Marathi for Brahmin Computer Coolies
cogitoergosum
← India’s Superpower Euphoria CCXLVIII
Marathi for Brahmin Computer Coolies
http://cogitoergosum.co.cc/2011/02/06/marathi-for-brahmin-computer-coolies/
06/02/2011 by navanavonmilita
19th Century Maharashtra
19th Century Maharashtra:
A Reassessment
Edited by
Shraddha Kumbhojkar
19th Century Maharashtra: A Reassessment, Edited by Shraddha
Kumbhojkar
This book first published 2009
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2009 by Shraddha Kumbhojkar and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-0603-X, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-0603-9
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………….. vii
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………. 1
Shraddha Kumbhojkar
Contribution of Maharashtra to the Field of Sanskrit Literature
in the 19th Century …………………………………………………………………………… 5
Shripad Bhat
Historical Writings: Challenge and Response ……………………………………. 11
Raja Dixit
Standardisation of Marathi under Colonialism: Strategies of Caste-
Class
Hegemony ……………………………………………………………………………………. 21
Dilip Chavan
Dialectics of Women Reforms in 19th Century Maharashtra………………… 35
Narayan Bhosale
Recasting ‘Indian’ Woman and Marathi Theatre: A Case Study
of Sharada ……………………………………………………………………………………. 49
Jaswandi Wamburkar-Utagikar
Dispensing “Abstract Justice”: Erloo Bin Narayan–A Mahar’s Quest
for Education, Circa 1856 ………………………………………………………………. 58
Aravind Ganachari
Narrative Constructs: Ambedkar and Savarkar in Amar Chitra Katha…………
70
Aju Aravind
Articulating Caste and Modernity: Locating Phule’s Discourse …………… 82
Merin Simi Raj
vi Table of Contents
Denial of Centrality of Vedic Texts: Alternative Route to a Subaltern
Utopia ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 99
Shraddha Kumbhojkar
Contributor Contact Details…………………………………………………………… 113
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The present book is a compilation of research papers that were
originally presented at the National Seminar on 19th Century
Maharashtra.
It was organised by the Department of History at the Tilak Maharashtra
University, Pune with financial support from the Indian Council of
Historical Research. I take this opportunity to thank both these
institutions
for their support.
I wish to thank all the contributors to this volume who gave their
valuable time and efforts throughout the publishing process.
Thanks are due to all my students and colleagues at the Tilak
Maharashtra University.
My friends Devendra Ingale and Vijay Kunjeer patiently participated
in endless discussions about the book and offered valuable inputs.
Vijay
has also helped with the translations. I thank both of them. I admire
and
thank my friend Junuka Deshpande for creating the cover art.
Neelesh and Prachetas are always there for me.
— Shraddha Kumbhojkar
INTRODUCTION
SHRADDHA KUMBHOJKAR
The post-globalisation understanding of History in India is facing
serious challenges from identity politics, monopolization of History
and
intolerance towards alternative understandings. The papers in this
collection were presented in a seminar that was organised as an
attempt
towards recognizing the validity and significance of reassessing
Histories.
Nineteenth Century in the Indian history is characterised by sweeping
changes in almost all walks of life. Though the geographical process
of
colonisation had completed in the early decades of the century, the
colonisation of the minds and bodies of the colonials went on for
years to
come.
Maharashtra in the nineteenth century exhibits all the characteristics
of
a society standing at the crossroads of civilization. Western
education,
press, industrialisation and material changes in production and
consumption
patterns resulted in fundamental changes in the thinking of the
people. The
first half of the nineteenth century witnessed the beginning of the
Postal
Service in 1837, spread of the native press and rudimentary education,
chiefly with missionary initiative. The second half witnessed more
dramatic events that changed the destiny of the subcontinent forever.
Western education was pioneered with the establishment of
Universities.
This was – not accidentally – immediately preceded by the revolt of
1857.
As education and communication improved –Railways began their Indian
journey in 1853 – ideas were exchanged faster than ever before. The
society began to look at itself with a changed perspective that was
strongly
influenced by the interaction between the colonial present and the
distant
past. People devised various strategies to manifest their opposition
to the
colonial present – ranging from critiques of social stratification
that was
perceived to have invited the colonial rule, to violent revolts
against the
establishment instigated by local leaders. On this background, ways of
thinking underwent fundamental changes in the nineteenth century
Maharashtra. The present book is a collection of papers re-looking at
the
historical change and continuity in India in general and Maharashtra
in
particular.
2 Introduction
The papers in this collection were presented at the seminar entitled
“19th Century Maharashtra: A Reassessment” organised by the Department
of History at the Tilak Maharashtra University, Pune in association
with
the Indian Council of Historical Research. They touch upon various
aspects of Maharashtra in the nineteenth century and try to take a
fresh
look at the things that happened over a century ago. The first four
papers
review various aspects of the intellectual life of nineteenth century
Maharashtra. These are followed by five specific case studies that
relate to
the Maharashtrian society.
The first paper in this collection by Shripad Bhat argues that the
traditional processes of creation of knowledge in the Sanskrit
language
were still alive in the nineteenth century Maharashtra. He points out
that
while literary contributions to the Sanskrit language abounded in this
period, traditional schools of Philosophy were not seriously touched.
The second paper by Raja Dixit provides the missing link as to why
traditional ways of expression were not popular in the realm of
philosophy. He has provided a review of the Historical writings in
this
period. He has also argued that a War of Positions was being fought in
the
philosophical and intellectual realm. The war implied threefold
tension in
the society – Colonial-native, Hindu-Muslim and High Caste-Low Caste.
This led to the evolution of a counter-historiography that can be
embodied
in writings of Mahatma Phule.
Another trajectory that appears out of these tensions in the society
is
described at length in the next paper by Dilip Chavan. He argues that
the
threat posed to the Status Quo or the existing hegemony of the upper
castes due to the changes introduced in the nineteenth century
Maharashtra
resulted in the various attempts of Standardisation of the Marathi
Language in this period. By increasing the elitist Sanskrit component
in
the standardised Marathi language, it was aimed to become
incomprehensible for the masses. Once again, it must be noted, that it
was
Mahatma Phule who challenged the straightjacketed notion that elite
culture was synonymous with the Indian culture.
The next paper by Narayan Bhosale discusses the dialectics of
women’s reforms in this period. He reviews the elitist and other
attempts
to bring about a change in the lives of women. He argues that these
attempts initially were elitist and involved deliberations rather than
actual
empowerment of women. While the reforms cannot be seen as a linear
progression, the attempts by Phule’s Satyashodhak Samaj and its
followers
led the way.
The elitist nature of early women’s reforms is the topic of the next
paper by Jaswandi Wamburkar. She has taken a case study of Deval’s
Play
Shraddha Kumbhojkar 3
“Sharada” which coincided with and contributed to the legislation
banning
child marriage that was introduced a century after a ban on the Sati.
She
has argued that the elite play had the “guilty readers” as the desired
audience. It had to restrict the message of social reform to a level
acceptable to its audience. Therefore, it could never reach the level
of
radicality as displayed by the followers of Phule.
Aravind Ganachari in his study of the Case of Erloo Bin Narayan
throws further light on why radical reforms could be demanded only by
the people from the lowest social strata. He has unearthed fresh
evidence
from the archives that shows that the colonial claims of benevolence
were
in reality quite hollow – a fact asserted by Phule as early as 1882.
Colonial
rulers boasted of principles of ‘justice and equity’ but their recipe
was not
for India, and their “utilitarian and political interests” over-ruled
all
humanitarian considerations. The paper shows that the Revolt of 1857
was
not a defining moment for British administrative policy as such
discriminatory policies existed even before an assurance of
noninterference
in social matters was given by the Queen’s Proclamation
[1858].
Discriminatory policies are the colonial legacy that permeated the
socio-cultural field as well. Aju Aravind’s paper discusses how Amar
Chitrakatha- the most popular comic-books of twentieth century
Indiaprovide
narratives of the lives of Ambedkar and Savarkar that are
ideologically charged. With Nehruvian socialism and the developmental
state as a hidden counterpoint to the narratives these comic books
reduce
real people to abstractions. This serves the rightwing project of
depicting a
seamless coexistence between rationality and credulity, secularism and
spiritualism; accepting a monolithic understanding of the Indian
society and
wiping out the contribution of the subalterns.
All these papers point to the fact that Mahatma Phule’s contribution
to
the making of modern Maharashtra is seminal. The next two papers touch
upon the various aspects of the life and times of Mahatma Phule. Merin
Simiraj discusses the contribution of Phule in giving voice to those
that
were historiographically silenced. Shraddha Kumbhojkar argues that
Phule’s works can be seen as an alternative route towards attainment
of a
subaltern Utopia.
It may be said in conclusion that the book takes a fresh look at the
various aspects of nineteenth century Maharashtra. It includes the
critiques
and reviews of literature, language, history writing and women’s
reforms
in this period. It argues that the elite attempts at social reform had
their
own inherent limitations. They could not reach the level of radicality
reached by the subalterns whose lived experience of discrimination was
4 Introduction
the biggest stimulus for reform. Mahatma Phule stands out from among a
range of thinkers in this period for his innovative understanding of
the
Indian reality. He widened the horizons of identity of exclusion and
suffering by encompassing various classes of oppressed people in it;
such
as women, Shudras, slaves, African Americans, etc. Thus, Phule was one
of the rare thinkers who reconciled the Indian reality with its
Universal
counterpart.
CONTRIBUTION OF MAHARASHTRA
TO THE FIELD OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE
IN THE 19TH CENTURY1
SHRIPAD BHAT
The 19th century marks an important stage in the history of Sanskrit
Studies in India. Sanskrit language opened up a new era in the study
of
world history. The contribution of Sanskrit Scholars in the 19th
century
has been of two kinds, viz. 1) along traditional lines and 2) along
modern
lines, involving critical edition of texts, and comparative, cultural
and
historical studies. The latter kind has been more prominent even in
Maharashtra.
The first and foremost among the modern Sanskrit Scholars in
Maharashtra was Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar (1837- 1925). One of
his basic contributions to Sanskrit learning was the composition of
two
graded textbooks on Sanskrit grammar in English. They were commonly
used in secondary schools throughout India and soon made a deep impact
on the Sanskrit studies in this country.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856- 1920), the scholar patriot of India was
well known for his ‘The Arctic Home in the Vedas’, ‘The Orion’, ‘The
Vedic Chronology’ and the commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita. Shankar
Balakrishna Dixit (1853- 1898) wrote a history of Indian Astronomy in
Marathi language, which took into account all available Vedic evidence
on
the subject. Kashinath Vamana alias Bhau Shastri Lele of Wai (1863 -
1918) was a Sanskrit Pandit of the traditional type and was
particularly
well versed in Vedic ritual and Dharmshastra. He edited for some years
a
journal called Dharma in which he published Vedic and Dharmshastra
texts together with Marathi translations. Laxman Shastri Chandratreya
(1852 – 1920) translated Vajasaneya Samhita into Marathi, and five
1 I am thankful to Late Prof. R. N. Dandekar who edited the book,
‘Sanskrit and
Maharashtra’, a collection of various articles written by well-known
scholars,
from which many references have been taken to compose this article.
6 Contribution of Maharashtra to the Field of Sanskrit Literature
Adhyayas of that translation have been published under the title
Vedapushpa.
V.K. Rajwade (1860- 1944) is known for his works on Rgveda as also
his edition, with translation and notes, of Yaska’s Nirukta. Pt. S. D.
Satvalekar (1866- 1944) made valuable contribution to Vedic studies by
publishing neatly printed editions of all the Vedic Samhitas. His
Marathi
and Hindi translations of many Vedic texts and also his many writings
bearing on Vedic culture popularized Vedic studies in Maharashtra and
other parts of the country.
C. G. Bhanu (1856- 1930), has translated several principle Upanishads
and other philosophical texts into Marathi. As far as the grammar is
concerned, there were many works to be mentioned, Nilkantha Shastri
Thatte (1750-1834) was acclaimed as one of the greatest grammarians in
the Deccan. He trained a long line of worthy pupils, who on their
part,
made significant contributions to the study of grammar either through
teaching and or by means of their writings, Sadashivabhatta Ghule,
wrote
a Vivruti on shabdendushekhara and another Bhatti on the
Paribhashendushekhara. A mention may be made here of Bhaushastri
Ghule (1828-1925) of Nagpur who was the author of
shekharavivrutisangraha (a commentary on the shabdendushekhara) and
the Gajasutravritti (a commentary on the Panini Sutra 1.3.67).
One Venkatamadhava, who had migrated to Madras and was serving
there as lecturer in Marathi in Fort St. George College about 1827
wrote a
small work called Maharashtra prayoga chandrika. This is a grammar of
Marathi in 227 Sanskrit sutras of Paninian type and is accompanied by
a
short Sanskrit vritti, a Marathi vritti and illustrations.
Raghavendracharya
Gajendragadkar (1792- 1852) of Satara one of the pupils of Nilakantha
Shastri Thatte, who wrote Tripathaga on the Paribhashendushekhara, the
Vishami on the Shabdendushekhara, and the Prabha on the Vaiyakarana
bhushanasara. About the middle of the 19th century, Vishnu Shastri
Bhat
of Poona, wrote the Chitchandrika on the Paribhashendushekhara.
There was a great tradition of teacher and disciples. Bhaskar Shastri
Abhyankar of Satara, pupil of Thatte who was himself a great teacher
and
whose disciples also attained eminence as great teachers of grammar.
Kashinath Shastri Ashtaputre (1800- 1850) of Wai, one of his pupils,
namely Rajaram Shastri Karlekar (1810 -1875), was the teacher of the
great Balashastri Ranade. These three, Astaputre, Karlekar and Ranade,
formed the backbone of teaching staff of the Government. Sanskrit
College of Banaras, which during 1850-1910, had come to be recognized
as the stronghold of Vyakarana and Dharmashastra. Among these
Balashastri Ranade, in his short life (1839- 1882) attained an
outstanding
Shripad Bhat 7
mastery in the Veda, Ritual, Vyakarana, Nyaya, Mimansa, Vedanta and
Dharmashastra. He was honored by Pandits of Varanasi with welldeserved
title ‘Balasarasvati’.
During this period, scholars of Dharmashastra, contributed a little
part.
Western scholar Colebrooke [c. 1800 A. D] prepared the digest
Dharmashastrasangraha. Among some minor works belonging to about
this period may be mentioned the shraaddhamanjari (1810), the
Prayaschittamanjiri (1814) and the Krityamanjari (1818) (all the
three) by
Bapubhatta Kelkar of Phanashi (Dist.- Ratnagiri), the Acharabhushana
(1819) by Tryambakram Oka and the acharendu (1838) by Tryambak
Narayan Mate.
In the 19th century traditional scholars have made some significant
noteworthy additions to the ancient Indian philosophical systems.
Thus,
Narahara Shastri Marelkar, later Shankaracharya of Karaveerapeetha,
wrote the commentary Balabodhini on the Purvamimansa Sutras. Krishna
Shastri Ghule (1873- 1953) of Nagpur wrote Hautradhvaantadivakara a
critical work on Mimansa and shrauta. The Tanjore Kannadiga, author
Vancheshwara (18th – 19th century) who received patronage at Poona and
from Patwardhan Sardars of the southern Maratha states, is known his
commentary Chintamani on Khandadeva’s Bhaattadeepika. He also wrote
on Dharma and shrauta. Swami Kevalananda Saraswati (earlier known as
Narayan Shastri Marathe) (1877-1957) compiled the valuable
Mimansakosha in seven volumes, and these were published by Prajna
Pathashala, Wai (1952- 1966).
The literature on Vedanta, particularly the Advaita Vedanta produced
by Maharashtrians is quite profuse. Raghunath Shastri Parvate (died
1820), who enjoyed the patronage of Nana Saheb, the minister at Bhor,
wrote a commentary on the Gita, called the Padabhushana as also the
Advaitic polemic against Dvaita, called Shankarapaadabhushana in 1848
A. D. Acyutaraya Modak (1778-1833) of Panchavati, near Nasik was a
prolific writer who is credited with the authorship of as many as
thirty
works dealing with such varied subjects as poetics, religion and
Advaita
philosophy. He was also a noted Sanskrit Poet. Krsnananda Saraswati,
pupil of saccidananda, was the author of Advaitasamrajya (1891), the
Gitasaaroddhaara (1892) and the Kaivalyagatha (1903) on Vedanta and
Vishnubhakti according to 18th chapter of Bhagavadgita. Nationalist
leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1908-14) wrote a Sanskrit Commentary on
the Brahmasutras while serving his term at the jail in Mandalay.
Vasudevananda Saraswati Tembeswami (1854- 1913) wrote the
Shikshatraya with a Svopajna commentary. The work deals with the basic
tenets of Indian philosophical thought. He also wrote the sutravritti
on the
8 Contribution of Maharashtra to the Field of Sanskrit Literature
shankarabhashya, on the Brahmasutras and several other books, like the
Gurusamhita and the Dvisaahasri, which seek to correlate the tenets of
Advaita philosophy with the Dattatreya cult.
The Bhagavadgita is perhaps the most seminal of all Hindu scriptures.
There is, therefore no wonder that it should have attracted the
attention of
a large number of Maharashtrian thinkers and commentators. In the 19th
century, Chitsadanandalahari, a commentary on the Gita written by
Raghunath Swami, (1891) which is actually a pravachana on the
Jnaneshvari with a story affixed at the end of each adhyaya, the
Bhaashavivrutiteeka (in prose) by Raghunath Shastri Parvate, and the
Setubandhini teeka by Vishnubawa Brahmachari (1825 – 1871).
In his essays on the Bhagavadgita (1875, 1882), K.T. Telang has
discussed, such problems as the ‘Gita and the Vedas’, ‘the
Chaturvarnya
and ‘Buddhism and the Gita’ and has concluded that the Gita reflects a
period of revolution in the concept of Dharma. The most outstanding
Marathi exposition of the Bhagavadgita is the famous Gitarahasya
(1915)
by Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856- 1920). According to Tilak, nishkama
karmayoga is the central doctrine of the Bhagavadgita. Tilak, further,
shows how the Gita has provided a metaphysical basis for its ethical
teaching.
An account of the contribution of Maharashtra to Sanskrit poetics
during the 19th century would remain incomplete if one failed to
mention
Acyutaraya Modak who wrote Sahityasara with a svopajna commentary
Sarasamoda, in 1831 A.D. This work consists of 12 chapters, called
ratnas,
and is worthily described as a convenient and well-written compendium
on
poetics. A reference also should be made, in this context to excellent
editions of works on Sanskrit poetics, viz, Sahityadarpana of
Vishwanath
by P.V. Kane and the editions of Mammata’s Kavyaprakasha by
Chandorkar (Parts 1-3, 1896, 1898).
As regards music, some kind of realistic attitude can be observed in a
work called Shrimallakshayasangeetam written by V.N. Bhatkhande
(1886- 1936). Bhatkhande tried to explain the practice of music, which
he
called Lakshya. It is noteworthy to mention that his work reveals a
keen
historical sense on the part of the author. He sought to compare and
contrast the various characteristics of the same raga as mentioned by
different authorities and thereby to ascertain the oldest form of that
raga.
The study and practice of Ayurveda underwent a reorientation in the
19th century. The art of printing was introduced. Indigenous plants
began
to be studied botanically. Attempts began to be made to collect
manuscripts of Ayurvedic texts. Thus Krishnashastri Bhatvadekar of
Bombay published, in 1860- 64, the shatashloka with the commentary
Shripad Bhat 9
shatashlokachandrakala and a Marathi translation, the Vaidyamrita and
the
Kutamudgara with a new commentary. The nighanturatnakara, compiled
by Godbole (Bombay 1867) contained the description and analysis of new
plants and other substances. Vegetable Materia Medica of Western India
was compiled by Dymok (Bombay 1883). The search for manuscripts in
the then Bombay Presidency, made by R.G. Bhandarkar in 1882-84,
brought to light a number of Ayurvedic works. Bhandarkar also
published
(Part I, Bombay, 1893) the lists of Sanskrit Manuscripts in private
libraries
in the Bombay presidency.
Anna Moreshwar Kunte (1844- 1896) of Bombay edited the Charaka
Samhita and translated a part of the Sushruta samhita in 1876. He also
edited, in 1880. Vagbhata’s Ashtangahridaya with Arunadatta’s
commentary. Among other works, Vagbhata’s Ashtangahridaya edited
about the same time, may be mentioned by Ganesh Shastri Tarate
(Bombay, 1888) and Vagbhata’s Ashtangahridaya with a Marathi
translation and a valuable introduction by G. K. Garde (Poona, 1891).
The Yogachintamani Vaidyaka Saarasangraha by Harshakirti Suri was
published in Bombay (1869). Hanumanta shastri Padhye of Poona edited
in 1894 the Vrundamaadhava with Shrikanthadatta’s commentary, while
T.G. Kale edited two texts on Rasashastra with Marathi translation.
There
were also published editions of the Saharangadhara Samhita (Bombay
1891) by Prabhuram Jivanram and the Haareeta Samhita with Gujarati
translation (Bombay 1892) by Jairam Raghunath. The Nighantushesha by
Hemachandra, which deals with medicinal plants, was edited by K. P.
Parab and others in 1889 (Bombay).
In the literature of mathematics and Astronomy a mention may be
made of Govinda Balakrishna Dixit (1783- 1854) was a poet and a writer
on Jyotisha and Dharmashastra. His kalaprabodhodaya and
Ekadashikaprakasha are well known. Dinakara, son of Ananta of Poona,
is
known to have written the Grahavijnanasaarani, the
Maasaraveshasaarani,
the Garahanankajala etc. A reference may also be made here to the
Sanskrit-Marathi work, muhurtasindhu which was written by Gangadhar
Shastri Datar (1822-1855) of Poona. A special mention needs to be made
of Venkatesh Bapuji ketkar (1854-1930) wrote authoritative Sanskrit
works on astronomy, such as, the Jyotirganitam, the ketakigrahaganitam
and the Vaijayantipanchangaganitam.
Thus, in the 19th century Maharashtrians made definite contribution in
various branches of Sanskrit literature. It is, however, found that
the
philosophical schools like mimansà, schools of Vedànta, other than
Advaita, Nyàyavaisesika, and epics like Ràmàyana and Mahàbhàrata were
not seriously touched in the 19th century.
10 Contribution of Maharashtra to the Field of Sanskrit Literature
Bibliography
Bhat Shripad, ‘Contribution of Lokamanya Tilak Indian Studies’, Tilak
Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune, 2006.
Dandekar R.N. ‘Sanskrit and Maharashtra’ University of Poona, 1972
Joshi Moreshvarshastri, ‘Vidwatparimala’ Igatpuri, 1988.
Joshi Mahadevshastri, ‘Bharatiya Sanskritikosh’, Vols 1 to 10,
Bharatiya
Sanskritikosh Mandal, Pune. 3rd edition, 2000.
HISTORICAL WRITINGS:
CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE1
RAJA DIXIT
Any historiographical review will be incomplete without taking into
account the sociological and ideological context. This article,
therefore,
aims at perceiving the nineteenth century Marathi historiography as a
dialectical development.
The tradition of serious historical research and its presentation in
the
form of a historical narrative was almost absent in India until the
middle of
the 19th century. Though Indians used the term ltihas since the
ancient
times and occasionally showed an awareness of history in an informal
manner, unlike the western people, they did not develop the art and
craft
of history writing. Kalhana’s Rajatarangini (12th Cent. A D.) stands
out as
an exceptional piece of historical writing. Some bards and story-
tellers in
medieval Maharashtra dealt with historical themes and produced
literature such as ballads (Povadas), romantic poems (Lavanis),
chronologies/genealogies (Shakavalis), chronicles (Bakhars), family
accounts (Kaifiyats) and biographical sketches of saint-poets (Santa-
Charitre). Though this was ‘history’ narrated by them in their own
way, it
generally lacked in the discipline and rigour of historical research.
Barring
a few exceptions like the Sabhasad Bakhar (1694-97 A. D.) they were
put
aside as ‘historically useless material’ by most of the modern
historians of
India. It must however be admitted that this literature has immense
historical value not because of its factual accuracy, but because of
its
ability to show some socio-psychological traces of the past. Though
this
literature cannot be termed as historical writing in a modern sense,
it
definitely made the Marathi people history-conscious, which is a
prerequisite
of the production and reception of ‘written history.’ This medieval
historical consciousness, coupled with the modern idea of history,
1 This article is based on the following article by the same author:
Raja Dixit,
‘Historical Writings And Research’, in Rajendra Banhatti and G.N.
Jogalekar (ed.),
A History of Modern Marathi Literature, Vol. II, (1800 to 2000),
Maharashtra
Sahitya Parishad, Pune, 2004, pp. 238-78.
12 Historical Writings: Challenge and Response
introduced by the Westerners in the 19th century, prepared a fertile
ground
for the rise and growth of historical writings in modern Maharashtra.
The British, who became the rulers of India, showed great interest in
Indian history and culture. But this was not a purely academic
pursuit.
Their efforts at acquiring a ‘command of ’ Indian languages,
literature,
law, history and culture, to borrow the phraseology of Bernard Cohn,
were
mainly for creating the language, literature, law, history and culture
‘of
command.’ The oriental studies of the 18th and 19th centuries were an
occidental construction of the ‘orient’ as they perceived it and as
they
wanted the oriental people to perceive it. This process, as described
by
Edward Said as the ‘orientalization of the orient’, was the part of a
comprehensive imperialist project of the Western rulers. Macaulay, who
was instrumental in introducing English education in India, made his
oftquoted
statement on the 2nd Feb. 1835 that “We [the British] must at
present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us
and
the millions whom we govern – a class of persons, Indian in blood and
colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in
intellect.” In the
light of this conscious policy of Anglicisation, history obviously
became
an instrument of British hegemony in India. No wonder that a
generation
of British administrators came forward to study Indian history and to
shape it in the new mould so as to suit British colonial needs. Mark
Wilks’
Historical Sketches of South India (3 Vol.s, 1810-14), James Mill’s
The
History of British India (6 Vol.s, 1818), James Cunningham Grant Duff
’s
A History of the Mahrattas (3 Vo1.s, 1826), John Malcolm’s The
Political
History of India from 1784 to 1823 (2 Vol.s, 1826), Captain James
Todd’s
Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (1829), Mountstuart Elphinstone’s
The History of India (2 Vol.s, 1841), Sir William Hunter’s History of
British India (1899-1900), Vincent Smith’s Early History of India
(1904),
W. H. Moreland’s India at the Death of Akbar (1920) are some prominent
works produced by British ‘administrator-historians’. Though there was
an
imperialistic design behind the whole gamut of history-writing by the
British, it cannot be denied that the Indians, in various ways,
benefited by
this exercise. History as a serious modern academic discipline and
history
writing as a research-based methodological exercise were introduced in
India through these writings. Indian people’s knowledge of history as
a
branch of knowledge was certainly broadened and their mental horizon
vastly widened because of these writings and the new education to
which
they were introduced. Indians started reading, studying and
assimilating
this ‘given’ history and being influenced and affected by it. In
course of
time, they realised the dangers and drawbacks of this history and
while
launching their struggle for counter-hegemony and fighting their ‘war
of
Raja Dixit 13
position’ they also used history as a powerful cultural weapon. The
history
of modern Indian and Marathi historical writings cannot be understood
properly if we miss this dialectical dimension.
The first modern biographical work in Marathi was published in 1816,
and this form of literature began to flourish by the middle of the
19th
century. Most of these biographies were translations, adaptations or
imitations of biographies from other languages. However, they
contributed
to the new historical awareness in Maharashtra. History became an
important component of the new curriculum when the British rulers
introduced New Education. The growing interest in academic pursuits
and
new awareness regarding the pedagogical value of history were the
motivating forces for history writing. Historical works of the Western
historians, especially of those associated directly or indirectly with
the
British administration in India, were read by the early generations of
the
English-educated natives. The works of James Mill, Grant Duff,
Elphinstone, Murray and others were read in schools and colleges in
Maharashtra. Many abridged editions, adaptations and translations of
these
works were produced so as to make their comprehension easier for the
native students. Most early historical writings in Maharashtra were
government sponsored textbook writings and were cautiously presented
so
as to avoid any governmental disfavour.
The first historical work in Marathi entitled Raghuji Bhosale Yanchi
Vamshavali (Genealogy of Raghuji Bhosale) was published in Bengal at
Serampore in 1816. It traced the story of Bhosale clan right from
Babaji
and gave an account of some activities of Shivaji too. One of the
pioneering Marathi books on history was Bakhar Marathyanchi (1829-30),
a translated version Grant Duff’s ‘A History of the Mahrattas.’
Captain
David Capon and Baba Sane were its translators. The book was
prescribed
as vaachana-book (reading text) for school children. Kushaba Limaye
prepared its abridged edition in catechistic form. This book, named
Maharashtra Deshache Varnan (1840), became popular and nine editions
were published till 1866. Baba Padmanji’s Shalankarita Maharashtra
Deshacha Sankshipta ltihas (1866), a text-book published by the
Christian
Vernacular Translation Society, was a rapid survey of the history of
Maharashtra from ancient times to the establishment of British rule.
The
pioneering work on Indian history was a book based on Elphinstone’s
‘The
History of British India.’ It was an abridged and translated version
prepared by Balshastri Jambhekar (1846) that was later modified by
Major
T. Candy (1849). A two volume comprehensive translation of
Elphinstone’s book was done by Vishwanath Narayan Mandalika (1861).
Many such translations and adaptations were published due to the
14 Historical Writings: Challenge and Response
encouragement and help provided by the Department of Public
Instruction.
The British Government, while giving such patronage, obviously
curtailed
the freedom of the native authors and translators. M. G. Ranade’s
remark
on the translation-works was: “Of the fourteen which relate to India,
the
translations of Elphinstone’s and Murray’s histories, and of Grant
Duff’s
Maratha history, are the only ones which possess any literary merit”
(1867). Many dynastic histories, histories of other Indian provinces,
of
England and some other foreign countries, and also of the world, were
produced during this phase. All these works represented the initial
enthusiasm and awareness of the newly educated intellectuals whose
histories were mainly didactic narratives lacking in originality and
interpretation.
Balshastri Jambhekar (1812-1846) was a pioneer of Epigraphical
writings in Maharashtra, who contributed fourteen articles on ancient
Indian inscriptions to the journal (1841-1847) of the Bombay branch of
Royal Asiatic Society. History was sometimes narrated through books
that
were not formal histories and also through journalistic essays. Right
from
its infancy, the Marathi Press showed a deep concern for historical
themes.
The very first issue (May 1840) of Balshastri Jambhekar’s magazine
Digdurshun contained an article entitled Itihas, which discussed
Shivaji’s
administrative system. The Digdurshun also introduced its readers to
the
history of Greece. Bhau Mahajan, in his weekly Prabhakar, published a
series of articles on Great Britain Deshachi Rajaneeti (March-April
1842),
which traced the development of democracy in England. Through another
series Frenchanche Bandacha Vruttanta he gave an account of the French
Revolution of 1789 in more than twenty-five articles (1842). He also
gave
a brief account of the history of America (1847). All these articles
on non-
Indian history were published with a view to making Marathi readers
conscious about democracy and nationalism. The first treatise on
Economics in Marathi was Hindustanchi Pracheen Va Sampratchi Sthiti
Va Pudhen Kaya Tyacha Parinam Honar Hyavishayin Vichar (1843). Its
author Ramakrishna Vishwanath wrote also on ancient and medieval
Indian history, but this cannot be termed as methodical and
specialized
history-writing. Its importance lies not in the authenticity of the
content,
but in the new and nationalistic awareness of history. It was another
early
economic thinker and social reformer, Lokahitawadi Gopal Hari
Deshmukh (1823-1892), whose contribution to history writing was more
concrete. His sense of history was amply reflected in his socio-
economic
and journalistic writings (e.g. Shatapatre, 1848-1850) during the
middle of
the 19th century. He also wrote genealogical essays in Induprakash
(1862)
on medieval Indian Princes and Generals, and historical essays on
various
Raja Dixit 15
religious communities. He regarded the neglect of history as one of
the
fundamental drawbacks of the Indian society. He firmly believed that a
consciousness of history, which unfolds a story of change, was an
important pre-requisite of social reform. Lokahitawadi made a critique
of
the past for shaping a better future. He wrote a number of books on
history
during 1870s and 1880s. He compiled volumes of a number of historical
stories and useful information about the past. He wrote a monograph on
the third battle of Panipat and also on the Kshatriya Kings of Delhi.
His
histories of India, Gujarat, Saurashtra, Rajasthan and Shrilanka stand
as a
testimony that Lokahitawadi was never parochial in his approach. He
gave expression to his broad nationalistic and reformist sentiments
through
his historical writings.
The early period of historical writings in Marathi (1816-1867) is
rightly termed as the ‘Age of Grant Duff’ by Mahamahopadhyay Datto
Waman Potdar. This phase produced, in the words of M. G. Ranade, ‘not
a
single original historical work of merit.’ This was a period of
imitation and
education. But a new generation of Marathi historians started coming
out
of the spell of British administrator-historians. A landmark in this
respect
was the presentation of an essay by Nilakantha Janardan Kirtane (1844-
1896) at the Poona Young Men’s Association in 1867`. Kirtane, a junior
student of the Deccan College, in his essay entitled Grant Duffkrut
Marathyanchya Bakharivaril Tika, made a critique of Duffs history.
Pointing out Duff’s mistakes and showing his limitations, Kirtane
stressed
the need for a fresh look at Maratha history. This essay, published in
lnduprakash and later printed in the form of a booklet (1884; new edn.
1926), was an emotional counter-attack on colonial historiography. A
more profound, conscious and nationalistic attack was launched in 1874
by one of the admirers of Kirtane’s thesis. Vishnushastri Chiploonkar
(1850-1882) serialised his long and trend-setting essay Itihas
(History)
through his Nibandhamala. He explained the meaning of the term
History,
analysed the age-old neglect of history in India, described the
contribution
of ancient Greeks and Romans to historiography and listed the
advantages
of a study of history. He strongly criticized the ‘biased foreign
historians
and frustrated missionaries for presenting the history of India in a
selfish,
mischievous, unjust and childish manner.’ Mill, Macaulay and Morris
were
the principal targets of his attack. Chiploonkar also condemned those
natives who blindly accepted such history as ‘Mahaprasad’ (pious
blessing). He reminded the readers of the glorious historical
tradition of
India by citing numerous examples. He made a fervent appeal to the
natives to stop the neglect of history, give up their indifference and
take up
the responsibility of collecting and preserving the source-material of
their
16 Historical Writings: Challenge and Response
history for the reconstruction of the past. His mention of the
cyclical
theory symbolised his optimism regarding the ‘dispellment of the fog
of
untruth and illusion and the rise of the Sun of truth and knowledge.’
Kirtane and Chiploonker, through their inspiring essays, opened new
channels of historical research and gave rise to the ‘great wave of
affinity
for history’ which later found a special mention in Rajwade’s
introduction
to his first volume of Marathyanchya Itihasachi Sadhane (1898).
A New Age had thus begun. Marathi intellectuals concentrated their
energies on creating a nationalistic counter-culture of which history
was a
vital component The last quarter of the 19th century proved to be a
period
of great awakening. It witnessed the sharpening of the contradiction
between the interests of British rulers and their Indian subjects. The
other
contradictions within the Indian society also began to crop up. This
was a
period of tensions, complexities and identity crisis. It is no wonder
that
history, under such circumstances, got a new prominence in
Maharashtra.
The pre-Nibandhamala period witnessed the publication of sixty-one
books on historical themes in Marathi, whereas one hundred and ten
historical works were published between 1874 and 1900. The
quantitative
growth was also marked by a qualitative improvement in the form of
research-orientation. In 1876, the Bharatavarsheeya Pracheen
Aitihasika
Charitra Va Sthalakosha (an encyclopaedia of ancient Indian historical
persons and places) compiled by Raghunath Bhaskar Godbole was
published. This unique compilation was a result of seven years of
constant
hard work. In 1878 Chiploonkar, along with Kashinath Narayan Sane and
Janardan Balaji Modak, set up a magazine dedicated to the exploration
and
publication of old literary and historical material. It was named as
Kavyetihas-Sangraha (Collection of ancient poetry and history). The
magazine had three sections devoted to Sanskrit poetry, Marathi poetry
and Maratha history respectively. This journal, during its eleven
years of
existence (1878-1889), brought to light about twenty-five Bakhars and
five
hundred and one original documents comprising approximately 6,300
pages. The task of meticulously editing this huge volume of material
was
completed mainly by K. N. Sane (1851-1927), who also added explanatory
notes throwing light on subtle historical aspects. Sane proved to be
one of
the great pioneers in the field of historical research in Maharashtra.
Prominent among the historical works edited by him were Bhausahebachi
Bakhar, Panipatchi Bakhar, Peshwyanchi Bakhar, Malhar Ramraokrut
Charitre, Holkaranchi Kaifiyat and Dabhade Va Gaikwad Yanchi Hakikat.
In 1896, Sane delivered a series of lectures on the ‘sources of
Maratha
history’ at Hirabagh, Pune. These lectures were published in the form
of
six articles in Kesari. This was a clear manifestation of a growing
public
Raja Dixit 17
interest in historical research.
Two prominent scholars contemporary to Sane were Balaji Prabhakar
Modak (1847-1906) and Rajaramshastri Bhagwat (1851-1908). Modak
wrote a series of books (1876-1887) on the history of Kolhapur and
Karnataka. He also wrote the history of Muslim States of the Deccan.
Modak’s works were based on a careful study of numerous original
documents. Bhagwat was versatile scholar and a forthright reformist.
His
most famous work was Marathyanchya Sambandhane Char Udgar
(1887). He applied linguistic methods for analysing the past with
special
reference to the rise of the Varna and caste systems in Maharashtra.
He
wrote a small biography of Shivaji in 1889 and depicted Shivaji
through a
liberal progressive nationalist perception. In his essay on
Maharashtra-
Dharma (1895) he emphasised that the Bhagwat Dharma preached in
Bhagwadgeeta was the real basis of Maharashtra-Dharma. His egalitarian
philosophy was reflected in his historical writings. By 1890s
dedicated
scholars such as Narayan Bhagwan Pavgi, Vasudeoshastri Khare,
Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade, Govind Sakharam Sardesai, Dattatray
Balwant Parasnis and Shankar Shrikrushna Deo were engaged in serious
historical research, faithfully following the Rankeian dictum “No
document, no history.” Two of the nineteenth century historical
journals
set up by D.B. Parasnis – Maharashtra- Kokil (1887-1892) and Bharata-
Varsha (1896-1900) – published a number of Bakhars, Kaifiyats, Yadis
and
documents. In 1897, Vasudeoshastri Khare set up a journal Aitihasik
Lekhsangraha for the same purpose. Satkaryottejak Sabha set up by
Shankar Shrikrushna Deo at Dhule in 1893 was a pioneering effort in
the
institutionalization of historical research and writing activities.
Sayajirao Gaikwad, the ruler of the Princely State of Baroda, gave a
generous patronage to the publication of historical writings. Two
series of
books entitled Rashtra Kathamala and Maharashtra Granthamala were
published during 1890s under his patronage. In 1895, Bal Gangadhar
Tilak
launched the Shivajayanti Utsav (an annual festival to celebrate
Shivaji’s
birth anniversary), which proved to be an effective instrument of
massmobilization
for the nationalist cause. A number of literary artists had also
become historically conscious which led to the sudden growth of
historical
plays, novels and poems. Keshavsut, the pioneer of modern Marathi
poetry, made an earnest appeal through his poem Nairutyekadeel Vara
(Wind from the south-west, 1898) to read neglected historical
documents
lying in old Maratha forts. This appeal symbolised the spirit of the
age. A
tide of historical consciousness had burst forth. Its climax came at
the end
of the nineteenth century with the publication of three great works
that laid
the real foundations of modern scientific history writing in
Maharashtra. In
18 Historical Writings: Challenge and Response
1898, Musalmani Riyasat, the first volume of G.S. Sardesai’s
Riyasatseries
and first volume of V. K. Rajwade’s 22-volume series Marathyanchya
ltihasachi Sadhane were published. This was followed by the
publication
of Rise of the Maratha Power, the magnum opus of Justice Ranade in
1900. It is also an interesting co-incidence that the real foundations
of the
history of Marathi literature were laid in 1898 by the pioneering
works of
Justice M. G. Ranade (an English Note on the Growth of Marathi
Literature; later translated into Marathi by S. G. Malshe in 1982), L.
R.
Pangarkar, G. J. Agashe, Moti Bulasa and V. L. Bhave. All the
abovementioned
works marked the beginning of a new age of indigenous
historiography.
Mahadeo Govind Ranade (1842-1901) was a prominent figure and the
moving spirit behind a number of socio-cultural movements in
Maharashtra including history-writing. He had the unique distinction
of
writing as well as making history. A man with a synthetic mind and
broad
vision, Justice Ranade represented the blend of Western liberalism and
Indian humanism. He provided a scientific and theoretical base to
‘written
history’ in Marathi. His approach was not narrative and biographical,
but
basically interpretative and sociological. His aim was to present a
clear
view of history from the Indian standpoint. Though he did not write a
single book on history in Marathi, his name became immortal in Marathi
historiography. His Rise of the Maratha Power (1900) set new standards
and became a source of ideas and inspiration for future generations of
Marathi historians. Though written in English, different scholars
later
translated it into Marathi separately. N.R. Phatak’s translation
(1964) is
perhaps the best among them. Though Ranade’s Rise is often consulted
by
history-lovers, all his writings are truly ‘historical’ as suggested
by N. R.
Phatak. Seen from this angle, Ranade’s Dharmapar Vyakhyane (Religious
Discourses, published posthumously in 1902) becomes very relevant
historiographically. Though Ranade wrote about many individuals such
as
Shivaji, Tukaram, Ramdas, Martin Luther and others, he perceived them
as individuals representing contemporary socio-historical trends and
value-structures. While analysing the achievements of these
individuals he
tried to comprehend the historical processes and intellectual
discourses
with which they were associated. Dispelling the misconceptions created
by
Duff’s history, Ranade showed that the rise of the Marathas
exemplified
“the first beginnings of what one may well call the process of
nationmaking.”
Avoiding deification of Shivaji, Ranade discovered the social
evolution in Maharashtra that culminated in the political phenomenon
called Shivaji’s Swarajya. It was Ranade, who put the history of
Shivaji in
the wider socio-cultural context and tried to convey the moral import
of
Raja Dixit 19
Maratha history. Though Rajwade did not agree with Ranade’s views
emphasising the social relevance of the medieval Bhakti movement, he
praised Ranade for his theoretical foundation and for providing social
causation of continuity and change in Maharashtra.
Iithasacharya Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade (1863-1926) and
Riyasatkar Govind Sakharam Sardesai (1865-1959) began their
illustrious
careers as historians in the closing stage of the nineteenth century.
Rajwade combined empirical research with sweeping philosophical
vision.
In him, we find a paradoxical attachment to objectivity and
interpretation.
He was truly a giant who represented the spirit of his age that was
full of
paradoxes, complexities and internal turmoil. Sardesai was a hard-
working
dedicated scholar. Many critics ridiculed and underestimated him as a
‘mere compiler’, forgetting the fact that interpretations and
articulation of
theories become possible only on the solid foundation of systematic
compilation of innumerable facts laboriously woven into a logical and
chronological narration. Beginning with his first volume of Riyasat
series
in 1898, Sardesai provided such a foundation through his narration of
political history of India from thirteenth to mid-nineteenth century.
Ranade in his ‘note’ on Marathi literature (1898) significantly
remarked, “No mere foreign graftings can ever thrive and flourish,
unless
the tender plant on which the grafting is to be made first germinates
and
sends its roots deep in its own indigenous soil….Unless the minds of
our
young men are disabused of the prejudice they imbibe in early life
that the
historical sense is wholly absent in India, and until they are trained
to
appreciate the value of these contemporary narratives and records at
their
true worth, it is hopeless to expect any real and permanent growth of
the
true historical and critical spirit which alone can ensure success in
the
future cultivation of this department of our literature.” It was the
19th
century spirit of Renaissance in Maharashtra, which fostered a new way
of
looking at the past. As explained by Arvind Deshpande, the history
produced during the late nineteenth (and the early twentieth) century
was a
‘construct’ derived from the triple conflict :
(a) British hegemony and imperialist viewpoint of history versus
Indian national identity,
(b) Newly emerging Muslim identity versus Hindu revivalist identity
and
(c) new challenge of non-Brahman identity / movement versus
traditional
Brahmanic identity.
The intellectuals in Maharashtra, aware of British attempts at a
cultural
hegemony, launched a ‘war of position’ to create a counter-hegemony.
Though elitist in nature, this movement played a significant role in
the
history of modern Maharashtra. The writing of modern scientific
history
was the part of a broad process of modernization of India within the
20 Historical Writings: Challenge and Response
framework of Indian Culture. Writing history was one of the ways of
making history. History was used as an instrument of hegemony by the
British imperialists. The Maharashtrian elite used history, on the one
hand,
as a nationalist weapon to fight against the British, and on the other
hand,
as an instrument of creating and legitimizing their hegemony within
the
indigenous society. A counter-historiography, therefore, was bound to
arise and create an inner upward pressure. In this context, the role
played
by Mahatma Jotirao Govindrao Phule (1827-1890) was very significant.
He was not a historian in the strict sense of the term. But his
thoughtprovoking
and egalitarian writings had a specific historical perspective
that gave birth to the subaltern streams in Marathi historiography.
His
severe indictment of the Aryan-Brahmanic tradition, his emphasis on
focusing ideas and achievements of Buddha, Charvaka, Kabir, Tukaram
and Shivaji and his counter-mythisization glorifying the pro-people
Baliraja tradition effectively demonstrate his historical approach.
Phule
was basically a polemicist and his role was not that of an academic
historian exploring unknown sources and insisting on narrating and
interpreting authentic facts. His was the role of an organic
intellectual
aiming at the creation of a counter-culture. The alternative trends
that
developed mainly in the twentieth century were inspired by Phule’s
views
and tried to turn the ‘top-down’ Marathi historiography in the upward
direction, at least to some extent.
STANDARDISATION OF MARATHI
UNDER COLONIALISM:
STRATEGIES OF CASTE-CLASS HEGEMONY1
DILIP CHAVAN
The medium through which the mass of the population must be instructed
I
humbly conceive must be their Vernacular Tongues, and neither English
nor Sanskrit….In a word, knowledge must be drawn from…the English
language, the Vernaculars must be employed as the media of
communicating it, and Sanskrit must be largely used to improve the
Vernaculars and make them suitable for the purpose.
2
Standardisation of various regional languages is relatively a more
recent phenomenon. Capitalism has an inherent tendency to homogenise
and standardise various processes – cultural as well as material.
Calling
standard language a ‘normalized’ product, Pierre Bourdieu considers
standardisation of language a modern phenomenon, which has emerged
along with modern industry.
3
Standardisation of language has been looked at from both the
instrumental and the sociolinguistic perspectives. The instrumentalist
perspective valorises the process of standardisation. It sees
standardisation
as a tool and defines it in terms of “efficiency, rationality and
commonality.” Some scholars equate linguistic homogeneity to economic
development. They argue that “a country that is linguistically highly
heterogeneous is always underdeveloped, and a country that is
developed
always has considerable linguistic uniformity.” Heterogeneity is
perceived
1 I am thankful to Simon Bernabas, Wandana Sonalkar and Bhalchandra
Nemade
for commenting on the earlier draft of this paper.
2 Report of the Board of Education for the Years 1847 and 1848, No.
VII.
(Bombay: American Mission Press, 1850) 180. (emphasis in original)
3 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power trans. Ginto Raymond
and
Matthew Adamson (1992, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994) 46.
22 Standardisation of Marathi under Colonialism
as a hindrance to progress as it generates conflict.
4 The term language
standardisation designates the process of change in status, function,
and
form by which a dialect becomes ‘standard’. The sociolinguistic
perspective
delegitimises the notion of standard and considers standardisation a
deliberate and conscious attempt of a certain group.
Recent scholarship on the issue of language standardisation is more
critical about the socio-cultural repercussions that result from
standardisation. James Milroy and Lesley Milroy have distinguished
between two kinds of mechanism that tend to encourage stability in the
use
of a language or dialect. Both may apply at any level of society but
one or
other may be dominant at some levels. The first mechanism is covert
and
informal pressure for language maintenance, which is exerted by
members
of one’s peer-group or social group. The second is overt and
institutional
enforcement of norms through public channels such as the educational
and
broadcasting systems.
5
Milroy and Milroy define standardisation as the suppression of
optional variability in language, observing that the various stages
that are
usually involved in the development of standard language may be
described as the consequence of a need for uniformity that is felt by
influential sections of society at a given time.
6
Though general linguists, usually, do not hold the superiority claim
of
a certain language valid, there is a strong tendency among these
linguists
to base their grammar on the language used by the elites. All early
grammarians of English had resorted to Latin to provide them with a
model.
7 The early grammarians of Marathi disregarded the linguistic
variability prevailing in Marathi and considered the language used in
Pune
as the model for constructing their grammar. A. K. Priyolkar
acknowledges
that the language used by the Chitpavan brahmins during the Peshwa
regime was drastically different from the languages used in the rest
of
Maharashtra. He also argued that the variety of Marathi used by the
Chitpavans differed from those of other castes.
8
4 Aditi Mukharji, ‘The Standard Problem’ in R. S. Gupta ed.,
Directions in Indian
Sociolinguistics (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2000)
86.
5 James Milroy and Lesley Milroy, Authority in Language: Investigating
Language
Prescription and Standardisation (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1985) 56.
6 Richard Hogg and David Denison, A History of the English Language
(Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2006) 273.
7 Hogg et al 284.
8 A. K. Priyolkar, Hindustanche Don Darwaje, (Mumbai: The Goa Hindu
Association, 1974) 15.
CHAPTER 3—THE ROLE OF THE SUB-REGIONS OF MAHARASHTRA
THE INTER-RELATIONSHIP OF THE SUB-REGIONS and their role in the
formation of Maharashtra is
indicated in this Chapter.
Sub-regions and their dialects —The main dialects in Maharashtra are
roughly based on the
sub regions. In Khandesh the dialect spoken by people is called
Ahirani. In Konkan the dialect is
Konkani. Throughout the northern Konkan, in the districts of Thana,
Kolaba and Ratnagiri, Konkani
is supposed to be a Marathi language. Further southwards, in Goa, the
Konkani is supposed to be a
separate language by some scholars. In Berar and Nagpur the dialect is
Varhadi. The Southern
Krishna valley dialect is Kolhapuri. There is no regional name for the
dialect spoken along the banks
of the Godavari. The language developed in this region became the
acknowledged literary language
tor Maharashtra at an early period, and exercised an influence on all
other regions, as we shall see
later.
Sub-regions and Dynasties.- The dynastic histories of these different
regions are also
different from one another.
The earliest kings who ruled during the period from three or four
centuries before Christ to
three to four centuries after Christ, were the Satavahanas with their
capital at Pratishthan (modern
Paithan), on the river Godavari about thirty miles west of the modern
city of Aurangabad.
These kings ruled in the Godavari valley and north Konkan. In the
Puranas they are
mentioned , as Shakaraj. An eastern inscription mentions a Satavahana
King as Aparanta-adhipa
(King of the western lands—Konkan). They called themselves Andhra-
Bhritya. All these words being
compound words can be differently interpreted. Shakaraj might mean a
king who was a Shaka
(belonging to the Shaka tribe of Central India) or a king who ruled
over the Shakas. Andhra-bhritya
might mean one who was nourished by and therefore servant of the
Andhras or it might mean one
whose servants are the Andhras. The first of these kings is supposed
to have fought with the help of
horses. There is also a legend which says that an early Satavahana
king could not understand the
Sanskrit spoken by his wife who laughed at his ignorance. The king
thereon learnt within
56 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
a short time a Prakrit language. All these legends indicate either
that the king was a foreigner who
did not know Sanskrit or that he was of humble origin and spoke a
language of the people. The
Satavahana kings have left many inscriptions, all of them in Prakrit.
There is an anthology of Prakrit
poems called Gatha—Saptashati which is supposed to have been put
together by a king of this
dynasty some time in the sixth or seventh century, A. D.1 All this
shows that in this kingdom a form
of Prakrit called Maharashtri became the language of the court. All
the dynasties which followed the
Satavahana dynasty were patrons of Maharashtri. They, however, did not
have Pratishthan as their
capital but their capitals were not far from it. The Satavahanas were
followed by Chalukyas,
Vakatakas and then by Rashtrakutas. During the Rashtrakuta dynasty was
written one of the most
voluminous books in the Maharashtri dialect, namely the Harivamsha
Purana by the court poet
Pushpadanta. This is a Jain book.
The Rashtrakutas were followed by Yadavas who apparently were patrons
of Marathi poets
as can be inferred by the reference to King Ramachandra by
Dnyaneshwar. His reference to the
“city of Marathi” can be confirmed in a double sense as referring
abstractly to the Marathi language
as also concretely to the capital city of the kingdom of the Yadavas.
The Yadavas did for Marathi
what the Satavahanas did for Prakrit. Prakrit was the language of the
people and the Satavahanas
gave it a status by making it their official language as their
inscriptions show. In the same way
Marathi was the language of the people a few centuries before the
Yadavas came on the throne, but
they were the first to give patronage to it. Parallel with the
Satavahanas, three dynasties ruled over
Konkan, namely, the Maurya, the Kadamba, and the Shilahara. Their
inscriptions are in Sanskrit
and partly in Prakrit. In Konkan again we have one of the earlier
Marathi inscriptions.
The third important sub-region comprising roughly the valleys of
Purna, Vardha and
Vainganga together form the kingdom known in Sanskrit literature as
Vidarbha whose kings were
the Vakatakas. The first historical reference is in the fourth century
when a Gupta princess called
Prabhavati married a Vakataka prince. It is thought that the poet
Kalidas came with the princess and
lived at the Vakataka court. A few centuries after Kalidas, the poet
Dandin mentions the poetic style
(in Sanskrit) of Vidarbha called the Vaidarbhi style, the best style
in poetry. Kalidas in his drama
Malavikagnimitram, which purports to refer to a king of the Shunga
dynasty in Magadha, mentions
some kind of a disturbance and a revolt in the then Vidarbha kingdom
and the marriage of the
Shunga king to a princess from Vidarbha. Kalidas does not
1 Lila-Charitra an early Marathi book of the 14th century and
belonging to the Mahanubhava sect
mentions ‘ Shalivahana’ as a person in the employ of the then king
Mahadeva of the Yadava
dynasty. Part 2, page 2 of introduction and p. 31 of text. Lila
Charitra Part 2, 1st book, edited by H.
N. Nene, Amraoti, 1933.
MAHARASHTRA – LAND AND ITS PEOPLE 57
give the name of the dynasty then ruling Vidarbha. He merely mentions
the prince by his first name
Madhavasena. The Shunga dynasty was ruling in Magadha in the 1st
century B. C. In the centuries
which precede the Shunga dynasty, Vidarbha is mentioned again and
again. Three legends of
Sanskrit literature mention three Vidarbha princesses. The first
called Lopamudra belongs to a
hoary past and is connected with the legend of the sage Agasti
crossing the Vindhyas and opening
up the south. The second legend refers to princess Damayanti, the
daughter of Bhima or Bhishma,
king of Vidarbha. She was married to Nala. The third legend refers to
Rukmini, daughter of a king
called Bhimaka, Bhima or Bhishma, who was carried away by Shri
Krishna. If we place the time of
the Mahabharata battle, that is of Shri Krishna, as somewhere near
1000 B. C, then we have a
thousand year gap which is not filled either by legend or history for
this area.
The short account given above, however, shows that Vidarbha was always
in active contact
with the north throughout the legendary and historical period. It was
the southernmost outpost of the
interrelated dynasties of the northern Sanskrit-speaking people. This
characteristic apparently
continued during the historical period, inasmuch as all the Vakataka
inscriptions are in Sanskrit.
The history of this region is obscure after the Vakatakas of whom one
branch or the other
ruled over some portion of this region up to the eighth century.
Apparently this area, especially the
eastern portion from Nagpur to Bhandara, was ruled by Gond kings. The
twelfth century inscriptions
show that parts of Vidarbha were nominally under the Yadavas. Not
until Chhatrapati Shahu sent
the Bhosles to rule over Nagpur did this region come again effectively
under the rule of Maratha
kings. In spite of the long domination of Sanskrit, the Marathi
language was the language of the
people from at least the thirteenth century onwards.
The southern portion, after the Chalukya era, was ruled by local
chiefs some of whom held
sway over parts of the coast and part of the mountain region. An
eighth century inscription mentions
Punaka-vishaya (revenue division) which approximately was the same as
the township of Poona
today. The Prakrit inscriptions in the Buddhist caves of this area
tell of river Indra, the present Indrayani,
and Mammalavishaya, the present Maval. These inscriptions show that
Prakrit held sway in
the southern portion. A connected dynastic history for this region
cannot be reconstructed.
The last sub-region comprising the two Khandesh districts, called west
and east Khandesh
formerly, and called Dhulia and Jalgaon now, had no famous dynasties
ruling in them. This portion
was ruled over by people called Ahir or Abhir who are mentioned first
at the end of the
Mahabharata. These people apparently were pastoral people who
destroyed the kingdoms of the
Yadavas and also mixed with them. Khandesh was penetrated by the
Marathi-speaking farmers
from the south (Nasik area) and from the east (Berar) ; from the north
by people from central India;
and from
58 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
the west along the Tapi river by people from Gujarat. The Marathi
immigration appears to be the
latest inasmuch as most of Khandesh speaks today either standard
Marathi or Ahirani (a dialect of
Marathi). Bhils, a very numerous primitive tribe belonging to
Rajasthan, have penetrated into
Maharashtra through Khandesh over the Satpuda hills, Part of Khandesh
was ruled by the Bhils.
Thus in the north the western (Khandesh) and the eastern (Bhandara and
Chanda district ) portions
were held by primitive people. The eastern Gond kingdoms, however,
seemed to have been more
powerful and not as primitive as the small Bhil chieftainships of
Khandesh. The most ancient
dynasty, that of Satavahanas was on the banks of the Godavari. The
later dynasties upto the
Yadavas ruled in the east but not directly on the river Godavari and
influenced the north, the south
and also Konkan1. From the 13th century onward, the centre shifted
gradually westwards.
After the conquest of the Yadava kingdom by the Khiljis in 1318 a
Muslim dynasty known as
the Bahamanis assumed an independent status in the Deccan in 1347. It
continued to rule for well
over 125 years. The Bahamani kingdom broke up into five independent
kingdoms by the beginning
of the sixteenth century with their capitals based at Ahmednagar,
Bidar, Bijapur, Golkonda and
Ellichpur.
Even during the period of these dynasties, the Godavari area continued
to be of importance.
But new forces, political and social, were arising further south in
the Krishna basin. Maratha rajas
held territories under the Muslim kings, and paid tribute to them. The
Muslim kingdoms feuding
among themselves, had also to deal with quarrels among their Maratha
and Muslim sardars, and
became locked in a fight for life with the Moghals who wanted to
extend their empire into the
Deccan. In the second quarter of the seventeenth century, Shivaji, the
son of a Maratha raja, under
the sovereignty of the Bijapur dynasty raised the flag of revolt. The
peculiarity of this revolt was that
Shivaji did not fight to extend or augment his own holdings but fought
to establish a Hindu kingdom.
Aurangzeb succeeded in destroying the southern Muslim kingdoms of
Bijapur and Golconda. He
established at Hyderabad his own representative, but he had to face
the rising tide of the Maratha
revolt which at last succeeded in establishing a Hindu kingdom in the
south-west. Shivaji’s father
held hereditary lands-round about Poona and all the fights of the
Marathas first against the Bijapur
King and then against Aurangzeb were fought mainly in the Bhima-
Krishna basin and, as already
noted above, deep into Dravidian India.
The decline in the importance of the central Godavari area which began
with the defeat of the
Yadavas was completed by the time the Marathas had established their
kingdoms in the south. A
factor
1 The Vakatakas ruled from Vatsa-gulma (modern Vashim) in Berar. The
Chalukyas ruled
from Vatapi (Badami) and Kalyani (near Gulbarga), the Rashtrakutas
ruled from Manyakhet near
Wadi.
MAHARASHTRA – LAND AND ITS PEOPLE 59
which further contributed to this decline was that this part of
Maharashtra together with the Purna
valley became part of the southern kingdom established by the
descendant of one of the famous
generals of Aurangzeb viz., Gaziuddin Firoz Jung, who founded the
Hyderabad dynasty soon after
Aurangzeb’s death.
Sambhaji, the eldest son of Shivaji was executed by Aurangzeb. His son
Shahu was taken
prisoner. Rajaram, the younger son of Shivaji, was crowned king of the
Marathas. He. however,
died in 1700. After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 the successor of
Aurangzeb released Shahu.
Many Marathas joined him as the rightful heir of Sambhaji. Tarabai,
the widow of Rajaram crowned
her son, King of the Marathas and established a kingdom with its
capital at Kolhapur. This split the
Maratha ranks into upholders of Shahu and upholders of Rajaram’s
successor. Shahu established
his capital city at Satara and appointed Balaji Vishwanath with the
family name Bhat as his chief
minister with the Persian title “Peshwa”. The Peshwa title and office
became hereditary and the
family of Bhat established Poona as their residence and from then on
Poona became almost the
capital of Maharashtra. In this narration, we see how from early
seventeenth century almost to the
establishment of British rule, the most important region was the Bhima-
Krishna basin. Chhatrapati
Shahu as noted earlier granted in jagir eastern Berar to one of his
supporters from the Bhosle
family. His descendants still hold the Raja title though divested of
political power by the British. The
British in mid-nineteenth century, annexed Berar from the Nizam of
Hyderabad and joined it to
Nagpur. The region from Aurangabad to the district of Nanded remained
under the Nizam till the
merger of Hyderabad in 1948. This was called Marathwada.
In 1818, the British defeated The Marathas and British rule was
finally established. The British
divided India into Presidencies and Provinces, the boundaries of which
were determined more by
the chance of conquest rather than through any other considerations.
The two districts of Khandesh,
the Konkan districts, and Nasik, Nagar, Poona, Sholapur and Satara
districts became parts of
Bombay Presidency which was made up of Sind, Gujarat, the above-named
Maharashtra districts
and a few districts of Karnatak. The Purna valley, called Berar, and
the Nagpur area became the
southern parts of a Province which was called Central Provinces and
Berar (C. P. and Berar) and
Marathwada remained with the Hyderabad dynasty called the Nizam’s
dynasty. Bombay became
the capital of Bombay Presidency. It was becoming an important city
not only as a capital but as a
centre of commerce, trade and industries. The government moved to
Poona for four months of the
year, so that Poona also retained some of its old importance,
especially in army and government
circles and the traders belonging to the camp established outside the
old city. Matters continued
thus until India gained its independence and later the present State
of Maharashtra came into
existence by an Act of the Parliament of the Union of India on
60 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
1st May, 1960. For the first time, in the history of this linguistic
region, it became politically one. As
with the older centres, Pratishthan and Poona, Bombay also is rapidly
becoming not merely the
political capital of Maharashtra, but also its cultural centre.
Nagpur1 as the capital of the Bhosles helped to consolidate the
Marathi culture and language
on its north-east border. It was greatly influenced by northern
immigrants and it has absorbed many
people from Andhra. It still continues to be a very active centre of
the Marathi people though the
shift of the capital to Bombay has reduced its importance to a certain
extent.
This very short account of the dynastic history of Maharashtra shows
how different subregions
took part in the formation of Maharashtra at different periods and how
gradually the centre
of interest shifted from the Godavari southwards into the Krishna
basin and then slightly northwestward
into the altogether new city of Bombay. Pratishthan and Poona were
purely Marathi in
their character. Bombay, a small fishing village, was developed by a
foreign power and attracted
entrepreneurs from Gujarat and Sind and later from all other provinces
in India. In Bombay today
the number of people whose mother tongue is Marathi constitute about
43 per cent (1,775,114) of
the total population (4,152,056) of the city. If the number of Konkani
speakers (192,773) is added to
this, the percentage will be well over 47. They thus represent the
largest concentration of Marathispeaking
people in any city. The existence of the various communities belonging
to different
religions and different provinces with a very large sprinking of
western businessmen has made
Bombay a cosmopolitan city. This character has influenced Bombay’s
social life. Poona had led in
the political, cultural and educational effort during the first half
of the British period. But, however
wide the influence of Poona, and however great the political leaders,
they never lost their provincial
charecter. Bombay’s educational effort was in the hands of foreign
missionaries and the
government. It entered the educational field rather late, but has
rapidly made up for the time lag.
While in Poona the effort was made mainly by Marathi people, the
educational institutions in
Bombay were started and have been maintained by such varied
communities as Marathi, Gujarati,
Sindhi and Tamil people. In the same way, the political leaders have
belonged to both the Marathi
and Gujarati communities. Its dimensions of life are broader than
those of Poona and these are
well-reflected in the many-sided cultural activities. It is dominated
by the Marathi intelligentsia, but
Marathi culture itself has, been shedding its purely provincial
character.
The slight distinctions and the inter-relations of the six sub-regions
become very clear if we
study the type of village names found in them. A comprehensive study
of the village names is now
being conducted at the Deccan College, Poona, and all the results are
not in hand. The following
analysis is merely a preliminary analysis
1 D. G. Landge—”Nagpurcha Sanskritik Itihasa”, Madhya Pradesh
Samshodhana Mandal
Granthamala, 4, Nagpur, 1954.
MAHARASHTRA – LAND AND ITS PEOPLE 61
of place-name suffixes. A similar preliminary account of the content
of the place—names is also
given1.
In the table attached, forty-two suffixes are listed in a descending
order of frequency. In the
final analysis some of the suffixes might be lumped together, for
example, khede and kheda, pur
and puri. But here the list is given with only one consideration, that
of frequency. Only those suffixes
which occur at least twenty-five times in a sample of 9216 names are
given here. In the table
twenty-five districts of Maharashtra State excluding Bombay are
listed, one after the other, in such a
way that the districts coming into one sub-region are listed together.
Ratnagiri, Kolaba and Thana
make the sub-region Konkan; Poona, Satara, Kolhapur, Sangli, Sholapur
and Osmanabad form the
southern region comprising the valleys of Krishna and Bhima; Dhulia
and Jalgaon make up the Tapi
valley or Khandesh; Nasik, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Parbhani, Nanded
and Bhir form the
Godavari valley; Buldhana, Akola and Amraoti are in the Purna valley;
and Vardha, Nagpur,
Bhandara, Yeotmal and Chanda are in the Vardha-Vainganga valley.
1 The Government of Maharashtra has published in connection with the
1961 Census a list of
Maharashtra place names : “ Maharashtratil Khedyanchi va Shaharanchi
Varnakrami”, 1965.
The first volume of a book on the study of Maharashtra place names is
recently published.
62 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
Important place-name Suffixes by Region and Districts (Maharashtra)
Konkan Khandesh Godavari Valley
Suffix Total
Thana
Kolaba
Ratnagiri
Dhulia
Jalgaon
Nasik
Ahmednagar
Bhir
Aurangabad
Parbhani
Nanded
Gaon 1,130 24 24 13 12 47 73 75 53 108 70 70
Pura 555 2 2 3 15 5 13 26 15 63 28 47
Vadi 361 2 2 4 4 10 7 5 94 32 28 29
Kheda 166 — — 1 2 2 2 1 4 41 17 4
Vali 114 35 34 22 — — — — — — 1 —
Oli 110 8 10 5 1 1 2 1 1 4 2 2
Li 74 4 3 4 2 1 1 — 1 — 4 —
Khede 71 — — — 9 38 12 1 — — — 7
Vada 67 2 2 — — — — — 3 5 3 2
Ur 64 2 2 1 3 2 2 4 5 — 2 14
Ale 58 4 4 1 5 7 4 1 1 3 3 —
Di 57 1 3 1 — 4 3 4 2 4 1 2
Ghar 56 10 20 6 2 — 1 — — 1 — 1
Purl 51 — — — 1 3 — 3 7 15 4 2
Gavhana 48 1 — — 4 5 3 2 3 7 7 2
Vade 46 3 5 13 2 — 1 8 — — —
Ne 38 4 2 1 3 6 5 3 — — 1 —
Ada 37 5 6 1 2 4 2 1 — 3 3 —
Le 37 — 9 5 5 2 4 2 1 — 3 —
Vadi 37 — — — 1 1 1 — — 1 1 —
Abad 35 — — — 1 1 1 4 — 8 3 —
Ala 35 — — — — — — — — 1 2 2
Oli 34 3 4 6 1 — 2 3 — 4 — 1
Kheda 32 — — — — — — 3 — — 5 —
Ora 31 — — — — — — — 1 — 2 5
Pada 31 2 4 — 7 — 13 — — — — —
Palli 30 — — — — — — — — — — 7
Vad 29 1 2 — 4 6 1 2 — 1 2 —
Ve 28 2 1 5 1 6 2 3 — — — —
Shet 28 8 9 1 — — 4 2 — — — —
Ori 27 — — — — 1 3 — — — 2 —
Ra 27 — — — — — — — 4 3 1 —
Da 27 — — — — — — — — — 1 —
Ri 26 1 1 1 — 2 — 1 2 — — —
Ni 26 3 1 — — 1 1 1 — 2 3 —
Gad 26 2 1 4 2 — 3 — — 2 — —
De 26 1 1 4 1 4 3 1 — — 2 —
La 25 — — — — — — — — 1 1 5
Shi 25 1 — 5 — — 3 — — — — 1
Ja 25 — 5 1 — — 2 1 2 — 2
Ge 25 — 1 2 — 2 — — — 1 1 —
Gram 2 — 1 — — — — — — — 1 —
MAHARASHTRA – LAND AND ITS PEOPLE 63
Important place-name Suffixes by Region and Districts (Maharashtra)
Berar
Suffix
Buldhana
Akola
Amraoti
Vardha
Nagpur
Bhandara
Chanda
Yeotmal
Poona
Satara
Kolhapur
Sangli
Sholapur
Osmanabad
Gaon 53 39 38 34 48 30 91 48 43 25 6 15 41 50
Pura 19 31 71 45 33 5 35 33 11 6 8 8 14 17
Vadi 3 12 1 1 2 7 2 4 4 14 11 12 13 10 39
Kheda 38 26 17 1 — 1 1 4 1 — — — — 2
Vali — — — — — — — — 9 10 — — 2 —
Oli
LI 1 3 7 2 12 1 11 6 3 7 3 3 8 6
Khed — 1 3 3 10 5 10 2 5 2 — 3 — 3
Vada — 1 6 1 2 — — 1 — — — — — —
Ur 2 6 6 2 10 6 14 4 — — — — — 2
Ale — 1 1 1 — 1 4 3 2 1 4 2 3 4
Di 4 — 4 — — — — 1 3 1 3 3 2 4
Ghar 1 4 5 4 4 1 3 3 1 2 1 1 2
Puri — — — — — — — — — 8 7 — — —
Gavhana 2 3 — — 3 1 1 2 3 — — — 1 —
Vade — 2 4 — — — — 1 3 — 1 — —
Ne — — — — — — — — 6 4 2 2 — —
Ada — 1 — — — — — — 1 3 1 — 4 3
Le 1 1 — — 2 — — 3 — 1 — 1 — 1
Vadi — — — — — — — — 2 — 1 — 2 1
Abad — 1 — — — — — — 15 11 — 2 3 1
Ala 2 3 4 2 — 1 — 1 1 — — — — 2
Oli 2 6 1 1 5 1 9 4 — — 1 — — —
Kheda — — — 1 1 1 — 1 1 1 1 — — 1
Ora — 1 12 1 7 2 1 — — — — — — —
Pada 4 6 3 3 1 — 3 1 — — — — — 2
Palli — 1 1 — 2 — — — 1 — — — — —
Vad — — — — — — 23 — — — — — — —
Ve — — 2 — — — — 1 1 2 1 1 1 1
Shet — — — — — — — — 2 3 1 — 2 —
Ori — — — — — — — 1 3 — — — — 1
Ra 1 3 4 1 5 2 3 1 — — — — — 1
Da — 3 1 2 6 3 2 1 — — — — — 1
Ri 3 1 5 1 6 1 6 2 — — — — — 1
Ni — 1 1 1 3 2 3 2 1 — — — 1 3
Gad 1 2 2 1 — — 1 2 — 3 — 1 — 1
De 1 — 2 — 1 — 2 1 1 4 — — — —
La — — — — — — — 1 3 3 1 1 — 1
Shi — 2 — 4 1 2 7 2 — — — — — —
Ja — 1 — 1 1 — — 3 3 5 — 1 — —
Ge — — — — — — — — 3 1 — 3 2 3
Gram — — — — — — — — — — 3 — 5 10
64 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
The most frequent suffix is gaon derived from Sanskrit grama which
occurs in 1,130 cases, that is
about 12 per cent. The distribution of this suffix is as follows:—
1. Konkan “ “ “ 61
2. Krishna-Bhima “ “ “ 180
3. Khandesh “ “ “ 59
4. Godavari basin “ “ “ 449
5. Purna “ “ “ 130
6. Vardha-Vainganga “ “ “ 251
Total 1,130
We find that the Godavari, Purna and Vardha-Vainganga region which
have together fourteen
districts, as against Konkan, Khandesh and Krishna basin which have
eleven districts have 830 :
304 “ gaon “ suffixes. One can say that this particular suffix which
is found in all districts is found
over two times more frequently in eastern Maharashtra than in western
and southern Maharashtra.
In Konkan, the frequency is the least. The suffix which is second in
frequency is pur (555). It too
shows a very similar distribution. It is as follows:—
1. Konkan “ “ “ 7
2. Krishna-Bhima “ “ “ 64
3. Khandesh “ “ “ 20
4. Godavari “ “ “ 192
5. Purna “ “ “ 121
6. Vardha-Vainganga “ “ “ 151
Total 555
This suffix is found four times as often in the east as in the west
and south : pari occurs 51
times and is found in :
1. Konkan “ “ “ 0
2. Krishna-Bhima “ “ “ 4
3. Khandesh “ “ “ 4
4. Godavari “ “ “ 31
5. Purna “ “ “ 5
6. Vardha-Vainganga “ “ “ 7
Total 51
MAHARASHTRA – LAND AND ITS PEOPLE 65
Again, this suffix belongs predominantly to eastern Maharashtra
(Western Maharashtra 8
versus eastern Maharashtra 43).
The third suffix vadi (361) has the following distribution:—
1. Konkan 8
2. Krishna-Bhima 99
3. Khandesh 14
4. Godavari 195
5. Purna 26
6. Vardha-Vainganga 19
Total 361
Again, eastern Maharashtra has it twice as many times as western
Maharashtra, namely 240
to 121.
The fourth most frequent suffix is khed, found in the alternate forms
like khede, kheda and
khedi. All these suffixes are derived from the word kheta which in its
turn is derived from kshetra. It
means a field or a small rural settlement. In all there are 283 such
names. In the table below, the
distribution for these different types of suffixes is given :—
Khed Khede Kheda Khedi Total
1. Konkan 1 0 0 0 1
2. Krishna-Bhima 4 0 0 0 4
3. Khandesh 4 47 0 5 56
4. Godavari 69 13 8 4 94
5. Purna 81 7 13 1 102
6. Vardha-Vainganga. 7 4 11 4 26
Total 283
This again shows that this type of suffix is almost absent in the
whole of the coast and the Bhima-
Krishna region. It is also not very frequent in the Vardha Vainganga
basin. As against that, the
Purna basin, the Godavari basin, and Khandesh (the Tapi basin) have it
in the largest number. This
table shows that for this particular type of suffix, Khandesh has
something in common with the
Purna and Godavari valleys. Khandesh distinguishes itself from these
others in the grammatical
form of the suffix, That is, it has khede instead of khed.
66 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
The next two suffixes vali, oli together form 224 place-names :-
1. Konkan 114
2. Krishna Bhima 51
3. Khandesh 2
4. Godavari 13
5. Purna 11
6. Vardha- Vainganga 33
Total 224
This suffix is found most in Konkan and in the Krishna basin. It is
found again in Vardha-
Vainganga basin.
Another suffix, ghar, is found mostly in the west, vade is found again
in the west; vade is
found, however, predominantly in Bhima-Krishna Valley, as can be seen
in table below :—“
Ghar Vade Vadi
1. Konkan 36 21 0
2. Krishna-Bhima 15 14 32
3. Khandesh 2 2 1
4. Godavari 3 9 3
5. Purna 0 0 1
6. Vardha-Vainganga 0 0 0
There are in all 2755 places which have no separate, easily
recognisable suffixes. For
example Pune (Poona) is derived from some such name as Punaka which
becomes Puna and
modern Pune. Such names have been listed as without suffix for the
present. An analysis shows
that again eastern Maharashtra has more such names than western
Maharashtra and that the least
number of such names is found in Kolhapur and Sangli, the southernmost
districts of Maharashtra.
PLACE NAMES WITH NO SUFFIX
District. No. Total of Sub-regions
Konkan. 1. Thana 150
2. Kolaba 147 405
3. Ratnagiri 108
Krishna-Bhima, 4. Poona 139
5. Satara 103
6. Kolhapur 23
7. Sangli 43 463
8. Sholapur 66
9. Osmanabad 89
MAHARASHTRA – LAND AND ITS PEOPLE 67
PLACE NAMES WITH NO SUFFIX
District. No.
Khandesh
10 Dhulia 148 267
11. Jalgaon 119
Godavari Basin
12 Nasik 109
13 Ahmednagar 103
14 Bhir 79 680
15 Aurangabad 114
16 Parbhani 144
17 Nanded 131
Berar or Purna basin 18 Buldhana 111
19. Akola 147 376
20 Amravati 118
Vardh-Vainganga basin.
21 Wardha 64
22 Nagpur 153
23. Bhandara 49 564
24. Chanda 147
25. Yeotmal 151
2,755
This very preliminary survey shows that :—
(1) many of the suffixes are Sanskritic in origin and seem to possess
the meaning given to
them in Sanskrit text books on human settlements ;
(2) suffixes like gaon, pur, vadi, denoting settlements of the type
recorded in classical
Sanskrit are found in the Godavari basin and in the Vidarbha area
which were the two areas which
had powerful ancient empires. These seem to be the more ancient parts
of Maharashtra. Suffixes
like oli and vali which can be derived from palli, meaning a hill or
mountain-settlement are found in
the west which is rugged and mountainous*. In the extreme north-east
the Vainganga river seems to
be the Benna of Prakrit texts. A smaller river near Nagpur is called
Kanhan from Sanskrit Krishna,
so that the region between the two can be designated as between Kanha-
Benna. In the south, near
Mahabaleshwar (a spur of the Sahyadri) we meet two rivers with purely
Sanskrit names, Krishna
and Venna. It might be surmised that the eastern settlement is older
than the southern settlement,
on the general principle that Prakrit names generally antedate purely
Sanskrit names;
(3) this type of comparison apparently provides a tool for a fine
analysis between sub
regions. In certain respects, we have seen how certain sub-regions
stand apart from all others. An
explanation in cultural-historical terms is not always possible but
may emerge when a detailed
analysis for one linguistic province is made and when similar material
is available for neighbouring
linguistic provinces.
* Names like Winsai Ghatsai (Sanskrit. Vindhya-Shrayi, Ghat-Shrayi)
mean a mountain leanto.
68 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
A special case would make this clear. There are three suffixes, vad,
od, and de which
together number 47. In the coastal region, we have only 4 such
villages ; in Krishna-Godavari, none
at all, 1 in Purna valley and 2 in Vardha-Vainganga and all the rest,
that is to say 37 in Khandesh.
This peculiar position of Khandesh is easily understandable when we
know that Gujarat has many
place-names with these three suffixes so that the position of Khandesh
as an area open for
immigration from Gujarat becomes at once clear.
The sociological significance of some of these place-name suffixes
will be considered later
when we deal with the social structures of the people of Maharashtra,
especially their organisation
of space.
We have already mentioned that in Maharashtra up to about the eighth
century the language
used in the Godavari basin as also in the approaches to the coast
(Naneghat inscriptions) was
Prakrit. The Saptashati of Hala compiled some time in the seventh or
eighth century was also a
collection of poems in Prakrit. The “great tradition” was thus
embodied in Prakrit, which was the
language of the literary people as also of the coast. For a few
centuries after that we have no
continuous record. In the village of Akshi in Kolaba district on the
west coast, we find a Marathi
inscription which belongs to 1012 A. D. At about the same time, a poet
who calls himself Ko-uhala
(9th century) wrote a story in a language which he called Marahatta-
deshi bhasha1, that is a
language spoken in the desk (land) of Marahatta (Maharashtra). In this
story, Ko-uhala claims2 that
he is writing in this language so as to be understood by the common
people and women. The
language of this book is very different from the Prakrit of
Saptashati. A number of verb forms and
noun forms are Marathi but the whole language is not yet Marathi. It
might be called proto-Marathi.
From the kind of claim the poet makes, we gather that the language was
easily understood by the
masses. We can take it that though it may not be exactly the spoken
language of those times, it was
certainly a language understood by all. About two centuries later, we
find Dnyaneshwar writing a
commentary on the Gita in a language which he calls Marathi or deshi.
This commentary was
composed and recited to a temple audience and was written down by a
writer. So it was primarily an
oral communication. Here again, Dnyaneshwar tells that what was looked
in the inaccessible
Sanskrit was made easily available to all the people. The language of
Dnyaneshwari, as the book is
popularly known, is Marathi. Obviously it was also the language of the
people. A little later, but in the
same century, the Mahanubhava sect was putting on paper the sayings of
its founder
1 Apparently, the word deshi was used for a few centuries to denote a
spoken language of a region
as against the more universally understood Sanskrit or even Prakrit.
Dnyaneshwar, writing in 1290
A.D. talks of the language as deshi or Marathi. In the same way,
Hemachandra in 13th century A.D.
composed his famous dictionary of regional words and called it Deshi-
nama mala.
2 Upadhye A. N “Litavai” published by “ Sindhi Jain Granthamala”
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay,
1949.
MAHARASHTRA – LAND AND ITS PEOPLE 69
so that we have a record of contemporary spoken Marathi prose.
Dnyaneshwar’s verses as also the
prose of the Mahanubhavas cannot be easily understood by Marathi
speakers of today, but the
difference between that Marathi and the present Marathi is not so
great as for example between
Chaucer English and the present-day English.
One of the earliest Marathi inscriptions is found in Karnatak at the
foot of a Jain statue. It
contains three words, but the words and the grammatical construction
is pure Marathi. We may
therefore say that Marathi had come into its own as a language spoken
over a wide area and had
acquired a literary form which was used for inscriptions and for
communication over wide areas. The
transition from Prakrit to Marathi must have occurred between the 7th
and the 10th centuries.1 We
find the language already in its full flowering in the thirteenth
century. From the “little tradition”
Marathi had definitely passed into the “great tradition” by about the
twelfth century. We have
evidence of this in two rather late works. The one is a life of Christ
written in Marathi, called Christa-
Purana by Father Stephens (1549-1619) of Goa. The other is the story
of St. Peter written by a
Frenchman, Delacroix, in 1602 A. D. This means two things : one, that
people as far south as Goa
acknowledged themselves as belonging to the Marathi linguistic region;
and two, that the fact that
this type of proselytising material was in the literary language of
the land, means that it was
understood by everyone.
1 Certain analogies and contrasts suggest themselves in this study of
Maharashtra as a linguistic
region. A certain land area gradually became one linguistic region.
Throughout its history barring the
last few years, this area was always governed simultaneouly by
different dynasties. Sometimes the
dynastic rules belonged to people of different religions since the
coming in of Muslims. But the
linguistic unity and consciousness, once reached, was not disturbed.
This process cannot be called
universal. Sometimes, as in western Europe, a linguistic unity is
established and then the dynasties,
whether one or many, generally are native and because of Christianity,
Christian. It would be
interesting to spell out the differences and similarities of the
formation of cultural regions in India and
in the West. In India, southern regions belonged to a linguistic
family different from the northern
regions while in western Europe the languages all belong to the Indo-
European family. (The Lapps,
the Finns, the Hungarians, even the Turks, are peripheral to Western
Europe.) On the other hand,
all the Indo-European languages in India can be traced back to
Sanskrit and are not so different
from one another, as for example the Latin-derived southern language
and the Germanic northern
languages.
Gender & History ISSN 0953-5233
Shefali Chandra, ’Gendering English: Sexuality, Gender and the
Language of Desire in Western India, 1850–1940‘
Gender & History, Vol.19 No.2 August 2007, pp. 284–304.
Gendering English: Sexuality, Gender and
the Language of Desire in Western India,
1850–1940
Shefali Chandra
British India’s first ‘native’-managed high school for Indian girls,
the Poona Native
Girls’ High School (PNHS), was inaugurated in 1884. The school was
founded by proponents
of women’s English-language education; it taught its pupils until the
stage of
the matriculation examination – a rite of passage otherwise synonymous
with preparing
‘native’ men for government employment and certifying their
acquisition of the
English language.1 Despite the support of colonial and native elites,
the school drew
sharp attacks from those who opposed women’s English education. One of
the most
controversial of such criticismswas made in the play
TaruniShikshanNatika.2 Primarily
intended to lambaste the promiscuous ways ascribed to the school’s
female students
because of their desire to learn English, the play quoted an opponent
of the new education
for women as saying that he did not think that ‘women should be
imprisoned at
home in a burkha, but nor should they be allowed to participate in
balls’.3
Implicitly elevating a belief in an immutable indigenous culture and
Hindu brahminical
patriarchy, these words characterised the larger struggle over
signification
ushered in by British colonial modernity. At the heart of the conflict
was that ‘Indian
women’ were learning ‘English’.4 But such rhetoric indicated a wider
development –
that the constitution of both gender and language in this period
brought ideas of national
culture and sexual difference into alliance. Drawing attention to the
artifice of gender
even as they sought to fix it, statements such as this formed instant
identifications with
the parallel process of distinguishing the English language from
other, ‘indigenous’
languages.
In this article, I argue that the process of ‘indigenising’ the
English language
in colonial India drew sustenance from the equally charged process of
fixing sexual
difference. Conversely, the project of locating indigenous women as
the locus for
sexual difference made ready and regular reference to the (emerging)
hierarchy between
‘English’ and ‘indigenous’ languages. This article thus seeks to
illustrate the details
of the increasingly mutually reinforcing relationship between ‘Indian’
English and
colonial gender regimes.
Feminist historians of western India have demonstrated how the
sexuality of the
Hindu Brahmin woman was, at least from the eighteenth century,
deployed to sanction
The author 2007. Journal compilation
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,
UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Sexuality, Gender and the Language of Desire in Western India 285
social group mobility.5 By the early nineteenth century, fixing the
‘traditional’ role of a
normative female subject further served the collective ascendancy of
liberal nationalist
and British colonial interests alike.6 The context of nationalist–
colonial interaction thus
bolstered the deep significatory potential of ‘Indian womanhood’ and
generated new
cultural formations through embedded references to perceptions of
sexual difference.7
Vigorous social change was supported by somewhat alarming shifts
between ‘gender’
and ‘sexuality’. Viewing these developments in the context of a longer
history by
which (female) sexuality was monitored to bolster political power, I
reject received
assertions on divisions enforced in the nineteenth century between the
‘material’ and
the ‘spiritual’, between ‘west’ and ‘east’.8 I illustrate instead
howthe definition of sexual
difference and the coalition between female, indigenous and domestic,
were actively
assisted by the English language – putatively the language of the
colonial modern. It
was through this process that a rapidly mutating ‘English’ was made
acceptable, and
in fact even desirable, for ‘Indian women’.
The multidimensional relationship between language and gender in South
Asia
has been documented by scholars researching linguistic change in both
the ‘classical’
as well as ‘bhakti’ traditions.9 Non-classical language traditions
regularly disrupted
expected conventions of gender difference by frequently deploying the
figure of
‘woman’ to metaphorically suggest subterfuge, desire and the
circumvention of established
custom. It is therefore evident that South Asian languages have always
been
intrinsically gendered. Yet the ‘feminisation’ of non-English
languages (specifically,
of the Marathi language) that I trace here reveals that English and
Marathi were not
only gendered through their internal structures of signification.
Rather, and in addition,
the very terms, words and strategies used to identify native women as
the locus for sexual
difference were deployed to identify the difference between English
and ‘mother’
languages. Despite their coeval and closely interdependent
relationship, English and
the vernacular were separated from one another through the logic and
the vocabulary
of sexual difference.
The process made ready use of existing structures of sentiment. The
language
used to distinguish English from the vernacular was deeply gendered,
and evoked
multiple meanings and audiences. It did this by referencing popular
mythology and
brahminical caste requirements, while also exacerbating ideas of
resilient differences
between ‘east’ and ‘west’. These statements found ready and immediate
translation in
state-sponsored school curricula, popular cultural representations and
writings penned
by English-educated subjects (men as well as women) in this period.
Based on these
sources, I demonstrate that gender and language cemented differences
between ‘foreign’
and ‘indigenous’, and between ‘west’ and ‘east’. Growing distinctions
between
insiders and outsiders in this period support my assertion that the
discourse on ‘native’
gender was Janus-faced in its orientation: it referenced diverse
audiences, sharpened
ideas of local and global distinctions and remained attuned to gender
standards in an
idealisedVictorian Britain, while simultaneously carving out fixed
standards for gender
difference in the colonial location.
My approach to the English language focuses on its rising symbolic and
cultural
power as projected from the middle of the nineteenth century.
Rejecting the primacy of
formal, linguistic or grammatical definitions for language,10 I
demonstrate instead that
the consolidation of new, transnational gender norms elevated the
cultural meaning
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
286 Gender & History
of the language over its linguistic structure. Over-determined as this
context was
by perceptions of cultural difference and the struggle over
signification, hegemonic
social groups in western India deployed their control over English to
consolidate the
connection between the ‘indigenous’ woman, gender as difference and
reproductive
sexuality. My ‘gendered’ analysis of the English language will thus
illuminate two processes:
how the representation and regulation of sexual difference shaped the
content
and reach of Indian English, and how this process then formed its own
‘language of
gender’. This gendered English created new codes of signification to
support thematrix
of colonial–national and heterosexual gender.11
‘To unite the highest intellectual attainments with the most feminine
and
domestic graces’
Situated in the western Indian cities of Bombay and Poona, and
covering the years
between 1850 and 1940, this article acknowledges that the rise to
social prominence of
the first generation of English-educated men, the vibrancy of port
cities in the colonial
culture of nineteenth-century British India, the growing availability
of new ideas in the
print culture of the time and the first expressions of nationalist and
regional sentiment
exacerbated the conflict over establishing standard ideas of ‘Indian’
culture.12 The
mid-nineteenth century specifically marked the rise of new
patriarchies – not just new
methods of patrolling gender by way of female behaviour – but also the
clarification of
an entire constellation of practices and arguments that served to
augment the authority
of a newclass of ‘native’men.13 Furthermore, the rise of English
literary study in British
India in this very period viably masked the political conquest of the
subcontinent and
in the process created a class of ‘surrogate Englishmen’ – English-
educated native men
who became the conduits for cultural transfer and control.14 The
colonial administrative
debates over this matter have been well documented, but the manner in
which this
carefully controlled form of English education actually took root in
British India has
received far less attention.
The (male) agents of cultural transformation produced by colonial
English education
policies first disseminated their knowledge by introducing it to
‘their own’ women.
While there is evidence for a number of private, home-bound efforts
for teaching
English to native women,15 perhaps the earliest interest in creating a
wider and institutional
location for an education that foregrounded English learning was
launched by
Manockjee Cursetjee Shroff.AParsi judge in the court of small causes
in Bombay city,16
he first had his own daughters taught at home by a British governess,
and then went on
to establish the Alexandra Native Girls’ English Institution. As early
as 1843, he stated
to the governor of the Presidency, Mountstuart Elphinstone, that the
model he aspired
to institutionalise would ‘unite the highest intellectual attainments
with all the most
feminine and domestic graces’.17 An idealised Victorian culture –
itself under construction
in middle-class Britain – that placed great emphasis on the separate
sphere
of female domesticity thus dictated the parameters for the English
education of Indian
women.
Conversing in Calcutta a few years later (in 1850) with another
advocate of
women’s education, J. E. D. Bethune, Cursetjee further argued that the
‘Marathee
and the Guzrathee . . . abound with more impure and unchaste
terms . . . denoting
the mental degeneration of the people’.18 Conscious of the newefforts
to standardise the
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
Sexuality, Gender and the Language of Desire in Western India 287
vernacular,19 of ‘converting it from its defective state and
dilapidation, into a language
of literature (divesting the same of the unchastity of thoughts and
ideas)’, Cursetjee
asked Bethune ‘whether the English or the vernacular should be the
language through
. . . which to impart to the plastic minds of the girls here the
knowledge of Europe’.20
Cursetjee’s attempt to stabilise the relationship between English and
non-English languages
invoked the superior literary and intellectual power of English.
Convinced that
only ‘English [was] complete in all its useful and entertaining
elements, and adequately
expressive of individual thoughts, feelings and wants’, Cursetjee
sculpted the relationship
between English and the realisation of individual, human sentiments.21
Even more
crucially, however, he deployed the ‘language of gender’ to signify
the hierarchy and the
space between English and the ‘vernacular’.22 He related the values of
‘unchastity and
impurity’ to the ‘vernacular’. His concern over the difference between
English and the
vernacular seemed inflected by the wider social reform rhetoric on the
moral and sexual
improvement of native women. English, subtly associated with a modern,
literary and
enlightened Europe, was juxtaposed with the impure and defective
vernacular, even as
the latter remained amenable to reform and example. The two languages
were culled
from the same structure of signification that differentiated between
men and women.
Common-sense notions of gender – themselves under construction – were
delicately
deployed to fill the cultural space between English and non-English
languages.
Linguistic histories of pre-colonial South Asia have demonstrated that
languages
have existed in symbiotic relationships with one another – evidence of
deep multilingual
realities.23 The relationship between languages – itself essential to
the status of
each idiom as a language – was constantly buttressed by symbolic power
and the
association of each with a set of attributes and privileges. Hence the
distinction
between languages was maintained as much by symbolic associations as
it was by their
formal and informal roles. This representational space between
languages, which somewhat
uneasily maintained the hierarchy between social classes, was
vigorously interrogated
in the eighteenth century. In the case of western India, new
competition between
social elites over access to the Peshwa court in the eighteenth
century had disrupted
the relative power encoded in the Persian, Sanskrit and Marathi
languages.24 Despite
this conflict, each language continued to derive its status and
presence as much from
associations with power and access as from its physical, linguistic
structure. Cursetjee’s
interest in determining the relative worth of English and the
vernacular thus followed a
well-established history of fixing the symbolic value of specific
languages. What was
strikingly novel however,was how he culled this relationship. His
multiple-coded references
to gender suggest the increasing importance of sexual difference in
determining
cultures of power for an emerging nationally oriented identity.25
Cursetjee demonstrated
the myriad ways in which perceptions of sexual difference could be
harnessed
to imply the relative value and worth of culture. Furthermore, and
even more crucially,
it was English that enabled him to dictate the parameters of the
private and thus to
renegotiate his access to the public–political world of colonial
modernity.
Having suggested this particular relationship between English and the
vernacular,
Cursetjee went on to found the Alexandra Native Girls’ English
Institution, where
‘none but girls and ladies of the most respectable families, or of
those otherwise distinguished
for their intellectual and moral worth, and being well recommended,
[shall]
be admitted into the Institute’.26 Cursetjee’s efforts, which appeared
to encourage
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
288 Gender & History
(gendered) equity in learning, actually deepened the association
between social privilege
and English education by nurturing – through exclusion – the class
interests of an
upwardly mobile English-educated intelligentsia. Emphatically bringing
together the
Anglicised, the domestic and the celebration of a selectively shaped
indigenous culture,
the school’s first report (for the year 1863) approvingly noted the
students’ deportment,
their hairstyles and ‘dress, which though blazing with jewels or gold
spangles, had still
some similarity to the dress of an English girl’.27 Native women had
to demonstrate
not only their intellectual achievements, but also their ability to
display the trappings
of both indigenous and western culture.
And ‘English’ lay at the heart of this complex pedagogical transfer. A
decade after
its inauguration, the school’s annual day ceremony saw the governor of
the Presidency,
Sir Richard Temple, address the audience – the students, their parents
and prominent
members of other philanthropic societies in the city. Speaking of the
‘highest and most
superior kind of education’ imparted at this institution, Temple
foregrounded ‘English’
in his definition of education and emphasised to his audience that at
the Alexandra
school,
the special purpose is to give to native girls an education not
perhaps exactly the same as that which
is given to English ladies, but an education on the same principle and
on the same model, and
mainly through the medium of the English language . . . we saw from
the graceful way in which
[the students] were so good to defile . . . before the ladies and
gentlemen present, that they are being
instructed exactly in the same graceful address and manners as those
we hope distinguish, and will
ever distinguish, the English young ladies.28
Native girls were being educated into the ideals of conduct and
comportment that
defined the lives of ‘English young ladies’, ideals that had to be
performed for
the interested gaze of an elite, largely male, native and European
audience. The
social organisation of perceived sexual differences was achieved
through the selective
display of particular codes and behaviours. This standard of upper-
class deportment
borrowed heavily from an idealised notion of English feminine
accomplishments. And
English eased this transnational fashioning of the feminine–domestic.
At the heart of
the production of mid-nineteenth-century bourgeois gender in Britain
was the requirement
of domesticity, the separate spheres of male and female influence,
knowledge and
activity and the elevation of domestic comfort, home and family life.
29 Supported by
a companionate understanding between husband and wife, the harmonious
domestic
ideal required a mutual, cosmopolitan awareness of the larger world.
But in the case of
India, the selective Anglicisation, performed for and supported by the
European and
native philanthropists present, compulsorily maintained a requisite
quota of ‘indigenous’
culture in its elaboration.
Further cementing the connection between women and gender difference,
Temple
reminded his audience that while native men were being educated in the
‘arts, the
sciences, the poetry, the literature, the politics, the history of
Europe, [and were] . . .
accustomed to live in houses constructed upon and furnished in the
English style’, their
women were yet to feel the power of these cultural benefits. The
cultural deficiency
of Indian women thus betrayed the mission of universal Anglicisation.
Ultimately,
however, Temple believed that native men would ‘seek the companionship
of women
educated somewhat in the same manner, women who are able to appreciate
and understand
all those pursuits, studies, and sciences’. Abiding by this almost
natural course
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
Sexuality, Gender and the Language of Desire in Western India 289
would ‘overcome even the most ancient prejudice [and] be a necessity
of your social,
your domestic, your national existence’.30
For this collection of European officials, philanthropists and English-
educated
native men, the English education of Indian women was an unqualified
signifier of
progress that would contribute to the elevation of national character.
Moreover, it provided
the means for the domestic, the public–social and the national to
coalesce in a
matrix of harmonious bourgeois authority. Heterosexual, romantic love
and companionate
understandings cemented the path to India’s progress; all would be
achieved
through the English education of Indian women. Further conceding the
‘remarkable
progress and proficiency’ attained by native youth, Temple felt
compelled to caution
that ‘at present the women of India are very much below,
intellectually, the women
of Europe . . . the circumstance that the women are so well educated
in Europe is one
great reason why households are well managed, and why children are
well trained’.31
If uneducated Indian women could not comply with the pedagogic
intervention
of the English education project, they would negate the possibility of
marital companionship
and the domestication of national cultural values. The question of the
intellectual
comparability of native and European men, measured by English
education, was
effectively laid to rest through the prospect of the deficient English
knowledge of
Indian women. This established the civilisational inferiority of India
vis-`a-vis Europe.
Not only were ‘Europe’ and ‘India’ deftly essentialised by this
process, but so too were
the class and caste distinctions between Indian women. As the
governor’s speech indicates,
educated Indian women could not automatically bridge the intellectual
divide
between themselves and their husbands. Only English-educated women
could possibly
narrow the cultural and intellectual impasse within the conjugal unit,
for only these
women could introduce the culture and civilisation of Europe into the
Indian bourgeois
family. Thiswas howthe English educational project came to be
inflected by the gender
standards of a transnational bourgeois heterosexuality – one that
deployed standards of
cultural difference between ‘England’ and ‘India’ to claim its
emerging hegemony.
‘The language of the bedroom’
Following on the heels of Cursetjee’s pedagogic experiment, the
inauguration in 1884
of the Poona Native Girls’ High School was accompanied by abundant,
discordant
and impassioned debates in the mushrooming print culture of the time.
32 Kesari, then
under the editorial management of G. G. Agarkar, noted in September
1884 that popular
opinion considered the English language to be vittalshi.33
Dictionaries from the early
twentieth century record that the term indicated the defiling touch of
a member of an
untouchable caste, or the contaminating presence of a menstruating
woman. The suggestion
that English was ritually impure – especially at a time that saw the
re-evaluation
of the contours of authentic and indigenous culture – swiftly stoked
the pre-eminent
foundational fear of a patriarchal brahminical order, one that had
historically consolidated
power through languages of power and control over female sexuality.
Similarly
invoking an indigenous structure of sentiment, another writer
identified simply as
G. B. L. wrote on the same subject to the English-language, native-
managed newspaper,
the Mahratta. Here s/he argued that were Indian women to learn
English, then ‘under
the powerful, magical influence of such a language, poor Marathi,
already crippled,
will soon be discarded as the dialect of the illiterate Kunbi’.34
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
290 Gender & History
That this history of linguistic change evoked sharp anxieties over
caste and
rural/urban boundaries reflects the longer, status-centric politics of
language in South
Asia.35 In this case the fear was that English would encroach on
Marathi; that (uppercaste)
Indian women speaking English would annihilate both the Marathi
language
and all organic ties to indigenous culture, history and tradition and
with that, would
relegate Marathi to becoming the language of the rural, non-Brahmin
peasant. The
underlying implication was that the respectable status of Marathi was
dependent on its
use by upper-caste women. It was these women who had to perform their
knowledge
of Marathi so as to ensure that upper-caste culture remained
‘organically’ indigenous
and resistant.
The struggle over fixing gender difference elevated the cultural force
of English
beyond its linguistic features. Arguing that ‘the ambition of every
woman . . . will be to
blubber in a tongue whose force will be soon overpowering’, G. B. L.
firmly believed in
the ability of women to signify cultural parameters and thus to
realise both the irresistible
cultural ascendancy of English, as well as the mutually exclusive
relationship between
English and the vernacular.36 The ‘fact’ of Indian women learning
English signified the
immediate rejection of indigenous languages and the ‘magical’,
‘overpowering’ effect
of the English language.
Resonating with views expressed by Cursetjee at a slightly earlier
date, G. B. L.
also believed that ‘English’ could provide an intellectual example to
Marathi: if works
were translated from English, then the ‘most choice pieces of poetry,
of thought, of
philosophy’ would be introduced to Marathi speakers. The vernaculars
would thus be
reformed through infusions from English.37 Much in keeping with the
training disseminated
through British India’s first generation of English-educated men, G.
B. L.,
a self-identified ‘native’ writing in one of the most prominent
English-language newspapers
of the time, believed that the existence and quality of literary works
established
the superiority of the corresponding culture. At the same time, G. B.
L. supported the
widening differentiation between English and ‘the vernacular’. While
the vernacular
might have been relatively barren – in terms of literary content and
its ability to encode
sophisticated thoughts and feelings – it was also malleable and open
to transfusion.
This was how the physical structure of the weaker Marathi could be
improved – though
not violated – by the example of another language.
Writing in the Mahratta the following week, ‘a correspondent’ further
elaborated
on why only women could maintain the space between English and non-
English
languages. If English were taught to ‘our’ women, then
it will be our Lingua Franca and it will efface every trace of the old
Vernaculars. English will be the
language of the streets, the market, the kitchen and the bedroom.
Whatever be the excellences or
special qualifications of the English language, we are not at all
prepared to leave our mother tongue
in its favour, for everybody knows the affection which he feels for
every thing that he can call his
own . . . I say that we are not prepared to lose our nationality in
the loss of our language. Sad and
mournful will be the day when a Hindu child will say to his mother
‘Mamma, I am hungry; get me
the moon, Mamma’!! This will be the ultimate fate of India if the
medium of educating females be
made the English language.38
This author claimed that when native mothers learned English, they
would immediately,
irrevocably surrender the vernacular, initiate its demise and disrupt
the culturally
sanctioned boundaries of gender difference. Then English would
permeate the public
and the private, disrupting commercial transactions as well as public
order. And most
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
Sexuality, Gender and the Language of Desire in Western India 291
outrageously, it would infiltrate the site for the production and
reproduction of national
subjects and the foundation of the bourgeois domestic–private: the
bedroom.
Female sexuality had no location or purpose outside the inner recesses
of the bourgeois–
nationalist home.
Invoking the ‘mother tongue’ further elicited loyalty and affection,
and the expectation
of a sacred domestic culture. This was essential for the sentimental
response
that the writer hoped to elicit from the public at large. Successfully
manipulating the
multiple possibilities encoded in references to the mother – that most
elevated role for
nineteenth-century colonial bourgeois womanhood – the correspondent
exhorted ‘every
champion of the Marathi language [to] whet his sword and be ready to
enter the lists.
“Courage is necessary as the affairs are critical!!”’39 The conflation
of domesticity, the
mother tongue, Marathi and the mother, all besieged by a crusading
foreign culture,
amplified the urgency of preventing ‘women’ from learning ‘English’.
Simultaneously,
it anticipated a masculine, militant response.
The slippage between signs enabled individual words to be endowed with
greater,
lesser or different meanings altogether. This was how the internal,
constituent elements
of language – even languages of power – could be steadily, subtly
redirected. The
relationship between the individually charged terms of these lines
was, by the last two
decades of the nineteenth century, re-evaluated in the context of
bourgeois nationalism,
its need to establish and police gender stability and the threat posed
by the ascendancy
of an Anglicised middle class. Together, this directed how certain
words were being
brought into relationship and conflict with one another. Motherhood,
the mother tongue,
reproductive sexuality and domesticity were brought into alliance, and
‘English’ was
thrown into an oppositional relationship.
This process of defining ‘indigenous’ and ‘foreign’ culture
simultaneously
endowed some participants with a striking recourse to the flexibility
of meaning. In
1887, Bal Gangadhar Tilak took over from G. G. Agarkar as the editor
of Kesari. The
newspaper had published an article on the curriculum of the Poona
Native Girls’ High
School. Railing against the school for keeping its curriculum veiled
from the larger
population,40 the article further claimed that ‘English educated,
piano playing, singing
and dancing women, Grace Darlings and Elizabeths’ were threatening to
usurp the
once sacred position of Ahilyabai and Sita.41 By arguing that English
was somehow
antithetical to the essential, and now vulnerable, needs, duties and
functions of Indian
women, the debates shaped a cultural field that implicitly,
undesirably and powerfully
masculinised English.
Constantly accompanying the masculinity of English was the
feminisation of the
vernacular. Kesari reiterated that Indian women must (re-)learn their
vernaculars so
as to prevent the unnatural crusade of the English language and
British values. The
danger of English was that once women learned it, it would eradicate
native culture
and be magically reproduced by successive generations of Indian
children. Gender –
by way of women – had the power to materially transform languages.
According to this
writer in Kesari, the ‘vernacular’ chalked out the terrain for the
behaviour and purpose
of native womanhood, and simultaneously marked the limits of the
English language
and its culture. This aspect of the ‘feminisation of the vernacular’
necessitated that the
non-English languages be the location as well as referent for ‘Indian’
womanhood.
Kesari next went on to praise Narayan B. Kanitkar for revealing the
complexities
of the school through his play, TaruniShikshanNatika.42 First
published in 1886, its
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
292 Gender & History
printed version went into several editions, and it was staged every
week in Marathi
theatres around the city of Poona, where it was viewed by ‘both the
educated and the
uneducated Hindus of Poona’.43 The play depicted the lives of a number
of female
students in the new institution, describing them both at school and at
home. Central
and recurring themes were the flirtatious and sexually motivated
behaviour of the
native female students, their enactment of European dances and
mannerisms and their
mercenary inclinations. The women were overwhelmingly driven by their
desire to
be educated in English, and the play described how their single-minded
pursuit of an
English education drove them to prostitution and extramarital affairs.
‘English’was repeatedly invoked to signify the very opposite of
normative culture,
motherhood and femininity. For instance, a central scene in the play
described Chimni –
one of the English-educated female characters – dressed in
‘bootstockings’ and sitting
in a room furnished with chairs and tables, a mosquito net and piano
while attempting to
understand a geography lesson in English. Viewing an illustration from
the Ramayan,
she expressed longing for Ram’s physique, and then repugnance for her
husband’s
appearance. In an obvious reference to a recently concluded, heavily
publicised case
for the restitution of conjugal rights, Chimni argued aloud that her
education was far
more desirable to her, and that she had come to realise that she would
not accompany
her husband to his new home away from Poona.44 The play then depicted
her flirting
with her male English teacher.
Kanitkar powerfully portrayed ‘English’ as diverting women from the
core of
womanhood: conjugality, domesticity and motherhood. The play wove its
way through
feminist rants, threats of divorces and elopements, ending with the
central character
having to earn a living by prostituting her body.45 Its most striking
feature was
how it sexualised these English-educated women. Earlier
representations (such as in
the school reports from the 1870s that I discussed earlier) had framed
the agenda
for women’s English education by examining the manner in which women
presented,
performed and preserved Hindu tradition, domestic values or their
maternal responsibilities;
in other words, gender presentation determined gender identity. But
Taruni-
ShikshanNatika vividly represented womanhood – by way of female
sexuality – as
undesirably compromised because of the female characters’ desire for
English.
The play constituted a significant eruption in the history of gender.
Boldly
introducing the tendentious issue of the object of desire, it
suggested that women who
desired English were defined primarily by their sexuality. Because of
that, they might
fall outside the parameters of prevailing gender norms altogether.
These repeated and
disturbing portrayals of the excessive sexuality of the English-
educated woman effectively
established that ‘English’ had the power to introduce a debased,
corporeal desire
into the conjugal relationship.46 The purported incommensurability of
sexuality and
indigenous womanhood invoked by the play would be disturbed by
English. The power
of English thus lay in its ability to irrevocably disrupt the
fundamental, and therefore
most vulnerable, connection between sexuality and gender.
That was not the only kind of gender trouble feared by Kanitkar. The
playwright
also believed that the English-language education of native women
would bring
‘immense harm to the males of his Community’47 and that the ‘teaching
of the English
language and English ways to young women . . . [is] enervating [and]
immasculating
[sic]’.48 The English language and British cultural ways were thus
endowed with
emasculatory power. Listing these disruptions the author stated:
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
Sexuality, Gender and the Language of Desire in Western India 293
If women . . . imitate men . . . they will desire the alien religion,
they will mix the simple and pure
Marathi language with English words to create a weak combination . . .
obscene books will spoil
their minds, they will drink alcohol with men, will want to dance in
the English way, they will want
to have love marriages, ask for divorces, prefer the path of
elopement. . . 49
The power of English to contaminate indigenous conceptions of gender
difference
suggests that the language was associated with a deferred, threatened
or undesirable
masculinity. I believe that the significatory power of English in
colonial India ultimately
emerged from its ability to appropriate the status of forbidden
masculine power. The
concurrence that ‘English’ works be translated into the vernacular,
the oblique alliance
of the female and the vernacular as endangered by ‘English’ as well as
the allegations
that native culture was both disrupted and disciplined by the speaking
of ‘English’ –
all of these factors suggest that the somewhat errant power of
‘English’ emerged from
its symbolic ability to regulate gender order. As will become clear,
the proponents of
women’s English education also manipulated the cultural meaning of
English to argue
that it would effectively control sexual difference and gender order.
‘I shall read pretty English stories to my mother and translate them
into
Marathi for her’
The tremendous symbolic authority of ‘English’ in late nineteenth-
century colonial
India lay in its capacity to influence the chain of signifiers that
shaped the relationship
between ‘women’ (as the locus for gender difference) and sexuality.
This phallocentric
power, with its ability to signify a frustrated, even deferred
masculinity, could
be successfully deployed to control native womanhood. It is telling,
then, that the
advocates of women’s English education now articulated their agenda by
presenting
English as the integral and constitutive element that bound women to
normative
heterosexuality.
In 1890, there appeared a Marathi-language biography of the first
student of the
Poona Native Girls’ High School. Entitled SadgunManjari,50 it was
based on the life of
Avadibai (henceforthAvadi) Bhide, a young Brahmin child widowwho might
have been
the school’s first matriculate had she not died tragically before the
examination.51 The
biographer, Ganesh Janard Agashe, was well aware of the allegations
levelled against
English-educated women in the popular press. In contrast to prevailing
expectations
that an English educationwould spoil the morals of Indianwomen, make
them obstinate
and rude, encourage them to disobey their husband’s authority and
disdain household
tasks, the tale of Avadi Bhide provided a very different perspective.
Agashe reconstructed minute details of Avadi’s life from her letters
(some of
which were written in English), her diary as well as memories of her
school friends and
teachers. In contrast to earlier representations that polarised
‘English’ and normative
womanhood, Agashe’s work enumerated the many ways by which the
‘English’ language
and native women could co-exist, and even beneficially reinforce one
another.
Agashe worked to impress his reader with Avadi’s diligence,
conscientiousness and
integrity as well as her selfless devotion to ‘Marathi’ culture. She
appeared to have
been completing more than one year’s work each year that she was in
the school. Her
teachers encouraged her ceaselessly, giving her English books such as
Pandita Ramabai
Saraswati’s The High Caste Hindu Woman to read.52
More to follow...
...and I am Sid Harth
cogitoergosum
Avadi was evidently a model student. The author reports on her
performance in
an English scholarship examination conducted in 1887. Asked how she
would use the
education she was currently receiving, Avadi answered:
Having been cut off from the worldly affairs by the will of God,53 I
mean to pass my life in helping
others . . . I shall read pretty English stories to my mother and
translate them into Marathi for her
sit still as many poor girls in my
position have to do. Then science and the higher subjects that I learn
and mean to learn, will help
me in talking with my father and brother, and I shall have the dear
pleasure of seeing them pleased
with me.54
Avadi presented her thwarted reproductive and conjugal desires as the
most significant
aspect of her female identity: her gender was informed by the lack –
and longing
– for reproduction and domesticity. Furthermore, her knowledge of
English structured
other, intimate relationships. It is significant that these were
entirely asexual and
defined by the biological, filial and domestic. Avadi planned to read
English stories –
in translation – to her mother, but discuss science and the ‘higher
subjects’ with her
father and brother. In the case of educating her unschooled mother,
Avadi performed
the role of ‘surrogate Englishman’. In contrast, her knowledge of the
higher subjects
– evidently borne by English – permitted her proximity to the male
members of her
family.
Whether it was for the facility she demonstrated with the English
language in
stating her goals for the future, or for the sentiments espoused
therein, Avadi’s work
satisfied her examiners beyond expectation: she was awarded an
unprecedented thirtynine
out of forty points for this answer. In a related vein, writing a
school essay in
English on the ‘IdealWoman’, Avadi argued passionately that such a
woman was ‘true,
loving and obedient to her husband . . . [and] ought to take great
care of her children and
instruct them so as to make them good . . . Above all, she should be
strictly religious,
for without religion no woman can fulfil all that is required of her
as maiden, wife or
mother’.55 Avadi’s model woman was shaped by a religious desire and
her reproductive
function; both of these would harmoniously co-exist with her knowledge
of English.
The language provided her with the syntax to express exactly those
well-disciplined,
gendered desires.
Yet Avadi would never allow ‘English’ to overwhelm her intellectual
and cultural
identity. Agashe repeatedly stated that his primary agenda was to
demonstrate that,
despite her English education, Avadi did not eulogise the works of
‘Shakespeare and
Milton’. Rather, she regularly went into raptures over the works of
the Marathi poet
Moropant and, at another stage, over a Marathi story that depicted the
wifely devotion
and fortitude of a long-suffering and even physically mistreated
female character. The
evidence Agashe collected on Avadi thus performed a dual purpose. It
established
that English would not encroach on Marathi. Second, despite its
phallocentric power,
English would be disciplined by the reality of brahminical gender
difference. If English
provided the conduit for sexual desire and (hence) disruption in
TaruniShikshanNatika,
Agashe deployed it as the silent referent against which to display
Avadi’s asexual
femininity.
Following on an established history whereby the state (in western
India) regulated
caste mobility by legislating the acceptable parameters of female
sexuality,56 here too
the sexuality of the Brahmin woman was deployed to signify the
cultural power of
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
Sexuality, Gender and the Language of Desire in Western India 295
the socially mobile, English-educated, elite. The question of
reception thus becomes
increasingly intriguing: the colonial state could barely have been
cognisant of the
power of these multiple-coded messages. The primary audience surely
consisted of
the opponents of English education – those who had manipulated
representations of
overly sexualised English-educated women and emasculated Indian men to
oppose the
use of the English language and the spread of English education.
Agashe’s book was
dedicated to the superintendent of the school and would have been read
by some of
its teachers and students. His depiction of Avadi’s sexless womanhood,
her obvious
affinity for Marathi and the manner in which he blurred the
distinction between the
formal linguistic structure of English and its cultural effect
together articulated the
agenda, content and purpose of women’s English education by the late
nineteenth
century.
Perhaps the clearest representation of the manner in which stable,
normative gender
would sterilise the phallocentric power of the language was made in a
fictional,
English-language account written by an Indian woman, Shevantibai
Nikambe, in 1895.
That an English-educated Indianwomanwould reach to the novel to
amplify her support
of the English education of native women is of tremendous
significance, especially for
a reading of agency, resistance and cultural interpellation. Entitled
Ratanbai: A Sketch
of a Bombay High Caste Hindu Young Wife, the short novel depicted the
Brahmin girl
Ratanbai, her tireless quest for an English education and the repeated
hurdles placed
in her way by various forms of native tradition.57 Ratanbai’s craving
for English was
strikingly depicted as seething, fervent and potentially disruptive of
the basic pleasures
of home and family that bourgeois Indian woman were educated into
desiring. Describing
her reaction after she had been removed from school for the second
time, Nikambe
informs the reader that Ratan was ‘most miserable . . . How often,
with an aching heart,
she would sit dreaming about the school life! Her teacher, her
companions, the English
lesson, the translation class, came before her, and then the longing
would come: “Oh!
Could I but go to school once again!”’58
Ratanbai’s longing for English, portrayed as sensual, secretive and
forbidden,
suggested a misplaced desire. Ultimately it was her husband – himself
educated to
the highest standards at a British university – who intervened both by
soothing her
tumultuous longing for education as well as by guiding that very
desire. This is evident
in Nikambe’s intriguing depiction of their wedding night, their first
moments spent
in complete solitude and otherwise synonymous with heterosexual
intercourse. The
young couple first discover their mutual attraction for a particular
‘beautifully bound
gild edged Book’ which Prataprao declares they should both access
regularly so as to
‘make it our guide in life’. And only then does ‘Prataprao Khote claim
young Ratanbai
as his partner in life. They begin life together, recognising the
responsibilities and duties
which lie before them, and which concern not only themselves but their
people and
their country’.59
Ratanbai’s husband entered the narrative solely to divert her longing
away from one
form of phallocentric authority (the English education project).With
that, he led her to
another – heterosexual romance, reproduction and a nationalist
sensibility. Nikambe’s
novel established the benign and entirely non-radical benefits of an
English education;
it did so by depicting the expansion of those sites which compulsorily
reproduced
heterosexual affect: the private space of the home, the wedding
ceremony and the
nation.
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
296 Gender & History
At a wider level, the text concurred with TaruniShikshanNatika by
enacting a shift
in the process of evaluating gender. Earlier requirements had stressed
the performance
of palpably gendered knowledge – the demonstration of religious belief
and ritual, the
adherence to ‘native’ language and dress and the performance of
‘Victorian’ domesticity.
But by the turn of the century gender was constituted by a valuation
of the object of
desire.60 Thewomen who desired English in TaruniShikshanNatika were so
excessively
sexualised that they appeared beyond the realm of gendered
possibilities, while both
Avadi and Ratanbai were presented as appropriately gendered beings
precisely because
their desire was malleable and subordinated to the laws of native
hetero-patriarchy.
‘A new generation of hipless, breastless woman is coming to the
forefront
in America and Europe’
The contested relationship between gender and English in the
nineteenth century had
subjected English to the scrutiny of new requirements of domesticity,
nationalism and
sexuality. The parameters and purposes of gender difference shifted
over this period,
but by far the most significant turn was in the amplification of
heterosexual power as
determined by the object of sexual desire. Ultimately and throughout,
the proponents
of the English education system laboriously crafted English to appear
supportive of
bourgeois heterosexual gender norms. In the process, the class profile
of the Englisheducated
was significantly broadened, even as the incremental increase in the
number
of women learning English continued to strengthen the ongoing
reification of gendered
difference between English and non-English languages.
The example of Dhondo Keshav Karve (1858–1963) and his pioneering
Indian
Women’s University (IWU) is most instructive in illustrating new
connections between
gender and English in the early twentieth century.Ahighly motivated
man from a village
on the western Indian coast, Karve’s tireless quest to learn English
and to excel as a
student of the ‘modern’ education system makes for fascinating studies.
61 Politically,
he was most respected for his position on brahminical widowhood. Aware
that the
social ostracisation of the Brahmin widow must be addressed to
initiate the larger issue
of caste reform, Karve in 1896 inaugurated a school, the Mahilashram
in Poona, for
Brahmin widows. It was here that his belief in the primacy of the
‘mother tongue’ for
women found its first institutional realisation. The education at the
widows’ school
was almost entirely delivered in Marathi, although a few girls were
taught Sanskrit via
Marathi.
Karve was convinced that women must learn ‘their own’ languages. Yet
his views
shifted considerably over time. By the turn of the century, the
Mahilashram taught
the first grade of English education. Karve gradually became even more
amenable to
educating some students in the English language. In 1907 he realised
that some of his
students could pass the matriculation examination of Bombay University.
62 The Poona
Native Girls’ High School was at this time the most viable option for
the high schooling
of native girls and women. Curiously rejecting this option, however,
he enrolled his
senior students in the New English School for Boys, where he himself
had once taught
English. The New English School for Boys was entirely administered by
Indians but
did not admit girls. Special provisions were thus made for Karve’s
female students.
Why did the boys’ school appear to present a more attractive option?
Karve offered
several explanations for enrolling his students at the New English
School for Boys and
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
Sexuality, Gender and the Language of Desire in Western India 297
not the Poona Native Girls’ High School. The latter had been closed
sporadically due
to the outbreak of plague in the city. Furthermore, he found that the
methods used to
teach the students in the PNHS were so extremely severe that the
experience served to
discourage the students altogether. And he believed that ‘girls
deserved much greater
encouragement than boys’.63 Did Karve’s decision actually signal that
the disjuncture
between women and English had begun to be resolved? Or was it possible
instead that
a women’s school teaching English posed more of a threat to the
stability of gender
binaries than a boys’ school did? Was it easier to manage gender
difference under the
conditions of the native-managed boys’ school?
In 1915, Karve was invited to share his pedagogic philosophy with
members
and guests of the Indian National Social Conference, the social reform
counterpart of
the Indian National Congress. The Conference comprised those
(predominantly male)
leaders most invested in claiming their authority over the rapidly
modernising Indian
nation. Discussing the various aspects of the present education
system, Karve especially
emphasised that ‘the strain involved in receiving instruction through
a foreign tongue
that tells so severely upon the boy is bound to do greater harm to the
girls. We cannot
afford to have the future motherhood of the land thus enfeebled and
enervated by this
extra and uncalled for strain’.64
Karve’s belief in essential differences between the sexes propelled
his agenda for
women’s education and the place of language in the new educational
curricula.65 Never
calling for a total absence of English, Karve elaborated in this
speech that the ideal
girls’ school should maintain ‘English as a second language, with
courses of study
specially suited to the needs of womanhood’.66 Just as significant was
his conception
of indigenous womanhood: for him, girls and women were defined purely
by their
reproductive function. An overwhelming emphasis on English was thus
inappropriate
for women because it would hamper their maternal capacities. Also
emphasising the
connection between English and social class, Karve conceded at this
event that ‘those
women who have the time, money and inclination . . . are welcome to
follow [that]
course of study’. While English might be detrimental to the
reproductive function
of women, elite women might (he believed) be permitted to study the
language as a
concession to their privilege and leisure.67
In 1916, Karve was successful in inaugurating the Indian Women’s
University,
the first (and even today, only) women’s university in India, which
opened with five
students.68 The institution was based on the recognition of two
essential principles,
that ‘the most natural and therefore efficient medium of instruction
is the learner’s
mother tongue and secondly, women as a class have different functions
to fulfil in the
social economy from those of men’.69 The first of these clauses
completely naturalised
the ‘feminisation of the vernacular’ – the process by which stable
gender difference
(located in women) marked certain languages as indigenous. The second
principle
demonstrated that sexual difference – irrespective of social class –
had been fixed
through the reproductive act.
The maternal, reproductive role of ‘women as a class’ now dominated
other means
by which gender difference was defined and realised. Continually
contrasting the indigenous
with the foreign, Karve also wrote against the ‘continuing prohibition
of the
mother tongue so much so that the mother tongue has been rendered
untouchable’.70
The stark polarities between English and non-English languages,
already marked by
gender, were further buttressed by his belief in the widening
difference between the
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
298 Gender & History
‘indigenous’ and ‘foreign’. Intellectual development in India would
remain retarded as
long as the dominance of the English language continued to undermine
‘the position
which nature means the mother tongue to have’.71
The invocation of the mother, and of the mother tongue, to provide an
emotive
thrust to the patriarchal nationalist project had, as I have
demonstrated, been shaped in
the mid-nineteenth century. And yet, Karve’s idea of gender differed
in striking ways
from earlier articulations of gender difference. Rather than focus on
the presentation
of gendered behaviour, on the performance of religious, ritualistic or
‘indigenous’ culture,
or even on the object of desire, he alluded entirely to the
reproductive function
of women as shaping female identity and gender difference. Second,
‘east’ and ‘west’
were essential ingredients in naming gender difference. Finally,
through the university’s
curriculum, he could naturalise these differences as knowledge and as
cultural
critique.72 Not only did the IWU do away with the matriculation
examination as its
standard for admission (crafting instead its own ‘Entrance
Examination’), but it replaced
the designations of Bachelor and Master of Arts. The equivalent to the
BA was
the GA – the Graduate of Arts, or Grihitagma. The MA was replaced by
the Proficient
in Arts, or Pradegragma.73 Alongside this, it declared English to be a
compulsory
subject in the curriculum. Within a year of its inauguration, the IWU
stated that the
medium of instruction would be the students’ mother tongue, but that
English would
be a compulsory second language.74
I believe that the fixing of gender through the reproductive function
and the absolute
polarity now established between ‘English’ and the ‘vernacular’ is
what made
the ‘foreign’ tongue more acceptable for female students. While this
apparent shift
does seem to mark the final acceptance of English and a slight change
of heart for
Karve, it also furnishes us with further evidence of the continuing,
reinforcing relationship
between English and gender in modern India. The policies
institutionalised at the
IWU subordinated English to the ‘mother tongue’, fixed gender through
reproductive
sexuality and also marked insuperable differences between indigenous
and foreign culture.
Altogether, these policies enabled the emergence of English, but only
as a critical
product of gender difference.
Karve had held that the ‘foreign’ tongue would be detrimental to the
health of
native women, yet he had also maintained that English be a second
language in the
university.75 His views were further developed through his colleagues
and associates,
one of whom, G. M. Chiplunkar, elaborated further on the parallel
constitution of
indigenous gender (as determined by motherhood) and the polarity
between English
and ‘indigenous’ language. Chiplunkar taught at the Indian Women’s
University and
published a book in which he dealt explicitly with the subject of
women’s education.76
Bringing together the naturalisation of gender difference through the
reproductive function
with essential differences between ‘east’ and ‘west’, Chiplunkar
railed against the
women’s educational system in the west, arguing that a
new generation of hipless, breastless woman is coming to the forefront
in America and Europe.
These women may serve the purpose of intellectual companionship in
companionate marriages but
as far as motherhood is concerned, [the] future race of children, if
they are given the right of self
determination, will not prefer them as their prospective mothers.77
Chiplunkar concurred with Karve in advocating that ‘Indian women’ be
taught
English. ‘Indianwomen’ were defined according to an idealised
difference fromwomen
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
Sexuality, Gender and the Language of Desire in Western India 299
in ‘America and Europe’, a difference that – by way of reproduction
and motherhood
– established their superior femininity. Further citing the widely
influential 1923 publication
of the British Board of Education on the differentiation of curricula
according
to gender, Chiplunkar also advocated literary study for girls. The
report had forcefully
argued that ‘girls were better in English and boys in Mathematics’ and
that therefore
‘there is a real need that girls should study pieces of Literature
selected chiefly for their
. . . accurate use of language’.78
Chiplunkar quoted the recommendations of this study at length,
maintaining that
‘women are more emotional than men. Artistic “imagination” and
“vision” appears
to be closely allied with their emotional nature and for this reason
it is obviously of
vital importance in their education’.79 The education of a ‘future
wife and mother’, he
believed, would by definition have to be wider than that of a boy,
incorporating not just
the subjects that boys learned in schools but also ‘1. household
arithmetic. 2. unlimited
literature. 3. hygiene. 4. housekeeping in all its aspects’.80
Other subjects that he advocated were fine arts, child psychology, sex
hygiene and
moral training. Despite all of his concerns about unnecessarily
exertingwomen through
the educational system, Chiplunkar’s ideal curriculum seemed even more
taxing than
the putatively gender-free one applicable to Indian boys. The syllabus
and reports on
curricula instituted at the IWU from this point on establish that
women were taught
English as a necessary, compulsory subject. Marking the close
correspondence between
language and the cultural values encoded in literature, the IWU also
taught English by
way of literature. Indeed, the university remained steadfast in its
commitment to correct
prevalent ‘misunderstandings that a graduate of this university is
shut off from the vast
treasures of English literature. The University does recognise English
as a language of
world-wide culture and special importance to India on political and
national grounds’.81
In some contrast to debates from 1870, when the project of fixing
gender difference
referred to caste-specific control over the domestic, private and
conjugal, here ‘gender’
indexed the public, and even international, status of the nation. By
the second decade
of the twentieth century, gender clearly identified the distinctly
indigenous and modern
aspects of the Indian public. As I have demonstrated, this had already
been anticipated
in the pedagogic agenda envisaged by Manockjee Cursetjee Shroff.
Rather than keep
English out of the curriculum at the IWU, the new climate of building
an authentic
national culture necessitated that Indian women learn English. English
was continually
foregrounded as a compulsory subject in the curriculum, although it
remained essential
to demonstrate that it was supported by the more ‘natural’ ‘mother
tongue’. The
latter remained the medium for instruction. Disciplined by the
institutionalisation of
beliefs in the importance of the ‘vernacular’ language for women’s
education, by the
further stabilisation of gender difference through the discourses of
reproduction and
motherhood and by the establishment of certain essential and
insuperable differences
between women and men as well as ‘east’ and ‘west’, English was –
regardless of earlier
distinctions between the elite and middle classes – made acceptable
for the needs
of ‘native’ womanhood.
Women make English an Indian language
The vast conflict over fixing the place of the ‘indigenouswoman’,
especially heightened
in the colonial context, spawned the charismatic status of the English
language. As
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
300 Gender & History
I have demonstrated, the distinction between the language and its
cultural effect was
repeatedly thrown into acute disarray because of the politics of
gender. Not only did this
necessitate that ‘women’ learn ‘their vernaculars’, but it established
that the vernacular
enter into a relationship of supportive submission to the English
language. Throughout,
gender provided the glue that bound English and ‘indigenous languages’
together, just
as the vernacular came to embody the physical space for the
performance ofwomanhood
and the reproduction of national culture.
If this presented one aspect of the cultural history of Indian
English, at least in
its western Indian guise, another lay in the very language deployed to
energise those
developments. Building on the feminisation of the vernacular enabled a
constellation
of references to emerge that crafted the association between the
native woman, the
mother and the mother tongue. A strategy such as this, which smoothly
extracted affect
and subjected multiple constituencies to a similar relation of filial
devotion and
masculine chivalry, constantly referenced Hindu mythology and rituals
of purity and
pollution to strengthen its case. The result was a particular culling
of the heteropatriarchal
and Hindu brahminical as authentically local, indigenous and
resistant. Gender,
by way of women, was structured as a language and produced English as
a cultural
consequence.
The English language emerged as a critical effect of gender – a
constantly deferred
referent in the chain of signification that arose around the cultural
project of fixing native
womanhood. This history was entirely reliant on the binary being
shaped between
‘indigenous’ and ‘foreign’, as well as ‘vernacular’ and ‘English’ – a
series of polarities
that provided the larger terrain for the urgent project of locating an
essentialised native
womanhood so as to sustain a globally relevant programme of modern
gender difference.
Thus the global, as a series of ideas, drew sustenance from equally
vivid notions
of an immutable, local and indigenous culture. Allusions to universal
and culturally
specific standards of domesticity, reproductive desire and motherhood
thus provided
the gendered syntax for the nebulous phallic authority attained by the
English language
as it began to claim its position as the pre-eminent global language
of power.
Notes
For their comments I thank Saadia Toor, Abby McGowan, Antoinette
Burton, Jean Allman and Uma Chakravarti,
as well as the two anonymous readers for Gender & History.
1. The founders of the Poona Native Girls’ High School (also referred
to as the Poona Female High School, or
the Huzurpaga School) claimed it to be the first native-managed school
in British India to teach its female
students to the level of the state-wide matriculation examination. All
subjects after the fourth grade would
have been taught in English.
2. Narayan Bapuji Kanitkar, TaruniShikshanNatika, athva adhunik
tarunishikshan va stri svatantra yanche
bhavishyakathhan [A Play on the Modern Education of Young Girls or a
Prophecy on Modern Education
and Female Freedom] (1886; Pune: Shri Shivaji Press, 1890).
3. Kanitkar, TaruniShikshanNatika, pp. 2–3.
4. My use of inverted commas for English indicates that the meaning of
the language – under constant
negotiation – superseded the power communicated through its linguistic
or grammatical structure.
5. Uma Chakravarti, Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita
Ramabai (New Delhi: Kali forWomen
in association with the Book Review Literary Trust, 1998).
6. Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial
India (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1998).
7. Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Issues ofWidowhood: Gender and Resistance in
ColonialWestern India’, in Douglas
Haynes and Gyan Prakash (eds), Contesting Power: Resistance and
Everyday Social Relations in South
Asia (Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 62–108,
esp. pp. 77–9.
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
Sexuality, Gender and the Language of Desire in Western India 301
8. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and
Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993), p. 6.
9. Vinay Dharwadker (ed.), The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan
(New Delhi and New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999).
10. Here I take my cue from V. N. Volosinov, even as I depart from his
argument that ‘language acquires life and
historically evolves precisely in concrete verbal communication and
not in the abstract linguistic system of
language forms nor in the individual psyche of speakers’. V. N.
Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of
Language, tr. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (1929; repr.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973),
p. 58. In the case of India, Sumathi Ramaswamy has focused on the
structures of (devotional) sentiment that
bind speakers to language and thereby questioned the notion of a
transparent linguistic form that pre-exists
the power of locally and historically constituted ideologies. Sumathi
Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue:
Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997).
11. I believe that this responds to Judith Butler’s critique in her
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999), p. xii. I agree that the
acceptance of sexual difference – real or
imagined – as fundamentally shaping gender itself serves to elevate a
heteronormative, anti-feminist theory
of gender. By showing how new rules for gender differentiation were
derived from an understanding of
the power of English, I attempt to disassociate the origin of the
knowledge of gender difference from its
location in bodies differentiated according to (perceived) sexual
attributes.
12. Mridula Ramanna, ‘Profiles of English Educated Indians: Early
Nineteenth Century Bombay City’, Economic
and Political Weekly, 4 April 1992, pp. 716–724; Aroon Tikekar, The
Cloister’s Pale: A Biography
of the University of Bombay (Bombay: Somaiya, 1984); Christine Dobbin,
Urban Leadership in Western
India: Politics and Community in Bombay City, 1840–1885 (London:
Oxford University Press, 1972); Jim
Masselos, Towards Nationalism: Group Affiliations and the Politics of
Public Associations in Nineteenth
Century Western India (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1974).
13. Chakravarti, Rewriting History.
14. I borrow the term ‘surrogate Englishmen’ from Gauri Viswanathan,
Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and
British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
15. Shefali Chandra, ‘The Social Life of English: Language and Gender
inWestern India, 1850–1940’ (unpublished
doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2003).
16. In one of his letters he stated that he was a commissioner in the
Court of Requests – the two positions do
not appear to be contradictory.
17. Manockjee Cursetjee Shroff, A Few Passing Ideas for the Benefit of
India and Indians (London: Emily
Faithfull, 1862), pp. 3–4.
18. Cursetjee, A Few Passing Ideas, p. 26.
19. In Cursetjee’s use, the term denoted the non-English languages of
India. Obviously referencing the distinction
between Latin and other European languages, the very use of this word
implicitly elevated English to
the authoritative position of a classical language.
20. Cursetjee, A Few Passing Ideas, p. 26.
21. Cursetjee, A Few Passing Ideas, p. 25.
22. I borrow the term ‘language of gender’ from Laura Runge, Gender
and Language in British Literary
Criticism, 1660–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
23. Sheldon Pollock, ‘The Cosmopolitan Vernacular’, Journal of Asian
Studies 57 (1998), pp. 6–37.
24. Veena Naregal, Language Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere
(New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001).
25. I thank an anonymous reader for Gender & History for helping me
clarify this point.
26. Cursetjee, A Few Passing Ideas, p. 80.
27. Alexandra Native Girls’ English Institution (hereafter ANGEI),
Alexandra Native Girls’ English Institution,
Its Origin, Progress, and First Report 1863–64 (Bombay, 1881), n. p.
28. ANGEI, Report of the Alexandra Native Girls’ English Institution
for the Years 1876 and 1877 (Bombay,
1878), n. p.
29. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and
Women of the English Middle Class,
1780–1850 (1987; London: Routledge, 2002).
30. ANGEI, Report . . . for the Years 1876 and 1877, n. p.
31. ANGEI, Report. . . for the Years 1876 and 1877, n. p.
32. Even a cursory search through the records of Kesari, Mahratta,
Native Opinion, Pune Vaibhav, InduPrakash
and other periodicals published in Pune and Bombay during 1884 reveals
the overwhelming density of debate
on this subject.
33. ‘Strishikshanavar shevatche don shabd’ [‘A FewWords on the Subject
ofWomen’s Education’], Kesari, 16
September 1884, p. 2.
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
302 Gender & History
34. Kunbi is the Marathi word for peasant. G. B. L., ‘A High School
for Native Girls’, Mahratta, 17 August
1884, p. 6.
35. An anonymous reader at Gender & History helped me better
articulate this point.
36. G. B. L., ‘A High School for Native Girls’, p. 6.
37. It is significant that the debates over language in the girls’
school never referred to the far more prevalent
government-sponsored activity of rendering Marathi works in English.
Orientalist translations from Indian
languages had of course been far more invested in the ‘classical’
languages, and had only fleetingly taken
account of the ‘vernacular’ languages. The activity had peaked some
sixty years earlier in the case of
western India, and had been accompanied by the rise of a standardised,
Sanskritised Marathi written in the
Devanagari as opposed to the Modi script. The relationship between
classical and ‘vernacular’ languages,
and the later use of the ‘mother tongue’ to designate those languages
recognised as ‘vernacular’, also suggest
the subtle work of gender ideology in these developments.
38. ‘Higher Female Education’, Mahratta, 24 August 1884, p. 3.
39. ‘Higher Female Education’, p. 3.
40. The writer said the curriculum had been kept in a burkha: the
allegation resonated with the statement made
in TaruniShikshanNatika that I mentioned at the beginning of this
article.
41. Ahilyabai and Sita are iconic female figures from Maratha and
Hindu mythology; Sita was increasingly
invoked as an embodiment of the dutiful Hindu wife. Kesari, 28
September 1887, quoted in Venubai Panse,
Pragati Pathavar Svarn Mahotsav Smarak Granth [On the Road to
Progress: Golden Jubilee Commemorative
Volume] (Pune: High School for Indian Girls, Huzurpaga, 1934), p. 45.
42. ‘Female Highschoolateel Shikshankram’ [‘The Curriculum in the
Female High School’], Kesari, 28
September 1887, p. 2.
43. ‘The Poona Native Girls High School’, Bombay Gazette, 21 October
1887, p. 8.
44. The reference was clearly to the case of Dr Rakhmabai. In 1884,
Rakhmabai had legally filed for separation
and publicised her opposition to her marriage with Dadaji Bhikaji. The
resulting furore reverberated through
the colonial courts as well as British and native society. For an
overview see Chakravarti, Rewriting History,
pp. 138–41.
45. Almost forty years after the first publication of
TaruniShikshanNatika, another Marathi author, Vithal
Vaaman Haddap, created an equally resounding sensation with a similar
depiction of ‘Indian’ womanhood
corrupted by English education. The novel was first published in 1924.
The protagonist of Bahekleli Taruni
[literally, The Blundering or Corrupted Young Girl] studied at the
same Poona Native Girls’ High School.
V. V. Haddap, Bahekleli Taruni (Mumbai: Mauj Office, 1924).
46. This play was not alone in making such an association. For a
discussion of the newspaper accounts, plays
and novels that constantly referred to the excessive sexuality of the
English-educated woman, see Chandra,
‘The Social Life of English’, ch. 3.
47. ‘The Poona Native Girls High School’, p. 8.
48. Kanitkar, TaruniShikshanNatika, pp. 13–14.
49. Kanitkar, TaruniShikshanNatika, pp. 14–15.
50. Sadgun: full of the most virtuous qualities; Manjari: the seeds of
the tulshi plant used in Hindu religious
rituals.
51. Ganesh Janard Agashe, SadgunManjari: eka hatbhagya strichye
charitra (Pune: AryaBhushan Press, 1890).
52. Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, The High Caste HinduWoman (New York:
Fleming H. Revell, 1887), is usually
read as a critique of Brahmanical gender relations, which it certainly
was. But Ramabai also makes startling
associations between women’s desire for knowledge and privacy as
together structuring the primacy of
the conjugal relationship. Far from being a revolutionary rejection of
normative views on gender, Ramabai
also emphasised the private, companionate and domestic aspects of the
conjugal relationship as energising
progressive gender relations.
53. Popular opinionwould have held that as a child widow,Avadiwas
socially useless and inauspicious, and that
her education was responsible for initiating this unfortunate turn of
events. Here she presents her situation
as willed by divine purpose and strives to characterise her interest
in charitable pedagogic activities. The
confluence between English education and the rise of a socially
responsible philanthropic inclination has
been explored in Ellen McDonald, ‘English Education and Social Reform
in Late Nineteenth Century
Bombay: A Case Study in the Transmission of a Cultural Ideal’, Journal
of Asian Studies 25 (1966),
pp. 453–70. The gendered aspects of this ‘transmission’ are however,
yet to be examined, especially as they
emerged at the confluence of an evidently Protestant notion of a
calling or vocation in the service of society.
54. Agashe, SadgunManjari, pp. 17–18, italics in original.
55. Agashe, SadgunManjari, pp. 119–20.
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
Sexuality, Gender and the Language of Desire in Western India 303
56. Hiroshi Fukazawa, The Medieval Deccan: Peasants, Social Systems
and States, Sixteenth to Eighteenth
Centuries (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991); Chakravarti,
Rewriting History.
57. Shevantibai Nikambe, Ratanbai: A Sketch of a Bombay High Caste
Hindu Young Wife (London: Marshall
Brothers, 1895).
58. Nikambe, Ratanbai, p. 43.
59. Nikambe, Ratanbai, p. 59.
60. George Chauncey has identified a similar shift in his study on
urban US culture in the late nineteenth
century. George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the
Makings of the Gay Male
World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
61. Dhondo Keshav Karve, in Karve and N. M. Patwardhan, Atmavrit va
charitra (Pune: Hingne Strishikshan
Samstha, 1954). For a more expansive discussion, see Chandra, ‘The
Social Life of English’, ch. 4.
62. Karve recalls in Atmavrit va charitra that the school had about
seventy-five students on its rolls at this point,
but it is unclear how many of these students were at the higher,
English standards.
63. Karve, Atmavrit va charitra, p. 257.
64. Shreemati Nathibai Damodher Thakersey (hereafter SNDT), Shreemati
Nathibai Damodher Thakersey
Indian Women’s University: Calendar (hereafter SNDT Calendar) (Poona:
H. R. Diwekar, 1924), p. v.
65. Karve recalls that he was inspired to reach these thoughts by
reading a pamphlet that had been sent to him
anonymously, some years earlier, on the Japan Women’s University in
Tokyo established by Mr Naruse.
Karve quoted Naruse at length in his presidential address. Naruse had
declared that ‘our aim in establishing
the Women’s University is neither to copy the higher institutions for
women in America and Europe, nor
to rival the men’s university courses in this country. What we aim at
is so to frame our schedules of study
as to suit the mental and physical conditions of women at present and
to gradually raise the standard in
accordance with general progress’. It is critical to note that Naruse
made no mention of language in his
strident attempt to frame a course of study suitable to the female
subjects of the ‘Empire of Japan’. D. K.
Karve, Looking Back (Poona: Hindu Widows’ Home Association, 1936), p.
107.
66. Karve, Looking Back, p. 105.
67. Once again, this presented a curious twist on the ideas put forth
by Naruse, who recognised that women
might not desire to be married or to procreate, and that the
educational system must not force them to
delimit other ambitions. By Karve’s standards, however, the only women
who might seek alternatives to
the conjugal and reproductive function were those of the already
leisured classes. Karve, Looking Back, p.
144. This is of especial importance because Karve believed that
vernacular education might ‘democratise’
education in general, yet he never believed that alternatives to
female domestic functions and performances
might make knowledge or culture free of gender inequality.
68. The numbers expanded over the years. By 1922, the university
reported over 700 students in the feeder
schools (which were themselves spreading across Bombay Presidency and
even beyond). Students in those
schools would have entered the university through its entrance
examination. Fifteen students were reported
as having passed the higher [GA] standard. SNDTWomen’s University:
Sixth Annual Report (Poona, 1922).
69. SNDT Calendar, p. vi.
70. Karve, Atmavrit va charitra, pp. 425–6. The word Karve uses –
vittal – is the same one found in the Kesari
article cited above (note 33) on the contaminating effects of the
English language. Vittal is used to indicate
the polluting touch of a member of an ‘untouchable’ caste or that of a
menstruating woman. It can also
mean to marginalise, or to dispense with.
71. Karve, Atmavrit va charitra, p. 429.
72. As pointed out by an anonymous reader for Gender & History, the
deliberations on religious, ritualistic
and indigenous culture themselves characterised the formation of
specialised knowledge, and might have
superseded the performative aspect of domestic and conjugal behaviour
(as desired by Cursetjee and other
advocates of women’s English education).
73. Karve maintained that the agenda was to ‘remove defects in the
system which affect both men and women’.
The curriculum, however, was entirely oriented towards female domestic
roles. As he himself said, ‘the
very name suggests . . . studies looking to the needs and
circumstances of the generality of women. With
this object in view, Domestic Economy and Hygiene are given an
important place . . . under the head of
Domestic Science are include Biology, Anatomy, Human Physiology, and
Elements of Psychology with
special study of the child mind, which are compulsory. Fine arts, viz.
music, painting, needle work and
embroidery . . . [are] regular subjects of the examination’. Karve,
Looking Back, p. 141.
74. Indian Women’s University (Pune: AryaBhushan Press, n. d.) lists
the syllabus for the university’s entrance
examination in 1917. The necessary subjects were ‘English, vernacular,
History and hygiene’. This record
listed, among other English literature subjects, Oliver Goldsmith’s
play ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ and Sir
Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
304 Gender & History
75. Karve had also been the primary teacher and advocate for the
ambitions of his sister-in-law, Parvati Athavale,
whose desire to learn English conclusively shaped her life and travels
for decades. For a reading of her
autobiography, see Chandra, ‘The Social Life of English’, pp. 240–58.
76. G. M. Chiplunkar, The Scientific Basis of Women’s Education
(Poona: Prof. S. B. Hudlikar, 1930).
77. Chiplunkar, The Scientific Basis of Women’s Education, p. 26.
78. British Board of Education, Report of the Consultative Committee
on Differentiation of the Curriculum for
Boys and Girls Respectively in Secondary Schools (London: HMSO, 1923),
p. 123. It is fascinating that
100 years after Thomas Macaulay had encouraged English literary study
as a means to discipline Indian
men into colonial relations of dominance and consent, the British
board advocated the same route for the
gender socialisation of British women. This is not to say that this
was a new domestic policy for Britain.
See Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983; repr.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1996); Janet Sorensen, The Grammar of Empire in Eighteenth-
Century British Writing (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000).
79. Chiplunkar, Scientific Basis of Women’s Education, p. 92.
80. Chiplunkar, Scientific Basis of Women’s Education, p. 75.
81. SNDT, Srimati Nathibai Damodher Thakersay Indian Women’s
University: A Short Account of Its Origin
and Growth during 1916–1926 (Poona: AryaBhushan Press, 1926), p. 4.
The author 2007. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007
CHAPTER 3*-HINDI
Hindi.
HINDI IS CONSIDERED TO BE THE LANGUAGE OF MADHYA DESH by Grierson. He
divides it into two
parts—Western and Eastern. Western Hindi consists of five dialects
viz., Bangree or Hariyani, Khadi
Boli, Vraj, Bundeli and Kanauji. Among these Khadi Bolt has now
achieved a unique place of
honour, as it is raised to the level of the lingua franca of
independent India. It is popularly known as
Rashtrabhasha. Eastern Hindi consists of three dialects viz., Avadhi,
Bagheli and Chhattisgadhi.
This classification is not accepted by modern philologists. Dhirendra
Varma in his recent
article ‘Hindi Pradesh Aur Uski Upabhashaen ‘(published in the special
issue of ‘Sahitya Sandesh’—
July-August 1957, pp. 55 and 56)—expresses the view that the term
‘Hindi language ‘really means
literary Khadi Boli written in Devnagari script and this is the
language spoken in the following parts
of the country viz., (1) Bihar, (2) Uttar Pradesh, (3) Madhya Pradesh,
(4) Rajastan, (5) Delhi, (6)
Himachal Pradesh and (7) Hariyana. He further adds that the principal
dialects of Hindi are : (i)
Maithili, (ii) Magadhi and (iii) Bhojpuri in southern parts; (i)
Avadhi-Bagheli, (ii) Chhattisgadhi, (iii)
Vraj-Kanauji, (iv) Bundeli and (v) Khadi Boli-Hariyani in central
parts; (i) Jaypuri-Hadanti, (ii) Mevati-
Ahirpati, (iii) Marvari, Mevari-Malvi in the western region and (i)
Gadhavali-Kumayuni and Pahadi
dialects of the environs of Simla in the northern region. According to
him Urdu can be added to this
list as it is another literary style of Khadi Boli. Thus Hindi
comprises fourteen dialects. This view has
now found general support among all linguists of repute.
In Maharashtra primarily Khadi Boli is propagated and fostered,
although sporadic attempts in
the direction of other dialects of Hindi such as Avadhi or Vraj are
found.
It must be admitted that Maharashtra has been taking interest in Hindi
from very early days. It
is well known that from the days of Dnyaneshwar (1275 A.D.)
Maharashtra has been the home of
Bhagawata Dharma. All Marathi saints headed by Dnyaneshwar have been
the avowed champions
of this Dharma, and were primarily
*This Chapter is contributed by Dr. M. D. Paradkar, M.A., Ph. D., Vice-
Chancellor, Bombai
Hindi Vidyapeetha, Mahim, Bombay 16.
interested in bringing home their ideas to the masses in Maharashtra.
As these masses consisted of
people speaking languages other than Marathi also, it was thought
proper to use a common
medium. This made these saints use Hindi as the medium of expression.
Nevertheless, their songs
in Hindi deserve mention.
Although historically the credit of writing poems in Hindi first goes
to Muktabai, Namdev is the
first Marathi saint whose Hindi songs are accepted as authentic. Born
in a family of modest means
in about 1270 A.D., he came into contact with Dnyaneshwar and joined
him in a pilgrimage to the
holy places of India. In the latter part of his life, he migrated to
Punjab and propagated the
Bhagawata Dharma there. This ultimately culminated into the formation
of a sect under his name.
Ghoman in the district of Gurudaspur is known for Gurudvara Baba
Namdevji, the temple erected in
his memory. It is no wonder, therefore, that his songs are preserved
in Grantha Saheb. The
influence of Marathi over these songs (forms like ‘anile’,
karile’etc.), the importance given to
muttering of the appellations of the Lord in them, the devotion to
Vitthal as well as autobiographical
references appearing therein are all characteristics that go to prove
beyond doubt that they have
come from the lips of the famous Marathi saint of Pandharpur. Some of
these are couched in
Gurumukhi also. One of these songs happily identifies mind with the
measure of cloth and the
tongue with a pair of scissors helpful in destroying Yama’s nose—
“mana mere gaju jivva meri kati
mapi mapi katau jamaki phansi
kaha karan jati kaha karen pati
rama ko namu japau dinarati
soneki sui rupeka dhaga
nameka citu hari sau laga.”
Translation.—”My mind is the measure of cloth and tongue, the pair of
scissors. With these I
am cutting the nose of Yama slowly and slowly. How am I concerned with
caste or creed? Day and
night I continue to mutter the name of Rama I consider this needle of
mine to be golden and the
thread woven through it is made of silver. My mind is completely
riveted on the Lord”. Thus it is that
tailoring work of Namdev of Pandharpur continues.
Some of his songs (Abhangas) admirably bring out the utter vanity of
false sacrifices and fake
austerities.
In short, Namdev is the first great Marathi saint who successfully
propagated the Bhagawata
Dharma in the beginning of the 14th century by composing lucid songs
in Hindi.
In the latter half of the century, Bhanudas became famous in
Pandharpur for his unflinching
devotion to Lord Vitthal. In addition to his compositions in Marathi
he has also composed some
poems (known as Gavalan) in Hindi. One of them happily describes Lord
Krishna in his cowherddress.
266 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
“Jmuna ke tata dhenu charavat rakhat hai gaiya;
monhan mera sainyya;
Morapatra shiri chhatra suhave gopi dharat bahinya
Bhanudas prabhu bhagat ko vatsala karat chhatra chhaiya”.
“Translation.—On the banks of the river Yamuna, Mohan (i.e. Krishna)
my Lord looks after
the grazing cows. On his head, the charming peacock’s feather appears
to advantage; one Gopi is
holding him by the hand. Bhanudas’s Lord, the lover of his devotees,
always supports them (lit.
holds an umbrella over their heads)”. The felicity of expression in
Vraj, here, is indeed remarkable.
The great-grand-son of this great devotee was Ekanath (1533 to 1599
A.D.). Many abhangas
in Hindi are attributed to Ekanath. For example the following one is
expressive of the importance of
real devotion free from any kind of egoism :—
” bhajan’binu dhig chaturai dnyan !
pothi puran bachat sabahi, waha men nahi dnyan
loka kahain ham atmadnyani, gyan nahi abhiman.
eka janardan guruka banda, bhakti bhajanake pran”.
Translation.—” In vain are cleverness and knowledge without bhajan.
All people read books
and Puranas; but real knowledge does not exist therein. People
consider themselves to be the
knowers of atman; but that is egoism and no knowledge. The devotee of
Janardan Swami asks a
person to approach a real teacher; for devotion is the very essence of
bhajan”. Some of the Hindi
songs of this saint speak of complaints of the wives of cowherds in
front of Yashoda against the
mischievous pranks of Krishna.
Ekanath excelled in bringing philosophical ideas home to the common
man with the help of
suitable metaphors. His ‘Hindu-turkasamvada’is a long conversation
ending in the realization of the
reality on the part of both. His commentary on Bhagawata was
respectfully carried by Pandits of
Banaras in a palanquin in the year 1573 A.D. This great saint, the
author of the celebrated
Bhavartha-Ramayana died in 1599 A.D.
Among the followers of Ekanath, Janijanardan has spoken of the pranks
of Krishna in his
childhood in a very felicitous style in Hindi. He is the author of
Sita-svayamvara and Nirvikalpa, a
work on philosophy. He died in 1601 A.D. Dasopant, another prolific
writer in Marathi, has also
composed a few abhangas in Hindi.
In the days of Ekanath and Dasopant, Maharashtra had to suffer from
invasions of the army
of Muslims. These armies naturally consisted of people knowing and
speaking in Hindi. Thus Hindi
had almost become the language of the people having some kind of
authority. It is no wonder that in
these circumstances, poets of Maharashtra who wanted themselves to be
understood by people
outside Maharashtra, used to compose some songs in Hindi. Tukaram
(1598 to 1649 A. D.), the
famous saint and powerful advocate of Bhagawata Dharma was no
exception to this rule. He has
composed abhangas in Hindi wherein the boyish pranks of Krishna are
described through the words
of cowherd-esses, more
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 267
popularly known as Gopis. All these poems are known in the Varkari
circles of Maharashtra by the
name ‘Gavalan ‘. One of such ‘Gavalans ‘of Tukaram is as under :—
” main bhuli ghara jani bat
goras becan ayen hat
kanha re mana mohana lal
saba hin bisarum dekhen gopal
kanhan pag darun dekha anera
dekhen to saba vohin ghera
hun to thakita bhaira tuka
bhaga re saba manaka dhoka”
Translation.—” I came to sell milk in the bazar and lost my way to the
house. I forgot
everything while looking at the cowherd’s dress. Looking at darkness
around, where should I direct
my step. I see myself surrounded by him and him alone. I was stunned;
but all fear in my mind had
disappeared tofally”.
It is very easy to see that Tukaram’s Hindi is very much influenced by
Marathi as well as
Gujarati. The work ‘ghara jani’is taken from a Marathi phrase and
‘bat’is clearly a Marathi word.
Words like ‘dikaro ‘(son) and ‘nhana ‘(child) speak of Gujarati
influence. This need not be a surprise,
as in the days of Tukaram, songs and padas of famous Gujarati devotees
like Narsi Mehta had
become quite current in Maharashtra.
Due to the influence exercised by the ‘dohas’of Kabir which had
penetrated into the interiors
of Maharashtra by the time, Tukaram also composed some dohas and tried
to emulate Kabir.
Some of them are indeed very piercing :
” tuka bado na manun, jisa pasa bahu dam
balihari usa mukhaki, jisa se nikala ram”
Translation.—” He who has sufficient wealth is not great according to
Tukaram. Tukaram is
ready to serve that mouth, from which springs the word Ram”.
Padas attributed to Tukaram, however, are not very authentic. Still,
Tukaram’s poetry has the
stamp of a simple and straightforward devotee, calling a spade-a
spade.
Ramdas, the great devotee of Rama, was a contemporary of Tukaram. Born
in 1608 A. D., he
distinguished himself on account of his attempt to create harmony
between the spiritual and material
life. He has composed songs in Hindi. His faith in God Rama has
received an emphatic expression
in these songs :
” Raghuraja ke darbar ghamadi gajatu hai,
Tathai-thai-thai pakhavaj vajatu hai, suravar
munivar dekhan avatu hai,
Narada-tumbar kinnar suravar gavatu hai,
shankh bheri suna ke roma tharakatu hai,
Lal ghusara tabake udavatu hai; ramadasa
tahan balijavatu hai”
268 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
Translation.—” In the assembly of King Rama, drums are being beaten.
The tabor is creating
the sound ‘tathai-thai thai’. Sages come to see the assembly. Divine
sages like Narada, Tumbaru
along with Kinnars and Gods are singing and a great thrill is
experienced while small drums are
gently beaten. The red powder (known as gulal) is being scattered
everywhere. Herein Ramdas is
ready to offer himself with great eagerness.”*
It must be accepted that Ramdas’s Hindi is more refined and felicitous
than any of the earlier
saints of Maharashtra.
Ramdas got many enthusiastic admirers and devotees. In fact these
people are known as
Ramdasis, i.e., followers of Ramdas. Among these, Keshavsvami from
Bhaganagar (i.e., Hyderabad
Deccan-1677) and Rangnathaswami from Nigadi (1612 to 1684 A. D.) have
written some of their
songs in good Hindi. Tradition includes these two among the famous
Ramdas Panchayatan placing
Ramdas in the middle.
Maharashtra owes much to the Natha-tradition. Some of the devotees of
this sect are
responsible for writing good devotional songs in Hindi also. Sohiroba
Ambiye, born in Banda, a
village near Sawantwadi in 1714 A. D. got initiated into Natha
Sampradaya at the hands of Gaibi
Nath, i.e., Gahini Nath. It is true that the language of Sohirobanath
does not contain the polish and
finish of an artist; nevertheless his songs are indicative of his
scholarship and learning. For example
:—
” Dudha ke bich me gheeka rahana, o to saci bat
saguna me nirgun taisa rahate, unkun na lagat hat,
guda me se to sakara avati kachu to karamat lagati
kahat sohira joga juguta bin kaise mile andar ki jyoti”.
Translation.—” It is an accepted fact that ghee is latent in milk. In
the same way reality
without attributes lies hidden in the sensible form and person of the
Deity; it remains beyond the
reach of the hand. It is true that sugar comes out of jaggery, but
this requires some effort. Hence
Sohira says, ‘How can one get the lustre within without the means of
Yoga ‘.”
Devnath of Surji Anjangaon (1754—1821 A. D.) has also been a
distinguished saint who is
equally at home in Marathi as well as Hindi. The language of this
devotee of Niranjan has a
sweetness of its own. In loving words does he say :—
” aja mori sanvariya so lagi prit
chain raindin mohe pare nahi
ulti bhai sab rit
kaha karaun kit jau sakhiri kaise bani ab bita
Devanath prabhunath niranjan, nisidin gavai git.”
*’Nayananamo raghuvira mero ‘is one of his songs couched in a language
which reminds one
of a similar song in honour of Krishna sung by Mirabai.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 269
Translation.—” Today, I fell in love with the Lord of darkish
complexion. Day in and day out, I
do not feel at ease, everything in world is now topsi-turvied for me.
Oh friend, what would I do,
where should I go? What is to happen to me now? Whether it be day or
night, Devnath continues to
sing in honour of his Lord Niranjan”. In fact, Devnath has sung
sweetly about the unflinching
devotion of the devotee towards the divinity. His words are
reminiscent of masters of Vraj like
Suradas and Nandadas”.
Dayalnath (1710—1758), the disciple of Devnath is also known for his
songs in Hindi. His
poems appear to be influenced by Suradas and Nandadas. One of his
songs happily speaks of the
charming form of Krishna and the eager desire of the devotee to
consecrate his life at his feet:—
” Kisan ke caranan ki balihari
moramukuta pitambar sohai, kundala ki chabi nyari
brindavanki kunjagalinamo, khelata radha pyari,
jamuna ke nirtir dhenu carave bansi bajave nandayari,
Devanath prabhu dayalu chabila, natnagar giridhari”
Translation.—”I consecrate myself at the feet of Lord Krishna. His
yellowish garment
(pitambara) along with the crown of peacock’s feathers appears to
advantage and unparalleled
indeed is the charm of his ear-ornaments. Beloved Radha is carrying on
her sports in the bowers
playing upon the lute while making the cows graze on the bank of
Yamuna”. The Lord of the disciple
of Devnath is handsome and loving; he holds the mountain over his
finger and is the foremost
among actors.’Another song ‘ankhiyan haridarasanson atake ‘i.e. ‘Eyes
eagarly await the sight of
the Hari’is comparable to a similar song of Suradas.
Shivdinanath alias Shivdinkesari (1698—1774) belongs to this great
tradition of Nathas. He
was initiated into the tradition by Kesarinath in 1706 A.D. He was
known for his learning and words
of wisdom. In one of his songs he expresses the idea that a devotee of
Rama finally attains oneness
with him.
” ramabhajana kar ramahi hona
jo loha parasa sang sona,
jo keera bhringiku dhyavai, so keera
bhringirupa pavai
ramabhajanse* koli vala, hoya
rathi ramayana bola,
sivadina manohar nath kesari,
rama-bina nahin bat dusari”
Translation.—” Just as iron is transformed into gold on account of
association with the
philosopher’s stone, so one becomes Rama by undertaking the bhajan of
Rama. The parrot who
continuously meditates on Bhringi assumes the form of Bhringi (the
devotee of
*Ramabhajanase ganika uddhari, papi ajamilke gati sudori.
270 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
Shiva). On account of bhajan of Rama, the courtesan improved her lot
and Ajamila got
emancipation. Due to Ramabhajan, the fisherman Valya enriched himself
and went on singing
Ramayana. Shivdinath Kesari, therefore, considers that there is no
other saving factor than
muttering the attractive name of Rama”.
There have been some saints in Maharashtra who did not owe allegiance
to the Nathatradition.
Poems in Hindi composed by some of them deserve mention. Among these
Janajasavant
from Khandesh (1608—1752 A.D.) has sung very sweetly about the Lord of
Janaki—
” Jyake janakinath na pyare
take matapita aur suhrud sakha
vako mukha hi kare
yeka bund gangajala neeko,
dhig thillar ko pani
haridasana he ceti upar varo rajajiki rani.”
Translation.—” The person who does not love the Lord of Janaki has his
face tarnished. His
parents and friends are also sufferers. One drop of holy water of
Ganga is worth-having; of what use
are other waters? Far superior is the maid servant of a devotee of Ram
to the Queen of a king” This
song is reminiscent of the famous letter that Tulsidas is reported to
have written to Mirabai.
The choice of words on the part of this poet is indeed very happy. In
fact, Janajasavant has
remarkable felicity of expression in Hindi. Madhavamunishwar (1689—
1734 A.D.) from Nasik a
follower of Madhava school of thought, has composed some songs about
Shri Rama.
” karo mana raghoji se preet
tata, mata, suta, bandhu, vanita, inaki ulti reet
jo koi apano apano garji kaun koiko meeta
kahate madhonath gusain, kara le apano heet.”
Translation.—”Oh mind, do devote yourself to Shri Rama. Father,
mother, son, brother and
wife—all are crooked. Every one of them is selfish. Who is the friend
of whom? Madhavanath says
‘you work for your benefit (by loving Rama).’Some of the songs of this
poet are couched in
Hindustani or Urdu also.
Amritray (1698—1743 A.D.) one of the accepted disciples of
Madhavamunishwar rose to
eminence on account of his ballads known katavas. Simplicity and
lucidity are the prominent
characteristics of Amritray’s composition in Hindi as well as Marathi.
Pictorial quality of his katavas
made them extremely popular with person’s undertaking ‘kirtan
‘(celebrating the praises of God with
music and singing) in his days.
Words in Sanskrit as well as Hindi have been skilfully used and simple
incidents* are
presented in a very effective way. It is no wonder that ‘katavas’came
to be known after this gifted
poet.
*Like Krishna’s ‘mruttika-bhakshana’, birth of Rama, etc.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 271
Among other saints of Maharashtra whose writing in Hindi deserve
mention are Dinkar
(between 1598 and 1698 A.D.) Manpuri of Daulatabad (death in 1730
A.D.), Thakurdas Baba (death
in 1830), Niranjan Raghunath (1782—1855 A.D.) and Balakram (whose date
is uncertain). Dinkar
who was initiated by Ramdas in 1654 advised people to refrain from
worldly things and concentrate
their attention on Rama the only saving factor in the welter of this
world. Being well-versed in music,
his songs are composed in various ragas.
Manpuri whose math is found in Daulatabad has been a Saint who spoke
of the all-pervading
quality of the highest and the impossibility of getting him without
the help of a spiritual teacher. Like
all saints of repute, he was not interested in external things such as
the polish of language,
embellishment etc.
Thakurdas Baba considered Ekanath, as his guru and reverentially spoke
of him as his
saviour in all poems.
Niranjan was a devotee of the God Dattatraya. He was initiated by
Raghunathswami who
really named him as Niranjan. In many of his songs he includes the
name of his guru Raghunath
also. Hence he became known as Niranjan Raghunath. As he travelled to
Girnar in Saurashtra and
stayed there for penance, his language some times bears the influence
of Gujarati. This explains
words like ‘dikara ‘(son) that occur in some of his songs known as
‘Prabhati’intended to awaken God
Dattatraya from sleep.
Nothing is known about Balakram, the author of the work
‘Angadashistai’*. ‘The concluding
portion of this work is found in Hindi. It begins with the following
words :—
” lankapati tab krudha bhayo re, bata sune angada kee
kya dekhat ho saba meele tum, jivva chedo yakee”
Translation.—”On hearing the words of Angada, the Lord of Lanka became
extremely angry
and said,” what are you doing here all together? Cut the tongue of
this bragging monkey ‘.”
Balakram differs from the rest of saints in writing many ‘savaiyas ‘in
Hindi. Some of these
speak of the devotion to Rama, while some contain words of practical
wisdom also.
Thus most of the saints of Maharashtra from the days of Dnyaneshwar
have contributed to
Hindi poetry. Although very few of them could wield the language with
felicity, yet most of them were
actuated by an eager desire to give comfort and consolation to the
people amidst the strain and
stress of practical life. It is no wonder, therefore, that they
received a warm welcome from the
people at large. There have been many women saints; yet very few of
them appear to have written
in Hindi. Bahinabai (initiated in 1640 A. D.), the well-known disciple
of Tukaram, has composed
some of her ‘gavalans ‘in Hindi. These songs are full of lucidity and
the womanly quality of
completely identifying oneself with the object of description. This
has made them very appealing.
Some of these give an admirable picture of Lord Krishna, clad in the
cowherd-dress playing upon
the lute on the banks of the
*Based on an incident in Ramayana where Angada, son of Valin goes to
Ravana in the
capacity of his messenger.
272 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
river Yamuna. Some of the songs of this poetess contain the
philosophic idea that on gathering
knowledge one need not be afraid of the inevitable death at all.
Encomiastic songs (popularly known as ‘povadas ‘) and Ballads
(usually, called lavanis) form
an important part of the literary history of Maharashtra. They
represent the Marathi mind with its
likes and dislikes, virtues and vices. Almost all Shahirs of
Maharashtra have written ballads in Hindi.
Among these Ballad-poets, chronologically Anantafandi (1744— 1819 A.
D.) is the first poet
whose Hindi compositions have been brought to light. His Hindi’povada
‘on Nana Phadnis is :—
“savai madhavarao savai danka bajaya
phadnis nanaki tareeph akkalne to gajab kiya
bindharse rajya calaya, nakise cakamak jhadi
kaik mutsaddi chap gaye bas bhaye nanaki to akkal badi
dilli, atak, lahor bhahor karnatak bijapur pukar padi
caro taraph tajela nikala, canda aise keerat badi
jine baithe raj kamaya dilke tai khup dilase diya
saheb bandagi karana, puna chand kahun aya na gaya
aji badi akal”.
Translation.—” Savai Madhavrao became a great and famous ruler. Nana
Phadnis worked
wonders with his inteligence. Without even touching the sword he
carried on the administration and
successfully fought battles. All other administrators and statesmen
paled into insignificance in front
of Nana. Kingdom of the Peshwas became triumphant all over Delhi,
Atak, Lahore, Karnatak and
Bijapur. The spotless fame like the moon spread everywhere. Stationing
himself in Poona, Nana
aggrandized the kingdom and inspired confidence in the people.
Europeans never thought of
visiting any other city than Poona. Indeed Nana’s intelligence was
supreme”.
Whether in praise or cavil, Anantafandi was very clear and emphatic
even to a fault. His
ballads or lavanis in Hindi, couched in erotic sentiment, also evince
this quality. ‘Bara baraska patha
dekho angi nayanapar jhurmur dari is quite famous. Here a beautiful
Gujarati girl of twelve years is
described. In fact Ananta Fandi neither cared for the polish of his
language, nor for the metre. All
that he felt and felt sincerely at the time, lies expressed in his
poems. Yet he is worthy of being
remembered for the spirited quality and transparent frankness of his
poems.
Parshuram (1754—1844 A. D.) has composed songs on a variety of
subjects and excels all
Shahirs in holding a true mirror to the society in which he lived and
moved. Although most of his
poems in Hindi are unfortunately lost to us, yet some of them dealing
with the pranks of Lord
Krishna are available.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 273
Ramjoshi (1762—1808 A. D.) from Sholapur is, by far, the most
illustrious of the composers
of songs and ballads in Marathi. His poems in Hindi are unfortunately
not available. The same can
be said about Honaji Bala who is known for his wonderful simplicity
and lucidity linked up with
inspiration of no mean order. Saganbhau (1778—1940 A. D.), a
contemporary of Honaji Bala, was
patronised by Bajirao II. Being a Musalman, he was acquainted with
Hindi. Although at times
Sagan’s erotic ballads tend to become a bit obscene, on the whole he
maintains a good level and
attaches importance to the emotions of love which spring from the
heart.
Among the mixed lavanis (written in Hindi as well as Marathi),
Sagan’s :—
” dad koi nahi deta
mai to jogan houngi,
rakh lava majhe angi”.
Translation.—”Nobody takes care of me. I would become a mendicant.
Besmear my body
with ashes” is very famous.
Prabhakar (1769—1843 A. D.) is also one of these poets who were
patronized by Bajirao II.
Majority of his poems have been vulgar and obscene. One of the
beloveds, goaded on by passion,
requests the friend to unite her with her lover in the following
words :—
” dilbahar dildar mujhe milavo
nahi to aphim khilao”.
Translation.—Unite me with that handsome one; otherwise provide me
with opium” (to commit
suicide).
Here a reference has to be made to Govindrao, one of the ‘Shahirs ‘of
the Shivneri group,
who has composed 70 songs in Hindustani, i.e. Khadi Boli influenced by
Urdu. This is natural in
view of the region near Shivneri (Junnar) being under Mohammedan rule
in those days, Govindrao
uses good metaphors in his poems:—
” bismilla karkar uthaee,
akkalaki haya samsher
mansube kee dhal
jiretop par bakhtar
juva kee kee kaman
guru gyan ke liye teer
pavan ka hat ghoda kiya
man upar hai svar.
Translation.—” With the name of God on the lips, the sword of
intelligence is taken up.
Intentions form the shield, as well as the armour for the protection
of the head. Youth is converted
into an arch. The teacher is the sharp arrow for getting knowledge.
Wind is converted into a horse
and the mind rides on it”.
274 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
Thus it can be seen that from the days of Namdev down to the first
half of 19th century,
Maharashtra has been contributing to Hindi.* With the exception of
some poets like Ramdas,
Devnath, Dayalnath, other poets of Maharashtra have expressed
themselves in Hindi which is
greatly influenced by Marathi, which is quite natural. It is, however,
interesting to note that Hindi
written by most of these poets comes close to Khadi Boli of today.
With the advent of British rule, the growth of Indian languages
including Hindi was
jeopardised. But as years rolled on, thoughtful persons educated
through this very system slowly
became conscious of their rights and started agitating against the
foreign domination. The cause of
Hindi, the common language of the country received an able supporter
in Mahatma Gandhi. The
eighth session of Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Prayag, held under the
presidentship of this inspired
leader in 1918 decided to propagate Hindi in the whole of India,
starting with the southern parts of
the country.** This led to the foundation of Dakshin Bharat Hindi
Prachar Sabha which has done
signal service to the cause of propagating Hindi. The year 1921 saw
the opening of the first Hindi
teaching class in Bombay. In 1924 Hindi got a place in municipal
schools. The work enormously
increased and finally resulted into the formation of Hindi Prachar
Sabha in 1935.
In the year 1936, the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan held its session in
Nagpur and formed an
independent Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti, with a view to propagating
Hindi in all non-Hindi
speaking provinces except Andhra, Tamilnad, Keral and Karnatak
provinces as the latter were
placed under the jurisdiction of Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha.
Although advocates of Hindi
were impelled by the self-same desire of propagating the common
language, mutual differences
which arose in them during later years, led to the formation of
various other parallel institutions like
Bombai Hindi Vidyapeeth (1938), Bharatiya Vidyapeeth or Dnyanalata
Mandal (1942), Maharashtra
Rashtrabhasha, Poona (1946), Bombai Hindi Sabha, Bombay (1946).
Hindustani Prachar Sabha,
already in vogue from 1935, also developed into an independent
institution by 1958 on account of
Hindi-Hindustani issue. In addition to popularising Hindi through the
nooks and corners of
Maharashtra these institutions have contributed to the development of
language and literature also.
GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION.
These institutions were interested in preparing manuals of Hindi
grammar and composition.
Many manuals of this type thus arose out or this necessity that was
felt in propagating Hindi in
Maharashtra. Among all such attempts, the foremost as well as the most
successful attempt was
made by two experienced Hindi
*The celebrated Marathi poet Moropant Paradkar (1729 and 1794 A. D.),
was induced to write
‘Doharamayan ‘and ‘Surramayan’, where an attempt is made to bring
Hindi metres like Doha,
Soratha and Harigeetika in Marathi.
**The Sammelan was fortunate in enlisting the support and sympathy of
Babu
Purushottamdas Tandon, who is now accepted as the pioneer worker in
the field.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 275
Pracharaks Shri B. L. Sathe and Shri B. V. Keluskar. Their book
Hindustani Bhasha Parichaya in
Parts I, II and III was published in 1941 and 1942. Many editions of
these books have been printed
so far. This speaks of their popularity.
The Bombai Hindi Vidyapeeth published Urdu-Hindi Shikshika in two
parts, prepared by
Kumar Sharma in the year 1949-50. Angreji-Hindi Shikshika Part I was
published by the Vidyapeeth
as early as 1939. Part II of this useful manual came out in July 1948.
The Vidyapeeth also published
Gujarati-Hindi Dipika, Part I. Second edition of this book came out in
December 1949, and also
published in two parts, Marathi-Hindi Dipika. Saral Hindi Vyakaran in
two parts prepared by Shri
Kantilal Joshi and Shri P. M. Dangre deserves mention in this context.
‘Hindi-Shuddhalekhan’written
by Shri Yashaschandra was published by Vidya Granth Prakashan, Wardha
in 1951.
This small book explains the peculiarities of Hindi grammar in 60
pages.
Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti, Wardha has done good work in fostering
this spirit of
harmony by bringing out a series of books known as ‘Bharat-Bharati’.
In addition to these, many
useful books like ‘Lokvani’in three parts (for Maharashtra Sabha,
Poona) and ‘Rashtrabhasha Bodh
(later on Subodh) in three parts (for Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti,
Wardha) have been published
with a view to give graded instruction to learners of Hindi language.
Rashtrabhasha ka Adhyapan
‘(1958) by Prof. G. N. Sathe is a very useful book throwing light upon
the methods of teaching Hindi
in non-Hindi speaking areas.
DICTIONARIES.
Many efforts have been made for popularising Hindi by preparing useful
dictionaries. The
foremost among these was undertaken by the late Pandit G. R.
Vaishampayan, one of the pioneers
in the field of Hindi Prachar in Maharashtra. His ‘Hindi-Marathi Kosha
‘(1945) throws light upon the
words current in the two languages. Second edition of this useful book
came out in the year 1947
and an abridged version of the same under the title ‘Rashtrabhasha
Marathi Laghu Kosha ‘in August
1948. ‘Marathi-Hindi Shabda Sangraha ‘(1949) is another important work
of this author containing
18,000 words and 2,300 popular sayings or phrases in Marathi along
with their equivalents in Hindi.
His ‘Hindi-Marathi Lokokti Kosha ‘published in June 1950 contains 868
popular sayings in Hindi
along with their equivalent expressions or explanations in Marathi.
This speaks of the mastery of the
author over the two languages, as well as his single-handed devotion
to the cause of Hindi.
‘Hindustani-Marathi Shabda Kosha ‘was prepared in the year 1939 by a
committee appointed
by Akhil Maharashtra Hindi Prachar Samiti, Poona. Third edition of
this book prepared by Shri G. P.
Nene and Shri Shripad Joshi at the behest of Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha
Sabha, Poona and
published in January 1956, with an addition of 6,000 words in view of
the development of Hindi
during 17 years. ‘Abhinav Shabda Kosha ‘alias ‘Shabda-Mitra ‘by Shri
Shripad Joshi gives words in
Hindi with their equivalents in Marathi and
276 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
vice-versa in two parts. Here words having the same meaning in both
the languages have been
brought together in a separate appendix. Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti,
Wardha, published one
dictionary called ‘Sankshipta Rashtrabhasha Kosha’in April 1953.
Another Hindi-Marathi dictionary
prepared by Shri Krishnalal Varma in collaboration with Mrs. Penkar
may also be referred to.
‘Vyavahara-Deepika ‘, a Marathi-Hindi dictionary, was published by
Dnyanalata Mandal, Bombay, in
February 1955, second edition of which came out in January 1956.
Gujarati edition of this ‘Deepika
‘was also brought out mainly due to the grant of the Government of
India in keeping with its policy of
fostering attempts of developing Indian languages. Thus Marathi-
Gujarati-Hindi English Vyavahara
Deepika was published by the Mandal in March 1960. Here words
belonging to different spheres
with their equivalents in four languages are brought together. This is
a good contribution of the
Dnyanalata Mandal.
More significant and valuable is the polyglot dictionary called the
‘Bharateeya Vyavahar
Kosha ‘prepared by Shri V. D. Naravane, a linguist from Bombay,
published recently. This dictionary
gives to its user 25,000 words in Hindi and English with their
equivalents in fourteen major Indian
languages including Sanskrit. In all, the languages are Hindi,
English, Punjabi, Urdu, Kashmiri,
Sindhi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Assamiya, Uriya, Telugu, Tamil,
Malyalam, Kanareese and
Sanskrit. The script is, of course, Devnagari. The words in the
dictionary are grouped in fifty different
categories such as vegetables, animals, relations, etc. Three-fifty
sentences of practical use in
every-day life are also included in this book. Thus ‘Bharateeya
Vyavahar Kosha’is a significant
contribution and would facilitate a study of Indian languages.
Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Sabha, Poona, has recently brought out
Bruhat Hindi-Marathi
Shabdakosh. This Kosh lists about 70,000 words including technical
words that have newly been
current, difficult words of Urdu as well as those words that have been
borrowed from various
dialects of Hindi such as Avadhi, Vraj, etc. Liberal grant given by
the Central Government has
considerably facilitated the publication of this lexicon which will
prove very useful for the admirers of
Hindi and lovers of modern Indian languages. Editors of this work,
Shri G. P. Nene and Shri Shripad
joshi, therefore, deserve to be congratulated for this service to the
Hindi-knowing public of
Maharashtra. Shri Shripad Joshi is now preparing Bruhat Marathi-Hindi
Kosh on the same lines
which also will be eagerly awaited.
Bharatavarshiya Prachin Charitra-kosh is a useful Hindi version of
Prachin Charitra-kosh
originally compiled in Marathi by Mahamahopadhyay Siddheshwar Shastri
Chitrav. This kosh brings
together all information regarding celebrated personalities of the
past culled from Vedas down to the
days of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. New additions have been made
to the original so as
to make the number of listed persons mount to 12,000, the volume
covering 1,225 pages. The
author has taken care to refer to researches undertaken by oriental as
well as occidental scholars of
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 277
repute like the late Sir R. G. Bhandarkar, Dr. S. P. Pandit, Max
Muller, Roth and Oldenberg. Lives of
ancient personalities lay down the norm of documentation. Appendices
bringing together useful
information about contemporaries of Buddha and Mahavir add to the
value of the book. The learned
author has. also succeeded in giving all information in a style that
is free from being terse, a fact
which deserves special mention. Hence the kosh is a very valuable
addition to the Hindi publications
of Maharashtra.
People of Maharashtra have contributed to almost all branches of
literature and their
contributions are rich in quality also. Most of these belong to a date
later than 1920 especially after
Hindi was officially accepted as the language of the Indian union in
1947.
POETRY.
Shri Ramavatar Chetan is a well-known Hindi poet. First book of his
poems was published in
1955 with the title ‘Svasonke Svar ‘. In one of these poems, Shri
Chetan speaks of the fact that ups
and downs in life need not scare one away from undergoing them. At
times despondency takes
possession of the poet’s soul and he speaks of fine dreams that have
been destroyed.
” vipadonka dher uthaya
par na milee ashaki chaya
sansose bahalaya manko
veenaki jhankar samajhkar
bahalana vyarth ho gaya”.
Translation.—”I withstood many calamities; but the ray of hope never
did appear. Taking my
breaths to be the notes of the lute, in vain did I try to find
consolation”.
Chetan’s pen has gained sufficient confidence and power in ‘Chandse
Neeche’published in
the year 1958. Here he is out to become ‘a hero in the strife ‘by
discarding short cuts to success.
‘Rasmihas ‘(January 1959) brings together poems of Shri A. R.
Ratnaparkhi written during his
stay in Maharashtra. First poem ‘Rasmihas’is an attempt to write
‘abhang’in Hindi. ‘Rasmihas
‘contains a ‘nivid’addressed to the river Tungabhadra where the poet
expresses the eternal wish to
transcend all limitations and become one with the Highest. ‘Komal
Agraha ‘is one of the lighter yet
attractive poems. ‘Diwali ke deep ‘is an attempt of writing rhythmic
prose. Thus ‘Rasmihas ‘attracts
the attention on account of the novel attempts made by a Marathi-
speaking poet.
‘Ruponnayan ‘of Professor Dr. N. V. Joshi (Head of the Philosophy
Department, R. R.
College, Bombay) is a novel and praiseworthy attempt in the direction
of writing prabandha-kavya in
Hindi. The poem is philosophic in content. This poem throws a flood of
light upon the problems of
the modern man through symbolic presentation of the events that took
place between the two great
world-wars. In fact, this is the first attempt to write a prabandha-
kavya in Hindi with the help of
anushtubh. The metre has gained in lucidity as well as power at the
hands of the author. Similes
used in the poem are reminiscent of epic similes in point of
conception as well as enunciation.
278 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
Hence ‘Ruponnayan ‘deserves to be remembered for originality and
novelty in respect of plotconstruction
and the penetrating style adopted in it. ‘Aloka’by the same author
continues the story
further. In addition to these, poems on various subjects are being
published in newspapers and
magazines. Among the authors of such poems Professor Bansidhar Panda,
Shri Suryadeo Tripathi
and Shri Rameshwar Dayal Dube may be mentioned. Poems of the
illustrious modern saint Tukdoji
indicated that the tradition of the saints of Maharashtra still
continues to wield influence with the
masses. Shri Sahabrao Sanade’s ‘Padmabhushan’ is a Hindi poem on the
life of Karmavir Bhaurao
Patil.
PROSE.
Prose becomes the most suitable medium of expression during the days
of keen conflicts and
hard struggle. Contributions to Hindi prose in Maharashtra can be
suitably divided into novels and
stories, dramas, essays, books on literary criticism, biographies etc.
With the exception of novels
and stories as well as dramas, other works can be put under one
category.
Novels and Stones.
Shri Anant Gopal Shevde from Nagpur has distinguished himself in this
field. His novel
‘Jwalamukhi‘ has been very successful due to the sublime plot and
artistic style. ‘Mrugajal’ is
another novel. ‘Nishageet’, ‘Purnima ‘and ‘Svapnasiddhi ‘have also
been very popular novels.
National Book Trust of India has undertaken the work of translating
‘‘Jwalamukhi’in all Indian
languages. ‘Mrugajal’was awarded a prize of Rs. 1,000 by Madhya
Pradesh Shasan Parishad.
‘Mangala ‘is the sixth novel of Shri Shevde based upon the story of
Pandit Sadananda, a blind yet
skilled musician and his beautiful young wife Mangala. The novel
oscillates between merit and
demerit, joy and sorrow, temptation and love, life and music. This
novel is shortly going to appear in
brail script also. Stories written by this author have also been very
popular. The style of Shri Shevde
is at once pleasing and powerful.
‘Bhagna-mandir ‘is one of his realistic novels based on the social
conditions of India after
independence where he speaks of selfishness and non-spiritual outlook
being the root cause of
present day evils. The author has received an award from the
Government of Uttar Pradesh for this
work which has been already translated in Telugu. Recently, he has
published another novel named
‘Indradhanushya’ depicting the weal and woe of conjugal life as well
as the chastening influence of
love which can pave the way for enduring happiness. It is indeed a
matter of pride that ‘Jvalamukhi
‘rendered by him in English is also published by the Pageant Press of
New York in America under
the title ‘Volcano’in February, 1966. This novel is based on the
Indian Revolution of 1942, leading
India to freedom. In fact this is one of the few Hindi novels
translated by the author himself and
published abroad. Needless to add that this has been translated in ten
Indian Languages.
‘Ankh-michauli’ is a novel written by Shri N. D. Gadgil, a teacher in
Bombay. Although there is
nothing new in the theme of story as such, yet the easy, flowing style
of the author is indeed
remarkable. It speaks of his command over Hindi.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 279
Two novels viz., ‘Dhvastaneeda’and ‘Suranga ‘written by Shri Shripad
Joshi have been
warmly received by the people.
The story of the life of Nana Phadnis, the astute politician of the
Peshvas, is also written by
Shri Shripad Joshi in attractive Hindi.
Among story writers, Shri Shripad Joshi has given an interesting
account of the lives of four
Saints of Maharashtra in the form of short stories running into 30—40
pages each. Thus our books
viz., ‘Sant Tukaram’’Sant Dnyaneshwar ‘, ‘Sant Namdev ‘and ‘Samarth
Ramdas’have been
published by Svasta Sahitya Mandal Prakashan under the series known as
Samaj-Vikas Mala. The
language of these books is very simple and lucid.
Here a mention of ‘Char Pharar’by Shri Yadunath Thatte must be made.
‘Char Pharar ‘, as the
very name suggests, contains the story of four residents of a village.
The story is evidently written
with a view to popularising co-operative efforts among those who live
in villages. The style is,
however, simple and elegant. The importance of villages in the
development of India is finely
impressed upon the minds of adult readers. The author deserves to be
complimented for
maintaining the pleasing style throughout.
In addition to these notable attempts, stories of several writers in
Maharashtra like Smt.
Jyotsna Deodhar, Shri Shripad Joshi, and others have been published in
various magazines like
Dharmayug, Ajkal, Vishva-jyoti, Hindustan, Jeeven-sahitya, etc. It is
not necessary to give an
exhaustive account of these.
Short Stories.
Dr. Jagadishchandra Jain has published the second edition of his
interesting collection of
stories from ancient Ardhamagadhi and Pali literature bearing the
title ‘Do Hajar Baras Purani
Kahaniyan ‘. He has also brought out stories collected from
Panchatantra in ‘Hamari Kahaniyan ‘.
These stories not only serve to throw light upon the social conditions
of the times to which they
belong but also serve the important purpose of introducing to the
younger generation the ancient
works of renown. ‘Ramani Ke Rup’is also another similar attempt of the
author undertaken with the
purpose of pointing out to one Dr. W. William Morris that India has
not been merely a land of
philosophy but has also evidenced keen interest in matters pertaining
to this mortal world of weal
and woe. This book consisting of three parts brings together 26
stories of women found in ancient
Sanskrit and Prakrit works. Herein the readers come across women of
different calibre; some of
sterling character who were able to foil all attempts of outraging
their modesty by virtue of their
cleverness, some who evinced proficiency in different arts and deceits
and some who were forced
to accept the primrose path of vice on account of circumstances.
280 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
Shri Ramraje Shirke from Kolhapur has now established himself as a
story-writer in Hindi.
Many of his stories viz., ‘Aish’, ‘Ahilya’, ‘Tootati Galiyan’,
‘Andhereka Ant’, ‘Canvas’, ‘Teesari Patni
‘published in the issues of ‘Niharika’have been warmly received by the
Hindi-knowing public.
‘Upahara’(Niharika October 1963), for example, nicely brings out the
essential chastity of an Indian
woman; while ‘Andhereka Ant’speaks of the happy union of the
intelligent and compassionate Kanta
with the amiable but blind Manohar with the help of the ruse of the
former which is at once
appealing in its tenderness. ‘Maya ‘, another interesting story by the
same author speaking of the
chastening and powerful influence of kind and opportune words of
encouragement finds place in the
Divali issue of Niharika (1965). Shri Shirke must be complimented for
writing simple and elegant
Hindi. The words of Ashok while encouraging the maimed Maya can be
cited as a good
illustration.—’yahee to bat hai! Kash! Tum apani antarik shakti ko
pahachan leti! Hath pair sabut
hona shaktika pramana nahi hai Maya! Vaha to manushya ke antarme hoti
hai, aur jise isaka
sakshatkar ho jata hai vaha manushya vidhatase kam nahi ho sakata:
vahi lekhak hota hai: vahi
kavi hota hai: chitrakar: shilpakar: gayak sab kuch hota hai ‘.
‘Dayare ‘(1965) is a collection of seven short stories written by Shri
G. P. Nene, Vice-
President of the Svaichhik Hindi Prachar Samstha Sangh and Editor of
Rashtravani, the monthly run
by Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Prachar Sabha, Poona. Some of these like
‘Nandanbai ki Mang’or
‘Naya Papa ‘rightly place their finger on the ills of the society. The
words of the prostitute Motibai,
namely,” samajya to hamari roji vapas de ya hamen apane men mila le /
ham ghar basaneko taiyar
hain /koi bhi bemautaki maut marneko taiyar nahi hoga” are certainly
an eye-opener to the so-called
respected people of the society. ‘Naya Papa ‘also ends on a very
significant note sounded in the
announcement of Chitra-gupta, viz.,” pirthvipar ghoshana kar dee jay
ki isake age papakar-monkee
namavaleemen asamyami santanotpatti ghor papa mana jayega aur usaka
danda mrutyu hoga”.
Efforts of this type by non-Hindi speaking people will go a long way
in popularising and enriching
Hindi and hence Shri Nene deserves to be felicitated.
Dramas.
At the outset, it must be said that on account of the absence of well-
organised stage, dramas
written in Hindi do not come to the standard. ‘Jagirdar’and ‘Vakeel
sahab ‘are, however, written by
Dr. N. V. Joshi with the stage in view. ‘Vakeel-sahab ‘has been
successfully staged. ‘Jagirdar ‘is
interesting in view of the language spoken in the province of Malva.
It was originally written in Malvi
language, although Hindi rendering of it has also been added with a
view to facilitating
understanding. Both the dramas speak of the evils of capitalistic
society and the modern awakening
of the masses in general. Although the political bias of the author is
quite evident in the play, the
element of contrast, the characterisation as well as the language used
in it speak of the ability of the
author.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 281
‘Dhartee Kee Mahak’of Prof. Ramavatar Chetan dramatizes a story of a
village in Northern
India where the dawn of political awakening is slowly appearing in
spite of the evils of capitalistic
society having their roots deep in the soil. The language is admirably
suited for dialogues. Apart
from agreement with his view, the author is certainly successful in
presenting the drama in a
convincingly appealing manner. Shri G. R. Kulkarni has written a folk-
drama ‘Kisanpandit’to which a
prize was awarded by the Government of India.
Other contributions.
Dr. Jagadishchandra Jain is known for his works in Hindi. In his book
named ‘Bharatiya
Tatvachintan’(1955) he presents an account of the history of Indian
philosophy right from the
prehistoric days down to the twentieth century. The book ends with the
necessity of adopting new
outlook towards philosophy with a view to reconstructing and reshaping
the country in keeping with
modern conditions. ‘Dekha-Parkha ‘is a collection of his thoughtful
essays on problems of Prakrit
and Jain literature. These essays are an outcome of the author’s
research in the field. On the whole,
the collection is interesting as well as instructive. In his book
‘Chini Janatake Beech’of 253 closely
printed pages, the learned author gives a complete picture of the
people and culture of China. This
book is an outcome of his stay in China as a Professor in Peking
University for a year. Another
important book of the author, viz., ‘Prakrit Sahitya ka Itihas’would
certainly prove helpful to all
people desirous of knowing the history of Prakrit literature.
Shri Shripad Joshi is another prolific writer who has written about 80
books in Marathi, Hindi
and Urdu. These books cover a wide range of subjects. ‘Hindi Nibandha-
kala’is one of his books
tracing the development of the art of essay-writing in Hindi. ‘Urdu ke
Adeeb ‘traces the history of
Urdu literature in a very attractive and winning style. The author has
rightly discussed the modern
poets and writers of Urdu with the same amount of sympathy. In short,
the book is a happy
introduction to Urdu literature with its strength as well as weakness.
Among other works of the
author, ‘Guruvayur ‘and ‘Marathi -Hindustani Kosh ‘may be mentioned.
‘Vanaspati Sabhayata ‘a
collection of humorous articles and ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji’a biography
are the two other works of this
author. Shri Narayan Prasad Jain’s ‘Urdu Shayari’is a good collection
of the poems of Urdu poets.
His ‘Dnyanaganga ‘in two parts collects words of wisdom phrases and
popular sayings in Hindi.
‘Tukaram Gathasar ‘contains the Hindi poems of that saint collected by
this author. ‘Bolati Hindi’is
another book of Shri Jain comparing Hindi with English, Marathi and
Gujarati. ‘Hasya-Mandakini’and
‘Sant Vinod’are two works of this author which would soon be
published.
Among other writers in Hindi, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, and Acharya Dada
Dharmadhikari are
prominent. ‘Vinoba ke Vichar’has been published in two parts. The
range of subjects covered in
these essays is indeed very wide. The language of these books
282 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
is simple and has a flow of its own. Words in some of the essays like
‘Shramadeo kee Upasana’,
‘Vrikshashaka-nyaya’ are very weighty, although his views on education
and other matters may not
find followers in large numbers.
Acharya Dada Dharmadhikari, the former editor of ‘Sarvoday ‘is known
for his essays in Hindi.
His rich experience in the Sarvoday movement has given rise to books
of the type of ‘Sarvoday-
Darshan ‘, ‘Krantika Agala Kadam ‘and ‘Manaviya Kranti’. Some of his
essays speak well of his
literary talent also. In one of his articles written on the occasion
of the sixtieth birth-day of Pandit
Jawaharlal Nehru, he speaks of the qualities of the great leader in
the following words :—
” Utkantha aur pranjalata ke karan unake svabhavame balasulabh
niskapatata hai.
Jawaharlal Nehru munhaphat admi hain. Ve bahut jaldi bigad padate hain
aur char mination ke bad
khilkhilakar hansane lagate hain”.
Translation:
” Eagerness and purity of heart has given rise to guilelessness in his
character. Jawaharlal
Nehru is an outspoken individual. He loses patience immediately and
after a few minutes he could
be seen laughing heartily” . The learned Acharya is able to write in a
style suited to the subject.
Sarvoday movement has brought in many writers in the field. Smt. Vimal
Thakar’s ‘Dadaka
Snehadarshan’is a fine pen-picture of Dada Dharmadhikari. ‘Bhudan-
Deepika ‘and ‘Samya-yoga ka
Rekhachitra ‘are two other books of Smt. Vimal Thakar. Among other
works in this category may be
mentioned ‘Vinoba Bhave ‘of Yadunath Thatte; ‘Tapodhan Vinoba ‘of Shri
Bapurao Joshi, ‘Krantikee
Or ‘of Kusum Deshpande, ‘Satyagarhaki Shakti ‘of Shri S. D. Javdekar,
‘Gunka Gokul’and ‘Vyaj-
Batta ‘of Shri Appasaheb Patwardhan, ‘Naye Ankur’and ‘Taiki Kahaniyan
‘of Shriram Chinchalikar,
‘Bunaee’of Dattoba Dastane, ‘Dharmasar ‘and ‘Shramadan’of Shivaji
Bhave and ‘Sath’as well as
‘Krantiki Rahapar’of Nirmala Deshpande.
‘Padmavat Ka Kavya-saundarya’by Professor Shivsahay Pathak (K. C.
College, Bombay), is
a very useful attempt of critically appreciating ‘Padmavat, one of the
famous prabandha Kavyas in
Hindi. The author has collected all information about Malik Muhammad
Jyayasi and presented it
with great care. Critical estimate of Jyayasi in keeping with the
modern standards of literary criticism
is far from being superfluous in Hindi. With the help of some Persian
manuscripts, Professor Pathak
has brought out an edition of ‘Chitrarekha’another work of Jyayasi,
which is a contribution to the
study of the poet.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 283
Among works of research in Hindi, the thesis of Dr. Bhalchandrarao
Telang from Aurangabad
deserves a special mention. In this work known as ‘Bharatiya Arya-
Bhasha-Parivarkee Madhyavartinee
Boliyan ‘the author presents a philological study of three dialects,
viz., Halabi,
Chhattisgadhi and Bhatari belonging to the three Indian languages,
viz., Marathi, Hindi and Uriya,
respectively. The work consisting of five chapters is a valuable
contribution to the study of
comparative philology which can be considered to be a desideratum of
the day. ‘Adhunik Hindi
Kavita me rupa vidhan ‘is another thesis of Dr. Ramayatan Sinha. In
this work, the author gives a
critical study of the figures of speech employed in modern Hindi
poetry. Mrs. Ithape’s work also may
be mentioned in this context. Recently Dr. K. G. Divakar of Poona
University has brought out a few
research publications.
‘Shri Samarth Ramdas’(December 1951) of Shri D. B. Joglekar is a
useful biography of the
great saint of Maharashtra. The work is divided in three parts dealing
with the life-sketch, poetry and
the sect formed by the illustrious saint. Here a mention of the book
‘Rashtrasant kee Jeevan
Jhankee ‘should be made. This is written by Shri Bhau Mandavkar of
Amravati and published by
Seva Prakashan Nagpur, in the year 1954. The book critically presents
the life and work of Shri
Tukdoji Maharaj the modern saint of Maharashtra, in a short canvas of
44 pages. The style of the
author had received unstinted praise from all quarters. ‘Tulsidas Aur
Eknath’of Shri Chaturvedi from
Marathawada is an excellent attempt of comparing the works of the two
famous saints of India.
Compositions of Shri Bhring Tupkari (Bombay) and essays of Shri Y. S.
Korekar (Aurangabad), also
deserve mention. Shri Vaman Chorghade has also contributed to Hindi in
a way which cannot be
ignored.
Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti, Wardha, has recently published a series
known as ‘Bharatiya
Vangmaya ‘(1951). The series was started with the aim of introducing
to the people, the literature
extant in all Indian languages through the medium of Hindi. Three
parts of this useful series have
been already published. Part I contains studied articles on Sanskrit,
Pali, Prakrit and Apabhramsha
literature. Part II brings together two articles on Hindi and Urdu
literature written by Dr.
Lakshmisagar Varshneya and Shri Rasul Ahmad (‘Abodh ‘), respectively.
Part III consists of three
chapters on Bengali, Uriya and Assamiya literature. These are written
by Dr. Sukumar Sen, Dr.
Mayadhar Mansimha and Dr. Viranei Kumar Barua. According to the plan
of the Samiti, Part IV
intends to give a critical appreciation of literature in Marathi,
Gujarati, Punjabi, and Sindhi and Part V
would be allotted to the literature in the languages of the south,
viz., Tamil, Telugu, Malyalam and
Kanareese. Here a reference can be made to the biography of Lokmanya
Tilak written by Professor
B. G. Deshpande at the behest of the Samiti in July 1956. ‘Nagarik
Shastra Aur Bharatiya Shasan
‘(by Shri Ratanlal Barjoriya) is a revised edition of ‘Nagarik Shastra
Aur Bharatiya Samvidhan
‘originally prepared by Shri Ranjan for the Rashtrabhasha- Ratna
examination of the Samiti. Here a
reference may be made to two Small books
284 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
prepared by Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti, Poona. They are
‘Batchit’by Shri P. M.
Dangre and ‘Bapuki Baten ‘by Shri Rameshwar Dayal Dube. Simple and
short sentences in both
these books may prove very useful for those who begin to learn Hindi
through conversation.
‘Unmesh Prakashan ‘was formed in the year 1952 by some enthusiastic
pracharaks of
Bombay with a view to providing a common platform for expressing and
publishing the views of the
people of Maharashtra in Hindi. The Prakashan decided to start its
work by bringing out critical
evaluations of books prescribed for certain examinations. Hindi
Prachar Karyalaya, Matunga, had
already taken a lead in the matter by publishing critical articles on
‘Shashi-gupta ‘, a drama of Seth
Govindadas in April 1952. Unmesh Prakashan under the presidentship of
Shri V. K. Tambe brought
out similar books on ‘Nahusha ‘and ‘Pradkshina ‘(Khandkavyas by Shri
Maithilisharan Gupta),
‘Dhruvasvamini’(a drama by Shri Jayshankar Prasad) and ‘Charumitra
‘(one-act-plays by Dr. Ramkumar
Varma) in the year 1952. This commendable effort of entering the field
of literary criticism in
Hindi could not be continued on account of pecuniary difficulties.
Here a reference can be made to another novel attempt to foster real
spirit of harmony among
all advocates of Hindi irrespective of the institutions to which they
belong. This took the form of
starting a small monthly called Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samanvaya
Patrika in the year 1959 at the
inspiration of Shri B. G. Joglekar, who donated a sum of Rs. 1,001 for
the cause. Members of the
editorial board of the magazine headed by Dr. M. D. Paradkar were able
to enlist the support and
sympathy of most of the institutions propagating Hindi due to the high
ideals of the Patrika viz.,
creating a press and publishing concern in Hindi as well as fostering
a spirit of harmony in
languages of Western India by publishing translations of important
works in each of them. The
advocates of the Patrika, however, soon realised the difficulty of
translating high ideals into reality
on account of practical and pecuniary considerations which are too
well-known to need any
elaboration. The Patrika closed down after carrying its work for seven
months. Nevertheless, other
magazines like Rashtrabani (Maharashtra Sabha Poona), ‘Rashtra-
bharati’(Rashtrabhasha Prachar
Samiti, Wardha), are doing good service to the cause of Hindi in
Maharashtra.
In addition to these contributions, various articles in different
magazines like Rashtravani
(Poona), Jayabharati (Poona), Bharati (Bombai Hindi Vidyapeeth),
Bharati (Wardha), Sahitya-
Sandesh, (Agra), Saraswati Samvad (Agra), Adhar (Allahabad), Naya
Sahitya and newspapers like
Navabharat Times, Dharmayug, Saptahik Hindustan have been published.
Among such writers,
Miss Savita Agarwal, Shri G. P. Nene, Dr. Jagadishchandra Jain,
Professor Vasant Deo, Professor
Chandrakant Bandivadekar, Professor Ramavatar Chetan, Shree Rameshwar
Dayal Dube, Dr. M.
D. Paradkar, Dr. K. G. Divakar and others have contributed serious and
thoughtful articles on
various subjects.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 285
CRITICISM.
Shri Ram Shirke from Gargoti has contributed a fine essay on Sant
Dnyaneshwar in one of
the books, viz.,’Bharatiya Kavi Sant ‘ pubilshed by V. V. R. I.
Hoshiarpur in S. U. series XII (1962).
In this essay running into 45 printed pages, the author has introduced
Dnyaneshwar to the non-
Marathi speaking people in simple Hindi.
Prakrit-Pushkarini by Dr. J. C. Jain (1961) is a small book of 91
printed pages bringing
together 500 Prakrit stanzas quoted by Sanskrit rhetoricians in their
works. The author has carefully
translated all of them into Hindi thus bringing them within the reach
of the generally interested
reader. The author’s contention that mostly these stanzas are free
from the dead weight of
philosophy and hence throw light on the life of the common man torn
between conflicting emotions,
can easily be granted. But the fact that all of them deal with the
sentiment of love certainly indicates
that the canvass of these writers was essentially limited. The effort
of the author is, however,
commendable. ‘Vishva-Sahitya ke Jyotihpunja’by this very author seeks
to introduce 13 writers of
repute from the world by giving a short summary of their lives and a
resume of their literary activity.
The author in his introduction claims that he has chosen only those
writers who have contributed to
the development of man as a whole. The names of these writers are as
under Confucius, Kalidasa,
Goethe, Balzaque, Dostoeveski, Leo Tolstoy’Oscar Wilde, Anton Checkov,
Rabindranath, Lu Shun,
Suryakanta Tripathi (Nirala), Zaverchand Meghani and P. K. Atre. It is
evident that the choice in
such cases is bound to be subjective and hence need not stand any
objective test. Nevertheless,
inclusion of poets like Nirala from whom we are not far separated and
that of P. K. Atre, speaks
more of the author’s partiality for them. Prakrit Sahityaka Itihas
(1961) is a more serious and useful
work of II chapters wherein the author gives a connected and
appreciative description of ancient
literature in Prakrit languages. The author has also attempted to fix
the relative dates of authoritative
Jain works belonging to Shvetambar as well as Digambar sects. Chapters
X and XI throwing light
upon the technical literature in Prakrit languages are extremely
interesting. Two Parishistas given at
the end bring together a few unusual words employed in the old Prakrit
works and the other
containing an alphabetical index of Prakrit quotations found in
Sanskrit works on Alankara are also
extremely useful to every student of Prakrit. The book has brought a
prize to the author from the
Government of Uttar Pradesh. It is, however, admitted that the author
has not done justice to the
role of the Apabhramsha poetry which played a significant role, thanks
to the contributions of
master-minds like Svayambhu and Pushpadant. Jain Agama-Sahitya me
Bharatiya Samaj is
another important work of this learned author throwing sufficient
light upon the society reflected in
Jaina Agamas and deserves to be an important land-mark in
contributions to Hindi literature. ‘Bharat
ka Seemant’ and ‘Hindi Sahityaman Dokiyum’written in Gujarati by this
very author speak of his
indefatigable industry.
286 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
Bhagirath Dikshit, Professor of Hindi, Jai Hind College, Bombay, has
recently brought out his
‘Samikshalok ‘(1964). The book consists of seven chapters indicating
the importance and place of
literary criticism along with the contributions to it by all renowned
critics in the West. This has been
the first attempt of its kind in introducing to the Hindi-knowing
world the opinions of reputed Western
critics from the times of Plato down to T. S. Elliot. The author has
certainly been successful in
carrying out his ambitious plan of presenting a faithful survey of the
science of literary criticism in the
West without being unduly influenced by any particular school. In
fact, he seems to be keen on
reading a harmony between the principles of literary criticism in the
East as well as West.
In Kamayani-Vimarsha (Jan. 1965) this author intends to freshly
evaluate Kamayani, the
famous Mahakavya written by Jayashankar Prasad. The treatment is
indeed very systematic and
the chapters styled as ‘Rasa- Vimarsha, ‘Darshan- Vimarsha ‘and
finally ‘Mulya- Vimarsha ‘are very
interesting and instructive. Boldness of the author in controverting
the opinions of renowned
predecessors in the field including his teacher is indeed commendable
and the conclusion that he
has arrived at, being quite plausible, undoubtedly adds to the novelty
of the book. ‘Maharashtra
Hindi Loka-kavya ‘(1944) by Dr. K. G. Divakar from N. D. Thakarsi
College, Poona-4, is a very
useful attempt of systematically studying folk-literature of
Maharashtra in Hindi composed mainly by
writers of ballads belonging to the 17th and 18th centuries. The
collection of poems in the appendix
adds to the value of the book. The fact that this is written by a
person whose mother-tongue is
Marathi is significant. It was appropriately awarded by U. P.
Government with a prize of Rs. 500
(1963-64). An attempt in this direction was, however, made by Dr. M.
D. Paradkar from Bombay in
one of his articles published in the November issue of ‘Adhar ‘in 1960
wherein a reference is made
to the contributions of one Govindrao Sane from Shivneri which is
unfortunately missing in this
book. The influence of Marathi on the style of Dr. K. G. Divakar is
easily discernible. ‘Kavindra
Chandrika ‘by Dr. Divakar deserves special mention.
‘Namadeoki Hindi Seva ‘, a result of the researches of Dr. Bhagirath
Mishra, the Head of
Hindi Department of the University of Poona, in collaboration with one
of his colleagues, also
deserves special mention here.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Bombai Hindi Vidyapeeth, Bombay, has done a signal service to the
cause of Hindi by
bringing out a Silver Jubilee Volume in December 1963. It is divided
mainly into five parts. The first
consists of important articles of accepted scholars like Dr. Dhirendra
Varma, Dr. Baburam Saxena
and others on the script, language and literature connected with
Hindi. Two seminars on the use of
the same script for all Indian languages and the advisability or
otherwise of including literature of
Hindi dialects in the curriculum in non-Hindi speaking regions, being
extremely instructive and
interesting. go to add to the value of this part of the book. Articles
on scientific terminology to be
adopted in Hindi as well
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 287
as other Indian languages along with one on the language problem of
Goa by Prof. A. K. Priyolkar
speak of the editors being alive to the burning problems of the day.
The second part appropriately
gives a complete survey of contributions to Hindi on official as well
as non-official levels from all
states. Propaganda in Hindi has been carried out in all parts of the
country by various institutions
and it was but meet that the service done by all should have been
recorded in such a volume. Thus
the article ‘Hindi Pracharak Sansthaen’ running into 32 printed pages
is a testimony to the healthy
outlook and broad vision of the editors of this volume. A classified
list of desertations on Hindi
accepted for the degree of Ph. D. in various universities running into
45 pages will also go a long
way in helping futher research work in Hindi. In addition to this,
readers of this part also get an idea
of the place of Hindi in foreign countries like Burma, Czekoslovakia,
German Republic and Soviet
Russia. This part is befittingly brought to a close by a short resume
of activities in the interest of
Hindi in other parts of the globe as well. Part III gives a very good
survey of trends of postindependence
literature in all Indian languages including Sanskrit. This section
has become truly
representative and is adequately styled as ‘Bharatiya Chintan
Bharatiya Sahitya’. Part IV, though
short, strikes a significant note in so far as it aims at presenting
‘who’s who ‘of non-Hindi speaking
writers in Hindi. The editors appear to be aware of the modest
proportions of the scheme and have
expressed their wish to complete the work in co-operation with other
institutions in the field. The
appendices of this valuable book throw light upon the history of the
institution, viz., Bombai Hindi
Vidyapeeth and lectures delivered by distinguished personalities like
Dr. Zakir Hussain, the
President of India, Dr. Vishwanath Prasad and others on the occasion
of the silver jubilee. Vidyapith
Parivar Parichay, with the photos of pracharaks and short articles on
each of them is but meet in
such a volume as the institution thrives on their selfless efforts.
Thus the Silver Jubilee-Volume of
the institute deserves to be a land-mark in Hindi contributions of
Maharashtra both in form as well as
the contents. The editorial board consisting of Dr. M. D. Paradkar,
Prof. R. R. Deshpande, Prof.
Mhatre and Shri B. V. Bhosle deserve to be complimented on conceiving
and executing the work of
this type, ‘Nibandha-sudha ‘edited by Dr. M. D. Paradkar brings
together 14 essays of Dr.
Hazariprasad Dwivedi with an exhaustive survey of the essay-literature
in Hindi in an illuminating
introduction running into 48 pages. Here a reference to the Silver
Jubilee Volume brought out by
Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti, Wardha, in the year 1964 must be made.
This is also divided into
five parts. Part I brings together 11 articles of different scholars
like Dr. Sunitikumar Chatterji, Dr.
Vinaymohan Sharma and others evaluating the contributions to Hindi
from all the Indian States. Part
II, in fact, deserves to be an independent book on History of Hindi
literature (running into 225 pages)
by Dr. Sitaram Chaturvedi; but the propriety of including it in the
Silver Jubilee Volume of the
institution is, to say the least, open to question. Part III
containing three articles on the nature of the
Rashtrabhasha,
288 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
its vocabulary and scientific literature written in it, is certainly-
relevant in such a volume. Part IV
brings together two interesting articles on ‘Devnagari Varnamala’and
‘Nagari Lipi’. The volume is
brought to a close by an article on ‘Rashtrabhasha Prachar’by Shri
Kantilal Joshi which, though
exhaustive in its own way, does not do justice to the contributions
made to Hindi by sisterinstitutions.
In all, this volume, though not ambitious and all-pervading like the
one brought out by
Bombai Hindi Vidyapith, is a laudable attempt in the direction.
Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Sabha,
Poona, has done excellent service to the cause of Hindi by bringing
out the book ‘Pandit-Nehru-
Vividh-Darshan ‘by Shri Ranjan Parmar. This book throws very good
light on the penetrating
intellect and purity of mind behind the literary activities of the
late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who is
rightly considered to be one of the makers of modern India.
TRANSLATED WORKS.
A survey of the contribution of Maharashtra towards Hindi language and
literature would
certainly remain incomplete if translations of Marathi works into
Hindi are not mentioned.
Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Sabha (Poona) has done excellent work by
getting many known
Marathi novels, stories and dramas translated into Hindi at the hands
of persons having command
over both languages.
Poetry.
‘Manache Shlok ‘is one of the most popular poems of Shri Samarth
Ramdas Svami. These
Shlokas have been translated in simple Hindi prose by Shri D. B.
Joglekar (of Bombay) in the year
1949. The utility of this book has been increased on account of
another appendix bringing together
the mythological references in the poem and clearly explaining them.
Thus the stories of devotees
like Ajamil, Upamanyu, Pralhad have been explained. ‘Bhagna-murti’of
A. R. Deshpande has been
rendered into Hindi by P. Machawe.
More interesting than this is ‘Manobodhsar’of Shri D. L. Mahajan, a
poet of Nanded. The
peculiarity of this translation of the same poem ‘Manache Shlok ‘is
the fact that it is written in
Avadhi, which has been touched and adorned by the celebrated Hindi
poet Tulsidas in his famous
Ramacharitmanas. The author’s mastery over ‘Avadhi’, a dialect of
Hindi, has elicited praise from
Hindi-knowing people also. In fact, the translation is so felicitous
that it can easily pass for the
original.
Prose.
In prose, as is expected, novels and stories naturally get
predominance. Some of the novels
of Hari Narayan Apte and most of the novels of Prof. N. C. Phadke have
been rendered into fluent
Hindi by Shrinivas Kockar and Mr. Maniklal Pardeshi respectively. Some
novels of Shri V. S.
Khandekar have been translated happily into Hindi by R. R. Sarawate.
Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha
Sabha, Poona, takes lead in getting novels and stories translated into
Hindi. The Sabha succeeded
in persuading, the Marathi novelist, Shri G.N. Dandekar to translate
his own novel’Kuna Ekachi
Bhramana gatha’in January 1958. The book becomes a useful study of the
mind. Natural scenes on
the bank of Narmada described in a picturesque
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 289
way furnish an excellent background for various emotions that ruffle
the soul of the hero. The style
is at once, penetrating with simple yet, powerful sentences. In short,
‘Kisi Ek Ki Bhraman-gatha
‘makes a very happy and instructive reading.
‘Chattanka Beta’ (January 1959) is a translation of ‘Garambicha Bapu
one of the popular
novels of Shri S. N. Pendse. This novel in Marathi is representative
of the modern trend of turning to
the villages with a view to making the people appreciate the inherent
qualities of the atmosphere
therein. The translation of the novel undertaken by Shri
Shailendrakumar Simha has been very
happy. The translator has succeeded in bringing the local colour of
the original novel in Hindi, which
was, by no means, an easy task. Natural scenes of Garambi are also
picturesquely described.
‘Chattan ka Beta ‘is a valuable addition to Hindi novels. ‘Hatya
‘another novel of this author (Shri
Pendse) is also being translated. Parts of it have already appeared in
the Hindi edition of Navneet.
‘Savitri’of Prof. P. S. Rege has been happily translated into Hindi by
Prof. Moholkar of Bombay.
Here it would be proper to refer to a similar effort undertaken by
Rashtrabhasha Prachar
Samiti, Wardha. This Samiti published the translation of ‘Marali
Mannige’a famous Kanareese novel
written by Shri Shivaram Karant under the title ‘Dharatiki Or’in
October 1955. The Kanareese novel
presents a faithful picture of the society that exists to-day in
villages. It depicts the life of three
generations of the family of a Brahmin known as Aitalram. The author
has spoken of the
worthlessness of the present system of education through the story of
educating the son of this
Aitalram. The story covers a period from 1840 to 1940 and admirably
indicates how the problem of
poverty became more and more acute for the people of the village, as
years rolled on. The work of
translating this bulky novel running into 550 pages was done by Shri
Baburao Kumthekar under the
able guidance of the linguist, Shri Rahul Sankrityayan.
Mohanlal Bhatt, the Mantri of this Samiti, has translated one of the
most popular and famous
novels of the late Zhaverchand Meghani viz., ‘Sorath Tara Vaheta Panee
‘under the title ‘Sorath
Tera Bahata Pani (July 1956). The original Gujarati novel presents a
faithful picture of Sorath or
Saurashtra through the pages of history. The novel portrays the
typical products of the Kathi race
with all the vigour and power that the Sorathi language commands. The
Hindi translation is
comparatively happy. Shri Mohanlal Bhatt has tried his best to make
the translation as forceful as
possible. In this lies the value of ‘Sorath Tera Bahata Pani ‘.
Coming to stories, ‘Marathiki Nayi Kahaniyan ‘edited by Shri
Shailendrakumar Simha and
Prof. Vasant Deo at the behest of Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Sabha,
Poona, is a praiseworthy
attempt of introducing modern Marathi stories to the Hindi-knowing
world. This book brings together
eleven Marathi stories of well-known writers of Maharashtra in a
translated form. ‘Sade-gale
Loga’and ‘Ninnanabe kam Sankee yatra ‘are translations of the
290 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
stories of Prof. Gangadhar Gadgil and Shri D. M. Mirasdar, done by
Shri Shailendrakumar Simha
himself. Prof. Vasant Deo has translated Smt. Vibhavari Shirurkar’s
story under the name ‘Shikari’.
Other story-writers introduced through the book are Shri Arvind
Gokhale, Shri D. B. Mokashi, Shri P.
B. Bhave, Smt. Vasundhara Patwardhan, Shri Mahadeoshastri Joshi, Shri
Vijay Tendulkar, Shri
Vyankatesh Madgulkar and Shri Shashikant Punarvasu. In translating the
stories of these authors,
the editors were fortunate in getting the co-operation of Shri G. R.
Kulkarni, Pandit Yadav Tarafdar,
Smt. Indumati Gandhe, Kumari Shakuntala Deo, Mrs. Prabha Okhade, Shri
D. P. Aphale, Shri G. D.
Kambli, and Prof. Vishnu Nivasarkar. One of the editors, viz., Shri
Shailendrakumar Simha gives a
brief critical survey of modern Marathi story in an appendix attached
to the book. This would help
the readers to get a fair idea of the peculiarities of some of the
story-writers.
Dramas.
It is known that Hindi literature suffers from a paucity of dramas
really meant for the stage.
This was and is due to the want of a well-developed stage. In this
sphere Marathi literature is
sufficiently enriched and translations of Marathi dramas in Hindi
would go a long way in creating the
necessary background for the development of dramas in Hindi. In this
sphere also Maharashtra
Rashtrabhasha Sabha, Poona, has taken a good lead by getting two good
Marathi dramas
translated into Hindi. The first is ‘Jugar’of Smt. Muktabai Dikshit
translated by Prof. P. R. Bhopatkar
(December 1952) under the title ‘Jua ‘and the second is ‘Shrimant’of
Shri Vijay Tendulkar translated
by Prof. Vasant Deo under the title ‘Ameer’(January 1959). The former
drama is based upon the
permanent problem of second marriage and extra-marital relation. This
arises primarily on account
of the vital way-ward nature of man which refuses to abide by
discipline and accept one object
permanently. The satire is extremely bitter and piercing. Prof. P. R.
Bhopatkar has been very
successful in translating the drama by maintaining the power and
vigour of the original Marathi play.
Prof. Vasant Deo’s translation happily maintains the racy dialogues of
the original Marathi
play. Shri R. S. Sarvate from Jabalpur has translated three dramas of
Mama Varerkar, viz.,
‘Satteche Gulam’, ‘Dvarkecha Raja’and Sonyacha Kalas’. Shri Kelkar has
brought out the translation
of his drama ‘Saraswat’. It is reported that ‘Kichakvadh’and
‘Andhalyachi Shala’are also translated in
Hindi. ‘Bhatala Dili Osari’is translated by Shri B. G. Joglekar under
the ‘Diya hat, khane baithe sath
sath’’(yaw paying guest)’. Although it is not printed in a book form,
it was staged in Delhi and
appreciated by persons like Seth Govindadas and the celebrated poet
Dinkar. Shri Joglekar has
also prepared a translation of Mama Varerkars’’Layacha Laya ‘under the
name ‘Dakshayani’which
may be printed shortly.* If all important
*Mama Varerkar’s ‘Bhumikanya Seeta’finely rendered into Hindi by Shri
V. K. Tembe, was
also successfully staged. Shri P. K. Atre’s rollicking comedy
‘Lagnachi Bedi’has been translated by
Prof. Dr. Jain under the title ‘Vivahka Bandhan’. The attempt of Dr.
Jain to introduce the famous
dramatist to the Hindi-knowing world by creating an atmosphere suited
to it, is remarkable.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 291
dramas in Marathi are thus translated and published in Hindi, it would
certainly prove to be a very
useful service to Hindi language and literature. Bombai Hindi
Vidyapitha, Bombay has successfully
staged some of the famous Marathi dramas like ‘Tuze Ahe Tujapashi’,
‘Prema Tuza Rang Kasa’in
their Hindi versions and has secured prizes in dramatic competitions.
Other Works.
Among other translations, ‘Kalidasa’of MM. V. V. Mirashi from Nagpur
should be referred to.
The work was originally written in Marathi and translated by Pandit
Hrishikesh Sharma of Nagpur in
the year 1915. This book has been one of the most popular as well as
standard works on Kalidasa.
In this edition where the learned author of the book was helped by
Professor Shukdeoprasad Tiwari,
all material arising out of recent researches in the field has been
utilised. The translation in Hindi
has been, on the whole, satisfactory, although at times the
construction of the sentences appears to
be a bit clumsy and unhappy. The translation of this book in Hindi is
a significant contribution to the
study of Kalidasa.
Another book that deserves mention is ‘Vaidic Sanskritika
Vikas’originally written in Marathi
by Tarkatirth Lakshman-shastri Joshi and translated into Hindi by Dr.
M. D. Paradkar for the Sahitya
Akademi, New Delhi (1957). This book incorporates lectures delivered
by the learned author on the
development of Vedic culture from the Vedic period to the modern times
in 1949 for the Poona
University. Here Tarkatirtha Joshi gives an objective analysis of the
illusive topic viz. culture in a
very logical and convincing manner. While translating this work, Dr.
Paradkar has taken very great
care to retain the logical consistency and power of the original work.
Chapter V of this book appropriately emulates the place of the Jains
and Bauddhas in the
development of Indian thought as a whole and the sixth is devoted to
the contribution of modern
thinkers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Lokmanya Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, Yogi
Arvind and
Manavendranath Roy to the development of Indian thought The book ends
with the cautious, yet
thoughtful words :
“Yatharthme prasna yah hai ki is samsarko adhik achha, adhik sampanna
kaise banaya ja
sakata hai? Ek samay german darsanik libenitz kaha uthe the, ‘Ham jis
duniyame rahate hai, wahi
yatha-sambhav sabase uttam visva hai” Yaha avasyak hai ki isi
duniyame, isi sansarme ham
adhyatmik jivanki anubhuti prapta karen! Is sansarme jivit rahaneki
pravruttiko adhyatmikatase
adhik sampanna evam saphal banana nitanta avashyak hai”.
Translation :
“In fact, the real question is, ‘How to make this world more happy,
more enriched ‘? On one
occasion, the German philosopher Libenitz did say, ‘The world in which
we live is possibly
292 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
the best world ‘. It is desirable therefore, that we should try to
experience the glory of spiritual life in
this world alone. It is absolutely necessary to foster ways of living
in this world by enriching and
ennobling it with spiritual outlook”.
Collecting all references to the original works in Sanskrit and
Prakrit in one appendix and
arranging important words in their alphabetical order in another has
made the edition with Hindi
translation an important book of reference.
‘Rutuchakra’of Smt. Durga Bhagwat and ‘Drushtiadchya Srushtit’of Smt.
Krishnabai Mote are
happily rendered into Hindi by Shri Shailendrakumar Simha.
‘Rutuchakra’contains twelve literary
essays where Smt. Durga Bhagwat graphically describes the glory of all
seasons during the twelve
months of the year. Shri Shailendrakumar has given a very good account
of himself in translating
such a book full of the local colour, which by no means, is an easy
task. The translation is, indeed,
felicitous and speaks well of the skill employed by Shri
Shailendrakumar Simha.
‘Ankh ot pahad ot’presents another translation of the same author. The
name of the book in
Marathi, viz., ‘Drushtiadchya Srushtit’, already referred to above,
contains the impressions of Smt.
Krishnabai Mote regarding the weaknesses and vices that have crept in
the village-life of
Maharashtra. The thoughtful yet sympathetic outlook of the author has
rendered the pen-portraits of
characters very life-like and hence unforgettable. Shri
Shailendrakumar has succeeded in retaining
the touching and penetrating quality of the book in Hindi.
In addition to books of this type, Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Sabha,
Poona, has published
the translation of ‘Pravasi Jadugar ‘of Raghuvir, a famous magician of
Maharashtra (March 1956). In
this book of 168 pages in print, the author gives an interesting
account of his travels through East
Africa and Japan. The pleasing and conversational style sustains the
interest of the readers from
the beginning to the end. Shri G. R. Kulkarni, the translator, has
attempted to retain the pleasing
quality of Marathi and has, to a great extent, succeeded in his task.
Recently the Sabha has brought out the translation of ‘Angadh
Moti’(November 1959), a fine
collection of interesting essays of Shri N. V. Gadgil, Professor
Vasant Deo is the translator. Shri N.
V. Gadgil writes in a very delightfully conversational style.
Professor Vasant Deo has retained all
these qualities and hence his translation has been extremely happy. In
the very first essay, ‘Himalay
ki Yatra’the author playfully speaks of the failure of his attempts to
go on a journey of the Himalayas
along with his school-going friends. In fact, it is a happy memory of
the days of childhood. ‘Angadh
Moti’is, therefore, a very useful contribution to Hindi. ‘Bhagwan
Buddha’of Dharmanand Kausambi
as well as the famous book ‘Pratibha-Sadhana’of N. S. Phadke have been
happily translated into
Hindi by Shri Shripad Joshi.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 293
Among books that are intended for children, reference need be made to
Munnarajaka
Mahagranth’and ‘Dilbahalav’. The former is a fine translation of ‘Babu
Balacha Grantharaj’(written
by Shri D. M. Tilak of Nasik) by Shri B. G. Joglekar (25th December
1952). The entire book makes a
pleasant reading on account of lucid and yet idiomatic Hindi.
‘Dilbahalav’published by Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Sabha, Poona, in
April 1958, is Shri
Suresh Nighojkar’s Hindi translation of a book written in Marathi by
Shri R. T. Ranade. The book,
divided into six chapters or parts, begins with simple and interesting
examples in arithmetic, written
as well as those to be done orally. Material for testing the general
knowledge of children is also
provided for. Some jokes and conversations creating laughter are also
included in the book. The
book, unique in conception, is interesting as well as instructive and
deserves to be read by all
children.
Among other translations ‘Sthitapradna-darshan’and ‘Gita-pravachan ‘of
Acharya Vinoba are
translated by Shri Haribhau Upadhyay, one of the former ministers of
Rajastan.
The interest that Maharashtra has shown in Hindi can be looked at from
a different point of
view also. People of Maharashtra have rendered Hindi books in Marathi
also. In the year 1947,
‘Hindi Hich Amachi Rashtrabhasha ‘of Shri S. D. Chitale, was
published. The author has given a
lucid exposition of the problem of Rashtrabhasha as well as the place
of Hindi in the system of
education in independent India. The book admirably traces the history
of the language along with its
tussle with Urdu. In the year 1956, ‘Gandhijika Vidyarthi Jeevan’was
translated by Shri Shripad
Joshi at the behest of Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Sabha, Poona. Here
Shri Joshi has given an
idea of the life of Gandhiji as a student in simple and fluent
Marathi. The Sabha has only recently
brought out the book,’Sumitranandan Pant—Kahi Kavita’(May 1960) which
contains translations of
37 poems of the celebrated Hindi poet. Marathi poets of renown like
Shri Arati Prabhu, Shri B. B.
Borkar, Shri Y. B. Pendharkar, Smt. Shanta Shelke, Shri V. R. Kant,
Shri Mangesh Padgaonkar,
were invited to translate these poems in Hindi. A short essay on the
life and policy of Shri
Sumitranandan Pant is also incorporated in the book. The method of
giving the Hindi poems along
with their translation in Marathi is indeed worthy of being emulated.
It is also necessary, here, to
refer to a similar effort undertaken by Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad.
From the year 1959, this
Parishad has decided to bring out critical essays on the yearly
contributions to literature of
languages other than Marathi. In keeping with this decision, the
Parishad has already published a
small book of 51 printed pages containing critical remarks of Prof. G.
N. Sathe (Podar College of
Commerce) of Bombay on the contributions to Hindi literature during
the year 1948. This is the first
effort of its kind officially undertaken by an institution wedded
primarily to the cause of fostering
Marathi.
294 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
Thus it can be seen that the contributions of Maharashtra to Hindi
have spread over the last
five or six centuries. Maharashtra has accepted Hindi to be the common
language of the country as
a whole from a very early period.
Recent Traslations.
For a few years to come, translating books from Indian languages like
Marathi and Gujarati
into Hindi and vice versa, is bound to be an important feature of our
literary activity. In so far as such
attempts go a long way in fostering a healthy atmosphere of give-and-
take, they deserve to be
encouraged more and more. ‘Bharatiya Sahitya-Shastra ‘by Dr. G. T.
Deshpande, of Nagpur
University, is a very illuminating treatise discussing problems of
Sanskrit rhetorics from the historic
point of view. In fact the book brings together the lectures delivered
by the author on behalf of
Marathi Sahitya Sangh, Bombay, in memory of the late V. M. Joshi, one
of the gifted Marathi writers.
The originality of the author can easily be seen from his way of inter-
relating Lakshanas of Bharata
with the Alankars, i.e. figures of speech of later rhetoricians. The
book has been translated into
Hindi by Prof. S. G. Deuskar who is very well-read in Sanskrit. His
translation into Hindi, however,
leaves much to be desired. The author, it appears, has not cultivated
good acquaintance with
constructions and idioms in Hindi. This makes this translation more
literal than literary. Another book
worthy of mention is ‘Rajwade Lekh-Sangrah ‘originally edited in
Marathi by Tarkatirth
Laxmanshastri Joshi and translated by Prof. Vasant Deo, Bombay, for
Sahitya Akademi (published
in 1964). The book brings together 20 thoughtful articles by the late
Shri V. K. Rajwade, one of the
most erudite historians and etymologists of Maharashtra. The articles
are not only truly
representative but also throw light on the out-look of a real
historian, who advocated the philosophy
of history that is essentially linked up with literature. The
introduction that gives the life-sketch of
Rajwade, one of the typical Brahmins of 19th century, has added to the
value of the book for non-
Marathi speaking people of India. Translating the writings of a
historian of that type, is by no means
an easy affair and Prof. Vasant Deo has indeed done a good job in
presenting all thoughts in fluent
Hindi. Vaktrutvashastrakala, Tantra Mantra by late Shri N. V. Gadgil,
former Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Poona, originally written in Marathi, is a unique book
of its kind. This treatise begins
with the importance of speech in democracy and in seven chapters
brings out all details that are
necessary for an aspirant in being a good speaker. In the concluding
chapter the author
appropriately places his finger on successfully conducting meetings as
well as large gatherings.
Prof. Vishnu Nivasarkar from Bombay has done very good service to the
Hindi-knowing world by
translating this into good and readable Hindi. ‘Janta vah hai jo satat
apaneko vidyarthi samajhkar
abhyas karata rahe’; ‘Sachcha vakta vah hai jo jnanka kan-kan chunta
rahe ‘are some of the
sentences that have a proverbial ring. Words like ‘abhyas ‘in the
sense of study as well as some
constructions bearing the influence of Marathi could have been
avoided. Nevertheless,
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 295
the translator and the publisher, viz., Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha
Sabha, Poona, deserve to be
congratulated for presenting this book to the Hindi-knowing people of
the country (1963).’Bharat
Chin Sangharsh’ written by Shri T. R. Deogirikar has been translated
by Shri Lalji Upadhye and
published by Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Sabha, Poona. International
dispute about the Sino-
Indian border along with the treacherous activities of China have been
aptly explained in this book.
Six maps connected with the disputed border have added to the utility
and importance of this
treaties of 102 pages.’ Ravindranth-Vyaktitva evam Krutitva’ is an
excellent Hindi rendering of the
Marathi book by Shri G. D. Khanolkar. The author, who had an occasion
to study in Shantiniketan,
has naturally succeeded in adding a personal touch to the account
making it very lively and
interesting. Dr. M. D. Paradkar has finely translated it for the Book
Centre, Bombay, who have taken
care to publish the same in a very attractive manner.
Fondness of Maharashtra for drama and histrionics is now known all
over the country. It is no
wonder, therefore, that new dramas suited to the stage and yet
partaking of novelty in experiment
continue to pour in Maharashtra. Dhupa ke sayamen is Prof. Vasant
Deo’s translation of the Marathi
drama’Vedyache Ghar Unhat’ by Prof. Vasant Kanetkar (1964). The drama
seeks to focus the
attention of the readers on the peculiar workings of the human mind
through the character of the
hero viz., Dadaji. The entire drama is based upon the inner conflict
surging within the outwardly nonappreciative
and high-handed behaviour of this interesting personality ultimately
ending in his tragic
exit by leaping through the window. The success of the dramatist lies
in bringing the humanly
psychological part to the fore-front which, in itself, speaks of the
living quality of the Marathi stage. A
few words under the title’ Parde ke Pichhe’ by the director Prof. B.
Kelkar is bound to prove
extremely helpful to those interested in presenting the drama on the
stage. Prof. Vasant Deo’s
translation reads like the original.’ Prema Tujha Rang Kasa’ by the
same author is rendered into
Hindi by Prof. Deo himself under the title’ Dhai Akhar Prem Ka’. This
is also a powerful drama
apparently written in a farcical style but ultimately converging upon
the stark reality of life through
depicting the chastening and ennobling influence of love that is
common to all alike. Characters are
finely portrayed and they humorously bring out the truth of the adage’
history repeats itself’. Prof.
Vasant Deo’s translation is good on the whole but at times tends to
become too literal and hence
slightly jerky.’ Jag Utha hai Raygadh’ is the third drama of the same
author translated by Prof. Deo.
The drama tries to portray the stress and strain of Shivaji in the
concluding years of his life when the
conflict between the king and the father in him reaches its climax.
Apart from the historical truth
contained in it, the drama has undoubtedly captivated the Marathi mind
and has brought to the
author the reward for writing the best drama of the year 1964 on
behalf of the Sangeet Natak
Akademi. Prof. Vasant Deo’s carefulness in writing it into flowing
Hindustani style is indeed very
commendable. Ghar of Prof. Vasant Kanetkar is also rendered into Hindi
under the title’ Bebasi’.
Translations
296 MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEER
of such successful dramas in Marathi will ultimately provide Hindi
with a lively stage. Dramatical
literature in Hindi will be considerably enriched thereby and this
will certainly be a great service to
Hindi, the language of the Indian Union. It will be opportune here to
mention that’ Dhai Akhar Prem
ka’ was staged at Nagpur by Bombai Hindi Vidyapith and it was highly
appreciated by the Hindiknowing
audience. It fetched first prize to the Vidyapith in the competition.
Sporadic attempts in this direction are too many to be detailed here.
Mention of the free
Marathi rendering of Jainendra-kumar’s novel’ Parakh’ by Shri H. S.
Ursekar, Presidency
Magistrate, Bombay (1959) is, however, necessary. The translator has
changed the names of the
characters in the original novel in order to give it a colour suitable
to Maharashtra. Thus Satyadhan,
Katto and Bihari become Satyapriya, Bijali and Vasant. Shri Ursekar’s
effort in retaining the original
psychological vein of the entire novel and bringing out the inner
conflict in the mind of characters is
one that can evoke admiration. Viyogi Hari’s book has been translated
into Marathi by Shri Shripad
Joshi of Poona under the title’ Antariche Bol. Kaka Kalelkar’s’
Lokjivan’ has also been translated
from Marathi into Hindi by this author. This brief survey speaks well
of the interest of Maharashtra in
Hindi which continues unabated from the early times of Marathi saints
like Dnyaneshwar and others
down to the modern day.
MAHARASHTRA STATE GAZETTEERS
GOVERNMENT OF MAHARASHTRA
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
DIRECTORATE OF GOVERNMENT PRINTING, STATIONERY
AND PUBLICATIONS, MAHARASHTRA STATE
1971
BOMBAY
GENERAL VOLUME
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
CONTRIBUTORS
Dr. S. M. KATRE,
Director, Deccan College
Post-Graduate and Research
Institute, Pune.
Sanskrit and Prakrit
Prof. K. P. KULKARNI
Marathi—A. D 983 to A. D. 1600.
Dr. S. G. TULPULE , M.A., Ph.D.
Marathi—A. D 1600 to A. D. 1800.
Prof. A. K. PRIYOLKAR,
Marathi—Christian Literature
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Prof. M. V. RAJADHYAKSHA,
Marathi Literature from A. D. 1800
to A. D. 1920.
Shri T. V. PARVATE,
Marathi Literature during 1920 and 1970.
Dr. M. D. PARADKAR, M.A., Ph.D., Vice-Chancellor, Bombay Hindi
Vidyapeeth
Mahim, Bombay-l6
Encyclopaedic dictionary of Marathi literature
By Sunita Deshpande”>Encyclopaedic dictionary of Marathi literature
By Sunita Deshpande
The Encyclopaedia Of Indian Literature (Volume Two) (Devraj To Jyoti),
Volume 2
By Amaresh Datta
Global Vision Publishing House
F-4 1st Floor, “hari Sadan’ 20 Ansari Road,
Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002 (india)
Phone: 32971125, 23261581, 23276291, Mob: 9810644769
Email: nsing...@vsnl.net globalv...@eth.net
http://www.globalvisionpub.com
First Edition 2007
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
S.M. Tadkodkar, Goan Christian Marathi Vilapika during the 17th
Century
An extraordinary book: S.M. Tadkodkar, Goan Christian Marathi Vilapika
during the 17th Century. Delhi: B.R. Publications, 2009.
Tadkodkar, who is HoD of Marathi at the Goa University, proposes that
2 of the 3 Paixao de Christo found at the end of the MS of the
Khristapurana preserved in the State Central Library, Panjim, Goa,
were written by Thomas Stephens himself.
The book – which is practically sold out – contains transcriptions of
many other parts of the MS: the Censures and Licences, for example.
Tadkodkar teaches a course called “Christian Marathi Literature” every
year to his students. Every year, he told me, he has problems from his
students: Sir, why do we have to study this stuff? And every year, by
the end of the course, they say: This is the best course we have
attended.
The Professor is full of admiration for Thomas Stephens. His writings
are able to move people even today, reaching out across temporal,
religious and community barriers to touch the hearts of those who read
and hear.
Posted by Ivo Coelho at 21:53
Labels: Thomas Stephens
3 comments:
Anonymous said…
Paixao de Cristo – by Dr. S.M. Tadkodkar
Goan Christian Marathi Vilapika : During the 17th CenturyPaixao de
Cristo (Passion of Christ) known as Christi Vilapika in Marathi, was
written by during the 17th century in Marathi language and Roman
script, based on sublime pathos of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It
republushed in the book Goan Christian Marathi Vilapika : During the
17th Century[1]
Contents: Introduction. Prologue to the readers. 1. Christian Marathi
literature in Goa. 2. Contribution of A.K. Priolkar and V.B.
Prabhudessai to the study of Christian Marathi literature written
during the 17th century. 3. Textual criticism and the Christian
Marathi literature in Goa. 4. Depiction of suffering and the Cry. 5.
Scheme of transliteration of Christian Marathi literature in Goa. 6.
Texts of the Paixao de Cristo (Christi Vilapika) in the Roman script.
7. Texts of the Paixao de Cristo (Christi Vilapika) transliterated
from the Roman script into the Devanagari script. 8. Structure of
Marathi language in Christian literature in Goa. Appendices: 1.
Censures and licenses. 2. Glossary (Marathi-Roman as well as
Devanagari script-English). 3. Explanatory notes-I. 4. Explanatory
notes-II. 5. Four texts of CHILAYABAL VILAPIKA. 6. Bibliography. 7.
Texts of the Christi Vilapika. “This book is a faithful reproduction
of original texts of Christian Marathi Vilapika (Passion of Christ),
written by Catholic missionaries during the 17th century in Marathi
language and Roman script, while the Portuguese were ruling Goa. Dr.
S.M. Tadkodkar, an ardent research scholar of Christian Marathi
literature of the 17th century, has offered in this book edited copies
of three poems based on sublime pathos of the crucifixion of Jesus of
Nazareth. He also transliterated the texts into the Devanagari script.
Dr. Tadkodkar has restored original texts after following principles
of textual criticism. The author has also investigated linguistic form
of the 17th century in Goa to explore whether it resembles with that
of 12th and 13th centuries Marathi language in Maharashtra. The
linguistic erudition reflected in these consolidated texts would
emerge as a patient study of the 17th century enriched with glossary
and copious notes. This attempt should be considered as the valuable
contribution to the understanding of vernacular languages, which offer
potentially abundant material for specialized linguistics.” (jacket)
Description Book cover of Goan Christian Marathi Vilapika : During the
17th Century, B.R. Pub., 2010, ISBN 81-7646-498-8 .
18 May 2010 22:16
Anonymous said…
Dr. Tadkodkar receives gold medal for his research and literary
contribution
Panaji, dated December 21, 2009
Dr. S. M. Tadkodkar is the recipient of noteworthy ‘Research Link
Saraswat Samman Gold Medal’ for the year of 2008-09 in respect of his
outstanding contribution to area of research and literary writing in
Marathi. Dr. Tadkodkar is the head of Department of Postgraduate
Instruction and Research in Marathi at Goa University.
The Gold Medal and a scroll were presented to Dr. Tadkodkar during an
impressive function of an all India Research Scholars Seminar at
Nalanda (Bihar), which was held on December 12 and 13 this year. The
Medal was awarded by ‘Research Link’, which is a national periodical
for publication of critical research articles. It is being published
at Indore in Madhya Pradesh.
Dr. Tadkodkar was awarded a three year research fellowship by
University Grants Commission, New Delhi. On the basis of the research
his book in English titled ‘Goan Christian Marathi Vilapika of the
17th Century’ has been published. One of the noted critics Professor
S. R. Chunekar has observed that Priolkar – Prabhudessai – Tadkodkar
tradition in the field of research in Marathi has emerged.
His literary writing has been published in noteworthy periodicals
including a journal titled ‘Paramarsh’ of University of Pune. He has
been invited to present papers at national seminars and to deliver
lectures outside Goa in front of learned audience.
Writing of Dr. Tadkodkar has been included in anthologies which are
published at national level. He also has chaired a session of the
first All India Language Congress held at Jalgaon.
Basically, Dr. Tadkodkar, who prefers solitary life, is a well known
poet of Konkani and Marathi.
Dr. Tadkodkar has written more than thirteen books in Marathi, Konkani
and English. Out of which following are the volumes of poetry:
1. Krishna-Kalee (Konkani),
2. Paayanjael (Konkani),
3. Raan-Maun (Marathi),
4. Titiksha (marathi),
5. Taabaa (Marathi)
His books are also published by Goa Konkani Academy and Gomantak
Marathi Academy. A monograph in Konkani by Dr. Tadkodkar on a Konkani
poet Dr. R. V. Pandit was well appreciated for embedded neat research
attitude. Presently he is editing a birth centenary volume titled
‘Bakibab Borkar Janma-Shat-Saawantsarik’ which includes writings by
luminaries on the celebrated Konkani-Marathi poet Balkrishna Bhagawant
Borkar. It will be a model for research writing, Dr. Tadkodkar hopes.
. It will be a model for research writing, Dr. Tadkodkar hopes.
Dr. Tadkodkar, who is a silent research scholar, has also received
‘Anubandh-Bhimrao Chincholikar prize, Gomant Vidya Niketan prize for
best research writing earlier. He earned Ph. D. degree for his thesis
on ‘A Critical Study of Professor Anant Kakaba Priolkar’s contribution
to research’ under the thought provoking guidance of Dr. V. B.
Prabhudessai, who is well respected in the area of research by one and
all.
18 May 2010 22:31
Anonymous said…
Dr. Tadkodkar receives gold medal for his research and literary
contribution
Panaji, dated December 21, 2009
Dr. S. M. Tadkodkar is the recipient of noteworthy ‘Research Link
Saraswat Samman Gold Medal’ for the year of 2008-09 in respect of his
outstanding contribution to area of research and literary writing in
Marathi. Dr. Tadkodkar is the head of Department of Postgraduate
Instruction and Research in Marathi at Goa University.
The Gold Medal and a scroll were presented to Dr. Tadkodkar during an
impressive function of an all India Research Scholars Seminar at
Nalanda (Bihar), which was held on December 12 and 13 this year. The
Medal was awarded by ‘Research Link’, which is a national periodical
for publication of critical research articles. It is being published
at Indore in Madhya Pradesh.
Dr. Tadkodkar was awarded a three year research fellowship by
University Grants Commission, New Delhi. On the basis of the research
his book in English titled ‘Goan Christian Marathi Vilapika of the
17th Century’ has been published. One of the noted critics Professor
S. R. Chunekar has observed that Priolkar – Prabhudessai – Tadkodkar
tradition in the field of research in Marathi has emerged.
His literary writing has been published in noteworthy periodicals
including a journal titled ‘Paramarsh’ of University of Pune. He has
been invited to present papers at national seminars and to deliver
lectures outside Goa in front of learned audience.
Writing of Dr. Tadkodkar has been included in anthologies which are
published at national level. He also has chaired a session of the
first All India Language Congress held at Jalgaon.
Basically, Dr. Tadkodkar, who prefers solitary life, is a well known
poet of Konkani and Marathi.
Dr. Tadkodkar has written more than thirteen books in Marathi, Konkani
and English. Out of which following are the volumes of poetry:
1. Krishna-Kalee (Konkani),
2. Paayanjael (Konkani),
3. Raan-Maun (Marathi),
4. Titiksha (marathi),
5. Taabaa (Marathi)
His books are also published by Goa Konkani Academy and Gomantak
Marathi Academy. A monograph in Konkani by Dr. Tadkodkar on a Konkani
poet Dr. R. V. Pandit was well appreciated for embedded neat research
attitude. Presently he is editing a birth centenary volume titled
‘Bakibab Borkar Janma-Shat-Saawantsarik’ which includes writings by
luminaries on the celebrated Konkani-Marathi poet Balkrishna Bhagawant
Borkar. It will be a model for research writing, Dr. Tadkodkar hopes.
. It will be a model for research writing, Dr. Tadkodkar hopes.
Dr. Tadkodkar, who is a silent research scholar, has also received
‘Anubandh-Bhimrao Chincholikar prize, Gomant Vidya Niketan prize for
best research writing earlier. He earned Ph. D. degree for his thesis
on ‘A Critical Study of Professor Anant Kakaba Priolkar’s contribution
to research’ under the thought provoking guidance of Dr. V. B.
Prabhudessai, who is well respected in the area of research by one and
all.
18 May 2010 22:32
…and I am Sid Harth