AN INDIAN ACADEMY

TO THE EDITOR,

Triveni, Madras

Dear Sir,

I was much interested to read the article in the July-August issue of your journal, entitled ‘Why not an Indian Academy?’ by Dr. P. Guha-Thakurta. As you have pointed out in your editorial note on it, the suggestion in favour of the creation of an Academy is by no means a new one. And there is also force in your remark that literary academies become far too often centres of reaction and obstacles to progress. But such risk has indeed to be taken in view of the immense good the Academy can be expected to do in India. Dr. Guha-Thakurta lays much stress on the greater possibilities of establishing cultural contact with the outside world which the formation of an academy will secure. While not denying this, I should attach more importance to the need for co-ordinating literary effort in the different parts of India herself. If we think of it, is it not very strange and tragic that while political and social happenings in any part of India are flashed all over the country practically in no time, literary and cultural developments should almost entirely be shut in on account of language barriers? This, I suggest, is a much more serious desideratum than lack of recognition in outside countries for our prominent literary artists. And it can be remedied only by the establishment of regular contacts between literary men in the different parts of India.

Such a consummation is possible on the establishment of an academy. But how about its language? I presume that Dr. Guha-Thakurta thinks of English in that connection. But in any case, we cannot afford to forget the vast mass of our literary men who use the vernaculars and are innocent of English literature. It seems to me that the official language of the academy, in its journal for instance, cannot at any rate be exclusively English. A combination of English and Hindi would perhaps be the most practicable medium for exchanging thought.

Just another point. An-All-India Academy consisting of representatives of the different literatures of India could probably be sooner established than similar bodies for the different literatures themselves. But surely, the latter are, in a sense, more urgent. And steps have to be taken to bring them into existence along with, or immediately after, the establishment of an All-India body. This is, I understand, what Dr. Cousins tried to do some years back. It is of course on the basis of active and flourishing vernacular literatures that an All-India Academy can be expected to have any life; otherwise, it will be an exotic. I cannot omit to mention in this connection the important and invaluable spade work that is already being done by the Triveni in establishing cultural contacts between men in different parts of India. If and when an All-India Academy is started, it will have a happy debt to repay to a fine journal that did pioneering work for it, against great odds.

The matter is of as much importance as urgency. And trust that it will be taken up in right earnest by all literary men and by all lovers of literature.

 Triplicane, Madras

9th January 1934.

Yours Truly,

S. P. SARMA

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