Literature and Nationalist Ideology : Writing Histories of Modern Indian Languages

Writing histories of literature means making selections, passing value judgments, and incorporating or rejecting foregoing traditions. The book argues that in many parts of India, literary histories play an important role in creating a cultural ethos. They are closely linked with nationalism in general and various regional ‘sub-nationalisms’ in particular. The contributors to this volume look at a great variety of aspects of the historiography of modern regional languages of India. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 Preface 8 List of Contributors 10 1. Introduction 14 2. Shaping a Literary Space: Early Literary Histories in Malayalam and Normative Uses of the Past 32 3. Drowning in the Ocean of Tamil: Islamic Texts and the Historiography of Tamil Literature 64 4. From Scattered Archives to the Centre of Discourse: Histories of Telugu Literature in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century 97 5. Beyond the Nation: A Comparatist’s Thoughts on Some Foundational Categories in the Literary Historiography of South Asian Literatures 112 6. Dineshchandra Sen’s The Folk Literature of Bengal: The Canonisation of Folk and the Conception of the Feminine 139 7. Ethics or Aesthetics? Obscenity as a Category for Evaluating the Hindi Public Sphere in Colonial North India 162 8. George Abraham Grierson’s Literary Hindustan 189 9. The Impact of Sectarian Lobbyism on Hindi Literary Historiography: The Fascinating Story of Bhagvadacharya Ramanandi 222 10. The Politics of Exclusion? The Place of Muslims, Urdu and its Literature in Rāmchandra Śhukla’s Hindī sāhitya kā itihās 272 11. A Discourse of Difference: ‘Syncretism’ as a Category in Indian Literary History 295 12. Unscripted: The People of Arunachal Pradesh in Literary and Other National Histories 318 13. Indian Literature in English and the Problem of Naturalisation 336 14. The Mahatma as Proof: The Nationalist Origins of the Historiography of Indian Writing in English 366 Index 389 Writing Histories of Modern Indian Languages