The recent article by Rangnath Pathare `The Impact of LPG (Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization) on Contemporary Marathi Literature (New Quest 169, July-September 2007) is an excellent example of how literary criticism functions in Marathi today. Prejudice, a dogmatic outlook and sloganeering politics have replaced an intelligent analysis of literary texts and a sharp sense of literary values. Posturing and sectarianism have replaced the critical ability to provide substantiating evidence for statements made by the critic. I intend to point out how Pathare’s assumptions are merely assumptions born of  his own limited understanding of literature and the sociology of literature rather than penetrating and original insights into the contemporary Marathi literary scenario.

The first severe limitation of Pathare’s observation is a rather superficial understanding of the extremely complex and dynamic relationship between literature and society. An assessment of the impact of liberalization, globalization and privatization is still a matter of debate among trained sociologists and economists. Demonizing capitalism is typical of a certain leftist ideology, which has failed to live up to its claims of explaining persistence of capitalism long after its soothsayers had announced its collapse. The problem with this kind of leftist politics is its own inability to account for its own internal contradictions in its ideas and actions. It views contemporary society from an apocalyptic and catastrophic perspective - a view which is not as scientific or rational as it claims to be. Nor is it as saintly as it claims to be on human rights’ issues. Besides, a huge chunk of Pathare’s article consists of this sort of `sociological’ survey of Marathi society done by person who is neither a trained sociologist nor an economist. It consists of observations which have not been backed up any evidence in the form of sociological data or economic statistics. Hence, it is an excellent example of how not to do sociology or economics. One wonders if Prof. Pathare, who is a professor of physics, writes articles on his subject in a similar way: peppering sweeping generalizations without adequate evidence, and with dogmatic sloganeering.

However, more serious problems arise when such a narrow-minded stance is adopted in the realm of literary criticism. Its outlook is extremely reductive and deterministic. It confuses social values with literary values. Even if we accept that the dividing line between the two is often blurred, their relationship is not of simple identity. However, what Professor Pathare does is even more illogical. He rails abuses on certain cosmopolitan Marathi poets like Hemant Divate, Salil Wagh, Manya Joshi, Sridhar Tilwe and Sachin Ketkar without naming them. I wonder what prevents him from naming these new poets unequivocally. Probably he wants to be on good terms with some of them even after criticizing them. This is again a very typically timid Marathi middle-class attitude of criticizing someone whom you want to retain as a friend. His railing is characteristic:

I wonder who `appoints’ critics and thinkers in a given society. I would like to know from Pathare, if the `post' of a writer and critic or thinker  is `appointed' after an ad in newspaper, interview, `fixing' and all that. That’s probably how he got `appointed' as a novelist and critic. With friends in high posts in the Sahitya Akademi and academia, Professor Pathare has managed to `post' himself as a `major' voice in fiction. I would also like to know if people require Pathare's under-the-table-recommendation to be `appointed' as bona fide ‘members’ of the literary fraternity.

I feel that people like Pathare, who claim to be authorities, are self appointed, or are appointed by their friends in academia, official institutions and award-giving organizations. Otherwise, how is it that after writing mediocre stuff they manage to become `reputed' and the sole bearers of Marathi tradition? If we’re behaving like Mafia dons, they’re behaving like a military Junta and rejecting them involves rejection by their chamchas and `appointment’-wallahs. Actually, it’s people who share Pathare’s dogmas and biases that populate the Marathi literary establishment, literary academia, and award-giving institutions and occupy the posts of `literary critics’. Is it any wonder that the most ridiculous trash from Pathare’s coterie is being celebrated as `great writing' and is given prestigious prizes. Sorry, Mr. Pathare, we can’t help it. We don’t recognize you or your agents, or your bosses as our authorities, and neither do we need your `appointments’, `awards’ or `certificates’ for the posts of writers and thinkers.

Besides, how can you declare that someone is living in their `shallow illusionary universe’? How does one verify whether Hemant Divate’s or Manya Joshi’s universe is any shallower or profounder than Prof Pathare’s? Such a subjective and impressionistic remark is itself an indicator of Pathare’s prejudiced and naïve `critical’(?) practice.

I also wonder if there is anything wrong with the use of modern means of communication like blogs and the internet. However, I think that Pathare’s technophobia owes something to the emancipating power of technology. Internet technology offers a space for expression outside the dogmatic, feudal and parochial Marathi literary culture. Technology thus becomes a liberating force. When the local puddle becomes bondage, reaching out into the global domain is refreshingly empowering, especially for those who dare to think differently and write differently. This does not, of course, mean that there is no digital divide or social inequality. It means that technology is a powerful tool, which can be used as well as abused. It means that for a creative and independent thinking it can be used as a means of articulation.

Pathare has labelled these writers as “postmodern” but fails to explain exactly what he means by that and what features of postmodernism does he find in their writings. The term “postmodernism” is a weird term as Appignanesi and Garratt (1999) point out. They  point out how the term is etymologically  self contradictory and problematic. The term `modern’ is from the root `modus’, which means `now’. Postmodern, then would mean ` after now’, which means something which has not yet arrived and will never arrive!

Marathi critics have a curious way of periodizing  twentieth century Marathi literary history. Conventional literary history marks the late-nineteenth century as the beginning of  `modern’ literature (which is in keeping with many other Indian literatures), and the phase after B.S. Mardhekar (c. 1940s) as `Modernist’. For some critics, like Chandrakant Patil, the period of the rise of little magazine movements in the sixties marks a new phase in Marathi literature, which is termed as `Sathottari or `the post-Sixties’ borrowed from the friendly neighbourhood of Hindi literature. This phase is set off as a rejection or rebellion against the modernism of the 40s. This term is, however, is extremely problematic. The first problem is that the earliest little magazine movements began in the early fifties, with Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar and others starting the cyclostyled little magazine named `Shabda’ in 1954, so it is not really `post-Sixties’ at all. The second, and more serious problem, is that some of the important preoccupations of the so-called `post-Sixties’ can be traced back to Mardhekar himself. The preoccupations like amalgamation of international modernist movements with the Bhakti traditions, or with idea of alienation or the depiction of dark subjectivity and explicit sexuality, which is common in the writings of Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar, Bhalchandra Nemade (whose famous novel Kosla, shows the clear impact of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, in spite of his xenophobic version of nativism), Namdeo Dhasal (who co-founded the Dalit Panthers party, inspired by the Black Panther’s movement in America), Vasant Abaji Dahake (the dark surreal vision of Kafka is a major influence on his works) and others are prominently present in Mardhekar’s poetry. Hence, people who want to depict the post Sixties movement as a `nativist’ rejection of the earlier modernist phase (termed `Satyakatha’-Modernism disparagingly by the little magazine-wallahs after the name of a reputed literary magazine which published the works of the early modernists as well as the early works of Chitre, Dhasal and Kolatkar) have not read their literature carefully and critically.

Recently, a controversial position is taken by Sridhar Tilve (1999), who claims the post-Sixties little magazine is a third `modernity’ (or alternatively `postmodernism’) and the new generation of poets who deal with the social and cultural problems of the post-liberalization phase are the poets of a `Fourth modernity’ (`post-post modernist’, by Tilve’s arithmetic; the first phase being the late-nineteenth century, the second phase being the early modern phase of Mardhekar, Vinda Karandikar and others, and the third phase is the `postmodern phase’ of Chitre, Kolatkar and so on). The debate over the terminology is largely futile according to me, because in India, no period exhibits a complete break with the preceding period and at the same time there is no period in which there is some discontinuity with the previous period.

The point here is that the term `Postmodern’ as used by Pathare is used not as a historical category in literary history but as a derogatory label from a parochial point of view. I find Lyotard’s discussion of the term `postmodern’ very useful in this context. Lyotard defines post-modern as precisely the avant-garde spirit of questioning received dogmas, parochialism, and the received norms of literature. If questioning the received dogmas and established norms of literature is postmodernism in Lyotardian sense, then postmodern even predates modernism. In the Indian context, this spirit can go back to the Bhakti period, which was a period of intense questioning of norms and customs.  It is not limited to Sanjeev Khandekar or Manya Joshi.

However, Pathare is not alone in Maharashtra to resist the experimental and the new. This prejudice is deeply ingrained and widely held. Another and more insidious attack on the new avant-garde in Marathi comes from Nitin Rindhe (2006). He believes that the present generation of Marathi poetry, whose cultural and social context is that of globalization, is bifurcated in its attitudes on the basis of the economic class and region. The poets based in the metropolis belong to a class which has benefited from globalization and, hence, they uphold globalization directly and indirectly. They’re not critical of globalization. Poets not based in the metropolis  have not benefited from globalization and are therefore critical of globalization. The conclusions he draws from his argument is that poets and critics like Hemant Divate, Sachin Ketkar, Manya Joshi and Salil Wagh lack sensitivity and celebrate globalization. He complains that the poets and critics who come from metropolitan location consider the poetry from non-metropolitan location `backward’ and `inferior’. Though the argument is attractive, it is deceptive and fallacious. It is simply based on his ignorance of the poetry written by the above poets. He assumes that it is the sacred duty of poets and poetry to criticize globalization. In short, his criticism is NOT descriptive but NORMATIVE. He imposes his own ideas of the poet’s duties on the poet. No contemporary critic, Sridhar Tilve or Sachin Ketkar or Salil Wagh has called non-metropolitan poetry as being `backward’ or `inferior’, just because the poets come from non-metropolitan location. Likewise, one only has to read some poets like Hemant Divate or Manya Joshi or Salil Wagh carefully to realize that they are not celebrating globalization but are actually expressing their own perception of the crises created by globalization. Thus, in the face of a widespread tendency to run down the new experimental avant-garde in Marathi, I urge its detractors to read it closely first before attacking it. The close textual reading precedes close contextual reading and the critical estimate of literature can only come after careful double reading.

To illustrate what I said, let’s look at two poems written by Hemant Divate and Manya Joshi to verify if the said poets are actually celebrating globalization uncritically. Both poems can be found in ` Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry’ (2004). Both poems have been  translated by me.

In the poem titled `Shopping at Mega-Mall’, the speaker realizes that he has turned into a commodity or a consumer item and is being displayed in the mega mall.

The consumer becomes the consumed; the subject becomes the object, not just any object but an object to be sold in a flashy wrapper as the entire world turns into one huge Mega-mall. This is indeed a dehumanizing predicament.

This sense of commodification of self is also an awareness of being used, abused and used as a foot wipe. The last stanza quoted above is almost an example of Dalit poetry, where the owner of the broom spits on it as he dreams of a vacuum cleaner. The consciousness of the dehumanizing, asphyxiating and sinister aspects of globalization pervades poetry of many contemporary poets like Hemant Divate. However, it goes undetected even by people who call themselves trained readers of poetry like Pathare and Rindhe, which puts a question mark over their ability to read contemporary poetry or  any poetry, for that matter.

Manya Joshi’s poems often touch upon the segregation of human being from  human being in the age of the `communication’ revolution. His poem ` An Announcement for Mr. and Mrs. Limaye’ can be read as an expression of alienation in the `global village’:

The poem, which mixes up registers and languages, expresses how people lose each other and are alienated from one another. In spite of being a very small world, a married couple travelling in a Mumbai suburban train fails to recognize each other on the crowded railway platform. Manya Joshi’s perception of the predicament of alienation in the “superbuiltup” world is not celebratory. It is a rather agonizing situation from which even Sai Baba cannot save us. However, the critics who attack Manya or Hemant for lack of sensitivity fail to respond to the sense of crises and suffering implicit in their poetry, primarily because they are deeply prejudiced against these poets beforehand and secondarily because they simply don’t know how to read a poem.

Poetry need not be sloganeering in order to be `political’. The expression of personal anguish needs only to be situated in the historical context to be realized as political. Social is nothing but the individual contextualized. However, setting off with biases and dogmas and wanting to straight-jacket certain writings, without even reading them closely, is a sign of substandard critical practice. Needless to say, it is fairly widespread in Maharashtra and Professor Pathare’s essay is just one example of it.

References

Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated by G Bennington, B. Massumi, Manchester University Press, 1984.

Nitin Rindhe, Aajchya Kavitetli `Navta’ ani Samikshakanchi Gochi, Abhidhanantar, Mumbai, April-June, 2006.

Richard Appignanesi, Chris Garratt , Introducing Postmodernism, Icon Books, 1999.

Sachin Ketkar ed. and trans. Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry, Poetrywala, Mumbai, 2004.

Sachin Ketkar, a bilingual writer and translator, has translated and edited Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry. He is on New Quest’s editorial board.