What is Literary Culture, Did You Ask?

The Strange Case of Orissa

Sailen Routray 

Orissa was the first state in the Indian subcontinent to be created more or less exclusively on a linguistic basis in the year 1936. The region’s linguistic and literary heritage forms an important part of the self-definition of Orissa as a region/state and Odias as a people. But the literary culture of Orissa is, relatively speaking, under-studied. 

‘Literary criticism’ is a small-scale industry in the state and in the Odia language, fuelled primarily by the need for PhDs. But apart from a few honourable exceptions, most of it is of the ‘The Literary Oeuvre of X: A Study’ or ‘Representation of Women in the Poetry of Y’ variety. It does little to illuminate the state’s and the people’s experience of the literary.

Orissa’s society and culture remain neglected by the broader academic community to a large extent, and this is reflected in the meager literature in English on Odia literary culture. In this light, the volume under discussion, Reading Literary Culture: Perspectives from Orissa by Sumanyu Satpathy goes some distance in rectifying such a state of affairs.

This volume is not a monograph. It is a collection of sixteen essays divided into four sections titled ‘Introductions,’ ‘Interventions,’ ‘Critiques,’ and ‘Explorations,’ and comprises of book reviews, an interview, an extensive biographical note, thematic overviews of various aspects of Odia literature, and the review of works of a few Odia writers.

These pieces were written for various occasions and have been collected here in one volume for the first time. There is no thematic/theoretical coherence across these essays apart from the fact that all of them deal with one aspect of Odia literature or the other.

In a way the title is slightly misleading. When one thinks of literary culture, one generally expects a stress either on the ‘literary’ or on the ‘cultural.’ But a good overview of any specific ‘literary culture’ must do both in a balanced fashion.

In the specific context of Orissa, it must show the linkages between literary and cultural production and explicate ‘the literary’ as merely one site of studying the region’s culture, yet at the same time demonstrate how literature has played a crucial, ‘overdetermining’ role in the self-definition of Odia socio-cultural identity. The book sets out to do this, but in many ways fails to achieve its objective.

The second essay in the volume, ‘Traditions and New Trends: An Overview of Oriya Literature’ gives a short, concise overview of Odia literature, and avoids most of the general biases that one sees in most such reviews. But there are some obvious oversights. For example, the essay does not do adequate justice to the role of ‘non-Odias’ such as Radhanath Ray and Madhusudan Rao in shaping ‘modern’ Odia literature, and the significance of such a phenomenon for understanding Odia literary ‘modernity.’ The essay also does not do adequate justice to Odia literary non-fiction.

The third essay in the book titled ‘Perspectives on Contemporary Oriya Poetry’ is a competent and nuanced overview of the poetry scene in Orissa. But the title is somewhat misleading; because an essay that is about ‘contemporary Oriya poetry’ and does not include even a short discussion on poets such as Akhil Nayak, Bharat Majhi, Pabitra Mohan Dash and Kedar Mishra amongst others, is both incomplete and inadequate (although the essay does mention the name of Basudev Sunani).

These poets, along with others from their generation, have a self-conscious engagement with contemporary politics, and their work is marked with an intense engagement with the idea of ‘the political.’ This sudden change of course in Odia poetry needs to be sociologically accounted for. Perhaps it is unfair to expect this from a short overview that tries to deal with around three generations of a poetic tradition in seventeen pages. But then, the title of the essay should have been different.

The fourth essay in the volume, ‘Oriya Children’s Verse: Sense and Nonsense,’ is perhaps the most satisfying piece in the volume. This article is quite exhaustive, and fills in an important gap. Children’s literature is one of the least studied thematic areas in Odia literature. ‘Oriya Children’s Verse: Sense and Nonsense’ provides a short overview of the work of some important scholars working on the thematic area of nonsense verse, as well as of the tradition of writing poetry and non-sense verse for children in Odia.

The second section titled ‘Interventions’ comprises of four review essays, and are almost models of such compositions. But the tenth essay in the volume, in the next section, ‘Translating Chha Mana Atha Guntha’ is perhaps the most comprehensive and perceptive review in the book. It critically examines a new translation of Fakir Mohan Senapati’s famous novel. It is scholarly and rigorous, and gives us a historical context of the translations of the text.

J.P. Das and Jayanta Mahapatra are perhaps favourites of Satpathy amongst Odia littérateurs, and it shows in the sensitivity with which he engages with their works. The last essay in the volume, titled ‘Polumetis as Artist: J.P. Das,’ within the format of an extended biographical note, provides us with a broad and richly detailed overview of the life, times, and works of one of the most versatile Odia writers.

In the preface of the book Satpathy says, “Since I do not live in Orissa, I have the additional luxury and freedom to express my opinions without fear or favour, expecting the perspectives to be somewhat “different…” This is a somewhat simplistic reading of ‘the politics of location,’ and reproduces early twentieth century notions of ‘ethnographic distance.’

As this review of the book shows, this volume suffers from such a distance. Certain kinds of insights about literary cultures are available only by inhabiting them intensely from within; being an ‘insider’ is as much a privilege and advantage as it is a liability.

This is a well-produced book, although there are a few obvious irritants. The text has many editorial mistakes. There are a few references cited inside the text that do not find a place in the bibliography. Despite these reservations, it must be said that the volume under review is a competent introduction to many aspects of Odia literature (if not to Odia ‘literary culture’), and deserves to be widely circulated and read.

Book Under Review

Sumanyu Satpathy. Reading Literary Culture: Perspectives from Orissa. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2009, pp. 248, Price Rs. 675. 

Note: A somewhat longer version of this review was first published in 2009 in the 29th edition of the webzine 'Muse India'.