Latest news with #SahityaAkademi
Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Sahitya Akademi winner Parienkar''s Konkani stories collection translated into English
New Delhi, Thirteen short stories of Sahitya Akademi winner Prakash Parienkar, originally written in Konkani and portraying village life in Goa's forested region Sattari, have been translated into English. Through these 13 narratives in "The Bitter-Fruit Tree and Other Stories", Parienkar weaves together a web of social, cultural, and agricultural traditions that define the lives of the people in the northeastern region of the coastal state. Published by Niyogi Books, the short stories have been translated by Vidya Pai. The stories are set against the backdrop of the Mhadei river, which flows through the landscape, nourishing the crops and the people who tend to them. Parienkar's writing is infused with a deep understanding of the natural world and the interconnectedness of human life with the land. He writes about the diverse flora and fauna of the region, the folk customs and religious traditions, and the struggles of the villagers as they face the fury of nature or revel in its bounty. One of the most striking aspects of Parienkar's stories is the way he captures the sheer diversity of life in Sattari. From the kumer farming practices of the past to the puran farming methods that are unique to this region, Parienkar's stories are filled with details that bring the world of the villagers to life. The stories also highlight the challenges faced by the villagers, including the impact of government policies on their traditional way of life. The characters in Parienkar's stories are multidimensional and complex, with their own unique struggles and triumphs. The women, in particular, are powerfully drawn, handling domestic responsibilities and working on the land with a strength and resilience that is inspiring. Parienkar's stories also explore the complex social dynamics of village life, including the hierarchy of caste and the distinct roles played by different communities. The tussle between native residents and outsiders is another theme that runs through many of the stories.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Lucknow dastango duo at Prez house recounts lore of Ahilyabai, who refused Sati to serve masses
Lucknow: In a proud moment for Lucknow, two renowned Dastangoi storytellers from the city, Himanshu Bajpai and Pragya Sharma, got opportunity to narrate the life and glory of Ahilyabai Holkar, queen of Indore, at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi. In the two-day event (May 29-30) that marked 300th birth anniversary of Ahilyabai Holkar, Himanshu and Pragya narrated 'Dastan-e-Ahilya', organised by Union ministry of culture and Sahitya Akademi. Inaugurated by President Draupadi Murmu, the event was themed 'How much has literature changed'. The duo began with the incident of Raghoba's wife, Anandi Bai, sending her maid to discover secret of Ahilyabai's popularity. The maid tells her that Ahilyabai lives a an austere life, with neither jewellery, nor any ostentation, but is famous because of her great thinking and welfare of common people. How Ahilyabai meets Malhar Rao Holkar, becoming daughter-in-law of the Holkar dynasty and then becomes a widow was narrated along with the highpoint of the legend in which she stops herself from performing Sati (jumping into her husband's funeral pyre) for the sake of her subjects and instead, devotes herself to public welfare. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like They Lost Their Money - Learn From Their Lesson Expertinspector Click Here Undo The queen was famous for her fairplay and trait of upholding justice at any cost. She sentenced her son Male Rao to death because he had killed a calf by crushing it under his chariot. The storytellers recounted that Ahilyabai was not only devout but a warrior too. She defeated Chandrawat of Rampura thrice. The last section of the narration describes how when Ahilyabai died, a large number of people gathered in Maheshwar. Due to her contribution to the masses, Ahilyabai was termed a goddess while she was alive. Previously, in 2020, Himanshu had the opportunity to narrate the Kakori Conspiracy episode at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Among the listeners were Sahitya Akademi president Madhav Kaushik, secretary Srinivas Rao, poets Arun Kamal, Ashok Chakradhar, Lakshmi Shankar Bajpai and Rajshekhar Vyas.
Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Indian Historiography: New Approach to Literary History
Excerpts from the interview: Q. What was the genesis of the Sahitya Akademi-edited anthology Indian Literary Historiography ? Could you tell us more about it? A. This book began a few years ago as a conference organised by the Sahitya Akademi. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Not many people—perhaps no one—has addressed Indian literary historiography at book length. Historiography isn't widely understood or practised in India, and many may wonder what it actually is. Simply put, it is a history of histories. At a more nuanced level, it's the study of the methodologies used in writing histories. I found the subject fascinating, and I was in a position to persuade the Sahitya Akademi to organise a pan-Indian conference, with participation from many languages. This book is the outcome of that conference. I also tried to include languages not represented at the event, and so on. The subject interested me partly because I've been involved in writing a history of Indian literature myself—one that follows a somewhat different approach to most. In India, the pattern established by the Sahitya Akademi has been to give equal space to all recognised languages—14 at the time of the Constitution's adoption, then 18, and now 22. The Akademi, in fact, recognises 24. So when they organise a conference or commission a volume, they expect most of these languages to be represented in separate chapters by subject experts. This model has been widely adopted and is now expected not just from the Sahitya Akademi but from other publishing institutions as well. That's the approach I've followed here. Q. It is interesting to encounter these essays, as this area does not appear to have been explored with such a strong empirical focus before. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Would this anthology be considered an important starting point in that direction? A. Yes, but also very enjoyable. One point worth making at the outset is that during British colonisation, many officials and scholars believed that Indians lacked a sense of history—be it political or literary. This notion began with John Stuart Mill, who wrote about this supposed deficiency. Later, Lord Macaulay claimed Indian history was unreliable, citing examples from the Puranas , such as kings ruling for 27,000 years and mythic elements like oceans of milk—concluding that such accounts were implausible. This view persisted for over a century. Even as late as 1900, the British Sanskrit scholar A.A. Macdonell remarked that Indians did not write history because they never made any—an insult and injury wrapped into one sentence, appearing in his lengthy history of Sanskrit literature. Yet even his work acknowledges the vast literary output in Sanskrit, which contradicts his own claim. These are colonial slanders, reflecting a sense of superiority. But the larger question remains: how do history and literature relate? Traditional historians have long insisted that history must be grounded in strict documentation—records, evidence, material data. Under such a lens, much of Indian tradition is excluded. These historians have often refused to treat literature as valid historical evidence. Happily, some of these once-dominant voices have begun to acknowledge that there can be more than one kind of history. , a widely respected historian, now distinguishes between 'embodied' history—clearly written as history—and 'embedded' history—where historical content is hidden within literature. Texts such as plays, epics, even the Puranas, may not look like history but can yield rich historical insight depending on how they are read. Indian bilingual scholars like Vasudev Sharan Agarwal and Hazari Prasad Dwivedi also made important contributions. Agarwal, for example, drew on literary works like Kalidasa's Meghaduta to construct a picture of India in Kalidasa's time—not from a historical chronicle, but from a highly literary text. It depends on how one approaches the material. Reading for poetic ornamentation yields aesthetic pleasure, but reading from a different angle can also reveal historical depth. Western scholars—and some heavily Westernised Indian historians—took a long time to recognise this. But history is now seen as a broader, more complex field. Over the past few decades, it has also lost its exclusive claim to 'truth.' The postmodern critique has blurred the boundary between history and literature. We now understand that no single version of history can claim absolute truth. Competing narratives arise based on perspective, interpretation, and motive. History is a narrative, and so is literature. That puts them on equal footing—and makes for a very exciting intellectual playing field. Q. As literature and history converge, how might this reshape our understanding of Indian literature? Does it point to a redefinition, a new canon, or simply a fresh lens on existing texts? A. Yes, the book offers a history of the histories of literature in various Indian languages. One innovation I introduced, departing from the usual Sahitya Akademi model, was to abandon the English alphabetical order typically used in such collections—where Assamese comes first, and Urdu last. Instead, since this is a book on historiography, I arranged the languages chronologically, beginning with the oldest. Of course, determining which language is 'oldest' is not straightforward—it's a politically charged question. Is Sanskrit older than Tamil ? Is Urdu older than Hindi? Are Marathi and Gujarati contemporaneous? Still, I felt it was worth attempting a chronology based on historical evidence, which seemed more meaningful than alphabetical or script-based orders, such as the Devanagari order, which can also distort the narrative. These inherited structures—alphabetical or otherwise—are constructed paradigms that go unquestioned. I wanted to disrupt that a bit. While the model helped hold the nation together in the early years of its existence, it has drawbacks. In these collections, each language is treated in isolation, as though they developed independently. But Indian languages have a long history of interaction, influence, and exchange. The siloed structure fails to capture that interconnectivity. I couldn't change the model, but I could take a different approach. After years of working with those volumes, I was given the opportunity to write the South Asia section of the History of World Literature (in four volumes). There, I broke from the language-by-language format, which, though tidy, doesn't integrate. True integration would involve showing how languages flowed together across time, linked by chronology, genre evolution, and innovation. For instance, a literary innovation may arise in Urdu today and appear in Malayalam tomorrow—either through influence or independently. As Shishir Kumar Das noted, such patterns can reflect either prophane (early) or epiphane (later) appearances of similar phenomena across languages. This flowing model seemed a better way to capture the complexity of Indian literary history. Yes, the risks are real—we've grown used to seeing 15–20 pages per language, each in its own chapter, disconnected from the rest. As my friend Sujit Mukherjee said, such books are held together only by the binder's glue; they lack a unifying vision. So I chose to write a literary history where all languages flow together. And if some readers count pages to compare Bengali with Tamil or Hindi with Kannada, so be it—I didn't count. I followed the narrative and thematic criteria I set out, not quotas. Q. Having lived with this project for so long, what were the absolutely astonishing discoveries that you made? A. Yeah, I'll come to that in a moment. But first, let me clarify one thing. The vision I just described isn't in this book—it's in The History of World Literature in four volumes. The history I wrote there, of South Asian literature, is something I'm trying to publish in India. Now, about this book—yes, the discoveries and excitements are enormous. I believe in engaging with contributors, reading drafts, offering feedback. Many are old friends—some of the country's best scholars. It's been a rich exchange of ideas. Some rewrote pieces several times, others cut them down. Let me highlight a few cases. In Sanskrit, early histories of Indian literature were written mostly by Westerners. In Hindi, it was Grierson; in other languages too, a Western scholar often compiled the first grammar, dictionary, and history—often before fully mastering the language. In Sanskrit's case, from the Rigveda (1500–1200 BCE) to Jayadeva's Gita Govinda (~1200 CE), the language held cultural dominance. When Western scholars encountered this, they were taken aback. William Jones , who translated Shakuntalam in 1789, called Kalidasa the 'Shakespeare of India,' but also wondered why the play had seven acts and so much eroticism—things he didn't associate with drama. This attitude led to the artificial categorisation of kavya versus sahitya, a division Indians themselves never made. In Tamil, there's a long-standing competitive coexistence with Sanskrit. In Hindi, the late Avadhesh Kumar Singh listed 46 different literary histories. In Urdu, early histories were limited in scope—initially omitting non-Muslims and women, for instance. Each language has its own internal exclusions and silences, but some issues—like inclusion—cut across them all. That's the real excitement of this volume. In my concluding chapter, I review 21st-century histories of Indian literature—five or six of them—and explain how I came to conceptualise a literary history that doesn't go language by language, but follows a chronological flow, highlighting innovation wherever it occurred. There is an inherent imbalance in our linguistic landscape—Hindi is spoken by five times as many people as the next major language. I wish all languages were equally represented, but that's not how things are. We must work with what we have and compensate accordingly, striving for a spirit of inclusiveness—though it will always be seen differently by different people. That's part of the debate, and the fun. Yes, it's been exciting to work on this volume since the 2016 conference. But I must stress again: the other project—in which I imagined myself (pardon the vain conceit) riding a chariot pulled by 24 horses, each one a language—is a different model. I lived with that for 18 years, from 2004 to 2022, as part of a Stockholm-based collegium. I've followed both models in my writing—one in Indian Literary Historiography, the other in the global history project. It goes beyond what most literary discussions do. Most are either criticism or reviews of a single text. Few explore long historical perspectives across multiple languages in one book.
New Indian Express
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Narivetta Movie Review: Emotionally distant retelling of a dark chapter in Kerala's history
22 years have passed since the Muthanga incident, one of the darkest chapters in Kerala's history. In 2003, as a mark of protest against the then-state government's delay in allotting them their promised land, people from various tribal communities occupied land within the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary and set up huts there. The government's efforts to evict them resulted in a violent confrontation, ending in police personnel firing at the protestors. A local tribal youth and a policeman were killed in the clash, but it is reported that the tribes suffered more casualties than what was officially recorded. This shocking incident is the source material of Anuraj Manohar's Narivetta, which has been generously fictionalised to lend a cinematic touch. The film does not mention Muthanga, CK Janu, or Geethanandan, but you still know who's who and what the makers intend to document. Director: Anuraj Manohar Cast: Tovino Thomas, Cheran, Arya Salim, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Priyamvada Krishnan Social justice cinema is a genre unto itself, which the neighbouring Tamil film industry has been acing quite well lately, bolstered with the arrival of distinct voices like Vetrimaaran, Pa Ranjith, and Mari Selvaraj. In Malayalam, though, the movement is yet to flourish properly. Narivetta could have been a bold step in that direction, but the film, unfortunately, merely scratches the surface. It is primarily because of the (deliberate) choice to narrate it from the perspective of a cop, who is a victim of systemic oppression, and not the traditionally marginalised. Sahitya Akademi award winner Abin Joseph's script is more interested in the coming-of-age of its protagonist than digging deeper into the plight of the indigenous community and the injustice meted out to them by the system. The screenplay, which plays out in a non-linear fashion, devotes a lot of time to establishing Varghese (Tovino) and his backstory. It also doesn't make much sense why, in a film like this, there's such an excessive focus on the hero's love story. Varghese and Nancy's (Priyamvada Krishnan) track, including the quintessential romantic song, feels more like a filler that doesn't add anything substantial to the overall narrative. Varghese is first introduced as a happy-go-lucky youngster trying to secure a government job, but despite being well-educated, he remains politically ignorant. It is highlighted very early in the scene where he tells his friend about faking a strike and suicide attempt to grab the government's attention. As the narrative progresses, we see him being further ignorant and insensitive towards the struggles of the Adivasis and the purpose of their strike. Suraj Venjaramoodu, as his mentor Basheer, is a calming presence, often guiding Varghese and imparting some sense. When a frustrated Varghese says, "Ithippo ivanmark vendi nammal kaval kidakkuanallo," Basheer simply smiles, as if to suggest, "Isn't that your job as a policeman—to guard the public?" There's another instance where his colleagues complain about being homesick and wanting to return home soon. Basheer quietly says, "Namukku keri kidakkan oru veedu enkilum ondu." Suraj beautifully underplays the role of this seasoned cop, who has seen it all. Despite the Adivasi struggle being the emotional core of the film, the makers don't really seem interested in delving into the specifics of the protest and how the system had been betraying them. Even the nature of the strike holds much significance in this context. Unlike usual protests, the tribals turn their own lifestyle into a form of strike, by establishing self-governed settlements within the reserved forests. However, the film fails to underline these details. It is still commendable that the film maintains a certain authenticity in portraying the tribals and their dialect, rather than simplifying it for a commoner's understanding. If you notice, the tribes in the film, except for a couple of characters, don't have any real identity and are conveniently bracketed as the 'protestors'. Arya Salim's CK Shanthi, the true hero of this story, if told from the other perspective, only gets limited presence here and mostly remains one-note. Despite the lackluster writing, the actor manages to leave a mark with her feisty performance. Similarly, the actor who supposedly plays a character inspired by Geethanandan, one of the faces of the Muthanga strike, hardly gets a dialogue or two. Anuraj Manohar, who impressed with his wonderfully nuanced directorial debut, Ishq, is unable to elevate Narivetta beyond basic storytelling. Except for a couple of well-staged, intense moments in the latter half, the film is hardly gripping as everything plays out predictably without any room for invoking tension. To his credit, the climax standoff between the policemen and the protestors is well shot. While one can argue about the extent of brutality shown, it's the makers' final resort to hammer in the emotional resonance. Jakes Bejoy's stirring score also plays its part in underlining the tragedy. Among the other actors, Cheran makes a strong presence as the commanding officer Raghuram Keshavdas, an evil cog in the system's sinister wheel. But it's unrealistic how a superior officer heading such a serious operation interacts regularly with Varghese, a rookie constable—another example of convenient screenwriting to take the narrative forward. Tovino's performance in these portions also doesn't help. While his character experiences a range of emotions in the film, the actor is at his weakest while portraying the nervousness of a new joinee and the angst of a man worried about his colleague's disappearance. Narivetta opens with the Milan Kundera quote—The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. While Narivetta isn't a hard-hitting reminder as it promised to be, the film's idealistic ending is an earnest attempt to serve justice to the forgotten... at least on screen.
The Hindu
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Review of Indira Parthasarathy's ‘The Middlemen of Vedapura', translated by M.K. Sudarshan
In his long literary career spanning over 60 years, veteran Tamil littérateur Indira Parthasarathy, commonly known as Ee. Paa, has produced many works that reflect social and political events in Tamil Nadu. His novel Kurithi Punal, written in the backdrop of the 1968 Keezhvenmani massacre of 44 persons belonging to Scheduled Castes, fetched him the Sahitya Akademi award in 1977. A novelist-cum- playwright, Prof. Parthasarathy, who turns 95 on July 10, won the Saraswathi Samman in the late 1990s for his play Ramanujar, based on the life of the founder of the Vishishtadvaita philosophy, which propagated the concept of social harmony in South India in the 11th century. Another important play of his was Aurangazeb, written in the mid-70s, capturing one of the most eventful periods in Indian history. His 90s novel Vedhapuratthu Vyaabaarigal, written at a time when Tamil Nadu experienced the eccentricities of those in political power, has now been translated by M.K. Sudarshan into English as The Middlemen of Vedapura. Essentially a political satire, The Middlemen of Vedapura centres around a young woman, Apurva [the name of the granddaughters of Prof. Parthasarathy and his friend-littérateur Ashokamitran], who returns to Vedapura from abroad to rediscover her roots, and becomes a political player in the process, learning the tricks of the trade, and eventually mastering the art of survival in a field where deception and betrayal are the norms. The plot would not be of interest to those who are not enamoured with politics but the narrative style and portrayal are engrossing. Notwithstanding certain striking similarities to political personalities that the country has seen, The Middlemen of Vedapura should not be viewed as a work that fictionalises real-life incidents. It goes beyond, and the translator has captured the spirit of the work very well. ramakrishnan.t@ The Middlemen of Vedapura Indira Parthasarathy, trs M.K. Sudarshan BlueRose Publishers ₹499
