“If you don’t know where you have come from, you don’t know where you’re going.” — Maya Angelou.
Rightly, it has been said and recounted about history and the historical past of an individual and a society. A mind disconnected from its cultural roots floats oblivious and runs into foreign, unkempt landscapes of identity. It took me 9 years after studying literature and critical texts to finally arrive at the fundamental tenets of literature and its core purposes. I have been reading English literature for a long time now, though I wasn’t introduced to pages of literature and poetry at the young stage of life, I picked up upon them myself, out of curiosity. Initially, it served no broader or deeper implications than the purposes of leisure, self-reflection, and contentment, and this perception persisted through my graduation years. So far my trajectory in literature followed the lives and works of my favourite authors and poets. Their impressions deeply influenced my writing routine as I experimented with new styles and forms of poetry. I was indeed contented with doing what I had done so far. But, this journey underwent a significant retrospection after having an epiphany: nearly every writer I admired, whether from British Romanticism, Russian Realism, or the American Revolution, shared a common underlying goal — harnessing new and unique literary models that forged and fostered their cultural identities. These writers intricately tied their art to their motherland and mother tongue.
This realization prompted me to walk backwards and rethink the so far conclusions that I had drawn in my head about what literature is. Though literature might have several philosophical connotations and a vibrant chest to birth art and truth, the one clear principle I can propose is that ‘literature cannot exist in isolation’. One can produce seminal works of literature without the intention of it being recognised and hailed afterwards. However, the final trajectory for any work of literature is to end up as a ‘dialogue’ in society. To serve a quick example, let’s think about the ‘Letters of Franz Kafka’, which were never meant to be read by the world. Posthumously, those letters entered the public domain, where millions of readers interacted with them, and there occurred a dialogue between the work and its reader. Hence, no work of literature remains passive. For, they finally end up as a dialogue shaping the dynamic narratives of its time. This dialogue shapes and contributes to the governing notions, ideas, and narratives of that society in that time and space (and sometimes even beyond them).
With this notion of literature as a ‘dialogue’, let’s hop back to our title: ‘deflection from cultural roots’. As I previously mentioned, the writers I encountered were all serving this dire passion of theirs to reinvent and refigure their cultural and historical identities. A ‘Mark Twain’ appears and surges to create literature unique to the identity of American self-hood. And so remains the case with all other writers of the canon. Either they are attempting to foster their cultural identity or they are passionate about refiguring and updating their existing identity with the changing times and political scenarios. I left my home to read and discover the narratives of foreign lands, and their people. But the people I met on my way, were busy embellishing and remarking their lands, language and culture, which made me question: where had I left my ‘locality’? What is my ‘dialogue’? What are the folk songs, colloquialisms, and regional languages that define my identity? It is an alarming scenario for us since not many countries have over 700+ different languages to speak and be bothered about. Unable to figure out one sole factor to blame, I feel embarrassed to admit that in my 10 years of schooling, the curriculums could not prioritize a portion of lectures for the regional cultural past, language and ethnicity. If we claim India to be a mosaic of cultural vibrance, then that mosaic would turn out grey if every individual stroke does not flesh out to his/her regional colour. I strongly propose introducing a subject focused on regional teachings in every state’s curriculum, dedicated to indigenous narratives, languages, and histories. Such education would nurture cultural awareness and pride in younger generations.
To share an incident, though intelligible, I did not even know the name of the language that my paternal and maternal grandparents spoke among themselves until I was 22. It was only after thorough research that I learned about its origin, dialects, and existing literature. This lack of awareness, unfortunately, is not uncommon. A big chunk of credit goes to the prevalent colonial ethos disguised under the hoax of progressivism, where modern mummas abstain their child from speaking regional languages, demarcating their desi tongues to English. To clarify, English has been imposed as a skill rather than a language, which is where this problem of cultural vacuum germinates. If the production of our regional literature has already been ruptured, then the big question is: Whose ‘dialogues’ are dictating the narratives of our society, where the individuals have been stripped of their own identities?
Without a strong educational foundation in our cultural and regional literature, we risk feeling homeless on the world stage. Foreign populations are often equipped with robust literary works and regional narratives. The need to rekindle pride in our diverse cultural identities has never been more urgent.
No comments:
Post a Comment