Former Prime Minister of India - Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Speech of Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Inauguration of the International Festival of Indian Literature ~At Home in the World~

It gives me great pleasure to be with all of you this evening. I warmly welcome all the distinguished writers to this festival of Indian literature. I join all of you in commending the Indian Council of Cultural Relations for organizing this event, which has attracted the attention of the lovers of literature all over our country.

Indeed, this festival is taking place at a time when Indian literature — specifically, Indian writing in English — has attracted the attention of the lovers of literature all over the world. This attention is manifesting itself in growing worldwide recognition and acclaim for our writers — both those in India and those living abroad.

This is best illustrated by the choice of Shri V. S. Naipaul for the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. We are honored to have you with us today, Sir Naipaul. One may or may not agree with your description of India as a land of a million mutinies. But I do know that this nation of one billion people celebrated your winning the Nobel Prize as a proud event.

Friends, literature in India has a long and rich tradition. Its richness lies, uniquely, in the richness and diversity of India’s linguistic heritage. From Valmiki to Vallathol, Thiruvalluvar to Tagore, Nanak to Nirala, and from Mira to Mahashweta Devi, we have been blessed with an unbroken lineage of outstanding writers and poets. They have shown how great literature can become an integral part of the history, culture, and life of a nation, serving it as an unending source of vitality.

Our men and women of letters have also made an enormous contribution to enriching the literary and cultural heritage of the world. They wrote in languages that were not known beyond the shores of India. In that sense, they were at home in their own specific region or community. Yet, each one of them spoke for the world, for the entire humanity.

The concerns of their creative expression, though rooted in time, space, and culture, embraced the totality of human experience. In this, they were guided by India’s integral outlook towards life, an outlook that rejects nothing that is human but respects everything — Dharma, Arth, Kama, and Moksh — in their proper balance. Our writers boldly explored the fundamental truths of human life. They were seekers who searched for answers to the eternal question: what is the relationship between man, nature, and the creator? And whatever they experienced, whatever they discovered, they expressed it with an honesty and authenticity that had the distinctive stamp of beauty of their individual creation.

Thus, Indian literature has set a timeless standard to judge itself — indeed, to judge any artistic expression. It can be described in three words: Satyam Shivam Sundaram. If this guiding principle of literature and other creative expression was relevant in ancient times, it is also relevant now.

In this activity of creative expression, India has never been intolerant and narrow-minded on the question of language. Our civilization has always accepted intellectual freedom and celebrated cultural pluralism. It has recognized language as a means of expression, as a connector of peoples and as a carrier of culture. Which is why it nurtured the diversity of languages, letting each of them find its own natural course of flow.

The beauty of our linguistic tradition is that this diversity is dynamic; it is not cast in an unchanging mould. With the passage of time, and responding to the needs of our interaction with the rest of the world, we have accepted linguistic influences from beyond our shores. In this process of fertilizing interaction, we have assimilated them and made them our own.

With each phase of India’s interaction with the world, our literary tradition has been further enriched. Something similar has been happening with the ongoing phenomenon of Indianization of English. The emergence of the self-confident Indian writer in English, who has an increasingly appreciative audience abroad, is I think, a development that is a tribute to the literary abilities of some of our writers. At the same time, this is also a recognition of the essential adaptability and catholicity of the Indian spirit.

It may seem somewhat ironic that the literary heritage of India is more often being celebrated today not for its sustained evolution within India, but for its increased recognition abroad, principally through the medium of a relatively new language for Indians, English. Sometimes this international recognition is so lopsided that there is even a tendency abroad to view Indian literature as being synonymous with Indian writing in English.

I am aware that this development has triggered off a lively and heated debate in the literary circles in our country. The debate has thrown up many important issues to the fore — issues that go the heart of many sociological, cultural, economic, and developmental aspects of modern India. Some have raised an important question as to whether Indian writing in English has as yet grappled with the joys and sorrows of our masses, with the full complexity and richness of life in India. An equally relevant counter-question is asked: Can Indian writing in English be said to be inauthentic only because it expresses the Indian Experience in a manner different from those writing in non-English languages?

I am sure that these issues will be discussed in a constructive manner in this conference. The debate will no doubt continue beyond this conference. But let it be commonly accepted that those who write in English and those who write in other Indian languages do not constitute two separate camps. Both are a part of the indivisible fraternity of Indian writers, rejoicing in each other’s achievements and contributing to the literary heritage of India and the world.

Distinguished writers, allow me to present some of my thoughts on these issues as I see them. As I said before, we are proud of the success of Indians writing in English, which has made some of our writers “at home in the world”. However, I am filled with despair when I think of the problems of literary writing in other languages in India. Those who write in languages other than English often suffer from very undeserved neglect. In spite of their authentic creative strength, the originality and importance of the subjects they deal with, and the literary aesthetics of their works, these writers have to fight unsuccessfully for recognition that should naturally be theirs.

They lack publishers and commercial sustenance. Even when they are published, the print order and sales are embarrassingly small. They are denied a nation-wide readership; and certainly, most of them are deprived of international audience and recognition. The odds are so heavily stacked against them that many non-English writers of outstanding merit cannot pursue literature as a means of securing a decent livelihood.

Of course, publishing in English has certain obvious advantages. It makes commercial success and publicity in the media easier to come by. However, these cannot be the real criteria for judging the strength of literature. Ultimately, good literature, irrespective of the language in which it is written, stands the test of time on its own literary and creative merits.

It is undeniable that good literature is being created in all Indian languages. What it needs is proper support because of the disadvantages of publishing in non-English languages. Therefore, all of us have to seriously think of how to mitigate these disadvantages with both governmental and non-governmental initiatives. I would like to invite suggestions on from all those involved in the literary effort — writers, publishers, editors, intellectuals, critics, and of course, readers — on how to take good books by Indian writers, at affordable prices, to more and more people in India and abroad.

Some have suggested the setting up of a National Translation Board for Indian Literature in order to expand this activity beyond the scope of what is being done by existing agencies. This can make good literature in one Indian language available to readers in other languages, including in English. The Government would support such an initiative. In addition, we would also sympathetically look into the problems faced by publishers of good Indian literature in non-English languages.

Friends, this conference is taking place when India is going through a fascinating phase of transition. A phase in which the past co-exists with an ever-changing present; but when the present is changing faster than ever in the past.

India is changing. Our society is changing. Our people are absorbing much more of the world than before. But make no mistake about it: they are doing so in ways that do not discard their essential Indianness; rather, almost every Indian family, every Indian citizen, and every Indian who is a part of the Indian Diaspora is today exploring, asserting, adapting, but rarely ever abandoning their Indian identity.

This process of change presents a fertile ground for literary energy and expression. The changes it brings in ordinary lives; the new equations it forges in old frameworks; the hope it kindles in the dispossessed and the energy it gives to the upwardly mobile — all of this constitutes the pageantry of India. The India of today is a veritable kaleidoscope for the literary imagination. It is a gold mine for themes of national and global relevance.

I have spoken much. Indeed, much more than I initially intended to. In the end, I can only re-state the obvious. Above and beyond everything, good literature has a relation to the desire to create a better world. During our Freedom Struggle, almost all great writers believed that their writing should somehow contribute to the liberation of India. Their works also exposed the many injustices and wrongs in our society. In my own childhood and adulthood, I was deeply influenced by the books of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Sharatchandra, Premchand, and Maithilisharan Gupt.

Now the times have changed. Life is making different demands of us. Yet, even in this age of globalization, good literature cannot be without a purpose. What is the purpose of any specific work of literature is for the writer to explore and for the reader to discover. I am not one of those who believe that a writer achieves creative development only when he sheds all commitment to society. At the same time, I also believe that that commitment cannot be defined by any ideology or political agenda. The writer must have untrammeled freedom to explore and express life as he or she sees it.

I would therefore like to see Indian literature make big, bold, and creative forays into the life in India and the world around us. Let it hold a mirror to ourselves and to the society in which we live. Let it uncover the happenings in our individual selves and make us confront the reality in the society we live in. Let contemporary Indian literature enrapture us. Let it sadden us. Let it provoke us. Let it anger and agitate us. Let it inspire, energize, and ennoble us. Let it enable us see new dreams and to work together for the realization of those dreams. And let it celebrate the new India and the new world.

With these words, I inaugurate this International Festival of Indian Literature and wish it all success.

Thank you.