A Journal of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya L A N G U A G E D I S C O U R S E W R I T I N G Volume 5 April-June 2011 Editor Mamta Kalia Kku 'kkafr eS=kh Published by Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University Hindi : Language, Discourse, Writing A Quarterly Journal of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya Volume 5 Number 2 April-June 2011 R.N.I. No. DELENG 11726/29/1/99-Tc © Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya No Material from this journal should be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the publishers. The publishers or the editors need not necessarily agree with the views expressed in the contributions to the journal. Editor : Mamta Kalia Editorial Assistant : Madhu Saxena Cover Design : Vazda Khan Editorial Office : C-60, Shivalik, I Floor, Malaviya Nagar New Delhi-110 017 Phone : 41613875 Sales & Distribution Office : Publication Department, Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya Po. Box 16, Panchteela, Wardha - 442 001 Subscription Rates : Single Issue : Rs. 100/- Annual - Individual : Rs. 400/- Institutions : Rs. 600/- Overseas : Seamail : Single Issue : $ 20 Annual : $ 60 Airmail : Single Issue : $ 25 Annual : $ 75 Published By : Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, Wardha All enquiries regarding subscription should be directed to the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, Wardha Printed at : Ruchika Printers, 10295, Lane No. 1 West Gorakh Park, Shahdara, Delhi-110 032 2 :: April-June 2011 L A N G U A G E D I S C O U R S E W R I T I N G April-June 2011 Contents Heritage Literature and Society Jainendra Kumar 7 On the Bagmati Bank Acharya Janki Vallabh Shastri 13 Satire Bholaram Ka Jeev Harishankar Parsai 19 Non-Fiction Woh Jo Yatharth Tha Akhilesh 25 Poetry Four Poems Savita Singh 37 Two Poems Priyadarshan 41 Three Poems Hare Prakash Upadhyay 46 At the age of twenty-eight Nishant 53 Discourse Meeting Points of Two Cultures Yordanka Boyanova 59 Kedarnath Agrawal as a Poet Ashok Tripathi 67 Cultural Encounter and Synthesis: The Concept of Indian Feminism K.M. Malathy 82 April-June 2011 :: 3 Memoir My Reminiscences of Premchand Shivpujan Sahay 87 Language The Future of Hindi Suniti Km. Chaturjya 96 Bhojpuri and Surinami Badri Narayan 100 Hungarian Indology: Past and Present Vijayasati 106 Short story Gadal Rangey Raghav 113 Convoy Padma Sachdev 128 The Laser Show Harjendra Chaudhary 140 Anchal Subhash Sharma 151 4 :: April-June 2011 Editor's Note In spite of the stigma attached to books–that books don’t sell, that people are losing interest in buying books etc.–books are being published in Hindi and English like never before. Everyday there are a dozen book launches in a single city and it is difficult to honour all the invitations. Every announcement gives you a high, ‘ha ha another book-launch announcing the survival and revival of a fellow- writer’. In the intellectual circles a book launch is much like the Friday release of a new movie. So far so good. What happens thereafter! Press-coverage, some random book-reviews later the book adorns the publishers’ godowns gathering dust and ddt. The writer’s role ends there and the marketeer’s role begins. Fortunately publishers in Hindi are also good marketeers, they sweat it out through the length and breadth of the country and do not like to leave things to their managers alone. Books are like fish, if they don’t sell, they stink and perish. In the midst of this milleu we have a few writers like Rabindra Nath Tagore, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Premchand, Agyeya and Nagarjun whose one or one and a half centenary we are celebrating with aplomb this year. We have to pause and ponder. What makes their writing so different and durable? We want to read them again and again. Especially Tagore transcends all territories and reigns supreme as someone who lives on and on. The vast range of his writings scales over all hurdles of language and diction, fact and fiction, longitude and latitude. He is able to speak with equal ease and grace to children, teenagers, youth and older people in his poems, short stories, plays and novels. He loves life in all its forms and features. He faces no crisis of communication. The reader is struck by his social consciousness, idealism, human concern and empathy for all. He was a noble soul who brought the nobel home. Premchand’s longevity as a writer rests upon not simply the fact that he wrote more than three hundred short stories and fourteen novels besides many essays and editorials, but also on his constant involvement with the common man’s lot. Widely translated, published and presented on stage, Premchand literature celebrates the existence of the ordinary vis-a-vis the extraordinary. Premchand is remembered as the mouthpiece of Halku, Hamid, Surdas, Hori and Gangi. There are no elitist April-June 2011 :: 5 pretensions in Premchand’s writings. He brings in focus the ‘aam admi’ as none before did. The sale of Premchand’s books is so stupendous that had he been alive he would have received royalty in crores of rupees. Authors like Tagore and Premchand share the rare honour in the world that even when they are not living, their works remain. Like Shakespeare and Shaw, like Homer and Kalidasa they disappear to appear in their works. They do so because they get fresh oxygen of readership in every generation. They have passed the test of time. The worst punishment for a writer is to be forgotten during his life-time and to be dumped before death. No one writes to remain unread or unheard. We have to constantly revitalise our psychology and hone our creative tools to survive the test of time. In this issue we bring you Jankivallabh Shastri’s short story along with other short stories by Hari Shankar Parsai, Rangeya Raghav, Padma Sachdev, Harjendera Chaudhary and Subhash Sharma. In Heritage we have Jainendra Kumar’s views on literature and society. Discourse comprises of articles by K.M. Malathy, Ashok Tripathi and Yordanka Boyanova. Three of them have interesting themes to discuss. K.M. Malathy talks about the concept of feminism, Ashok Tripathi analyses Kedar Nath Agrawal’s poetic genius in detail and Yordanka Boyanova discusses the meeting points of two cultures of the east and the west through the Bhagvadgita. Hindi has a rich heritage of memoirs. Shivpujan Sahay remembers the time he spent with Premchand in Lucknow and Varanasi. This reminiscence reveals the literary and human angles of Premchand as well as Acharya Sahay. The younger writer Akhilesh shares space with him in this slot when he gives us a moving narrative of his childhood days in ‘woh jo yatharth tha’. Akhilesh however chooses to call it non-fiction. Our poetry section is varied and vibrant. We have poems of Savita Singh, Priyadarshan, Hareprakash Upadhyay and Nishant. Our language slot brings you an article on future of Hindi by the renowned linguist Suniti Km. Chaturjya and another on status of Hindi teaching in Budapest University, Hungary by its visiting professor Dr. Vijayasati. Dr. Badri Narayan gives us a candid account of Bhojpuri surviving in alien climes. Visit HINDI on Internet: www.hindivishwa.org 6 :: April-June 2011 e g a L S ITERATURE AND OCIETY t Jainendra Kumar i Translated by r Satya Chaitanya e A majority of powers emerging in Hindi literature today enjoy H no social recognition. Until a while ago our literature was upper class; people who produced literature were well established in society. But today the vast bulk of writers is not so. Even those with no room to put down their foot in society write today. This raises the question: what are the expectations of the society and literature from each other? What is their relationship with each other? Literature is becoming more and more personal and individualistic. It was comparatively more social in nature in the past. In those days, literature used to reflect accepted social customs and traditions precisely as they were. Today in the same literature, what we find predominantly is the protest and revolt of the individual against those accepted and predetermined credos and beliefs. For this reason it could be said that if in the past literature was like a mirror that represented in the form of reflection social realities as they were, today it still is a principle that reflects the society but not in any complimentary form but as a whip that lashes at it so that society is taken forward. Today literature is inspirational too. It not only depicts the society today, but also drives it. It is not only our past that it contains today, but also our will and our desire, our dreams. Those who rebel against the society, those who tread their April-June 2011 :: 7 own path rather than live to safeguard was some noble power in them and it the mores and traditions, the ethics and is the society that needsto change its values of the society, those who are belief systems, reform its ways. exiles from society and punished by it, Such people were initially rejected even such people can no more be but eventually worshipped. This is what considered totally unfit for creating we get to see in the case of great men literature today. On the contrary, we of the world. Their relationship with see around us people who are rejected society is not one of slavery, but of totally today, but become ideals leadership. They tread their own paths. tomorrow because of their commitment The society laughs at them, but it also and the uniqueness of their literary finds that it is their examples that genius. When we look at those who are illuminate its path ahead. like bright stars in the literary sky of If we go by differences in the nature the world, we frequently find that they of literature rather than by the authors, were initially scorned and rejected, but we can find two different kinds of literature in the end received honour from the around us– one that is necessary to same society. In growing up in life, they retain and sustain the society as it is, ignored society’s censure just as they and the other that makes society dynamic. ignored its honours. Their imaginative hearts chose an ideal for them and they Literature can serve both purposes. just kept moving straight towards it. But if we are to consider what is most It was for the society to either ignore essential, most pulsating with life, the them or worship them. As far as they longest lasting, then we find that it is were concerned, they confined their work literature that accepts the dangers to keeping alive the flame they saw present on its path, even when they burning in their hearts, and to incessantly are in the form of whip lashes, and takes making offerings to it. True, in the the society forward. Such literature is beginning the society kept them poor, idealistic, is futuristic, ever new– but called them uncultured, perceived them such literature is also not always accepted irresponsible, even tortured them, without a battle against it. laughed at them. But they remained Two principles are seen to be at work committed to the path of the common in society. All individuals in the society good they had chosen and kept moving could be understood as representatives on that path with an unfailing attitude of these two principles, more or less. of benediction towards all. Eventually One is the principle of collecting together, the society did come to see that there holding together and the other is of 8 :: April-June 2011 spreading out, of scattering. One is is run predominantly by men of the collectivist; the other individualistic. One commercial class; the fakir is unnecessary finds its centre within itself and the other for its affairs. The trader, the merchant looks outside itself, depends on external will wield power in his hands, and the forces, for its driving powers. One is fakir will live on his generosity. If the dynamic and the other static, fakir does not accept the generosity of conservative. the merchant gratefully, then the merchant will create the court and the Social life and the individual in society prison house for him. That is how matters are blends of these two principles in are with the society. different proportions. On the one side is the village trader who has been sitting But the same society in its literature from the time of his grandfather and will sing the praise of the fakir. The great grandfather in his shop that sells merchant finds the ideals of the fakir salt and oil, and is constantly engaged very close to his heart. If the fakir does in making money and improving his not create problems, then the family and property. And on the other businessman will give him a place of side are such people as have nothing honour in his house and thus arrange to do with family and home, who spend the affairs of his other world too the night where they find themselves, satisfactorily. But if his sons and who find no pleasure in marriage and grandsons speak one word about treading family life, and keep wandering about. the path of the fakir, then he grows Literature has place in it for both these restless. kinds of people – for the dynamic ones What should literature that accepts and for the conservative ones. It finds both principles equally expect from the neither type acceptable and neither kind society that has but one dimensional of people to be shunned. life? What should its relationship with But society is not very sentimental the society be? The only possible answer in nature and for that reason, it is notvery is that a writer’s relationship with his generous either. Society unhesitatingly society will be decided by his own accepts conformist principles and individuality, his personal inclinations. individuals representing conformist Coins made of metal are solid principles. With the other class of people, substances. When those people, whose the nonconformist ones, its attitude is imagination does not soar higher than more of disrespect and conflict. the solid metallic level nor plunges any What I mean to say is, the society deeper, write, the relationship of their April-June 2011 :: 9 writing with society will be that of how to swear at society, how to berate acceptance, obedience or appreciation. it, but they can keep away from the It is also possible that we will find on marketplaces of society, having no the surface of their writing, rebukes interest in such places. They do not against the society but those bitter look towards society for keeping sounding disparages will be like the themselves alive. If they write, they write irritated speech of a momentarily furious because they are the well-wishers of wife against her husband. From those society. They write to fulfil their duty– bitter words we come to know that the their obligation, their dharma– towards author is begging for the mercy of society, society; and for establishing the truth, its attention, its heedfulness and care. for establishing in the society that form of truth which is deeply rooted in their Those who covet money, those who heart, but not in the outside world. That live for money, write honeyed words is to say that they do not write for or spicy things and make an offering those who spread their nets in the of these to the society. Who does not marketplaces of society. Their know that if sweets sell in the market, relationship with the society, it could so do spicy savouries? The relationship be said from their standpoint, is of wishing of such literature and such writers with the best for the society with no society is that of the shopkeeper who expectations of anything in return, of wants to see everyone as his customer, desirelessness, of selfless altruism. And or that of the wife who knows she has from the side of the society the no life without her husband. There may relationship is of neglect, accusations be sharp, burning arrows of satire in and exile in the beginning, and of respect their writing – plenty of them – but and worship later. it is all written fundamentally with an eye on the society’s acceptance. There It is such people we see as creators is a lot of entertainment in such writings, of immortal works of literature. They but comparatively less intensity, little made their own journeys in life; they power. walked their own paths. Their central desire was not to be accepted by people But fakirs– spiritual tramps, as good; they chose to appear before vagabonds– are rare and few. I mean the society precisely as they were. It such fakirs for whom “fakirhood” is not is possible that today the society counts commerce. What is the relationship of them amongst its greatest, but out of such fakirs with society? They are the necessity it was bound to call them well-wishers of society. They do not know 10 :: April-June 2011