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PRESENTATION ON EPIC AND NOVEL IN INDIA

BY Meenakshi Mukherjee

Franco Morettis The novel consists of two volumes History, Geography and Culture and Forms and Themes. The essays in these volumes are written by some of the leading contemporary critics. It is an attempt to understand the literary genre of novel across the world. Meenakshi Mukherjee, an eminent litterateur in her essay Epic and Novel in India traces the emergence of novel, pre-narrative discourses in India and the relationship between the early Indian and the western novels. Mukherjee begins her essay with the general assumption that the early English novels in India are a derivative discourse. After the mid nineteenth century these novels were evaluated in terms of western novels. But quite early in the essay she defies this general belief. She says that there are other determinants as well and emphasizes to go against the grain to examine the early novels in India. She also talks about the influence of the English education system which Lord Macaulay adopted for India. It affected the intellectual and literary developments of the country but Mukherjee asserts that it was not the only influence. She says that the early English novels shaped out of hybrid influences and indigenous genealogies. The realism from the western novels was taken up by several writers like O.Chandu Menon in Indulekha (1889). Though such writers declared the use of things according to their true appearance, Mukherjee says that the end of Menons narrative is similar to that of puranas. May god bless us and all who read this tale Though this type of ending is very different from the realist western novels but the good hopeful endings were also found in many Victorian novels. Hence it is not an easy task to point out from where the influence of western novels starts. She further draws some more similar elements for example the use of rhetorical device of authorial intervention in novels like Krishnakanters Uil (Bankim Chandra 1878), Vanity Fair (William Thackeray 1847). But question that they are borrowed from the Victorian novels is not very simple because such devices were also present in the oral narratives of India. Mukherjee further talks about the co-existence of the devices of the English novels and the conventions of the storytelling in many of the writers. She cites the example of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee whose first novel was in English (Rajmohans wife, 1864) but who then turned to writing in Bangla for the rest of his life. He was well read in English, Sanskrit and bangle literatures. However, the fusion of these cannot be exactly charted. Mukherjee then gives an insight into the pre-novel narrative forms in different parts of India. Describing the epics as past continuous she says that the themes used in the novels (later on) foreshadow in the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. Writers like Salman Rushdie (Midnights

Children) and Shashi Tharoor (The Great Indian Novel) have even deployed myths from these tales. Arabic storytelling style of Qissas and Daastans, Sanskrit stories like Vetala Pachisi, Simhasana Battisi and stories like Padmavat, Arabian Nights, and Hatim Tai are some other sets of pre-novel narrative forms. The first generation Indian novelists were well read in these forms before they started writing novels. And so we can trace some marks of these stories in the early novels in India. Further, Mukherjee develops that the novels in the mid nineteenth century in India which were intended to be a moral vehicle for the people but later history and fantasy got intertwined in these novels. Very fine examples of such novels are Chandrakanta (1891) by Devakinandan Khatri and Romesh Chandra Dutts Mahararashtra Jiban Prabhat (1878). Chandrakanta also brought the concepts of Tilism and Aiyyars which later merged into the detective of Jasusi Upanyas just as in Sir Arthur Conon Doyles novels. Furthermore Mukherjee articulates the rise in the feeling of nationalism and credits it to the prescribed educational system which in turn gave rise to the dissatisfaction with the subjugated present and thus shaped the idea of India. And that is why history interested many writers like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Harinarain Apte in the latter half of the 19th century. Here, we see resolute Mukherjee when she says the reason Bankimchandra was given the title of the Scott of India (from Sir Walter Scott) was to impose the influence of Walter Scott on Bankimchandra totally ignoring the vast differences in the writings of the two writers. Though she says that the reasons of the emergence of the historical fiction in India and Europe are different but she does not hesitate to use some of the points that Lukacs makes. Firstly, she agrees that the changes in political situations lead to the change in literary form and secondly, the consciousness of history and its effect on the life of common man. She mentions Tagore who believes that it is only when people relate to each other they write down their history. This happened after the new systems came into existence in India and religion took a backseat. But he also argues that history was recorded before this in Maharashtra at the time of Shivaji thus resounding what Lukacs says in his first point. The reading of history in the classrooms led to the consciousness of their own history and the urge to write it themselves from the Indian point of view. Mukherjee here asserts that writing history is never free from the biases but she maintains that partiality is way better than hostility. Towards the middle of the essay Mukherjee mentions some of the English writers such as James Mill, Richard Orme who questioned the masculinity of Indian men deliberately to make them inferior to the Europeans. Contesting this is the portrayal of the Rajput men in the popular fiction at that time. Sole purpose of the Rajput men was to protect the dignity of the country and their women (Bankims Raj Singha, 1881). Women together with land blend in a composite metaphor. Women are portrayed as powerless beings just to increase the stature of men. But there were also texts featuring veerangana stark opposite to these defenseless women (Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi and Razia Sultana). There was, as Mukherjee mentions, another paradigm to this portrayal of

women. A woman was seen as the mother in terms of familial discourse, of goddess for invoking Devi and the patriotism for the motherland. In these novels the low caste people did not occupy much of the space and were mostly at the margins. Mukherjee points out something interesting which is the portrayal of Britishers in the novels. It was mostly positive because many of the novelists were working as government servants and showing a white man in negative light would have brought adverse effects on their careers. However, there is no apparent explanation of the portrayal of Muslims as the other. The idea of nation and religion was somewhat mixed at this time which is critiqued in two of Tagores novels, Gora and Gharey Bairey. Mukherjee explains in detail how these two novels examine the concept of nationalism both depicting aggressive Hinduism versus the more rational concept of nationalism. During the latter half of the twentieth century the notion of religion and nation changed and so did the construction of them in the novels like Raag Darbari and Maila Anchal. Mukherjee calls them introspective, satiric, comic or subversive. The issues relating to identity, alienation started to seep in the novels after the partition. Amitav Ghoshs Shadow Lines (1988), Jochchna Kumari and Toba Tek Singh are some of the texts Mukherjee talks about in this relation. As discussed earlier in the essay; here also fiction gets merged with the history of the time. Towards the end of the essay Meenakshi Mukherjee comes back to the question of novel in India being a procured discourse. She gives several reasons besides the adopted English education system. She says the Progressive Writers Movement of the 1930s also contributed in the changing relationship between the Indian and the European novels. These writers were leftoriented and tried to propagate the notion of equality. There was also the modernist movement where novelists experimented with the style and form of the novels. Mukherjee concludes with many writers who claim to have been influenced by other foreign literature like American, European rather than the British literature. But there have also been a row of classic writers who were totally unaffected by the western writings. To name a few are Shivrama Karanath (Kannada), Gopinath Mohanty (Oriya), Tarashankar Bandhopadhyay (Bangla). Mukherjee then draws our attention to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee who shifted writing in his mother tongue from English but there are also writers like Kiran Nagarkar and Mrinal Pande who switched to English from their mother tongue. She says there are not any absolute reasons for this shift. Furthermore, Mukherjee refutes to the idea of Shivrama Padikkal who believes that people (dominant group) construct reality considering the literary productions but says if that would have been the case then the early English novels in India would have got more importance. Instead she says, Early English novels were hardly noticed, seldom discussed, and never canonized...

The English writers of that time deliberately depoliticized their novels because of the fear of installing sedition. And many novels like The Princess of Aryavarta (K.K. Sinha, 1903) even valorized the imperial rule. Coming back to the gender role, Mukherjee says that the mother tongue belonged to the women who were not corrupted by the western influence. Indian women were not a part of the readership of the early English novels because education was only accessible to men. Women were instructed only through their mother tongue rather than English. Thus the regional identity, mother and language seem to merge within each other making the Indian languages the vehicle of the regional nationalism. Mukherjee remarks Salman Rushdies Midnights Children as the landmark text of the Indian English novels. She maintains, though the number of publications in Indian languages is still larger than the English ones but its spread is limited to the region of the language. Finally Mukherjee closes her essay by putting yet another thought in the minds of the readers. She says that it is not much investigated whether the audience of the Indian or English novels affected the style form and themes of the writing of the novels. Comments: The novel has been a quintessential form of modern art and it actually can be quite interesting for the present generation to read the phases of the Indian novel carved out by Meenakshi Mukherjee in this essay. The essay is written in jargon-free and comprehensible language. But somewhere it seems to be too much loaded with information and by the end of the essay you have a long list of novels with you! Mukherjee starts off with the common belief of early Indian novel being imported from the west, then goes on to talk about various traditions in India, then coming back to the early Indian novels and relates it to the concept of nation and gender.