Abstract
This chapter examines the journey of Magical Realism to India through a comparative reading of Indian and Latin American fictional works that share several similar aesthetic and stylistic features as well as political and ideological agendas. Latin America did not view the East as a source of imperial powers, as it did Europe. Nevertheless, the East influenced the shaping of an eclectic imaginary that was consciously used by Latin American modernistas. Thus began an intense engagement between these two worlds. An example of this sustained engagement was the overwhelming response of Indian writers to Magical Realism provided by García Márquez’s novels. Therefore, Latin American literature, starting from the Boom, became a turning point for Indian vernacular literatures. The Subaltern for a long time occupied a central place in Indian prose and poetry, and this mode has given voice to the subaltern aesthetic subject that became a source for representing alterity. This is the reason for the strong and lasting impact of Latin American fiction on Indian literary scene.
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Notes
- 1.
See Roger A. Zapata. Guamán Poma, indigenismo y estética de la dependencia en la cultura peruana (Minneapolis: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literatures, 1989). As cited by Amaryll Chanady in “Territorialization of the Imaginary in Latin America: Self-Affirmation and Resistance to Metroplotan Paradigms,” in Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, eds., L.P Zamora and W.B. Faris, 1995.
- 2.
José Martí has been regarded by whole Latin America as their liberator even though he was not invovled in the fight for their liberations with arms. However, he led the battle of ideas for an independent Latin America.
- 3.
As quoted in Rise of the Spanish-American Republics as Told in the Lives of their Liberators (1918) by William Spence Robertson, p. 239.
- 4.
“Indigenous” is not used here in the sense of Indian native population. It is used to show how the thinkers and liberators of Latin America pronounced in favor of creating their own orginal system which would be based on the local needs and local knowledge. In fact, the historical processes had exterminated the Indians and their autochthonous cultures.
- 5.
José Martí, Paginas Escogidas, English translation on https://writing.upenn.edu/library/Marti_Jose_Our-America.html, Accessed on 13 June 2020.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
See my article “Las demografías literarias y el encuentro sur—sur (América Latina e India)” in América Latina y la literatura mundial: Mercado editorial, redes globales y la invención de un continente, eds. Müller Gesine, Dunia Gras, Iberoamericana, Madrid, 2015, pp. 249–59.
- 8.
My interest arose thanks to my long years of teaching Latin America and its literature to the postgraduate students at the University of Delhi. I would like to specially acknowledge the intense interaction and exchange of ideas that I have had with my two research students Ravikant Sharma, working on contemporary writer Uday Prakash, who writes in Hindi, included in the present essay and Prasanna Deep, who has taken up writers of Telagu literature. In the course of my teaching and supervision I got insight in how deeply Latin American writers have been impacting contemporary Indian Literary circle.
- 9.
Ramchandra Mangaraj, is a greedy landlord who exploits the poor villagers, peasants and grabs their lands. Mangaraj along with Champa, someone who is more than a servant maid in his house, plots a heinous plan to grab from childless couple, Bhagiya and Sariya, their land property. Champa convinces Sariya that she would bear a child only if she built a temple and suggests to her that she take loan from Mangaraj for this purpose. The weaver family falls in this trap and ends up losing everything to Mangaraj. Unable to bear the loss, Bhagiya goes mad and Sariya starves herself to death. Her death brings the downfall of Mangaraj. This is followed by the death of Managraj’s wife, and every finger points at Mangaraj. The sad side of human nature reveals how nobody stands by you in your bad times and that exact thing happens with Mangaraj. Once respected and feared man is booked for murder charges.
- 10.
In the introduction of the English translation of the novel Satya. P Mohanty describes the narrator as touter (a bit like a Fool in European drama) ‘who has indisputable wit and he inhabits lower rung of the society and is always a bit unreliable. Senapati transforms this rather unsavory type into a new kind of social agent (…) is the only one who can survive Mangaraja’s oppression and chicanery’. (Six Acres and a Third, trans. Satya P. Mohanty et al. Penguin Books India, Mumbai, 2006, p. 6).
- 11.
Hazari Prasad Dwivedi (1907–1979) was a novelist, literary historian, essayist, critic and scholar. He wrote in Hindi numerous novels, collections of essays, historical research on medieval religious movements of India, and as also history of Indian Literature. He served as professor and was contemporary of Rabindranath Tagore. His writings influenced a whole generation of Indian writers.
- 12.
For more discussion on native wisdom and knowledge in O.V.Vijayan’s novel see https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/64056/11/11.chapter%205.pdf.
- 13.
See Mohan, Anupama. The Country and the Village: Representations of the Rural in Twentieth -Century South Asian Literatures, A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English and the Collaborative Program in South Asian Studies University of Toronto, (2010)
- 14.
In fact the author had also argued that modern science is incapable of explaining all the mysteries of life and existence. The logic and mathematics constituted by Western science have meaning only in this solar system. This system of knowledge and rationality will be invalid in a different cosmic system where the speed of the particles is greater than light. The Afterwords written later by the author explains how he was disillusioned by socialism after the incidents in Hungary in 1954 and his faith in Marxism was shaken. That’s why though he set out to write a revolutionary novel but half way through his work he completely changed the plot of his story and what finally came out was The Legends of Khasak . Kerala is one of the most progressive and advanced states of India where Communist party has been winning elections and forming a state government.
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Maurya, V. (2020). Transcontinental Journey of Magical Realism: A Study of Indian Literatures’ Response. In: Lu, J., Camps, M. (eds) Transpacific Literary and Cultural Connections. Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55773-7_10
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