IK Sharma. OP Bhatnagar: The critic with a big heart. (Jaipur: Rachana Prakashan, 2006). Pages xviii +164, Price Rs.325/-. ISBN 81-89228-13-7
I had known OP Bhatnagar for years as a poet with vision, seeking reality, discovering truth, suggesting new paths. He was always interested in regenerating man and humanity, demolishing fossil values and looking for a substitute for the illusions of light. His creative and critical writings struck me as a spur to collective action.
But when I read his latest collection of poems, Cooling Flames of Darkness (2001), I was surprised to find him unusually negative, downcast, and hopeless; perhaps, over-possessed by the “fossilized abstract of life.” However, it rang true when he opined: “We have a history and many are the knots / Before an Indian poet in English / Like an Eskimo trapped in the desert” (Cooling Flames, p.61). Some of these knots he had previously reflected in essays such as ‘Meeting East and West in Indian Poetry in English’, ‘New Indian English Poetry Today’ and ‘The Death and Poetry of Sarojini Naidu’.
Bhatnagar was genuinely concerned about the strength and future of English Indian poetry and indeed was its critic with a big heart, as I. K. Sharma would like to call it. OP Bhatnagtar: The Critic with a Big Heart is Sharma’s tribute to the genius of OP Bhatnagar, whose literary vision, centered on many promising new poets, storytellers, and playwrights, lent authenticity and power to post-Ezekiel Indian English writing. (see ‘New Indian English Poetry Today’). OP Bhatnagar also explored post-independence authors and critics to bring his contributions into perspective.
While it is sad that OP Bhatnagar was denied recognition by the “establishment” set of poets and critics for advancing the cause of marginalized voices, IK Sharma, evoking fond memories of his contacts with OP Bhatnagar, demonstrates the inner strength of the late poet-critic. “to nourish the common grass” without denigrating anyone (p.xvii).
As an empathic and critical reader, Sharma collects ten previously published critical articles by OP Bhatnagar to make this book. His introduction touches “the deepest chords of our emotional being,” as Prema Nandakumar, to whom he dedicates the book, observes.
I fully agree with what IK Sharma writes about OP’s life in Amaravati and Delhi on pp. xiv-xv: Not only his health had created darkness around him, but also the academy in Delhi that sent him to his death. None bothered to take notice of him.
IK Sharma seeks to present OP Bhatnagar as “a critic with a rare generosity of understanding”, to quote Prema Nandakumar (from her letter to him). In the first essay, Bhatnagar convinces us that poets like Toru Dutt, Aru Dutt, Romesh Chander Dutt, and Manmohan Ghose wrote with India’s history and culture tied to their medium. Tagore and Sri Aurobindo were interested in its poetic content rather than the medium, and without any affectation or sense of alienation, “exile or heightened nostalgia for country or language or loss of identity” noted in Nissim Ezekiel, R. Parthasarathy or AK Ramanujan. Poets such as Kamala Das, IK Sharma, Narsingh Srivastava, and Jayanta Mahapatra write with a sense of “participation in the creative act” rather than demonstration of “Western attitudes,” mode, or style of expression.
In the second essay, Bhatnagar refers to the naturalization of English, or what Braj B. Kachru calls, the nativization of English, by several new poets “of intact sensibility” such as Baldev Mirza, IK Sharma, Pravin A. Parikh, RKSingh, T.R. Srinivas, Mukund R. Dave, Niranjan Mohanty, Krishna Srinivas, Mahanand Sharma, DVK Raghvachrayulu, and many others. Those “who are in contact with this huge mass of new Indian English poetry today will not fail to recognize its linguistic and aesthetic dynamics as genuine and natural,” notes OP Bhatnatar (p. 43).
The third essay deals with ‘death’, one of the main concerns in Bhatnagar’s own poetry. Here the critic reflects on death in the poetry of Sarojini Naidu in front of Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Rainer Maria Rilke and Adriene Rich. Sarojini Naidu impersonally uses death as a plea for life (p.51). As he points out: “His was the poetry of the rejection of death in a political-metaphysical philosophy of self-sacrifice, surrender and suffering for a higher cause that leads to a defeat of mutability and unity with the Infinite and the higher being” (p.54).
The fourth essay examines Indian political novels in English “against the logic of their own political history and growth” (p. 58). He speaks of KS Venkatramani’s Murugan The Tiller (1927), which first introduces Gandhi’s ideal of rural reconstruction and rural economy. Bhatnagar also mentions Venkatramani’s other novel, Kandan the Patriot (1932), which promotes the ideology of Gandhi or Satyagrah, before reflecting on Raja Rao’s Kanthapura, Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable, Coolie, Two Leaves and a Bud, and The Sword. and the Sickle, RK. Narayan’s Waiting for the Mahatma, and B Rajan’s The Dark Dancer (1958), which presents politics as a way of life and conviction. These novelists present a contrast to others who were moved by the tragedy of the partition of India. Important among them are Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan and Chaman Nahal’s Azadi.
Bhatnagar also reflects on the decline of Gandhian values with a lack of political order, as manifested in the narratives of Manohar Malgaonkar’s A Bend in the Ganges, Bhabani Bhattacharya’s Shadow from Ladakh, and Nayantara Sahgal’s Strom in Chandigarh. Indian political novelists have been aware of the “pathetic politics of poor politicians” just as they have found meaning in Gandhi’s humanism and secularism (p. 77).
Bhatnagar’s scrutiny of more than a dozen novelists is deep and comprehensive. As one might note in his appreciation of Manorama Modak’s Single is the Wheel, which is the subject of his exploration in the fifth essay, OP Bhatnagar reads the novelist with empathy and a sense of history. His study of VA Shahane’s Prajapati against the perspective of the “image of India”, the sixth essay, is thought-provoking because the narrative seeks to reconstruct the spirit and vision of the unity of India despite its dominated social structure. by castes and their disappointing contemporary realities. The irony is: unlike the mythical prajapatis, modern prajapatis seek power and indulge in violence of all kinds. However, I agree with Bhatnagar’s remarks on pages 107-109: Shahane’s humanism is dubious.
The seventh essay examines Indian short stories in English against the phenomenon of “colonial encounter” presented by Mulk Raj Anand, Manohar Malgaonkar, Raja Rao and Ruth Prawer Jhabwala.
In the following essay, OP Bhatnagar points out that Jawaharlal Nehru failed to inspire literary imagination, even if Shahane’s Prajapati seemed to have been structured according to Nehru’s vision. ‘Nehru and Indian Novel in English’, one of the best essays in the volume, is an extension of the sixth essay, cleverly placed before ‘Gandhi in Indian Drama in English’.
Indeed, Gandhi has a massive presence in English Indian fiction, but he rarely meets Gandhi in drama. (Would that OP Bhatnagar were alive to see Gandhigiri at Lage Raho Munnabhai!) The first image of Gandhi appears in Bharati Sarabhai’s poetic work, The Well of People (1943), which is followed by KS Rangappa’s Gandhiji’s Sadhana, eleven years after the death of the Mahatma. death. Gandhi’s ideas are also presented by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas in Barrister at Law, Asif Currimbhoy in An Experiment with Truth, Lakhan Deb in Murder at the Prayer Meeting, Shiv Kumar Joshi in He Never Slept Too Long, R. Javanthinathan in Guardianship of India , MV Rama Sarma in The Mahatma and Gian Singh Mann in Truth and Tears. All these playwrights present Gandhi “not in the dramatic but absolute image of truth, kindness, courage, justice, non-violence, abstinence, compassion, faith, sacrifice and universal wisdom” (p. 150). The last essay makes a comparative study between Lakhan Deb’s Murder at the Prayer Meeting and TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, noting that the Indian playwright provides a better role model in human values than TS Eliot.
The imaginatively crafted volume presents OP Bhatnagar as a pillar of Indian English writing, with an intrinsic faith in Indian English authors. The critical analyzes of him, devoid of intolerance towards the points of view of others, are very logically developed and convincingly presented with a progressive mindset. His contribution to the cause of Indian writing in English will always be remembered as positive, forceful and valuable. IK Sharma deserves congratulations for his other significant contribution, as editor, to Indian English Writing.