Conversation with Satya 11

From Indian Literature to World Literature:
A Conversation with Satya P. Mohanty

Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar and Rajender Kaur

The oral dimension of the novel is evident in the final version of the translation but the connection with the Odia folk performance form, pala, is something that occurred to me much later. The “touter” social type I identify in my introduction to the novel is a close cousin of the pala gayaka (lead singer), since both use parodic discourse, and this hunch was confirmed when I read, via Tilottoma Mishra’s translation, Hemchandra Barua’s “Fair Without, Foul Within,” and saw how close the connections are between the thia-pala traditions of Assam and Odisha. Tilottoma Mishra pointed out to me in conversation that since Assam and Odisha have had extensive cultural contact and interchange ever since the days of Shankar Dev in the 15th century, Assamese scholars of folk traditions think that Odishan and Assamese pala may well have influenced one another over the centuries. This is something I want to look into more closely. Noone I know is working on this subject. It would also be good to look carefully at the textual echoes of pala in Barua and Senapati (and of similar folk forms in texts from other regions of India). To understand, more generally, the relationship between pala and literature in eastern India, we need a good history of pala as it has developed in different ways in Assam, Bengal (both Bangladesh and West Bengal), and Odisha. A comparative study of pala across the three linguistic regions would be illuminating. I was fascinated to discover that pala in Assam has its origins in tribal traditions of worship. I think it is quite likely that the interactive form of the performance was influenced by the multi-genre pedagogical kirtan practice popularized by Namdev in 14th-century Maharashtra.

By the way, my own approach to Chha Mana Atha Guntha is most probably shaped by my earliest encounters with it, which were as oral performance. My brother, who is seven years older than me, used to read out the humorous passages to me when I was in my early teens – and I remember him laughing so hard that he often almost fell off his chair. So even though Senapati’s novel is a canonical text in Odisha, my first encounter with it was not an academic one, and I am grateful for that. This is certainly not a novel that should be initially approached in an overly solemn scholarly context. Consciously and unconsciously, what I have been trying to do in my later engagements with the novel over several decades is to understand why my initial oral encounter with Senapati’s text was so vivid and powerful, and to trace some of that power back to the written text and its cultural sources. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn recently – and I am sure you won’t be surprised either – that Chha Mana later became the source text for pala performances, and it has been used especially by organizations on the Left for cultural and political education in Odia villages.

Q: Most of the textual analyses in Colonialism, Modernity, and Literature have a comparative focus. Your introduction to the volume says that a genuinely comparative approach to Indian literature – literature produced across regions and linguistic traditions – can help us avoid the problems caused by regional insularity and cultural chauvinism. Can you say a bit more about that?

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Essays in this Forum

Rethinking the Global South
by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

From Indian Literature to World Literature: A Conversation with Satya P. Mohanty
by Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar and Rajender Kaur

Asia in My Life
by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

The Global South and Cultural Struggles: On the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization
by Duncan Mceachern Yoon

The Fault Lines of Hindi and Urdu
by Sanjay Kumar

Reframing Colonialism and Modernity: An Endeavour through Sociology and Literature
by Gurminder K. Bhambra

Varieties of Cultural Chauvinism and the Relevance of Comparative Studies
by Tilottoma Misra

Literature to Combat Cultural Chauvinism: A Response
by Shivani Jha

Is There an Indian Way of Thinking about Comparative Literature?
by E. V. Ramakrishnan

Modernity and Public Sphere in Vernacular
by Purushottam Agrawal

West Indian Writers and Cultural Chauvinism
by Jerome Teelucksingh

Oral Knowledge in Berber Women’s Expressions of the Sacred 
by Fatima Sadiki