‘Modernity, Print and Sahitya’: A well-researched book about how Odia literature shaped its culture

Iconic French literary theorist Gerald Genette defines the epigraph as “roughly as a quotation placed en exergue, generally at the head of a work or a section of a work; literally, en exergue means off the work, which is going a little too far”. Often considered a paratextual element of a work, to use another concept given by Genette, the epigraph is often overlooked by readers too interested in the narrative that most texts offer.

Readers of Sumanyu Satpathy’s excellently researched and highly readable book Modernity, Print and Sahitya: The Making of a New Literary Culture 1866-1919 will miss the epigraph of the book, a quotation from Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum (1620), at their own peril as the short quotation is a pointer to important thematic concerns of the book. Alert to the tight structure of his book, the author returns to the quotation in the later part of the book where he discusses the ambivalent attitude of many Odia writers and poets to print modernity unlike Bacon’s celebration of print in his time.

Shaping Odia culture

In this quotation, Bacon talks about three inventions, “namely, printing, gunpowder and the compass” which have “changed the appearance and state of the whole world”. While gunpowder, first used by Babur in India in establishing the Mughal empire, is not related to the subject of the book, the other two, printing and compass, have played a very important role in heralding literary modernity in Odia language and literature and are examined in great detail.

The book discusses the trajectory of modernity, the development of print culture, and the different facets of sahitya and their role in shaping the public and literary sphere of Odia culture. Satpathy has used a substantial number of Odia and Hindi sources in writing the book and has translated them into clear and precise English. His wide reading of English literature particularly modern British literature which he has taught for decades gives a comparative edge to his reading of Odia modernity and sahitya.

No less important is the subtitle of the book which clearly mentions two landmark dates, 1866 and 1919, the beginning of a new literary culture in the Odia language and its full development. 1866 was the year of the great famine in Odisha which killed a big part of the state’s population. It was also the year when Cuttock Printing Company launched the first indigenous Odia periodical Utkal Dipika which played a very influential role in Odisha’s public sphere for the next five decades.

1919, the other year in the subtitle, becomes important because in this year Gopalbandhu (1877-1928) started The Samaj which radically departed from the path chosen by Utkal Dipika. It was also roughly the year when the cause of Odia language and culture started identifying itself with the national cause after Gandhi’s arrival on the national scene and his successful efforts to unite different segments of Indian society. Much like Saadat Hasan Manto who retrospectively saw the potential of 1919 for India’s independence in his memorable story “1919 Ki Ek Baat” written in 1951 – the story talks about catastrophic events like the protest over the Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh massacre waking up people against the colonial rule – Satpathy’s 1919 holds significance in his Odia context.

Aware that the word modern is generally translated as aadhunik in Hindi and literature as sahitya, Satpathy cautions the readers against simplistic notions of transfer of meaning and delves deep into the Indian aesthetics to come to a nuanced understanding of conceptually pregnant words like new, old, modern and literature. In looking at the sites of Odia public culture he dwells on the role of bhagabat tungis, kind of temples, and pathasalas in promoting Odia language and literature. Folk tales around the figures of Gopal Bhand, Tenali Ram and Birbal and their conversion into Rahasyas, often taking the form of witty prose dialogues, were other important cultural forms of Odia culture.

Role of periodicals in Odia literary modernity

Satpathy highlights the role of many periodicals in giving a boost to modernity in Odisha. Fakir Mohan Senapati (1843-1918), the most important of all Odia writers, set up Utkal Printing Company in 1865 and led the setting up of Balasore Utkal Press in 1868 launching the periodical Bodhadayini O Balasore Sambad Bahika with the aim of separating news and literature. It is interesting to see how almost in the same period contours of print modernity were being shaped in Urdu by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan who started two very important periodicals The Aligarh Institute Gazette in 1866, devoted mostly to subjects of topical interests, and Tahzibul Akhlaq in 1870 which tried to reform Muslim thinking on religious and social matters.

An important contribution of Odia periodicals was their role in influencing and shaping different forms of literature. The most important genres of literature – essay, the short story, poetry and the novel – benefitted greatly from the periodicals. Fakir Mohan’s “Rebati”, published in Utkal Sahitya in 1898 and celebrated as the first short story in Odia, is remarkable for not only its theme of women’s education but for also attaching an English epigraph, a new literary trope in Odia literature. Realistic fiction, an ingredient of modernity, made its appearance in Odia literature. The fortunes of many novels depended on the continuation of periodicals. Many novels in Odia started in a serial form in the periodicals but remained unfinished as the periodicals shut down. Thus, Ram Shankar Ray’s (1857-1931) Bibasini could be completed but Unmadini remained incomplete because Indrabhanu, the periodical publishing it, shut shop.

Periodicals also carried reviews of books and notices of events. Gopalbandhu, credited by the author for heralding a new political aesthetic in Odia literature, introduced the modern notion of clock time, leisure and excitement of a train journey. In fact, the influence of periodicals on literatures in other languages also followed an almost similar trajectory. Avadh Punch and Avadh Akhbar shaped the literary dimension of Urdu print modernity in the 19th century. One of the first Urdu novels, Ratan Nath Sarshar’s Fasana-e Azad, a tome of over three thousand pages, started as a series of humourous sketches in 1878 and achieved its final form after being serially published in Avadh Akhbar.

Periodicals were also important means of disseminating the discourse of colonial modernity, its so-called civilising mission and some new literary forms. Many modern institutions like hospitals, police stations, courts and local news items started finding a place in the periodicals. Bookshops made their beginning from 1905 onwards. Using the pseudonym “Sri”, Fakir Mohan commented on the heavy currency of words like “development” and “progress” in the press. Gopal Chandra Prahraj (1874–1945) who dwells on words like debate and argument as key aspects of modernity’s enlightenment project noted the loosening of the stranglehold of caste as a result of Western education.

Science was also presented through the medium of periodicals like Madhupa and Pradipa which regularly published essays, often anonymously, on scientific subjects. Advertisements, another modern practice of promotion of ideas and goods, also benefited from newspapers and magazines often triggering a competition between rival companies. The advertisement of an American medicine Electro Salsa which Satpathy cheekily describes as “a crude form of Viagra” led to the patriotic promotion of many desi products like “Deshi Salsa” and “Hukumi Oil”.

New forms of writing

Travel writing, both in verse and prose, was yet another important genre resulting from colonial modernity. With the demand for railroads in Odisha in the 1880s, the “topographical and geographic knowledge of the land” was used effectively in many works beginning with Gobind Pattanaik, Gobind Rath and Fakir Mohan. The modern idea of nationalism had not yet taken root till this time, but it is interesting to note that “a place barely 50 miles away” was considered “a foreign land”. Travel writings, published in periodicals, “not only fuelled nationalist consciousness…, but also strengthened the idea of Utkal desh”.

Travel could also result in important insights for writers like Fakir Mohan, a Brahmo, who observed during his visit to Kashi: “Shaiba, Shakta and fire worshippers (Zoroastrians)… Is there any difference between you all? No, No. If we probe deeper, we can see that there is no difference between Christians, Mussalmans and Hindus. The only difference is in the empty words, empty subjects, empty opinions, and empty rituals on the surface. But the fundamental ideology is the same. Everyone aspires to reach God. That is, the haat (marketplace) is one but there are many approaches to it”. One may recall Ghalib’s visit to Banaras in 1827 and his celebration of the city he called “the Kaba of Hindustan” in his long narrative poem Chiragh-e-Dair.

The introduction of geography as a subject in schools in Odisha, the fieldwork of map makers and the definition of the boundaries of Odisha on the linguistic ground, sometimes wrongly, also had an impact on Odia literature. Writings of Radhanath and Gangadhar Meher which marked and mapped the Western part of Odisha and used its myths and legends created “the sense of a ‘greater’ Utkal in the imagination of the reading public”.

An important note in Odia writings towards the end of the 19th century is the desire to change the taste of the people, imagine the past and envisage the future of the Odia language. Calling it Odia kandana, an equivalent of American jeremiad, Satpathy identifies three steps of this jeremiad: hearkening of the glorious past of Odisha, the present fallen state caused by “external aggression, exploitation and colonisation”, and the possibility of regeneration of Odia society through high moral conduct.

In ameliorating the moral conduct of the people, injustices against women and lower caste needed special attention. Ram Sankar Ray who read all Hindu texts and wrote articles in Utkal Sahitya critical of many social ills, was categorical that criticising flaws of Hindu society cannot “be mistaken as attacks on Hinduism itself”. Many bad social practices like “old men marrying young girls, drinking, gambling and other kinds of addiction” were treated satirically by Ram Sankar in his farce Budhabara (1892) and Fakir Mohan in his short story “Madha Mohantynka”. Radhanath’s main concern was Aryan morality inspired by his Brahmo rationalism. In many other Odia writings representation of the woman’s body became a hot subject of debate.

Colonial education provided a new importance to prose as against kavya which was the dominant tradition in Odia literature. Even poetry had to change its idiom and adopt realism to come close to ordinary lives and issues. One very important factor in shaping the new literature was the introduction of a particular form of Odia sahitya in school curricula and the need thereby to produce relevant textbooks. Established writers like Fakir Mohan and Radhanath were equal to the challenge of writing prose works much like Ghalib was in responding to print capitalism and meeting the demands of the new curricula through his letters and selections of poetry.

An important point in this discussion is, as Satpathy argues, that “the nascent print capitalism was a stakeholder in textbook printing as a major source of capital gain”. The withdrawal of Bengali textbooks as a result of the “Save Odia” movement triggered a competition among writers to fill the gap by writing textbooks. Interestingly all leading writers of Odia were associated with some or other periodicals which often carried forward the debates around the nature of sahitya and textbooks. Acknowledging the work of Natabara Samantaray many times in the book, Satpathy highlights the role of two textbooks – Kavitabali and Sahitya Bisayak Adarsh Prashnabali – in shaping modern Odia literature. Shifting from palm-leaf pothi text to print was also a cheaper affair. In the same way transition from shruti-snruti to reading books and magazines and from pothi readers to editors changed things forever.

The nature of Odia nationalism

An important phase in the modern history of the Odia language was the “Save Odia” movement when Odia intellectuals felt threatened by Bengali hegemony and the reports of imposition of Bangla as the medium of instruction in schools. “As a corollary, the question of Utkal bhasa and sahitya also got inextricably linked to Utkal desh”. Similarly, the decision to introduce Hindi rather than Odia in the offices and courts of Sambalpur met with protests. Satpathy documents many important efforts of Odia intelligentsia to set up organisations to oppose such hegemonic practices.

Unlike the Bengali idea of nationalism, Odia nationalism was conceived in local terms, incorporating local histories. An important trigger in Odia’s interest in their history was the English translation, widely advertised in periodicals, of some fragments of Toynbee’s history describing the “resistance and bravery that the Oda paiks had displayed when they resisted the combined British campaign to annex Cuttack in 1817”. There were also remarkable efforts to write history in verse, for instance, in works like Radhanath Ray’s Mahayatra, a reinvention of Mahabharata inspired by Milton and Madhusudan Dutt. Historical novels following the realist mode and claiming to speak the truth also became an important genre. Ram Sankar Ray’s incomplete novel Soudamini, set in Rajasthan, Umeshchandra Sarkar’s Padmamali, using oral histories of Mayurbhanj and Nilgiri and set during the early British rule in Odisha and Fakir Mohan’s Lachhana which records “atrocities visited by the Marathas” in 18th century Odisha and Marathas’ misrule are important works in this regard.

Debates about taste and obscenity

There is a very interesting and thought-provoking discussion of the idea of ruchi or taste in the book. A point of debate around the notion of ruchi, appearing almost like an obsession after the 1870s, concerned the issue of obscenity in literature. “Ruchi Parivartan, a term we first encounter in Rangalal in 1864 (refined ruchi), entailed almost nothing other than distaste for obscenity”. Though the new poetry deployed veer and sringar rasa predominantly, sringar rasa was sanitised because of a certain consciousness about obscenity. The novel and the new drama deployed hasya and karuna rasas liberally.

In a decade or so English education and the impact of the West via the Bengali public sphere not only exerted an influence on the concept of sahitya but there was also a “conflation of adi rasa with the Western concept of obscenity”. Importantly Fakir Mohan who was committed to “traditional aesthetics even while adopting a European form” in works like Mamu considered ruchi a foreign import. Another Western influence, not part of Odia aesthetics, was upadha, a metrical poetic form in which, as Bhasakosha stipulated, “the penultimate vowel and the last letter of the first line will tally with those of the second line”.

Coining a naughty phrase “coitus interruptus” indicating a kind of self-censorship, Satpathy notes that Fakir Mohan and many other writers stopped short of describing the whole female body by suggesting a few words. In works like Ram Sankar Ray’s Unmadini and Umeshchandara Sarkar’s Padmamali, the narrator can describe eyes, face and other parts of the female body before he addresses the reader writing sentences like “there is no need to go further down”.

It is a book of lament, if not grouse, against Odia’s unequal relationship with the Bengali language and its writers. Though staying clear of any bitterness, all through the book the author shows awareness of the big brotherly attitude of the Bengali language towards Odia. Lamenting the Odias’ internalisation of “Bengalis’ pretensions of superiority”, Satpathy notes how “Odias’ relationship with the Bengalis went through phases of mutual exchange, cooperation, reciprocal antipathy and acrimony”. In the conclusion of the book Satpathy, while agreeing with the Eurocentric bias in modernity studies, questions the nativist bias in many studies of Indian modernity. “This can be noticed in the indiscriminate equation of the state of affairs in colonial Bengal with that elsewhere in India, and the way the term Bengal Renaissance becomes ‘Indian Renaissance;, a seamless, synecdochic transfer of a local feature to a pan-India characteristic”.

He quotes Sudipta Kaviraj approvingly in an important endnote who called out “sub-imperialistic delusions” of the Bengalis: “The British did introduce cultural forms, which they saw as part of the civilizing processes of modernity…. As British rule extended westward, extensive Hindustani-speaking territories were added to the Bengal presidency. Bengalis duly developed sub-imperialistic delusions about themselves and considered other groups within the larger territory of the presidency their natural inferiors.”

Important takeaways from the book also include an accent on the diversity of languages and dialects in India, non-identification of language and religion and most importantly an emphasis on the non-sectarian nature of the Odia movement where narrow markers of religion, caste and colour played no role in the promotion of Odia identity. The resolution of the Utkal Union Conference in 1903 can still teach a lesson or two to the present generation of Indians who are surrounded by many divisive ideologies.

The resolution read: “The welfare of the Odia-speaking tracts will be its main concern, and all the Utkalbhasi areas are called Utkal. Those who are domiciled permanently in Utkal, that is, those who consider Utkal to be their home, will be considered Utkaliya even if they belong to different jatis. Those who have come here and lived for many years thinking of this as their motherland and have devoted their life to the welfare of Odias, and those who consider their service to the Odias as their duty, we consider them as our own…. Among the Utkaliyas are Hindus, Mussalmans, Christians, Brahmo… Thus religion cannot come within the purview of our deliberations on the Odia-language-based struggle of the Utkal Union since there will be serious cleavage among ourselves”.

Mohammad Asim Siddiqui is a professor in the Department of English at Aligarh Muslim University.

Modernity, Print And Sahitya: The Making of a New Literary Culture, 1866-1919, Sumanyu Satpathy, Routledge.