I think most of us have heard or not heard about Lord Macauley who once said- All the Indian literature is not more than a self of any European Library. The statement was given in year 1835; I cannot remember the date exactly but sometime in 18th century. You must be thinking why this statement has come in my mind in this Wednesday morning. The thing was that yesterday I had a meeting with a senior person, who publishes school books. He was a graduate from a foreign university. When the meeting finished we started casual discussion on Politics, hobbies, or family.
He said” you know television is bad thing , it is spoiling the kids, now kids have porn videogames, and all the saas Bahu daily shops are disgusting ,harmful and intelligent people must avoid watching too much television”. I nodded, suddenly he asked, “What do you do in your free time at home”. I told him that whenever I found myself free, I keep on reading. Then he said sheepishly with a smile,” so I believe you read the stories of Munshi Premchand in your freetime.” And then he said that presently he is reading a book called secret, it is a very good book, life changing book, and millions of copies has sold worldwide, and he suggested that I should read and he suggested some more books on how to improve category and I should read Chetan Bhagat.
Whatever books He has referred in discussion I had had my own Idea, but I was not thinking about that, I was just wondering why he had mentioned Munshi Premchand, and why there was a sheepish smile on his face while mentioning the legendary Hindi authors. It might be he was thinking that reading Indian literature is a derogatory thing, or is there any comparison between Munshi Premchand and chetan Bhagat, the former essayed a pivotal role in Indian freedom struggle and later I believe all of you know what does he writes, and where his writing stands.
Now come on the earlier statement of Lord Macaulay, is Indian literature so poor that we feel ashamed to mention that. I don’t think so. It is fact that we have no sense of our literature and history, but our literature is not of below standard. We know about J, .K Rowling or mills and boons, but hardly anyone among us bothers about Mahasweta Devi. Tagore is popular only because his western fan following or the fact that he was the first Indian to receive Noble Prize in literature.
Who knows that this is the country where Tulsidas wrote Ram charit Manas in 16 th century, the best poetry found in any literature? Legendary poetess MeeraBai, Kabir das, and many more who have written before 18th century, but the point is Ignorance. We are Ignorant to our past, to our history and to our literature.
