Tit for tat: Hindi press snubs JLF

BY ANAND VARDHAN| IN Opinion | 11/02/2013

THE HINDI PRISM

Anand  Vardhan

Philistine is a word you cannot associate with the Hindi press. When it comes to engagement with the world of letters, the this media inherits a legacy of literary engagement both in mainstream as well as niche publications. It should be remembered that one of the first literary journals in India, Hans, was pioneered by legendary Hindi writer Premchand way back in the 1930s. Now other Hindi literary journals are also on offer for a niche – and perhaps shrinking – readership. Many well-known Hindi writers had their stints in mainstream journalism as well and their literary presence could earlier be felt in how some Hindi dailies and magazines engaged with the Hindi literary scene. So what explains the indifference in the Hindi press to an event marketed and covered in the English press as an Indian literary meet with an international interface?

Apart from newsy moments of controversy (this year Ashis Nandy, and last year Salman Rushdie) why did the Hindi press cold shoulder the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF)? To what extent does it reflect the space (or even absence) Hindi readership has in the imagination of a supposedly true-blue Indian version of a publishing carnival – a packaging imperative which turns reading and writing into a spectacle?

For starters, some facts stare at you. Major Hindi dailies – Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, Hindustan, Amar Ujala – have not been enthusiastic about JLF and have not spared column inches for it. Interestingly, even Jaipur-based Rajasthan Patrika looked the other way when Delhi-based English dailies made you believe that January was the month to turn into annual book-lovers at Jaipur. And if you thought Jansatta to be the touchstone of literary sensitivities in the Hindi press (a reputation it owes to the literary inclinations of its former editor, late Prabhash Joshi), JLF did not find mention in its pages either (not even in its weekend literary supplement). Juxtapose it with how English dailies were giving you daily feeds on the event with features carrying titles like ht@litfest, Times in JLF, etc., and some dailies even sponsoring talk sessions and panel discussions (The Hindu was one of the sponsors for the event last year).

Though not surprising, this indifference has less to do with the patterns of event coverage in Hindi press and more to do with the constricted lingual canvas on which JLF deludes itself with a pan-‘Indian’ literary landscape. How many Hindi writers, and for that matter writers of other Indian languages were there in talk sessions and panel discussions? In the name of non-English world of letters, JLF had occasional brushes with Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi, announcing Kannad writer U Ananthmurthy on Man Booker International shortlist or Bollywoodsque encounters with Javed Akhtar. That’s where English media’s reporting on the non-English part of the event ended too. The indifference in Hindi papers was in sync with the place which Hindi found in this spectacle – on the margins.

Generally speaking, the book-launching and lit fest-participating publishing houses share their target groups with English media readership and the English-speaking urban middle class (aspirational and upwardly mobile) and of course, the elite. Lekhak does not figure in the literary imagination of this target group.

A case in point is the English-centric book launch scene in the capital. The cosy crevices of Delhi which have hosted some newsmaking book launches in recent times are fiefdoms of English writers and the ambience is corporate. Most of the crowd gathered there cannot name even one contemporary Hindi writer. The lekhak does not figure in their world of letters. For instance, try remembering the last time you read about or saw a picture of the launch of a book in Hindi on newspaper pages or glossy covers of news magazines?

Perhaps you can have a faint recollection of a front-page newsmaking launch of a book in Hindi long time back when a publisher had all publicity rituals in place for the launch of a collection of poems (of mediocre literary merit) penned by a the then prime minister, A B Vajpayee. That by no means implies that more important works in Hindi, of far greater literary worth, have not been published in recent years.

Now try to keep a tab of book launches in the English publishing scene reported by different media launches, and sometimes even excerpts from a new book doubling up as cover stories for newspapers and magazines or talking points for TV discussions or author interviews. The numbers can tell you how skewed the equations are. Why so?

The question is not why English books are covered but the exclusion of non-English literary scene from English papers, though their coverage pretends to cover Indian literary lanscape (English dailies in Delhi ignore Hindi books, Mumbai papers ignore Marathi and similarly Hyderabad papers ignore Telugu books). It's ironic that all English papers have a lot of space for Hindi cinema, because of its saleability and pop culture pull. But a similar bilingual interface is not evident when it comes to Hindi or regional literature. The other point is that the publishing scene, especially book launches, is still limited to publishers of English books. Such market strategies have not caught the fancy of low-budget Hindi publishers.

There is a decline of bilingualism in the reading elite of a particular region, north India. It can be explained with the concept of social distance which gets more pronounced in the north Indian elite as they climb the social ladder, what you may also call upward social mobility. The moment the elite of north India start gaining social and economic capital, they seek cultural capital. Let’s face it: though unfortunate, English has become the ultimate arbiter of cultural capital in this country. But what is more disturbing is the distance it produces with non-English- speaking masses in north India. For example, let us pose a question within the journalistic fraternity of Hindi-speaking states only. Do we really have people in higher echelons of media houses who can name, leave alone analyse and critique, current works in the Hindi publishing scene? Do we have people who can interview authors writing in their mother tongue?

The disconnect with the Hindi world of letters and ideas is too obvious.

With English as a badge of triumph and Anglo-gluten in mouth, the upwardly mobile class of the North seeks to shed all signs of pre-Anglo existence. Speaking or writing in Hindi becomes a condescending favour they dole out to masses, or worse, for laughing among themselves. No wonder it does not figure in their pedagogical imagination beyond passing the state-ordained compulsory examination.

The same does not hold equally true for regions with a strong sense of regional lingual identity. For example, a book carnival in Chennai or Kolkata is likely to have a fair degree of engagement with Tamil and Bengali books and writers vis-a-vis such events in, say Delhi or Lucknow or Patna would have with books and authors in Hindi. In a more formative context, early signs of this difference could be seen in the degree with which upwardly mobile parents discourage their children from speaking and exploring local dialects of Hindi whereas a Tamil- or Bengali-speaking child is less likely to face such parental discouragement while speaking his or her mother tongue, the language of his surroundings.

One more aspect is that of how English publishing houses use media visibility as well as other public platforms to market the book. For an author, it can sometimes be dangerous in its own way. For instance, something that happened in the last week of October 2010 illustrates the unintended consequence of such media courtship for an author, with the publisher acting as the eager facilitator. The danger is, it sometimes turns the author into a talking hack. On October 25, 2010 Ramchandra Guha’s Makers of Modern India was released by Penguin at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi. The book launch was followed by an introductory lecture by Guha, and a talk anchored by NDTV’s Barkha Dutt. The next day, the eminent historian, one of India’s better-known public intellectuals, was heard again. He was delivering the lecture verbatim at Delhi University’s Convention Hall. The publishers made him to do the repeat act at a strategic point for promotion and a mini-stall was set up selling only the new book. The author appeared a talking hack.

The absence of JLF in the Hindi print space reflects the interplay of social distance and market dynamics of an event. As English media houses were eager to wear their once-a-year literary inclinations on their sleeves, the Hindi press could not find enough stuff for Hindi readers. Perhaps that also gives credence to writer Jeet Thayil’s observation: ‘‘We have no literary culture in India, only a culture of book journalism’ (January 28, 2013, Indian Express).