Guest Column Jatindra K. Nayak

The significance of the year 1936 in the history of modern India cannot be easily missed. In this year, the colonial government took a very important decision: two provinces, Orissa and Sind, were created on the basis of language in response to the language agitations going on in these parts of India.

Not many would celebrate this decision in an era of globalisation. In fact, quite a few members of the cosmopolitan middle class, a class full of would-be emigrants, may consider the linguistic states a mistake, a burden of the past one would be only too happy to shake off.

And yet, these movements had once aroused passions, which had led people to sacrifice their lives and property, stake their every belongings, and devote all their energies in a mission to save and nurture their languages. The idea of linguistic states is now associated with narrow-minded provincialism, a rejection of the larger world, cosmopolitan values and lifestyles.

In short, many see these as handicaps impeding a forward-looking progressive nation state, best forgotten or weakened by forces of globalisation.

Language agitations find few sympathisers among the young eager to become a part of a mono-lingual global elite, which looks upon all boundaries as irritatingly fictitious, a nuisance, a remnant from an unenlightened past. Linguistic states thus increasingly appear to be historical aberrations which widespread use of English will enable us to put behind ourselves. English is the antibiotic that would cure us of the disease called regional language. However, adoption of a so-called international language does not automatically confer on its speakers an international outlook. The world of English speakers in India does not seem to be a large one. Consumerist middle class may use English for upward social mobility, but its outlook on life may remain parochial and depressingly limited.

An event that took place in 1936 in Orissa goes to show how a ‘regional’ language was shaped into a highly effective instrument of exploring a large world of experience and opened a window to a vast intellectual and cultural landscape.

In the ordinary course of things, one would have expected an explosion of parochial sentiments, a celebration of Oriya identity, and the uniqueness of Oriya culture and society.

In all likelihood, this might have happened in some spheres. A group of left-wing intellectuals brought out a magazine called The Adhunik (The Modern Age). Only six issues of the magazine appeared between May and October 1936. It featured essays, poems, short stories and book reviews by writers who came to be household names later. They included Bhagabati Panigrahi, Kalindi Panigrahi, Nabakrishana Chaudhury, Gopinath Mohanty, Anant Patnaik, Sarangadhar Das, Mayadhar Mansingh and many others.

If one scans the pages of the issues of the magazine, he would experience the inflection of a new sensibility which had little or nothing to do with Oriya nationalism.

It used the Oriya language to explore and disseminate ideas which had swept through the world at the time and it was partial to a political ideology which was distinctly internationalist in its emphasis. But it was no organ of propaganda; it created a forum in which the opponents of Marxism could also articulate their opinions and views.

In it, love poems jostled for space with articles on class-consciousness and historical materialism. Committed Marxists rubbed shoulders on its pages with misty-eyed romantics and hard-nosed sceptics. In short, years of strengthening the Oriya language by brilliant writers who wrote in it had lent it suppleness and vigour and a receptivity which enabled it to convey with amazing effectiveness complex ideas concepts and new ways of looking at and interpreting the world.

The writers who contributed to The Adhunik used a language spoken and understood by a few hundred thousand, but the issues they addressed embraced many countries and continents. Nothing human was alien to them: they debated the utility of marriage as an institution, the nature of the historical process, reviewed translations of Russian fiction and drama, autobiographies in English and imported concepts current in the west into Oriya public sphere.

The Adhunik published translation of a story by Chekhov, reviewed Nehru’s autobiography and plays written by Soviet dramatists, published an assessment of the achievement of the plays of Eugene O’Neil and an article on growing commercial importance of tobacco and sugarcane.

The magazine, which was committed to a revolutionary overthrow of a capitalist order, provided space for an article on the futility of history by Mayadhar Mansingh, who had little sympathy for Marxist theory of history.

Thus, in their writings, a whole new and exciting liberal intellectual landscape comes vividly to life.

They tried to make sense of and critique a new order of things arising in response to the force of new circumstances but were willing to use the voice of dissent and voices celebrating the possibilities of life.

Seven decades later, Oriya seems to have lost that intellectual self-confidence and seems to have shied away from assuming the role of a language of knowledge. It is increasingly content with emerging as a language of entertainment. On the other hand, English, as it is used by the educated middle class, too has ceased to reflect a truly cosmopolitan sensibility and appears to have degenerated into a means of communicating only skills and information. One looks in vain for instances of it being used to develop new ways of thinking about and analysing the world. An obsession with communicative English has gripped us, but we pay little attention to what we communicate and what needs to be communicated and the context in which acts of communication are being performed. Not much thought seems to have been given to how we decide what is worth communicating. Our intellectual world seems to have shrunk.

One wonders if useful lessons could be learnt from the exciting, if short-lived, experiment carried out by the young writers and activists who brought out The Adhunik.

(The author teaches English at Utkal University)