Literary Route India

Literary Route India

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Literary Route India

Index 1.- General Introduction

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2.- Classical Period

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· Sacred Literature (sruti) - The Four Vedas - The Ancient Upanisads

17 17 21

· Epic Literature - The Vyasa Mahabharata - Bhagavad-Gita - Ramayana, by Valmiki

25 25 29 31

· Lyrical and Devotional Poetry - Gitagovinda by Jayadeva - Kabir’s Poetry

33 33 35

· Theatre: Sakuntala by Kalidasa

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· Stories and Fables: Pañcatantra

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· Literature of Treaties - The Laws of Manu - Patañjali’s Yogasutras (2nd century AC) - Kamasutra by Vatsyayana

43 43 47 49

· Classical Period Recommendations

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3.- Colonial Period · Ravindranath Tagore (1861-1941) · Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay (1871-1938)

53 55 57

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Index · Premchand (1880-1936) · R. K. Narayan (1906-2001)

59 63

· Colonial Period Recommendations

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4.- Contemporary Authors

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· Arundhati Roy (1961) · Anita Desai (1937) · Khushwant Singh (1915) · Anita Nair (1966)

69 71 73 75

· Contemporary Authors Recommendations

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5.- The Authors of the Diaspora (“Children of the Raj”)

79 9

· Vikram Seth (1952) · Sir V. S. Naipaul (1932) · Jhumpa Lahiri (1967) · Salman Rushdie (1947) · Amitav Ghosh (1956)

81 83 85 89 93

· The Authors of the Diaspora Recommendations

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Literary Route General Introduction The immense internal diversity of the Indian culture is also reflected on its literature. The history of Indian literature could be divided in two great blocks: The Classical Period (where texts of Sanskrit oral tradition stand out) and the Modern Period (marked by the Western British influence and the literary use of modern languages). In this Route we have divided this second period in three stages: Colonial Period, Contemporary Authors and Diaspora Authors.

In India, the beginning of literature goes back four thousand years with the Vedas, the sacred texts of Hinduism. In the following centuries many texts were composed in Sanskrit devoted to religious, philosophical, scientific topics and in general all the fields of knowledge held by the caste of the Brahmans. However, this literature of the religious elite will progressively receive popular influences. With time, more genres appeared (poetry, epic prose, theatre, stories, proverbs, etc.), less solemn styles (humorous, moralizing, virtuous, etc.) and more daily topics (love and eroticism, politics, popular legends and myths, social conflicts, etc.). In addition, despite the fact that Sanskrit language is still used for everything referred to the official culture, more and more regional vernacular languages are used for literary compositions.

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In its cult and popular side, Indian classic literature was characterized by its oral character (it was composed, staged and transmitted orally), the predominance of verses and metric (which made memorizing, reciting and transmission easier) and because in general more value was given to tradition than to individual authorship.

Manuscript in Sanskrit on paper, India, 1583

However, the British colonization and the contract with the modern West considerably decrease the weight of tradition in India and literature echoes social worries of the present more and more. In the last two centuries, Indian literature has integrated the modern concepts of “author” and “originality”, new literary genres have been consolidated, such as novels and stories, and modern languages of

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Literary Route

General Introduction

India (especially English, Hindi and Bengali) have become literary languages.

Indian modern literature, from the colonial period to today is characterized by realism and customs, sometimes with a tragic and comical vision at the same time, and others with high doses of social criticism. The style is normally simple and natural, given the fact that it tries to approach the general public, especially the middle class, which is the main character and consumer of Indian families.

The tensions between modernity and tradition, between urban and rural life, between the West and the East, confrontations between Muslims and Hindis and the transformations that the Indian society has experimented in little time, especially regarding the system of castes and the women’s situation.

Some of these stories, starred by lovers who struggle to consummate their love or ordinary individuals who search to build their own identity away from social conditionings, have been adapted to cinema by the Bollywood industry and many of the authors we will approach have been acknowledged with international literary awards.

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Scenes from Ramayana

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Literary Route

Classical Period The vast literary production of this period –which lasts around three millenniums, from the beginning of the Hindi civilization around 1500 BC to the Muslim conquer in the 12th century –mainly includes works written in Sanskrit language, the classical language of India, predecessor of many of the modern languages of India (Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, etc.).

This literary corpus is made up of a great variety of genres (from religious and philosophical literature, to poetry, fables, stories and plays) and often several genres are combined in one work.The Indian literary tradition is mainly versified and of oral transmission and in many cases the works were written down a long time after their composition. For this reason, added to the loss of many manuscripts, the identity and chronology of the authors and works is mostly very vague.

Hindi Sanskrit literature is divided into two blocks: Sacred literature (called sruti, “what’s heard”, this is, revealed texts whose authorship is considered divine) and popular literature (smrti, “what’s remembered”, this is, the religious tradition of human authorship).

Sacred texts of Hinduism that belong to the first group are the Vedas, the Upanisads and the Bhagavad-Gita. From the popular tradition, the two epic poems (Mahabharata and Ramayana), the legends (Puranas), the philosophical aphorisms (sutras) and the scientific treaties (sastras) are highlighted. All these texts have gradually made up the rich and complex Hindu tradition, approaching almost all of the fields of knowledge and from very diverse perspectives.

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Scenes from Mahabharata

However, Sanskrit language did not only serve as a solemn tradition vehicle, of sacred or erudite content, but there is also a Sanskrit literature made up of “literary” works (stories, poetry, plays, etc.) with daily topics, made for the entertainment of the public and with didactical, moralizing or purely aesthetic objectives.

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Literary Route

Classical Period Sacred Literature (sruti) Between the 14th and the 10th century BC, the Aryans penetrated in migratory waves through Northeast India with an immense cultural and religious legacy that has been compiled in the Vedas, the revealing Writings of Hinduism.

The Four Vedas The religion of the Aryans was polytheist and ritualistic. They adored their gods through sacrifices and rituals where they recited hymns, prayers and sacred formulas. These religious texts were orally transmitted for centuries and were finally compiled and fixed in a textual corpus that receives the name of veda (“knowledge”).

The Hindi tradition believes that these hymns were revealed to the rsis (“wise clairvoyants”), who received them by divine inspiration and that, therefore, do not have human authorship but are eternal, sacred and their mere mentioning has a magic power.

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The corpus of the vedic texts is organised in four great collections: Rg-Veda (Veda of the hymns), Sama-Veda o (Veda of the singing), YajurVeda (Veda of prayers) and Atharva-Veda (Veda of the magic formulas).

Each one of the Vedas belongs to a certain school of priests, which was in charge of memorizing them, reciting them in the sacrifices and transmitting them orally to the following generations.

Title: LosVedas / Vyasa; translation, preliminary text and notes by Juan B. Bergua Publication: Madrid · Clásicos Bergua, cop. 2001 Description: 630 pages; 17 cm

The Vedas are made up in Vedic, an Indo-European origin language which later evolved to Sanskrit. The Vedic hymns (mantras) are mostly invocations to Gods in order for them to attend the sacrifice. Some of the main Gods are Varuna (the protector of the cosmic and social order), Indra (the god of ray and war), Rudra (the god of storm), Agni (the god of fire), Soma (the god of the plant of immortality whose juice was extracted during certain sacrifices), Vac (the goddess of speech) and Usas (the goddess of dawn). The Vedas also include instructions about how to carry out rituals and sacrifices to achieve

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Ruta literària Literary Route

Classical Period · Sacred Literature

certain purposes, mundane (rain, success in battle, illness healing, etc.) or supra-mundane (immortality and rebirth in one of the heavens).

Many of the gods and Vedic rituals lost importance in the subsequent Hinduism, but its view of the world constitutes the base of Hindu religion, such as for example the belief in a cosmic order (rta, later called dharma) which keeps it together from connections and analogies between the human, divine and cosmic levels.

Every one of the four Vedas gave origin to a broad exegetic literature: The Brahmanas, treaties that explain in a very detailed way how to correctly execute the different kinds of sacrifices and rituals; the Aranyakas or “treaties of the forest”, which are focused on the esoteric aspects of the Vedic religions and, finally, the Upanisads, who interpret the Vedic religion in a symbolic and mystical sense.

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Title: LosVedas: ensayos de traducción y exégesis / Ananda K. Coomaraswamy Publication: Madrid · Ignitus · Sanz y Torres, 2007 Description: 190 pages; 21 cm

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Classical Period · Sacred Literature

Literary Route The Ancient Upanisads

Around the 6th century BC a reaction in India against the excessive ritualism of the Vedic religion and the religious monopoly of the caste of the Brahmans occurred. This spiritual revolution was expressed in form of diverse mystic and asthetic currents. Some of them broke away from the official religion, originating new religions, such as Buddhism and Jainism, whereas others were limited to reforming and reinterpreting, from inside, the official Brahman religion.

The Vedic writings that transmit this new mentality are the Upanisads, compilations of parables and teachings written in a poetic-philosophical language and that circulated in the renounced ascetic circles. The term upanisad –made up of the particles upa (“close”), ni (“under”) and sad (“to sit down”)– alludes to the fact that these esoteric teachings were received “at the feet of the master”, who only transmitted them to the disciples that were prepared to understand them.

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Title: Upanishads / Version and introduction by Juan Mascaró; edited by José Manuel Abeleira Publication: Barcelona · Random House Mondadori, 2009 Description: 262 pages; 20 cm

Instead of focusing on the literal and ritualistic meaning of the Vedic legacy, Upanisads make an effort to find their esoteric, symbolic and mystic meaning. Despite the fact that these texts group in an asystematic manner a great variety of doctrines, the predominant cosmic vision in them is a mystic monism that identifies Brahman (what’s Absolute, the unique fundament of reality) with atman (the individual essence of all things). The Upanisad teach that only through the experience knowledge of this identity –and not through rituals, recital of mantras or the theoretical study of the Writings– one can break away from the terrible rings of samsara (the never ending cycle of birth, suffering and death). In these texts the idea of the law of the moral retribution of actions (karman), the concept of reincarnation (samsara) and the new ideal of liberation (moksa), which will be present in almost all of the later currents of thought.

There are more than a hundred Upanisads, but the most important are the old ones, that were composed between the 7th and the 4th centuries and are considered a part of the Vedic revelation.

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Literary Route

Classical Period 路 Sacred Literature

In chronological order they are: Brhadarayaka, Chandogya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, Kausitaki, Kena, Katha, Isa, Svetasvatara, Mundaka, Mahanarayana, Prasna, Maitri and Mandukya. Among them, the most ancient are written in prose and contain a language, topic and style still close to the Vedic, whereas the most recent are written in classical Sanskrit, they use verses and introduce new philosophical and mystical deliberations that will end in the birth of vedanta, the most important Hindi philosophic school

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Title: Upanisads / Prologue by Raimon Panikkar; edition and translation by Daniel de Palma Publication: Madrid 路 Siruela, 2001 Description: 169 pages; 22 cm

Literary Route

Classical Period Epic Literature Mahabharata and Ramayana are the two epic poems of Hinduism and are the text witness of the beliefs, customs and myths of popular theist Hinduism that was gestated and developed for centuries parallelly to the Brahmanic official religion.

The Vyasa Mahabharata Mahabharata (“the great war of the Bharata”) is the story of the confrontation between two related clans, the pandavas (sons of Pandu) and the kurus (sons of Dhrtarastra), both descendents of the old King Bharata. This war ended with the great battle of Kurukshetra (“the field of the kurus”) where almost all the kings of India took part.

Finally the pandavas, helped by the intervention of the God Krishna, ended up winning and recovering the land that had been seized by the kurus.

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The compilation period of the Mahabharata goes from the 4th century BC to the 4th century AC. During this period, and from the original narrative core, slowly enriched itself with new myths, episodes and fragments from different oral popular traditions. Mahabharata, therefore, does not have an author, but many and anonymous –despite the fact that tradition ascribes it to the mythical character Vyasa, whose name means literally “the compiler”.

Title: La batalla de Kurukshetra / Maggi Lidchi-Grassi; translated by Bel Atreides Publication: Barcelona · Apóstrofe, 1997 Description: 427 pages; 22 cm

This epic poem, with an extension of seven times the Iliad and the Odyssey together, is probably the longest work of universal literature.

It contains around two hundred thousand verses, organized in 18 books (parvan) and a final appendix called Harivamsa.

What Vedas are for the Brahman religion, Mahabharata is for classic popular Hinduism. As well as working as the national heroic deed of India, it has become a real philosophical, religious, moral and legal encyclopedia, which has been recognized, recalled and represented for centuries until nowadays. Its stories and the teachings it includes

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Literary Route

Classical Period 路 Epic Literature

show a synthesis between the Brahman religion and popular beliefs, giving an especially Theist concept of divinity and the idea of devotion (bhakti) as the path for salvation.

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Title: El auriga de los caballos del sol / Maggi Lidchi-Grassi; translated by Bel Atreides Publication: Barcelona 路 Ap贸strofe, 1998 Description: 409 pages; 22 cm

Classical Period · Epic Literature

Literary Route Bhagavad-Gita

Bhagavad-Gita (“The song of the Lord”) is one of the parts of Mahabharata (6.23-40). It was composed around the 2nd century BC and lasts 700 verses, structured in 18 chapters.

This little poem is inserted in the narrative plot of Mahabharata in the critical moment of the battle of Kurukshetra, when Arjuna, the noblest warrior of the pandavas, was paralyzed in the battlefield when his relatives and friends who are seen in the opposite side must be attacked. In this critical moment, Krishna, who until then had been his charioteer and friend, is revealed as God itself (Visnu, who has acquired a human shape) to convince him to abandon fighting. If he doesn’t fight, Krishna says, he will disobey his duty (dharma) as a warrior and will not allow the fulfillment of fate: The victory of the pandava and the reestablishment of the social and cosmic order (dharma).

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The 18 chapters of the Gita reproduce the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna and culminate in the final decision of Arjuna to turn to fighting. The Gita is therefore a philosophical digression inserted in the epic plot of Mahabharata, that can also be read as an independent work. Its importance eradicates in the fact that it introduces a perspective in the development of the Hindu philosophy: The importance of the committed action (karma) and devotion (bhakti) —as well as knowledge (jñana)— in the path to freedom.

Title: El canto del Señor. Bhagavad-Gita / Direct translation from Sanskrit, introduction, edition and notes by Fernando Tola Publication: Madrid · Biblioteca Nueva, cop. 2000 Description: 222 pages; 21 cm

The Bhagavad-Gita is probably the most popular text of current Hinduism and also the best known in the West. The universality of its message eradicates in the philosophy of karma-yoga, which teaches us to carry out individual duties (sva-dharma) with uninterested attitude and offering the result of our actions to divinity. This attitude is, according to the Gita, a way not only to achieve self-liberation but also the best way to contribute to the maintenance and wellbeing of the social and cosmic organism.

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Literary Route

Classical Period · Epic Literature Ramayana, by Valmiki Ramayana (“Rama’s trip”) tells the story of Prince Rama who feels forced to maintain his father’s honour, King Dasaratha, to give up the heritage of the throne and to go to the forest like an ascetic for fourteen years with his wife Sita and his brother Laksmana. However, once they are in the forest, Sita is kidnapped by Ravana, the king of the demons (raksasa) and imprisoned in the island of Lanka.This epic poem accounts the adventures of the hero Rama on his long trip to rescue his beautiful and beloved wife.

After overcoming many difficulties, Rama, with the help of his brother and an army of apes led by Hanumat, manages to free Sita from Ravana, killing him and his kingdom. At the end of the story, Sita shows Rama her fidelity throwing herself into the fire without being burnt and Rama shows himself as one of the avatara (“descendents”) of the God Visnu, who has embodied in a man to end with the lineage of the demons.

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Title: El Ramayana / Valmiki; translation, preliminary study, notes and ramayanic image by Juan B. Bergua Publication: Madrid · Clásicos Bergua, cop. 2006 Description: 2 volumes; 771 pages - 832 pages; 17 cm

The authorship of the Ramayana is attributed to the poet Valmiki and it is thought that it was written around 3rd century BC. The poem includes 24.000 verses and is divided in seven books, even though it seems as if in its process of oral transmission it went through several changes and even interpolations. The story of Rama has always been present in the Indian mind in general. The many literary recreations of this story shows it, especially the well-known version in Hindi Ramcaritmanas, by Tulsidas (16th century) and the fact that still today the story of Rama is staged in many festivals and in wedding ceremonies the names of this couple of heroes are mentioned as the ideal couple.

In effect, for the Indian mentality it is an exemplary story. All its characters represent a social ideal. Rama as the prince and husband, for his courage and nobility, Sita as the wife, for her devotion and fidelity and Hanumat as the God devout, for his unconditional devotion. As in the case of Mahabharata, the honour of the heroes eradicates in the execution of its own duty, according to a cosmic destination only known by gods.

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Literary Route

Classical Period Lyrical and Devotional Poetry In Sanskrit literature lyrical poetry holds an important position, which predominantly approaches the topic of love and nature and that inspired some of the European romantic poets such as Goethe. The most important work of the genre could be Meghadhuta by Kalidasa, translated into several European languages. This work accounts how a yaksa (arboreal spirit), condemned to an exile of a year in the centre of India, convinces a cloud that goes by to send a love message to his wife, who lives in the Himalayas, describing the wonderful landscapes he can admire on his way. Another important poet is Bhartrhari (7th century AC), author of the three sataka (“collections of a hundred poems”) about love, the wise behavior and indifference, respectively.

But poets we highlight here are those who turn to poetry to express their intense feeling of religious devotion.

Gitagovinda by Jayadeva

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Jayadeva, from Bengala (12th century AC) is the last great name of Sanskrit poetry and the author of the Gitagovinda (“Govinda’s song”).

He was a passionate devotee of God Krishna –one of the nine descendents (avatara) of God Visnu- also known as Govinda (“the cows’ shepherd”).

This work is placed between the genre of drama and lyricism and it poetically interprets the life of God Krishna. It describes the love games of Krishna with the shepherdesses in the garden of Vrindavan, and especially the emotions regarding his relationship with his favourite shepherdess, Radha.

Title: Gita Govinda: los amores del dios Krishna y de la pastora Radha / Jayadeva; translation from Sanskrit, introduction, edition and notes by Fernando Tola Publication: Madrid · Biblioteca Nueva, cop. 1999 Description: 132 pages · 21 cm

In the Gitagovinda, religious devotion, spirituality, human feelings and eroticism are interweaved, a combination that is very present in devotional traditions (bhakti) of Hinduism. It is a very popular work, about which many comments, translations, versions and interpretations have been written, in India and in the West. In addition, the poetic strength and the feeling of the Gitagovinda has been taken to other arts such as music, dance, theatre and painting.

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Literary Route

Classical Period · Lyrical and Devotional Poetry Kabir’s Poetry Kabir (15th century), son of a family of Muslim craftsmen from Benares, is the most important of the sant of the North, mystics that preached with songs the devotion to a unique and ineffable divinity. He was a great poet, musician, philosopher and saint, but not as a resigner, but leading the life of a head of family. He was illiterate and did not know Sanskrit, but he composed several poems and preached in the vernacular language of his region: Hindi.

His poetry has a mystical, devotional and universal character. Placed in a common land between Hinduism and Islam, he went ahead of his time and influenced the devotional movements (bhakti) of India, especially as precursor of the Sikh religion, which collects great part of its poetry in its sacred book (Adi Granth).

Kabir taught that the purpose of life is the union of the individual soul with God’s soul. He preached simplicity of the direct experience of the inside divinity and the unity of all religions, showing himself as very critical with the inflexibility and ritualism of the Hindu and Muslim orthodoxy.

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His main work is Bijak, a collection of poems where he displayed his vision of spirituality. Kabir extracts from Hinduism the concepts of atman (individual soul), brahman (universal soul) and the doctrine of reincarnation, whereas Islam takes the idea of a unique God and the equality of human beings before Him, independently from their caste, sex and religion.

Doubting the authorship of the revealed texts of both religions, it preached an intuitive, simple and direct path, of union with divinity.

Title: Poemas breves / Kabir; translated by Jesús Aguado Publication: Palma de Mallorca · José J. de Olañeta, cop. 2001 Description: 79 pages; 14 cm

The legend says that when he died a dispute between Muslims and Hindus occurred due to its corpse. However, when they opened his grave they found it empty and found a book where disciples would write their teachings. Kabir has inspired poets, mystics and musicians of all time and is considered saint by Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism. Despite the fact that he didn’t found any sect or religion, his disciples formed a community, Kabir Panth, that has persisted until today.

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Classical Period

Literary Route Theatre: Sakuntala by Kalidasa

Kalidasa (4th-5th centuries AC) is without a doubt the most important poet of India. The topics of his works are extracted from the epic and popular stories, to which the poet adds modifications. His style is highlighted by the characterization of characters, the study of human nature and an absolute mastery of Sanskrit language.

Kalidasa is the author of epic poems, such as Kumarasambhava and Raghuvamsa, and of the famous lyrical poem Meghadhuta. But this poet stands out for his dramaturgic compositions (nataka). His most important work is Abhijñanasakuntala (“Sakuntala’s acknowledgement”), a drama in seven acts that has been translated into several European languages.

The story comes from Mahabharata and approaches the story of Sakuntala, a young girl who abandoned by her parents, grew wild and innocent in a chapel in the forest, adopted by the saint Kanva. One day, King Dusyanta of Hastinapura visited the chapel and, captivated by her, he takes her in marriage. However, one day the King was away, the wise Durvasas visited the chapel and feeling unattended by Sakuntala, he puts a curse on her that consisted in her husband not to recognize her as his wife. Effectively, when she arrives in the palace, the King doesn’t recognize her, he rejects her and Sakuntala must go back to live in the chapel. Many years later, the King finds the ring, and finally recognized Sakuntala and their child, Bharata.

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Title: The Recognition of Sakuntala: a play in seven acts / Kalidasa; Sakuntala in the Mahabharata (Mahabharata 1.62-9); translated and edited by W. J. Johnson Publication: Oxford [etc.] · Oxford University Press, 2001 Description: 147 pages; 19 cm

The origin of Indian theatre goes back a few centuries before the writing of Natyasastra, the dramaturgic treaty of Bharata (3rd century BC).

Indian theatre is generally characterized by giving more importance to the feeling that to the characters or the plot. Idealism and romanticism predominate over tragedy and characters are quite stereotyped. The topics and characters are always popular and generally extracted from episodes of the two great epic poems.

As well as Kalidasa, other playwrights such as Bhasa (author of thirteen works and predecesor of Kalidasa), Bhavabhuti (author of Uttararamacarita) and Harsa (author of Ratnavali) stand out.

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Literary Route

Classical Period Stories and Fables: Pañcatantra Pañcatantra (“The five principles”) is a collection of stories and fables of moralizing and didactical content. Its authorship is attributed to Visnusarma (3rd century BC), but the stories it tells come from a much older oral tradition.

The work is structured in an introduction and five chapters, which are the “five principles” the title refers to. In the introduction the general framework of the work is offered: All these stories are told

by Visnusarma to certain princes who need to be instructed about the art of good governance and wise behavior.

The five chapters include a total of 73 stories interweaved among each other. Every chapter has a main story or framework, which at the same time includes other stories that characters tell each other, like a game of Russian dolls. Stories are written in prose and in very simple Sanskrit, but often verses from popular sayings (subhasitas) that the narrator recites to give as examples or to summarize the essential message of each stories are interweaved.

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Title: Panchatantra / Translation from Sanskrit by José Alemany Bolufer; prologue by Carmen García-Ormaechea Publication: Barcelona · Círculo de Lectores, DL 2001 Description: 396 pages; 21 cm

Generally, stories illustrate in a simple way the logic of human behaviour (even though their main characters are nearly always animals) and give guidelines about how to act in life to achieve purposes. There are many animals of the Indian fauna, such as jackals, lions, crows, turtles, snakes, frogs, dogs, donkeys, etc. As well as the cynical and humour tone of these fables, the strength of these stories is in the fact that the animal main characters embody, with their behavior, many human features.

There are many versions and translations of these fables in several periods and regions of India. Their best known Indian version is Hitopadesa (“The Good Advice”) by Narayana (12th century), which includes the majority of fables of Pañcatantra but with a different order and more perfect regarding literature.

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Literary Route

Classical Period · Stories and Fables: Pañcatantra

The transmission route of these fables can be sketched by the whole world, towards China and Southeast Asia first, and towards Persia and Europe later. The version that arrived in Europe is the one known as Calila and Dimna comes from a Persian version of the 12th century.

So, these Indian origin stories are known all around the world, even though they are transformed by time and the languages and cultures that adopted them. It is difficult to determine the approach of the mutual influence between Esopo’s Greek fables and the Indian fables of Pañcatantra, but it seems like the contact that existed between the Indian and the Greek world could also be reflected here.

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Title: The Pañcatantra: the Book of India's FolkWisdom / Translated from the original Sanskrit by Patrick Olivelle Publication: Oxford [etc.] · Oxford University Press, 1997 Description: 195 pages; 19 cm

Literary Route

Classical Period Literature of Treaties Scientific literature is characteristic of the Indian culture. There are treaties about almost all of the fields of knowledge: aesthetics, astrology, etymology, metric, grammar, medicine, politics, philosophy, etc.

Within this kind of literature we find the genre of the sutras (“threaded” aphorisms that synthesize a doctrine) and of the sastras (completed and systematic treaties that expose a science).

The Laws of Manu In India, the religious system has always gone along with the social and political system. The ideal of liberation, which in the period of the Upanisads involved giving up the world, was slowly integrating with the political and social values of society. This integration of values embodied in the concept of dharma, which designated the religious law that governed the political and social life.

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In the first centuries BC the treaties about dharma (Dharmasastra) were composed that systematize the different social, political, religious and moral principles above which the Hindi society is built, almost until today. They are treaties about ethics and politics among which Manusmriti (2nd century BC – 3rd century AC) and the Arthasastra of Kautilya (2nd century BC – 2nd century AC) are highlighted.

Title: Código de Manú y otros textos / Anonymous Publication: Madrid · Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998 Description: 96 pages; 17 cm

The tradition attributes the authorship of Manusmriti (The Laws of Manu) to Manu, according to the legend the only survival of the universal flood, and therefore, the first antecessor of humanity and creator of the system of social rules. This code of laws tells about the creation of the world, the duties every caste has towards governors and women, the legislation to apply criminal behaviours, the doctrine of karman, among others. But maybe what’s most important in this treaty is the ordination of life it proposes to the members of superior castes. According to The Laws of Manu, life has four purposes (purusartha) that every man must fulfill: Pleasure (kama), richness (artha), duty (dharma) and liberation (moksa).

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Literary Route

Classical Period · Literature of Treaties

In addition, life is organized in four stages: Student (brahmacarin), head of family (grhastha), retired (vanaprastha) and resigners (samnyasin).

From this vision, attached to Brahmanic mentality, universal law (dharma) is expressed in the particular duty of every individual –depending on their social belonging, sex and the stage of life they are in– who, fulfilling their own duty in society, contribute to general wellbeing.

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Title: The Law Code of Manu / A new translation based on the critical edition by Patrick Olivelle Publication: Oxford [etc.] · Oxford University Press, 2004 Description: 316 pages; 19 cm

Literary Route

Classical Period · Literature of Treaties Patañjali’s Yogasutras (2nd century AC) In the first centuries of the Christian era the six classical philosophical schools were developed (darsana, literally “perspectives”): nyaya, vaisesika, mimamsa, vedanta, samkhya and yoga.

Each of these schools has a funding philosopher and a basic treaty, written with short aphorisms (sutras), that synthesizes the basic precepts of their philosophical doctrine. The linguistic economy that allows the genre of the sutra is thought to make their oral transmission easer (they should be accompanied by explanations by the master) and their memorizing (by the disciples). However, despite the utility of this kind of treaties at the time, their concise character turned into a problem of comprehension for subsequent philosophers and developed a tradition of commentators who in some cases reach to nowadays.

In the case of the school of classical yoga, this foundational treaty are the Yogasutras (“The Aphorisms ofYoga”) where the wise Patañjali (2nd3rd century AC), compiles and systematizes a group of aesthetic and meditative disciplines practiced by the groups of resigners of their time.

The Yogasutras display a psycho-physical discipline aimed at progressively purifying and controlling mind, with the final purpose to distinguish between the psychological phenomenon of mind (thoughts, memories, emotions, etc.) and the conscience that observes it (spirit or the transcendental conscience).

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Title: Yoga-sutra / Patanjali; version and notes by T. K. V. Desikachar Publication: Madrid [et al.] · EDAF, 2003 Description: 159 pages; 18 cm

Despite the fact that the term “yoga” is used generally in India to design any path that leads to liberation, in the strict sense it is used to refer to the philosophy of Patañjali, which receives the name of classic yoga, raja-yoga (“regal yoga”) and astanga-yoga o (“yoga of the eight parts”), because its practice includes eight stages: Ethic restrictions (yama), individual disciplines (niyama), posture of meditation (asana), control of breathing (pranayama), sensorial abstraction (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana) and contemplation (samadhi).

In the case of the other schools the main treaties are:The Mimamsa-sutras of Jaimini, the Brahma-sutras of Badarayana, the Nyaya-sutras of Gautama, the Vaisesika-sutras of Kanada and the Samkhya-karikas of Isvarakrsna.

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Classical Period · Literature of Treaties Kamasutra by Vatsyayana Kamasutra (“Aphorisms about Love”) (3rd 5th century AC) is a known text of the Hindi tradition that approaches the science of sexuality, eroticism and love. It has been translated into many Indian and Western languages and has been the topic of artistic representations on many occasions.

Even though in the West it is known by the classification it includes of coitus postures and sometimes it is considered, as an error, a manual of tantric sex, Kamasutra does not belong to the tantric tradition, but the topic of love and sex relationships is approached from a much broader perspective, within the traditions and values of the Hindi society in general. This treaty is written in prose (even though it has many interweaved verse fragments included) and it has 36 chapters divided in 7 parts.

This treaty must be read from the framework of the Hindi doctrine of the four purposes of life (purusartha) displayed in The Code of Manu: Pleasure (kama), richness (artha), virtue (dharma) and liberation (moksa).

Even though spiritual liberation if the noblest and elevated objective, the first three are main aspects of life. Among them, pleasure is the least important in the hierarchy, but so a society works well, men and women must know how to behave and how to extract the best of this aspect of life.

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Title: Kama Sutra / Vatsyayana; translated by Àlvar Valls Publication: Barcelona · La Magrana, 1999 Description: 225 pages; 20 cm

This treaty offers a lot of information about the role of sex and love in society and for oneself, the ways to conquer a woman, erotic games, many sexual postures (up to 64), how to find a suitable wife, the presence of middlemen, how to improve one’s own attraction, the art of marriage, the behavior of women and men regarding the opposite sex, unique wives, many wives and courtesans, the nature of feelings and emotions, etc., but it also warns us of the danger of completely flowing around the search for pleasure.

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Classical Period · Recommendations

Title: La hora de los dioses / Maggi Lidchi-Grassi; translated by Bel Atreides Publication: Barcelona · Apóstrofe, 1998 Description: 351 pages; 22 cm

Title: Bhagavad Gita / With advaita notes by Sankara; edition by Consuelo Martín Publication: Madrid · Trotta, 2002 Description: 333 pages; 23 cm

Title: Mahabharata / Concised edition by R. K. Narayan; translation from English by Ángel Gurría Quintana Publication: Barcelona · Kairós, 2003 Description: 218 pages; 20 cm

Title: Cien poemas / Kabir; prologue and introduction by Francesc Ll. Cardona Publication: Barcelona · Edicomunicación, cop. 2003 Description: 128 pages; 18 cm

Title: El Ramayana / Valmiki; translation, preliminary study, notes and ramayanic image by Juan B. Bergua Publication: Madrid · Clásicos Bergua, cop. 2006 Description: 2 volumes; 771 pages - 832 pages; 17 cm

Title: Kumarasambhava: el origen de Kumara / Kalidasa; edition by José Virgilio García Trabazo Publication: Madrid · Akal, 2003 Description: 220 pages; 22 cm

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Literary Route Colonial Period With the arrival of the English, not only changes in the Hindu society arouse, but the impact could also be seen in literature. The feelings of patriotism among authors were more evident than before and there was, therefore, growth in the literature written in regional languages. Bengali literature was the one that grew the most with authors such as Bankim Chandra, Sharat Chandra or Tagore himself.

Another highlighted fact was the introduction of the Western education and English literature in the Indian educational system by the British.

As a result of this fact, some Indian authors began to write in English and there was a growth in the Middle Class, which was not only main characters in these works, but also consumers of them.

In classical literature the main literary genre was poetry and plays written in Sanskrit, but in the colonial period fiction acquired importance, especially novels and short stories, written in Hindi, English and Bengali. Certain examples are the following, Premchand, who wrote a simple version of Hindi, closer to common people, R. K. Narayan, who wrote in English, and Tagore, who wrote in English and Bengali. The topics, which in the classical period were mostly religious and moral, are now social topics, such as poverty, the caste system, the situation of women, rural India and its customs, etc. Next, some of the important authors of the colonial will be approached.

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Mumbai Railway Station

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Colonial Period Ravindranath Tagore (1861-1941) R. Tagore, popularly known as “Gurudev”, was a poet, philosopher, painter, composer, musician, educator, writer and reformer. Born in an influencing family of Bengala, he was the first Asian Nobel prizewinner and, without a doubt, the most important author and character of the colonial period in India.

He was a follower of Gandhi, but he did not get into active politics, because he was against nationalism and turned to spiritual values.

Therefore, for example, in 1915 we was appointed soldier of the British Empire, but he resigned to that title after the killing of Amritsar in 1919.

Tagore funded the Shantiniketan School, currently a prestigious university that combines in education the Oriental and Western philosophy.

The literary work of Tagore consists of around 1500 songs, more than 2000 paintings and portraits, 28 volumes of poetry, several Works of art, novels, short stories, essays and many letters. He is also the author of the national hymns of India and Bangladesh.

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Tagore’s most important work is without a doubt Gitanjali, for which he was awarded the Literature Noble Prize. It is said that this work was the result of the immense pain caused by the losses and tragic events Tagore suffered in this stage of his life.

Title: Gitanjali: Song Offerings / Rabindranath Tagore; Introduction by W. B.Yeats Publication: New Delhi · Rabindra-Bhavana, 1999 Description: 273 pages; 20 cm

The title Gitanjali comes from the Hindi words git (“song”) and anjali (“offering”), which could be translated as “Song Offering”. Gitanjali was written in Bengali and translated into English in 1912 by Tagore himself. The English version is a collection of 103 poems, half from the Bengali version and the rest from other books of poems by Tagore.

Most of the songs talk about the relationship of the poet with God and the world and also about devotion, love and faith. Even though Tagore was Hindu, his poems talk about a universal faith and spirituality; he wanted to create a world culture based on multiculturality, diversity and tolerance. Many critics think that Gitanjali is like a soothing balm for the spirit. Others of his outstanding works are: Gora, The Postman and the King and Hungry Stones.

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Colonial Period

Literary Route Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay (1871-1938)

Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay, born in the rural Bengala of the colonial period, is one of the most important authors in Bengali language. Sharat Chandra was the writer of masses and their works, very popular among the Middle Class, talked about the social problems of the time. The main character of his novels was always society, a society full of social discrimination, superstitions and immoral customs and practices, in name of religion. Sharat Chandra was a social revolutionary and reformer.Through his novels he incited the oppressed to go out and protest. His works talk for example about women trapped by customs in a very orthodox society, and the majority of his works have been taken to Bollywood films.

Devdas is without a doubt the most popular work of the author. Up to now, four cinematographic versions have been made by different Bollywood directors. Devdas is a tragic love story that explains the customs and the caste systems in a very orthodox society of rural Bengala. The main characters are Devdas, son of an influential family of Brahmans (the highest social caste), and Parvati (called Paro), daughter of a neighbouring family but of an inferior caste to Brahmans.

Devdas and Paro are in love, but their love suffers the consequences of the rigid caste system of the time. In the story there is a third main character: The prostitute Chandramukhi, who is in love with Devdas and completes the triangle of impossible love.

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Title: Devdas: a Novel / Saratchandra Chattopadhyay; translation from Bengali by Sreejata Guha Publication: New Delhi [etc.] 路 Penguin Books, 2002 Description: 128 pages; 19 cm

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Colonial Period

Literary Route Premchand (1880-1936)

Premchand, popularly known as “Munshi Premchand”, is without a doubt the most important figure of Hindi literature. Premchand was born in Varanasi and his real name was Dhanpat Rai Srivastava. He lost his mother when he was only 7 years old and had a tough childhood.

Hindi literature of the previous period to Premchand consisted mainly in religious or fantastic works. Premchand brought realism to Hindi literature, writing about the real problems of people in a simple language.

Premchand is considered the great master of literary narrative in Hindi. He wrote more than 300 stories, a dozen of novels and two essays.

Godan is the last complete novel written by Munshi Premchand. The word godan literally means “cow” (go) and “to give as a gift” (dan), for which the translated title would be: “The gift of a cow”. However, the word in Hindi “dan” means much more than give as a gift: It is the gesture of all Hindis to clean their Karma and godan is the biggest dan that could exist in Hinduism.

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Title: Godan / Munshi Premchand; translated by Ayushma Sharma Publication: New Delhi · Diamond Books, 2009 Description: 373 pages; 22 cm

Godan is the story of the peasant Hori, his wife Dhania and his three children. The novel begins with the purchase of a cow by Hori, which was his dream and also the most prestigious symbol of rural India.

The plot continues with the jealousy of Hori’s brother and his son Gobar. Hori’s life is an eternal struggle to survive and page after page the reader suffers with him. Despite his endless problems, the main character is very optimistic and always thinks that things will be solved and everything will improve, a very common feeling among Indian people. Hori’s story and his family is the story of hundreds of thousands of peasants in colonial India and in the India of the 21st century.

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Colonial Period · Premchand

In this novel the author does not only talk about rural conflicts, but also about the urban ones: Tragic-comical life of journalists, the problems and bad conditions of industrial workers, etc. The author also presents the feminist movement of colonial India, through the arguments between two characters, with arguments that are still valid in the current Hindi society: Doctor Malta, who believes in the equality of opportunities between men and women, and Mr Mehta, who belongs to the traditional current of thought.

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Title: Antología de cuentos / Premchand; selection, introduction, translation from Hindi and notes by Álvaro Enterría Publication: Palma de Mallorca · José J. de Olañeta · Indica Books, 2001 Description: 156 pages; 21 cm

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Colonial Period R. K. Narayan (1906-2001) Rasipuran Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanswami, known as P. K. Narayan, is considered one of the great novelists of Indian literature in English language. Narayan was born in a family of Middle Class traditional Brahmans, in rural Madras, but spent his childhood in a city of Mysore, where his father was the headmaster of an English school. This helped the child Narayan to learn about the English culture and literature, because Tamil and Sanskrit as mother tongues.Young Narayan dreamed about being a writer, but the beginnings were tough due to the bad economic conditions of his family and the opposition of his father, who thought that young Narayan wasted time writing books.

His first work was Swami and his Friends, published in 1935. His style was simple but natural and irony and humour in tragic situations are the main feature of his novels. In the literary world he is considered “word charmer”. All his works are placed in a semi-urban imaginary village called Malgudi and the common topic of almost all his works is the Middle Class.

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These are some of the most important books by the author, with which he won several literary awards of India: The Bachelor of Arts, The English Teacher, The Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma, The Guide, The Man-Eater of Malgudi, Mahabharata and Grandmother’s Tale.

Title: El guía / R. K. Narayan; translation from English

by Nicole d’Amonville Alegría Publication: Barcelona · Kairós, 2002 Description: 241 pages; 20 cm

The novel The Guide is without a doubt the masterpiece of the author.

There, in a masterly way, Narayan accounts a tragic-comical life of the main character, Raju. Raju is a tourist guide in Malgudi, who invents stories of his village and its places to entertain his clients. The other main character is Rosie, a classical dancer who comes to Malgudi with her husband. Raju and Rosie fall in love and he becomes her manager and representative. Later, due to his frauds, he spent a period of time in jail and when he comes out his life turns 180 degrees. The criminal Raju becomes a saint man and the tourist guide becomes a spiritual guide.

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Colonial Period · Recommendations

Literary Route

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Title: El llicenciat en lletres / R. K. Narayan; translated by Xavier Pàmies Publication: Lleida · Pagès, 1998 Description: 217 pages; 21 cm

Title: Srikanta / Sarat Chandra Chatterjee; translation from Bengali by Gloria Khisha Publication: Madrid · Alianza, cop. 2006 Description: 227 pages; 23 cm

Title: Gora: and Other Stories / Rabindranath Tagore; Translation from the original in Bengali by several authors Publication: New Delhi · Macmillan India, 1924 Description: 867 pages; 18 cm

Title: The Collected Short Stories of Khushwant Singh Publication: New Delhi · Ravi Dayal Publisher; Bangalore, cop. 1989 Description: 219 pages; 22 cm

Title: Shatranj Ke Khilari / Produced by Suresh Jindal; screenplay, music and direction Satyajit Ray Publication: Mumbai · Shemaroo Video, cop. 2004 Description: 1 optical disc (DVD). 116’. Color

Title: La morada de la paz: una guía poética y espiritual / Rabindranath Tagore; translation from French

by Rosa Alapont Publication: Barcelona · Oniro, cop. 1999 Description: 239 pages; 20 cm

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Literary Route Contemporary Authors India is a country with a great literary tradition and the contemporary authors have continued this tradition with great merit. This period has brought us great Indo-English novelists winners of several literary awards. Indian contemporary literature has a clear Western influence, but preserves its polyvalent Indian flavor, holding an important position in world literature. The introduction of English had a great impact on cult Indian people, who began to read other literatures and to get to know about other cultures. This period is marked by the diversity of genres and languages, but the intention of authors was to be natural, aim to common people and approach everyday topics. Another important aspect is the sense of liberation among authors, because they do not see English as a colonial language, but they use it without complexes and often mixing it with words and expressions of native regional languages, as the writer Arundhati Roy does in her novel The God of Small Things, where she uses sentences and words of Malayalam, the official language of the region of Kerala. The list of contemporary authors is very long, but here we will approach the most outstanding authors.

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Arundhati Roy, Khushwant Singh, Anita Desai and Anita Nair

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Ruta literĂ ria Literary Route

Contemporary Authors Arundhati Roy (1961) Arundhati Roy, writer, intellectual and activist, is daughter of a Bengali father and a Christian mother. She was born in the state of Bengala, but spent her childhood in Kerala, south India. Roy studied Architecture in Delhi, but since she was a child, she wanted to be a writer and began her career as a writer writing scripts.

The first novel by Roy is The God of Small Things, which was published in 1997. Very soon it became a best seller and in October of the same year, it won the prestigious prize Booker. In 2005, Roy won the maximum prize of Indian literature (Sahitya Akademi Award) for her work The algebra of infinite justice.

Arundhati Roy has always taken part actively in the social movements inside and outside the country and has written many articles and essays in support of different social causes.

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The God of Small Things is the best work by this author. The novel is set in Ayemenem, a mountain village of the Indian state of Kerala, and this is the story of three generations of a Christian family. Roy talks about love and human pity, but through her characters she also explains different aspects of the culture of Kerala, such as customs, clothing and food. With a subtle irony, the author explains the ancient traditions and practices of the society and religion, such as the contemptuous treatment towards the untouchable by the high castes, even by the British Christians. The main characters of this novel are Pappachi and his wife Mammachi, his son Chacko divorced from the English Margaret and his daughters Sophie and Ammu, who, also divorced, has twins, Estha and Rahel. Roy explains us the patron of the Indian family, where men are superior to women. In this case, Pappachi is the patriarch and later Chacko inherits this honour.

Through its female main characters, Roy talks about gender violence and inequality suffered by women in India, the British influence on Indian people and the transformations that villages have suffered due to modernization and economic growth.

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Contemporary Authors Anita Desai (1937) Anita Desai, daughter of a German mother and a Bengali father, born in the mountain city of Mussoorie, in north India. Since she was a child, she grew surrounded by the Western and the Eastern cultures, as well as speaking five languages, and this mixture of cultures is reflected in her works. She once wrote: “I see India through my mother’s eyes, like a foreigner, but my feelings towards India are like my father’s, someone who was born here”.

Anita Desai has written a lot about Indian Middle Class women and, through her female characters, portrays their inside conflicts. Many works of hers have been published, translated into 11 languages.

Among her most important works the following stand out: Fasting Feasting, Clear Light of Day, Diamond Dust and Other Stories, In Custody, Baumgartner’s Bombay, The Zigzag Way and Fire on the Mountain.

The novel Fasting Feasting is a family drama in two parts. The first part tells the story of a Middle Class Indian family with two daughters and a son. As it happens in the majority of Indian families, the son has to go to study abroad and the daughters have to marry in a concerted marriage by their parents. In the second part of the novel, the experiences of the son in an American family are accounted. The author explains the two patrons of the family very well, as well as the genre inequality in two different cultures, such as the Indian and American cultures. The title of the novel Fasting Feasting represents the idea of contrast: The contrast of two cultures, the situation of women, the role of men in society… to finally wonder: Is the situation of women really that different in both cultures?

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Title: Ayuno, festín / Anita Desai; translated by Gian Castelli Publication: Madrid · Alianza, cop. 2000 Description: 281 pages; 22 cm

Anita Desai is also the mother of Kiran Desai, winner of the Booker prize in 2006.

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Contemporary Authors Khushwant Singh (1915) Born in 1915 in Haladi (current Pakistan), Khushwant Singh is novelist, translator, journalist and writer. Singh is one of the most important and read authors, but also one of the most controversial of the current Indian literary panorama. For many years he was editor of the prestigious magazine “The Illustrated Weekly of India”, he has collaborated with many national and international newspapers and has been member of the Upper House of the Indian Parliament.

Singh’s first literary work was the story The Portrait of a Lady, published by the Canadian Forum. His first work was The Mark of Vishnu and Other Stories, a collection of short stories, but he became famous with his first novel published in 1956, Train to Pakistan, previously named Mano majra.

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Title: Tren a Pakistán / Khushwant Singh; translated by Marta Alcaraz Burgueño Publication: Barcelona · Libros del Asteroide, 2011 Description: 246 pages; 20 cm

Train to Pakistan is a historical novel result of the pain that the author felt about the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The facts occur in a calm village called Mano majra, placed on the border between India and Pakistan, where people from all religions live in peace and harmony and where the only outstanding fact is the trains going past.

The calmness of the village falls because of the rumours about the killings of the Sikhs and the Muslims and soon the calm village becomes a battlefield. In middle of this situation, the love story between Jugga Singh, a young Sikh, and Nooran, a Muslim girl, takes place. When the Muslims of the village decide to go to Pakistan by train, the main character Jugga Singh decides to save his beloved Nooran and his Muslim lives of his life, doing everything possible so the train can go to Pakistan with all the passengers safe and sound, the author masterly explains how the corrupt politicians and policemen can end with the harmony of a village and the importance of values such as friendship and generosity among the neighbours of a locality.

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Contemporary Authors Anita Nair (1966) Anita Nair, born in Kerala, is Graduate in English Literature and continued a career as an advertiser. She began her literary career with a compilation of stories. Her first novel The Better Man was released in 1998, but the recognition and fame in the literary world arrived with her novel Ladies Coupé, which was a best-seller in India and England. Other of her novels are the following: Magical Indian Myths and Nine Faces of Being. In most works by Anita Nair the main characters are women. In fact, after the publication of Ladies Coupé, Anita Nair is considered as a feminist author in the literary world, despite having denied it in several interviews.

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Title: El vagón de las mujeres / Anita Nair; translated byJosé Manuel Berástegui Publication: Madrid · Alfaguara, 2002 Description: 376 pages; 23 cm

Ladies Coupé tells the story of the coexistence of six women in the intimacy of a train reserved for women, typical in Indian trains. In a long and night journey, the six women go on a tour through their lives, talking about love, loneliness, marriage, family and their personal feelings, and invite the readers to take part in this special trip.Through its characters, with a simple language, the author introduces us into the world of human feelings. The main character is Akhila, a 45 year old single woman, an unusual fact in Indian society. Akhila, who had always lived as a daughter, sister and aunt, but never as a woman, one day decides to change her life and buys a one way train ticket to live her own life. The author talks about the lack of self-esteem in Indian women, who always live depending on the role that has been chosen by others for them (like daughters, mothers and wives) but almost never as women. Gastronomy is another important aspect of this novel, which does not only include the names of several dishes of the Hindi gastronomy, but it also includes the recipes at the end of the book.

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Contemporary Authors · Recommendations

Title: El Bombay de Baumgartner / Anita Desai; translation from English by Gian Castelli Publication: Madrid · Alianza, cop. 2004 Description: 365 pages; 22 cm

Title: Un hombre mejor / Anita Nair; translated by José Manuel Berástegui Publication: Madrid · Santillana, cop. 2004 Description: 427 pages; 23 cm

Title: Fuego en la montaña / Anita Desai; translated by María Corniero Publication: Madrid · Horas y Horas, DL 1997 Description: 206 pages; 21 cm

Title: Las nueve caras del corazón / Anita Nair; translated by José Manuel Berástegui Publication: Madrid · Alfaguara, 2006 Description: 526 pages; 24 cm

Title: Clara luz del día / Anita Desai; translated by Gian Castelli Publication: Madrid · Alianza, cop. 2001 Description: 341 pages; 22 cm

Title: Mitos mágicos de la India / Anita Nair; translated by José Manuel Berástegui; illustrated by Frederic Amat Publication: Barcelona · Duomo, 2009 Description: 200 pages; 21 cm

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Literary Route The Authors of the Diaspora (“Children of the Raj”) The British Empire of India, received the name of Raj (“kingdom” in Hindi) and many of the authors who were born at the end of this period and wrote in English, often receive the name of “children of the Raj”.

When Vikram Seth received a millionaire amount of money as an advance for his novel A Suitable Boy, a golden period for Indian literature began. Seth was followed by many other authors who with their works have won many prizes and popularity in the literary world.

This saga is of the authors that have grown in an independent India.

The majority write in English, without complexes and without looking at the West. Fiction is the most popular style among these authors and the topics approached vary, despite the fact that they are always linked to historical events and to the current social and political system of India. Their vision of these topics is similar to those of Indian people who live abroad, but they are closer to their country with their feelings. Novelists such as Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Naipaul, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Gita Hariharan, Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy, are only a few of the names of a long list of authors that have won many literary awards in the last years and that, with their works, have taken modern Indian literature to a very high position.

Brick Lane in London

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The Authors of the Diaspora

Literary Route Vikram Seth (1952)

Vikram Seth belongs to this important saga of Indian authors who write in English without complexes. Seth has lived in three different continents and has written in almost all varieties of genres, from poetry, novels, fables and stories, to his travel experiences. Born in 1952 in Calcutta, he was educated in an Indian elite school and later completed his studies in England, United States and China.

Among his main works we can find the following: His first novel The Golden Gate, written in verse and published in 1986, From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet, published in 1983 and winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Award, and his work for children Beastly Tales from Here and There, a compilation of stories about animals in verse.

However, his best known and awarded work, and for which Seth received 250 thousand pounds in advance, is this famous novel A Suitable Boy. The novel A Suitable Boy is divided in 19 sections and tells the story of 4 families —Mehra, Chatterji, Kapoor y Khan— who live in a fiction city called Brahampur. The main story is the search of a mother for a suitable boy for her youngest daughter to marry, in few words, “a suitable boy” for her daughter. In middle of this family drama, Seth tells the story of post-independent India, relations between Hindi people and Muslims, the English influence of the Indian culture, the situation of women, the caste system and a long list of minor topics.

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Title: Un buen partido / Vikram Seth; translated by Damián Alou Publication: Barcelona · Anagrama, 2000 Description: 1350 pages; 25 cm

There are many female characters in the novel, each one with their limitations, and through them, Seth shows the restrictions that are imposed on women in India. For example, the father-in-law Mahesh Kapoor, believes in the education of women but not in women working outside their house. The novel begins and ends with a wedding and with the famous sentence of mother Mehra to her youngest daughter Lata: “You must also marry the boy I chose for you”, which reflects the Hindi society very well and some of its customs, like the famous arranged weddings.

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The Authors of the Diaspora Sir V. S. Naipaul (1932) Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, 2001 Literature Nobel Prize, was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1932 in the bosom of a Hindi family.

This grandparents, like many Indians of the time, had to emigrate from India to Trinidad, at the end of the 19th century, in search for work. When his father found a job in the capital, the whole family left the village to the capital Port of Spain, where there weren’t hardly any Hindi families. With this, the life of the child Naipul completely changed and he lived a tough and lonely childhood in the city. In 1950 he emigrated to England with a grant for Oxford and with a strong desire to become a writer. For many years he worked as a collaborator for BBC. In 1990 he was given the Knight Award of the Order of the British Empire.

Sir Naipul entered the literary world in 1957 with the novel The Mystic Masseur. His most important works are: India, The Enigma of Arrival, A House for Mr Biswas, AWay in theWorld, The Loss of El Dorado, Reading &Writing, Personal Chronicle, Half a Life, Miguel Street and Between Father and Son: Family Letters. Sir Naipaul is a true magician of words, his style in simple, precise and elegant at the same time.

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Title: Una casa para el señor Biswas / V. S. Naipaul; translated by Flora Casas Publication: Madrid · Debate, 2001 Description: 571 pages; 23 cm

A House for Mr Biswas is a social comedy, which talks about the extraordinary life of an ordinary man. The main character is Mohan Biswas, a common man who isn’t handsome or rich and that, since he was a child, searches for his own identity. His life is tragic from his birth, he is trapped in a character that is not him and that’s why he is always searching for an opportunity to be the main character of his own life.The story of Mohan Biswas is very human.The character seems self-centred, because his only purpose in life is to have his own house, far from everyone, to be free. But despite the economic, social and cultural difficulties, Mr Biswas solves all the problems with dignity, elegance and an admirable persistence. All in all, this novel is like life, sometimes tragic and sometimes comical.

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The Authors of the Diaspora Jhumpa Lahiri (1967) Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London, in the bosom of a Bengali family, but spent her childhood in the United States. Since she was a child, she felt admiration and love for the land of her parents, India, but she also had feelings for England and the United States. However, as an adult she developed a feeling of not belonging to any of these three countries, as it is reflected in her words at a press conference in Calcutta: “No country is my country, I feel in exile wherever I go and that’s why I feel the need to write about the people who live far from their land and feelings”.

Jhumpa Lahiri made her debut in the literary world winning the Pulitzer Award with her work Interpreter of Maladies, a compilation of short stories.

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Title: The Namesake / Jhumpa Lahiri Publication: Boston; New York · Houghton, Mifflin and Company, cop. 2003 Description: 291 pages; 21 cm

The Namesake, her first novel, is a book about relationships among people and families and about the search for one’s own identity, a true story about life. The main character of the novel is a young man called Gogol, son of Ashok Ganguli and Ashima Gangula, who has a sister, Sonia. Her parents are Indian but live in the United States. The name Gogol isn’t Indian or American, it’s Russian, and has a story behind that plays a key role in the development of the novel. Ashima marries Ashok Ganguli in an arranged wedding and they both move from India to Massachusetts (United States), far from their roots and of the warmth and affection of their relatives. Ashima always searches for something in this faraway land that will make her feel close to her homeland, like for example to make Bengali food with American ingredients. The novel explains with intensity the experiences and celebrations of Indian families emigrated to the United States.

The son Gogol, born in the United States, tries to deepen into the American life, but his parents, born in India, cannot forget the customs of their country of origin, which causes a mixture of feelings that the author masterly transmits to the readers. The Ganguli family, like all immigrants, tries to forget the past, look at the future and move ahead,

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Literary Route

The Authors of the Diaspora 路 Jhumpa Lahiri but does not always manage to and this struggle is one of the most important topic cores of the novel. The author describes the situation of second generations of immigrants very well, who feel out of place and lost between the two cultures. In addition, it explains the difficult situation immigrant women go through in loneliness, far from their roots and searching for their own identity.

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Title: Int茅rprete de emociones / Jhumpa Lahiri; translated by Antonio Padilla Publication: Barcelona 路 Ediciones del Bronce, 2000 Description: 248 pages; 21 cm

The Authors of the Diaspora

Literary Route Salman Rushdie (1947)

The author S. Rushdie, brilliant and controversial at the same time, is an Indian Muslim who was born in Mumbai in 1947, the year of the independence of India and the creation of Pakistan. Even if Rushdie has lived far from India for many years, his spirit is Indian and he has written a lot about socio-political issues of India. A good example of this is his masterpiece, the political novel Midnight’s Children, written in 1980, but his debut in the literary world was very discrete, with a novel called Grimus, which went unnoticed. In 1983 he wrote is controversial novel Shame, a satire about politics in Pakistan, which was censured in this country. But the work that turned Rushdie into the “king of controversial” was The SatanicVerses. This novel awakened rage in the Islamic world and by the comments it includes about the prophet Mohammed and the sacred book The Koran. As a consequence of this, Rushdie was condemned to death penalty by the Iranian spiritual leader Ayatula Khomeini.

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The author had to hide for several years, but did not stop writing.

Creations of this period are the anthology of stories Haroun and the Sea and the novel Moor’s Last Sigh. Other known works by this author are The Grounde Beneath Her Feet and Fury.

Title: Els fills de la mitjanit / Salman Rushdie; translated by Joan Sellent i Arús Publication: Barcelona · Empúries, 2002 Description: 636 pages; 24 cm

Rushdie’s masterpiece, Midnight’s Children, is a political novel that tells the story of the struggle of India for independence, the division of India in two parts, the creation of Pakistan and its bloody consequences in the shape of communal disturbances between Hindi and Muslim people. The novel takes place in the cities of Srinagar, Amritsar, Agra, Mumbai and Karachi. The main character of the novel, Saleem Sinai, together with another 1001 children, is born in the magic and historical moment of India – between 12pm and 1am of the 15th of August of 1947- the moment of the Indian independence. In the novel all these children have magic powers and, interweaved with the drama of their lives, the author gives us episodes and important incidents taken place before and after independence. Saleem works in a factory of pickles and every night writes about his life in a diary, which he then reads aloud and is registered in the novel.

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The Authors of the Diaspora · Salman Rushdie

Midnight’s Children, won the Booker Award in 1981 and in 1993 it was named the best work among all the winners of Booker of the last 25 years, this is, it was the winner of the winners.

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Title: La terra sota els seus peus / Salman Rushdie; translated by Carme Geronès and Carles Urritz Publication: Barcelona · Destino, 2001 Description: 629 pages; 23 cm

Literary Route

The Authors of the Diaspora Amitav Ghosh (1956) Amitav Ghosh is one of the best known authors of India. He was born in 1956 in Calcutta, but he lived and was educated in different cities, among which Delhi, Alexandria and Oxford stand out. He currently lives between India and the United States and is a well known literature teacher, Ghosh is a polyvalent author that has touched different literary genres –novels, travel experiences, essays, journalistic works- and has won many literary awards, inside and outside India. Ghosh published his first novel The Circle of Reason in 1986 and his main works are: The Shadow of Lines, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tides. His last work, Sea of Poppies, is the first volume of the trilogy.

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Title: The Shadow Lines / Amitav Ghosh; Publication: Ravi Dayal · New Delhi · Permanent Black · Delhi, 2002 Description: 252 pages; 22 cm

The Shadow of Lines is the second novel of the author. The novel is placed between Dhaka, Calcutta and London, and it is where the author interweaves the personal life of characters with the historical facts of the period. The novel is written in first person, with a simple language and a special humour, comical and tragic at the same time.

The young narrator travels around different parts of the world and, from the memory of his grandmother, his uncle Tridib and his beautiful cousin Ila, he tells the story of the life and events of two families: The Bengali family of the narrator and an English family, the Price. The author subtly interweaves historical and political facts of the period, such as the creation of Bangladesh and the violence and disturbances that occurred after this event.The author talks about violence generated in name of the struggle for freedom and about the invisible lines that divide countries and borders. With this novel, Ghosh won the most important Indian literary award, the Sahitya Akademi Award, in the category of English language.

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The Authors of the Diaspora · Recommendations

Title: India / V. S. Naipaul; translated by Flora Casas Publication: Madrid · Debate, 2001 Description: 583 pages; 22 cm

Title: Desde el lago del Cielo: viajes por Sinkiang,Tíbet y Nepal / Vikram Seth; translated by Juan Gabriel López-Guix Publication: Barcelona [etc.] · Ediciones B, 1998 Description: 286 pages; 24 cm

Title: El sanador místico / V. S. Naipul; translated by Flora Casas Publication: Madrid · Debate, 2001 Description: 233 pages; 22 cm

Title: Mar de roselles / Amitav Ghosh; translated by Iñaki Tofiño and David Cañadas Publication: Badalona · Ara Llibres, 2010 Description: 525 pages; 24 cm

Title: Els versos satànics / Salman Rushdie; translated by Màxim J. Rovira Publication: Barcelona · Columna, 1989 Description: 431 pages; 24 cm

Title: El círculo de la razón / Amitav Ghosh; translated by Benito Gómez Ibáñez Publication: Barcelona · Anagrama, cop. 1992 Description: 458 pages; 22 cm

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