Social Realism in Literature

Realism in Literature in Contemporary Society

-          S.Sridevi

In societies that are built on political systems like democracy, republicanism with voting rights for all and freedom of expression, literature begins to carry more social criticism, personal agendas of communities and entertainment factors that are marketed.

India is socially, culturally ready for bring about great literary writing to emerge in regional languages and English. Our natural multicultural nature has accepted English literature also as one of our literatures. The English departments all over the country are researching in the literatures of their regional languages and launching writers. The support given to U.R.Ananathamurthy by the critic Meenakshi Mukherjee is a symbol of such good practices.

Social realism and imaginary stories are going a parallel round in India as elsewhere. Literary fiction carries social and political commentary built in an imaginary structure of story.

Munshi Premchand visualized a country that would uphold traditions of realism in literature, and the novel today has become the mode that carries realism at its best. Writers like Perumal Murugan, Murugesan have expressed their conviction in human expression and have brought out stories that carry social criticism in Premchand’s style.   Jayakandan, the hardcore realist said that the writer should have a comprehensive outlook.  It is required that a writer needs to understand the life around him in a thorough manner. He should aim at a holistic understanding of the prevailing social, political and economic conditions. He should evaluate all factors in a balanced way. Jayakandan is very clear about the neutrality of a writer. He says a writer cannot take a selective view which would be erroneous. A realistic approach becomes necessary that is not biased. This requires healthy literary criticism and exchange of views. A writer should necessarily venture into his enterprise by touching on a single issue. But then he should relate it to other socially relevant issues. This is what we call the socio-spiritual approach. The writer may begin writing work dwelling upon the problems of an individual, but then as a writer he should be able to view it as part of the larger social reality.

Premchand also said that it becomes the writer’s duty to help all those who are downtrodden, oppressed and exploited – individuals or groups – and to advocate their cause.  A writer has to be realistic with sharp observation skills. It is not even enough that from a psychological point of view his characters resembled human beings; we must further be satisfied that they are real human beings of bone and flesh. Writers have to believe in real life and depict the real man.

Literature and other related arts are very vital today in India. The colonial contact, globalization and Diaspora of India have become strong reasons for this cultural expansion.  India is reviving its arts and culture at a phenomenal speed. Every region in India is producing its literature, crafts, music, cinema and televised shows dealing with stories. Ethnology has reinforced the greatness of indigenous cultures and India is taking directions in reasserting the identity of every ethnic centre in literary works. In spite of having an uninterrupted history of 200 years, Indian literatures, written in 22 officially recognized major languages, countless tribal languages and in foreign languages like Persian, English, French and Portuguese, the many-faceted literary output of India constitutes one of the richest achievements of mankind in the world. A huge body of written literatures is complimented by a huger body of oral texts still being produced in tribal languages of the sub-continent.

Some seminal aspects of Indian literary and cultural expressions are:

Serialized novels revolutionized Tamil readings in the 1940s.

Writers research on topics and then colour the data with their personal imagination and concoct stories. They are encouraged by private or government organizations to do the research in a particular area. Forgotten stories are dug; dead practices are revitalized. These past stories are re-read from a modernist perspective with the authorial voice telling the readers that the past is wrong. This is different from writers wring the existing oral stories or writing stories on popular histories. Dismantling the old order and building the new order also became a major preoccupation.

Writers are completely influenced by other writers from other countries and try their forms of writing – modernism, existentialism, magic realism etc.  

Indian English has become an Indian language and novelists are now selling books in lakhs of copies. These books deal with current socio-political issues of our country. This has resulted in a voice for India at the global level. Bestselling novelists such as Anuja Chauhan, Chetan Bhagat, Ashok Banker, Amish Tripathi, and others do not market their books to the west; many of them have not even been published outside of India – something unthinkable for an earlier generation. Likewise, notably absent in these books are glossaries or other attempts at translating food or other cultural items to a western reader. The assumption, then, that writing in English means a western orientation or foreign intended audience is no longer valid; in consequence, the terms of the earlier debate – the sense of English as a “foreign” language on one hand and a cosmopolitan one on the other – have largely dissolved. Today’s authors also not only move but move back: Chetan Bhagat and Aravind Adiga lived abroad for many years and then moved back to India.

India’s northeastern region is a complex mélange of languages, cultures and literary traditions. The Northeast Review is a common ground for thinking and talking critically about literatures and cultural productions from this region. These writers ask seminal questions  about the diverse literatures of the region; the unique style of their writing; reading of these literatures through the lens of globalization.

Re-readings of mythological stories have become an essential necessity to day. Books are written with illustrations about Indian Gods, their historical backgrounds and these books have brought back the youth to reading our past.

Today’s cinema in India, if taken as an expression of the human mind with the desire to please people, carries the dreams of the people who operate this medium. Cinema builds ideas of nation, forms national culture, and creates psycho-social perspectives on identity, class and gender. Gender is redefined and people are told where each gender has to be located in a social stratification. The highest forms of racist and sexist views are played by the mainstream cinema upholding these values as Right. Ashish Nandy has written extensively in this area saying how the city cinema expresses the dreams of the underprivileged.

The televised stories that are circulated have become direct addresses to women carrying ideologies of family, sacrifice and constantly construct the good woman vs. the bad woman.

Technology is facilitating more literature reading today. It is bringing the youth into the art of reading. Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited in India. This will have a lot of implications on Indian readership and authorship. Already Facebook refused to withdraw the pdf of banned books in India. As it is, the statistics say that India buys maximum smart phones and therefore Kindle can bring another shift in reading and writing practices.

Simultaneously, Indian society also has shown the need for censorship and bringing a kind of standardization. Tholkappiar records how rigid the Tamil society was with writing. One could not write in a casual manner. The theme of writing had to be fitted within strata, a type. We have to ask some modern research questions here:

How did the Tamil language manage to survive this long?

Could the rigid Tamil literary criticism be one of the reasons for retaining Tamil values?

Did the Tamils read the materialism in texts and therefore controlled them?  

What is unique about Tamil people and Tamil language that both are vital even today?

Why did Tholkappiar always quote the past scholars in his writings?

Was there a powerful oral literary criticism before it was written down by Tholkappiar?

The cardinal vowel chart – is it from Tamil/Indian  linguistics?

To what extent German universities came under the impact of Tamil philology?

Sangam literature was secular and realistic – it used yadhartham. The descriptions were located logically with the unity with time, space and features of a livelihood. Aham poetry did not even use names of human beings aiming at universality. Tamil scholars say epics like Kundalakesi  were backed up by religious perspectives. Nevertheless, Tamil epics depicted society of the period in which they were written.

And then the age of mythology came for social and political reasons and the poetry expressed once again themes that were socially believed and practiced. The mimetic, resistant and fantastic nature of imaginary texts has always born from a reality – as perceived by the people  of a period. The writer or scripter writes from within this social structure, constructing his stories of good vs. evil.   

Creative works will equally reinforce the social critical tradition involving standardization and censorship. Artistic energies will naturally construct critical spheres.

Democratic growth in artistic expression in written texts and electronic texts will also create the need to bring frameworks of standardization based on some value system or other as social systems will negotiate with representations or misrepresentations which are decided by the location of the artist’s perspective and the critic’s view.  Writers create and recreate society, sometimes minutely recording events and sometimes exaggerating them. The representational value of literature guides its role in society and politics and culture.