Table Of ContentINDIAN POETRY
Modernism and After
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tNDIAN POETRY
Medernism and After
A Seminar
Edited by
K. Satchidanandan
Sahitya Akademi
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Indian Poetry : Modernism and After is a collection of papers
from a Seminar organised by the
Sahitya Akademi at New Delhi in March 1998
Sahltya Akademl
Rabindra Bhavan. 35, Ferozeshah Road.
New Delhl-110001
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Contents
Introduction
K. Satchldanandan vii
Key-note Address : A Home for Every Voice
Dilip Chitre l
Part One
Modernism In Retrospect
Tradition and Modernity : Modern Kannada Poetry
KD. Kurtkodis 15
The Politics of Modernism : Modernist Poetry In Kannada
R Shashidhar 24
The Politics of Modernism : The Case of Tamil 3 7
S. Carlos (l'amilavan)
Modernity as/against Colonialism: Emergence of
the Modernist Canon in Malayalam Poetry 54
P.P. Raveendran
The Zoo Story: Colonialism. Patriarchy and
Malayalam Poette Discourse
E. V. Ramakrtshnan 66
'Nirala' and the Transition of Sensibility In Hindi Poetry
Ramesh Chandra Shah 80
The Legacy of Modernism in Gujarati
Chandrakant Topiwala 91
Tradition - Independence - Metropolis - Modernity -
Freedom : Elusion and Illusion
Dileep Jhaveri 9 7
History and Poetry : The Evolution of Poetry in Rajasthani
Chandra Prakash Deval l 14
Reflections on the Changing Identity of Indian English Verse
Makarand Paranjape 122
Contemporary Critical Doctrines. Indian Sensibility
and Nlsslm Ezekiel
Jagdlsh V. Dave l 53
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Part Two
After Modernism : Artlculattn1 Restatance
After Modernism : Marathi Poetry of the 80s and 90s
Chandrashekhar Jahagirdar 173
Search for Native Traditions : Post · Colonialism.
Poetry and Nativlsm • Marathi Context
Chandrakanl Patil 181
The Testament of the Tenth Muse : A Perspective
on Feminine Sensibility and Sexuality among Indian
Women Poets in English
Rukmini Bhaya Nair 193
Beyond 'AMMA' and 'AKKA' : Nourishing Self-definitions
Vanamala Viswanatha 224
Gendered Sensibility : A Study of Telugu Women Poets
M. Sridhar and Alladi Uma 236
.
Stepping In Her own Being : Two Women Poets In Hindi
Sudheesh Pachawi 244
Eating. and Eating with, the Dallt: A Re-consideration
Touching Upon Marathi Poetry
Aniket Jaaware 262
Ethnic Assertions In Poetry
Lakshmi Kannan 294
Part Three
Poetry as Discourse : Some General Issues
The Addressee of Poetry : Another Discourse
Udayan Vqjpeyi 307
Some Thoughts on Translating Meera
Shama FutehaUy 314
Poetry In Translation : The Case of Urdu
M. Asaduddin 322
Poetry in the Times of Technology and Science
NagBodas 339
The Poetry of Future/The Future as Poetry
Rajlukshmee Debee (Bhattacharya) 352
Contributors 367
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Introduction
O ne of the most i.mportant developments in Indian
Poetry in the post-Independence period in all the
languages has perhaps been the break-down of a single
voice. a single unifying concern that despite its varieties
of articulation characterised the poetry that just preceded
Independence. All the languages had certain father figures
or patriarchal pantheons represented by specific
concerns, conventions and forms. The editors of Vibhava
an anthology of modern Indian writing, call this 'Tagore
Syndrome' that. according to them, is characterised by
cultural nationalism, romantic love, idealisation of nature.
metaphysics and mysticism and an ideal of nation
building. The concoction, they say, had become too sweet
or too stale as was the case with lyricism in poetry and
realism in fiction. Some writers who came to be celebrated
as the pioneers of modernism later wanted to liberate
themselves from what they thought was an overbearing
literary culture. The image of the writer as the hero in
the dazzling halo of the public self no more fitted the new
writers who, with a different sensibility. were trying to
articulate the existential tensions, anxieties and doubts
of individuals sentenced to the solitude. ambiguity and
anguish of the post-industrial urban infernos. Oilip Chitre
in his i.ntroduction to An Anthology of Marathi Poetry
alludes to experience as the "broken gestalt' and
th~
shows with examples from Marathi poetry how the
cultures that broke off most violently from the tradition
were the very cultures that had a deep-rooted sense of
their native ways of feeling because it was individuals in
these cultures who experienced the deepest trau.ma when
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vu1 Introduction
the mechanised society enjoying the fruits of a mass
civilization broke up their sense of an organic inner life.
At the same time poets also began to be exposed in
a big way to the experiments in contemporary Western
poetry that they admired yet refused to imitate since they
were well aware of the indigenous traditions that were
rich in situations. characters, symbols, motifs and
archetypes that could well serve as a source of metaphors
for the conflicts of modern life. B.S. Mardhekar of Marathi,
for example. returned to the poetry of Tukaram and
Ramdas in search of potent stylistic devices as also a
shared sensibility. Tukaram's anguished search for God
and the sharp moral didactic of Ramdas assumed a new
relevance and intensity in the spiritual crisis Mardhekar
was passing through in the postwar years. Constant
references to tradition and redeployment of images and
situations from the epics can also be seen in the poetry
of other pioneers of modernism like Sitanshu
Yashaschandra, G.M. Muktibodh, Sachi Routray.
Ayyappa Paniker or Gopalakrishna Adiga. Perhaps
modernism in poetry - a genre with deeper roots in
tradition - was not as complete a break with the past as
was modernism in fiction, a genre with a shorter history.
Unfortunately. several of our critics tend to examine
modernism in general equating the trends in all genres.
thus ignoring the specific modalities of its emergence in
each genre, each language and, ultimately, each text.
Another kind of division - partly conceptual and
partly chronological - applied to the study of modernism
has been those of 'high modernism' and the avant-garde.
For example, E.V. Ramakrtshnan in his comparative
study, Making it New has examined in detail the
emergence of modernism in poetry with special reference
to Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Malayalam in its wider
social and literary context. He denounces the tendency
to qualify all modernist works as ·avant-garde' since it
reduces poetry to pure fonn. Taking his cue chiefly from
Peter Burger he defines avant-garde as a negation of the
•
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K. Satchidanandan
IX
autonomy of art as also a questioning of art itself as an
institution. Avant-garde art is the art of engagement that
trtes to reintegrate art in the practices of life. Like the
modernists the avant-garde artist also recognizes the need
for technical innovation but refuses to consider it an end
in itself. Ramakrishnan considers the impact of Western
literature and the spread of print capitalism to have been
the two major factors that contrtbuted respectively to the
shift in sensibility and the critical awareness
characteristic of modernism. The self-conscious nature
of 'high modernist' writings is characterised by anti
mimetic and anti-organicist impulses that reinforce the
aesthetic distance between the reader's habits of reading
•·
and the text's manner of articulation. They tend towards
the lyrical and the abstract suggesting an essentialist
and universalist view of life whereas the avant-garde idiom
moves towards the discursive and the dramatic to
accommodate the multi-voiced quality of a hierarchically
divided society. The dialogic nature of avant-garde writing
differentiates it from the predictable insular and hermetic
postures of 'high modernism'. The avant-garde's
aspirations. he says. also reflect an impulse towards
inclusion of forms and democratisation of the literary
realm, and a movement away from myth to history. This
division between 'high-modernism' and avant-garde is not
without its ideological implications and problems of
categorisation especially when applied to individual cases.
Vinay Dharwadkar in his afterword to the O;eford
Anthology ofM odern Indian Poetry edited by him with A.K.
Rarnanujan points to certain contexts of modern Indian
poetry like the variety of movements and counter
movements, the variety of Indian sources. foreign
influences surrounding it and its varied social world· that
shapes the lives of the poets. In my own studies in English
and Malayalam I have developed two kinds of approach,
an ontological one where modern poetry seems to be
constantly shifting its concepts of identity to larger class,
gender. and regional-linguistic identities. and a complex
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x Introduction
sociological one where poets faced with the forces of
standardisation brought about by the market society and
its consumer culture seem to be forming 'imagined
communities' or 'alternative nationhoods' as in the case
of movement-poets like the Marxist radicals, Dalits,
Women or those with pronounced regional, linguistic,
ecological and other concerns.
2
This anthology of papers selected from those
presented at the seminar Indian Poetry after
Independence: Towards a History of Sensibility held on
14-16 March 1998 at the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi is
intended to be much more than a survey of texts, trends
and movements in Indian Poetry after Independence.
While it takes stock of the polyphonic poetry of the last
five decades with its Vigour. complexity. commitment and
formal variety. it also raises basic theoretical questions.
examines paradigm-shifts and interrogates the set
canons. Some of the key questions sought to be raised in
the course of these discussions are: What was the impact
of Colonialism on Indian Poetry. before and after
Independence? How do we reassess the legacy of Indian
'romantic' poetry in the post-colonial context? What are
the continuities and discontinuities of pre-Independent
and post-Independent poetry? How far are the colonial
imaginaries still holding sway over the Indian creative
mind and what are the possible means of decolonisation?
What has Modernism meant to Indian Poetry? Was it a
'cultural pastiche' or a genuine attempt to come to terms
with an ever-changing and complex reality? Was it an
urban middle-class movement with an elitist bias as its
detractors would say. or a serious attempt to liberate
poetic imagination from its well-worn rules and verbal
cliches? Were its formal innovations in tune with the
revolution in its concerns and contents? Was there a
political Modernist poetry? In what ways has Indian poetry
transcended the Modernist phase? Can it be called post-
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