Bombay’s Governor Dr Harekrushna Mahatab was no doubt unconsciously echoing Shri V S Khandekar, the well-known Marathi scholar and writer, when he asked for ‘rebels of thought’ to give a new lead to the nation through literature.
This, indeed, was the burden of Khandekar’s lecture delivered at Nasik earlier in the week in the Vasant Vyakhyana Mala series as it was of Shri Mahatab’s lecture in the city under the auspices of P.E.N.
For reasons that are not immediately apparent — unless it be that India is still passing through the stage described and dismissed vaguely as ‘transitory’ — contemporary Indian literature is sadly deficient in social content and has best been compared to a temple without God. If it is true that literature but reflects the tempo of feeling in any given country, then it is clear that the zeal for progress, for social reform, and economic betterment is at its nadir in India.
What has happened since then to choke fresh feelings, and blight new thought? Has the tap of emotions run dry?
The answer, it would seem, is that youth today are not conscious of the distance their elders had travelled and take too easily the gains of the last two generations. Worse, social legislation has overtaken the social reformer in some respects and the Parliament has usurped the Publisher’s field.
Ideas are debated not in homes, but in the home of all homes, Lok Sabha. The writer on social themes feels, to some extent, thwarted of his purpose. Newspapers have taken the place of novels and films the function of fiction and the author is left to fend for himself as best as he can in the jungle of competition. Between them, the newspaper, the radio and the film have ‘polypolised’ the attention of the citizen, leaving the writer to sulk in the corner. This is neither good for the writer, nor for society because the book is man’s best companion whereas the rest influence but for the moment.
