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

Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar and Rajender Kaur


[How should readers and critics approach the idea of ‘Indian literature’ -- or, for that matter, 'world literature'?  This wide-ranging conversation explores that question.  It also asks how a genuinely comparative study of the regional traditions in the various Indian languages can be conceived.  Within the context of those two questions, it delves into more general issues: Can literary criticism be seen as part of a collaborative project in which historians, philosophers, and social scientists participate as potential interlocutors or even partners?  How are ‘theories’ such as postmodernism and philosophical realism relevant to the study of Indian literature and culture?

Satya P. Mohanty, Professor of English at Cornell, has written extensively about philosophical and literary realism as well as contemporary approaches to Indian literature. He is also well known for his critical introduction to the 2005 translation of Fakir Mohan Senapati’s ground-breaking realist novel Chha Mana Atha Guntha, first serialized in Oriya in 1897-99 (Six Acres and a Third [University of California Press, 2005; Penguin-India, 2006]). Set in a village in colonial Orissa, the novel traces the rise and fall of a rapacious landlord, Ramachandra Mangaraj. Far from fitting into the stereotype of the sleepy little village as the timeless essence of an ancient and pre-modern Asian civilization, however, the village in Chha Mana Atha Guntha emerges as the site of profound changes unleashed by the Permanent Settlement of 1793 in the territories of Orissa, Bengal and Bihar. Mohanty’s work on debates about realism took a new turn with Colonialism, Modernity and Literature: A View from India (henceforth CML). This anthology of essays is notable for the fact that scholars working in a variety of traditions of literary realism – English, Hindi, Telugu, Assamese, and Latin American Spanish – made cross-regional and transnational comparisons using Senapati’s novel as a point of departure.  Mohanty’s editorial introduction in CML suggested to social scientists and literary critics that early realist novels in Indian vernaculars of the colonial period can give us insights into alternative modernities that do not necessarily adhere to the model provided by Euro-American modernity, which is closely tied to the rise of capitalism.  (The following interview was done during October and November 2011; a short version appears in the print edition of Frontline.  The two interviewers teach literature at American universities: Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar is a Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Center of the University of Pittsburgh, and Rajender Kaur, the current president of the South Asian Literary Association, is Associate Professor of English at William Patterson University. This interview first appeared in the South Asian Review; a short version was published in Frontline.  A Hindi translation will be published in the next issue of Alochana.  This version was published in The Journal of Contemporary Thought, together with the forum we are reprinting here.)]

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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