Pondicherry has a
great antiquity. A small town surrounded by countryside on the
Bay of Bengal, in the south-east coast of India, Pondicherry was
the seat of Vedic teaching and learning, founded by Rishi
Agastya, who arrived from the North India, before the birth of
Jesus Christ, much before the advent of contesting colonial
powers on its shore. It became a literary hub during the time of
Sri Aurobindo and his disciples but it has not retained much of
that to claim the literary heritage now. It lies vibrant with
its shops, tourists and entertainment industry but in the
literary sphere it seems to be an appendage of the metropolitan
city Chennai, the old Madras.
Few hundreds of years
passed while Portuguese, Dutch, French and British competed for
its occupation. Finally when the British occupied the whole of
India, French settled in Pondicherry and four other smaller
coastal territories of India while the Dutch was satisfied to
keep its presence in Goa. French occupied Pondicherry for about
200 years before leaving it for good in 1954. However, it still
is considered to be the French window of India, as Nehru wished,
with its language, culture and heritage buildings.
While the British
Government in India chased the freedom fighters and
revolutionaries everywhere under its kingdom, some political
firebrands from nearby Madras took shelter in Pondicherry.
Aurobindo Ghose from remote Calcutta sailed in disguise in a
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) bound ship to reach silently the shore of
Pondicherry on 4 April 1910. He was a great savant, a poet,
politician and journalist. Here he began his yogic life, away
from the day-to-day politics. Here came the French savant and
writer Paul Richard and his wife madam Mirra Richard. The three
of them jointly began the great philosophical quarterly review
Arya in 1915. As the two French people were persecuted by the
British power for their association with the revolutionary
Aurobindo Ghose, they had to leave India after about a year and
then it was the responsibility of Sri Aurobindo to write almost
the whole review by himself. All his philosophical and spiritual
works filled it pages until its end after 1921. The poet and
politician came to be known as a philosopher. Great scholars and
inquisitive readers in India awaited the appearance of each
issue. Sri Aurobindo’s magnum opus, The Life Divine
and many other works were serialized here. He wrote and rewrote
here his great and largest in English language epic,
Savitri.
Mirra Richard came
back imbibing some of the Japanese culture in 1920 and stayed on
as a spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, even beyond his
passing away in 1950. She remained on earth up to 1973 and
enriched the Ashram circle and others outside with her
literature, leadership and teachings. She became the Mother of
the Ashram inmates and others.
Among the political
refugees who came from Madras was Subramania Bharati, a Tamil
poet, editor and freedom fighter, who arrived in 1908 and
remained in the town for some ten years. He was highly
influenced by Sri Aurobindo and wrote many patriotic and
spiritual poems. He translated Sri Aurobindo in Tamil and the
latter translated some classic literature from Tamil into
English. Another great scholar, critic and poet of the next
generation, K.R.S. Iyengar wrote that this period of Bharati’s
life in Pondicherry was considered to be the Bharati Age in
Tamil Literature. Another poet of Pondicherry was Bharatidasan
who too enriched the Tamil literature in many ways. V. Ramaswamy
Iyengar, popularly known as Va. Ra. in the Tamil Literary World
for his short stories, came to live with Sri Aurobindo sometime
in 1911 and lived up to 1913. He too was deeply influenced by
Sri Aurobindo.
The sphere of Sri
Aurobindo’s literary creations spread much beyond Pondicherry.
It drew the attention and influenced many of the Western
litterateurs and critics. While Sri Aurobindo with his yoga, as
a path finder of a new spiritual dimension and literature came
to be known throughout the world, many talented litterateurs,
critics and painters thronged around him, mostly as his
disciples.
Along with some
regional literatures like Bangla, Gujerati, Hindi, Oriya and
Tamil, Indian English literature was created in a big way from
Pondicherry. We may mention the names of some of the authors;
poets, fiction writers and essayists whose works reached many
parts of the world in original and in translation: Nolini Kanta
Gupta, Harindranath Chattopadhyay, Dilip Kumar Roy, Sahana Devi,
Tehmi, A. E. (George Russel), Nishikanta, M. P. Pandit, K. D.
Sethna alias Amal Kiran, Nirodbaran, Satprem, T. V. Kapali
Shastriar, Sundaram, Kamalakanta, Romen Palit, Narayan Prasad,
Sujata Nahar, Manoj Das and Kishore Gandhi. All of them remained
for the major part of their lives or a very considerable period
of it in Pondicherry, creating literature and doing sadhana.
Some of the disciples stayed mostly outside but contributed for
the same cause like Dr. Sisir Kumar Ghose, Dr. Madhusudan Reddy
and Dr. K. R. S. Iyengar. Dr. Prema Nandakumar and some such
scholars are still writing from outside but they perfectly
belong to this school. Sri Chinmoy, who became famous for his
devotional songs and meditation centres throughout the world as
a Spiritual Guru, for his yogic, almost superhuman capacity in
writing poems, painting and for showing physical acumen, lived
in New York and elsewhere in USA, was famous in the UNO and left
the earth on 13 October 2007. He lived in Pondicherry from his
childhood as a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
The list of poets and
other writers are not exhaustive for there were more of them.
Those whose contributions were significant have been mentioned
but some may still have been omitted for want of record or
continuity. Some are still working. They were saturated with the
spiritual influence of Sri Aurobindo. Besides literature, many
were works on yoga and spiritual subjects. The idea was aptly
expressed by a serious sadhak or spiritual practitioner,
Krishnaprem, alias Ronald Nixon, in his letter of 1st February
1934 to Dilip Kumar Roy, which was appreciated by Sri Aurobindo:
‘In the last resort,
this whole cosmos is but expression- Divine Expression, and in
proportion as He. . . is able to manifest in us, we shall
ourselves automatically become centres of expression. Till then,
our productions whether in the realms of poetry, philosophy or
art, are but the play of children, funerals where none is dead
and marriage where there is no bride.’
After the Mother’s
passing and from sometime before it, many such contributors
either left or expired. Few only remain. The magazines published
by the Ashram and its affiliated bodies, by many independent
organizations connected to the Ashram in various Indian regional
languages, in English and other international languages or by
related persons still continue to be published but gradually
they have assumed the characters of house magazines, read mostly
by the devotees. Ashram Publication Department and allied bodies
produce books by the inmates or some such persons on Ashram life
or on different aspects of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s life
and works.
There are some local
publishing establishments and local writers in Tamil and English
and occasionally in French but such productions and their
circulation seem not to have acquired much significance.
There being no
significant railway connectivity or airport here, we receive
only three English language dailies, The Hindu, The New
Indian Express, The Deccan Chronicle and two Tamil
language dailies published from Chennai. The weeklies published
here thrive on advertisements only. They are insignificant as
media. They have no literary value. Portions of the pages of
English dailies meant for this region and the weekly feature
pages were being filled up earlier by writers from here. But
such newspapers have now become less charitable. Feature pages
have been abolished and for other things they depend entirely on
Chennaiites. Even the columns meant for local area problems
filled up by letters from the region have been abolished. The
Government does not have any problem to face by way of grievance
or to see any write up not to their liking. None is there to
point out anything. Media is satisfied with fat sops. Tourism is
growing up at the cost of environment. Hotels and restaurants
are expanding per force despite shortage of space. The number of
vehicles is increasing at galloping stride despite a situation
of homelessness for the vehicles. They ply and rest on the
congested roads everywhere.
There is a big book
shop in the town, storing and displaying latest works by the
well publicized authors. Those are sold on the strength of
publicity by big publishers with the help of the media. Books by
the local writers are jammed in a corner. As they are not
patronized by the big media, multinational and big publishers,
they go unnoticed. Merits may be hidden somewhere but rarely
focused. But real writers cannot be cowed down. They go for
internet magazines, go for blogging. These are acting as good
shelters for writers in smaller areas. And in spite of all the
barriers some have found their niche at the all India level and
beyond.
There are windows for
spiritual books and school, college books but they do not cover
the main body of literature. Book Fairs are held everywhere from
time to time and people visit and buy some books. These are not
problems endemic to this area only but they apply, more or less,
to other areas too.
On the whole, writing
and publishing are not as strong activities as some other
activities are here. Lack of verve keeps the unexplored areas
silent. People live vibrantly with exhibitions, fairs,
festivals, fashions and different types of entertainment
including eating out. Common gay people throng the sea side and
walk with mobile phones in the ear.
Aju Mukhopadhyay
© Aju Mukhopadhyay, 2008
