Copyright by Sarah Virginia Houston Green 2008 The Dissertation Committee for Sarah Virginia Houston Green certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation : The Individual in the Nation: Locating Identity at the Transition from Didactic Nationalism to the Lyrical in Early Twentieth-Century Hindi Poetry Committee: Herman van Olphen, Supervisor Gail Minault Patrick Olivelle Martha Selby Cynthia Talbot The Individual in the Nation: Locating Identity at the Transition from Didactic Nationalism to the Lyrical in Early Twentieth-Century Hindi Poetry by Sarah Virginia Houston Green, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2008 Dedication This dissertation is respectfully and lovingly dedicated to the memory of two fathers who lived unselfishly, with simplicity and purpose: Ira Hansford Houston and Walter D. Green. Their examples of strength and goodness live on. Acknowledgements At this point, which is both the culmination of a long process and the beginning of a new sense of productivity, I wish to thank all who have generously offered their support and assistance in various ways, both professional and personal. I am specifcally mentioning only those who have been closest to the research and writing processes. But I sincerely thank all of my teachers, mentors, colleagues, fellow graduate students, former students at Mount Holyoke and UT, family, and friends who have contributed in many ways. Funding for my dissertation research in India was provided through an American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Junior Dissertation Research Fellowship. My gratitude towards the AIIS goes well beyond the matter of funding to include the extraordinary network of support that the Institute extends to all its scholars working in India. I am particularly grateful to Purnima Mehta, current Director-General of the AIIS, and Pradeep R. Mehendiratta, who was the Institute’s Director-General during my research period. Without their efforts on my behalf, my research year would not have been as successful or pleasurable as it turned out to be. I am also deeply indebted to the Director, Sudhakar Pandey, and staff of the Nāgarī Prachāriī Sabhā of Vārāasī, which was my affiliated research organization in India and in whose library I carried out archival research. I also sincerely thank the College of Liberal Arts and The University of Texas for the award of a Continuing Fellowship, and the Department of Asian Studies and the former Center for Asian Studies (now South Asia Institute) for their support with Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships over a period of years. I am gratified that the U.S. Department of Education offers substantial opportuntities for students to pursue language studies through FLAS awards. The South Asia Program Coordinator at DOED, v Cheryl Gibbs, deserves special thanks for all she has done to facilitate the work of South Asia National Resource Centers and language study awards. Long may the U.S. Government continue strong support for South Asia language studies! At UT many individuals have assisted me. I particularly wish to thank my dissertation supervisor, Professor Herman van Olphen (whose patience is as exemplary as his expertise in Hindi) for his tireless help with translation processes and for many years of support and mentorship. A very special debt of gratitude and friendship is owed to Professor Martha Ann Selby, whose wisdom and scholarly insight were my North Star in the writing process, and to the rest of my committee for their guidance, patience, and effort on my behalf: Gail Minault, Patrick Olivelle, and Cynthia Talbot. It is impossible to express fully my gratitude or my admiration for them as exemplars of remarkable scholarship and inspired teaching. Appreciation is also due to the South Asia faculty and staff of UT’s Department of Asian Studies (DAS); in particular, I thank Jennifer Tipton, DAS Graduate Coordinator, for her guidance. I also extend especially warm thanks to Rupert Snell, Akbar Hyder, and Jishnu Shankar of the DAS and Hindi Urdu Flagship Program (HUF)—all friends with whom I have worked closely—for a wide range of ministrations. Rupert Snell has kindly given permission to use translations of several of Mīrābāī’s verses from his book, The Hindi Classical Tradition: A Braj Bhāā Reader. Both he and Jishnu Shankar lent their expertise in some Khari Boli translation issues. The exceptional understanding and patience of Darlene Bosking, staff colleague and Program Coordinator of HUF, made my final months of writing possible. I also thank Jonathan Seefeldt, HUF Media Coordinator, for his serendipitous appearance on the doorstep of the South Asia Institute and his dedication to the field of Hindi language studies. Many UT faculty members have encouraged me; I am grateful to them all. But, v i in particular, I would like to thank James Brow, Janice Leoshko, and Traude Harzer. Fellow graduate students at UT, Ian Woolford and Peter Knapczyk, assisted with aspects of text production; the visits of Addie Woolford were always a source of delight and relief. Colleagues at other institutions and fellow South Asianists have been an invaluable source of support and assistance. Sagaree Sengupta, Bates College, provided the initial inspiration for the dissertation’s topic, for which I am deeply grateful; and I acknowledge her kind permission to cite unpublished materials. Susanne Mrozik, Jonathan Lipman, and Indira Peterson of Mount Holyoke College; Modhurima Das Gupta, Lewis and Clark College; Matthew Cook, North Carolina Central University; Janaki Patrick of the Kathak Ensemble, New York City; Rakesh Ranjan, Columbia University: Allison Busch, Columbia University; and Alan Wells, Medical College of Wisconsin, have all offered their encouragement and assistance. In particular, many close friends have generously walked with me. I truly thank all of them for their concern, good will, and stamina, but will only mention a few by name: Sarah Cashin, Fr. Peter Rocca, Jehan Mitchell, Rita Svjagintsev, Susan Kerr, and Elizabeth Korves. Gardner Harris and Kristen Rudisill, also graduating from UT in 2007-2008, trod the same path as fellow dissertation writers and long-time friends . My family, both on the Houston and Green sides have watched and waited with care. My mother, Carolyn Inez Houston, and brothers, Sam and Dan Houston, and their families deserve special gratitude. I also deeply appreciate the encouragement of Tom, Glenda, and Edna Green. My children, Ira Green, Renata Green, and son-in-law, Tony Morris, have been a source of strength and joy throughout the process. But the last is really the first: my greatest thanks and praise is reserved for William Green, safe harbor, best friend, and unfailing source of strength. vi i The Individual in the Nation: Locating Identity at the Transition from Didactic Nationalism to the Lyrical in Early Twentieth-Century Hindi Poetry Publication No._____________ Sarah Virginia Houston Green, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2008 Supervisor: Herman van Olphen The Chāyāvād Era of Modern Standard Hindi (Khari Boli) poetry appeared around 1920 as a contradiction to the poetic idiom of the previous Dvivedī Era (named for Mahāvīr Prasād Dvivedī, 1864-1938, editor of the influential journal, Sarasvatī). Through Sarasvatī, Dvivedī oversaw the standardization of Khari Boli Hindi as a national poetic medium. Whereas the didactic, grammatically standardized poetry of the Dvivedī Era emphasizes social reformist and nationalist themes, the poetic idiom developed by the four major Chāyāvād poets—Jayśakar Prasād (1889-1937), Sumitrānandan Pant (1900-1977), Sūryakānt Tripāhī (“Nirālā,” 1899?-1961) and Mahādevī Varmā (1902- 1987)—focuses on the interior feelings of the individual and freely transgresses grammatical rules. This shift in the popular poetic idiom raises the dissertation’s leading question: why did the individualistic, introverted Chāyāvād idiom appear at a moment of social consolidation and intense nationalist activity? My query is broadly contextualized within three theoretical areas: modernity and nationalism as Chāyāvād’s primary vi ii discursive contexts; identity studies; and the concept of the cultural product as a semiotic system involving complex social reverberations. The Chāyāvād idiom’s manifestation as a cultural product constitutes the dissertation’s major area of concern. I argue that Chāyāvād transmitted new configurations of Indian identity primarily through two means: the reformulation of culturally significant themes and the manipulation of grammatical rules. I identify four semiotically potent themes, the ‘transmissional modes,’ which served as sites of identity reformulation: dharma, in the senses of conscience and social duty; nature; the individual in relation to society; and desire with its corollary, suffering. On the basis that grammatical forms transmit social messages, I argue that grammatical developments relating to the Chāyāvād idiom were integral components in the construction of new modern-nationalist Indian identity models. Chāyāvād utilized shifts in grammar to address issues—such as power—that are closely connected to identity. Thus the work of Chāyāvād, carried out in relation to the processes of modernity and nationalism through the transmissional modes and grammatical shifts, was to transform the terms of discourse that served as the basis for modern-nationalist identities in India. ix Table of Contents Introduction: The Work of Chāyāvād......................................................................1 Questioning the Transition to Chāyāvād.........................................................1 Between Modernity and Nationalism: Gandhi and Tagore..........................10 Situating Chāyāvād in Modernity.................................................................13 Nationalism as Modernity’s Central Discourse ...........................................20 Chāyāvād and Identity .................................................................................23 Chāyāvād as a Cultural Product: The Transmissional Modes .....................25 Research Issues and Methods ......................................................................30 This Dissertation in the Context of Previous Scholarship ...........................32 Layout of the Dissertation ............................................................................37 Chapter One: The Dvivedī Yug: Identity and Poetry in the Colonial Milieu........41 Poetry and National Identity.........................................................................41 Before Chāyāvād: The Place of Poetry in the Hindi Language Movement..44 The Father of Modern Standard Hindi Prose: Bhāratendu Hariścandra......54 Defining a Modern Era: Dvivedī and the Parameters of Poetry...................65 Preeminent Nationalist Poet: Maithilīśara Gupta .....................................71 Dvivedī Era Themes in Bhārat-Bhārti .........................................................77 Modernity and Identity in Sarasvatī ............................................................79 Chapter Two: Dvivedī and the Grammar of National Identity..............................84 Dvivedī and the Grammar of Identity...........................................................84 Background: Language, Hegemony, and Identity in Gramsci and Dvivedī.88 Dvivedī on National Identity........................................................................97 Dvivedī on Language, Grammar, and the Supremacy of Khari Boli .........105 Hegemonic Hindi? .....................................................................................118 Chapter Three: From Dvivedī Yug to Chāyāvād: Shifting Models of Self and Society .....................................................................................................................124 Modernity and the European Romantic Subject in Colonized India..........124 x