Indian Critics Survey

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INDIAN CRITICS SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

1. Full Name: Sachin Chandrakant Ketkar 2. Postal Address: Behind Jalaram Mandir, Opposite Shivam Soc., Valsad, Gujarat 396001 3. Email:

[email protected]

4. Birthplace: Valsad, Gujarat 5.Institutional Affiliation: Lecturer in English, S.B.Garda Arts College and PK Patel Commerce College, Navsari, Gujarat 6. First Language: Marathi 7. Languages Read: Marathi, English, Gujarati and Hindi 8. Language most used for criticism: English 9. Other Languages written: Marathi, Gujarati and Hindi 10. Areas of Research in recent years: Translation Studies, Contemporary Indian and British poetry, Literary Theory, Aesthetics and sociology of literature. 11. Publication: Mostly creative writing. Poems and translations in English and Marathi published regularly in periodicals. See the brief bio data. The essay on Translation Studies: Theoretical Developments published on the website called www.Poetryschool.org. This essay is the part of my doctoral thesis. Papers read: 1) `Translation and Teaching of English Literature in India ' read at 15th Oxford Conference on Teaching of English for Overseas Teachers held at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK in April 2000. The topic of the conference was `From Critical Reading to Creative Writing'. 2) `Translation: The `Renaissance' Paradigm read at UGC Sponsored Seminar on `Indian Renaissance ' organized by Uma Arts and Nathiba Commerce Women's College, Gandhinagar, Gujarat on 29-30 August 2002. 12. Specific and General Projects in criticism currently in process: i) I have put together a handful of essays on translation studies with a special emphasis on translation theories in the Indian context. My papers are entitled as follows: a) Is There an Indian School of Translation Studies? b) Beyond Words: Translation and the Philosophical Discourse c) Translation Through the Ages: A Historical overview c) Recent Developments in Translation Studies d) Translation of Bhakti Literature: A case of Narsinh Mehta

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e) Translation: The ` Renaissance Paradigm' f) Translation and Teaching of English Literature in India g) Translating Contemporary British Poetry: A Translation of Ted Hughes Poem In addition, some other essays in process ii) I am working on various poetics in contemporary Indian poetry. I am gathering various anthologies and collections along with critical writings. My focus will on poetics and the historical contexts of the poetry under consideration. This project is yet to take a proper shape. I would love to interact with others working in the same area. iii) I am working on contemporary British poetry and the British literary culture. iv) I am writing a paper on Language of Poetry for www.poetryschool.org. 13. CRITICAL APPROACHES perspectives, analytical techniques and so on and their AIMS. I am old fashioned enough to believe that criticism is secondary and instrumental literary activity and hence I am quite eclectic in the choice of my conceptual tools. I even believe that rigid adherence to a single set of tools (in the form of a theory or a belief-system) is a dogma. I try to avoid dogmas of all kinds: New Criticism, Historicism (both old and new), nativism, Post-Structuralism, Post Colonialism and so on. Yet I borrow my tools from all these and then do my best to avoid jargon. I select the system that seems to have a direct bearing on the literary text/s under consideration. In the field of translation studies, my critical vocabulary consists of concepts borrowed from culture studies, linguistics, semiotics, Russian formalism, new historicism, post-colonialism, discourse analysis and the history of ideas. For instance, in my analysis of the issues related to the translation of bhakti poetry, I have used the language of semiotics (Julia Kristeva's notion of Intertextuality), discourse analysis (I have elaborated on the discursive shift involved in translation of bhakti poetry. The Bhakti poetry is primarily musical and oral-performative while its English translation if a written discourse meant for private consumption) and postcolonial theory. In my work on contemporary British poetry and Indian poetry in regional languages, I am interested in poetics and the literary culture. I am interested in close stylistic reading of the particular poem and extracting implicit poetics inductively. However, lack of a good theory that connects close textual readings to the sociological context makes the things difficult for me. I find that the deterministic and mimetic theories are too limited in their orientation and too dogmatic too be of a great help. The new fashionable theories, which reduce all literature to a part of the grand conspiracies of power politics, too, I believe, are extremely limited in their scope. To reduce the complex and deeply ambiguous aesthetic structures of a literary text to a social document is more useful to politicians of literature than to someone who is interested in the enigmatic labyrinthine textures of literary texts. This of course does not mean that the literary texts do not have a historical and political context, what I mean is that the context of power is not the only one they have. After all even a shaving blade has a historical and political context. 14. Elements of Criticism in your chosen areas of interest with which I am satisfied : I am happy that translation studies is gradually being recognized as a independent and valid area of research in the English Studies academic establishment. Some very good work is done by astute scholars like GN Devy, Vilas Sarang, Tejaswini Niranjana, Sujit Mukherjee, Harish Trivedi, Pramod Talgeri and many others. I am particularly satisfied with their efforts to contextualize and historicize translation theory . I find the writings of poet-scholars like K. Satchitanandan, EV Ramakrishnan, AK Ramanujan and Vinay Dharwadkar impressive in the area of contemporary Indian poetry. Their statements on contemporary poetry

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are extremely insightful. They have very good understanding of heterogeneity of voices, influences and contexts that shape the poetry today. 15. Critical Issues for Criticism today and/or elements of criticism with which I am dissatisfied: and 16. Suggestions for ameliorating the unsatisfactory situation, with indications of particular approaches, methods, critics that might be most helpful. I prefer to answer these questions together. i) I am dissatisfied with lack of rigour and discrimination in the use of critical language in India today. This is the case in many of the regional languages and also the case with critical writings in English. Many of the critical writings in English are verbose inflations of jargon or superficial `analyses'. It may be due the lack of encouragement to quality research and Indian tolerance to mediocre research in literary studies. ii) I am dissatisfied with the obsession with colonial history in the departments of English Studies in India as if colonialism is the only history that is relevant today. The discourse on post colonialism has emerged as a new dogma today in our academic circles. This is of course not to undermine some very significant insights this body of discourse has provided but I am worried about using a single frame of reference too rigidly as if it is the only frame of reference available. I feel that at times this discourse is merely a fashion -the latest-inthing and a hype. iii) I believe no theoretical approaches, attitudes or methodologies are irrelevant in the Indian critical context only that they have to be contextualized and judiciously applied to Indian literature. For instance, deconstruction as a critique of Western logocentricism is of little use to Indian critical discourse because unlike the Western philosophy, Indian philosophy had not sought rigorously to purge itself of metaphysical assumptions but rather had tendency to glorify its metaphysical heritage. However, the insights that deconstruction offers about the constitution of human language and its relation to the constitution of philosophy are valuable to us. Deconstructive readings can help to expose the repressed metaphysical and political dimensions of `Indian' texts. Deconstruction's accentuation of the marginal, the contradictory and the repressed in systems of thought, is an extremely political strategy that is of immense importance to our intellectual context. May be the distrust of radical Western philosophies is a political anxiety in our intellectual establishment as it may expose dubious grounds of many academic postures and positions. However, I believe that one should not select a critical strategy that is irrelevant to the work/s under consideration. For instance, one learned scholar whom I still respect, `read' The Man-eater of Malgudi' as a postcolonial allegory and Vasu as an arch-colonizer. Such far-fetched readings are I believe are irrelevant. Cutting up a literary text to fit it in the theoretical coffins is not a satisfactory approach at all. 17. General Suggestion for achieving more productive interactions among critics in India: Though we have very good critics and scholars working in more or less isolation and scattered all over the country, WE LACK GOOD INSTITUTIONAL SET UPS which can facilitate more productive interactions among critics in India and ENCOURAGE AND PRODUCE QUALITY RESEARCH. The problem is the lowering of quality in the academic and pedagogical establishment in general. The good efforts like the present survey are rare and commendable. We lack GOOD PUBLICATIONS that consistently produce criticism of high quality. The tolerance for the substandard works is doing immense harm. Forming some sort of national CRITIC'S GUILD would be a good idea. We can utilize technological innovations like the INTERNET AS A COMMON SHARED PLATFORM FOR CRITICS in India. We can form MESSAGE BOARDS, CLUBS, and GROUPS and WEBSITES like INDCRIT.8M.NET. WITH BEST REGARDS TO THE PROJECT SACHIN KETKAR