‘Good literature transcends boundaries’

South Asian writers discuss sharing their work with neighbours

KARACHI:

Thriving in a region where boundaries matter, English literature in some parts of South Asia is a nascent genre, which endeavours to transcend geographical constraints. Authors and poets from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan sat together on the third day of the sixth Karachi Literature Festival to discuss how literature from different parts of the region interacted with each other. The session was moderated by literary journalist Muneeza Shamsie, who broke the ice by sharing what she knew about how South Asian literature came into being.

Although the regions are separated on the frontiers, stories and poems penned by authors and poets from South Asia have a familiar feel to them — probably due to the quintessential landscape before which they are pictured.

A similar thought was echoed by writer H M Naqvi, who, to get the colloquium started, shared his experience of Sharjah Literature Festival where he was asked to introduce a Malayalam writer, Sethumadhavan. Though his knowledge on Malayalam literature was sparse, Naqvi said that he managed to introduce Sethu well before the audience. This anecdote, he added, shows how we are connected despite borders.

However, Ritu Menon had a different view about how literature is shared in the region. Being a publisher, she believes the ruptures created in the literary and thus cultural domains are because of restrictions of trade and exchange. She attributed the problem to the fact that books written by South Asian writers are taken to the West for publishing. This restricts the writer from having a market in the neighbouring countries.

“We cannot trade printed material between Pakistan and India as it is not allowed,” she said. Under such rules if one has to read a novel by someone from across the border then ‘piracy is the only choice’ left to them. “Same is the case between India and Sri Lanka, and in Bangladesh there is a problem of credit and payment.” If literature is held back within the regions they are produced in, then how do we read, she questioned.

In Bangladesh, however, English literature is a comparatively newer domain, which has yet to be explored by writers. A renowned poet of the country, Sadaf Saaz Siddiqui, said that after 1971, people in Bangladesh had to fight for their own language, Bangla. “This is why the country is quite behind in the field of English literature,” she said. “However, the growing fervour among authors to explore writing in English does in no way threaten Bangla.”

The literatures of the regions of South Asia have yet to become well-acquainted to their neighbours and this, Menon added, can be done if writers publish their books in their own countries rather than approaching publishers in the West.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2015.