Six Acres and a Third
Introduction
The novel, Chha Mana Atha Guntha by Fakir Mohan Senapati heralds the inauguration of the age of modern Oriya prose. The novel, widely praised for its “realism”, combines an ironic, reflexive, seemingly “postmodern” narrative style with the analytical spirit of a work of social inquiry, unearthing causes that lie beneath superficial phenomena. The importance of such foundationally original works as Chha Mana derives not only from their intrinsic literary merit but even more from their pioneering innovativeness, which can be fully appreciated only in the evolving historical context of that literature. Fakir Mohan Senapati himself stands at the source of one of the two broad lines of development of the early Indian novel, the realistic-satirical, just as Bankim Chandra Chatterji stood at the head of the other line, the historical-romantic.
SATYA P MOHANTY, HARISH TRIVEDI
I Senapati’s Novel: Historical Document and Literary Text
F
Chha Mana Atha Guntha has been widely praised for its “realism” – outside Orissa by, among others, U R Anathamurthy and Sisir Kumar Das. But the novel’s realist mode itself opens up new questions for the reader. Recalling Georg Lukács’s evaluative distinction between a descriptive naturalism and a more analytical realism, it can be argued that Senapati’s approach is of the latter kind [on this, see Mohanty 2006]. Chha Mana combines an ironic, reflexive, seemingly “postmodern” narrative style with the analytical spirit of a work of social inquiry, unearthing causes that lie beneath superficial phenomena. Senapati’s analytical realist approach (as Ulka Anjaria points out in her essay) is uniquely suited to the genre of satire, especially with its inversion of traditional social meanings, a genre used in closely comparable ways by the post-independence Hindi novelist Shrilal Shukla in his Raag Darbari. Senapati’s complex and self-reflexive narrative style raises questions about how we should interpret the author’s own values and intentions (on the difficult question of gender, for instance, see the essay by Horan, and also Sawyer). In many obvious and subtle ways, Chha Mana invites readers to re-imagine colonial Indian society from below – by providing a realist “view” that is not just sociological or philosophical, but also simultaneously – and necessarily – literary.
II The Literary Context
Though a couple of novels had already been published in Oriya before Chha Mana Atha Guntha [Mishra 2001: 240], Senapati is unanimously regarded as the “father” of the Oriya novel. It is nearly always true of works of such foundational originality that their importance derives not only from their intrinsic literary merit but even more from their pioneering innovativeness, which can be fully appreciated only in the evolving historical context of that literature. The early triad of modern Oriya writers – of whom Senapati was one, together with his close contemporaries Radhanath Ray (1848-1908), the romantic-patriotic poet of nature, and Madhusudan Rao (1853-1912), the sagely bhakta poet and educationist – not only inaugurated new generic possibilities but also demonstrated the creative potential of Oriya, the language they all wrote in. This is one aspect of any writer’s achievement, of course, that cannot come through adequately even in the most resourceful of translations, and it should therefore prove
We are grateful to Satya P Mohanty and Harish Trivedi for help in putting together the papers for this special section. –Ed
Economic and Political Weekly November 18, 2006
especially illuminating that one of the essays here, by G N Dash, richly documents the crucial movement for the upsurge of Oriya language to which Senapati made his vital contribution.
Senapati also has a significance beyond Oriya, in the larger context of the development of the novel across the many major languages of India. Sisir Kumar Das’s magisterial History of Indian Literature 1800-1910 (1991) focuses on Senapati’s realism and evaluates the significance of his novel through that literary-historical lens: “[it] is not only free from all traces of the Bankim (Chandra Chatterji) tradition, but it created a new world of fiction which was further expanded and enriched later in the century by . . .Premchand and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay” (1991: 296). Senapati is here identified as standing at the source of one of the two broad lines of development of the early Indian novel, the realistic-satirical, just as Bankim indisputably stood at the head of the other line, the historical-romantic.
Since Premchand (1880-1936), whose first novel began appearing the very year following the publication of Chha Mana as a book, seems neither then nor later to have read Senapati or indeed, in the lack of translation, even to have heard of him; the connection Das acclaims between the two writers must be seen as more of broad genealogy rather than that of influence or even inter-textuality. Another common aspect of the achievement of these two novelists was explored recently in a conference, held to mark (more or less together) the 125th birth-anniversary of Premchand and the 163rd birth-anniversary of Senapati, where both authors were viewed as the “saviours of [their respective] languages” and who had “a common agenda of retrieving indigenous languages…by modernising them” [Satpathy 2006: 8-9], a role that may be seen as that of subaltern self-assertion against the encroachment of other hegemonic languages.
Altogether, the four essays published here, and the conference in Delhi (January 2007) to which they are a curtain-raiser, should provide an opportunity for a reappraisal of the achievement of Senapati from diverse points of view. No less importantly, the occasion should help us situate, in a long and comparative perspective, the evolution of the early Indian novel – as well as the general theme of the “view from below” in modern south Asian literature.
EPWEmail: spm5@cornell.edu
[The international publication of a new translation of Fakir Mohan Senapati’s novel Chha Mana Atha Guntha (Six Acres and a Third, University of California Press, 2005; in India, Penguin, 2006) provides the occasion for an agenda-setting conference at the University of Delhi: ‘The Literary View from Below: Fakir Mohan Senapati’s Six Acres and a Third and the Tradition of Radical Social Critique in Modern South Asian Literature’ (January 3-5, 2007). The conference, building in part on the four essays published here, attempts to contribute to the ongoing development of a creative and progressive south Asian canon that can shape curricula and new scholarly work in literary criticism and related disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.]
References
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981): The Dialogic Imagination, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, US. Das, Sisir Kumar (1991): A History of Indian Literature 1800-1910, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. Lukács, Georg (1963): The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, translated by J and N Mander, Merlin Press, London.
Mishra, Rabi Shankar (2001): ‘Chha Mana Atha Guntha: The Language of Power and the Silence of a Woman’ in Meenakshi Mukherjee (ed), Early Novels in India, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi.
Mohanty, Satya P (2006): ‘Introduction’, Six Acres and a Third by Fakir Mohan Senapati, translated by Rabi Shankar Mishra, Satya P Mohanty, Jatindra K Nayak, and Paul St-Pierre, Penguin-India, New Delhi.
Satpathy, Sumanyu (2006): ‘Saviours of Indian Languages’, report on the conference held by the Sahitya Akademi on Fakir Mohan and Premchand: Saviours of Language, Bhubaneshwar, March 3-5, 2006, published in
Newsletter: Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, July.
REVIEW OF AGRICULTURE June 30, 2006
Measuring the Marginal Value of Water and Elasticityof Demand for Water in Agriculture – E Somanathan, R Ravindranath Is Bt Cotton Cultivation Economically Viable for Indian Farmers? An Empirical Analysis – A Narayanamoorthy, S S Kalamkar Globalisation and Expanding Markets for Cut-Flowers: Who Benefits? – Sucharita Sen, Saraswati Raju Lease Farming in Kerala: Findings from Micro Level Studies – K N Nair, Vineetha Menon Drought, Agricultural Risk and Rural Income:Case of a Water Limiting Rice Production Environment, Tamil Nadu – K N Selvaraj, C Ramasamy Diversification towards High Value Agriculture:Role of Urbanisation and Infrastructure – P Parthasarathy Rao, P S Birthal, P K Joshi Institutional Credit, Indebtedness and Suicides in Punjab – P Satish Farmers’ Suicides and Response of Public Policy:Evidence, Diagnosis and Alternatives from Punjab – Anita Gill, Lakhwinder Singh For copies write to Circulation Manager
Economic and Political Weekly
Hitkari House, 284, Shahid Bhagatsingh Road, Mumbai 400 001 email: circulation@epw.org.in
Economic and Political Weekly November 18, 2006
