(Off Topic) Marathi Novelist Bhalchandra Nemade Wins Jnanpith Award

[augusto pinto]

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/marathi-poet-novelist-bhalchandra-nemade-wins-jnanpith-for-2014/

I found the Gomantak putting this news on its headlines but none of the English papers did so. I'm mentioning this here because Dr Bhalchandra Nemade was the Professor and Head of the English Dept. of Goa University when it had been  formed. Dr Nemade  had been invited to set up the English Dept. by Dr Sheikh Ali who was the first Vice-Chancellor.

Among GBC members, FN, Rafael Fernandes and I were Dr Nemade's students. He was very erudite in his teaching of literary criticism and linguistics and his literary work in Marathi was well received. After leaving Goa University he was the Tagore Chair for Comparative Literature in Mumbai.

Augusto 

Augusto

[Rochelle Pinto]

Had no idea Nemade taught at Goa University! How lucky to have been his student. 

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[augusto pinto]

Actually Rochelle, as a student one does not normally idolise one's teachers unless they happen to be young enough to have a crush upon. After all they are in loco parentis.

Still Nemade  was not the sort whom one would try to take the piss out of.

Incidentally Brian Mendonca was also a Nemade student. I forgot him because he has of late forgotten to post to GBC.

Augusto

[Frederick FN Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या *فريدريك نورونيا‎]

Given Nemade's stance and perspective, I couldn't help wondering what were the politics -- if any -- behind this prize :-) Or was it just a thumbing in the nose of the new political establishment?

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report-writer-of-coccoon-and-more-bhalchandra-nemade-is-50th-jnanpith-laureate-2058737

Writer of 'Coccoon' and more, Bhalchandra Nemade is 50th Jnanpith laureate

Saturday, 7 February 2015 - 6:50am IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: dna | From the print edition

Born in 1938 in a small village Sangavi in North Maharashtra's Khandesh region, Nemade graduated in literature from Fergusson College, Pune. He postgraduated in Linguistics from Deccan College, Pune and English Literature from the Mumbai University.

• 

"I'm happy to have been honoured so. I'm proud of the way the Marathi readership tolerated my work and followed it. This is also special since I didn't have to suffer either a prison term for it or have ugly demonstrations outside my house," laughed Prof Bhalchandra Nemade reacting in signature style to becoming the 50th Jnanpith awardee and the fourth Marathi litterateur to get the honour.

Born in 1938 in a small village Sangavi in North Maharashtra's Khandesh region, Nemade graduated in literature from Fergusson College, Pune. He postgraduated in Linguistics from Deccan College, Pune and English Literature from the Mumbai University.

This PhD and DLit from North Maharashtra University has taught English, Marathi, and comparative literature at various universities including the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1990 for his critical work Teeka Svayanwar.

He is most famous for his first novel Kosala (1963), a fictitious autobiographical work, largely based on Nemade's own youth. Pandurang Sangvikar, the young rural protagonist of the novel studies in a college in Pune just like Nemade did. The character uses everyday rural Marathi and his worldview too is rural Maharashtrian.

Extensively translated into various languages including English, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Assamese, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Oriya, etc Kosala's chronological autobiographical narration was once equated with the style of J D Salinger. "But doing so is being unfair to Nemade," says journalist-columnist Kumar Ketkar, who calls the Jnanpith conferred on Nemade an honour for parallel thinking.

"Nemade has always been unconventional, even to the point of seeming cantankerous sometimes. But no one can take away from the fact that his writing reflects a rare originality," Ketkar told dna adding, "Though well-versed in English literature, Nemade has often spoken of adherence to Marathi with passion. Not in a reactionary manner, he has often cautioned against giving up what are our literary roots. According to him, in doing so, we invite the danger of making our literary tradition second to the European."

After Kosala, Nemade presented a different protagonist, Changadev Patil, through his four novels Bidhar, Hool, Jarila, and Jhool. Another tetralogy begins with Hindu – Jagnyachi Samruddha Adgal in 2010 having Khanderao, the archaeologist as its protagonist.

As a critic, Nemade's has always underlined Deshivad, a theory that negates globalisation or internationalism, asserting the value of writers' native heritage. "Marathi literature ought to try to revive its native base and explore its indigenous sources," he has often exhorted.

His strident anti-Brahminism ("Domination by Brahmins and Hindutva organisations has ruined Hindu society,") has left many antagonised, just as his views on the short story, which he called "a genre inferior to that of the novel."

The Sahitya Academy Awardee, was conferred a Padma Shri in 2011.

[Frederick FN Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या *فريدريك نورونيا‎]

Good ol' Prof Nemade creates some controversy for the media, on school education:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw89dyDoZU8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uuPwqePmco

And, some perhaps for Goa too: in the second link above, after 7:22, he suggests that Parusharam was Iranian! FN

[Frederick FN Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या *فريدريك نورونيا‎]

Interesting piece, specially for those of us who don't read sufficient Marathi... FN

http://www.dnaindia.com/blogs/post-bhalchandra-nemade-a-desi-booker-for-a-desi-author-2058752

Bhalchandra Nemade: A desi Booker for a desi author

Friday, 6 February 2015 - 9:25pm IST | Agency: dna

Deepak Lokhande

• dna Research & Archives

Few people in Marathi literature have changed how writers construct their works. Bhalchandra Nemade did that with the novel Kosla in 1963. Vi Sa Khandekar’s soft romantic novels were the order of the day till then and youngsters would go mushy reading that rich language that glorified romance.

And then Nemade happened. Kosla, which has been translated in many languages and is quite autobiographical in nature, changed the way novels were written. The form was so unique. At times it read like a diary. At times it read like an autobiography. And the language was so refreshingly different. It wasn’t the puritanical Marathi spoken in the Sadashiv Peths of Pune (capital of Maharashtrian conservatism). It was how people spoke in their villages, in their small towns, in their chitchats over a cup of tea. Kosla was about a young boy from the hinterland of Maharashtra who comes to study in Pune and stays in a hostel. It was about the years he spends in the cultural capital of Maharashtra (those in Pune, consider it as the culture capital of India).

Nemade became a star. A popular star, who also had critical acclaim. He then went on to write four more works – Bidhar, Hool, Jarila and Jhool. His stint in London as a professor at SOAS also exposed him to the debate societies in the Mecca of literature and Nemade then had the courage to take on those who vowed by the quality of Shakespeare and the likes. He then promoted his theory of deshivaad, or nativism, where he insisted that native writers must not get influenced by globalization and must delve into their own vast heritage. Nemade’s writings offered a world view through the prism of the narrator, who was often Nemade himself, though not so named.

His statement that declared short stories as an inferior form to novels irked many. But he was never afraid to speak what he felt and never shying away from debates. His opinions on Brahminism and religion often invoked strong reaction from right-wingers. When it was declared in 2010 that Nemade was going to come out with his latest work that would search for the roots of Hinduism and would in the process, destroy many popular myths, there was a strong buzz in Marathi literary circles. His publishers sought pre-booking orders for Hindu, Jagnyachi Ek Sammrduhha Adgal (Hindu, a rich trash of living) and were overwhelmed by the response that was similar to the Harry Potter novels (although Nemade will not like this comparison). The book created a history of sorts and broke all records. Nemade’s last work was in 1979 and it was widely discussed if he was over the hill. But Nemade made his critics eat a humble pie with Hindu.

A Jnanpith award is like a lifetime achievement award for a writer in India. But Nemade will not be done yet. He should not be done yet.