The Literary Scene in Marathi in 1971

Author(s): Vishwas R. Kanadey

Source: Indian Literature , October-December 1972, Vol. 15, No. 4 (October-December
1972), pp. 74-83
Published by: Sahitya Akademi

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24157185

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 The Literary Scene in Marathi
in 1971
VlSHWAS R. Kanadey

Literature does not reveal new trends year by year,

although, to go by the claims of many a writer in Marathi,
(especially, poets and dramatists), one would have to believe
that Marathi produces epoch-making writers every alternate
year! The tenor and quality of literature in Maharashtra
during the year 1971 is, therefore, not substantially different
from what it has been in recent past.
It is possible that a particular year will clearly reveal the
lines along which literature will develop in future; or, sometimes,
a particular year will witness a sudden crystallization and
consolidation of the trends that have been at work in the past.
The year under review, it must be said at the outset, was not
such a year. Therefore, no indication can be given of 'trends'.
It is easy to make predictive generalizations on the basis of an
annual survey of literature! All that can be done is to take note
of important events in the world of letters.
The year was marked by considerable excitement among the
writers and alert readers over two major issues : the 'Dalit
Sahitya' (the literature of/for/by the down-trodden) and
obscenity in literature and the writer's freedom. Both these
issues are the subject of long drawn-out controversies which are
exercising the minds of writers. Of the two, only the former
can be said to be a really 'new' issue in Marathi literature.
The latter caused controversies twice before. Recently, this
controversy was sparked off by Vijaya Tendulkar's latest
play—Sakharam Binder. The villian of the piece, according
to the defenders of Sakharam Binder, is the Stage Perfor
mance Scrutiny Board, which banned the play on the ground
that parts of it were obscene and that it desecrates the sanctity
of the institution of marriage. Cudgels were taken up on behalf

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 THE LITERARY SCENE IN MARATHI IN 1971

of the boards as well, and scores of writers jointly issued pamphlets

and wrote letters to the press defending and attacking the play.
The controversy certainly rocked the middle and lower-middle
classes and was perhaps unique in that such a wide range of
writers participated in it with so much vigour.
For years now, Marathi has witnessed the gradual emergence
of writers belonging to the down-trodden and distressed masses.
Growth of literacy, administrative reforms, and political awaken
ing have contributed to the rise of this generation of writers with
a new consciousness of their historic role.
The revolt against the traditional norms of literature—for
it is a revolt—is led by the well-known short-story writer, Babu
rao Bagul. Revolt, rejection, humanity and science appear to
be the ingredients of the new ideology. A controversy within
controversy is whether the struggle should proceed on Marxist
lines or not. Prominent amongst those who advocate the need
for viewing and directing the struggle along the Marxist lines
are Dr. Sada Karhade, Prof. Soman and the powerful poet,
Narayan Surve.
Some of the problems currently being discussed in this
context are : What is the definition of 'Dalit' Sahitya.' Is it
One produced by a 'Dalit' writer? Or, is it one for the masses?
Or, does it depend on the quality of the subject-matter of
art? What is it that one rejects (or ought to reject) in the
other-than-Dalit-Sahitya? Is all literature one, or are there
different literatures, each having its own set of absolute values?
The address delivered by Baburao Bagul from the Presidential
Chair of the 2nd Maharashtra Bouddha Sahitya Sammelan,
Mahad, in February 1971 is a sound enunciation of the stand
taken by the advocates of Dalit Sahitya, and as such is an
important document.
Another important event of the year has been the observance
of the Kolhatkar Centenary throughout Maharashtra. The
Programmes included speeches, readings, recitations, and sym
posia. Most of the literry magazines took out special numbers.
Among theSe, special mention must be made of the Kolhatkar
number of the reputed critical journal—Alochana, which

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 INDIAN LITERATURE

took stock of the entire range of the vateran dramatist's literary

output—his novels, humorous writings, plays, auto-biography
criticism, songs and his literary attitudes. The second edition
of Kolhatkar's autobiography, (Atmavritta : Shripad Krishna
Kolhatkar, ed. R.P. Kanitkar) was released during this yea
nearly 36 years after the first edition. Although the editor'
preface leaves much to be desired, the book itself is in
valuable in as much as it throws considerable light on th
sources of literary inspiration and on his creative genius.
Two more biographies deserve mention here. Dr. Bhau
Daji's biography has been written by one of the top-ranking
Marathi scholars—Anant Kakaba Priyolkar. It is a revealin
essay in the difficult art of research and investigation. A
product of untiring efforts, the book presents a well-authent
cated account of the life and times of one of the most disting
shed founders of modern thought in the last century i
Maharashtra.

Dr. (Mrs.) Kamal Gokhale has published a biography of

Chhatrapati Sambhaji, under the title Shivaputra Sambhaji.
Walking in the footsteps of her predecessors, like B.S.
Bendre, Mrs. Gokhale has marshalled plenty of historical
evidence to defend this illustrious scion of the noble founder of
the Maratha empire against the charges that have been conven
tionally levelled against him : his lack of foresight, his addic
tion to wine and his neglect of his father's hardwon empire.
Appasaheb Patwardhan's autobiography—Mazi Jeevan
Tatra is a lucid account of a quiet life spent in the service of
the Gandhian ideals.

Apart from these valuable biographies, there are at least a

dozen important books that have appeared in the field of
non-fiction. B.S. Paranjape's Marathi Samiksheche Adiparva
traced the growth of critical thought in Marathi in the last
century. Narhar Kurundkar, in his expanded tutorial, Dhar
Ani Kath surveys the trends in Marathi novel-writing in terms
of important novels that serve as landmarks. Others include
works by Govardhan Parikh (Lokhitwadi), R.S. Walimbe
(Radheya Kama and Seema Vriksha), J.S. Tilak (Ashi He Dilli),

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 THE LITERARY SCENE IN MARATHI IN 1971

G.V. Behere (Haar Ani Prahar), M.S. Golwalkar (Vichar

Dhan), R.C. Dhere (Varasa, edited), G.V. Akolkar (Maharashtratil
Shaikshanik Parivartan), to mention a few. But the two books
that easily take precedence over the rest, are—Sangeetache
Soundarya Shastra (Aesthetics of Music) by Ashok Damodar
Ranade, and Loksanskritichi Kshitije (Horizons of Folk Culture) by
R.C. Dhere. The former is perhaps the most valuable contribution
to Marathi literature since Mardhekar's Sahitya Ani Soundarya.
For the first time we have here an authoritative formulation of
the aesthetics of music and in a style that is precise and logical,
but not dry. The exposition of the technicalities of the art
form does not lose track in the deserts of abstraction. The
author's scholarship and his sense of music are both profound.
The other book is a collection of scholarly articles on various
aspects of folk culture in India. Nevertheless, there is an un
dercurrent in the articles that unifies them all : this is the theme
of the Yaksha Culture which one encounters at the root of various
social institutions and behind all the 'gods', 'goddesses' and ob
jects of worship in different layers of society. The book presents
a brilliant array of illuminating insights into various aspects of
our folk culture, such as 'Gondhal', 'Kalagi Tura', 'Bhand',
etc. As suggested in the preface the book certainly deserves to
be translated into other Indian languages, because the ultimate
contribution of the book lies in its unified vision of our culture.
While it is true that literature as a whole reflects the life
of a people, it- is also not uncommon to find that one particular
form of literature stands out as a true barometer of the pressure
of life in a particular period. This has happened with Marathi
during the last three decades. Poetry and Short Story have
successively served as the vehicles of the criticism of life. At
present, however, all the forms seem to be vying with each
other for the honour, though none unfortunately succeeds as
it should. This is not to suggest that these forms have them
selves not been put to a more sophisticated use. But successes
in sophistication cannot be substitutes for experience.
The novel in Marathi today is a case in point. More and
more novelists have turned to the historical novel, which has

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 INDIAN LITERATURE

essentially served as an escape-route to get away from the

rounding reality. The historical novels of Manmohan Na
(Mardani Zashiwali), T.L. Kulkarni (Kasturimrig), Mrs.
Nalini Sahastrabuddhe (Phulangi) and Capt. Vasudev Belvalkar
(Kalos Chadhavila Mandiri) portray respectively the lives of
Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi, Chhatrapati Rajaram, Mastani and
Nanasaheb Peshwa. But like previous novels in this genre
these fall between two stools : they arc neither good history,
nor good art.
Barring a few honourable exceptions, the rest of the novelists
have produced the usual pot-boilers. Each one has his own
formula for entertaining his readers; but all these formulae are
mere variations on the theme of so-called 'love'. The more
popular of these are—Udhava Shelke, Chandrakant Kakodkar,
Baba Kadam, Madhav Kanitkar, and, of course, the indomi
table Prof. N.S. Phadke.
Among these honourable exceptions, Anand Yadav's Gotawala
ranks the highest. It captures the transition that is taking
place in the life of the farmer under the impact of the
mechanisation of agriculture. With equal strength it also
captures the resulting pathos when the dispossessed, lonely
tiller is forcibly cut-off from his natural companions—-the
animals and birds and the mother earth. A melancholy gloom
steadily darkens the earth inhabited by the hero and external
and internal loneliness are blended through symbolic suggestions
and through a perceptive portrayal of the moods of the animals.
From this pervasive gloom, a cheap, sentimental metaphysic
was not far; but Anand Yadav's strength lies in the fact that
he courageously avoids embracing it.
Manohâr Shahane's Putt a has a bare skeleton of a story.
The interest of the anti-hero in recounting the events of his
eventless life is to give vent to his discontent, frustration and
impotent anger. The style is a mixture of levity and serious
ness—reminiscent of Bhalchandra Nemade's Kosala. In
the mood of ironic contemplation several important themes
appear and are lost sight of : search for identity, disinheritance
and heredity, alienation and absurdity. But one does not

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 THE LITERARY SCENE IN MARATHI IN 1971

find an adequate justification for all this in the hero's environ

ment. The technique, handled with great skill, is to work up
the mood, rather than to let it emerge out of the surrounding
reality.
Not very different in theme is A.V. Joshi's Alee, Mee, Met
Natraj, which is an autobiographical brooding of a screen
hero whose mind nostalgically lingers in the past. Once again,
the novel probes the meaning of absurdity in life. It is marred
by the fact that the whole probe operates in a low key—never
achieving the right intensity, the right impact. The book strikes
one as a stance of the writer (taken for the discerning critic)
rather than a natural flowering of a work of art.
Of the novels that float between these two categories, the
following are worth mentioning : Durdamya, Vol. 2 (Ganga
dhar Gadgil), Horpal (V.G. Kanitkar), Antarita (V.S.
Pargaonkar), Adeshi (Subhash Bhende), Are Sansar Sansar!
(Prabhakar Pendarkar). Kunwarni (Jyotsna Devadhar),
Pratinidhi (Vasant Varkhedkar), Pachola (R.R. Borade).
Unlike the novel in Marathi, drama is beoming increasingly
sensational.While the novel is introvert and meditative, drama
tends to indulge in wild exhibitionism. Neither a fine sensi
bility, nor a powerful intellect shapes these plays which bring
with them faint echoes of the crime and sex themes in sensational
American plays. One misses genuine experimentation in these
so-called expérimentais. Mostly, this experimentation consists
in the light effects, the revolving stage, and other clap-trap
gimmicks, the only exception to this being the one-act play
where one notices attempts to explore the possibilities of the
medium and accommodate burning themes with artistic
restraint.

Among the plays that appeared in 1971, the most important

are: Nat Samrat by V. V. Shirwadkar, Gidhade by Vijay
Tendulkar, and Avadhya by C.T. Khanolkar.
V.V. Shirwadkar, noted Marathi poet, has portrayed the
tragedy of an , old actor in his Nat Samrat. But for Dr.
Lagu's masterly acting (as Nat Samrat) and the powerful
Soliloquies, the play has nothing in it to sustain it as a tragedy

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 INDIAN LITERATURE

of any magnitude. For the conflict in the play is unreal (an

of a trivial nature), the plot thin and the propelling sequen
artificially contrived. The burden of ingratitude (accordi
to the writer, the play was inspired by King Lear) which brin
about the tragedy of the old actor (who could have been an
old man) is not really annihilating : nevertheless, the words a
acting succeed in making us supend our disbelief.
Tendulkar's Gidhade presents a set of vultures in hum
form to whom nothing is sacred except their greed. The pl
is a gradual unfolding of the fiercely wicked nature of these me
who relentlessly pursue their avarice with passion. Tendulk
like Shirwadkar, achieves his effects, by employing an appr
priate idiom of speech—curt, pointed, biting, sharp, obscen
passionate, and venomous. This melodrama of cruelty a
passion is relieved by a strain of sentimental tenderness in t
characters of Rama and Rajaninath, a poet (—a stage-poet
and their conventionally conceived sentimental relationship.
C.T. Khanolkar's Avadhya has become controversial not
because of any intrinsic philosophy in it, but because it has
shocked the middle-class audiences by presenting bedroom
scenes. The dust that this play and Tendulkar's subsequent
Sakharam Binder have kicked up recently has not yet settled
down. The explosive nature of such plays, however, need
not obscure their artistic failure.
Other popular playwrights like Vasant Kanetkar, Bal
Kolatkar, Madhusudan Kalelkar, Kalgutkar, have made
their annual contribution to the stage. Kanetkar's Meera
Madhura presents the Meerabai of the legend against the
conflict in the mind of her husband. P.B. Bhave's Maharani
Padmini is a play utterly conventional in conception and
execution. It resorts to chauvinistic patriotism for appeal and
exploits the romantic glorification of the past. C.T. Khanolkar's
Shrimant Patichi Rani is a common-place play in every
way—in theme, characterisation and treatment. A lifeless farce,
it acquires some sentimental value towards the end. Suresh Khare's
Mala Uttar Havany is concerned with the off-beat theme of the
life of a call-girl. A number of translations from Indian as well

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 THE LITERARY SCENE IN MARATHI IN 1971

as foreign languages have appeared in the field of drama. The

most important among these are-Adhe-Adhure (Tendulkar),
Tayati (S.R. Bhide), Tughlak (Tendulkar), Beckett . (V.V.
Shirwadkar), All My Sons (Asha Bhende), Dhummas (S.N.
Navare).
Ratnakar Matkari has written an interesting play for chil
dren—Indrachs Adsan, Naradachi Shendi.
Fashion is a great leveller of men. Nowhere does one find
a better illustration of this truth than in poetry. Literally hun
dreds of poems are produced every month and they are all
lamentably alike. Few—very few indeed—carry with them
the ring of authenticity. Although the output of poems is
very large, the publication of the poems in book form is riot
easy. Therefore, one finds fewer volumes of poetry than books
in other fields of writing. The most important publication in
this field is—December Ani Itar Kavita by Anirudha Kulkarni.
This is a collection of over hundred poems which are
refreshingly free from any influences. They present organic
structures that do not come out of their raw material : they
can be perceived and when pursued take us to the tangled
sources of instincts, intuitions, sensations and memories.
They present a gestalt of complex feelings recorded by a fine
sensibility. The texture of these poems is supple; it is rich,
varied, deep and subtle. Few first volumes have shown such
maturity and uniform control over the medium. Kulkarni's
themes vary between two poles—destiny and self. The des
tiny is not a dark stone wall, but something as subtle and
transitory as a wink of the eye. And the self is a way of
experiencing. Indriyopnishad by Satish Kalsekar is a slender
collection of 28 slender poems. As the title implies, they are
characterised by a ceaseless effort on the part of the poet to
attain new depths of nudity. The efforts, however, invariably
end up where nudity begins—with the skin. A philosophical
awe is sought to be created by the choice of an abstractionist
idiom (much like Dilip Chitre's), without offering anything in
terms of felt experience. Gurunath Dhuri in his first collection
Gloria gives evidence of a painterly sensibility which lends

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 INDIAN LITERATURE

vividness to his lines. But the poems do not succeed in concre

tising the fleeting moods, leaving them vague and hazy. The
poems entitled—Afeenache Drushtant indicate the lines along
which the poet is likely to move. Aditya is a volume
containing over 75 selected poems of the well-known poet
Manmohan Natu. It carries a preface by S.V. Vaidya who
is the editor of the volume. Manmohan is a gifted poet,
especially in his flights of imagination. He is also an eternal
rebel continuously rebelling against conventional thinking and
social conventions. It is unfortunate that the poet who begins
with a rebel's inspiration ends up as a conventional bard,
glorifying the past. His enthusiasm often gets the better of
him and mars the beauty of his lines. He has an irritating
knack of using words in quotes and having puns on them just
when he has written a bright and beautiful line. Many of
his poems have a lyrical beauty and have been set to music.
Among other collections that have appeared during this
year are Animish (Govind Kulkarni), Tulsidal (Anjali Thakar),
Vahi (N.D. Mahanor), Kalswar (S.V. Vaidya), Shivaayan
(N.R. More) and 11 nh Utarni (Shridhar Shanware).
Marathi short story continues to move at an even pace, des
pite experiments in its form by some writers. Among the collec
tions of short stories published during this year, Ranjit Desai's
Gandhli catches the eye because it is a collection of short
stories set in the background of history. They are stories—
mostly well-known about historical personages like Jahangir
and Meherunnisa, Bajirao and Mastani, Bande-ali- Khan and
Chunna. The theme is the same throughout—love. These
stories are the product of the same formula which the writer
had used in his historical novel. They are good time-killers in
more ways than one. Rajendra Banhatti's Samandharma is a
collection of ten of his short stories. They are all readable,
though the universe of experience that emerges from them is
not very rich or varied. Noteworthy amongst the virtues of
his writing are his racy style and his vivid delineation of charac
ters. The writer also has a sense of form. Leela Shrivastava is
a prolific writer. In her Phanshi Geleli Unhe she portrays

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 THE LITERARY SCENE IN MARATHI IN 1971

the seamy side of life of the people around us without caring

much for the form. For, her primary emotion is one of
moral revulsion and righteous indignation, of no requisite
artistic level. But her writings are valuable insofar as they
register her condemnation of the degradation of life and her
protest against the disintegration of values.
Tatra and Jatra are two fresh collections of short-stories
by the veteran Marathi Short Story writer Arvind Gokhale.
Most of these stories have appeared earlier in other collections.
Mention must be made here of the two volumes of stories—
Hriday Rang by Shirish Pai and Pashchim Rang by Shanta
Shelke—the latter a collection of stories from well-known Western
films.

This account will not be complete without a mention of two

important travelogues. The first one is D.B. Mokashi's
Athara Laksha Pawale. It is an account of the journey undertaken
by the writer in Maharashtra. It presents a fine spectrum
of impressions recorded by a sensitive and dispassionate mind.
Dilip Chitre's Sheba Ranichya Shodhat is an account of
his days spent in Ethiopia. It is like any of Chitre's books :
mainly about himself. It is verbose, pompous, brilliant,
incisive and at times neurotic even. It is a remarkable book,
—if you are interested in Chitre.

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