rohit,

I live in the boondocks. 100kbs-200kbs connection.

Half hour (approx) might work if electricity and internet connection does not break. And most often it does.

Frustrating at times. Then also I look at it as a blessing, need to stick to the writing, which sticks in the mind.

MadhSang,

Agreed on the need for translation. Often I get to know the literary work in a different language through a dubbed movie.

Vikram,

I think you are underestimating the awesome serials DD (Stone Boy, Farmaan, Chanakya, Malgudi days etc) did before private channels and excessive zoom lens ruined TV. Everyone watched RajasekharaCharithamu (first Telugu Novel) on DD. It was as good as Pride and Prejudice by BBC imho.

Netflix is opening doors but won’t sponsor anything that won’t sell. I think ithihaas ki thaali se and RajaRasoiAurAnyaKahani to be very entertaining.

You are also underestimating the disconnect in language. A lot of Indians have English as second language. Do you pick Chaucer or Tolkien when you want to be entertained?

Reading in mother tongue vs. English would be as difficult for many unless it is written in slang style of Tripathi.
There are a lot of great Indian writers but like I said dubbed movie is much easier than translating a book.

Garcia Marquez won’t be as popular without translations. We should perhaps start there.

Thanks Zack. Mehendi Laga ke Rakhna wont be forgotten for sure.

@MadhSang, agree with almost everything you say. Regarding Indian English, I think it is here to stay. As sophisticated as Indian languages are, English can currently express far more complex thought due to its much larger vocabulary. It is also part of the resistance against Hindi by non-Hindi wallahs.

I dont see any possibility of a diminishing of English’s role until North Indians give up trying to impose Hindi, and truly embrace multilingualism.

Regarding authentic voices from the Gangetic plains, I would try Adha Gaon by Masoon Raza and Raag Darbari by Shrilal Shukla.

sbarrkum;
Most were done by caste/craftsmen and they kept their knowledge within the family/community.

watch from 21.40 onwards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5S5nu81oV4

+1008

@Vikram

Good points! The op-ed pages of western newspapers will continue to highlight the adherents of the “universal civilization” who are only ethnically Indian, and understandably. A surfeit of upper middle class Indians who have seceded from the very society they live in do cloud more organic voices from appearing in such media. On the other hand, the relevance of such western validation is in precipitous decline and Indian writers, even in English, will begin to write primarily for Indians. Aatish Taseer wrote in 2015 of the boatman he met in Varanasi who looked forward to sending “this government of the English packing” with the rise of Modi. That hasn’t quite happened but the market for Indian authors, even those whose rise was mediated by the “universal” establishment is shifting homewards as Taseer himself wrote, wistfully, this month that after the rape of colonialsm ended 70 years ago, the seduction of cultural authority is also now ending. I am, however, skeptical if an Indianized English can ever be a medium for an authentic Indian conversation or a nursery of organic Indian ideas.

Extensive translation between Indian languages (as a web, not hub and spoke through English medium) is necessary to stimulate a shared Indian literature. Vivek Shanbaug’s recent Kannada novel Ghachar Gochar read as an Indian work written for an Indian audience on its own terms. Many of the cherished novels in Malayalam draw on myths (pan-Indian as well as Yakshi/Chattan etc…), one of the most famous being M.T’s Randaam-Oozham which tells Mahabharata from Bhima’s perspective. I’d love to discover the best authentic voices from the Indo-Gangetic heartland; unfortunately the Malayalam literati still translate very little Indian work that hasn’t been validated abroad.

Slapstick

Evangelical Christianity is a few steps removed from Wahabbism. However, it has two attractions to the disenfranchised.

a) Everyone is Brother/Sister with physical hugs and kisses including the visiting Americans. They also visit every home, sit, eat, help out, specially in the poorer homes. Upper caste Hindus (and Buddhists Priests in Sri Lanka) are going to have a hard time competing with that physical and community spirit.

b) Evangelicals invest, i.e. Education/schools set up jobs thru connections and then collect later on in tithes. Saudi Arabia/Wahabbi does similar, but will just teaching the Koran/Arabic result in employable people, and tithes/donations thereof.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe#Islam

However, there is a huge difference in how science and engineering evolved in Europe vs South Asia.

Two basic concepts in Europe (England?)
a) Scientific Publications
b) Patents and Copyright

So in the west one could stand on the shoulders of Giants (Issac Newton?). There was no necessity to reinvent the wheel. In Engineering/Inventions there was an assured period of “monopoly” and then the concept/invention reverted to the public.

In contrast, out here in South Asia there are plenty of superb Engineering work. However, no record as to how it was measured and built/created. Most were done by caste/craftsmen and they kept their knowledge within the family/community. If possibly techniques were written, termites and climate would have destroyed them in a few decades.

Why would an American newspaper cite a Hindi newspaper? American newspapers are just better, especially papers of record like the New York Times and the Washington Post. It’s not all just colonialism. Journalism is of a higher quality in the West as is Literature. Also, obviously foreign media is going to get op-eds from people who write in correct English. English is what matters.

Yes, it is true that the West has a lot of genre literature. But those of us who study Literature don’t take it seriously. There is the Western Canon and then there are books that the average person reads for entertainment. Don’t confuse the categories.

The good thing about the US is that over four years of English Literature classes in high school even people who are never going to read a non-required book in their lives at least know who Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald are. That is what the standard of good writing is. In Pakistan, supposedly “educated” people cannot quote a single couplet of Ghalib, which is frankly pathetic.