Is Indian Modernity a Journey Towards Alienation - Essay Example

? IS INDIAN MODERNITY A JOURNEY TOWARDS ALIENATION? By Presented to IS INDIAN MODERNITY A JOURNEY TOWARDS ALIENATION? Introduction After 1947, the Hindi literature has been full of stories of migration, adjustment and revolution. Whilst the traditional account talks about one drive into modernity, in the outline of alienated people, nuclear families and urban anomy, The Theme of Alienation in the Hindi Short Story and Death in Delhi, are good examples of Hindi literature that displays the reality brought to light by the writers. The works of literature seem more sophisticated, undecided and messy. Whether it is the contradicting attractions of old and novel gender titles, or the affiliations amid the village and the urban areas or nation, or the tension amid lower caste origin and middle class identity, current Hindi literature provides an intense image of the means by which change in point of fact occurs in urban India1. The following essay will comprise of references to the aforementioned works of Hindi literature, alongside the scrutiny and discussion of model examinations on Indian modernity as a journey towards alienation. In light of secondary collected works on social revolution, these works of Indian literature will be able to discuss and shed light on regionalist writing, popular works of fiction and women’s literature. Indian modernity As critics have previously discovered, the shifts made between the village and urban regions have shaped the sequence of Hindi literature and the return of legends have become basic to the experience of Indian modernity, and the resulting alienation from conventionality2. Intrinsically, the heroes in these works of fiction perhaps attract a rebellion that is offset by his repeatedly stressed flaws. For the transformation into accepting alienation to take place, the fiction characters in these stories normally turn out to be pathetic, harsh, self-absorbed and a simulated Hindu hamlet is created, with the incapacity to act, particularly when action appears most essential3. The role of these works of literature becomes a complicated one because of the redefinition of heroism in the features of protagonists during the seventies. Whilst many writers feel blameless about these works of fiction, their contribution to accepting alienation is quite evident because of the celebration of careful balance and proof of conventionality and modernity4. For instance, The Theme of Alienation in the Hindi Short Story is a narrative that involves arranged weddings and love matches happily cohabitate. This way, the writer, Roadarmel is able to sensationalize the catastrophic incapacity of culture and modernity in order to accomplish balance. This balance is usually between two major elements of the narratives: the domestic and alien worlds that induce the paradigmatic heading of the book, together with the narrative’s ultimate disastrous couple5. Death in Delhi as an Indian modernity a journey towards alienation a. The plot Death in Delhi is a narrative about a model, Jessica Lall, who was gunned down at a classy party in Delhi in 1999. She worked as a bartender, before her death, she had been requested to serve an intolerable partygoer at the end of the evening. She denied the request, making the partygoer feel insulted, making him pull out a gun, point it at her temple and pull the trigger6. A number of partygoers witnessed the murder and dozens more observed as the killer fled. When the killer was brought in by the police, he got a conviction seemed hard for the police since he was the son of an influential politician of a neighboring Haryana state. Even in India’s twisted and overcome courts, getting the man a conviction could not have been that hard. On the contrary, the man’s father was more authoritative in government than any leading police chief. Therefore, he was discharged from police custody. b. Indian modernity in the book’s plot Indian literature comprises everything which is encompassed in every sense of the word in its widest manner. One of the leading themes included in this text include belief and mundane, epic, drama and moralistic poetry, narrative and science. When the writer of this narrative discovered such articulations, his marvel was indicated and portrayed with the use of words to describe the urban livelihood of the Indians living in Delhi7. This description is matched with the livelihoods of the Indians thriving in the village regions of India. These populations have been defined by Gygax, the author, to have sustained the ancient creeds and living behaviors of the Indians passed down by their ancestors. On the contrary, Indians thriving in urban Delhi, like Jessica, have been consumed with cultures and lifestyles adopted and introduced by the white man from the western civilization. As a result, it would not be very precise to state that ancient Indian literature and traditions include just the religious classics of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Before the rise of Gygax’s composition, numerous Indian women composed poems and short tales in Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada. In the villages, women were the leading chief upholders of a wealthy oral culture of story-telling, through mythologies, folklores, songs and stories8. When the reading ability was introduced by the western civilization, they stated sifting through the Indian community. Gygax clearly explains that it is literacy that made all the traditional mythologies, folklores, songs and stories become transformed into poems and plays. These forms of community articulation were not widespread forms of literature. This is primarily due to most women having constrained access to learning than men. It was not until this writing style started being utilized in the late 1800s by several writers and literature composers who had been exposed to European culture that the urban Indians took form and adopted the new culture. The plot of the narrative slowly drives Indian modernity into accepting alienation of tradition by unwinding the details of Jessica’s living and relations with relatives and accomplices. It follows Ms Lall’s stubborn younger sister, Sabrina, as she attempted to get justice done. Solely, she was not allowed an opportunity. Acolytes of the accused’s influential family corrupted and risked bystanders. The police were also bribed and poof of the politician’s son being the proprietor of the assault weapon and actually using it to kill Jessica was all destroyed. The most compiling scenario in the book portrays one of the most unfavorable of India’s semi-corrupt institutes. This institute indicates witnesses sequentially withdrawing from their leading testament, claiming that they can no longer recall the incidences, and permitting a guilty man go liberated. The amount of Indian literature put down in English is smaller than that put down in the various regional languages, and spans a smaller variety of time. This trend simply started with the spread of the English language and learning. Nevertheless, the last twenty years have experienced an amazing peak of Indian women writing in English, making the literature of this era being publicly made official both in Indian and internationally. Such writers, as Gygax, are mainly western learned, middle class middle class civilians who articulate in their literature their discontentment with the predicament of upper-class and class conventional Hindu women shut in in oppressive institutes like child-marriage, wedding gifts, and preventions on women’s learning, prearranged matrimonies, suttee and compulsory widowhood. All these confrontational articulations have been expressed in Death in Delhi to show the detailed transformation of India modernity towards alienation by the western culture and civilization that might guide towards the death of a culture9. A majority of Indians looked outside and accepted the rule and doctrines of aliens who seemed superior in all aspects of living. In the process, the indigenous doctrines and learning were jointly overruled. However, Indian poets of the fifties and early sixties, during the dark modernism,” advanced a recognition disaster10. This particular recognition disaster, the conflict amid the conventional Indian tradition a western modernity, is noticeable in the literatures of the leading language regions in India during that period. Those who stuck to western modernity separated themselves from the commonalities and their truth. Nevertheless, the idea of experimentation occasionally advanced self-governing tributes of western tradition, as an expedition for novel principles and a searching test of the fundamentals authorizations or sources of worth. Jessica’s younger sister is an ideal example of such an individual or character with a passion for looking for self-worth, in this case justice represents a distinct voice and visualization surfacing in a depressing novel context. Further shaping of India’s modernity by alienation saw Sabina’s failure, and having India’s fourth estate triumph. The book’s title, Death in Delhi, is from a mocking foundation founded by Gygax, after coming across a newspaper title during the time of trial, remarking on the eyewitnesses’ mistrustful loss of memory11. Following the discharge, reporters pressed the eyewitnesses who had been on the stand to confess as a result of their untruthfulness. They also assisted in consolidating a candlelight demonstration at India Gate, the heart of New Delhi, where residential individuals called for Justice for Jessica and improvement of India court system. Shamed by the attention, the courts at last in 2006 convicted Manu Sharma, the accused, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Even though a majority of scenarios in Gygax’s book have been redone, certain scenarios from the initial plot have been altered and left out. Nevertheless, the revolution of Indian modernity towards accepting alienation has portrayed some positive outcomes for a number of the characters. For instance, as aforementioned, if it wasn’t for the reports’ pressing of the witnesses of Jessica’s trial, the demonstration could not have been carried out, and justice could not have been administered to both parties of the court proceedings. If people familiar with the court proceedings of Jessica’s trial took to the streets, it clearly implies that the people were well aware of their liberties and wanted to exercise them rightfully. Such academic knowledge could have only been passed down to the Indians living in the urban regions by the western civilization. Such intrusion caused alienation of the Indian culture and also served as an eye-opener for the Indians who got education form the “white man.” Apart from the writings of the communal practicality, having its origins in the soil, turned out to be a dominant inclination of current literature12. It was a continuation of the developmental literature of the 1930s and ‘40s. Nevertheless, certain additionally combative action was taken in the indigenous country’s approach. Gygax revealed his narratives’ introverted strive against the mounting disaster of displaced recognition. He put down political influence on the theme of torment, struggle, corruption, suffering and suppression. The narrative was a story dedication. Literature presently shifted to the browbeaten and demoralized. This was Gygax’s approach of indicating the direction Indian modernity was pursuing. Alienation is indirectly exposed in his writings in order to phase out influence of western civilization in India’s urban living and dwindling effect of its ancient cultures. In such Indian context, post-modernism reaches a response entered the Indian literary scenario. This was accomplished through media-activated and market-driven and led reality towards a response to the Indian modernism of the 1960s of the existential anguish, of the disastrous nature of its culture’s identity, and of the frustration of the idealist13. Nevertheless, this carried along the inclination of developmental literature of protest and striving. Gygax’s compilation is not a heartwarming story. It nearly took a decade and the joint effort of journalists, TV presenters, street demonstrators and the victims’ family members to obtain what ought to be a simple conviction. However, the legal system of India has not been cleared of its corrupt officials and dishonest subordinates as well as executives. Eyewitnesses remain exposed, corruption is rife, the less influential frequently packed down. Jessica was exceptional-her character portrayed a sexy, youth, Christian, learned, and rising from a middle-caste family-an investigative journalist’s or film director’s, vision prey. Gygax shows the vulnerability that women from the Indian modernity are susceptible to when exposed to the traditional individuals who have not fully accepted the alienation. Jessica was a Christina, implying she had abandoned all the belief, creed and traditions she was taught by her parents and other relatives while growing up. This was as a result of the introduction of Christianity in India from the western civilization14. The theme of alienation in the modern Hindi short story and Indian modernity as a journey towards alienation So as to connect the gap amid urban and rural consciousness, between history and the present, another inclination which is highly seeable in the postmodernism argument is the usage of myths15. Myths have been used to bring forth the current predicament. Mythic beliefs are actually trials of arbitrating the gaps between steadiness and adjustment, by this means substantiating the impression of total literary significance. By making use of the same myths situations, a wider dimension is provided to the current disordered circumstance in which mankind is currently thriving in. the mythical past confirms man’s affiliation with the supreme. It has a worth-outline and a renewal of the past for the present, and a variation for the future. In Roadarmel’s The theme of alienation in the modern Hindi short story one discovers a change towards the identification of the person’s entity is simply a humble piece of a greater reality16. Roadarmel makes use of myths or folklore to envisage on man’s alienation from a life of nourishment and grace. One comes across numerous cases of authors attempting to explore the origins, moorings, and probe entire regions of experience, blurred in the course of a phase of high modernism in the course of the last number of decades17. Conclusion Indian intellectuals are captivated by western traditions. Rather than making new approaches of analysis, they started to copy western mode of philosophy. Indians have been beneath clutches of the colonial clutches for an exceeding three centuries. At the same time, India has managed to get vastly educated by the colonial comprehension of fictional modernity. The Indian literary modernity origins are linked to the western literary modernity. When Indian intellectuals, fiction writers and leaders are thinking about their history, they are required to explore basic investigation18. The necessity for asking the means by which Indian modernity surfaced and its alienation interference has to be addressed by the Indians. Based on the readings aforementioned, it has been clearly elaborated that Indian modernity is a drive towards alienation of Indian culture by western civilization. Literary modernity is the form that Roadarmel and Gygax have taken to denote the alienation of India and its traditions. The consequences of the alienation have also been identified in both narratives. Nevertheless, the positivity of the consequences cannot outdo the negative effects of permitting the western civilization takeover the Indian philosophy and al the creeds involved with it19. Roadarmel and Gygax have literary modernity required by the Indian intellectuals to reexamine the outline of Telugu literary modernity. The journey is slow and visible. Having taken an exceeding three centuries, alienation of Indian modernity is facing similar results as it did in the past after the introduction of Christianity by the colonizers. Bibliography GAEFFKE, P., Hindi Literature in the Twentieth Century (Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1978) GYGAX, G., Death in Delhi (London: Paizo Publishing, 2009) ROADARMEL, G. C., The theme of alienation in the modern Hindi short story (California: University of California, 1969) THE ECONOMIST, ‘Death in Delhi: Indian film-makers are tackling difficult subjects with a light touch’ [online] http://www.economist.com/node/17899942 accessed 21st April, 2012 Read More