Knit India Through Literature Volume III - The West - Konkani

By Sivasankari

‘Knit India Through Literature...' is a mega literary project, first of its kind in Indian literature, is the result of the penance-yagna done for 16 years by Sivasankari, noted Tamil writer.

'Knit India Through Literature' has inolved intense sourcing, research and translation of literature from 18 Indian languages. The project she says aims to introduce Indians to other Indians through literature and culture and help knit them together.

The interviews of stalwart writers from all 18 languages approved by the eighth schedule of Indian Constitution, accompanied by a creative work of the respective writer are published with her travelogues of different regions, along with an indepth article by a scholar on the cultural and literary heritage of each of the language, in four volumes - South, East, West and North respectively.

Her travelogues, her interviews and the overview of each literature she has sought, all reveal one important unity... the concern our writers and poets express in their works for the problems that beset our country today. Through her project Sivasankari feels writers can make an invaluable contribution with their writings to change the thinking of the people and help eliminate those problems.

In this volume she deals with Konkani one of the languages spoken in western region of India.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pustaka Digital Media
• Release date: Jun 15, 2024
• ISBN: 6580501810976

Book preview

C:\Users\INTEL\Desktop\Logo New\pustaka_logo-blue_3x.png

https://www.pustaka.co.in

Knit India Through Literature Volume III - The West – Konkani

Author:

Sivasankari

For more books

https://www.pustaka.co.in/home/author/sivasankari-novels

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface – I

Preface II

Preface III

But For Whom This Project Would Not Have Been Possible...

Travelling Through Goa

Manohar Rai SarDessai

Poems

Chandrakant Keni

Hippie Girl

Pundalik Narayan Naik; Hema Naik

Glow of Fire

Kanchan

Damodar Mauzo

These Are My Children

Olivinho Gomes

The Lottery Ticket

Meena Kakodkar

Divergent Pathways

Modern Konkani Literature

Vision of Indian Literature

award from

The Tamil Literary Garden, Canada

Foreword

Afew years ago, while going through the first volume of Knit India through Literature, I had the uncanny feeling of travelling back to a remote past, even though it was a compilation of modern writing. It was because, as I read the travels of Sivasankari to different parts of the country, her experiences and records of her interviews, the imaginary contours of another character belonging to a different milieu flashed in my vision.

He was Gunadhya, our first great compiler and editor of stories. At the behest of his patron, the king of Pratisthan (modern Paithan), he roamed the country from north to south and from west to east and collected hundreds of stories which he put together under the title, Brihat Katha, in a language that was then widely popular.

However, when he arrived back home after years of toil with a cartload of palm leaf manuscripts, the patron did not evince much interest in the project. The super-sensitive scholar quietly left the court, climbed a nearby hillock, lit a fire and started throwing stacks of his collection into it. By the time the king was alerted to it and came rushing to the spot and dragged the distraught Gunadhya from his bonfire, five-sixth of the collection had gone up in smoke, says the legend.

Centuries later the surviving portion of the Brihar Katha was translated into Sanskrit by Somadeva, a scholar in the court of the Satavahana kings of Kashmir and became famous as the Kathasaritsagara.

Needless to say, a spontaneous recollection is not a comparison. But I should not be wrong in stating that there is a similarity of inspiration between the two while there is a difference too. The great Gunadhya, I believe, was not conscious of serving any cause apart from satisfying a compelling creative urge. Despite numerous diversities and warring kingdoms, India was an entity taken for granted; call it a nation or a subcontinent.

There was something deeper than politics or language and more vast than geography that gave it an unmistakable identity. Gunadhya probably had nothing to worry about on that account. But 2,000 years later, Sivasankari must be feeling that something is amiss with that identity. Diversity probably has deteriorated into division and, as a writer with a strong social commitment, she must contribute towards the process of restoring the pristine position.

Thus, her project: Knit India through Literature.

To make a confession, I was far from being enthusiastic in agreeing to write a foreword to this volume. My confession should include the cause for my reluctance too: I was not sure that though an earlier volume was so interesting, the present bulky manuscript would make any absorbing reading.

However, one cannot but feel small before this champion of Indian literature, a spiritual heir of Gunadhya, if one were to back out. I accepted the task and picked up the heavy file when the deadline stared me in the face - only to be transported to a golden realm of revelations. To follow the traveller into a new linguistic province, to meet its distinguished authors, to listen to their statements in response to searching and sometimes intimate queries from the explorer and then to be led into samples of their creativity, was an adventure and education.

The vicissitudes through which several of the Indian languages passed, the attitude of the colonial rulers to our native languages, do indeed explain a few problems which still beset our literatures. For example, as veteran Konkani writer Chandrakant Keni says, during the Portuguese rule, the 200 years of Inquisition period can be described as the black age of Goan history.

In 1684 the then Viceroy Conde de Alver, imposed a ban on the use of Konkani language after a three-year grace period. Well, at a still later period, Since the authorities feared that newspapers and magazines would be used to instigate the people to revolt, they did not allow the press to flourish. You can guess how rigorous the censorship was if I tell you that even wedding invitations were subject to censorship.

While the rest of India was ruled by the British for one and a half centuries, the Portuguese ruled Goa for four and half centuries. It is a tribute to the spirit of the Konkani-speaking people that their language survived the antipathy of the rulers and the latter’s occasional hostility too. Were the Portuguese ever sentimentally attached to Goa? They simply had stuck to Goa as Nehru observes, and their leader, Albuquerque, who had the fine title of Viceroy of the East, indulged in disgusting cruelties. (Glimpses of World History)

Readers may feel amused at being informed of a little-known fact concerning the Portuguese Goa. This is from the autobiography of C.C. Dutt, a distinguished member of the Indian Civil Service who, under the influence of Sri Aurobindo, was secretly helping the revolutionaries in the first decade of the 20th century. In 1906 the Portuguese, in utmost confidence, sent a proposal to the revolutionaries saying that they would consider selling Goa to them, of course for a satisfying price.

It would be so convenient for the revolutionaries to wage their war against the British if they could get as big a foothold as Goa! But would the British stand passively gaping at the passing over of Goa to their enemies? They would certainly strike.

A strategy was agreed upon. A mock rebellion would be enacted: the Governor of Goa would pretend to be under duress; the revolutionaries would declare Goa’s independence and at once a great power should recognise the new country and send a fleet there so that the British could not challenge the new masters of Goa without challenging the great power.

France and Germany were approached, but they did not agree to be a party to the conspiracy although they promised never to divulge the plan to the British. Then was approached Russia. Indeed, said the Russian Ambassador, the Czar would be happy to teach a lesson to the British for their treachery during the Russo-Japanese war. But a big naval encounter was imminent between Russia and Japan. Russia would oblige the Indian revolutionaries only if it emerged victorious in that encounter.

Alas, Russia was badly beaten and the grand plan collapsed.

From the colonial days to the dawn of liberation, from the cultural invasion by the hippies to the recognition of Konkani as the official language of the state, from its status as a Union Territory to that of a State, Goa has passed through several momentous changes. No doubt the first three incidents have left their impact on the Konkani writing and the proof is conspicuous in the pieces included in this volume (for example, Hippie Girl.) Once a domain of the Brahmins, the gradual dominance of non-Brahmin writers in literature, including several gifted ones from the oppressed and backward classes, also marks the radical changes in the social climate of the region. Once Ved Mehta thought, Goans think they are very Latin. (Portrait of India, 1970). But the situation it seems has rapidly changed.

Written in four different scripts, the Konkani language is adopting the Devanagari as its final choice.

While Marathi and Gujarati, two of India’s major literary streams with hoary traditions are covered in this volume along with Konkani and Sindhi, what shakes one’s emotions is the predicament of the Sindhi language. Bharatavarsha became India after Indus, the Greco-Arab name for the Sindhu, the name of the great river as well as the habitation that flourished on her valley. But the brutal process of history threw Sindhu or Sind out of India. Once the blessed cradle of a great civilisation, the ruthless and barbaric Arab invaders destroyed, sometimes with no reason of any sort, much of the glory of this unsuspecting land.

The last flicker of the wit, courage and dignity of the native ruling dynasty of Sind is at once tragic and moving. That happened early in the 8th century when Dahir was the king. A ship filled with varieties of gifts and Ceylonese damsels was on its way to Al Hajjaj, the Caliph’s viceroy over Iraq. The ship was plundered by pirates - Arab pirates - off the coast of Sind. Al Hajjaj demanded compensation from King Dahir who said that his jurisdiction did not extend to the far area of the sea where the incident took place. But Al Hajjaj was only looking for a pretext to invade the prosperous Sind. He sent an army, which was routed by King Dahir. The humiliated Al Hajjaj managed to influence his master, the Caliph, to dispatch a better-organised expedition under the captainship of a young and brilliant military brain, Mohammed Kasim.

Kasim reached the fabulously wealthy port-city of Debal carly in the year 712 A.D. and plundered it and proceeded to Alor, the capital of Sind. The battle between the invaders and the defendants remained undecided for about a week, but as has often been the case, a few of King Dahir’s own confidants betrayed him, facilitating the enemy’s entry into the fort. The king, leading his army himself, was killed.

The queen, Rani Bai, gathered all the ladies and staff of the palace on the roof of her castle and inflicted as much loss as possible in that situation on Kasim’s soldiers who surrounded the castle, raining bricks and boulders on them. At last, when the enemy broke into the castle, as was expected, all the ladies killed themselves before the lusty invaders could touch them.

Intriguingly, two daughters of the king. Parmal Devi and Suraj Devi, were found alive. The extraordinarily beautiful princesses were taken captive and Kasim dispatched them, along with a huge booty, to the Caliph. The delighted Caliph threw the girls into his harem and one day, at his sweet whim, had them brought into his bedchamber. Never in his life had he beholden such beauty As he was about to embrace one of them, she said, My lord, know this: that we had been obliged to share your servant Mohammed Kasim’s bed, night after night, after being captured. Is this your custom to offer to one’s master women already enjoyed by a servant?

The furious Caliph at once ordered for Kasim to be brought to him, dead. Accordingly, the live Kasim was sealed in a leather bag and brought to the Caliph’s presence, dead of suffocation. The laughing Caliph summoned the captive princesses to show them the plight of his audacious officer. The girls too laughed, but only to make the Caliph shed almost tears of blood. O Caliph, your servant Kasim had never even looked at us for more than a moment, had never touched us. But he destroyed our kingdom, caused the death of our noble parents and reduced us to slavery. We have avenged his villainy. And we are delighted that you, acting like a fool, have lost your best general!

The Caliph now realised that he had not only known two legendary beauties, but also had been vanquished by them - a shame with which he must live for the rest of his life. All he could do was shriek and tear his hair and bite his own hand with which he had written out the death sentence for Kasim and order for the two damsels to be buried alive. The princesses kept laughing till the end.

Probably the only part of India to have suffered the longest period of continuous alien rule, beginning with the Arab invasion of 711A.D. and separated from Hindustan in 1947, the language of its people, however, is not confined to Sind, now in Pakistan. It is spoken by some 20 million people most of whom live in India. While in Pakistan the script is Perso-Arabic, in India it is Devanagari. Millions of Sindhis who migrated to India when their land became a part of Pakistan, continue to miss their valley, as is so poignantly evident in these lines of Lekhraj Aziz (1891 - 1971):

The bulbul hasn’t forgotten the songs

She hummed in the garden of her homeland:

Away from the flower now,

She pines for the nest she built there.

It is a remarkable fact that Sufism is a prominent stream in the Sindhi literature. Answering a query from Sivasankari, Arjan Mirchandani ‘Shad’ says: The famous trinity of classical poets viz. Shah, Sachal and Sami wrote their poetry, the basis of which was Sufism and Vedanta. They have emphasised the concept of ‘unity in diversity’ on a spiritual and humanistic play.

There had been a voluntary exchange of influences among the languages or dialects that prevailed in the region before they matured into their modern versions. As K.M. Munshi observes in his Gujarat and its Literatures, the desabhasha or the language that prevailed in Gujarat and Konkan in an earlier phase of the region’s history. Was influenced not only by Maharashtri, but the then prevailing Kannada. An ancient Tamil tradition includes Gujarata in the Pancha Dravida or the five Dravidian regions. (Interestingly, this Tamil tradition contradicts the traditional concept of the so-called Arya-Dravida divide; but that is a different issue.) What Munshi says about Gujarati, Konkani and Maharashtri, applies to practically all the languages of India, even if we do not accept the theory that all the languages emerged from a single primeval source, over the millennia, there had been continuous intermingling of phrases, proverbs and words among the languages.

We know relatively more about the modern Marathi and Gujarati literatures than Konkani and Sindhi. Both Marathi and Gujarati earned their adulthood through great mystics, Marathi through Gnaneshwar (AD 1275-1296), the prodigy non-pareil, who wrote Graneshwari at the age of 15 and passed away at 20, and Gujarati through Narasinh Mehta (1414-1480) whose bunch of poems known as Prabhatiyan or ‘poems for the dawn’ became a household tradition.

The modern Marathi, as we know it and as historians put it might have been standardised only in the 13th century, but behind it lies a vast range of extinct dialects and archaic scripts and their essence found a distilled incarnation in the post-Gnaneshwari era. The same applies to Gujarati. Even Narasinh Mehta called his language not Gujarati but Apabhrashta Gira. Padmanabha calls it Prakrit: Bhalan calls it Apabhramsha or Gurjar Bhasha. The first known references to the language as Gujarati are by Premanand (1636-1734), a great poet and Lay Crose, a German traveller, in 1731. (History of Gujarati Literature by Mansukhlal Jhaveri). Needless to say, even when the language had not assumed its present form, the literature was there in other forms.

Dilip Chitre, in his interview, says that long before the saint poets made Marathi poetry a vibrant experience, the illiterate women created a tradition of oral verses known as Ovi. I believe such traditions are there in all the languages, with maxims, satires, riddles and wit for their content.

Even some of the traditions concerning man vis-a-vis the deities are remarkably similar in different parts of India. The image of the Lord in Dwaraka remains incomplete, says a legend, because the curious priests dug it out of the earth before it was time. (See Sivasankari’s Travelling through Gujarar.) The case with Sri Jagannath of Puri is no different. Gundicha Dei, the queen of King Indradyumna, pushed open the doors of the house inside which Visvakarma, the godly sculptor, was engrossed in carving the image out of a log. He disappeared leaving the image incomplete. Probably the legends convey the message that man is not yet ready to comprehend the Divine in full.

We cannot and we should not check a mighty great issue gate-crashing into our scope of reflection at this stage. As mature a language as Sanskrit prevailed almost all over the Indian subcontinent, among the elite, for centuries prior to the evolution of the modern Indian languages. The stories and philosophies of the epics were retold, sung, and enacted in every regional dialect. Most of the languages achieved their maturity through retold versions of the Ramayan or the Mahabharat.

In fact, to nation had a more robust and spontaneously developed literary heritage as had India. On one hand we had this magnificent chronology: the Vedas followed by the Upanishads, the Upanishads followed by the Iribasa or the epics, the epics followed by the Mahapuranas which in their turn were followed by Upapuranas and Sthalapuranas.

On the other hand, right from the age of the Puranas there developed, simultaneously, a distinct chronology of ethical as well as purely pragmatic lore: the Jatakas, the world’s first collection of didactic stories, the Brihar Katha (the Kathasaritsagara), the world’s first collection of fiction, the Panchatantra, the world’s first collection of fables with psychological profundity, so on and so forth. Between the two streams lay a mostly oral tradition - the