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1

From the Other One to the Only One Prabha Khaitan and Her Autobiography

100%
Browarczyk M.
Cracow Indological Studies
|
2015
|
vol. 17: Crossing over “on the Birds’ Wings”: South Asian Literature in Local and Global Contexts
85-111
EN
The article examines autobiography of Prabha Khaitan with reference to plausible global and cross-regional inspirations, and studies the narrative to track down some of the author’s individual strategies of constructing the narrative self. Prabha Khaitan enters into a discussion with autobiographical texts of global and cross-regional importance. Apart from being a prolific Hindi writer, she combined multiple roles of a feminist, an intellectual, an entrepreneur, and a philanthropist in her lifetime. Her autobiography reveals various, often contradictory, identities illustrating thus a fairly liminal and dynamic positioning of a woman in the contemporary Indian society, which results from the interaction of various factors. Khaitan accounts her life as that of a rebel against social norms and breaks ‘the aesthetics of silence’ (Ritu Menon’s concept) imposed on women of her class and caste. She both challenges and to some extent complies with the dominant orthodox discourse on womanhood by introducing the imagery of the archetypical female divinity, both Satī and Śakti, which also explores much more subtle and entwined coexistence of women’s submission and subversion.
2

“The Double Curse”—a Dalit Woman Autobiography in Hindi by Kausalya Baisantri

88%
Browarczyk M.
Cracow Indological Studies
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2013
|
vol. 15: Text History and Society as Depicted in Indian Literature and Art. Part II. ŚRAVYA. Poetry & Prose
287-305
EN
Kausalya Baisantri authored a Dalit woman autobiography in Hindi—the first to my knowledge—in 1999. The article draws on the ‘narrative self’ concept as the theoretical apparatus for the analysis of the text’s content and context. The history of the autobiography genre in Hindi overlaps with the beginnings and advancement of prose in pre-modern and modern literature in these languages, which developed at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Autobiographical motifs predominate Dalit writings, due mostly to the fact that Dalit literature per se is viewed both by the authors as well as by the readers as a strong manifesto of an exploited people’s struggle, voiced by the oppressed themselves with the purpose of enforcing social change, it is perceived as a weapon to fight oppression of the upper castes.
3

“...kahāniyā͂ ākhir bantῑ kaise hai͂?!” (“…how, after all, do stories originate?!”). The Clash between Indian and Western Literary Traditions in Ajñeya’s Short Stories

75%
Miążek T.
Cracow Indological Studies
|
2015
|
vol. 17: Crossing over “on the Birds’ Wings”: South Asian Literature in Local and Global Contexts
169-211
EN
The aim of this paper is to prove that Ajñeya (pseudonym of S. H. Vātsyāyan, 1911–1987), a Hindi writer of poetry and prose, formulated some theoretical essentials for kahānī as a literary genre, which influenced its further development in the second half of the 20th century. Examples from his selected short stories and theoretical essays have been quoted to illustrate issues which preoccupied the Hindi literary environment in its transition from tradition to modernity. The issues discussed in this paper refer to more general questions of a modern Indian writer’s attitude towards a loss of traditional values and a search for identity in an encounter with the West. Ajñeya’s contribution to the development of the modern short story still requires recognition because he was often criticized for excessive intellectualism and individualism. This situation started to change after his centenary jubilee celebration in 2011. The paper includes an outline of trends prevailing in Hindi short stories, which helps us to examine Ajñeya’s modern approach. Materials analyzed in subsequent sections reveal demands which he formulated towards modern authors of short stories. His claim for the liberation of a writer and the personal experience as a source of literature has been illustrated with quotations from the short story Kalākār kī mukti. It proves the writer’s awareness of tensions which affected Hindi literature in the time of transition. In this context the term mukti is presented as one of the key-words of his writings. His deliberations on the change within the concept of reality in Indian literature and transformation of Indian literary audience are discussed. The quotations from further short stories (i.e. Nayī kahānī kā ploṭ, Alikhit kahānī, Kavitā aur jīvan. Ek kahānī, Tāj kī chāyā me͂) reveal how realistic, mythical or romantic plots and characters are juxtaposed in one work. The examples from: Paramparā. Ek kahānī and Sikṣā present Ajñeya’s postulate of revealing deeper truths in literature. The usage of symbols, the means of suggestive language as well as techniques of building an “atmosphere” of the modern short story are analyzed (Gaiṇgrin, Alikhit kahānī, Darogā Amīcand, Hīlī-bon kī battakhẽ). In this context an application of traditional poetics of rasa to contemporary texts is investigated. The paper leads to the conclusion that while mastering the skill of short story writing, Ajñeya acted also as a theoretician, who attempted to teach Hindi writers and critics how to save their own tradition and identity in a clash with the West. He postulated that modernity should not exclude exploring one’s own traditional literature and art, it should focus on its transformation into modern idioms. This claim is presented as the writer’s literary manifest. Ajñeya’s demands analyzed in this paper are explained as resonating with some criteria of a modern short story later defined by the writers of naī kahānī school. It leads to the final conclusion that his achievements is this genre possess model features for creating modern short stories in Hindi.
4
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Writing (in) melancholy. Loss and remembrance in the works of two contemporary Hindi writers

75%
Junik Łuniewska K.
Jednak Książki. Gdańskie Czasopismo Humanistyczne
|
2018
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issue 9 "Memory, Melancholy and Nostalgia"
55-66
EN
The paper aims at analysing the question of melancholy and memory in contemporary Hindi literature. The author selected works by two Hindi writers (T. Grover and U. Vajpeyi), who represent similar approach towards literature and use similar means of expression. The two main motifs characteristic for their writing – love (pyār) and loss (a-bhāv) – are closely related to the creative process: the loved one is the lost object, the one subjugated to melancholy, who can be remembered through writing. In the light of A. Świeściak’s idea of “melancholic subject” and S. Bahun’s concept of “performing melancholia”, the author discusses ways in which both the writers construct their literary world, inhabit it with loved/absent objects (beloved, father), and mourn their loss. The subject in their writing is both fictional and biographical, so the loss relates to literary as well as real events, becomes multidimensional. In Grover’s Blue, the subject’s separation with the beloved leads her to realise the loss of her father in childhood, and thus unveils the mourning and melancholy (symbolically represented by blue/Blue). U. Vajpeyi’s poems create a space for meeting his lost love, for weeping and remembrance, for exchanging letters (and writing). The results of the present study show that melancholy – as a consequence of loss, mourning, and remembering - becomes a creative force, inducing the author (narrator, subject) to write.
5

Premchand’s Encounter with Tolstoy

75%
Dolcini D.
Cracow Indological Studies
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2015
|
vol. 17: Crossing over “on the Birds’ Wings”: South Asian Literature in Local and Global Contexts
159-168
EN
The present article deals with the issue of when and how the famous Hindi writer Premchand (1880–1936), following Gandhi’s attitude towards Tolstoy, expressed his deep admiration for him, namely in the critical review of Anna Karenina and in translating into Hindi the 21 short stories Tolstoy had written for his peasants in Yasnaya Polyana. In the latter case it is pointed out that it was an effort to re/ indianize those short stories, which Tolstoy himself said to be of Indian origin.
6
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Terminy nīras, nirastā w opowiadaniach Agjeja. Ślady sanskryckiej teorii estetyki rasa we współczesnej literaturze hindi

75%
Miążek T.
Academic Journal of Modern Philology
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2014
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vol. 3
43-54
EN
The main focus of this paper is to admit a possibility of interpreting some ideas present in modern Hindi literature in terms of the Sanskrit theory of aesthetics, originally conceived for stage performing arts. The author is aiming at presenting a symbolic context of rasa and its validity for usage in literature. Examples from Ajñeya’s short-stories point towards the possible connotations of the term nīras with the terminology of Sanskrit aesthetics rasa. The contribution of Saccidānand Hīrānand Vātsyayān known as Ajñeya in Hindi literature is presented in short. Some meanings of rasa known from Nāṭyaśāstra, especially the symbolic meaning of colors, are depicted as employed in modern literary criticism. Hindi terms: nīras “without sap,” “without taste” and nirastā – “dullness,” “emptiness” are discussed in relation to the Sanskrit term rasa “juice,” “taste,” “aesthetic experience,” “aesthetic category” and to its symbolic colors. The results of this discussion could serve as proof for an unbroken flow of Indian literary tradition since 500 BC till nowadays. Moreover, they acknowledge Ajñeya’s affirmative attitude towards the Sanskrit tradition.
7

Tyrants, Villains, Belles and Saints: Stereotyped Portraits of Muslim Characters in Early Hindi Novels

63%
Dubyanskaya T.
Cracow Indological Studies
|
2013
|
vol. 15: Text History and Society as Depicted in Indian Literature and Art. Part II. ŚRAVYA. Poetry & Prose
265-286
EN
This paper seeks to look at the prose fiction and essays published in Hindi in North India in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century from the viewpoint of contemporary religious controversies and communal developments. It suggests a closer look at a few representative Hindi texts by leading Hindi authors (Bharatendu Harishchandra, Devakinandan Khatri, Kishorilal Gosvami). These littérateurs made quite special efforts to point out the religious backgrounds of the fictional characters in their works and, thus, to create a general awareness about the roles of Hindus and Muslims, both in contemporary Indian society and in the historical perspective. Being rather assertive Hindus themselves, they not only pointed out certain negative sides of “the other” community but, also—as in the case of Gosvami—severely criticized the erstwhile Islamic rulers of India. Why was the task of portraying Muslims so crucial for Hindi literature, especially at the time of serious socio-political and religious turbulences? How does this interest go along with the identity-forming agenda of the epoch? What are the ways to structure and generalize the relevant attitudes of the authors and to explain them from the point of view of the historical development of the post-Mutiny society in North India? These are some of the questions to be approached in this paper.
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