LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT. 52. HISTORY IN LITERATURE

LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT

52.HISTORY IN LITERATURE

We have all studied some history- at least in school or college. We have read literature too. But our academic system is such that we have been taught to regard them as two distinct subjects.

We might have read Jawaharlal Nehru's reflections from his cell in the Ahmednagar fort prison in Hindi or his Tryst with Destiny speech. We might have read Sri Aurobindo's Uttarpara Speech ( 30 May, 1909). Keen students of our history might be aware of C.R.Das's defence of Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore Bomb Case. The first one we read because it was in our text-book. The others only interested persons would have read. 

At one level, this illustrates the difference between compulsory reading foisted on young people through the education system, and the free reading of interested persons. The motives differ greatly. The school system forces the hidden govt.agenda on people.Even govts in the so called free countries have a hand in deciding what should or should not be taught. As some formal schooling is now required for most jobs, including that of a sweeper,people have no choice. Outside the school, most reading is voluntary.The level and quality of true education is indicated by what people read on their own, after they leave school. G.K.Chesterton it was who said, 'let not study stand in the way of your education'.

At another level, how do we treat all this material? It may be considered 'academic' stuff if it forms part of our formal study; it may be seen as history if it is included in a history book; it may be considered literature if it forms part of a general anthology- which indeed is quite rare in India. How many of us would regard them as both history and literature?

Each of those pieces arose in a specific historical context. The first two merely recorded or reflected history. Nehru was in prison and he describes there how he rather started liking the place after a few days. (Dilchaspi lene lage- is what he said exactly, if my memory has not failed after 57 years). The other speech he made on the midnight of 14th August,1947 when we became free. But both speeches connected with Sri Aurobindo not only arose out of a historical context, but they made history.

Sri Aurobindo too gave a message on the occasion of Independence, as requested by AIR. It too is historical- 15th August being his 75th birthday! And his message is historical also on account of the content he put into it. But most Indians are not aware of it. Nehru's speech is nothing compared to Sri Aurobindo's message-but Nehru was in power, and so his speech was celebrated, while Sri Aurobindo, who was the first Indian to call for complete Freedom, a quarter century before Gandhi's Congress adopted it in January,1930, was forgotten, since he left active politics in 1910, 9 years before Gandhi came on the scene! (Incidentally, Congress goondas were annoyed that Independence came on Sri Aurobindo's birthday, a decision in which he had no hand,and they descended on Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry and pelted stones, and one ashramite  succumbed to the injuries.)

Sri Aurobindo returned to India after 14 years of stay and study in England, in 1893- the year in which Gandhi left for South Africa, and Vivekananda went to America! He entered Baroda state service, but the national situation slowly drew him into the vortex of politics- first secretly and then openly. His writings were a departure from the Congress culture of prayer and petition;the old guard was disturbed, and the administration woke up. The partition of Bengal in 1905 brought him into prominence, and he gave the programme of Swaraj, Swadeshi,  Boycott, Disobedience of foreign laws( Passive resistance), National education, settlement of disputes outside the British courts, improvement of the condition of the poor etc- all later adopted by Gandhi, without due acknowledgement to Sri Aurobindo! The country reverberated with the cry of Bande Mataram! He and Tilak engineered the split in the Surat Congress in 1907 and made the nationalist elements the foremost voice of complete Indian Independence. The British administration was shaken and demoralised, the Viceroy declared Sri Aurobindo 'the most dangerous man we have to deal with at present'- an honour not earned even by Gandhi: he was at most considered a nuisance! The administration wanted to silence him, implicated him in the Alipore Bomb case in May 1908, and he was put behind bars for a year in Alipore jail, most of the time in solitary confinement. But Mother India was behind him, even the British court could not convict him, and he walked free in May,1909. The Uttarpara speech was delivered after that! Such are the historical associations it evokes in a serious student of history, who does not rely solely on the concocted versions in govt. sponsored text-books.

But it became historical for another reason: it revealed for the first time the spiritual experiences of Sri Aurobindo in jail, his practice of the yoga of the Gita, his vision of everything as Vasudeva- the jail, its officers, its bars and bricks, his fellow prisoners. It also revealed to the world Sri Aurobindo's mission- to work for the mission of India in the world. He declared unequivocally: 'Sanatana dharma-that is nationalism for us'.He said India was rising for the sake of Sanatana Dharma!

The powers were unhappy with his release and some- how wanted to silence him- they feared no one else in the country, no other 'leader'. But he got his Adesh or Command,  and left British India and entered Pondicherry in April 1910 and from then till his Mahasamadhi on 5 December 1950 devoted himself to Yoga, blazing a new path. All that he wrote in the days of his political activity have been collected  and published under the title Bande Mataram. It constitutes commentary on the national situation, ideas on political science and supreme literature. No other Indian has written such English before or after him, on any subject. Few Englishmen have done it either! Compared to this, anything else written by anyone else is mere trash. Read it for yourself and judge.

Chitta Ranjan Das, summing up the defence of Sri  Aurobindo stated in the court :

.......a man like this who is being charged with the offences imputed to him stands not only before the bar in this Court but before the bar of the High Court of History and my appeal to you is this: That long after this controversy is hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, this agitation ceases, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism, and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India but across distant seas and lands.

More prophetic words have never been uttered in any court in history! And these words made Das too famous all over the country!

There is something to be said for the Judge, Mr. Beachcroft. He understood the govt. stakes in the case, understood their anxiety to have Sri Aurobindo convicted  above all, he understood the nuances of the defence and pronounced:

"Aurobindo Ghose, the most important accused in the case. He is the accused, whom more than any other the prosecution are anxious to have convicted and but for his presence in the docks there is no doubt that the case would have finished long ago.

"It is the case for the prosecution as well as for the defence  that he is of a very religious nature.

"His counsel argues that he is a Vedantist and that he has applied the doctrines of Vedantism to mould his political views; that as the doctrine of Vedantism applied to the individual is to look for the godhead within oneself and so to realize what is within oneself, so in the case of a nation, it can only grow by realizing what is best within itself, that no foreigner can give it that salvation, which it can only attain by methods indigenous to the country. His doctrines are not those of passive resistance, but of the realization of salvation by suffering. If the law is unjust, don't obey it but take the consequences. Do not be violent, but if the law is unjust, you are not bound morally to obey it; refuse to obey it and suffer. He has been saying to the people, you are not cowards, believe in yourselves and attain salvation, not by assistance from outside, but though yourselves. And this, Mr.Das says, is the key of his case.

"In Aurobindo's speeches....So far as these speeches went, they help the defence more than the prosecution.From them we get an idea of the stress he laid on national education,on lines other than those laid in Government schools, and this is in accordance with.... his policy that India is to find her salvation from within and not from without.

Even after his acquittal, the administration was trying to 'fix' Sri Aurobindo somehow- and even considered deportation. But better sense prevailed in England, and Lord Morley ,Secretary of State was firm and categorical. He wrote to the Viceroy Minto on 5 May 1910:

"As to the famous Arabindo.... the institution of proceedings against him was a foolish blunder.  (His writing) simply paraded passive resistance and abstention from taking part in public life. That may be odious and objectionable as you please, but it is at least doubtful whether any decent court will find it to be sedition.....As for deportation, I will not listen to it."

But the local administration issued a warrant against Sri Aurobindo late in April,1910, not knowing he had already left the country.

Incidentally, we must give credit to a certain trait in the British character, which did have a plain sense of justice. We may also remember that this trait had made an eminent person like Edmund Burke react against the wrong-doing of Warren Hastings and pursue Impeachment proceedings against him over a century earlier!. Gandhi's so called  non-violent methods could succeed only against the British. Hitler or Stalin would have finished him under an hour! This basic Anglo-Saxon string we see even today in the essential American: in spite of all the bullying that Uncle Sam indulges in around the world, it is still the American who is the greatest critic! It is this which makes us like the American still. Surely, such persons may not be many, but they are the  conscience-keepers  of the society! 

We can realise that Sri Aurobindo was not an ordinary politician. He had a spiritual vision of the country as Mother India, Mother Bhavani and therefore seeking her complete Independence was for him a religious quest. It was part of his Vedanta! It is an irony of fate, the twist of destiny that if any Hindu repeats those arguments now in Independent India, he will be dubbed a fundamentalist. The legislature, the judiciary, the fourth estate- they are all guardians of 'secularism'  which means every religion, other than Hinduism, can do anything in its name! But if Hindus talk of Hinduism, it becomes communalism or fundamentalism!

It is also a sad tale- how far our nationalist spirit is down since those days. When Bengal was partitioned on communal lines in 1905, the whole country rose in protest. But the subsequent leaders divided the whole country and justified it as being inevitable! Even now, Hindus have been evicted from their homes in Kashmir, and the whole country is maintaining a sacred silence!

Seen in this light, the whole of Sri Aurobindo's writings are supreme literature on  true Indian nationalism.If we study them carefully,we will understand how much Gandhi owes him! As I had shown elsewhere, wherever he followed the ideas of Sri Aurobindo, Gandhi was successful; wherever he deviated, he failed and created problems for the nation.  They were timely then, timeless now.

In literature proper, we have a specific category called 'historical' fiction. In English, Walter Scott's novels are the prime example, though we have Shakespeare's historical plays. In Tamil, we have the writings of Kalki. They are so called because they deal with some historical characters or events, though more imaginative characters and events are woven around them.

But if we think deeply, we find literature as such is historical- because every form of literature , especially what is considered realistic, arises in and reflects historical times and trends; they are related to specific historical contexts. Man is rooted in his environment, and cannot think beyond the context. But the greatness of great literature is that they raise issues which have permanent value or relevance. The trial and death of Socrates relates to one historical Greek figure- but the issue it raises has relevance for the whole of humanity. Gandhi was thrown out of a train for being coloured; he was instrumental in throwing out an empire.

But even when the novelists or writers do not deal with specific historical events or characters, they can hardly escape the spirit of the times being reflected in their writings. Thus, while Dickens deals with the Gordon riots of 1780 and the mob violence resulting in the sacking of Newgate in Barnaby Rudge, and French Revolution in the Tale of Two Cities, his novels generally deal with the socio-economic conditions of his times, especially around London. Thomas Hardy did not deal with any historical event or character, though there is a minor reference to the Napoleonic Wars in the Trumpet Major. But he dealt with the change that was sweeping over the society consequent on the industrialisation: the disruption of rural life and relationships, landscape and folklore. On a different level, he also dealt with human and class relationships and identities, the state of romantic love, marriage, gender issues, religion, etc.  On yet another level, he dealt with how things went wrong- how man was fated to fail- something like epic tragedy. His most serious works- the last two novels- were subject to hostile criticism, for being pessimistic and immoral. But these  very themes  with which Victorian society was unwilling to deal openly,have become serious subjects of psychological or psychoanalytical study subsequently.Divorce has become legal, and infidelity in marriage,common. In that sense, he hinted at a (future) 'historical' trend. Even his imaginary creation the 'Wessex' landscape is full of the spirit of history!

I have always felt that while Dickens reflected the history of his times,, Hardy reflected upon it. He left his imprint on the future. His pessimism is indeed deeply disturbing at times but we cannot wish away the tragedy and crookedness in much of human life.We cannot also deny that religion has  largely failed either to deal with the tragedy or remove the crookedness. At most, it only justifies 'God's ways among men'- whatever it may mean.

There is a lot of good literature everywhere, in any discipline. And there is history in literature! Let us not believe in artificial, academic distinctions, and enjoy both!

  

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LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT. 33.LITERATURE AND LIFE

LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT

33.LITERATURE AND LIFE

Great literature defies time. It also destroys national boundaries, crosses cultural constraints and language limitations and barriers. One of the basic characteristics of greatness is universality. The literature -be it poetry, drama, novel or short story- may deal with the lives of local characters-real or imaginary, historical or contemporary- or local events, but it involves ideas and emotions which appeal to humanity as a whole. Great minds everywhere have appreciated good thoughts wherever they come from and have restated them in the local language and idiom. This has been happening from time immemorial. Our Veda says: let there be no barrier to the flow of good thoughts from every side!

With the introduction of English education in India, we became familiar with English literature, and through English with the rich literary and cultural traditions of Europe. But, we did not have much direct exposure to the rich and varied literary  treasure of other European languages, which themselves had inspired and contributed to the great English literary efforts: Italian, Spanish, French, German. We learn from the lives of English poets how they read deeply of the literature of Europe, and were eager to get exposure to the fine arts of other countries in Europe, even though they had political conflicts. But we ourselves did not cultivate direct contacts with them. We saw everything only through English eyes. And we were fascinated by what we saw. We forgot to relate it to what we ourselves had, and acted as mere imitators.

The Europeans were appreciative of India too! When they first came into contact with Sanskrit literature, they were simply swept away by its majesty and beauty. The Germans and the French were quick to recognise the philosophical aspects of the Upanishads, and the literary excellence of our classical literature. Even the English appreciated them in the 18th Century, though the company officials who came to India were not  all men of letters.But there were some eminently scholarly persons like Charles Wilkins, Charles Hamilton, William Jones.  Warren Hastings, then Governor General, gave a foreword to the first English translation of Bhagvad Gita,by Charles Wilkins in 1784 and he wrote:

It is not very long since the inhabitants of India were considered by many as creatures scarce elevated above the degree of savage life; nor,I fear, is that prejudice wholly eradicated, though surely abated. Every instance which brings their real character home to observation will impress us with a more generous sense of feeling for their writings;and these will survive  when the British dominion in India shall have long ceased to exist, and when the forces which it once  wielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance.

 Many passages will be found obscure and many will seem redundant; others will be found clothed with ornaments of fancy, unsuited to our taste;and some elevated to a tract of sublimity into which our habits of judgement will find it difficult to pursue them ; but few will shock either our religious faith or moral sentiments.

Warren Hastings also observed a Brahmin meditating in Benares and remarked about the similarity between the Hindu way and "the methods of training approved by the most ancient form of Christianity". (Of course it is now established that these ancient Christian traditions had themselves been borrowed or taken from Buddhist sources.) This coming from one who was laying the foundations of British rule in India!

But the company officials and the Christian missionaries got alarmed at such open admiration, and made strenuous efforts to stifle such scholarly interest. Two developments made matters worse. Noticing the similarity between some Sanskrit words and those in European languages, some ventured into the dreary desert sand of philology, which became a bogus science, proposing Indo-European language guesses, ultimately taking the shape of the fancy Aryan theory. Another was the studied effort to suppress Indian learning and sources of knowledge with full official patronage and power, resulting in the introduction of Macaulay scheme of education in 1836. And it is this system which is still ruling us, making us all Macaulay's children!

But Europe caught on . The Gita was translated into French and German and spread throughout Europe. It greatly influenced the Romantic poets and philosophers. William Blake even made a painting of the Brahmin! And it reached the Transcendental poets and philosophers of America, sending an Emerson and Thoreau into raptures.

While the alarmed and crooked Jesuits and other Christian missionaries in India were inventing false stories and spreading them, learned Europeans were studying the original sources, scanty as they were and writing about the glory of India. Voltaire wrote:

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy,astrology,metampsychosis,etc..

            1775

The Greeks ,in their mythology, were merely disciples of India and of Egypt.

If India,whom the whole earth needs, and who alone needs no one, must by that very fact be the most anciently civilized land, she must therefore have had the most ancient form of religion. (1773)

 We have shown how much we surpass the Indians in courage and wickedness, and how inferior to them we are in wisdom. Our European nations have mutually destroyed themselves in this land where we only go in search of money, while the first Greeks travelled to the same land only to instruct themselves.

While politicians and  academic tin horns are governed by greed and ruled by prejudice and pet theories, savants are able to see into the heart  of things and appreciate the essence of any culture, because they are themselves cultured. Thus, Andre Malraux who could read the Gita in the original (unfortunately, many of us who claim either to follow it or oppose it, cannot) wrote in 1957:

......the fundamental evidence of the West, whether Christian or atheist, is death, whatever meaning the West gives to it, whereas India's fundamental evidence is the infinity of life in the infinity of time:'Who could kill immortality?'.

It is such a tragic irony that the first English Governor General of India was conscious of the greatness of the Gita and of the fact that the empire, which he was founding, was bound to end one day, whereas Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India was an anglophile and totally impervious to any national  religious or spiritual influence! And our leftists and pseudo intellectuals and self-styled secularists are celebrating Nehru's legacy!

Some may say that the Gita is after all philosophy, or a religious book, and not literature! Such people have no idea either of the Gita or of literature! The Gita is neither a religious book, nor a philosophical manual. In itself, it is just a guide to action in a perplexing situation, based on pure psychology. It enquires into the psychological basis of human action and its motivation, the complication it leads to and ways to avoid it. And any conviction ultimately constitutes a religion- even atheism is a religion! And any subject can become literature if the language is appropriately elevated! It is only in the modern day that junk writing is read as literature, like junk edibles are treated as 'food'. Serious writing in any language is ultimately philosophical in the sense it raises some basic question on some aspects of life. While 'Sphie's World' is philosophy in the form of a novel (like 'Zen And the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' is philosophy in the guise of a travelogue) all great literature in all times and climes have been philosophical- eg. For Whom The Bell Tolls, Moby Dick, Jaws, Siddhartha, down to the stories of Paulo Coelho! Why is a story like 'To Kill a Mocking Bird' still read 50 years after its publication, if it does not appeal to a permanent streak in human nature everywhere? And who can say Galbraith's 'The Affluent Society', Gunnar Myrdal's 'Asian Drama' or 'Parkinson's Law' is not literature, because they are not fictional stories?

Or take Shakespeare. Who would read his plays as mere stories except school children? In that case, they may as well read  the Lambs and be done with it! Shakespeare uses poetry, history, story to convey some deeper meaning, though he is not religious or didactic. And that makes him all the more effective as a teacher.  People would regard his tragedies like Hamlet or Macbeth as being philosophical. But take a light comedy like As You Like It. There we come across a passage such as:

"Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live in the sun
Seeking the food he eats
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither,come hither, come hither
Here shall he see 
No enemy
But winter and rough weather."

Is this poetry or philosophy? Or take another:

"All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble,pipes
And whistles in his sound.Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."


What is this if not the purest philosophy? And it does not occur in a manual of philosophy! In fact, not many philosophers will be able to express these truths  so simply, and so impressively. There are of course many pieces of Arunagirinatha expressing more or less the same ideas and even images! And our own Sankara gives a somewhat shorter poem:

Balastavat kreeda sakta:
Tarunas tavat taruni sakta:
Vruddastavat chinta sakta:
Pare brahmani ko pi na sakta:

Meaning: the child whiles away its time in play;the youth is after the opposite sex;old age is full of worries; none has time to think of the Almighty.

Elsewhere he says:

Ma kuru dana jana yauvana  karvam
Harati nimeshaat kala: sarvam.

Do not get puffed up about your wealth, retinue or youth. Time snatches away everything in a trice.


Historically, all cultures have only treated works of a serious nature as literature. The business of life was so hard, time on hand so limited, there was simply no time to read anything frivolous. People's need for relaxation or recreation was always met by some religious festival or activity. In ancient Greece, even the Olympic games and staging of tragedies were part of the festival honouring Apollo or other gods. Reading fictional accounts as literature started in England as the pastime of literate ladies in certain circles because they were not employed  and confined to homes. The first authors were also women, because serious writers considered writing such books somewhat below them. Books were then costly but circulating libraries came up to lend them books. In fact, it is these libraries, and publishers influenced by them who found out that people liked such light stuff and started catering to them. It is very much like what we see today in magazines or movies: they claim to cater to what people want and in the process debase the taste further. But with all that kind of stuff, the great poets and writers like Dickens and Hardy could write serious stuff and command great following. Dickens made public readings of his works both at home and in America. It is estimated that over a million people had heard him read his works in England  alone. And many of them were illiterate. Such reading to illiterate listeners took place by others even in petty shops. But who can claim that Dickens's novels were light? Even Karl Marx had said that his novels raised more questions of social concern than the writings of politicians, while Bernard Shaw contended that one novel of Dickens- Great Expectations- was more seditious than even Marx's Das Kapital! But this is the point: it takes a great mind to appreciate the finer aspects and deeper issues. If the great literary figures of the past are still read, while a new 'best seller' surfaces almost every week (and disappears quickly in the next), there sure is something in them that is more than mere story.

It is a characteristic of our age that with all the so called scientific and technological advance, so  much spread of education and literacy, so much of frivolous writing is treated and read as literature.  .