Comparative Literature in India: An Overview of its History by Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta

Hello Monks...
I am Riddhi Bhatt. Today I want to talk about  Comparative Literature in India: An Overview of its History" by Subha Chakraborty Dasgupt. This task is assigned by Prof. Dr.Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavsinhji Bhavnagar University (MKBU). As a part of the syllabus, students of the English Department are learning the paper called Comparative Literature & Translation Studies. So, let’s start friends. But before we start I want to give short information about what kind of things we see here…

📌Abstract :

The essay provides an outline of the history of Comparative Literature in India, focusing mostly on the department at Jadavpur University, where it all began, and to a lesser extent, the department of Comparative Literature at the University of Delhi. Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies at Delhi University, where it afterwards received a new name Its connection with Indian literatures is the starting point.The tradition began with the department in Jadavpur. With a modern poet-translator as its originator, it is based on Rabindranath Tagore's lecture on World Literature. While there were early attempts to decolonize and an overall desire to enhance and foster creativity, there were also subtle efforts to decolonize and an overall endeavour to promote and nurture creativity. Indian literature, along with literature from the southern hemisphere, gradually gained significance. In comparative literary studies, paradigms of techniques evolved from impact and analogue research to cross-cultural literary interactions, with an emphasis on reception and transformation. In Comparative Literature has taken on new perspectives in recent years, connecting with various areas of culture and knowledge, especially those relating to excluded communities.

📌Key Argument :

In this article, Researcher givesoverview of the trajectory of Comparative Literature in the India, focusing primarily on the department at Jadavpur University, where it began, and some extent the department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies in the University of Delhi, where it later had a new beginning in its engagement with Indian literatures. The department at Jadavpur began with the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore’s speech on World Literature and with a modern poet-translator as its founder. 

📌Main Analysis :

There were mainly seven most important sections in the article. Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta divided the article in the  below parts.

1. The beginnings
2. Indian Literature as Comparative Literature
3. Centres of Comparative Literature Studies
4. Reconfiguration of areas of comparison
5. Research directions
6. Interface with Translation Studies and Cultural Studies
7. Non-hierarchical connectivity

1) The beginnings :

There were texts focusing on comparative aspects of literature in India long before Comparative Literature was established as a discipline, both from the perspective of its relation to litera- tures from other parts of the world—particularly Persian, Arabic, and English—and from the perspective of inter-Indian literary studies, the multilingual context facilitating a seamless journey from and to India. between works of literature created in several languages."Relationships of joy," Satyendranath Dutta wrote in 1904. (Dutta 124).Rabindranath Tagore's address to the National Council of Education in 1907, titled "Visvasahitya" (meaning "global literature"), provided as a pretext for the formation of the Comparative Literature department at Jadavpur University in 1956, the same year the university began operations.Although it is impossible to speak of the epistemology of comparison with reference to a diverse group of individuals, the emerging contours of the discipline did reveal certain prerogatives. In the early stages it was a matter of recognizing new aesthetic systems, new visions of the sublime and new ethical imperatives – the Greek drama and the Indian nataka - and then it was a question of linking social and historical structures with aesthetics in order to reveal the dialectic between them. The he Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature, which went on to become an important journal in literary studies in the country, came out in 1961.

2) Indian Literature as Comparative Literature :

In this part,It wasn't until the 1970s that fresh pedagogical views began to enter the subject of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur. Indian literature has made a significant impact on the curriculum.However, not in terms of establishing national identity.of Comparative Literature studies in the country was around this nodal component of Indian literar themes and forms, a focal point of engagement of the Modern Indian Languages department established in 1962 in Delhi University. In 1974, the department of Modern Indian Languages started a post-MA course entitled “Comparative Indian Literature”. A national seminar on Comparative Literature was held in Delhi University organized by Nagendra, a writer-critic who taught in the Hindi department of Delhi University and a volume entitled Comparative Literature was published in 1977. However, it was only in 1994 that an MA course in Comparative Indian Literature began in the department. As stated earlier the juxtaposition of different canons had led to the questioning of universalist canons right from the beginning of comparative studies in India and now with the focus shifting to Indian literature, and in some instances to literatures from the Southern part of the globe, one moved further away from subscribing to a priori questions related  canon-formation.T.S. Satyanath developed the theory of a scripto-centric, body-centric and phono-centric study of texts in the medieval period leading a number of researchers in the department to look for continuities and  interventions in the tradition that would again lead to pluralist epistemologies  in the study of Indian literature and culture.

3) Centres of Comparative Literature Studies :

In the 1970s and 1980s, Comparative Literature was taught in a number of South Indian universities and departments, including Trivandrum, Madurai Kamaraj University, Bharati Dasam University, Kottayam, and Pondicherry. Despite the fact that Comparative Literature classes were conducted often, In Madurai Kamaraj University's School of Tamil Studies, a full-fledged Comparative Literary Studies department was formed alongside English literature. K. Ayappa is a well-known poet, novelist, and critic. When discussing the south, Paniker, a Kerala native, must be acknowledged for his work in the field, particularly his work on literary theory similarities and his book on India's storytelling traditions.

4) Reconfiguration of areas of comparison :

At Jadavpur University, revisions and reconfigurations of comparison areas occurred once more in the 1980s. Along with Indian literatures, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude was added to the syllabus in the late 1970s, along with a few other works from Latin American literatures, and eventually African literatures were included. These aspects of the syllabus were typically structured around concerns of solidarity and a desire to understand resistance to oppression, as well as bigger problems of epistemological changes and efforts to bridge gaps in history caused by colonial interventions.In the late eighties, with Comparative Literature moving out in different directions, it was felt that more structured approach to the subject was necessary. At Jadavpur, under the guidance of Amiya Dev, who was instrumental in the spread of Comparative Literature in different parts of India in the early years and for giving a direction to the discipline, a Master’s syllabus was designed that had genres, themes and

literary historiography as its core area and this model was more or l followed in many new department of comparative literature that would come up later.

5) Research directions :

The late nineties and the early twenties were a period of great expansion for Comparative Literature research in different parts of the country with the University Grants Commission opening its Special Assistance Programme for research in university departments. Many single literature departments were given grants under the programme to pursue studies in a comparative perspective. The English department of Calcutta University for instance, received assistance to pursue research on literary relations between Europe and India in the nineteenth century. Several books and translations emerged out of the project. The department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Saurashtra University, Rajkot, took up the theme of Indian Renaissance and translated several Indian authors into English, studied early travelogues from Western India to England and in general published collections of theoretical discourse from the nineteenth century.

The department at Jadavpur University was upgraded under the programme to the status of Centre of Advanced Studies in 2005, and research in Comparative Literature took a completely new turn. The need to

foreground the relevance of studying literature was becoming more and more urgent in the face of a society that was all in favour of technology and the sciences and with decision-makers in the realm of funding for higher education turning away from the humanities in general.Efforts towards this end led to an International Conference on South-South dialogue with a large number of participants from Asian and European countries. An anthology of critical essays on tracing socio-cultural and literary transactions between India and Southeast Asia was published.

6) Interface with Translation Studies and Cultural Studies :

It must be mentioned at this point that Comparative Literature in the country in the 21st century engaged with two other related fields of study, one was Translation Studies and the other Cultural Studies.Comparative Literature’s relationship with Translation Studies was not a new phenomenon for one or two departments or centres, such as the one in Hyderabad University, which was involved in doing translation studies for a considerable period.It must be mentioned though that despite tendencies towards greater interdisciplinary approaches, literature continues to occupy the central space in Comparative Literature and it is believed that intermedial studies may be integrated into the literary space.

7) Non-hierarchical connectivity :

It is evident that Comparative Literature in the country today has multifaceted goals and visions in accordance with historical needs, both local and planetary. Several University departments today offer Comparative Literature separately at the M Phil level, while many others have courses in the discipline along with single kinds of literature.

📌Conclusion :

As in the case of humanities and literary studies, the discipline too is engaged with issues that would lead to the enhancement of civilizational gestures, against forces that are divisive and that constantly reduce the potentials of human beings. In doing so it is engaged in discovering new links and lines of non-hierarchical connectivity, of what Kumkum Sangari in a recent article called “co-construction”, a process anchored in “subtle and complex histories of translation, circulation and extraction” (Sangari 50). And comparatists work with the knowledge that a lot remains to be done and that the task of the construction of literary histories, in terms of literary relations among neighbouring regions, and of larger wholes, one of the primary tasks of Comparative Literature today has perhaps yet to begin. In all its endeavours, however, the primary aim of some of the early architects of the discipline to nurture and foster creativity continues as a subterranean force.

📌Work Cited :

• Dasgupta, Subha Chakroborty. “ Comparative Literature & World Literature.” Comparative Literature In India: An Overview Of Its History, 2016.

THANK YOU...