Many languages, one literature
Listening
to Namita Gokhale, the Member-Secretary of Indian Literature Abroad, the
thought came to me that we are far behind India, when it comes to
promoting Sri Lankan Literature Abroad. The irony is that our publishers
are unable to find distributors even in India, our neighbour and big
brother.
Namita Gokhale, the Indian writer, Publisher and Festival Director
was speaking on 'Many Languages, One Literature', at the Center for
Contemporary Indian Studies. She mentioned Ondaatji and Shehan. Ondaatji
because he won the Booker and he lives in Canada. Shehan, probably only
after his Chinaman was published by Random House, even though Shehan
Karunatilake won the Graetian in 2008, and was first published in Sri
Lanka in 2010. Karunatilaka himself had told the Guardian, "If you are a
Sri Lankan writing in English you can't expect to be published outside
Sri Lanka".
The ILA Project, has been initiated by the Ministry of Culture,
Government of India, "to support and facilitate translation and
promotion of literary heritage and contemporary literature from the
Indian Languages into major foreign languages."
Sri Lanka is more in need of such a project than India, to encourage
our local talent. Our literature in Sinhala and Tamil could easily be on
par with international literature today. India has to deal with 22
scheduled languages, 122 regional languages, four classical languages
and over one thousand mother tongues. Yet they have several advantages
over Sri Lanka. First is the size of the population. Indians, from all
wakes of life, still like to read books. Indian books, even in their
native languages, have a vast readership abroad. The Indian diaspora
read, discuss and popularize Indian literature wherever they live.
Namita Gokhule |
In India, there are over 250 million Hindi speakers, about 85 million
speaking Bengali, 75 million speaking Telugu, 75 million Marathi, 55
million Urdu, 65 million Tamil, while in our own country we have only
about 15 million speaking Sinhala and about 5 million speaking Tamil. It
is a very sad situation, even with a 15 million Sinhala population, our
publishers consider printing only 1000 copies of a novel, and they are
happy if they can sell it within about two years. The average print of
an English novel is 500, and today most publishers do not accept books
by new authors. Our poets, writing in
both Sinhala and Tamil, face even
a far worse situation. They have to publish their books on their own,
and there is hardly any support even from the established poets, for the
young writers.
With such dismal figures, perhaps our priority should be to promote
Sri Lankan Literature in Sri Lanka, before we could venture abroad. We
have September as the Literary month, and October as the Reading Month,
and we have an International Book Fair, drawing about one million
visitors, but very few visitors are interested in fiction. They come to
buy text books and stationery. The F&B stalls perhaps earn more profits
than the booksellers. The publishers and booksellers have not heard of
marketing, of promoting their products, of attracting customers.
At India House, Namita Gokhale told us about her life as a writer,
about her first novel published in 1984. 'Paro: Dreams of Passion', a
sensational novel which had been considered as pornography by some
sections of the society, because of its 'candid sexual humour'. Yet the
book is still popular even with the present generation, which speaks for
itself. She posed the question about Sinhala novels, if our writers are
free to write without prudish restrictions. Someone in the audience
mentioned Karumakkaryo, by Gunadasa Amarasekara. And also his Yali
Upannemi. No one in the audience suggested any other novels. Are our
writers still confined within victorian girdles or is it because our
Sinhala Buddhist readers are serious observers of the Third Precept
about what is called 'sexual misconduct'?
Namita has written several novels, the most recent is 'Priya: In
Incredible Indyaa'. Sri Lankan readers know Namita Gokhale from her
non-fiction work, which she co-edited with Malshri Lal, 'In Search of
Sita, Revisiting Mythology. (I wrote about Namita and Sita in this
column last year on May 4th, 2011. )
Namita also told us about her other life, as an event organizer, of
how she and William Dalrymple initiated and developed the DSC Jaipur
Literature Festival, from small beginnings into a mega event with over
125,000 attending the festival this year. with Nobel prize winners and
unknown Dalit writers mingling together. The Jaipur Festival, held in
the Rajasthani capital Rajpur, has been called the Kumbh Mela in India,
and accepted by the international literary community as the largest
literary festival in the Asia-Pacific region. 'Many Languages, One
Literature' is in reality a very far off dream, which someday would be
achievable once we develop instant translators. Languages have been
created by man, and due to various reasons, even in one country, people
developed different tongues. We built one more barrier between us, and
it is up to us to break down the barriers, and unite once again to speak
in one tongue, or to get the aid of machines to translate from one
tongue to another. Till such time we have to do our own translations,
not as a business venture, to sell books and earn profits, earn royalty
or become famous. We have to do it to share our creativity, our culture
and our thoughts with our neighbours, with the rest of the world. Each
country, each culture should take the initiative to take their
literature abroad, across geographical borders and across man made
barriers.
|