Following is an attempt to ‘transcreate’[1] Agyeya’s essay titled ‘Lekhak Aur Uska Samaj’ which is excellently archived in the collections of ‘Vatsal Nidhi Prakashan Mala: Samvitti’ published by ‘Sasta Sahitya Mandal’ — to which I remain very thankful. All meanings of thought, conveyed by this transcreated essay, belong to Agyeya — all follies of thought, remain mine and mine alone.[2]
One might draw many circles around literary creations to discuss them within the context of society. ‘Poet and Society’, ‘Poetry and Society’ — these can be interesting banners to ignite meaningful conversations. It would be imperative to highlight that the difference between ‘society’ and ‘the writer’s society’ remains fundamental. Society in general would include all those people who will not or cannot read the writer’s work, or whose presence the writer is not considering at all. People at the receiving end of any literary communication are under consideration here as I say a few things.
In general terms, societies change — but the writer’s society changes in a specific manner. It is of utmost importance then to underscore this change, as without it we would be in no position to understand the changes that have come about in literary creations or the problems that arise when we try to communicate them today. In premodern societies, literature was communicated in a direct manner: the audience was physically present in front of the writer or the speaker. Literature was predominantly received in conclaves or in social settings in an oral and aural form. There was no distance between the creation and its reception. However, in the present situation, literary creations survive in published books, which someone can pick up and read if they want to. Otherwise, they may lie in vain for months or even years.
It is meaningful to think about contextual effects by comparing these two situations. It is only in the case of direct communication that a poem is incarnated in a lively form — its relishing by the society decides its vitality. On the other hand, a printed book remains like a gorge or wall between both the parties (the writer and his society). In earlier societies, there was no importance placed on the writer’s personality. His ‘fashion’ or mannerism became important as it was the bedrock of communication. But in modern times, when published texts are read, the personality of the writer becomes more significant and his ‘fashion’ takes a backseat. This allows the writer some freedom to express himself but he feels the social compulsion to make his own personality speak through his work, in pain of being considered inferior. The traditional writer quite religiously respected his ancestors and took pride in establishing himself as their follower. In the modern context, the writer negates his ancestors and tries to establish his uniqueness. The traditional poem lived in its communicability, without a predetermined version. Every conclave was an independent occurrence and the writer had the freedom to shape his presentation independently — he was even allowed to change words and phrases. This freedom does not exist in a published work. Printed literature not only has a specific version, but also a specific form. This allows us to capture the work in a specific temporal setting, even before reading it.
Form also allows us to think about structure. However, in oral traditions, structure was absent. Within multiple dimensions of structure, creation also has a temporal dimension. I have indicated this above as well. A rural farmer, whose agricultural acts are timed with planetary motion or the speed of clouds or the appearance of the passerine, and the worker of a big city who goes to the industry on an electric vehicle have different notions of time. I have already explained such matters and would refrain from repeating. But it is important to highlight some other aspects of such a difference. Without understanding this, today’s writer might find that the gorge between him and his society is increasing — a distance he cannot even aspire to bridge.
Two aspects stand out to my mind — one which relates to the structure of our society and another which relates to the structure of the ‘literary’ or the ‘aesthetic’ alone, in an Indian understanding. In our literary studies and social discussions, we largely divide our society into the aristocratic class, for which there exists aristocratic and aristo-cultural literature and the folk class, for which a folk literature and folk culture comes into existence. Such a gross partition is not only a generalization of the societal structure, but also a very corrupted form of looking at literary communication. Before too, there were many layers in society and it can be said that people had specific artistic eyes corresponding to their position on the social ladder. Even within what we term as folk, there were many types of literature for the purpose of artistic communication. Today, the journey from oral to published will create a huge difference in the nature of literary creations while posing a major problem for a big chunk of our society who are illiterate (while the rate of illiteracy has now declined, that of higher education still remains low).
A small literate part of our society — despite featuring vast distinctions of class within — has a more or less common expectation from literature. A writer would generally want to reach, and earn the respect of that part of the society. This part would not only be influenced by literature but will also hold the capacity to influence others. On the other hand, a large but uneducated mass exists, which is not without culture but does not read a printed book and whose tastes and receptive abilities are driven largely by orality. The writer cannot ignore this ‘big society’, nor does he want to. He would love to sympathize and identify with this society — but how can he, with a body of published texts? And if he identifies ‘that’ society as his target audience then what about the other society which not only has the resources to influence the former, but also has the potential to influence all of world-progress? There is no one answer to this question.
Next, I would like to touch upon the concerns surrounding the Indian tradition of literature. In this tradition there exists a holistic vision of all creative art. The same might be said of medieval Europe, perhaps, as the Europe before was primarily barbaric — making it difficult to ascertain whether there existed any artistic vision at all! I would like to point towards an Indian vision distinct from the dissolution that took place in medieval Europe. In general terms, oriental societies have had a largely similar view on this matter, but India can be safely regarded as the birthplace of such an artistic vision. It was not that different art forms like painting, sculpture, literature, and drama had divergent aesthetics. The art of orality was the only primary art form and art philosophy was primarily literary philosophy. This prevented sharp distinctions to arise between different forms of art, as has happened in the West.
I have mentioned oral situations and oral communication. I also said that the literary and the artistic in our society have been communicated and received at similar pedestals within the boundaries of varying cultures. Be it at the aristocratic or folk level, all artistic communications emphasized experimentation and performance. The domain of performing arts prospered through multiple forms. Today’s intellectual is surprised when he is told that literature and poetry are also forms of performing art. This surprise is a result of modern ignorance, and invariably, very few poets today can recite their own poetry with an element of affective performance.
Pad is orated even today in Rajasthan. It is a specific form of artistic communication where the presenter orates alongside a slowly unfolding tapestry (called pad). It is often possible that the female companion or presenter acts organically throughout the presentation. Thus, notwithstanding the primacy of the literary story, it also incorporates visual, pictorial and dramatic art forms. You might think that the tradition of the pad is a folk one, but such presentations were also common in aristocratic elite circles. There were visual representations alongside the literary — pictures often inscribed with a closely related kavita, doha, savaiya or shloka. The picture monumented the essence of the verses and the verses complemented the meaning of the picture. Often, pictures were shown and verses were orated. Where reception was an act involving various senses, performance had a major contribution. Today’s painter often dismisses literary opinions and shuns such art, calling it ‘illustrative’. Traditional art did not dismiss such polygamous collaborations. The irony of today’s times resides in the fact that synthetic attempts are made at creating such polygamous, multivariate aesthetics, and if they come from the West, they are considered new, commendable and exemplary. But if we connect them to our tradition and portray them as part of a natural progression — critics would ignore them.
We must hold fast to the continuous as well, to understand the deep change which has taken place in the relationship between the creation and the social. Traditions break and even get destroyed, but continuities exist alongside change. This is because in changing or progressing societies an ethnic memory remains at work. We should not then forget the continuity between oral traditions and published creations. I find Western theories incomplete. It is generally accepted in the West that the temper of oral creation and its creative process is fundamentally different from that of published texts. The western intellectual does not believe in the cohabitation of these two processes — he believes that it is a complete destruction of the oral that gives birth to the published text. Their researchers have studied other societies where oral traditions have ended, but they do not study India within this category as they distinguish the convention of Veda recitation from other oral traditions. Vedas being apaurusheya, it might make sense to not place them within oral conventions. They have a specific ‘chapterization’ which cannot be personalized at all. The Vedic sruti tradition keeps a chapter secure in its virgin form, without any literary concordance or embellishment.
Although India does have an independent oral tradition of the literary which is alive till date, it is closely related to creation and communication since its very inception. In this manner, India is an ideal region to understand the nature of oral creation and its creative-communicative process. Now whether this ignorance is a case of Western foolery or Western prejudice, is food for thought. The case of prejudice becomes much stronger when we find that in this country, not only are these two traditions alive parallelly — although one is gradually decaying — but one can also see the many stages of declination between the two categories. After the emergence of the press and the published book in India, the literature which was published was the literature of popular oral traditions of that time. The new creation, which had a definite published text as its ideal form of communication, moulded itself along the axes of oral creation. Few poets and storytellers even described their models, such that a reader versed in traditional ways would not face problems in this new situation.
Till date, oral traditions can inspire Indian writers, suggesting new devices of communication. This is even more important as a large chunk of our society remains outside the ambit of from higher education.[3] In this difficult condition, can today’s writer create something, which, while not defying the expectations of the aristocratic society, communicates with the larger society? Perhaps, we will get an answer to this when the psyche of the society steeped in oral traditions will also be studied, and its communication techniques would be brought into use again. It has happened so in the case of theatre, but it still remains a medium for primarily presenting visual creation. Theatre proves that the section of our society which does not read can be reached through the visual. But literary creations can also reach the same society if one tries to understand and deploy the processes of oral creation.
In the general context of literature, I have discussed a specific aspect of the relationship between the writer and his society. I had indicated at the very beginning that I would only do that and nothing else. But, as I have also mentioned, changes creep into the social conditions of literature, processes of communication, and circumstances of creation and reception; it is only after understanding such changes that we can comprehend the problems of literary communication. Otherwise, although a published text reaches an audience, the same text also becomes a wall between the writer and his society behind which the writer disappears. The many forms of alienation and estrangement discussed today are fundamentally born out of this new condition. The text becomes the first step towards isolation that pushes the writer away from his society. Before we try and possibly mitigate this growing distance, we must attempt to understand the forms and reasons which bring it about in the very first place.
[1] My method of transcreation resonates with Preetha Mani’s when she writes ‘The impossibility of translating that which must be translated constitutes the paradoxical ground on which the idea of Indian literature finds aesthetic expression’ in Preetha Mani, The Idea of Indian Literature: Gender, Genre, and Comparative Method (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2022). See also Tarif Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
[2] The intellectual origin of this attempt can be traced to Prof. Alok Rai’s reception of Akshaya Mukul’s biography of Agyeya in “The Life of ‘Agyeya’ the Unknowable”.
[3] Interestingly, Agyeya had noted that two-thirds of the Indian population were illiterate at the time of writing this essay. In the year 2021 Gross Enrolment Ratio for Higher Education in India stood at 27.1%, i.e. a little over a fourth of the population pursued college education at all.
Lokayata 