At one level, it is not incumbent upon the English press to cover a significant event in Hindi literature in the same way that English writing is covered. This argument, however, is premised upon a startling fact about India’s elites, particularly in north India: these elites are no longer bilingual and have no capacity to navigate vernacular materials. The paradox of our times is that there is a sense in which Hindi readership is growing, because more people are becoming literate; English still continues to flourish and the demand for it is increasing. But what we had hoped to achieve in our language policy, the creation of genuinely bilingual modes of being, is now simply an illusion. Thirty years or so ago, our middle-class elite would have still related to vernacular literature, followed it; now it is incapable of doing so. Even in the seventies, both the Illustrated Weekly of India and Dharamyug were part of the same social universe in that middle-class homes would read both; the elite could have related to both English and vernacular literary worlds. Magazines with a space for the essay format have been totally decimated in both languages. But it is also less likely that Hindi and English publications will now share the same space.

Judging by what is happening in schools, this trend is likely to worsen. We can speculate on why this is so: complete unimaginativeness with which Hindi is taught; the obtuseness of the Hindi establishment itself, which prevented the growth of the language by defending a very narrow literary conception of the language; the fact that unlike in the case of Tamil Nadu, Bengal or Kerala, the self-definition of elites in north India was premised on a distance from the vernacular rather than an identification with it. But this loss of bilingualism is not an unimportant cultural fact of our times and will impact our relation to our own past.

The second disjuncture is within the world of Hindi itself. If market trends are any guide, there is a growing demand for Hindi works and newspapers. The success of the wonderfully readable Hindi translation of Harry Potter speaks of new opportunities. But Hindi had deep discontinuities between its small literary world and the larger reading public. To a certain extent, this is true of all literary traditions, but the discontinuity seems greater in Hindi. The kind of mass readership high literature enjoys in any language is an open question, but at least literary awards seem to be considered a reflection of the possibilities of that language. The Pulitzers and the Bookers have become the object of mass news; but even within the Hindi world, the literary world seems more distant. Just the ways in which prizes in the two languages are covered suggest as much.

The third disjuncture is of course about cultural self-confidence. For all the bluster about the arrival of the postcolonial generation, we still could be said to privilege external modes of validation over our own (consider the ridiculous obsession over winning Oscars, for example). Of course it is the content of the standards that should count, not their provenance. But it is mildly disturbing that despite all the rhetoric of India having arrived, the lack of external validation in some important spheres is still seen as some kind of deficit. This is then compounded by sheer ignorance about the cultural possibilities and ground that we stand on. For instance, one distinction often mapped onto literature is the construction of the vernacular as the parochial and rooted, the English as the cosmopolitan and universal. This identification is bizarre, but widespread. But intellectually nothing could be farther from the truth. As Kunwar Narain himself once wrote, there is a sense in which Hindi writers have had to write with an even deeper sense of self-consciousness about three traditions: what he called Hindu, Indo-Islamic, and Western. In that sense, vernacular literature has carved out its freedom through a wider appropriation.

Finally, one cannot help wondering whether what is at stake at this juncture is not simply the contingent location of Hindi in emerging elite consciousness, but a conception of literature itself. Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger is a good read, with some powerful passages. But you cannot shake off the feeling that it is simply today’s macabre headlines selectively strung together for effect. Amitav Ghosh’s erudite Sea of Poppies again reads like what should have been yesterday’s headlines strung together, a history rather than a novel. These are perfect examples of what many critics feared might happen to literature under the guise of realism: the distinction between art and journalism, art and history would get eroded. Nothing wrong in stringing headlines (Dostoyevsky did that as well, but did incomparably more as well). But you cannot help but wonder whether the confusion between art and reportage is now so deep that we neglect the other possibilities of literature.

In a sense Kunwar Narain comes from a tradition of literature, which while it shared a modern scepticism of didacticism, did not wholly give up on the deeply transformative potential of art. It did not allow the romance of the fact to sideline deep questions about moral psychology, the nature of the self, questions of value, and transcendence. As a new sense of moral vertigo, disorder and confusion descend upon us, it is an open question: what kind of literature will enrich us most? But we will not be in a position to make those choices if we cling to an avoidable mono-lingualism, and a set of narrow standards to judge what is truly important.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi

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