Odisha - India in Translation: Reading Through Each of India’s 28 States
Basanti: Writing The New Woman (a collaborative novel)
I’m returning now to one of my favorite series — Indian Novels in Translation, State by State. Other posts in this series. Tamil Nadu |Karnataka | Andhra Pradesh | Kerala | Telangana | Goa
Basanti: Writing The New Woman
by (Nine Authors i.e. a collaborative novel)
STATE: Odisha
Original Language: Odia
Publisher in English — Oxford University Press (2019) - LINK
Translated by Prof. Himansu S. Mohapatra (Author), Prof. Paul St-Pierre (Author)
So far in this series, I have looked at novels written by a single author. Novels are often synonymous with the expression of a single mind. I’d estimate that co-written novels probably make up less than 1% of the overall market. But in the early 20th century, at least in some parts of India (notably in the East, Bengal, Assam, and Orissa), collaborative novels became popular and were serialized in magazines.
A bit like T.V. today where a series might swap directors for episodes to impart a different aesthetic to a familiar set of characters. Take this world. Let’s see what you can do with them.
Context
In the case of Basanti, let’s set the stage a bit:
The year is 1924. We are in Cuttack, the center for a burgeoning Odia culture, irrigated by the feverish learning of young minds at Ravenshaw College. At this point, Odisha is part of the Bihar and Orissa province of British India. Today, that encompasses Bihar, Jharkhand, and parts of Odisha. It is governed by the Bengal Presidency and Calcutta is obviously the dominant cultural force.
Odisha and Cuttack, relative to Bengal and Calcutta, are the provincial cousins. Conservatism and “backwards” ways of superstition and discrimination are the norm. Upper-class Hindu women, the wives of zamindars and barristers, are expected to be indoors at all times, unless accompanied by their husbands. They are expected to cook and to do embroidery and to exist in a state of comfortable languor.
However, some writers, many of whom attend or are recent alumni of Ravenshaw College, come together to form the Sabuja movement in Odia literature. They are influenced by Rabindranath Tagore and the reformist visions of the literary magazines of Calcutta. The Sabuja writers have a vision for “a new woman”, someone who fuses the traditional with the modern. To that end, they decide to write ‘Basanti’, a story about this new woman.
The story was decided upon ahead of time. Writers couldn’t change major aspects of the plot or the overall characterization of Basanti and her beau, Debabrata. So, really, writers had to bring their aesthetic to the prose rather than to the story. Together, nine writers, 6 men and 3 women, wrote ‘Basanti’ and the story began to appear in serialized fashion in Utkala Sahitya.
The goal was noble and large — to reform Odisha, to free women from captivity and liberate them to continue attending school instead of simply being married off at puberty and sequestered in the home for eternity. To invite men to see their wives as intellectual companions. To reject the idea that modernity necessarily meant compromised morals.
Summary & Literary Values:
Now, a century later, I was intrigued to read ‘Basanti’. My book is also about a woman, Missy. It is eponymous, i.e., named for the main character. And it is also, in some ways, about the tensions between modernity and traditional forms of self-understanding. What book about India/Indians isn’t?
The plot is effectively a romantic dramedy whose central conflict arises from an epistolary misunderstanding. Debabrata reads a fragment of a letter. Makes a huge erroneous inference. Casts Basanti out of the house. He realizes his mistake. Later, her honor is restored.
The first act is their courtship and it’s very sweet and quite good. It’s centered around their mutual love of learning and the way they support each other after Basanti loses her mother. After their marriage, domestic strife is well portrayed, relying on the tensions of moving from a vibrant city like Cuttack to a gossipy backwater. The animosity sparked in the mother-in-law dead against her new “love-marriage” daughter-in-law is captured in rich detail by the women authors.
But in the second half, the central problem of collaborative writing undermines the book. The characterization doesn’t hold up. People react out of character. Their reactions are outsized to events. Debabrata goes from noble to puerile. The mother-in-law goes from vicious to saintly. The book ceases to make sense.
And? So What?
Frankly, though, it’s okay if the book isn’t an outright literary success. After all, it was meant as a didactic exercise — to teach and preach a better, more just, less discriminatory way of life.
I found that it touched on something deeper in not just Indian culture but globally. Please pardon the half-thought here but hear me out:
In this book, the “mother-in-law” figure is successful in her way of life. That is domestic management. It is protecting her family’s honor in a hierarchy-obsessed rural community. She resents Basanti who is educated in the ways of the city. The conflict is not about the actual ideas themselves. Acceding to Basanti’s ways becomes an indictment of how the mother-in-law has spent her own life. I sensed here some of the same tensions that are playing out globally. Let me try to explain:
Non-Western countries resent the West for their patronizing attitude.
Many Americans resent coastal elites for lecturing them
Too often, those of us who are educated in a certain way of thinking, believe that the self-evident rightness of a thing is all that matters. But when we ask people to change, we are attacking their historical identity, their social standing, and, in some cases, their integrity. The content of the message in insufficient. People will only be won over if you can offer them some way to also retain their standing. How can we do that? That’s the question we need to be asking. I understand this a half-thought but it’s interesting to see that one hundred years ago, similar tensions were being wrestled with in magazines and in cultural production.
3/5. Is Basanti a great book today? No. I wouldn’t say so. The nine-authors approach failed to sufficiently cohere. But it clearly was a book of its time. I’m glad to have read it.
Read the other posts in this series.
Tamil Nadu - Pyre - LINK | Karnataka - Samskara: Rites for a Dead Man - LINK | Andhra Pradesh - Yashodhara - LINK | Kerala - The Legends of Khasak - LINK | Telangana - Sin - LINK | Goa - Tsunami Simon - LINK
MISSY Pre-Order Information:
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