Chapter III

Privileging Literature

Introduction

In this chapter, I attempt to explore the twin processes involving efforts of literature

to find a central place within the wider milieu of the periodicals and the intra-literary

debates that took place within this medium. Literature tried to subsume all forms of

knowledge, thereby projecting itself as adorned with the highest authority and thus

taking the burden of interpreting Indian civilisational experience as well as its

aspirations. Simultaneously there was also an ongoing battle within the literary arena

for the place of' most authentic voice', as it waded through the pillars of institutions

and market to define what was 'high' and what was 'low'. The attempt is also to

highlight the evolution of literary genres, institutions, schools as well as individual

personalities as expressions of the larger historical undercurrents. The attempt is also

to define the process through which the literary is reified.

Terry Eagleton and Chris Baldick have attempted to see the institutionalisation of

literary criticism in a historical context. 1 According to them, while the 19th century

English literature was dominated mainly by 'men of letters', who could write on a

number of issues in their journals, the area of literature became a specialised one

after the inclusion of literary studies into college and university curriculum. It was

around the second decade of the 20th century that the era of 'little j~urnals' appeared

on the scene that defined a new space for the category of 'poet-critic', e.g. Eliot. The

Hindi sphere also witnessed an almost simultaneous development of these categories

instead of a unilinear evolution. 2 This was mainly due to the emergence of different

institutions e.g. a pioneering journal like Saraswati, regulating institutions like

Nagari Pracharini Sabha, Kashi, and Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Prayag, and the

inclusion of Hindi into schools and colleges within a few years from each other. But

as Baldick has argued, the role of ideology was equally important in defining the

issues at stake.

1 Teny Eagleton, The Function of Criticism, Verso, ~ondon, 1984 and Chris Baldick, Criticism and Literary Theory: 1890 to the Present, Longman, London, 1996.

2 Even in the case of west, though, the argument about the unilinear development of literary institutions is not entirely true. Raymond Williams using the terms 'residual' (an outgoing style, method or school of thought) and 'emergent' (an upcoming one) movements has argued that at a given moment a large number of these schools, styles etc. contend for hegemonic sway. See Baldick, op. cit., p. 8.

94

Bayly while discussing the nineteenth century Hindi literary developments has

argued that,

In the old North Indian ecumene literary excellence had been judged by circles of poets in mushairas and their Hindi equivalents, by the plaudits of princes and by inclusion in the written anthologies of great verse which were circulated among learned families. By contrast, Harishchandra promoted himself and his poetry through his journal Harishchandra Chandrika.3

Even while the beginnings thus had been made during this period, the literature

gradually became circumscribed in the arena of print pre-dominantly from the

twentieth century onwards, despite certain occasional outbursts to promote a

revivified public culture of poetry through sponsored kavi sammelans. It was in this

sense that literature itself got identified primarily in a textualist mode, with different

forms of print arenaQournals, text-books etc.) determining its future course.

Part I

The World of Critics

Changing notions of literature

In a controversial yet significant study, Gauri Vishwanathan has argued that in the

19th century, the crucial project for the colonial enterprise was to impose English

language mainly through the systematic institutionalisation of English literature,

symbolising western civilisational superiority. 4 The argument has been contested at

various levels, particularly, for its complete disregard for the indigenous reception of

such an enterprise. Aijaz Ahmad has termed it as patently false by arguing that the

superiority of such kind was reflected in the professional courses like law, medicine,

technical advances etc., and the imposition of English language was significant only

in so far as it was needed for the colonials to know a foreign language in accordance

with the principle of 'traditional British pedagogy'. 5 Yet the question remains that

why literature in the first place was included as an essential part of the curriculum in

the colonies for both colonials and the colonised. Significantly, it had not been

initiated and regularised even in British universities at that time. Terry Eagleton has

3 C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence gathering and social communication in India, 17801870, Cambridge University Press, South Asian edn., N. Delhi, 1999, p. 347.

4 Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India, Faber & Faber, London, 1990.

5 Aijaz Ahmad, 'Indian Literature: Notes Towards the Definition of a Category' in In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, Verso, London, 1992, pp. 268-9

95

argued elsewhere that 'English literature' provided the best means for 'pacifying and

incorporating' the proletariat, women and the colonised, generating a hegemonic

consent for the ruling classes in times of socio-political instability. 6

Even when one

accepts Ahmad's contention that the majority of the indigenous intelligentsia. chose

vernacular medium for their literary expressions, the very idea of 'literature as

superior form of knowledge' had taken significant roots among the colonised. The

Hindi literary field proved to be no exception.

The answers to the question, "What is literature?" have varied from the most

expansive meaning all forms of writing, to the more restrictive defining it in terms of

fictional, imaginative or creative writing, both 'serious' and 'popular' and further to

its most restricted modern meaning denoting,

The concept of a special and privileged set of fictional, imaginative or creative forms of writing which, ... exhibit certain specific properties that require special methods of analysis if they are to be properly understood. 7

The process of course has been long and overlapping, particularly in the west.

Raymond Williams has argued that the way we understand 'literature' today in its

current meaning is a product of a long drawn historical process that came to be

finally crystallised only in the nineteenth century. 8 Whereas it had earlier been used

to denote all forms of scholarly writings, including philosophy, history as well as

fictional forms, and there was no set of distinctions to differentiate the latter from

the former two. It is in this sense that Tony Bennett has argued that, 'Written texts

do not organise themselves into the "literary" and "non-literary"'. 9 It was thus

evolution of a certain set of literary practices in conjunction with certain specific

historical ways of looking at things that ultimately defined and led to changes in the

meaning of literature.

In case of Hindi, constant attempts to define literature around this time resulted in

essays like 'Sahitya', 'Kavita Kya Hai?', 'Kavita Kya Vastu Hai?' etc. These

definitions sought to affix, contest and reformulate the meaning and the utility of

6 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Oxford, 1982. See, chapter one. 7 Tony Bennett, Formalism and Marxism, Methuen & Co. Ltd., London, 1979, p. 6. 8 See Raymond Williams, Keywords, OUP, Oxford, 1976 and Marxism and Literature, OUP, Oxford,

1977. 9 To quote him in full, "They are so organised only by the operations of criticism upon them. Far

from reflecting a somehow natural and spontaneous system of relationships between written texts, literary criticism organises those texts into a system of relationships which is the product of its own discourse and of the distinctions between the 'literary' and the 'non-literary' which it operates". Tony Bennett, op. cit., p. 7.

96

literature. Mahavir Pd. Dwivedi held the standardisation of Hindi language and

literature to be crucial mainly for its utilitarian and civilising values. For him,

It is literature only that has produced the harmful religious practices in Europe. The seeds of community independence have been sown and the feelings of individual independence have been nurtured by literature itself. Fallen countries have been rejuvenated by literature itself. What has reduced the power of the Pope? What has led to the empowerment of people in France? What has lifted the head of the downtrodden Italy? Literature, literature and literature alone! 10

For Dwivedi, literature remained the only means for the upliftment of Indian society,

and that too through the invocation of various duties, moral knowledge, science,

religion, politics etc. 11 This privileging of literature over all other forms of

knowledge was to continue in later years albeit under different arguments. 12 But the

superiority of the poet/literature had to be exemplified through detailed exposition of

the moral and social values and through a detailed list of India's contribution to the

world ranging from its scientific and mathematical knowledge, architecture,

philosophy, aesthetics etc. This rendered the literature's job into a compilation of

social and moral philosophy instead of finding independent aesthetics for literature

to establish its superiority, which the later writers sought to do. It is not a

coincidence that one of the first poets of khariboli Hindi, Maithili Sharan Gupt,

wrote an epic like Bharat Bharati, a story of Hindu civilisation through various

historical phases. This successful experiment of the merger of history and literature

became perhaps the first best-seller of supposedly a high literary brand in Hindi.

The debate around the meaning of poetry for Dwivedi was multi-layered. He

discussed it from the point of view of 'a man of letters', i.e. in his capacity as a

pioneering editor of a pioneering journal like Saraswati. The early years of Dwivedi

as a scholar were engaged in debating on the classical aspects of Sanskrit literature,

a necessary index for even the scholar of Hindi at that time. It was in this respect

that he had a long running argument with Pt. Madhav Prasad Mishra, the then editor

10 Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, 'Sahitya' (publication year not known). See Rambaksh ed., Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi: Pratinidhi Sankalan, National Book Trust, N. Delhi, 1996.

11 Even Harishchandra, while redefining the concept of literature had included social reform and patriotism among the five fold goals of theatre, which also included the 'traditional' comic, erotic and spectacular. See Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhartendu Harishcchandra and Nineteenth-century Banaras, OUP, Delhi, 1996, p. 279.

12 For a detailed discussion of the promotion of literature as the 'cultural autobiography of nation' see Dalmia, ibid, p. 271-2. Also, citing works of dictionary compilers like J.T. Thompson (1846), Bayly has argued that from the mid-nineteenth century itself, the efforts were on to make literature an 'object of more general pursuit in India' as part of the colonial civilising mission. Bayly (1999), op. cit., p. 298.

97

of literary monthly Sudarshan, 13 over his two articles 'Naishadh Charit Charcha'

and 'Sudarshan' dealing with the aspects of classical Sanskrit literature. The form of

the debate was very much along the lines of traditional shashtrath albeit through a

new medium of print which nevertheless helped in establishing the credentials of the

two scholars while simultaneously establishing and fixing the terms of debate. At

the same time it was not only the trip back to the glorious Sanskritic heritage that

defined a litterateur's position in a changing society. He/she had to look around for

locating himself/herself firmly in the contemporary scenario. While seeking to

'direct' the production of literature in Hindi, especially poetry, Dwivedi borrowed

his ideas not only from other sources like English but more importantly from Urdu.

He sought to make a radical break from the past advocating a completely open

attitude towards adoption of new values, aesthetics and forms. Dwivedi's initiative

arose out of the structural compulsions of the emerging literary field, where he had

to 'carve' his own position. Ironically enough, many of Dwivedi's positions carved

in this way were challenged by the later school of 'Chhayavad' on the very grounds

of openness he had argued for earlier. In a two-part long essay titled 'Kavi-kartavya'

(the second part published after ten years), Dwivedi clearly lays down the 'duty of a

poet'. Dividing poetry-writing in four parts, metre, language, meaning and content

(chhand, bhasha, arth aur vishay), he clarified that poetry could be written in both

verse and prose forms and also notevery thing written in verse could be termed as

poetry. 14 More importantly, he called for the abandoning of old metres like doha,

chaupai, sortha etc. in favour of new ones-something insisted upon by Nirala in

favour of his mukt chhand two and half decades later. Dwivedi suggested tapping

untapped sources of Sanskrit literature in this regard while also favouring Urdu

influences for contemporary Hindi poetry written in day-to-day conversation style.

He in fact went on to stress on the need of poetry without anupras i.e. alliteration in

the end, citing examples from Sanskrit, English and Bengali. Anticipating criticism

in this regard from the 'old schools' he argued,

The followers of tradition get agitated over any disturbance in the continuity of any established norm and begin to indulge in various mal­practices and allegations towards the new trends. This is quite natural. But if people began to be afraid over such adverse comments, then the newness (navinata) would have disappeared from the world. 15

1 3 Brought out by the Lahri Press, owned and published by Devkinandan Khatri. 14 Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, 'Kavi-kartavya', part one published in Saraswati, monthly, Allahabad,

July 1901 and part two published in Jan. 1911 of the same journal under the pseudonym 'Vidyanath'. Also see, Bharat Yayavar ed., Mahavir Pd. Dwivedi Rachnavali, vol.2, Kitabghar, N. Delhi, 1998, pp. 44-54.

IS Ibid.

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Yet Dwivedi was .cautious enough to warn against the violation of grammar;

interesting! y enough while he deemed literature to be the 'language of the learned',

he also insisted upon the comprehensibility of the language for the larger masses.

In his endeavour to transform the existing state of Hindi, Dwivedi attacked two of

the hitherto popular forms of poetry namely, sringar and samasya-purti varieties.

While the former evidently related to descriptions of love, particularly erotic love,

the latter was a style patronised by the kings and the princes and was very popular

till the age of Bhartendu. For Dwivedi, the content of poetry had to be

simultaneously 'entertaining' and 'moralising'. Hence instead of Nayika-bhed, the

need was to depict the life and character of an 'ideal hero'. He issued a list of

'recommendations', apart from the classical ones, for writing poetry in a new age.

The subject matter of poetry had to be the condition, thought and emotions of

ordinary people; it had to contain ideals of courage, love and compassion; use of

alankaras, similes were not to be complex and imagination had to be subtle; simple,

natural and beautiful language had to be used; and finally the metre had to be

simple, limited and in accordance with the description. 16 In a later essay of his,

Dwivedi had insisted that the duty of the poet was 'to create something new' by

following the spirit of the times and place (desh aur kaal). 17 In this respect Dwivedi

was not asking for the new ideals ot new value-systems to be created per say but to

give voice to the latent new aspirations of the new age.

More importantly Dwivedi's ideals of poetry also reflected the importance he

accorded to a poet. According to him, the poet was a kind of incarnation of God,

superior to prose-writers as he had 'God given powers' to influence the masses.

Citing the examples of Tulsidas and Bhushan who according to him had managed to

create a socio-religious and political revolution respectively by the sheer force of

their poetry, Dwivedi held the poets to be superior to all other types of writers

engaged in literary production for they18 stimulated the right kind of emotion inside

the reader (later this idea was polished by Ramchandra Shukla in his formal capacity

as a critic). This ideal was different from the role of a poet as one giving voice to

'civilisational experience' of India envisaged by the later 'Chhayavadis'.

Simultaneously he also acknowledged the imaginative powers of a poet and stressed

16 Ibid. 17

Dwivedi, ibid, Sept. 1920. Also see, Dwivedi Rachnavali, vol. 2, op. cit., pp. 94-8. 18 Dwivedi, op. cit., part two, Jan. 1911.

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on his 'spontaneity', 19 which had to be harnessed for the pragmatic values of

influencing the masses. Citing people ranging from the contemporary Urdu poet­

critic Altaf Husain Hali to Sanskrit scholars like Kshemendra, Dwivedi went on to

argue that even as a poet could harness his skills through sheer practice and

knowledge, it was primarily the natural genius (swabhavik pratibha) which

separated a great poet from an average one. (emphasis added)20 Hence in a position

of low hierarchy at the level of commercial success, poetry had to be privileged over

prose for entirely different reasons.

It is interesting to note the extent to which Dwivedi and his generation of poets were

influenced by the contemporary writings in other languages. In Dwivedi' s case it

was Urdu and as mentioned earlier specifically Hali, who remained the pioneer in

terms of laying down the new grounds of literary criticism. In one of his essays, he

held contemporary Urdu literature to be far ahead of Hindi in all respects and

emphasised stressing the need for Hindi to emulate its ideals. Praising people like

Muhammad Husain Azad, Hali, Nazir Ahmad etc., he sought to lay down a

summary of Hali's acclaimed Mukaddama-o-Sher-o-Shairi in that piece. 21 A

comparison of this summary with other essays of Dwivedi where he propounded his

own ideals of art and poetry22, makes very apparent that Dwivedi borrowed heavily

from Hali for his ideals. Ranging from the idea of poetry as God-given to a moralist

attack against poetry of love and shringar; to a stress on the need for looking for

new metres and experimentation, to his differentiation between verse and poetry all

seem to be borrowed from Hali. It is again interesting that even Ramchandra Shukla

was considerably influenced by Hali in this regard. Inspired by Hali, Dwivedi

looked around for somebody who could write a comparative piece akin to Hali's

poetic masterpiece Musaddas (The Rise and Ebb of Islam written in Persian Masnavi

19 Ibid. Also see, Dwivedi, 'Kavita', Saraswati, Dec. 1903. Rprt. in Dwivedi Rachnavali, vol. 2, op. cit., pp. 59-63.

20 Dwivedi, 'Kavi aur Kavita', ibid, July, 1907. Also see, Dwivedi Rachnavali, vol. 2, op. cit., pp. 68-79. Incidentally Karine Schomer has wrongly attributed Dwivedi' s arguments in this regard as holding just the opposite views. See, Karine Schomer, Mahadevi Verma and Chhayavad Age of Modern Hindi Poetry, OUP, Delhi, 1998, p. 60.

21 Ibid, July, 1907. 22 See for example, Dwivedi, his two part essay titled 'Kavi-kartavya', op. cit. Mohammad Sadiq who

credits Hali as the first person to introduce western canons of criticism within India, also talks about the overlapping of 'useful arts' and 'fine arts', 'tl1e utilitarian trespassing on tl1e aesthetic' in Hali's critical thoughts. To quote him, "according to him (Hali), poetry has its raison d 'etre in that it inculcates morality, one of his strongest grievances against medieval poetry being its deficiency in the moral element. The object of poetry .. .is not to anmse or please; it is to exalt, ennoble and to fortify the reader in his struggle for existence ... " Mohanm1ad Sadiq, A History of Urdu Literature, Oxford University Press, N. Delhi, 1997 (lst published 1964), pp. 354-5.

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style) in Hindi (and for Hindus).23 For this he groomed Maithili Sharan Gupt who

began to write and publish in Saraswati under Dwivedi' s training. Gupt' s Bharat

Bharati, the 'Hindu history of Indian Nation', was thus written from a Sanatani

Hindu's position even while critiquing the other streams of Hinduism. Islam and

Christianity were taken as natural 'outsiders' and enemies in this history. The

inspiration of this kind of religious history of a nation had, interestingly, to come

from a poetic work on a supposedly 'rival' religion. The text went on to become the

first contemporary classic of its kind and was accepted by the literary establishment

as exhibiting the true ideals of poetry and of the country simultaneously. It also

became a first best seller of the high variety on account of its strong message of

'cultural nationalism' and was hailed as giving voice to the suppressed aspirations of

India. Promptly enough it was among the first texts to be included in the entire

college and school curriculum at that time and even later. The popularity of the

poem (serialised in Saraswati) was so legendary that youth were found singing its

verses on the streets with the book in their hands. Dwivedi whose earlier mentioned.

piece titled 'Kavi Kartavya' was published in a later collection added a footnote in

the revised edition. According to him earlier only Chandrakanta (the extremely

popular adventure novel written by Devakinandan Khatri in late nineteenth century)

had the pride of place in terms of popularity among the common people in 'the

language of conversation' (sadharan bolchal ki bhasha). But by then in poetry this

place had been achieved by Bharat Bharati and Jaydrath Vadh (another poem by

Gupt).24 The ideal was indeed to bring out the Old Glory of India through poetry,

especially as described in its classical texts. When Bharat Bharati's book version

was published Dwivedi wrote a hagiographic one-page note on it asking the readers

to buy it. Giving mundane details about its different bindings and their respective

prices, he went on to eulogise the text in lofty words,

This poem is path breaking in contemporary Hindi. It will work as an ideal for the contemporary and future poets ... .It can awaken those who are sleeping; bring back to the right path to those who have lost their way; activate those who are inactive; bring the memories of the past (glory) to those who have forgotten themselves; enthuse those who have no enthusiasm; charge up those who are uneager; it can produce patriotism . . . . It has that sanjivani shakti.25

23 The 'Introduction' to Madd-o-Jazr-e-Islam, known as Musaddas-e-Hali, which appeared in June 1879, took the public by storm and ran through six editions, mostly pirated, in different parts of India. See, M. Sadiq, ibid, p. 347. . 24

Dwivedi, op. cit., Jan. 1911, revised in 1918. See Bharat Yayavar ed., Dwivedi Rachnava/i, vol. 2, op. cit., pp. 44-54.

25 Dwivedi, 'Bharat Bharati ka Prakashan', op. cit., Aug. 1914. Also see, Dwivedi Rachanavali, op. cit., p. 305.

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Bharat Bharati had the ideals of the contemporary poetry outlined by Dwivedi: its

action oriented role, enunciation of the ideal values of the contemporary society

especially in its nationalistic content. These made it a best seller as well as a

contemporary classic. In the same note Dwivedi again noted the fact that it was

modelled on Hali' s famous Musaddas and hoped to produce the same effect among

the Hindus as the former had done for the Muslims. 26

Another attempt of Dwivedi in this context was to popularise the khariboli form of

poetry where Brajbhasha still retained its hold despite being sidelined from prose

writing. Dwivedi argued that for Hindi to become the national language it needed to

be uniform as well as of high literary stature and this could happen only through the

maximum use of khariboli. Yet there remained an ambiguity vis-a-vis the adoption

of the form and meter of this new poetry ranging from Sanskrit to Urdu to old

medieval patterns.

While the effect of the regional and even 'rival' language was very deep over the

development of contemporary Hindi, the role of English was also quite predominant.

It was not only limited to the official promotion of literature as the 'supreme mode

of knowledge', as has been argued by Gauri Viswanathan27 but was apparent at

more complex levels. A case in point is that of Sridhar Pathak, who was an early

contemporary ofDwivedi traversing both 'Bhartendu period' and 'Dwivedi period'.

Pathak, who was a high official in the irrigation section of Public Works

Department, was among the first to switch over to writing of poetry in Khari boli.

He also supported its cause against the popular Braj Bhasha, way back in 1880s,

against the likes of Pratap Narayan Mishra and Balkrishna Bhatt, the well-known

associates of Bhartendu Harishchandra. 28 The popularity of his poems owed a lot to

from his translations of two well-known works of eighteenth century English poet

William Goldsmith. They were The Deserted Village and The Hermit under the titles

Ekantvasi Yogi (1889) and Ujar Gaam (1888) respectively. Sridhar Pathak was in

touch with Frederic Pincott, a member of Royal Asiatic Society and a self­

proclaimed supporter of the cause of Hindi. 29 Pathak dedicated his Ujar Gaam to

26 Ibid. 27 Gauri Viswanathan, op. cit. 28 See his essays on this theme in Padmdhar Pathak ed., Sridhar Pathak Granthavali, vol. 3,

Rajasthani Granthalay, Jodhpur, 1996. 29 Pincott sent his own introduction to be written in the proposed dedication like this, "Frederic

Pincott, Member of the Royal Asiatic Society, Discoverer of the system on which the hymns of the Rigveda are arranged; and the earnest advocate of the just claims of the Hindi language to

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Pincott and also sought his help while researching about Goldsmith for his next

work on The Hermit. Pincott while denying any real existence of the love story

except 'in the mind of the poet' cautioned Pathak,

Above all, do not make Edwin (the principal character of The Hermit), what we should call a philosophical whining idiot, talking about the miseries of life and death, and the sun and the moon and stars etc. He is intended for a strong hearted manly fellow .... That he was not a realfaqir is shown by his embracing and loving as soon as he finds that she (Angelina, the heroine of the tale) loves him. 30

Pincott further suggested him few English names of the characters according to their

social standards as well as situations for certain incidents.31 It is apparent that

Pincott was not only concerned about the 'true' representation of the poem's western

character but more importantly about the dangers of the poem getting converted into

representing what he saw as the 'philosophical India'. After he received both the

collections, he wrote back praising Pathak saying, "Your two poems will do more

for Hindi than all that the industrious kavi Harishchandra did". 32 This relationship

between the two was much more than simply appreciating each other's skills; it was

clearly and consciously also meant to further each other's career in their respective

countries. Therefore while Pincott informed of the sale of his own Hindi Manual, he

also asked for more of Pathak's translations to be sent so that they could be sent to - 0

different institutions like Royal Asiatic Society, India Office Library, Balliol

College, Oxford and further proposed for its inclusion in the Hindi courses in

England apart from an expensive bound copy to be presented to the Queen. He also

proposed to publish their appreciative reviews in various London periodicals like

Aliens Mail, Indian Magazine etc. with the view that, 'What I write in the

newspapers here will be useful to you in India; if you get the articles I send,

reprinted and circulated'. 33

Roughly about ten years later, Pathak's both translations, and the translator himself

in the capacity of the first successful poet of khari boli Hindi, were to become focal

attraction for many aspiring and established critics of the time engaged in the task of

official recognition. My explanation to the hymns of the Rigveda was published in the Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, vol. XVI, Part ii, and in vol. XIX, Part iv. My views are universally accepted among European scholars". See, the letter dated 2 Aug. 1888. Padmadhar Pathak ed., op. cit., vol. 1.

30 Ibid, letter dated, 18 October 1888. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid, letter dated, 8 Jan. 1890. 33 Ibid. Letters dated, 8 Jan. 1890, 12 Feb. 1890, 4 Mar. 1890 etc.

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consolidating their positions in the literary arena. Curiously enough the principal

characters among them like Dwivedi, Pathak and Mishra Bandhu (Mishra Brothers)

all held high posts in the government. While Pathak, as already mentioned was in

Public Works Department from where he retired as a commissioner, bwivedi, a self­

taught man, was a high official in the railways at Jhansi, before he decided to quit it

for the editorship of Saraswati at a considerably low salary. The Mishra Bandhu (Pt.

Ganesh Bihari Mishra, Pt. Shyam Bihari Mishra and Pt. Sukhdeo Bihari Mishra),

who came from a well to do family, were educated till the highest degrees, with

exemplary academic record before joining the administrative job. The elder, Shyam

Bihari served in various capacities ranging from a collector, a police superintendent

to being diwan of various princely states like Orchha. The younger, initially a

lawyer, also went on to hold the diwanship of various princely states like

Chhatarpur. The two of the brothers attained the title of Raibahadur from the

government while pursuing their literary interests. Many of these institutional

positions were to determine their position in the ongoing literary politics and their

ideas about literature in general. It is indeed interesting to know that while pursuing

excellence in the arena of Hindi literature and mobilising opinion for its national

character, many of them retained English as their mediu~ of exchange. This is

evident from their private correspondences.

Madhav Rao Sapre, one of the pioneering journalists of that time and later the

founder of Karmveer, wrote two separate reviews of both of Pathak's translations

while simultaneously underlining his lack of any professional tag in this regard.

Sapre praised Pathak's translation of The Hermit for creativity with which Pathak

had rewritten and added many beautiful stanzas in the poem. Thus citing that the

total number of stanzas were only forty in the original, in the translation it went up

to fifty nine; Sapre gave the specific instances where Pathak had created his own

'beautiful verses'. Going further, he cited a few stanzas from the original, while

comparing with the translation extolling that, 'while writing this I feel extremely

proud and happy that Panditji has translated both these stanzas laced with tough

similes verbatim'. 34 Interesting! y in contrast to the above mentioned advice of

Pincott, the only fault he found with the work was its inability to wholly indegenise

34 Madhav Rao Sapre, 'Ekantvasi Yogi', Sept. 1900. See, Devi Prasad Verma, ed., Madhav Rao Sapre ki Chuni Huin Rachnayen, Gyanganga, Delhi, 1998.

104

it by retaining the original European names and Angreji bhav (English emotions)?5

In his second review of Ujar Gaam, Sapre lamented that while the original text was

immensely popular in England, the translation had received scant attention. Taking a

cue from this, he went on to criticise the prevalent trends in Hindi poetry which

confused rhyming verse with poetry. He went on to cite the 'rave reviews' published

in British newspapers to establish the greatness of the work, something Pincott had

originally intended in his letters. One of the reviews of Pincott quoted from

Overland Mail thus said,

It is scarcely hazardous to predict that Sri Dhar Pathak has given a deathly blow to the jingling twaddle, which has for too long a time. passed for poetry in India.36 (emphasis added)

Another review from Aliens Indian Mail noted,

It is much to be hoped that other Indians will take to heart the lesson silently read to them by this masterly composition. It teaches them to abandon mere word-jingling and exaggeration, and to give their powers to the production of a literature which shall reflect the simple beauties of nature, which shall call forth pure and noble thoughts, which shall raise the mental, moral and material condition of their country and which shall endure as a memorial of patriotic labour.37

It was not only Sapre who was seeking to bring forward the ideals of poetry as

shown and directed by certain British intellectuals. The above quotes show the

extent to which the movement against sringar and riti poetry, and the attempt to

change the agenda of literature was influenced by external interventions. Moreover,

the very demonisation and a stereotyped image of the prevalent forms of Braj poetry

can be said to be influenced by such a process. On the other hand, as is evident from

Sapre' s praise, Pathak had not simply translated the texts but had recreated them by

adding his own imageries thereby producing a kind of hybrid. Yet the politics which

took place around Pathak and his works, went on to address some larger issues

connected with the ongoing literary battles.

The Critic's Field: Institutional Fights and Hindi

Dwivedi versus Mishra Bandhu

The fact that these reviews published in the British periodicals were not enough is

evident from Pathak's request (in 1900) for the Kashi Nagari Pracharini Sabha's

35 Ibid. 36 Madhav Rao Sapre, 'Ujar Gaam', Oct. 1900. See, Devi Prasad Verma, op. cit. 37 Ibid.

105

(KNPS) official stamp of approval. This also shows the extent of KNPS' authority,

in these matters, within a few years of its inception. Mentioning this, Pt. Shyam

Bihari Mishra (one of the famous Mishra Bandhu or Mishra Brothers) and referring

to Shyam Sundar Das' letter asking him to do the review of Pathak's works for

Saraswati, which at the time was published by KNPS under the editorship of Das,

asked his opinion in this regard. He also asserted that, "You can not but expect a

very fair and impartial (criticism) from me, so far as my ability to do so goes". 38

After Pathak's assent, Mishra wrote in association with his younger brother Sukh

Deo Bihari Mishra an appreciative review which also criticised some of its aspects.

This gave a leverage to Balmukund Gupt edited Bharat Mitra which launched a

tirade against Mishra accusing the criticism of being, "so worded as to wound the

feelings of Pt. Sridhar Pathak".39 Mishra was forced to defend himself in his various

letters to Pathak stressing his 'genuine' appreciation of Pathak's work while also

simultaneously asserting 'his right to be an impartial critic' in these matters.40

Evidently Mishra in his assertions was reflecting the gradual institutionalisation of

the role of a critic in the literary arena even as his position was shaky enough to

force him to write repeated personal apologies to Pathak. This was indeed working

both ways. Hence it also reflected in Pathak's eagerness to get his works reviewed

and then his annoyance after adverse comments. Balmukund Gupt in his reply to

Pathak's such concerns in this regard, despite being a critic himself, interestingly

asked him to simply concentrate on his poetry and not to pay any heed to the critics.

Cautioning him against the futility of any rejoinder he went on to argue that people's

love for his poems was the best certificate. In the same breath, holding the 'fallen

condition' of the country as compared to West for the lack of appropriate

appreciation of his poetry, Gupt assured him by predicting that in two hundred years

time he might attain a status to be worshipped. 41

The issue also involved Dwivedi, who too was in constant touch with Pathak and in

fact had written a poem titled 'Sridhar Saptak' in his praise. 42 When informed of

Mishra's proposal for the review through Pathak's letter, Dwivedi sceptically wrote

38 Letter dated 15-10-1900, Padmdhar Pathak ed., op. cit., p. 353. 39 Ibid, letter dated 31-12-1900. 40 Ibid, letter dated 16-2-1901. 41 Ibid, letter dated 26-11-1900. 42 Ibid, 'Memoirs of Maithili Sharan Gupt', pp. 136-7.

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back questioning Mishra's 'capability of doing justice to Pathak. 43 This was the first

of the three battles that Dwivedi undertook in those years over different institutional

interests. The other two were against Balmukund Gupt, as an editor and a rival critic

and against Shyam Sundar Das, as a representative of KNPS. After being assured of

Mishra' s positive views vis-a-vis Pathak, he reluctantly accepted it to be

satisfactory. The point here is that by making Pathak as a site of the battle, writers

like Dwivedi, Mishra and Gupt were engaged in establishing their own position as

critics. This also reflected in their mutual distrust as reflected in these letters.44 But

this battle had to be fought publicly only through the public medium of print. Rather

the very proliferation of the periodicals and their gradual specialisation into literary,

social etc. organised and shaped the outcome of these contests. Periodicals thus

became an early site to reflect these concerns.

The institutional battle between various figures took another turn about a decade

later once again when Hindi Navratna written by the Mishra Bandhu was published.

It was the first organised attempt to create a canonical history of Hindi literature by

attempting to arrange nine principal poets in a hierarchical order. The very fact that

the text included mainly poets from medieval period except Bhartendu

Harishchandra (incidentally who had done quite a significant prose writing)

reflected that the primacy of poetry was well established by then. Mishra Bandhu

were to come up later with their magnum opus Mishra Bandhu Vi nod (three parts) in

1913. Institutionally still being in the service of various riyasats, they were the last

of the defendants of sringar poetry in an age of growing moral and social reformism.

The work itself was dedicated to the Maharaja of Chhatrapur. Even as this defence

of the Sringar was not wholehearted as would be apparent from later discussion, the

attempt was enough to launch a tirade against their critics-Dwivedi by then

established as the editor of the pioneer journal Saraswati, being the foremost among

them.

Bracketing Dev, a prominent sringar poet of the much reviled ritikaal poetry, with

Tulsi and Surdas among the best three, caused a huge uproar. Dwivedi did a long

review of Hindi Navratna in Saraswati, perhaps one of his most systematic review

43 Ibid, letter dated 18-11-1900. 44

As Pierre Bourdieu has noted, "All critics declare not only their judgement of the work but also their claim to the right to talk about it and judge it. In short, they take part in a struggle for the monopoly of legitimate discourse about the work of art, and consequently, in the production of

107

of a text outlining the main contours of his methodology for a critical review. This

also indicated the crystallization of his gradual transformation from a man of ideas

to a specific position of a literary critic, associated with the 'modern' literary

practices. It was also reflective of the transformation of Saraswati from a general

periodical to a literary journal. Hindi Navratna was published (1911) by Nagari

Pravarddhini Sabha, one of the several associations formed for the purpose of

promotion of Hindi and Dev Nagari script on the lines of Nagari Pracharini Sabha.

Dwivedi divided his review in various sections titled 'Some general information

about the book'; 'Free thoughts of the authors'; 'Utility of the book'; 'Imaginary

photos'; 'Defects of the language' etc .. Giving informative details about the authors,

number of pages devoted to different poets etc., Dwivedi admitted in the very

beginning of not having read the book completely due to the paucity of time. While

admitting of its general usefulness in providing relevant information about the poets,

Dwivedi saw its analysis as being in the traditional mode of Guna-dosh vivechan

(the classically accepted definitions and parameters of judging a poetical work

prevalent till ritikaal). He also praised the authors for not even hesitating to critique

the greats like Tulsi Das for what they believed to be wrong. For example, one of the

criticisms of Ramcharitmanas was,

In 'Sundar Kand', this utterance of Ravana to Sita before Mandodari was not in the right taste that, "If you look at me even once then Mandodari and other queens would become your servants". 45

Interestingly even as Mishra Brothers were the advocates of ritikaal poetry, the

transformed moral universe had interceded into the literary world so much that they

considered even mild depictions of the lustfulness of Ravana like the one mentioned

above as morally faulty and hence unacceptable. Dwivedi' s major criticism of the

book centred on its lack of any singular and uniform criteria of judging the poets and

thereby placing them in a hierarchical order of Ratnas. Accusing them of

distributing the titles of Mahakavi and Acharya among the poets quite generously

without any critical insight Dwivedi then came down heavily for placing Dev along

with Tulsi and Sur in the category of top three arguing,

Those works of Sur and Tulsi that are worshipped from the huts to the palaces, whose flowers of poetry are reverentially held on their heads by the

the value of the work of art". Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, (ed. and introduced by Randall Johnson), Polity Press, 1993, p. 36.

45 Mahavir Pd. Dwivedi, 'Hindi Navratna', Saraswati, Jan.-Feb. 1912. See, Bharat Yayavar ed., op. cit., pp. 169-95.

108

low and the great alike; whose lofty lines have the capacity to transform the sinners into pious souls and the irreligious into religious ones ... holdingDev Kavi to be at par with them can not be considered logical by any standards ... the one who did not invoke the lofty ideals, who did not provide any special profit to the society, country or religion (dharma) through his poetry ... if he also gets the title of Mahakavi or Kaviratna then there would be hundreds of such poets in every region and not only the country. 46

Following Dwivedi's policy of patronising poets writing on social reforms and

patriotism (even as his policy remained not to pursue the extremes so as to avoid the

government's attention), the literary scene of Hindi was soon to be dominated by

'hundreds of such poets' achieving instant fame through their didactic and patriotic

rhetoric. His favourites in the list included poets like Maithili Sharan Gupt, Ayodhya

Sinh Upadhyay 'Hariaudh', Nathuram Sharma 'Shankar', Gaya Prasad Shukla

'Sanehi', Lochan Prasad Pandey etc.

Coming back to the review, Dwivedi once again took recourse to the contemporary

Urdu criticism and quoted a contemporary poet Chakbast's questioning of it, 'Do

they grapple with any of the problems of life, for the solution of which every

individual (strives) as soon as the dream and romance of youth are shattered by the

cruel realities of the world!' (Hindustan Review, Oct.-Nov. 1911)47 In his larger

criticism of the whole project, Dwivedi further pointed out the futility of the

attempts to judge different poets of different historical periods on the same scale and

insisted on them being assessed within their respective historical genres and context.

In the same breath he singled out Sur and Tulsi for their greatness across time and

space. 48 This contradiction was not only at play here but also in his earlier statement

when he had insisted on the fixing of a singular criterion to hierarchise the poets.

Another critical review of the same work in Maryada criticised it along exactly the

same lines. The reviewer expressed horror at downplaying the creator of

Ramcharitmans which according to him, had a unique but hierarchical combination

of politics, morality, patriotism, love and devotion for family members etc. on the

one hand and the elements of literature like language, metre, meaning, simile, dhuni,

avarekh, kavyagun, navras, alankar etc. on the other.49 Clearly the formal elements

of what was defined as literature as defined in the older tradition of gun-dash

parikshan remained secondary.

46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Anon., 'Samiksha', Maryada, May, 1912.

109

Replying to this criticism, in the same issue, the Mishra Bandhu while conceding the

importance of projecting the high ideals and community feeling and attempting to

prove their work to be based on that very criteria also stressed upon the autonomy of

the poet. According to them a poet could even write a hagiographic Mahishastaka

for a buffalo or construct metres for a donkey. 50 This was something they had argued

even while judging Dev's poetry saying though his fault was that he wrote mainly

sringar poetry, the beauty of his poetry was such that he should be ranked among

the best. 51 The attempt thus on their behalf was to accept (perhaps reluctantly) the

role of the content (predominantly moral) along side the formal elements of

literature and a poet's right to imagination. Not that Dwivedi did not concede this

himself In his numerous writings as mentioned above on the duty of the poets and

even in his review he stressed this point of a poet's right to imagination and

criticised the Mishra Brothers' attempts to rationalise every flight of fancy as

described in Ramcharitmanas. 52 Similarly even his attitude towards sringar rasa

remained ambiguous. While within poetry he wanted it to be relegated to the

background, he nevertheless defended it as a legitimate part of the literary creation.

In a piece written much later, referring to an incident where a group of women had

walked out of a poetry-reading session (organised at Vrindavan by Hindi Sahitya

Sammelan) of a particular poet on the charges of vulgarity, Dwivedi defended the

poet speculating him to be a sringar poet. He further differentiated sringar rasa from

general charges of vulgarity and dared the organisers of the Sammelan to boycott

poets ranging from Kalidas, Tulsi Das and texts like Srimadbhagvat. 53 Dwivedi 's

moral universe thus was selective in its approach choosing different yardsticks to

judge something within its context. It could force such a literary taste to take a back

seat within the arena of literary production and yet it could also defend it as a

legitimate literary genre against the onslaught of the 'official' harbingers of Hindi

like that ofH.S.S. seeking to change and control the direction ofthe literary practice.

Mishra Bandhu in retaliation to this criticism tried to enlist Sridhar Pathak's support.

In their consecutive letters they asked for Pathak's favourable review hoping, 'that a

poet of your status and eminence can hardly review any such work in such a carping

50 Mishra Bandhu, ibid. 51 Dwivedi, 'Hindi Navratna', op. cit. 52 Ibid. 53

'Sriyut Kavi-Kinkar' (Dwivedi), 'Kavi-Sammelan', Saraswati, Jan. 1926. See, Bharat Yayavar ed., op. cit., pp. 110-6.

110

spirit as the good Dwivediji has thought fit to adopt'. 54 It was perhaps one of those

rare occasions when a critic sought help from a poet in his battle with another

literary critic. Interestingly Shyam Sundar Das has recalled how Dwivedi had sought

to get certain portions expunged from a proposed collection of essays by Mishra

Bandhu under publication from Indian Press. The portions pertained to a counter­

critique of the critical writings by Dwivedi. Mishra Bandhu refused to comply and

hence the book itself could not be published. 55 While it might simply reflect upon

the personal character of Dwivedi, the import of the incident is much larger. It

signified the very nature of things when the existence of one critic was at the

expense of another. It also signifies the over all stature of Dwivedi which had

acquired such large proportions by then that he could influence the publishing policy

of the Indian Press run by Chintamani Ghosh-no mean figure himself.

The fight with the likes of Mishra Bandhu thus was about the overall direction of

Hindi literary field but on an equal plane as its 'insiders'. It was also a fight where

the supreme power of arbitration was in the hands of the critics themselves and not

the pursuers of other genres like poetry and fiction. Thus even as a Sridhar Pathak

could gain respect from these people, the position of a critic in the capacity of the

'thinker with a vision' remained supreme notwithstanding their own remarks to the

contrary. It is not surprising that barring Pathak who was senior to all these players

anyway, all other prominent poets of this era grew up under the patronising guidance

of the likes of Dwivedi. It was only in the later Chhayavad period that the

supremacy of the critic within the literary field was challenged by the poet-critics

like Nirala and Jaishankar Prasad. This scholar critics owed their supremacy to the

different institutional backing they could generate. Thus while Dwivedi had the

backing of Indian Press and his own Saraswati, Mishra Bandhu owed it to the

gradually losing out princely states (a major source of finance and patronage to the

Hindi literary activities) and Shyam Sundar Das had the backing of Kashi Nagari

Pracharini Sabha. Both Das and Dwivedi had differing visions for their respective

institutions and this was reflected in their clash over the question of course of

direction to be given to the movement for Hindi.

54 Letter from Shyam Bihari Mislrra to Pt. Sridhar Pathak, dated 2-3-1912. See, Padmdhar Pathak ed.,

op. cit., vol. 1. 55

Shyam Sundar Das, Meri Atmakahani, Indian Press, Prayag, 1957 (frrst published 1941), p. 199.

111

Dwivedi versus Shyam Sundar Das

The details of Shyam Sundar Das' association with KNPS have been given in the

first two chapters. Here it is necessary to take a look at some of the other aspects of

Das' relation with KNPS, particularly in the way he tried to utilise his supremacy

over the institution to have another bout with Dwivedi over the control over the

movement for Hindi.

Shyam Sundar Das began as another representative in the mould of the man of

letters transforming his role in the short span of three decades from a writer on

various themes to an administrator and critic, to a teacher at Banaras Hindu

University and to an arbiter over the official policies about Hindi determining its text

books, curricula etc. at various levels. His first writings in Hindi were translations

from English. There were translations from essays from the college curriculum like

'Aids to Contentment' (under the title 'Santosh'), on themes of linguistic history of

India and especially the Dev Nagari script, translated from the essays by the likes of

Grierson published in the journals like Calcutta Review and Journal of Asiatic

Society etc. 56 This not only indicates the extent to which the course of Hindi and

quest for its identity was being structured by these articles but as mentioned in the

case of Sridhar Pathak, Das's activities also helped him in cultivating British and

other European Indologists, linguists etc. who in the long run helped him consolidate

his own position in the indigenous literary field. Initially as the editor of the

quarterly Nagari Pracharini Patrika (1895-96) and during his three years of

editorship of Saraswati (1900-2), he published articles on varying themes like

biography (R.G. Bhandarkar, J.N. Tata, Queen Victoria etc.), science and

technology (on wild-life, India's craft, photography etc.), education (from thematic

essays to the ones on University Commission, Bisaldev Rasa, Nagari Script and

Hindi Language etc.). In these very years (from 1899 to 1909) he also wrote several

textbooks on various aspects of Hindi like Bhasha-Patra Lekhan, Hindi Patra

Lekhan, Hindi Primer, Hindi ki Pahli Pustak, Hindi Grammar, Hindi Sangrah etc.

apart from producing critical editions of various old manuscripts of medieval Hindi

poetry. 57

In his role as a scholar-critic Das thus held views almost similar to that of Dwivedi.

In an essay written and presented at Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Prayag (1915), Das

56 Ibid, pp. 26, 31. 57 Ibid, pp. 119, 129-31.

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mused over the same larger questions of literature and its relation to society, the role

of Hindi in this regard, the problems of creating national literature etc. Beginning

from a short discussion of the development of civilisations along Darwinian lines

and the important role of literature in the context, Das went on to differentiate the

western and Indian cultures according to their geographical conditions. Thus for

him, due to tough physical conditions of the cold West, the westerners had natural

inclination towards the material things in life as most of their time was consumed in

fighting for physical survival. The India on the contrary was endowed with all the

material riches leaving ample time for its people to indulge in either spiritual

pursuits or lavish indulgences and hence the predominance of religious and sringar

poetry. 58 Attributing the now familiar revolutionary role to literature with examples

of Europe, Das stressed on its potentialities for national reconstruction. For him it

had become imperative due to the current clash between the two civilisations. Das

privileged Hindi for this task for its heritage was richer than other regional

languages, it was the lingua-franca and had a closer relationship with Sanskrit,

supposedly the 'mother of all Indian languages'. By stressing 'the ancient tradition

of Hindi' and its linkages with Sanskrit, Das was attempting to consolidate the

power base for Hindi albeit for a new utilitarian purpose. For him the importance of

literature was not only for exchange of simple ideas but primarily for generating

complex ideals despite the use of simple vocabulary. The idea of literature thus was

to generate 'high emotions', uchcha bhav. According to him, 'the writers in this age

should not aspire to be a Bana and a Dandin so much as a Valmiki and a Vyasa, or a

Burke, Carlyle and Ruskin'. Elsewhere also he had insisted that the language of

literature always had to be high as against the language of common exchange. 59 It

was in this context only that despite criticising the ritikaal of poetry he, like

Dwivedi, insisted upon the emulation of classical traditions within Hindi; a prior

theoretical knowledge of different styles and genres of Hindi poetry; its theoretical

treatises like ritigranth and a familiarity with elements of classical poetry like rasa

and alankar. Criticising the younger generation of poets for disregarding all these

elements and seeking to emulate western, English poetry, he sought to restrict the

58 Shyamsunadar Das, 'Sarnaj aur Sahitya' (written in 1915) in Vidyaniwas Mishra and Gopal Lal Khanna ed., Babu Shyamsundar Das ke Nibhandon ka Sangrah, Utar Pradesh Hindi Sansthan, Lucknow, 1983, pp. 267-80.

59 Das, Meri Atmakahani, op. cit., p. 74.

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unlimited entry of poets on these grounds. 60 While the continuing ambivalent

attitude towards the questions of tradition and modernity is apparent, it also reflects

a patronising attitude towards the poets. Das' role as a writer and critic was more

sharpened when he joined the Hindi department of the newly established Banaras

Hindu University as its first head of the department in 1921. It was then that his

major pieces of literary criticism were written as part of textbooks for the university

curriculum. 61 Das has recounted the way he wrote separate works on literary

criticism and linguistic history of India for this purpose. According to him the books

were written in close interaction with his students. In this sense thus Das can still be

situated somewhere between a scholar-teacher and a full-fledged literary critic. This

also becomes clear with a survey of his writings.

In his second and more recognised role as an administrator and organiser of KNPS,

Das was associated with its activities like production of a detailed glossary of

scientific terms, dictionary, grammar, history of Hindi language, Hindi journalism

and Hindi novels, biographies of Hindi scholars, travelogues, books on science etc.

It gave him immense power in the selection of texts, themes and in the direction of

these projects in general. He also played a significant role of a community leader in

mobilising opinion against the government circular including the khatris among the

vaishyas in 1901.62 This authority got further fillip from his donning of various other

roles of editor, critic and a textbook writer, with great influence in the making of a

canonical history of Hindi literature, through a conscious policy of selection and

OmiSSIOn.

It is here that he clashed with Dwivedi who too was engaged in a similar project.

The battle was bitter and personal. According to Das, Dwivedi's animosity began on

a very personal issue that got reflected in the public form. 63 Whatever be the context

Dwivedi targeted Das on three planes, namely, in his attempts to rid Saraswati from

the interference ofKNPS in general and Das in particular; in his attacks on the other

activities of KNPS and thirdly by way of criticism of Das' writings. The battle was

of course mutual and therefore with wider implications. In this sense thus it was not

60 Das, 'Sahitya aur Samaj', op. cit., pp. 278-9. 61 Some of his titles of that time are Sahityalochan (1922), Bhasha-vigyan (1923), Hindi Bhasha ka

Vikas (1924), Hindi Bhasha aur Sahitya (1930) ar1d Roopak Rahasya (1931). See for a detailed list of his works, Vidyaniwas Mishra ed., op. cit.

62 Das, Meri Atmakahani, op. cit., pp. 120-3. 63 Ibid, p. 197.

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simply a clash of two egoists but a clash of two different institutions fighting for

supremacy in determining the course of Hindi. As a writer engaged in building his

reputation as a critic and scholar, Dwivedi was critical of Das' capacity in more

ways than one. Letters written to Sridhar Pathak during the years when Das was

editing Saraswati bear ample testimony to this. In one of his letters Dwivedi wrote

that, 'The editor of Saraswati has displeased me in more than one way. The thing is

he is entirely devoid of any knowledge of ... and besides he has no taste for

poetry ... ' 64 He in fact went on to criticise even the publishers, Indian Press for their

supposed neglect of the quality of the journal, ascribing it to their commercial

interest.

When he took over the editorship of Saraswati, Dwivedi came into direct conflict

with Das as the journal was published with the official approval of KNPS. The

trouble started with Dwivedi criticising the annual report of the project, undertaken

by KNPS, to find the authentic hand written manuscripts of Hindi in its efforts to

build its canonical corpus. In answer to this Das published various notes of approval

to this project by scholars ranging from George Grierson, Dr. Rudolph Hornly,

Griffith, Augustus Barth and indigenous ones like R.C. Dutt, Pt. Adityaram

Bhattacharya etc. in various English dailies like Pioneer, Indian People (both from

Allahabad), Advocate and Indian Student (both from Lucknow). Stung by Dwivedi's

charge, Das quoted many of these approving pieces written in form of personal

letters, critical pieces published in journals like Royal Asiatic Society (once again!)

etc. even while writing his autobiography many years later. A suitable reply was

also important for Das because this project was funded by the United Provinces

government and Grierson personally pleaded Das's case to the government.65 Das

also wrote a letter to the proprietor of the periodical accusing Dwivedi on various

counts. These were dismissed by Dwivedi who questioned the very motive of

publishing notes of approval in English dailies instead of Hindi ones. Dwivedi thus

sought to fix the boundaries of the arena of struggle, i.e. Hindi, making it a base of

his authority. The conflict at the administrative level began from the day Dwivedi

assumed editorship of Saraswati and sought to override any authority of the Sabha

64 Mahavir Pd. Dwivedi to Sridhar Pathak, dated 20-4-1902. Padrnadhar Pathak ed., op. cit. Also see letters dated 12-3-1900,31-3-1900 and 12-11-1900.

65 See, Mahavir Pd. Dwivedi, 'Sabha aur Saraswati', Saraswati, Dec. 1904 (Bharat Yayavar ed., op. cit., pp. 466-75). Also see, Shyam Sundar Das, op. cit., 1957, pp. 93-107.

115

over the journal. With the increase in the conflict, Sabha also demanded a prior ' approval of any article written about it, waming that either the journal desisted from

any andolan against it or else it would take back the approval. Dwivedi declared a

formal break off between the Sabha and the journal in 1905, drawing legitimacy

from the proprietor Chintamani Ghosh's letter to the Sabha, where he approved

Dwivedi' s work for the journal and expressed his reluctance to interfere with the

editor's work. At a personal level Dwivedi accused Das of not letting his pamphlet

titled Deshvyapak Bhasha published by KNPS initially commissioned by it.

Dwivedi went on to claim that far wider than the authority of KNPS was the

approval of its many readers spread across the country in Central Provinces, United

Provinces, central India, Rajputana, Bihar, Punjab and even Bengal and Madras.66

This then was the crux of the matter. While Das derived his power from an

institution like KNPS, Dwivedi on the contrary claimed to derive his sustenance

from a wider mass base of his journal's readership. He also stressed on the virtues of

public criticism. By April 1907, Dwivedi had announced his resignation from the

primary membership of KNPS. He accused Das of manipulation by not letting

Dwivedi' s books published (Das in return accused Dwivedi of the same tactics) and

called for the democratisation and transparency in the working of the Sabha by

ousting the dominance of 'Banaras clique'. 67 Dwivedi in fact vowed to publish a

whole expose in the form of a book (in both English and Hindi) in this regard and

was eventually dissuaded from it by intervention of other people. 68 The battle did

not only remain confined to Saraswati but also extended to other newspapers like

Bharatmitra with both of them writing rejoinders to each other. Pointing out

Dwivedi' s extreme ego (when Dwivedi after examining the draft of a short

biographical note on him in Hindi Kavi Ratnamal being edited by Das, had wanted

some changes), was impelled to insert the lines ... , 'The three great powers of poetry,

criticism and authorship reside collectively in Dwivediji. This is found only in rarest

of the men'. 69 The instance, though on surface substantiates Das' accusations, yet, it

also reflects a writer's anxieties to retain his position and more importantly

relevance in a fast changing world.

66Dwivedi, 'Anumodan ka Ant', ibid, Feb. 1905. See Bharat Yayavar ed., ibid, pp. 476-9. 67 Dwivedi, 'Sabha ki Sabhyata', ibid, April 1907. See Bharat Yayavar ed., ibid, pp. 486-500. 68 Ibid. 69 Shyamsundar Das, Meri Atmakahani, op. cit., p. 198.

116

The battle also went down to the concrete issues of literary criticism. Dwivedi

criticised the glossary of scientific terms prepared under the tutelage of KNPS for

which he himself had written the philosophy section. He also targeted Das'

textbooks, prompting the latter to accuse Saraswati of publishing tasteless poetry. 70

Dwivedi in a long rejoinder to this comment (published in the 'Annual report on the

status of Hindi', 7 July, 1906 prepared by KNPS) went on to quote earlier reports of

Das where he had made short approving comments on Saraswati. The very idea of a

report itself showed KNPS' attitude as a prima donna over the matters of Hindi.

Dwivedi was to challenge any such authority of approval/disapproval. Listing all the

poems published in the periodical between July 1905 and January 1906, out of

which his own numbered twelve, Dwivedi went on to defend other poets citing their

scholarship and institutional background. Hence poets like Pt. Giridhar Sharma and

Pt. Shyamnath Sharma were defended on account of their being official scholar­

poets in various princely states (another indicator of the close connection which

these riyasats had till then with the development of Hindi). Maithili Shara:n Gupt

and Ayodhya Sinh Upadhyay 'Hariaudh' were defended on account of their

popularity as well as the latter's publication by Sabha's own journal Nagari

Pracharini Patrika. As regards himself, Dwivedi went on to quote an earlier remark

by Das himself praising his poetry. Wondering loudly what then had changed

Sabha's mind so suddenly, Dwivedi went on to quote some of the poems published

by the Sabha's own journal to prove that they were in reality tasteless. He

sarcastically challenged Sabha to come out with a detailed guideline for producing

good poetry so that it could be emulated by the poets.71 The battle thus was not

personal. As the lines cited above indicate, it was a contest for the autonomy for an

editor (or even over the question who had the better right to decide in these matters)

and for the creative poet and his right to imagination. Ironically Dwivedi himself

proved to be one of the founders of the school to pontificate what to write and how

to write poetry, despite claiming not to be a poet himself

Despite all this, the broader similarity of views over the overall direction of the

Hindi literature and language eventually led Dwivedi and Das to acknowledge each

other's contribution. It reflected more so in terms of their belonging to the first

generation of intellectuals who formed the part of Hindi establishment deciding the

70 Quoted in Dwivedi, 'Bhaddi Kavita', Oct. 1906. See Bharat Yayavar ed., op. cit., pp. 480-5. 71 Ibid.

117

names to be included or omitted in the school and university curricula; writing the

first textbooks; giving patronage to the controlling institutions like KNPS and Hindi

Sahitya Sammelan and eventually an educational institution like Banaras Hindu

University. By 1920, Dwivedi who had himself criticised the KNPS project to find

old manuscripts, began to criticise the state government's meagre grant of merely

one thousand rupees for the purpose. Das recounted the incident when he

campaigned for awarding of an honorary degree to Dwivedi, the latter declined to

accept it and instead suggested Das' name. It could yet reflect Dwivedi's self­

perception of being above any such consecrating authority. But after his retirement

from the journal (in 1921 ), he was to donate his personal library to the same Sabha

with whom he had fought so many bitter battles. It was no coincidence that this

generation of scholar-critics including Ramchandra Shukla was to unite against the

new generation of poet-critics despite their institutional differences as the battle not

only remained about the changing meanings of literature but also about the

superiority of pursuers of different genres, criticism or poetry. While the former

asserted the right of the critic to lay down the path for poetry writing, the latter

asserted its autonomy in terms of its superiority to think and express issues of larger

import.

While a person like Das thus donned various roles in a very short span of time

ranging from an organiser and agitator for the cause of Hindi to a writer on wide­

ranging themes, as well as a teacher-critic. One can also gauge the subtle

differences, which these institutional shifts brought in his style and content of

writing as mentioned above. Yet it was not possible to shift for everybody to adapt

to such fast-changing situation. Das himself has reminisced about Hariaudh' s

inability to teach once he was appointed as a teacher in Banaras Hindu University.

According to him, Hariaudh even failed to explain his own poems to the students

and this after he was regarded as one of the first poets to be canonised in modern

Hindi. 72

72 Das, Meri Atmakahani, op. cit., pp. 212-3.

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Coming of the Professional Critic:

Ramchandra Shukla

Dwivedi thus was what Chris Baldick has called a 'public' critic with a presumed

audience of the 'common reader' interested in books and authors but with no time

for technical and theoretical nitty-gritties. Academic critic on the other hand, relied

on a 'captive' audience of students or fellow-scholars obliged to keep abreast of

latest theoretical innovations in the subject. In this sense thus, even the generic

preference of the two ditfered. 73 While the 'public' critic like Dwivedi preferred

forms like book-review or literary biographies, an upcoming professional critic like

Ramchandra Shukla made his mark through theoretical text-books, scholarly articles

etc. like more 'respected' forms. Yet by no means these were hermetically sealed

realms, rather they continued to have many overlappings, particularly evident in the

case of Shyam Sundar Das who fell somewhere in the middle with a rapidly

changing institutional background. It was eventually Ramchandra Shukla who

successfully acquired the status of the first modem literary critic of Hindi, though

this was to be achieved only in later years in his capacity as a professor at Banaras

Hindu University. Shukla, the pioneering critic and a late contemporary of Dwivedi

began writing on literary issues quite early. He began his career as a drawing teacher

in a missionary school at Mirzapur but later joined the editorial board of the most

ambitious project of KNPS for creating the most extensive Hindi dictionary, Hindi

Shabdasagar. The multi-volume work was completed over a period of twenty years.

Despite the contribution of other scholars including Shyamsundar Das, it was his

role, which was instrumental in compiling such a mammoth work which consisted

of ninety three thousand and one hundred fifteen words. Das has recognised his role

in these words, 'it would not be an exaggeration to state that the maximum credit for '

the utility and worth of Shabdasagar should be given to Pt. Ramchandra Shukla ... It

would not be an exaggeration to state that the Kosh made Shuklaji and Shuklaji

made the Kosh'. 74 As a prelude to this work Shukla was also given the task of

writing the history of Hindi literature which was published as Hindi Sahitya ka

ltihaas (1929), still regarded as an unsurpassable masterpiece of literary criticism. In

1916, when B.H.U. was established, Shukla along with Lala Bhagwandin (a

prominent figure of 'Dwivedi Age') was appointed to teach Hindi which then was

73 Baldick, op. cit., p. 6. 74 Ibid, p. 166.

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taught only as part of a compulsory essay paper for all the students. With the

establishment of a full-fledged department ofHindi in 1921 and beginning of regular

Hindi courses at F.A., B.A. and M.A. level (even though the medium for teaching

them remained English for some time to come as per the rules of the charter of the

university and was only removed with some active help by Madan Mohan Malviya),

the need for writing higher level textbooks arose. Apart from Das, Shukla produced

critical editions of Jaisi, Sur and Tulsi's poetry thereby giving them a final shape in

the Hindi canon. He also wrote detailed prefaces to these editions. Eventually he

retired as the head of the Hindi department.

Through his institutional base, Shukla attempted to define a new aesthetics for the

evolution ofHindi literature. It was thus inevitable that he saw Dwivedi's language

as meant for 'dunces' (bahut moti akla ke pathakon ke liye), bereft of any deeper

thought process, written in a very generalised fashion and not stimulating the reader

to think along new lines. 75 Well-versed in contemporary western criticism, Shukla

attacked Dwivedi for not going beyond the older 'judicial method' of gun-dash

parikshan and failing to emulate the newer methods of 'inductive criticism' and

evaluating works by placing them in a socio-historical context and then relating to

the other works of that genre.76 Yet he gave Dwivedi the credit for standardising the

language of literature through his relentless criticism of new works. One of the most

celebrated essays of Shukla, 'Kavita Kya Hai?' sought to lay down the aesthetic

position of a literary critic. It is important to note in this context that he wrote three

versions of this essay over a span of thirty years. The first version was published in

Saraswati in 1909 and the last version in 193 9, as part of a collection of essays titled

Chintamani. The first version elucidating the power of poetic language sought to

demonstrate this through an example of two descriptions of India's economic drain;

one in simple prose, the other in literary prose. The attempt in the very beginning

was to stress the 'effectiveness' of poetry, its ability to motivate people to action. At

the same time, by choosing to demonstrate the argument through such an example,

Shukla was also seeking to contextualise the political context of the new aesthetic

need for poetry. For Shukla, poetry liberated a man's heart and brought him to the

75 Ramchandra Shukla, Hindi Sahitya Ka Jtihaas (revised edn. 1940) (first published 1929), Nagari Pracharini Sabha, Kashi, pp. 277-8. In the case of the late nineteenth-century professionalisation of academia in the west, "the man of letters is despised by late nineteenth-century academics for his shallow eclecticism, partisanship and moral pretensions". Eagleton, op. cit., p. 66.

76 Ibid, pp. 287-8.

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higher plane of humanity. In this process poetry also revealed the inner, touching

truths of the different aspects of the universe before him. 77 Even as he attempted to

define poetry on aesthetic grounds, he nevertheless was seeking to provide

Dwivedi' s utilitarian notions of literature with an aesthetic robe. But this could

happen only by critiquing Dwivedi himself. This was all the more necessary due to

the demands of challenging the reigning establishment led by Dwivedi and his

reputation as the foremost scholar-critic. Thus while Dwivedi despite

acknowledging the supreme role of poetry regarded it as an art form for the lesser

civilisations78, Shukla on the contrary privileged it on the very grounds of giving

voice to complex issues emerging out of the modern civilisation. Rejecting the old

Sanskrit scholars like Panditraj Jagannath and European critics alike for their

privileging of 'entertainment' as the supreme motive of poetry as superficial, Shukla

contested the very notion of 'beauty' as claimed by these scholars. Critiquing the

western scholars' definition of beauty as primarily 'internal' he termed it as mere

word play. Indirectly referring to the Vedantic notion of beauty as being indivisible,

he argued for the embodiment of beauty in the matter or the very act itself. Thus,

Poetry does not reflect the beauty only of certain things but also brings forth intensely touching facets of certain acts and mental attitudes. The way it brings out the beauty of a fully bloomed lotus or the face of a girl in our hearts, in the same way it also generates the beauty of acts and emotions like generosity, bravery, sacrifice, pity, love etc. inside our hearts.79

Pointing out the dangers of ever-growing complexities of modern civilisation,

Shukla thus privileged poetry for its continuing role in restoring the man's

conscience and humanity. 80 By providing an aesthetic foundation to poetry, he

sought to privilege it over all the other art forms and genres. The contemporary

literary politics thus induced him to take cudgels against the previous scholar-critics

like Dwivedi and also to redefine the role of a critic on entirely new grounds of a

different establishment i.e. as a professional critic of a university. Yet in the process

he also remained insistent on the superior rights of a critic like Dwivedi to have a

77 Ramchandra Shukla, 'Kavita Kya Hai?', Chintamani (1939 edn.), Indian Press, Allahabad, rprt. 1997, p. 97.

78 Way back in 1903, Dwivedi had written, "Contemporary historians observe that as new refom1s are taking place in the foreign countries, as knowledge is increasing day by day, the power of poetry is also decreasing by the same pace ... a certain kind of emotionalism, innocence and piousness is required for poetry which is decreasing with the change of times". See Dwivedi, 'Kavita ', op. cit., Dec. 1903. Also see, Bharat Yayavar ed., op. cit., pp.59-f>3.

79 Shukla, Chintamani, op. cit., p. 114. RO Ibid, p. 127.

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judgmental view ofthe contemporary literature, particularly poetry. This was despite

his insistence on the adoption of newer critical methods to analyse a work within its

context. This attitude was to become clearer once Chhayavad came on the scene. to

seriously challenge this authority of the critic. His belief that despite the superior

effect and hence superior role of poetry, it was primarily a critic's role to give

direction to literary production, can be seen in his insistence that, 'people say that

critics keep arguing their positions, but the poets write according to their personal

whims. But this is not right. Poets are greatly affected by the critics of literature.

Many poets-especially new ones-attempt to follow in accordance with their

ideals'. 81 It was his this belief in the influencing role of a critic and hence the overall

shape of literary production and by implication thus shaping the attitudes of a

society that prompted Shukla to engage himself in such literary battles.

Prompted by this belief Shukla at the same time was also taking cudgels against the

European notions of art and poetry, particularly their orientalist clubbing of India as

spiritual and exotic. He saw it mainly as their reaction against their own crisis

induced by development of science and the resultant material progress. Sarcastically

stating that the 'westerners like our spirituality a lot', he held it responsible for

hiding the Indians' laziness and lack of initiative. 82

In another important essay titled Kavya mein Lok Mangal ki Sadhanavastha, arguing

against the followers of Tolstoy privileging the beauty of love, he stressed that the

beauty of action meant to drive away the sorrows of the world was superior to all

other forms of beauty and that should be the object of poetry. 83 In a way therefore

Shukla, in his distinct position as an academic gave a more sophisticated outlook to

Dwivedi' s utilitarian notions of literature. This position was in consonance with his

assertions that literature was mainly a prerogative of 'the literate populace' 84 that

fixed his criteria of a well organised structure, for creating his own masterpiece

Hindi Sahitya ka ltihaas as against Mishra Bandhu's simple Kavi-kirtan. Another

important point to be noted in this regard is that his literary history was primarily for

the University curriculum, establishing a selective literary canon. In this, Kabir was

denied a respected place in the pantheon due to his supposed illiterate background,

81 Shukla, Jtihaas, op. cit., p. 312. 82 Shukla, Itihaas, op. cit., pp. 307-8. 83 Shukla, 'Kavya rnein Lok-rnangal ki Sadhanavastha', Chintamani, op. cit., pp. 146-54. 84 Shukla, 'Pratham Sanskaran ka Vaktavya', Jtihaas (1929 edn.), op. cit., p. 4.

122

while Tulsi was privileged for just the opposite reasons. 85 But according to Shukla,

more importantly, Tulsi's contributions lay in maintaining the maryada of a 'rapidly

decaying Hindu society'. For him, Tulsi's portrayal of Ram as an ideal ruler, son,

husband, brother gave a hope of liberation to the contemporary society. This factor

combined with his grooming in classicism of Sanskrit literature clinched the highest

place for Tulsi in the literary pantheon. Clearly, Shukla's assessment of Tulsi was a

product of his own times not only reflecting his quest to find 'an ideal society' but

also centring around a certain notion of polity. This incidentally betrayed his

conservatism on both the fronts, from his privileging of Tulsi in literary pantheon to

his scepticism regarding Gandhi led national movement.

The professionalisaion of literary studies as represented by Shukla, was based on

universities' attempts to 'discipline' literature. Terry Eagleton has argued that, 'the

academicisation of criticism provided it with an institutional basis and professional

structure; but by the same token it signalled its final sequestration from the public

realm'. 86 In the case of contemporary Hindi public sphere, it was all the more

ironical since Shukla had himself outlined an aesthetic for literature based on

social/moral grounds addressing the concerns of his milieu through various forums.

It eventually got circumscribed; once he allowed himself to be institutionalised in

the professional role of a university based critic advocating 'high criticism'.

Part II

The World of Poet-critics

This section discusses the advent of Chhayavad, the Romantic movement of poetry,

its attempt to define its own aesthetics and its clashes with the then establishment in

the process. While the poets of this school attempted to privilege not only poetry but

also poets, over the reigning critics, they also grappled with various questions of

literature and its purpose. While privileging the power of poetry over all other

genres, by its claim to give expression to the civilisational aspirations of India, the

Chhayavad school had to grapple with prose's claim to depict the true reality of

contemporary society. This had to be done on two grounds: first by arguing to

privilege the deeper realities over the everyday realities as depicted by prose and

85 Shukla, ibid, pp. 42-5 and 62-79. 86 Terry Eagleton, op. cit., pp. 65-6.

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second by going back to the action-oriented role of poetry (as argued by Dwivedi

and Shukla) in the name of evoking right emotions and hence mobilising the masses

for the national movement by using poetry's supposedly superior effects. Yet the

poets of this school were never comfortable in this role and kept shifting their

positions. Many of these poets were also to write angry short poems on everyday

politics of the national movement or plight of the common people, the unprivileged

sections of society. 87 The long narrative poems, Mahakavyas etc. aimed to probe the

inner recesses of human condition and explore deeper meanings of Indian identity.

But many of the Chhayavad poets were also to revert to prose for depicting a

hardcore brand of realism. 88

The main contributions of Chhayavad poetry were held to be: a new aesthetic

sensibility reflected both in form and content; exploration of newer heights of

imagination; a new look towards nature and beauty (inspired by yet different from

European Romanticism); the perpetuation of the idea of individualism, where an

individual's personal experiences were privileged over accepted social norms; and

informed with this sensibility, a new definition of nationalism emphasising equality

in all aspects. All the great poets of this school talked of the primacy of love and

some of them opposed moral reformism such as widow remarriage on the grounds

that, it was a widow's choice to fall in love with a man and marry him rather than

simply forcing her to marry anyone. The movement also drew inspiration from the

mysticism of Tagore and the English Romantic Movement. The formal features of

87 Thus Nirala wrote poems on the nationalist themes like Jago Phir Ek Bar, social themes like Bhikshuk and Bharat ki Vidhawa. Pant wrote poems like Bharat Mata Gram-vasini identifying the Gandhian ideals of finding 'authentic' India in the villages. Prasad too wrote marching songs like Prayan-geet in his acclaimed play Chandragupt. This was partly prompted by the idea of fundamental duties of a poet to mobilise the masses for the ongoing national movement through such 'soul-stirring' songs as also due to the anxiety to share the avid popularity of poets like Maithili Sharan Gupt and Makahanlal Chaturvedi (writing under the pseudonym 'Ek Swatantra Atma') writing highly charged political poems bordering on 'sedition' in the language of the colonial government. Yet it was the very basis of the latter's acclaim.

88 Ayesha Jalal in a recent work has emphasized the role of poetry in contrast to Benedict Anderson's stress on the role of press and novel in imagining the nation. According to her, "what gave the discourse on identity a powerful inspirational quality and also a much wider audience was the recourse made to Urdu poetry, by far the most popular form of expression in northern India and also Punjab. Oral recitation of Urdu poetry at mushairas, attended by people in thousands, symbolising the interaction between private and public space, was a fact of everyday life in northern India ... " Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 47-8. In the case of Hindi, the pressure was twinfold: on one hand, to imitate this 'success' of Urdu poetry while also taking cue from the 'much maligned' yet extremely popular (even till 19th and early 20th century) Braj poetry on the other. The dilenuna of speaking to an exclusive high ideal of culture and creating public spaces of its own kept the Hindi

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this movement are already well documented;89 the attempt here is to analyse the

debates which Chhayavad provoked, the fundamental questions it raised about art's

purpose and the relationship of the movement with the contemporary Indian

scenario. All this happened as the proponents of Chhayavad engaged with the critic­

dominated contemporary literary.

It is not that Chhayavadi poetry was only concerned with depictions of love or a new

expression or style. Nirala himself wrote poems on nationalist themes like .!ago Phir

Ek Baar and on social themes like Bhikshuk, Bharat ki Vidhawa etc. But Chhayavad

poetry explicated itself primarily through poems on love, nature, mysticism and a

symbolist style. It is interesting to note that this form of poetry began to attain

popularity after the Non-Co-operation Movement was abruptly stopped. Key words

like bhav, kalpana, bhavavesh (emotion, imagination, grip of emotion) were to stay

as the labels of this school.

However, it is important to bear in mind that even as the period of Chhayavad is

generally regarded between 1918 and 193 8, there never remained such a generation

gap between Chhayavad and other 'previous' or contemporary dominant modes of

literary production. In fact Jaishankar Prasad, the senior most among the lot, was

writing from almost the beginning of the twentieth century itself. Beginning as a

popular Braj bhasha poet, he had gradually moved over to the Khari boli form of

Hindi for poetry writing. Chhayavad thus not only clashed directly with the different

institutional literary standards set by people like Dwivedi and Shukla but also

undertook to carve a niche for itself by defending itself and other poets of the same

league against the establishment's attack. Karine Schomer appropriately

differentiates the Dwivedi-age poets from the Chhayavad poets by arguing that

while the former only reflected the accepted (or prescribed by the critics like

Dwivedi) norms and value-system of the contemporary society, the latter by

rebelling against it strove to create an entirely new value-system itselr_9° The

emergence of 'poet-critic' as against 'the man of letters' and 'the academic critic'

poets hanging in between. In this sense, the Hindi scene remained more fluid despite the poet's 'superior claim' to represent ·the Indian ideal, hence, the equal importance of the noYel. ~9 For an excellent survey of Chhayavad, see Namwar Singh, Chhayavad, Rajkamal Prakashan, N.

Delhi (first published 1957) and Karine Schomer, Mahadevi Verma and the Chhayavad Age of Modern Hindi Poetry, op. cit.

9° Karine Schomer, op. cit.

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was thus a parallel development. This naturally was to create more complications

than in the West.

It is worth noticing that when Dwivedi did not provide space to Prasad in Saraswati,

he brought out Indu (first issue in July-Aug. 1907), generally regarded as the first

complete journal solely devoted to literature. Prasad was again to insist on an

undiluted literary character, while bringing out Jagaran (later edited by Premchand),

despite the financial unviability of this proposition. The fact that Saraswati' s denial

of space to Prasad effectively implied rejection by the literary establishment (despite

the former's all encompassing character) was well recognised by people like Prasad

and Nirala.

The trio of Chhayavad poetry, Prasad, Suryakant Tripathi Nirala and Sumitra

Nandan Pant91 initially created their distinct bases and then came together to form a

vad, a literary movement. Prasad came from a rich tobacco merchant family of

Banaras, suffused with the literary legacy of Bhartendu; Pant (originally hailing

from Almora) came from the university circles of Allahabad (though he never

completed his graduation), his patron being Amarnath Jha, the celebrated English

professor and later the vice-chancellor of Allahabad University. Nirala began his

career from Bengal and started in Hindi very late in his career. Well read in

contemporary Bangia literature and influenced by Upanishadic Vedantism, he

started work with Ramkrishna Mission's Hindi periodical Samanway, which contain

his first writings. Later he formed a team with people like Shivpujan Sahay and

Mahadev Pd. Seth (who was the financier and according to Nirala the first to

promote him actively) to bring out Matwala, a journal on satire (mainly political),

inspired from the British Punch. The same reason which prompted Prasad to start his

own journal also prompted Nirala to associate with Matwala, though the two

brought out two distinct journals. Nirala was still not to get the recognition he

aspired for as Matwala, despite its immense popularity, was mainly regarded a

journal of lower standards compared to old established journals like Saraswati. A

distinct power politics between the high and the popular had already struck roots in

91 Due to the paucity of space as well as the fact that Mahadevi Verma joined the movement almost at the end of the major debates concerning Chhayavad, I have decided not to discuss her contribution and the role she played in the ongoing debates. However it is not to deny that she gave a distinct colour to the whole movement but only when Chhaym'ad already had gained acceptance as a 'legitimate' movement. Our concern primarily is to analyse the ongoing processes within the literary field, which helped Chhayavad establish itself. For a detailed assessment of her role see Karine Schomer, op. cit.

126

the contemporary literary field influencing the academia and the market. Incidentally

Matwala was the same journal that indulged in rabid communal propaganda

contributing to the riots in Calcutta in the mid-1920s with Nirala's equivocal silence.

It is curious to find the commonality between all the three poets despite their

different social backgrounds and that is their lack of formal education or any degree.

It is once again imperative to refer to Bourdieu here who points out that in the case

of 'the most autonomous field of cultural production' (as in symbolist poetry)

inversely related to commercial profit or even power (honours), even the absence of

any academic training may be considered a virtue. 92 Yet all these writers,

particularly Nirala, were to dabble with quite popular forms of writing during their

respective careers. In the context, it will be once again fruitful to look into their

respective notions of literature, as they themselves underwent several changes.

Jaishankar Prasad: Introducing Chhayavad

Jaishankar Prasad though agreed over the idea that literature was an index to judge

the moral world as well as a supreme element in the development of any community,

for him it also led to a kind of Universalism or Vishwaprem. This was because

literature by its nature had to be uninhibited to pursue its relentless search for the

True and the Beautiful. Though Prasad's priorities were also conditioned by the

contemporary socio-political scenario. Yet he also believed in the direct and

proportional relationship (following the prevalent ideas of progressivism) between

the growth of civilisation and the growth of literature. Thus, 'when talent will attain

supreme development, then literature will also reach the highest and most exalted

stage of development'. 93 He too ascribed to literature a scope as wide as envisaged

by people like Dwivedi. Thus, 'linguistics, geology, archaeology, history, science,

grammar, lexicon, poetry, its useful elements, all should be understood as

literature'. 94 While writing on the viability of supra-authorial institutions like the

Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Prasad added a whole corpus of knowledge to the idea of

literature. Clearly the power of such institutions and establishment critics like

Dwivedi to dictate things had to be tacitly acknowledged by newcomers like Prasad.

92 Pierre Bourdieu, op. cit., p. 39. 93 Jaishankar Prasad, 'Indu Prastavana', Jndu, Shravan, Samvat 1966 (AD1909). See, Ratnashankar

Prasad ed., Prasad Granthava/i, vol. 4, Lokbharati Prakashan, Allahabad, 1986, pp. 431-2. 94 Prasad, 'Hindi Sahitya Sarrune1an', ibid, Kala 1, Kiran 11, Samvat 1967 (AD1910). See

Ratnashankar Prasad ed., ibid, pp. 438-40.

127

Yet around the same time when Dwivedi was nurturing his school of poetry and

Shukla was writing his first draft of 'Kavita Kya Hai?', Prasad was also stressing for

a new aesthetics of poetry. This was of course based on the belief in transcendental

powers of poetry on the grounds that, 'the long lasting effect which a versified

creation leaves, prose doesn't. .. it is he,re that we can compose music; the powerful

effect that music leaves in verse, it doesn't in the case of prose'. 95 It is interesting to

note that many of Prasad's poems were in the form of lyrics and mostly set in

various musical ragas. 96 The stress on musicality at the level of form was something

common to the works of Nirala, Pant and Mahadevi as well. It was at this level that

the dryness and prosaic character of Dwivedi School's poetry was contested.

Though Prasad had to accede to the 'reformist' power of poetry,97 he attempted to

define a new aesthetic role of poetry by directly attacking the prevalent types of

poetry as published in Saraswati at that time. Around the same time he had written a

critical piece on Maithili Sharan Gupt's poetry which Dwivedi obviously refused to

publish in Saraswati since Gupt was his protege and instead asked him to publish it

elsewhere. 98 Undeterred, yet acknowledging the high status of Saraswati, Prasad

pointed out to the lack of interest among readers in its poems as compared to its

prose works or even photographs. Attributing this to the change in people's taste

with the coming of western education, he castigated poets published by Saraswati

for remaining in a time warp thereby throwing a direct challenge to its editor

Dwivedi. 99 Criticising the 'tasteless' distortion of sringar in Hindi, he stressed on a

new type of poetry that was suffused with emotions (bhavmayi), passion (uttejana

bhari) and that made one forget one's own self. Nevertheless he was careful enough

to also stress on the autonomy of a poet's space, particularly against that of the

critics. Accepting that 'entertainment' and 'education' were the twin aims of poetry,

he asked readers and critics to approach a poetical work from the point of view of its

creator itself in order to understand its real meaning. This according to him was

better than getting into useless and injudicious dispute. Even controlling institutions

95 Prasad, 'Kavi aur Kavita', ibid, Shravan, Samvat 1967 (AD 1910). See, Ratnashankar Pd. ed., ibid, pp. 441-6.

96 In this context Karine Schomer's assertion that Chhayavad poetry was open in form to be rendered in any way possible is not entirely correct. Karine Schomer, op. cit., p. 88.

97 P d 'K . K . ' . rasa , avr aur avrta , op. crt. 98

Letter written by Dwivedi to Jaishankar Prasad, dated 5-4-1912. See Bharat Yayavar ed., op. cit., vol. 14.

99Prasad, 'Kavi aur Kavita', op. cit.

128

like HSS had to be grounded on this principle m order to gam legitimate

authority. 100

But poets following Prasad's principles, were not accepted by the established

literary journals like Saraswati and Madhuri. Pierre Bourdieu has pointed out that,

The fundamental stake in the literary struggles is the monopoly of literary legitimacy, i.e., inter alia, the monopoly of the power to say with authority, who are authorised to call themselves writers; or to put it another way, it is the monopoly of the power to consecrate producers or products (we are dealing with a world of belief and the consecrated writer is the one who has the power to consecrate and to win assent when he or she consecrates an author or a work-with a preface, a favourable review, a prize etc. 101

Despite an internecine struggle for the seat of authority within literary practice, there

was a consensus about literature's 'grandiose' and all-encompassing stature. It was

this scope which imparted it the burden of explaining the 'Indian civilisational

experience'. It was crucial that even the quarrels about different modes of literary

expressions reflect this concern, for only then could literary practitioners claim to

intervene on issues of day to day politics from a high moral ground. It was thus not

simply through an abstract notion of literature, but through an assertion about

literary practice embodying the most fundamental knowledge about society, that

literature took precedence over every other form of writing and literary figures were

accorded greater importance vis-a-vis political or even the non-literary editors of the

times.

As a reflection of this vision, Shukla raised the question of art's purpose when he

criticised Chhayavad for betraying 'one's own tradition', by emulating English

Romanticism and the Bengali mysticism of Tagore (as much a product of western

influence). According to him, Chhayavad was a product of the combined influence

of the 'art for art's sake' movement and Benedetto Croce's Expressionism, which

saw art as autonomous from life and insisted only on form instead of content102.

/

Shukla's argument was that art could gain fulfilment only if it was integrated with

life's activities, which he sought to prove by taking recourse to both ancient and

medieval Indian literature and to a contemporary English critic like I.A. Richards.

We find thus an ambivalence towards the West resurfacing time and again even as

he continuously attempted to engage with it in order to define an Indian aesthetics as

100 Prasad, 'Hindi Sahitya Sammelan', op. cit. 101 Pierre Bourdieu, op. cit., p. 42. 102 Shukla, ltihaas, op. cit., pp. 308-11.

129

distinct from the former. It was on this ground that he attempted to differentiate

western definition of poetry merely as one of the crafts (kala) like painting and

music (mainly meant to generate beauty) from that of Indian, which was distinct

from its own categories of 'sixty four crafts' (chaunsath kalayen) and integrated

with life itself and hence on a higher plane. 103

Nirala and Prasad denied these charges of western influence and instead claimed an

indigenous tradition. In an essay published posthumously (1939), after his untimely

death in 1937, Prasad delved deeper into the questions of Indian identity, its relation

with art and literature, particularly poetry. This was a riposte to the various

criti~sms against Chhayavad. Interestingly following the definitions laid down by

Shukla, Prasad argued that kavya and kala i.e. poetry and craft, were integrated in

western thought (seen as a linear progression from Greek philosophy to Hegel).

While poetry was deemed superior to other art forms like music and painting, it was

below religion and philosophy, since the latter were abstract forms of knowledge

compared to poetry. In the Indian system of thought, there was no duality between

abstract and non-abstract forms of knowledge. Therefore kavya, defined as an all­

encompassing literature and distinct from upvidya or mere craft, was the supreme

form of knowledge. 104 Thus in one stroke, Prasad denied credit to the West for the

idea that literature was the supreme form of knowledge 105 and at the same time,

projected it as an Indian contribution. Simultaneously, he sought to repudiate the

critics like Shukla at home, who were accusing Chhayavadis of foreign influence.

Ironically however, this was done with the West's own categorisation of the Indian

knowledge system, by quoting E.B. Havell's (the reputed art theorist and proponent

of' indigenous school') categorisation of Hindu/Indian identity as being a product of

Advaita where there is no distinction between the sacred and profane. 106 Yet Prasad

was careful to argue that despite differences in different cultures due to geographical

and historical specificities, the final purpose of all cultures was to further the

development ofUniversalism from their respective point ofviews.

One ofthe senior representatives ofthe establishment, Shyam Sundar Das, had also

tried to differentiate between Indian and Western literature along same lines, albeit

103 Ibid. 104 Jaishankar Prasad, 'Kavya aurKala', op. cit. See, R. Prasad, ed., op. cit., pp. 465-76. 1 05 s G · v· t1 · ee, aun 1swana 1a11, op. Cit. 106 Jaishankar Prasad, 'Kavya aur Kala', op. cit.

130

m a different vocabulary. According to him, the greatest speciality of Indian

literature was its idea of assimilation, evident in the constant juxtapositions and

ultimate resolution of the binary oppositions of happiness-sorrow, rise-fall. This

resolution led to a u~ique state of indescribable joy. 107 This state of spiritual joy,

according to him, was a result of the Indian quest to find an ideal way of life always

brimming with hope even in the times of acute distress. The West, which had the

tradition oftragedies unlike India, was beginning to emulate it only now. Das fell

back upon the usual Orientalist categorisation oflndia and regarded religiosity as the

second main feature of the Indian literature even as he tried to combine it with love

of nature, beauty etc. 108 He further argued that due to consistent insistence on the

pious and spiritually enriching experience of Indian literature, the more material,

worldly feelings and thoughts could not strike deeper roots even as the Indian

character tended to be monotonous due to this bent. Prasad also criticised attempts to

essentialise Indian cultural identity within specific civilisational traits. The notion of

Indian identity, based on a sense of idealism embodied in the preponderance of

'comedy' in its literature, was rebutted by Prasad for not accounting for major

tragedies like Mahabharat and Ramayan. 109

What needs constant emphasis, in this context, is that even as different protagonists

were stressing and contesting different notions of Indian civilisational character,

'tradition' itself was getting reshaped in the process. Further even when many

conclusions differed-sometimes to the extent of being diametrically opposite-the

grounds of the arguments remained the same. This was the predominance of the

Vedantic notion of Advaitism, the notion of unity of being-a notion continuously

underlined by the various western scholars. But this did not remain at the level of

argument only. Many of the poetic imageries seemingly seeped in the 'Indian

tradition' were also borrowed from the imageries of the Orient created by Romantic

poets like Shelley and Robert Southey.

107 Shyam Sundar Das, 'Bhartiya Sahitya ki Vishestayen' in Harihar Nath Tandon, M.A. (ed.), Nibandhmala, Indian Press, Allahabad, 1948 pp. 76-83. It is precisely in tllis language that the image of the mystical India was conceived by William Jones. To quote him," ... even the shape of an Indian play may reflect a metaphysical truth: namely, tl1at the pain and misunderstanding of separation is ultimately illusory, arising from a forgetfulness that there is only harmony. Tragedy arising from an irreconcilable conflict does not easily exist in a culture where tl1e predominant philosophical tradition discountenances the ultimacy of pairs and opposites; spirit and matter, good and evil." (emphasis added). Quoted in John Drew, India and the Romantic Imagination, Delhi, OUP, 1987, p. 62.

108 Ibid. 109 Prasad, 'Kavya aur Kala', op. cit., p.467.

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Pt. Ilachandra Joshi- who later became famous for his 'psychological' novels­

shared many of Das' concerns in his early writings. According to him, Western

literature was extremely passionate due to its extreme materiality which inspired

only sorrow and guilt. Thus the literature of the West tended towards self­

annihilation (atma-vinaash), while that of East stood for selj-aggrandization

(atmotkarsh). 110 Joshi, like Prasad, used the West's own categories to deny it of its

own attributes, as the original use of the two terms in English would show. For

Joshi, the intensity of Dante's Inferno was high precisely because of its 'imbalances'

born out of an acute feeling of sin unlike India's Kalidas, who despite depicting

materiality, imbued it with a sense of peace and calmness. It is important to note

here that Joshi sought to demonstrate his argument by quoting from Shelley's

Prometheus Unbound, a text that has been shown to be heavily influenced by

William Jones' and other Orientalist writings. 111 The reproduction of Orientalist

images was thus going on in a circular manner.

Jaishankar Prasad's greatest known work, and supposedly the finest epic in Hindi,

Kamayani, first published in 1934, betrays considerable influence of Robert

Southey's Orientalist. imagery. But as Javed Majeed has argued, while Southey

(early 191h century Romantic poet) used these images extensively, he also conformed

to the popular western literary forms. It is by coupling these two that he projected

his ideals from a conservative standpoint in a politically turbulent England. 112

Despite the predominance of almost identical Orientalist images like the 'deluge',

mystical woman appearing in the epic as Shraddha etc., a strong parallel can also be

drawn with Alexander Pushkin' s masterpiece Eugene One gin, published in the early

nineteenth century. Scholars have seen it as the epitome of contemporary Russian

spirit charged with the conflicting emotions of restless individualism and a craving

for stability. Outlining its strong influence on the nineteenth century Russian novels,

John Bayley argued that,

All through the nineteenth century Russian novel there runs the theme of the strong and spontaneous woman [as typified by Tatyana], and the uncertain, unsatisfied male [represented by Eugene] who is frustrated in the pursuit of personal and social ideals, pinned down by abstractions 'like a man under a stone' - rejected by life. 113

110 Pt. Ilachandra Joshi, 'Prachya aur Pashchatya Sahitya', Manorama, January 1928. Ill . . .

Jolm Drew, op. cit. 112 Javed Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill's History of India, Clarendon Press, Oxford,

1991. 113 Jolm Bayley, 'Introduction' in Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (1979 edn.), Penguin Books,

London, 1979,p. 17.

132

Interestingly Kamayani begins with the primeval man, Manu sitting under the

shadow of a stone after the end of the world as described in Puranic myths. 114 The

strong Russian spirit as represented by Tatyana is bifurcated into two mutually

conflicting characters of Shraddha (faith) and Ida (reason). Yet its in the flesh and

blood character of Ida that contemporary and subsequent critics alike have seen the

power of the epic. 115 Prasad's intention was to project them as the outcome of his

rahasyavadi Vedantic philosophy. The intention to show these parallels is to outline

the contemporary poets' attempts to redefine the classical Sanskritic tradition

(Shathpath Brahman in this case) to gain legitimacy, while also combining it with

the modern Romantic ideals as borrowed from Europe. Nirala, Prasad's another

fellow traveller of Chhayavad, termed it as the first epic of rahsyavad. Comparing it

with the classics like Shakespeare's Macbeth and Kalidas' Abhjnan Shakuntalam, he

argued it to be a successful exposition of the Indian understanding of the cosmic

universe. This according to him was based on the primacy given to mind and spirit

as against the inferior western Darwinian understanding based on physical

evolutionism. 116 Ironically enough the traces of influence of Darwin can be seen

clearly in Kamayni with lines like Thahara }is mein jitna bat hai (One survives

according to one's strength). On the other hand Nirala himself was to proclaim in

one of his poems (Jago Phir Ek Bar) that Yogya jan }ita hai, Paschim ki ukti nahin

Gila hai, Gita hai (The maxim that the ablest survives is not an observation of the

west but of Gita).

Nand Dulare Vajpeyi was the first professional critic to accord Prasad and his

Kamayni, the critical acclaim which had been refused to him by the senior critics

like Shukla. Vajpeyi, a product of Banaras Hindu University, and a student of

Shyam Sundar Das and Shukla, began his career as an editor of the literary journal

114 To quote in original, Himgiri ke Uttung Shikhar par, Baith Shila ki Shita/ Chhanh; Ek Purush Bheege Nayanon se, Dekh Raha tha Pra/ay-pravah. The story is represented confessedly as metaphor for the development of modem man and his quest for fulfilment. Through the myth of the flood and Manu's quest for establishing a new civilisation he is shown to be undergoing conflict between the mutually contradictory forces of faith (as represented by Shraddha, also Kamayani) and reason and this worldliness (as represented by Ida). Yet it is in the victory of faith over reason and the stress on the balance between desire, karma and gyan that Prasad sought to find his ideal for the modem man. Kamayani, (4th edn.) Lokbharti Prakashan, Allahabad, Samvat 1999 (AD 1942).

115 See for example, Ramchandra Shukla's critique of Shraddha lacking the powers of Ida as against Prasad's privileging oftheformer. Shukla, Hindi Sahitya ka ltihaas, op. cit., p. 374.

116 Nirala, 'Kamayani', Sudha (monthly), Lucknow, Oct. 1937. See Nandkishor Nawal ed., Nira/a Rachnavali, vol.-5, Rajkamal Prakashan, N. Delhi, 1983, pp. 532-4.

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Bharat. He later produced the critical edition of Sursagar (Sur Das' main body of

work) under Kashi Nagari Pracharini Sabha and also a critical edition of Tulsi's

Ramcharitmanas for Gita Press Gorakhpur. He also chaired the annual session of the

literary council of Hindi Sahitya Sammelan in 1939 and eventually joined BHU as a

professor of Hindi. Armed thus with all the crucial backings of establishment

institutions like KNPS, HSS, BHU etc., he was in a perfect position to consecrate

Prasad. This was also necessary to find his own critical niche against Shukla and

Das. Vajpeyi discounted the allegation that Prasad's outlook was lopsided.

Comparing him with Gorky, he argued that the realism did not only mean superficial

descriptions of day-to-day life. Rather, Prasad's was a unique combination of

philosophy of mysticism, poetic-style being romantic while the content was rooted

in realism. 117 By defending Prasad, Vajpeyi was also answering the criticism that

Chhayavad was absorbed in a self-contained world at the expense of the mundane,

but hardcore realities of life. Even Shukla noted the elements of class­

consciousness, while evaluating it in his ltihas. On the other hand, Muktibodh, the

well-known poet-critic, saw it as the grandiose exposition of the coming of the

national bourgeoisie in India.

Nirala: Representing the Institutional Battles

Nirala' s role in the shaping of contemporary literary debates and the consequent

literary identity of Hindi is supreme not simply due to his general recognition as the

greatest poet of modern Hindi but mainly due to the role he played at various levels.

It is in his case that what Eagleton has said about the Romantic critic fits quite aptly.

To quote him, "The Romantic critic is in effect the poet ontologically justifying his

own practice, elaborating its deeper implications, reflecting upon the grounds and

consequences of his art" .118 His contribution to the literary debates of his time is

much more important than that of his other contemporaries like Prasad and Pant.

Nirala, through his constant contesting of the normative aesthetic prescriptions of

old establishment critics, his arguments with the non-literary adversaries like

Banarasi Das Chaturvedi, his defence of his fellow-travellers of Chhayavad, and

further through an internal critique of their poetry as part of the establishment feud

117 Nanddulare Vajpeyi, 'Sahityik Vyaktitva' (written in Dec. 1937), Jaishankar Prasad, Bharti­Bhandar, Prayag, 1950, p. 23.

118 Terry Eagleton, op. cit., p. 42.

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etc. managed to put forward the basis of a new literary aesthetics and also linked it

with the larger questions of a poet's role in a given socio-historical situation. This

was linked to his defining idea of Indian civilisation itself It is worth noting that

when he was emerging as the institutional representative of the poet-critics, writing

and simultaneously explaining their own poems, around the same time T. S. Eliot

was also coming up as the icon of poet-critics in the west. This almost simultaneous

appearance of these two figures despite different socio-historical configurations

points to the complexity of the situation out of which Hindi literary field emerged in

such a short span of time.

To begin with, Nirala too began his literary journey explicating the supreme role of a

poet on the grounds of his 'emotional spontaneity' and 'his command over

traditional metres that gave shape to this spontaneity' transforming it into powerful

poetry. 119 Not only was he to question the authority of traditional metres in Hindi

poetry very soon, but even before this, he had already written a poem titled 'Juhi ki

Kali' 120 generally regarded as the first example of free verse in Hindi. In a later

article he described the role of a poet as giving voice to 'universal sorrow', vishwa­

vedana-a term which was to become a key word for the whole Chhayavadi

movement. Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi himself had used this term, a little ago almost

in the same terms, indicating a great shift from his utilitarian ideas about poetry. 121

Taking examples from disparate poets like Shelley, Rabindranath Tagore, Tulsidas

and contemporaries like Gay a Prasad Shukla 'Sanehi' and Sumitranandan Pant,

Nirala defined the role of a poet. Further criticising the existing Shastric definitions

of a poet, he stressed on the need to give new meanings to them, which included a

break from the 'stranglehold' of traditional metres. Rhetorically asking whether the

popular 'Ghanakshari' metre was popular two thousand years ago as well, he

stressed on the need for the creation of 'free poetry' that was possible only when the

'emotional overflow' of a poet into words was not allowed to be contained within

119 Nirala, 'Hindi aur Bangia ki Kavita', Samanway (monthly), Calcutta, Aug. -Sept. 1923. See, Nawal ed., op. cit., pp. 137-8.

120 It was published in Adarsh (monthly), Calcutta, Nov.-Dec. 1922 and that too after Dwivedi had already rejected it for Saraswati. While praising its bhav, he rejected it criticising its experimentation with metre.

121 To quote him, "the duty of the poet is neither to educate nor to explain philosophical elements. Instead such a song should flow from his heart which could give voice to the 'universal sorrow', vishwa-vedaria, of the whole of humanity". Clearly Dwivedi wanted to retain the job of philosophical exposition for the critics like him even as he was willing to give credit to the poet for the power of his invocation. See, Dwivedi, 'Kavita ka Bhavishya', Saraswati, Sept. 1920 in Bharat Yayavar ed., op. cit., pp. 94-8.

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fixed metres. 122 Interestingly Dwivedi in his earlier writings also had stressed on the

need of creation of new metres (as against Nirala's assertions for breaking out of

metres altogether) and yet their views regarding a poets' capabilities stood in

contrast to each other. Even as Nirala stressed on the need for 'uncontrolled

overflow' of poetry, he insisted on the constant dedication on behalf of the poet,

'even if a person is not a poet, if he wants he can definitely be a great poet i.e.

mahakavi' .123 On the other hand, Dwivedi despite his prescriptive formulas for a

poet believed in the supremacy ofthe 'natural' poet over a self-taught one. Yet what

was foremost in the mind of the contemporary intellectual-poet was to give a

civilisational identity to India in general and to the Hindi literary scene in particular.

This had to happen at two levels. One by reinterpreting the Indian tradition and

second by this very act taking away the monopoly of the critics in this field. But this

had to happen only when the primary job of the poet i.e. his poetry itself could be

shown to be all encompassing, not merely in the utilitarian terms of Dwivedi et al,

but on the very grounds of 'high' philosophical exposition. In another article he

sought to explicate that the true unity of Indian identity particularly among Hindus

and Muslims could be achieved only at the equal level of literature, especially

poetry. This had to happen by showing that both Urdu and Hindi poetry's

philosophical foundations were identical, i.e. Vedantism or the theory of 'unity of

being'. Citing examples from Tulsi, Kabir on the one hand and Ghalib, Nazir

Akbarabadi, Mir etc. on the other Nirala argued that even as advaitvad was primarily

ancient India's contribution to the world, it was only on this philosophical ground

that the unity between the two communities and hence the larger unity of India could

be achieved. 124 The argument thus was meant to project literature and further poetry

on top of all the forms of knowledge and art. It then could also take on the self­

projected superiority of the political class represented by the likes of Purushottam

Das Tandon, Madan Mohan Malwiya at the regional level and Gandhi and Nehru at

the national one. At another level Nirala attempted to dislodge the critics' hegemony

over defining such civilisational aspirations of India. To do this he further took them

on by pointing out the flaws in their interpretations of the tradition. Thus Nirala

122 Nira1a, 'Kavi aur Kavita', Kavi (monthly), Kanpur, Paus, Samvat !981 (AD 1924). See, Nandkishor Nawa1 ed., op. cit.

123 Ibid. 124

Nirala, 'Sahitya ki Samtal Bhoomi', Samanway, Calcutta, July-Aug. 1926. See, Nawal ed., op. cit., pp. 156-:61.

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critiqued Shyam Sundar Das' interpretation of Tulsi for having missed out the finer

nuances of Advaitvad in Tulsi's Ramcharitmanas. 125

It is not that Nirala had not sought the patronage of the establishment at first. In fact

he regarded Dwivedi as his first literary guru and through him only got an entry in

the literary world as part of the editorial staff of Samanway, a journal of the

followers of Ramkrishna Paramhans. Yet Dwivedi refused to publish his poems and

it was only when his later colleagues like Mahadev Prasad Seth and Shivpujan

Sahay (in Matwala) backed him that his poems began to be published by journals

like Madhuri and Adarsh. Later with the establishment of Sudha in the late twenties

he joined it as its editorial member taking on the various fronts by writing its

editorials. Even when Dwivedi left Saraswati, his successor Padumlal Pannalal

Bakhshi also refused to publish Nirala's poetry on the grounds of not conforming to

the current aesthetic taste. Nirala then took the battle to their ground by vehemently

criticising Saraswati, particularly Bakhshi's language in his regular column Chabuk

of the satirical journal Matwala. He also took on Madhuri which by then had

become the topmost literary journal. Nirala by mainly targeting their language in an

extremely sarcastic tone sought to delegitimise their very foundations of prestige. 126

Yet his journal Matwala was always seen as belonging to a second rung despite its

immense popularity.

More importantly, he began to undertake a systematic review of the contemporary

literary scene, particularly poetry in order to posit himself and his school within the

field. In the process he was among the foremost of the Chhayavadi lot to see

themselves as belonging to a school, a distinct literary and aesthetic tradition. This

review was indeed projected as part of the larger understanding of the Indian

identity. This understanding in return was taken to be as the poet's attempt to seek

fulfilment. Citing Tulsi, Kabir and Sur as seeking various aspects of this fulfilment,

Nirala termed the quest of the jatiya mukti as the supreme criteria for also judging

the contemporary poetry. This had to be also linked to the contemporary subjugated

state of the nation in terms of the poets' inability/ability to reawaken its people

towards the 'nation's conscious self. It was ostensibly on these grounds that he

125 Nirala, 'Tulsikrit Ramayan ka Adarsh', Madhuri (monthly), Lucknow, 18 Aug. 1923. See, Nawal ed., op. cit., pp. 131-7.

126 See for example the collection of his writings under the title Chabuk (published during 1923-4 in Matwa/a, weekly, Calcutta) in Nawal ed., op. cit., vol. 5.

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appreciated the representative poets of Dwivedi-age. According to him even as poets

like Hariaudh, Maitihili Sharan Gupt, Ramcharit Upadhyay, Ramnaresh Tripathi etc.

were good within the tradition bound expectations of poetry, both in terms of metres

and emotions they lacked enough 'soulfulness', sahridayta as also the will to

experiment with the newer forms. 127 Yet he termed it as sufficient according to the

scope of the situation. In a subsequent article, he went on to explicate those poets

who were generally regarded as belonging to his school. Much before this he had

called Sumitranandan Pant as the 'first natural poet' of Hindi. In a later article, he

simultaneously attacked the old school critics like Dwivedi, Padm Sinh Sharma, Pt.

Krishna Bihari Mishra etc. as becoming outdated while he also termed new writers

like Ilachandra Joshi following western values entirely. Terming himself as

belonging to the middle, he asked for the need to see art as not being confined to any

particular definition. Art according to Nirala had to be universal in its appeal despite

distinct local colours. In this respect he termed Jaishankar Prasad as the pioneering

poet of his kind even acknowledging that after reading Prasad's poetry he realised

that even structurally it was him and not Nirala who had pioneered breaking a

sentence in the middle of a poem. Praising both Prasad and Pant he termed them as

achieving a unique combination for Hindi poetry i.e. Prasad's attainment of complex

syntactical structure like Sanskrit and Pant's attainment of powerful flow like

English poetry. 128 This combination of both Sanskrit and English was indeed the

criteria of excellence sought by the intellectuals at that time. In the same article,

Nirala also discussed other lesser and upcoming poets like Balkrishna Sharma

'Navin', Pt. Mukutdhar Pandey, Govind Vallabh Pant, Bhagvati-charan Verma etc.

to prove that a lineage or a school pioneered by the likes of him had come into

being. Incidentally, a poet (and editor of the prestigious Karmveer from Khandwa,

Central Provinces) like Makhan Lal Chaturvedi, who was mainly known for his

highly charged political poems written under the pseudonym 'Ek Swatantra

Atma'-who was also recognised for his rahasyavadi, mystical poems- came

under attack from Nirala in this article. Nirala sought to demonstrate that despite his

excellent nationalist poems Chaturvedi was a novice in so far as writing mystical

127 Nirala, 'Hindi Kavita-sahitya ki Pragati', Sudha (monthly), Lucknow, March, 1928. See, Nawal ed., op. cit., 208-15.

128 Nirala, 'Saundarya-darshan aur Kavi-kaushal', Saroj (monthly), Calcutta, May-June 1928. See, Nawal ed., op. cit, pp. 215-23.

138

poems was concerned (one of the hallmarks of Chhayavadi poetry), by pointing out

various logical contradictions in such poems. 129 This incidentally was the fallout of

the attempts of the people from the old school as well as the journalist-propagandists

like Banarsi Das Chaturvedi engaged in a sustained campaign against Nirala at that

time. While they were ready to acknowledge Prasad as one of the Chhayavadis, they

refused to do so with Nirala and even Pant. Instead they included in their list, poets

like Makahan Lal Chaturvedi, whose writings directly about national-political issues

brought them closer to the old school. Yet this had to be done in this context by

privileging his mystical poems over the poems by other Chhayavadis, who by then

had become synonymous with rahasyavad or mysticism.

Yet it was in his battle with the most popular poet of Chhayavad Sumitranandan

Pant, that Nirala argued his position on the idea of poetry and its linkages with

national spirit in detail. When Pant published his first collection Pallav in 1926, he

wrote a long preface putting forth his ideas on art and poetry, a practice familiar

with the Chhayavad poets. In this piece he accused Nirala of using certain metres

under Bengali influence which were not fit for Hindi. 130 Nirala was quick to respond

to this argument by demonstrating the efficacy of his free verse which he argued was

based on the traditional metre of Kavitta and was bereft of any Bengali influence.

Instead he accused Pant of stealing ideas from Tagore. 131 The internal debate within

Chhayavad thus also centred around the anxieties to prove one's closeness to the

'tradition'. Most importantly, in the preface of his anthology Parimal (1929), Nirala

outlined an agenda for the poet, which was taken as the ultimate enlargement of

his/her role. It once again sought to buttress his argument in the defence of free

verse still being ridiculed as rabar-chhand (elastic metre) or kenchua-chhand (worm

metre). He famously argued that just like the human aspirations of freedom, poetry

also looked for its freedom from strict limitations posed by metres and rigid

structures. This again was reflective of the attempts of freedom on behalf of a whole

community itself. 132 The argument thus pushed up a litterateur or more exclusively,

129 Ibid. 130 Sumitranandan Pant, 'Pravesh', Pallav (1 51 published 1926). See, Sumitranandan Pant

Granthavali, vol. 1, Rajkama1 Prakashan, N. Delhi, 1993 (1st edn. 1979), pp. 148-76. 131 Nirala, 'Pantji aur Pallav', Madhuri, Sept., Dec. 1927 and April, May and July 1928. See, Nawal

ed., op. cit., vol. 5, pp. 164-208. 132 Nirala, 'Parimal ki Bhoomika', Parimal, 1929. See, Nawal ed., op. cit., vol.l, pp. 398-407.

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a poet's position on the top of not merely the literary hierarchy but going beyond

that, in the overall society itself.

In his poetry, Nirala is said to have experimented on a much wider scale than any of

his contemporaries. Beginning from traditional metres to breaking free from them

and then going back again with a vengeance to them was an ultimate exposition of

his prowess. In this respect he travelled a long way. By the end of his career, he was

to revert to a much simpler language with a popular Urdu diction in which his

Kukurmutta (1943) was written. Thematically too he kept experimenting with a range

of subjects. He wrote poems on social concerns (like Bhikshuk), romantic poetry,

and then during the times of intense rejection, he came up with his two long poems

Ram ki Shakti Puja and Tulsidas. At the level of language and structure these two

poems were written in an intensely Sanskritised language with an extremely

complex syntactical constructions prompting the contemporary critics to term them

as too tough and incomprehensible. It seems more likely that with a constant

accusation of having pioneered free verse (seen as an anarchist tendency within

literature) Nirala wanted the establishment's acceptance by adhering to traditional

metres albeit in his novel way. At the level of theme both his above mentioned

poems were an invocation of the authentic identity of India by reinterpreting Ram

and Tulsi Das as modern heroes of the Hindu society. It was in Saroj-Smriti, an

elegy written in the memory of his daughter, that he came closer to the more

grounded realities at home castigating the corrupt social system around and the

predicament of a poet in such a system. By early forties, when he wrote Kukurmutta,

not only had he simplified his language in order to address the masses directly but

also come to castigate the emergence of the capitalist power in a candid way. An

instance is,

Abe sun be ghulab, Boo! mat ghar pai tune rang-o-ab Khoon chusa khad ka tune ashisht, Dal par itra raha hai capitalist.

Attacks

This attempt was bound to raise the hackles of the establishment. Despite his

retirement Dwivedi himself came to the rescue of his school. In a long article

published in Saraswati, the recognised patron of the establishment by then, he

attacked Chhayavad by also citing helpful criticisms from people like Shyam Sundar

Das published in Saraswati itself. He described the Chhayavadis as a bunch of

140

misguided youth, who were inspired by Tagore, but lacked the knowledge and

rigour of the art of poetry, and sought instant fame through this kind of poetry. His

main accusation against them was their incomprehensible language bordering on

absurdity. This he sought to prove by quoting from various Chhayavadi poems.

Contrasting them with his favourite poet Maithili Sharan Gupt, he showed them to

be extremely inferior. 133 This argument of 'incomprehensible blabber' was also used

by Banarsi Das Chaturvedi to discredit Chhayavad especially targeting Nirala. Even

when the movement gained gradual acceptance Nirala yet remained a pariah for the

orthodox school even as others like Prasad and Pant were accepted. The ultimate

recognition in the form of inclusion of their poetry in the university/college syllabi

eluded Nirala for long even as his other co-travellers were included. Critics like

Ramchandra Shukla besides criticising the movement on theoretical grounds, also

employed the language of ridicule especially to browbeat Nirala. Shukla wrote a

sarcastic poem (published in Sudha) targeting Nirala especially by accusing him of

copying from Bengali and English Romantic poetry in an immature manner while

also implicating Nirala's patron Matwala in the process. 134 Another such piece titled

'Pashand-pratishedh' in Madhuri also ridiculed Chhayavad. While Matadin Shukla

(a well-known poet of that period) also replied back in the verse form in the

subsequent issue, Nirala dismissed these attacks coming from Dwivedi as too late to

'curb the fever of Chhayavad' and challenged Shukla to put forward his arguments

in prose instead of 'blabbering in verse'. Referring to various incoming replies to

Shukla in literary journals like Sudha and Madhuri (also reflecting the way these

journals had become the site of such contestations), he further went on to show that

Shukla's own poem 'Pashand-pratishedh' betrayed the elements of breaking the

fixed metres thus proving Nirala's point in this regard. Further replying to Shukla's

criticism of William Blake as a hypocrite, Nirala went on to refute it strongly by

showing him to be a poet again inspired by the ideas of 'unity of being' or

Vedantism giving examples like,

And heaven in a wild flower To see a world in a grain of sand,

133 Sriyut Kavi-kinkar (Dwivedi), 'Aaj-kal ke Hindi Kavi aur Kavita', Saraswati, May 1927. See, Bharat Yayavar ed., op. cit., pp. 117-30.

134 To quote him, "Kahin Bang-bhang-pad chakti chamak rahi, Kahin angreji-anuvad ka anaripan; Aise siddh saiyon ki mang matwalon mein hai, Kavya mein najhoothe svmng khinchte kahhi hain hum". Quoted in 'Sahitya ki Navin Pragati Par' by Nirala in Sahitya-samalochak, fortnightly, Lucknow, May-June and June-July 1928. See, Nawal ed., op. cit., pp. 223-32.

141

To hold infinity in the palm ofyour hand And eternity in an hour

Drawing parallels with it from the poetry of Tulsi Das, Nirala sought to prove this

by the then familiar argument that the universal ideals of fulfilment remained

identical despite local variations from outside. 135 Thus the conflict remained double­

edged. On one hand the need to define Indian identity vis-a-vis the West and Hindi

identity vis-a-vis other regional literatures like Bangia, Urdu etc. and at the same

time to call for the outlining of universal ideals.

Within his school itself he engaged in a fierce battle with first Sumitranandan Pant

and later his supporters and followers like Shantipriya Dwivedi and Jyoti Prasad

Nirmal, who attacked him for stealing ideas from Bangia and English poetry almost

verbatim, a charge Nirala had levelled against Pant. The battle was again bitter

bordering on personal abuse.

Around the same time Padm Sinh Sharma, using the platform of Hindi Sahitya

Sammelan (HSS) (which represented the authority ofthe old school) as its president,

launched a tirade against Chhayavad In his speech quoted extensively by Banarsi

Das Chaturvedi in his Vishal Bharat, Sharma first differentiated the modern

rahsyavad as 'distinctly spurious and hypocritical' as compared to the old ones like

that of Kabir and the ones represented by the 'Tasawwuf' tradition of Urdu.

According to him it was first imperative upon the youngsters 'to learn to respect the

elders'. This was the crux of the argument i.e. to fall within the line prescribed by

the old critics. HSS was a site close to people like Nirala and therefore they

generally boycotted these forums despite their occasional appearances. In this

session held at Muzaffarpur, their defence was put forward by the lesser poets of the

school like Krishnadev Prasad Gaur and Ramnathlal Suman. The latter's speech

came under a controversy as he had asked the elders to learn from the youngsters

and had termed the former as 'the dead wood of the garden of literature'. Quoting

this, Banarsi Das Chaturvedi (in his editorial), criticised the Chhayavadis and asked

instead a collection of 'model Chhayavadi poetry' to be emulated by the other

enthusiasts. For this he asked Jaishankar Prasad and Makhanlal Chaturvedi to do the

job. The suggestion reflected the stereotypical attitude of the politician-journalists

like Chaturvedi who always argued for a way to control the literary production. This

135 Ibid.

142

control could always be brought forth through a codification of ideal poetry and that

too by more acceptable people like Prasad (due to his seniority) and Makhanlal

Chaturvedi (due to his political activism and nationalist poems something he could

identify with as mentioned earlier). For this he found a natural ally in the critics like

Sharma. His modified arguments also reflect the extent to which Chhayavad had

attained respectability despite their protestations so as to merely suggest a model for

this kind of poetry instead of debunking it completely like few years earlier.

Chaturvedi also termed the supposedly adverse reporting against Sharma in this

context in Pratap, Karmveer and Swadesh as unjustified (once again indicating the

way in which these periodicals had become a very important site for such

institutional and ideological struggles). 136 Nirala took it upon himself to reply to all

these attacks squarely. Sarcastically replying to Sharma's criticism he went on to

cite Tulsi' s advocacy of iconoclasm for the sake of truth and also asked him to cite

the 'good' examples of Chhayavadi poetry. Asserting that rahsyavad was nothing

else except good poetry he 'rationalised' Sharma's opposition to the modern

rahsyavad as challenging the authority of his likes itself He outlined the basic

agenda and utility of such controversies by pointing out that through such

controversies itself a vad could become a vad. 137 It is evident thus that he was quite

conscious of the politics of such argumentation that led to the reconfiguration of the

literary field each time such a controversy arose. It was through this politics only

that old hegemonies could be challenged and new ones established even as a point of

synthesis emerged through such a process.

Yet his battle with Chaturvedi was so bitter, that it almost threatened to end Nirala's

literary career. Even though Chaturvedi and Nirala had a continuing tiff since a long

time, matters precipitated when Nirala published an essay entitled 'Vartman Dharm'

in a literary bi-weekly Bharat in 1932-3. The essay was written in a flowery

Chhayavadi form explicating Nirala's philosophical ideals of India. It is interesting

to note that the kind of complex language he employed in his poetry and got critical

acclaim despite tough opposition, the use of same kind of language in prose form

invited ridicule on the charge of incomprehensibility. 138 Chaturvedi in fact went on

136 Banarsi Das Chaturvedi, 'Sampdkiya Vichar' (on Hindi Sahitya Sammelan), Vishal Bharat, July 1928.

137 Nirala, 'Sahitya ki Navin Pragat Par', op. cit. 138 Interestingly in his later years, he employed a simple prose language in poetry e.g. in Kukurmutta

(Mushroom).

143

to begin a series called 'Sahityik Sannipat' (Literary Insanity) in his Vishal Bharat

sarcastically instituting an award of Rs. twenty-five for the person who could

successfully explain it. It was evidently followed with a barrage of articles by the

minor figures lampooning Nirala on the same lines and calling him a person gone

mad. Nirala in return wrote a terse reply in a series of essays explaining his own

essay in detail interpreting many incidents of Purans as fables hiding spiritual ideals

of the age. In the same breath he challenged Chaturvedi to solve some of the

supposedly irrational puzzles described in Purans. 139 A war of words ensued

between the both sides with Nirala clearly calling Chaturvedi a propagandist trying

to dictate terms to literary figures by flaunting his connections with Gandhi and

Tagore. He further accused him of raising such sensational issues like attacks ag,ainst

Chhayavad and Ghasleti Sahitya to increase the sales of his journal as well as

consolidate his connections with the intermediate political class. Calling him a

person without any literary or philosophical knowledge, he challenged him again to

explain the ideals of rahsyavad to him before attacking it. 14° Clearly the war was not

merely between the two personalities or even between the two institutional

representatives, namely an editor and a poet-critic, but also over the very question of

a writer's autonomy, his freedom in selecting what to write and how to write. The

implicit question within it was: who was superior in terms of knowledge, a person

directly engaged in literary production or an editor-propagandist having an authority

over what to publish and what not to publish?

Nirala's institutional battle with those in authority was also typified by his

engagements with Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. In his later interviews about his

relationship with Sammelan, Nirala accused it of giving it primacy to non-literary

politicians like Tandon (despite acknowledging their defence of Hindi vis-a-vis

other regional languages like Bangia). He further accused it for not using its

institutional strength via the examination system to introduce students to modern

and contemporary literature of people like him. This according to him was a grave

crime as despite his being the best literature till date, Sammelan created new

ignoramus opponents for people like him even as they were busy fighting with the

139 Nirala, 'Sahityik Sannipat ya Vartman Dhann', Madhuri, Feb., March and July 1933. See, Nawal ed., op. cit., pp. 152-75.

140 Nirala, 'Sahitya mein Propaganda', Sudha, 1 Sept. 1933. See, Nawal ed., op. cit., pp. 405-8.

144

old guard. 141 While Sammelan did not look favourably to the whole bunch of

Chhayavadis for long, Nirala remained at loggerheads with them almost till the end.

Even as late as in 1943 when he wrote his Kukurmutta and wanted it to be published

by HSS, Purushottam Das Tandon who literally controlled the institution, did not

agree to publish it. While the original hostile attitude of the HSS is evident, the fact

is also evident that till late Nirala could not fully boycott an institution like HSS and

sought to find its approval.

Nirala, like his other schoolmates was to find his base of authority among the

yoqnger generation, the students of university and colleges where he was invited

very often for speeches and poetry sessions. This phenomenon, seen with great

alarm, came under repeated attack from people like Dwivedi, Shyam Sundar Das

and others. Ironically though, Pant was to outpace Nirala in terms of popularity even

among youth. In a later reminiscence Nirala referred to his being invited for a lecture

by the students of Banaras Hindu University who were opposed to Ramchandra

Shukla's criticism ofChhayavad. The meet was boycotted by Shukla, and Hariaudh,

a poet of the old school and a Professor at the university, left it mid-way once Nirala

launched a tirade against the critics of Chhayavad even as the students supported

him. 142 In fact his 'authenticated scholarly defence' came from a younger generation

critic, Nand Dulare Vajpeyi, who apart from defending Prasad, also came to the

defence of Nirala and Chhayavad itself. Vajpeyi also wrote critical preface for

Nirala's anthology Gitika. Like Vajpeyi was the first professional critic to defend

Prasad, Ramvilas Sharma came up as the first academic-critic to defend Nirala. This

perhaps was the greatest moment of their official literary consecration. It is also

significant that despite being brought up on the 'old aesthetic/academic canons

proposed by the literary establishment, the younger generation of students/critics

sought to defy those very canons in order to carve a niche for themselves. The same

was true for the poets discarded by the 'old school'. Hence once again the claim of

these poets to belong to 'public domain' rather than catering to a 'select few', was

rendered asunder as they, with the help of new critics, began to be assimilated in the

new university/college curriculum, thereby automatically going away from that

141 Nirala, 'Prantiya Sammelan, Faizabad' (Interview conducted by Narottam Nagar), Chakallas (weekly), Lucknow, Nos. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 in May-June 1938. See Nawal ed., op. cit., pp. 198-210.

142 Nirala, 'Nand Dulare Vajpeyi', published in Chabuk, published around 1941-2, p. 4. See, Nawal ed., op. cit., pp. 433-7.

145

'public domain' itself It was inherent in the very logic of academic

professionalisation. The universities, in this sense, provided fertile ground for the

interplay of such contradictions.

At the same time many of the articles written on the aesthetic of poetry, very often

by lesser known people, also testified to the growing popularity of Chhayavad. One

such writer hailed it as the 'beginning of a new age' for breaking free from the 'old,

strict rules of metres', arid related it to the popularity of the 'feelings of sorrow and

pain' resulting from 'spirituallove'. 143 Clearly, it was not the larger socio-political

message but primarily the expression of feeling of love (even if hidden in a spiritual

garb) in a conservative society that often underlined Chhayavad' s stable popularity.

By way of summary of this section one needs to stress once again the ambivalence

the Chhayavadis were experiencing in terms of their external social commitment and

a need to define art/literature as something sublime, not accessible to everybody and

hence leading to the exclusion of the very masses in whose name the literature was

sought to be created. 144 This ambiguity was in a way sought to be resolved through a

bifurcation of the conceptual duties entailed by the respective forms of poetry and

prose.

Part III

The Various Roles of Prose

Way back in 1923 itself, when Nirala was still grappling with his own poetic self, he

made some categorical observations about the social roles of prose and poetry. To

quote him,

The main reason behind the slow pace of Hindi is the fact that the age of prose in it has begun only recently ... The language of poetry though does provide pleasure, it is not of any use for the struggles of life. Secondly, the lover of poetry gets besotted with imagination, which doesn't help. Flowery imagination makes a man fearful of the tough zone of action. The softer

143 Dinannath Visharad, 'Hindi Kavita mein Navin Yug', Veena, Vaishakh Samvat 1986 (AD 1929), pp. 505-9. 144 Bourdieu argues that between the two opposing poles of commercial art and 'art for art's sake' is

thoroughly ambiguously situated 'social art'. According to him, "although it relates artistic or literary production to external functions (which is what the advocates of art for art's sake object to about it), it shares with art for art's sake a radical rejection of the dominant principle of hierarchy and of the 'bourgeois' art which recognises it". Bourdieu, op. cit., ff. 12, p. 273. It was n~t without reason that even during that period, the rhetorical debates around the term, 'art for art's sake' abounded.

146

emotion of poetry makes people lovers of beauty. It jeopardises the community's life of action. 14

Even though he was to change his position about the power and social role of poetry,

the unease about different forms remained with the Chhayavad poets till the end.

This unease reflected the larger concerns of all the players involved in the making of

Hindi literary field at that time.

The constant flux between projection of a high cultural identity and the talk about

visibly more concrete issues like class-consciousness created a palpable tension in

the wake of the contemporary events. Gandhi's call for a shift of attention towards

rural India along with incoming ideologies of communism and different variants of

socialism, led to a search for suitable literary response. It was thus in its attempt to

find a foot in the ongoing socio-political movements, that literature found itself

getting shaped by these concerns in return. Realism as a genre emerged to grab the

attention among these circumstances. 146 Even though from the beginning of this

century itself, people like Chandradhar Sharma Guleri, the well known storywriter

of Usne Kaha Tha were advocating for the need of literature to reflect the lives of

common people, the question became crucial only with the onset of the Premchand

era.

In 1922, almost two years after his retirement from Saraswati, Mahavir Prasad

Dwivedi wrote a piece on the nature of novel calling it as mainly western product

'and insisted on following the norms as laid down by the west. Yet the contemporary

commercial character of the novel was what prompted him to berate the . prolific

market of novels at that time. According to him ninety five percent of them were

mainly a means to lure people for buying several kinds of commercial products. 147

This had to be attacked by those who insisted on using its alluring powers for

mobilising for socio-political purposes. 148 Yet Dwivedi was quite critical of

145 Nirala, 'Bhasha ki Gati aur Hindi ki Shaili', Samanway, Sept.-Oct. 1923. See, Nawal ed., pp. 50-4.

146 Aijaz Ahmad has pointed towards the significance of 'realism' as the decisive and most important influence over the contemporary literary scene in India, especially in its Russian and French variants, albeit in English translation. It was mainly because, 'its ways of apprehending the world corresponded to that histopric moment witihn Indian society when it was undergoing iots first bourgeois upheavals, obtaining its own class structure and household arrangements of the capitalist type, forming its own self-consciouness as a society beset with revolutionary crises, although in a colonial setting'. Aijaz Ahn1ad, op. cit., p. 270. 147 Dwivedi, 'Upanyas-Rahasya', Saraswati, Oct. 1922. See, Yayavar ed., op. cit., pp. 99-105. 14~ Talking about the development of the novel in India, Meenakshi Mukherjee identifies three

strands. One, consisting of the novels of purpose which utilised this new literary form for social reform and missionary enterprise. "The second is an 'inclusive category' where the apparently

147

Premchand' s early fame in this regard. Mentioning his two early novels which

brought him instant fame and giving them a combined title Sewashram from his

faulty memory (in reality he meant Sewasadan published in 1918, and Premashram

published in 1922 itself), Dwivedi referred to their criticism published somewhere.

Admitting of not having read them Dwivedi nevertheless seemed supportive of the

charges that these novels had not taken into account the prevalent social customs,

religious norms, time and space and even psychological factors. 149 These were

precisely the grounds basing on which Premchand had emerged like a lightening on

the Hindi scene. Premchand in one of his essays outlined his central arguments on

the nature of novel. in the process he also grappled with the western notions of the

purpose of art itself. He accepted the validity of the assertion that the highest ideal of

literature was that it was to be produced only for the sake of art itself. This was

because any literature pandering to propaganda fell from the high pedestal of its true

nature. Yet the doctrine of' art for art's sake' could be true only for happier times. In

this context the need of propagandist literature became paramount in times of

misery, even if it was to be stated in a subtle form. Quoting heavily from writers like

Henry James, G.K. Chesterton, he outlined his own formula of adarshonmukh

yatharthvad or idealistic realism. According to him stark realism led a person only

towards pessimism and hence the need to tamper it with an element of idealism, a

string of hope. 150 Incidentally this argument for a wholesome combination of

idealism and realism was something which seemed to be all pervasive at that time.

We have already mentioned Shyam Sundar Das' identification of it with the very

opposed tendencies of historical and supernatural fiction merge, the common denominator being the creation of an ethos remote in time. The third strand attempted to render contemporary Indian society realistically in fiction, joining the European novelists in that effort that 'willed tendency of art to approximate reality'. The latter was the most important strand to be followed by the later writers". Meenakshi Mukherjee, Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in India, OUP, 1994, N. Delhi, p. 16. There could be contestations to this argument at least in the case of Hindi. For example, the strand representing social reform and the 'realist' strand never remained aloof from each other, as in the case of Premchand itself. Secondly, the so-called popular novels of 'cheap' variety also claimed to lay stress on the need for social reform, as in the case of Goswami. Thirdly, Mukherjee's argument about the historical genre representing 'the ethos remote in time' once again needs qualification. In the case of hugely popular Chandrakanta of Devakinandan Khatri itself, even while talking of the psuedo-historical times it always took care to relate the magical acts of the aiyars as representative of the latest technological researches. Interestingly, one of the contemporary articles also classified Hindi novels somewhat along these lines of broadly four categories: fantasy, detective, historical and social. Kunwar Rajendra Singh, 'Hindi. mein Upanyas aur Natak', Veena, 1930, p. 64-9.

149 Ibid. 150 Premchand, Samalochak (monthly), Jan. 1925. See, Amrit Rai ed., Vividh Prasang, vol. 3, Hans

Prakashan, Allaltabad, 1962, pp. 3 3-8.

148

spirit of Indian identity itself. Yet as is well known, Premchand himself was to

abandon this principle in his later years.

The discussion in this context would be better served if we take into account

differing perceptions of his fictional writings. Premashram, his first novel written in

Hindi (Sewasadan was released in Hindi after being originally written in Urdu),

apart from immense popularity also generated a lot of critical interest. The novel

was written during the heyday ofNon-co-operation movement and used the peasant

unrest of Awadh as its plot. Released in a khadi cover it received instant critical

acclaim. Two of the prominent intellectuals of that time Raghupati Sahay 'Firaq'

(the well acclaimed Urdu poet Firaq Gorakhpuri) and Kalidas Kapoor (who turned

out to be a regular reviewer-critic of Premchand) praised the novel immensely

mainly for its 'true depictions' of the countryside and the oppression of the

peasantry. 151 The novel in fact was seen as having raised the demand of 'land to the

tiller'. In this respect it went beyond the likes of Dwivedi who despite having raised

the concerns about the plight of the peasants had stopped short of calling for the

complete abolition of zamindari system. Ramchandra Shukla on the other hand had

clearly taken as a pro-zamindar stand by terming 98 per cent of them as equally

unfortunate as the peasants. He cautioned the writers, particularly the fiction-writers

to be wary of malicious anti-zamindari propaganda by the politicians. 152 He in fact

had gone on to criticise the Non-co-operation movement on the charges of serving

only bania/trader interests. On the other hand, many of the contemporary articles

published in the periodicals despite expressing concern over the plight of the

peasants, ascribed this plight to the ignorance of the peasants themselves. The

important point in this context is that from a genre of cheap entertainment, fiction

had gone to the other extreme of being directly responsible for intervening in the

everyday affairs of the society. In this respect it began to be seen as affording a

much wider scope for giving voice to radical aspirations while simultaneously

underlining the pitfalls of the nationalist leadership.

Even as Premchand rapidly acquired a cult status with his subsequent success,

around the same time attacks also began to be mounted on him. Hemchandra Joshi,

the illustrious brother of Ilachandra Joshi and a critic himself, published an article in

Modern Review in 1923 terming Premchand as mainly a mediocre writer concerned

151 Prabha (monthly), Kanpur, July 1922, p. 57. 152 Shukla, Hindi Sahitya ka Itihaas, op. cit, pp. 292-3.

149

with the mundane realities of everyday life but not delving deep into the 'inner

recesses of human mind' like Rabindranath Tagore and Sharat Chandra in Bengali.

This prompted an instant barrage of replies leading to the swords drawn along

regional lines. One such reply thus argued,

Bangia novels have acquired a stereotyped narrative style. Very often they have a widow ... she loves a married man and forgets her own self in the lure of passion ... One doesn't know how long the lovers and servants of Hindi will be devoutly praying to Bangia literature.153

While the debate points to the clash of respective regional identities and Hindi's

quest to come out of the grip of Bangia influence, it also points towards the already

widening chasm between the two lines: one, supporting the line of pursuing the

depiction of social and political concerns of the times and the other aspiring to

achieve supposedly high philosophical quest through literature. The debate took

sharper turn when Ilachandra Joshi continued his criticism of Premchand along the

same lines, prompting a list of counter-attacks calling him envious, unpatriotic etc.

indicating the extent to which Premchand had been canonised in his lifetime. By

1928, Joshi was forced to defend himself as an admirer of Premchand and instead

argued for critiquing him from within. Calling him as a writer of 'masculinity' and

writing from his mind, Joshi attributed it to his concern with the happenings of

outside world. Joshi further charged him for not delving deep enough to identify

with the softer emotions of the heart, which according to him was feminine in

nature. This was because 'art' was mainly concerned with emotion and not intellect.

Drawing from this argument Joshi by comparing his female characters with those of

Tolstoy and Tagore found them to be mere ideas, cardboard characters, and a

product ofPremchand's own mind. The larger inference from this of course was that

it was the individual who formed the true basis of art and hence the aim of art to

engage with individual self and that according to Joshi was true test of 'patriotism'

as it were the individuals who made the rashtra, nation. 154 Even as the supreme

status ofPremchand was questioned Joshi had to concede his superiority in the field.

This was one of the reasons which prompted Joshi to write various clarifications on

this theme in journals like Pratap and Modern Review. It is also important to note

that Joshi was regarded as one of the pioneers of 'psychological novels' inquiring

153 Anon., Prabha, July 1923, pp. 58-9. 154 Pt. Ilachandra Joshi, 'Premchandji ki Kala ka Moo Rahasya', Visha/ Bharat, April 1928, pp. 454-

62.

150

into the individual self. Clearly the role of fiction had got inextricably linked with

the social and political questions of the times. Ironically enough it was Jainendra,

Premchand's disciple, who was credited with writing the first credible novels on

psychological themes. His novels Sunita, Tyagpatra published in the nineteen

thirties were the other novels of that period to become part of the canon. By the end

of the forties, a young writer writing under the pen name of Ajneya came up with his

first part of a novel titled Shekhar: Ek Jivani ( 1941 ), which instantly became a

classic statement on the explorations of individual self bordering on anarchism with

a cynical loss of faith in any kind of organised movement.

Parallel to these developments was the conflict over the very nature of prose and

poetry, something which we began our discussion with. It was the very idea of

poetry as looking into the deeper civilisational questions of India (even though with

great overlappings) that prompted Chhayavadi poets to delve into the prose writing

from a specific standpoint. Jaishankar Prasad who is till date regarded as the greatest

playwright explored the questions of Indian identity by going again and again to the

ancient historical themes like Chandragupt, Skandgupt, Dhruvswamini, Janmejay ka

Nagyagya etc. The latter was a strident indictment of the colonial argument of rule

in the name of modern development. Prasad interestingly used the metaphor of

Krishna and Pandavas as the ancient colonisers out to destroy the Rakshasa culture.

Structurally the plays still employed the flowery Chhayavadi language dabbling in

Sanskritised diction interspersed with poems. Premchand partly due to the

compulsions of his position within the contemporary literary field and partly due to

the ideological stance about the role and form of fiction, criticised Prasad for

running away from the more concrete realities of the times and attempting to dig the

old graves. He further accused him of pandering to popular sensational plots of

conspiracy, adventure and intrigue, the heady admixture of a bestseller. 155 Yet when

it came to writing fiction Prasad is seen as having gone beyond Premchand with

novels like Titli and Kankal ( 1931) which were seen as depicting ugliest faces of

contemporary society arguing for an individualistic rebellion against the norms of

society. While Premchand's follower critics like Kalidas Kapoor accused Kankal of

vulgarity, it was once again Nand Dulare Vajpeyi who termed the novel of going

155 Premchand, 'Review of Skandgupt', Madhuri, Oct. 1928. See Jabir Husain et al ed., Premchand Rachnavali, vol. 9, Janvani Prakashan, N. Delhi, 1996, pp. 337-8.

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beyond the 'innocent idealism' of Premchand. 156 Interestingly Prasad had himself

argued for a healthy combination of realism and idealism on the grounds that

literature was not simply history to be content with merely realism. Premchand

himself wrote an appreciating review of the novel as one of the best for its depiction

of lifelike characters. He also termed it as the outcome of his persistent criticism of

Prasad demanding his engagement with present social-political concerns. 157 Yet the

wedge between the two got divided into the followers of Premchand school and

Prasad school. While the former included people like Vishwambharnath Sharma

'Kaushik', Jwaladutt, Jainendra, Sudarshan etc., the latter self-confessedly consisted

of Vinodshankar Vyas, Raikrishna Das etc. But the division mainly occurred on the

form of short stories where Premchand was seen as supporting the importance of

'plot' and Prasad as laying down the foundations of short, sentimental stories. The

divisions thus also were seen as part of the contemporary literary politics. Nirala, the

other important figure of Chhayavad, though conceding him as the greatest

contemporary novelist, also criticised Premchand for pandering to the taste of the

age and not going beyond it. He further criticised Premchand's adherence to

idealism instead of 'natural truth' .158 Nirala himself wrote Chaturi Chamar (a short

story) and Billesur Bakariha (a novella) considered as classic examples of stark

realism even today. Chaturi Chamar, written in a memoir style, is a scathing

indictment of not simply the existing caste practices of the society but it questions

the very mind set that gets internalised in the mind of even a young child (in this case

Nirala's own son) through such practices. It seems as if the dilemma to maintain

both the task of expressing India's cultural and spiritual identity and various types of

existing inequalities was thus sorted out through this mechanism of the separation of

the two forms of poetry and prose.

Premchand himself travelled a long way within a relatively short span of fifteen

years. Starting his literary career in Hindi as a novelist in the hopeful yet charged

days of Non-co-operation Movement, he first went on to create Gandhian

protagonists like Surdas in Rangbhumi and then also dabbled with social victims like

Nirmala, took further the question of Hindu-Muslim unity surprisingly in a supra­

rational narrative like Kayakalp. He further went on to create a character of a

156 Nand Dulare Vajpeyi, 'Kanka1 ka Sarnaj Darshan' (June 1931), Jaishankar Prasad, op. cit., p. 55. 157 Premchand, 'Kankal', Hans, Nov. 1930. See Jabir Husain et al ed., pp. 344-5. 158 Nira1a, 'Hindi Sahitya mein Upanyas', Sudha, Aug. 1930. See Nawa1 ed., op. cit., pp. 466-8.

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I

weakling still considered as the most authentic character by him in Ghahan.

Interestingly the failure of Civil Disobedience Movement in the nineteen thirties

almost seems to have led him to the point of writing Godan, (published

posthumously in 1936) a novel regarded as his best where he had altogether

abandoned his public adherence to 'idealist realism'. It has been pointed out that the

positive characterisation of the national movement that pervades his stories was put

to test in his novels. But more importantly, even from the earlier days of

Premashram and Karmahhoomi he seems to be creating the idealist heroes and

failing time and again to sustain their positive image till the end. He seemed to be

raising here the question of true representation where the sudden autocratic

behaviour of his ideologically charged heroes towards the people they led (be it the

peasantry or the labouring classes) though might seem whimsical but was pointing

towards the larger questions of bourgeois leadership of the whole national

movement. 159 In this respect it would be wrong to see only Godan as representative

of his adherence to realism. Rather, the contradictions emerging within his whole

corpus of novels were quite consistent.

The Oct./Nov. 1929 issue of Nagari Pracharini Patrika,the research journal

published by KNPS, published a long essay (over 120 pages) titled 'Hindi ki Gadya

Shaili ka Vikas' (The development of the prose style in Hindi) by P. Jagannath

Sharma, signifying the fact that prose-writing in Hindi had come of age and hence

demanded a proper scrutiny. In this essay, Sharma chronologically analysed

different writers in great detail discussing their prose style, their usage of different

forms, and genres and passed judgments on them. It would be worthwhile to take a

look at this long piece, almost the size of a book (and was published by KNPS in a

book form around the same time). Asserting that the study of the gradual

development of linguistic style is interlinked with the development of the thought

process of a society, Sharma began his study of the Hindi prose from Lallu Lal and

Sadal Mishra of the Fort William College. Yet the essay began with a quote replete

with colloquial words, phrases and usages like 'aisa jaan padta hai, kahainge, bhaya

nastic ke bhi pardada bhaye' etc. Terming such words and usages fit only for general

religious lecturing to commoners and not for analysis of any serious topic, Sharma

stated his basic premise, the central theme running through his essay. Hence even

159 Sudhir Chandra, 'Premchand and Indian Nationalism' in Modern Asian Studies, 16, 4 (1982), pp. 601-21. .

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while crediting Devakinandan Khatri (the popular writer of Chandrakanta) for a

language easily accessible to masses, he went on to quote those passages from

Devaki's writings which were comparatively tough due to Sanskritised vocabulary.

He explained this as being necessary for Khatri's exposition of his philosophical

ideas. He did not fail though, to pass a general comment that Khatri's language was

not fit for the postulation of' serious thoughts'.

Continuing in the same vein, he discussed Harioudh's prose style which he divided

into two: one, his literary prose marked for' seriousness of ideas' and second, novels

like Theth Hindi ka Thath and Adhkhila Phool, reflecting the 'street language of the

common public'.

The reviewer's exploration of different styles fit for 'a critical language' continued

in his comparative discussion of Shyam Sundar Das and Chandradhar Sharma

Guleri. According to him, despite using a Sanskritised vocabulary and syntax, they

were comprehensible. Das's concentration on literary criticism and linguistics led

him to evolve a more complex style while Guleri' s focus on 'contemporary issues

gave his style a distinct colloquial character with a flow (chalti hui, muhavredar

hhasha). Hence even after the insistence on a complex style with Sanskritised

vocabulary for the exposition of complex ideas, the status of literary criticism was

put above the rest which necessarily had to be 'for a selective audience' implying a

hierarchy in which the issues of literature remained on top, above the contemporary

socio-political issues. It was in this respect that Sharma canonized Ramchandra

Shukla (even one year before his first edition of pioneering Hindi Sahitya ka ltihaas

came out in 1929) crediting him for 'initiating a comprehensive and solid tradition

of analytical literary criticism' and also consecrating him as the 'first professional

literary critic' in Hindi. One again linguistic style/form seems to be privileged over

the content-matter in this criterion for canonisation.

From here, the reviewer once again moved over to 'creative fiction' with discussions

of Jaishankar Prasad's plays and stories. Giving him the credit for 'starting a new

age in drama', Prasad's style was seen to be 'psychological', which was evident in

'emotionally charged dialogues'. Even in stories, 'reader lands up in the heaven of

imagination, away from this crude material world'. Yet Sharma was careful enough

to point out that 'the writer is forever tilted towards vastavikta, reality'. This last fact

had to be underlined specially in the context of the following discussion of

Premchand's .novels, which due to there sheer popularity and acclaim, led the

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reviewer to accept his 'pioneering place in the novel writing compared to Prasad as a

playwright'. He was nevertheless categorical in his statement that in contrast to

Prasad's 'supreme poetic imagination' even in prose, Premchand's prose was a

'crude-material discussion of the world grounded on the every day experiences'.

Hence while Prasad 'takes one to heaven', Premchand on the other hand 'to this

nether world, mrityulok'. Incidentally it was the same charge against Premchand

levelled by Ilachandra Joshi which has been mentioned earlier. The clear

dichotomous division between the two writers was thus laid down concretely where

Prasad was credited for showing 'the mirror image of heavenly sweetness' and

Premchand for the 'image of the real world'.

Quite evidently thus, even within prose, Prasad and Premchand had to be situated on

two different and opposing poles in the contemporary literary field. It is a different

matter that Prasad had not 'come up with his Kankal till then, eventually accepting

the 'supremeness of realism' as an established principle for fiction writing. Also,

even as popular usages of languages were commended at times, as in the case of

Premchand and Ugra, the insistence was clearly on privileging a complex,

Sanskritised form fit for 'the explication of higher ideas', the ultimate goal of the

contemporary Hindi intellectual. This unease about choosing between the simple

language to reach a wider audience and to explicate the higher ideals for a select

few, thus resurfaced even in prose. This very dichotomy had led to a division

between prose and poetry on the grounds of pursuance of different aesthetic ideals

earlier.

Conclusion

The February 1928 issue of Sammelan Patrika announced the wmner of the

prestigious Mangala Prasad Paritoshik for the books published in the year 1927. 160

The five member selection committee for the award consisted of Padm Sinh Sharma

(senior member ofDwivedi school and an avid spokesperson ofthe 'establishment');

Pandit Sukhdev Bihari Mishra (of the famous 'Mishra Bandhus'); Sridhar Pathak (a

representative poet of the old school, who produced his best works in the late 19th

and early part of the 20th century); Jagannath Das Ratnakar, B.A. (the most well

known Braj Bhasha poet of the modern times and also famous for his commentary

160 'Sri Mangala Prasad Paritoshik-Samvat 1984', Sammelan Patrika, February 1928, Bhag-1, Ank-1,

Quarterly Journal published by HSS, Allahabad, p.12.

155

on Bihari's Satsai, a Reeti Kaleen classic) and Kishori Lal Goswami (probably the

most popular novelist before Premchand, active since late 19th century who despite

facing criticisms by his compatriots had become part of the 'canonized' old school).

On the whole, the committee symbolised a complete sway of the old establishment

who despite coming from varying backgrounds (reflected in the choices of genres,

ideological commitments and aesthetic taste) had grown to become one in the face

of new challenges posed by the new generations. It also represented a direct linkage

between this literary establishment and the political class represented by people like

P.D. Tandon who controlled Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. The alliance thus was a

tactical one based on a quid pro quo where HSS through Tandon helped them

getting entrenched as the 'arbiters' of the literary activities, and they in return gave

there consent and support to Tandon over the general direction of the movements led

by HSS and even beyond, seeking support for his political activities at the provincial

level as well.

Coming back to the awards, there were 48 entries by 36 authors (many writers with

more than one entries) that included people ranging from Harioudh (of the old

school), Lajjaram Mehta, a well known Hindu conservative writer at that time,

Padumlal Pannalal Bakshi, a disciple of Dwivedi and later editor of Saraswati,

Maithli Sharan Gupt, another protege ofDwivedi (whose entry-was in the form of a

play and not any poem for which he was so well acclaimed), Premchand (whose two

entries included a classic like Rangbhumi), 161 Jaishankar Prasad's play Janmejay ka

Nag-Yagya, a minor classic and Sumitranandan Pant's two best known collections

Veena and Pallav, the representative anthologies of Chhayavad. Out of 48 works, 15

were plays, 5 under the category Acharyata, translation-one, criticism-five, poetry­

twelve, religion-one, prose-poetry-three, novels-five and ethics-one.

Interestingly the prize was given to Viyogi Hari on his Braj Bhasha anthology Veer

Satsai 162. It got two clear votes out of five: one from Padm Sinh Sharma and the

161 Incidently Premchand in a letter to Jainendra had confided about his indifference towards such literary awards but did not rule out accepting the money: "I have stopped thinking about the awards. If I get it I will accept it but in the way as if one finds money lying on the street". Letter dated 17 December 1930 from Amrit Rai ed., Chitthi-Patri, in Jabir Hussain and Ram Anand ed., Premchand Rachnavali, vol-19, p.292. 162 Now a long forgotten work but attesting to the contemporary aesthetic preference of the literary establishment as well as the fact that even as late as 1928 Braj Bhasha had still not lost the battle against the Khari Boli fom1 of Hindi poetry. Viyogi Hari was mainly known for his poems of Sringar Rasa, was an editor of Sammelan Patrika for four years before he joined Gandhi led anti­untouchability movement in 1932 as a full time activist of Harijan Sevak Sangh and became the editor of Harijan Sevak.

156

other from Ratnakar. Goswami gave it the third rank among his five best choices

topped by a 'Reeti Granth' titled Kavya Kalpadrum by Seth Kanhaiyalal Poddar.

Sridhar Pathak in a brief note cited four criteria of a good work: 1. originality; 2. the

liveliness of style; 3. purity of language; 4. usefulness of work. Clearly the old

established ideals of literary excellence had been preserved by Pathak who himself

was an innovator in his hey days. Yet he found none of the works worthy of the

prize. Ratnakar interestingly did not elaborate reasons for his choice (which anyway

was apparent enough, i.e. his preference for a Braj Bhasha work). Goswami on the

other hand sarcastically remarked over the short time given for the selection (twenty

six days for forty eight works). Only Sharma gave a detailed reason for his choice of

Veer Satsai and Sukhdev B. Mishra made a detailed survey of most of the works

listing their positive and negative aspects. Padm Sinh Sharma, once again typifies

Dwivedi School's ideals of literary excellence and hence listed: heartening excellent

usage of alankaras; and obeisance to the 'veer' poets; worship of the 'brave

incarnations, the glorification of pilgrimages like Chittor, a detailed explication of

bravery, heart felt exposition of the reasons for the nations fallen state etc.' adding

that, 'such an excellent description of historical incidents has been made in Veer

Satsai that one gets charged (tabiyat pharak jati hai)' .163 Quiet clearly, the

explication of veer rasa in conjunction with an active action oriented, emotion

evoking ideal of Hindu nationalism was what Sharma found in it to be so

exhilarating.

It was Sukhdev Bihari Mishra (his aesthetic position being at crossroads as it were)

who combined his preference for old 'reeti, sringar' with an eye for new aesthetic

challenges and gave his vote to Pant's Pallav. But before this, he made a detailed

survey of the works. Of the seven plays, he found most the plays not belonging to

'high literature' and suitable only for popular stage. Among three big names in the

field, Ugra (whose best known Mahatma !sa was in the contest), Prasad's and

Gupt's plays, he found them to be good 'but not worthy of the prize' mainly due to

'there inability to attain literary excellence'. On Rangbhumi, he sarcastically

remarked while acknowledging Premchand' s popularity that, 'I find them [his

novels] quite ordinary'. His reasons were mainly based on the grounds of characters'

apparently inconsistent behaviour. Ironically, Premchand' s other critics lauded his

163 Ibid.

157

works precisely for the realist characterizations. Further Mishra alleged that despite

claiming to be a book on nationalism, it lacked in this very area. 164

Talking of Veer Satsai, he rejected it on the grounds of' simply imitating old, worn

out ideals' as the poet had praised even the 'barbaric act of drinking of blood by

Bhima'. It was precisely on the grounds of 'merely mouthing the old ideals of the

predecessors and critiquing new challenges to them' that Mishra rejected his

adversary Ramchandra Shukla's critical works Bhramar Geet-Saar and his

commentaries on Jaisi Granthavali and Goswami Tulsidas (the latter two still

regarded as pioneering works). Interestingly it was Shukla who had leveled the

identical charges against the Mishra Bandhus, of which Sukhdev was one, to project

himself as the foremost 'professional critic' of his age. The battle of literary

consecration, war of positions had thus many shades and yet overlapped very often,

at least on the basic premises of criticism and counter criticisms.

Mishra' s terming of Pant's Pallav as the 'pride of contemporary Hindi literature' is

significant. Noting the present age as belonging to prose, he commented Pant for

bringing poetic excellence to the fore. Praising even the 'well acclaimed preface of

the collection', he termed it as exemplifying 'the magic of poetry in prose'. Yet he

also disagreed with Pant's attack on 'Reeti' poetry of which the Mishra Bandhus

were the last great defenders. He also softly critiqued the work for its Sanskritised

vocabulary labelling it as 'a language of scholars' and not completely an example of

Khari Boli. Going to extremes in his praise for the work, he ranked Pant among the

ten best Hindi poets of all time in league with Tulsi, Sur, and Dev. He gushed, 'I

wish to give it sixty marks out of fifty'. It is important to note in this context that

Pant was a representative poet of Chhayavad, a school vehemently criticized by the

old school including the Mishra Bandhus. This last point is important for more than

one reason. One speculation on Mishra's choice of this work could be the influence

of modern romanticism centred around the themes of love and nature which the

poems reflected and which Mishra as the defender of sringar/reeti poetry somehow

found to be a modern version of the continuing tradition of this aesthetic value. This

was despite Pant's conscious attempts to distance himself from the former. Also, in

the ensuing battles of the literary establishment, Mishra, was looking for new allies

164 As mentioned earlier Sudhir Chandra has pointed out that Premchand's intention was to probe the

very idea of nationalism itself in his novels critically. But it was not taken kindly by his contemporary critics.

158

as against the likes of Dwivedi and Ramchandra Shukla, both of whom had been his

trenchant critics.

Yet it was the poetical work belonging to Braj Bhasha (which was paradoxically

under severe attack from the proponents ofthe Khari Boli Hindi at that time), which

was chosen for the best prize. Three out of five judges preferred poetical work

signifying that prose still had not, specially in its fictional form, attained the required

'high literariness' (despite exceptions like Premchand who in any case was more

respected and loved by his readers than his critics). This judgement of 1928 also

signifies that despite almost ten years of battle for an official consecration, the

romantic/modernist movement both in its Chhayavad poetic version and

realist/modernist movement in its Premchand version was yet to attain it. This, then

was the situation which reflected a complete sway of a complex alliance between the

critics' establishment and political propagandists even at that time. Only gradually, it

began to seek new audiences and found its own critics and institutions from 1930s

onwards. Premchand moved to wider arenas like Progressive Writers Movement at

the fag end of his life (apart from completely moving over to 'stark realism' in

Godaan (1936) by abandoning his earlier attempts at a compromise). A poet like

Nirala, on the other hand, tended to temper his rebelliousness to ambiguously use

old accepted forms to write classic pieces like Ram ki Shakti-Pz~ja. Prasad around

the same time wrote his most well acclaimed Kamayani (1934). The classics of

modern Hindi produced in bulk in the decade of 1930 were thus produced out of

contrary pulls.

The debate about the role and utility of prose thus underwent various configurations.

This on one hand, was a result of the different ideological orientations of the

protagonists of the debate, it also reflected once again the different institutional

orientations on the other. At the same time, the debate over the superiority of the two

genres, prose and poetry, was also a product of the literary politics where the least

marketable thing like poetry tended to acquire an air of superiority vis-a-vis a

commercially more viable medium like fiction even as the consensus could not be

reached about their respective roles. This unease about the role of fiction, was to

remain a thorny question till the end. This is one of the concerns of my next chapter.

159