IN many Indian languages, the word for the modern is aadhunik. Interestingly, the word aadhunik was first used in the 10th century by a Darbhanga based philosopher, Udayancharya, who, while proposing Navya-Nyaya philosophy, proclaimed that the Kashmir Shaiv Nyaya followers were pracheen (ancient) and they were modern (aadhunik). This is a pointer to the fact, that the notion of the modern was already at least 900 years old in Indian tradition, whereas the popular belief is that the modern came to us through our encounter with the West and its wide impact in the 19th century. Like everything in India, the modern has been plural. However, if one insists on binaries, there are at least two kinds of modernity: one emerging from the restlessness and interrogative spirit of Indian traditions and the other being propelled by the western impact.

The emergence of the modern was also almost simultaneous with the appearance of nationalism, democratic impulses, identity issues and communalism. Though it eventually became a national, all-India trend, the modern grew in several stages in different regions of the country. Many new forms of creative and critical articulation took root, namely the novel, the short story, the non-fiction, literary criticism and journalism. More importantly, the modern permeated the realms of creativity, ideas and institution making.

Another important factor was the entry of English into the linguistic corpus of India as a language of power, of modernity, of communication with the world. Sadly, one of the outcomes of the modern has been the marginalization of hundreds of dialects of India: languages got standardized and dialects increasingly excluded from the written being reduced to the oral alone. In the process many nuances, cultural memories and resonances dimmed and modern Indian languages became modern but largely urban. In a recent People’s Linguistic Survey of India, it has been revealed that, if one ignores the rather firmly rooted but highly questionable distinction between languages and dialects brought about by the modern, there are still more than 700 languages in India, some spoken by a few hundreds to others spoken by millions. But in the VIII Schedule of the Constitution of India, only 22 languages are, in a way, recognized.

 

Language has been an important theme of consideration, of intellectual exploration and theory in India during the classical and medieval times. However, most ideas of language now prevalent do not emerge from the rich and complex tradition’s renewal and expansion into modern times but from current theories about language and linguistics in the West. This, despite the fact that one of the most outstanding linguist and language thinkers of the 20th century, Roman Jacobsen, had said that if someone today made a claim that she had articulated a new insight or theory about language, she had better check that that insight or theory had not already been formulated by an Indian centuries ago!

The West-propelled modern, in its zeal to organize Indian reality anew, also brought in the concept of the classical and the modern. So music and dance were termed classical; literature, theatre and visual arts, modern. The rest were lumped in a new category ‘folk’. In the realm of visual arts, the notion of fine art and craft came to be, and new categories of artists and craftsmen took root.

Indian languages had another struggle to wage. During the Mughal period (early 16th to mid-19th century), the official language was Persian and the British replaced it eventually by English. Both, incidentally, were foreign languages, which also became part of the language community of India and vehicles not only of administration but also of thought and creative expression. A substantial part of the struggle for freedom from colonial rule in India, communication with the colonial rulers, and across the country, was carried out in English. Even after independence, English remains the official language as also the language of power, thought and creativity. Barely 10 per cent of the Indian population knows it, but it is very powerful, enjoying the patronage of the state, the market and the elite.

In literature, the modern brought many new forms of prose giving prose a centrality it did not have in previous times. The modern transformed a largely poetic country into a land of prose. Some consequent developments can be noted. First, prose in many ways expanded the base of literature creating a pluralistic platform that was accessible, responsive and widespread. In fact, the democratization of literature rapidly gained pace and became irretrievable by the arrival of the printing press – a powerful instrument of the modern.

 

The printing press liberated literature from being confined to a ‘manuscript’ and made it widely available to the people. In the bargain, verbal literacy emerged as a new concept of literacy (only those who could read and write could be literate), illegitimizing oral literacy. Millions of people almost lost the right to express themselves since they could not read or write; this in spite of the fact that poetry only existed in an oral form for centuries, including the repertoire of a master like Kabir. Earlier, the Vedas survived in the oral tradition for a thousand years before they were written down. The modern commenced in India through the dialectics of inclusion and exclusion, of expansion and contraction, sometimes almost suppression.

One of the defining features of the 20th century in Indian literature across languages was the emergence of the massive presence of prose. There is hardly a major poet in any language who has not written prose. Many major thinkers and poets like Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali) and Agyeya (Hindi) became major novelists writing in prose. Prose intruded into more areas of human experience, existence, relationships and locales, thereby vastly expanding the geography of literary expression.

 

It is interesting to note that it was largely through prose that the ordinary man unseated the mythical or historical hero, who occupied the centre stage of literature heretofore. In Faqirchand Mohanty, Premchand, T.S. Pillai, Renu, Manto, among others, it was the farmer, the poor, the man on the street, the person sidelined by history or religion, that came to be the focus of literary attention and narrative. A similar displacement took place in poetry too, with Jaishankar Prasad, Nirala, Muktibodh, Akhtar ul Iman and Jibanananda Das, to name a few.

One of the central features of 20th century Indian literature is the place and possibility of the utterly ordinary. It has also meant inter alia, that a lot of workaday life, the dailiness of living, the stark social reality with all its dilemmas, ambivalences and contradictions, complexities and anxieties, has entered the literary arena almost for the first time. The poetics of enjoyment that had dominated earlier literary endeavours was replaced by a poetics of disturbance. Literature does not entertain or delight one anymore: it disturbs one to perceive reality, the human condition. The literature, which attempts to please, continues to exist and flourish as popular, but significance has shifted to the more interrogative, the more probing, and the more agonizing.

In some ways the modern brought with it a new notion of Indian literature. Earlier, Indianness was defined by Sanskrit poetics into the making of which writers and aestheticians from Kerala to Kashmir, from Bengal to Varanasi participated, and new ideas and concepts were discussed across the subcontinent. But the modern created a new awareness of a distinctive aesthetic, a plurality of them in Indian languages. Through translation, Indian languages developed a deep awareness and understanding of literary works, debates, issues and concerns expressed in other languages. Translation has become an instrument of bringing together, almost integrating, the various literatures of languages into one whole plural Indian literature. What Sanskrit did in tradition, the modern has done in the 20th century.

 

The modern also brought a new sense of freedom in the broader sociopolitical context. A mass movement, later to be led by Mahatma Gandhi, started to convert the age-old concept of individual liberation, ‘moksha’, into a more radical concept of social freedom. This had far reaching consequences. Literature became a site of struggle for freedom, against conventions of morality, social conduct, and form; it also, in a significant way, became a more open and visible arena of contestation between contending but alternative visions. As the national struggle for freedom attracted mass participation and involvement of many sections of the people, the ‘nation’ became a direct and indirect theme in literature. Perhaps for the first time in Indian tradition, literature was writing ‘nation’. In some ways literature started articulating in multiple and imaginative ways a new nation, one that was free and confident.

The rise of nationalism was also coupled with the twin emergence of communalism, of Hindu and Muslim identities. Especially in the North, it created a disastrous schism between Hindi and Urdu, the two languages that shared the same geography, many cultural and social memories, and the twin trends of Sanskritization and Persianization took root. In the South, however, there was greater integration and accommodation. The partition of the country, unfortunately, widened the gulf in the Hindi-Urdu belt. Interestingly, Hindi more or less bridged the gap while Urdu, in some ways, widened it.

 

The modern also brought in its baggage several new ideologies. Other than nationalism and communalism came Marxism and Gandhism. In the 1930s, the Marxist influence spread over many literatures in India. It encouraged a new way of looking at the social content and responsibility in and of literature. Lofty proclamations such as the one by Premchand, giving the Presidential Address at the inaugural session of the Progressive Writers Union in 1936, asserted that literature was a beacon of light in front of politics. However, this was also the beginning of writers coming together to discuss issues of literature, society and politics.

While the left parties had limited success in terms of electoral politics, Marxism continued to attract a large part of Indian intellect and creativity into its folds. Even at present, with the left reduced to a rather minor space in the Indian polity, Marxism remains a widespread force and ideology. There are at least three separate national organizations of writers owing their allegiance to Marxism in some form or the other. This ideological spread also brought, in large measure, a sense of parochialism: many writers who were or are liberals, but not necessarily Marxists, have been victims in terms of their contributions being undervalued or ignored.

 

The influence of Gandhi has been an important factor, especially in pre-independent India. The fact that he wrote his major texts including Hind Swaraj and his autobiography in his mother tongue Gujarati, brought about a new confidence in the literary and intellectual possibilities of writing in multiple mother tongues across the country. The Nobel Prize to Rabindranath Tagore for Geetanjali, a book of verses in Bengali, also contributed to an enhancement of this confidence. Gandhi’s influence also brought about a deeper and abiding sense of freedom, and literature was seen to be an integral part of the wider struggle for freedom, not only political but also social and moral. It can safely be claimed that India was already free in its literature, even though produced in a colonized country, much before she attained political freedom.

Communalism in India in its current popular phase seems to have taken root in a disturbing way. The forces that openly profess and practice it are enjoying unprecedented power and a large following. But in contrast, these same forces have little following or influence in literature. Particularly in the Hindi belt, which is notoriously communal and caste ridden, the literature remains pluralistic, firmly opposed to communalism and casteism. Hindi literature today is the only political opposition left, with all political parties in the region having fallen prey to the regressive forces and parochializing strategies promoting caste and religious bigotry. It is a radical moment where literature stands up against a vast and increasing majority of society in which it is produced.

The phenomenon also underlines the fact that literature, the more significant section of it, has affirmed its democratic credentials by being a powerful voice of a minority holding liberal views in society. However, as the influence of Gandhi waned and that of Marxism expanded, a third development has been the undermining of the spiritual dimension of the human condition. There has been no dialogue with religions: neither they nor the creative community felt the need to talk to each other. Consequently, amongst the middle classes across the country, and more especially in the Hindi belt, a shallow, almost false religiosity has taken root creating a spiritual void. The forces of communalism have seized upon this historical opportunity and walked in to fill the void.

 

Two other developments in the ongoing process of democratization of creativity must be noted. They are also an outcome of the liberating impulse of the modern. As we approach the completion of seven decades of democracy, there are more women, more Dalits writing significantly and boldly, bringing in unexpressed and unacknowledged experiences, emotions and feelings, thereby expanding the porous geography of literature. At last the significant and crucial presence of women in many other areas of creativity such as the visual arts, theatre, academia and cinema, is unavoidable.

Democracy has influenced literature to expand and to include women and Dalits into its fold, a place denied to them for centuries and, in turn, literature has strengthened the freedom component of democracy. Many a time women and Dalits are not so free in social circumstances as they are in literature. This trend first started in Marathi and Tamil and now covers all literatures and regions in India. In some areas – notably Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Manipur and Mizoram – tribal voices have emerged in literature, particularly in poetry and music, making literature yet another site for freedom, courage and plurality.

 

In modern times, two other forces have emerged in the form of media and cinema, in the arena of language. A substantial section of the media in pre-independent India openly participated in the struggle for freedom, reflecting its substance and passion, but also its contradictions and anxieties. Both Hindu and Muslim communalism were provided a platform. After independence, for a long time, the print media became a critical voice; one that reported facts, critically analysed policies, boldly shaped opinion, and to some degree endeavoured to protect and defend republican values. The many languages in India developed a robust press and their readers substantially outnumbered readers of the more dominant English newspapers. The newspapers provided space and support for modern criticism of the arts, and helped in their dissemination.

Sadly, with the unprecedented corporatization of media houses, at the present juncture they have largely become shameless vehicles of the state and the ruling parties, big capital, market forces and crony capitalism. They cannot be expected to be free, democratic, truth abiding, and critical minded. There is little space available for literature and the arts, obsessed as the media is with politics, crime, sports, fashion and popular cinema. After being an important democratizing vehicle, a large part of it in tone, temper, in its exclusions and preferences, in its lack of commitment to freedom and democratic critical enquiry, in absence of its concern for truth and resistance to lies and fakes, the press has now succumbed to becoming increasingly undemocratic, in a sense even anti-democratic.

Cinema, like the press, is a uniquely modern invention. It spread in India far and wide. Many languages began to be used and cinema played an important role in its democratic spread. Popular Hindi films took the language to the farthest corners of the country and beyond as its popularity spread, making it comprehensible to other language speakers. While some classics by Tagore, Sharad Chandra, T.S. Pillai, and Premchand, among others, became available to a large number of viewers through films for those who may otherwise have never read them, it also created populist versions of language and literature, emptying them of complexity, resonances and many understated but subterranean meanings.

 

While the works of many important literary writers in Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam and Assamese were put on celluloid, Hindi cinema sadly stayed aloof from significant Hindi fiction. While popularizing Hindi, it also, sadly, made it into a sentimental, mono-meaning, romantic language without much intellectual or ideational content. This is a classical example where a modern invention turns itself into a medium of regressive medievalism.

But it must also be recognized that the press in literature brought about a spate of literary magazines. This was an unprecedented opportunity for literature to win new readers far and wide. The magazines created new readers of literature, and many new trends made their first appearance in the pages of these magazines. They also became sites of criticism, enquiry and debate. New genres of literature –travelogues, diaries, sketches and reportage – first appeared in magazines and only later in the form of books.

Many literary journals were active supporters of the freedom struggle, and after independence of democratic expression, dialogue and debate, controversies and new innovative writings entered the domain. Many avant-garde movements in literature such as Nayi Kavita (Hindi), Digambar Kavita (Telugu), Hungary Generation (Bengali), and Navya Kavya (Kannada), grew out of literary journals. At the moment, in most languages except Bengali and Malayalam, large publishing houses do not publish or support literary journals. It is only through a language like Hindi, for instance, with more than 500 little magazines, that young writers find a platform, readership and attention. Like printed books, journals remain an abiding gift of the modern to India, which renew themselves as tastes, visions, and functions of literature and languages undergo transformations.

 

The modern introduced in the realm of language and literature new institutions: literary institutions such as Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Asam Sahitya Sabha, Marathi Sahitya Sammelan, and Gujarati Sahitya Parishad, all created entirely and largely sustained by community initiatives. After independence, many national and state academics were established. Non-government institutions such as Asam Sahitya Sabha, created a vast following and support base in the various communities of Assam, binding and bringing them together on a single platform. They sometimes sought state support in terms of grants, but remained largely independent and autonomous. The state sponsored and financed academies also enjoyed a fair measure of autonomy in the first 25 years of democratic India. As democracy and freedom started getting narrow and parochial, state interference expanded.

Most literary and language academies and institutions set up by the state have reached a disastrous level of irrelevance – lacking autonomy, courage and imagination. They represent, if at all, the worst and regressive forces, irrepressible mediocrity in literature and languages. However, this institutional framework, when it worked freely and pluralistically, substantially contributed to promoting translation, publication and healthy dialogue and debate. Languages also function as clearing houses. In India, English and Hindi are among such clearing houses. For instance, several works of drama are first translated into Hindi and then from Hindi into many other Indian languages.

 

The modern education system has also played an important role in the realm of literature and language. First, many languages and literatures became part of the general curriculum bringing millions of schoolchildren into the space. Second, new pedagogies were developed and fine-tuned over decades to teach these subjects. Third, in its best moments, education created a wider and new understanding of literature and its implications. Fourth, new forms of criticism, appreciation, analysis and evaluation developed in the academia. Literary scholarship and criticism took modern forms and their emergence and presence became an important noteworthy factor.

Over the decades, the same system is now promoting amnesia rather than memory, instrumentalism instead of freethinking, allowing English to dominate, almost pretending that it is the only language in which knowledge can be produced. The system at the present juncture suffers from many ills, and education’s role in liberating young minds is increasingly under serious doubt. In the Hindi belt, for instance, as literacy has expanded communalism, casteism, and religious bigotry have simultaneously increased. On the other hand, in many languages both teaching and research have reached a very low level in both quality and quantity. In Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, and medieval languages and literature, India will soon have no worthwhile indigenous expertise and scholarship. It would only be available in some foreign universities.

 

Recording, exploring and analysing the long and complex saga of the modern in India would require a tome. In concluding this essay, therefore, we may note yet another positive contribution of the modern. Under the influence of the modern, both Indian writers and readers became acutely aware of world literature. Starting with English literature in the earlier phase, Indians became familiar with European, American, and Latin American, African and Asian literatures. Many western trends, such as high modernism, Marxism, surrealism, realism, magical realism, and post-modernism came into vogue and each one of them impacted both creativity and critical thinking. Over a period these influences took deeper shape, got internalized, and moved away from being superficial and imitative.

Today, Indian literature is part of world literature as distinctive and confident, with several unique features. For example, while the modern in the West invariably became preoccupied with disruption, dissonance, tensions and dislocations, Indian literature, while not ignoring the increasingly fragmented nature of reality, continues to celebrate life and existence. The celebrative and the critical have finally merged to create an organic alchemy called India. The modern and post-modern have in the long run been domesticated on its own terms by India.