The Role of Comparative Literature in Respect to Understanding the Multilingual Identity of India
Priyamvada Jha
Editorial Assistant at National Book Trust of India | Passionate about Literature, Publishing, and Creative Writing | Skilled in Content Editing and Proofreading
India is a nation that celebrates variety on all counts—most particularly languages. We have 22 recognized languages and hundreds of dialects, which gives it richness like no other linguistic landscape elsewhere. As a postgraduate in Comparative Indian Literature from the University of Delhi, I have experienced how literature from different languages helps us understand the individual cultures and the threads that knit us together as Indians.
The Power of Language in India
Language has a big stake in identifying oneself in the Indian subcontinent. Each and every region has its different language, discrete culture, and traditions. Literature bears this diversity too. However, the challenge is that literature in one language mostly remains within that language community, failing to reach a wider audience beyond that community.
This is where the concept of comparative literature comes in: through a study of literature across languages, we begin to visualize the connectivity of cultures. For example, stories of love, sacrifice, family values, and social justice exist in every language—they are simply told in different ways. Comparative literature helps us understand those stories from multiple perspectives and deepens our appreciation of how, as a nation, we can be both diverse and united.
Translation Bridging Cultures
Translation is the most pragmatic aspect of comparative literature. Translation opens up stories, poetry, and ideas from languages one does not speak. In India, this assumes many more critical overtones because the barriers between regions are dissolved. For example, translating a Tamil novel into Hindi opens up the richness of Tamil culture to readers in North India, and vice versa.
Translation allows readers to reach out for stories and traditions varied across the country, enabling an appreciation of common human experiences across our diverse cultures. At the National Book Trust of India, I am conscious of the seminal role that translation can play in bringing regional literature better and closer home.
Seeing the Big Picture
It doesn't just compare the texts of different languages; rather, it gives us a way of asking some very valid questions: How does the Malayalam writer tackle social issues? How does the Bengali writer take a shot at it? What different approaches do Marathi and Kannada authors take in talking about themes such as nature and spirituality?
Such comparisons help us understand each other and give us broader perspectives. By observing how different cultures deal with matters at hand, we get a more complete idea of Indian literature as a whole. This has the effect of adding depth to our reading and creating a kind of harmonization across regions.
Why Comparative Literature Matters for India's Identity
I started staying at Hindu College, and it gave me an opportunity to come in contact with students and faculty throughout India. Along with the study of comparative literature that I did, that experience taught me an important thing: that our regional cultures indeed have been interrelated. On one hand, there is something exclusive with each language and its culture; on the other hand, they all share values and ideas.
Connections like these, in many ways, constitute the base of Indian identity. Comparative literature helps us understand how our cultural diversities make up the larger unified sense of what we are as citizens of India. In comparing and appreciating literature from different languages, we come closer to understanding and respecting the varied experiences which go to make up the identity of India.
Moving Forward
Working as an editorial assistant with the National Book Trust of India, I am constantly reminded about boosting literature in all Indian languages. This is what comparative literature does: it celebrates our multilingual identity while making sure regional voices are heard across the country. We will arrive at a far more inclusive understanding of Indian literature, representative of the richness of our diverse languages and bringing us closer to each other as a nation. In other words, Comparative Literature enables us to leap over the language barrier and share with our fellow citizens the knowledge of several cultures and the richness produced by multi-lingual Bharata.
Educator, Author and Novelist
4 个月Great advice I concur
Educator, Author and Novelist
4 个月Each society should respect its own mother tongue as well as the mother tongue of all societies inhabited this earth. That why retaining all languages and advancing its culture and traditions are invaluable. Back in 1952 the people of Bangladesh under the leadership of students marched into the streets of Dhaka to acquire our rights of speaking ,writing and advancing with Bengali language. The junta fired on the march and bloods of the Shaheed flowed on the black pitch. The march of 21 st February 1952 , led to the creation of independent Bangladesh during 1972. And twenty years United Nations recognized the life sacrifice of the people of Bangladesh for its language by recognizing annually the 21 February as the International Mother Language day. Viva all our mother tongues.
PhD student | Ross Fellow | Literacy & Language Education
4 个月Love this post! I have this book of folktales by AK Ramanujan where he writes in the introduction, paraphrased, that you cannot speak of Indian or India without acknowledging that India contains many Indias. India is an idea, more than a place, a construct that comprises so many overlapping yet distinct realities. I love your point that comparative literature is the lens to understand that complexity, perhaps the best, most accessible way we have for it.