LEADERSHIP AND
LITERATURE
Dr.
A. V. KRISHNA RAO
Indian
In
this paper, an attempt has been made to analyse the actual relationship between
“Leadership” and “Literature”, as they are generally understood. For the
purpose of our discussion, the point of departure is the broad definition of
literature as “fundamentally the expression of life through the medium of
language.”1 Implicit in this definition is the fact that the
expression is not mechanically objective but imaginatively subjective. It is an
interpretation or criticism of life, as it shapes out in the writer’s mind.
Since no great writer is an isolated fact, his or her interpretation or
representation of life is bound to be of common human interest. It is this
human quality of literature that sharply distinguishes it from scientific and
technical literature. There are, broadly speaking, four great impulses behind
literature, viz., (1) a desire for self-expression; (2) a general interest in
people around us; (3) a natural interest in the two worlds of reality and
imagination and (4) aesthetic satisfaction. As
Seen
in this light, various literary forms are but different accents in which the
same truth of life is uttered. Depending upon the people’s taste, which itself
is influenced not a little by the prevalent social, political and economic
situation in a country, a particular literary form may, become popular and
established. For instance, in the current century, novel has become the
principal instrument of a writer’s expression. It is a well-known fact that the
“Leader” in a novel is its “Hero” or “Protagonist”. But, perhaps, it is not
equally well-known that the concept or “Hero” Has undergone many a change since
the day when Carlyle considered and justified “Hero” as Divinity, Prophet and
Poet. Earlier still, Plato also spoke of a “Philosopher-king” as the ideal
ruler of a Republic. He, however, admits that “a philosopher will never be a
popular hero, because he has no time to waste on mere party politics, and it is
success in this lower sphere alone which earns the plaudits of the crowd.”
3 But, now, we know that in a democracy–which, incidentally, Plato
condemned as the worst form of Government, in so far as it has
degenerated from Aristocracy and Timocracy, the best leadership is as difficult
as it is important. As Prof. A. Appadorai remarks in one of his most recently
published articles:
“It
is now a common place after Mallock that leadership by the few is a necessary
condition of every form of Government...To rouse men and women
to a sense of their common interest and their public duty;
to think out what are, in a given period, the best interests of the community
and the means to achieve them; to present them in a simple, intelligible and
interesting form to the common man and get his general (and continuing) consent
to them and to reshape them in the light of circumstances, are the functions of
leadership in a democracy...A leader’s duty is to lead and not only to
follow the public opinion. Bernard Shaw aptly compares the statesman who
confines himself to popular legislation to a blindman’s dog who goes wherever
the blindman pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same
place. Mr. C. Rajagopalachari has rightly said that the greatest danger to
democracy and, therefore, to civilization threatens when the leaders of men,
instead of leading, begin to be led by what they consider to be the
trend.”4...Thus, we see that in a modern democracy leadership
assumes diverse forms…socio-Political, intellectual, bureaucratic, scientific
and spiritual or cultural. Literature, ipso facto, reflects this
diversity as can be found in George Orwell’s 1984 and other novels, Lionel
Trilling’s Middle of the Journey, C. P. Snow’s Corridors of Power, Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World and Herman Herse’s Siddhartha.
It
is noteworthy that the current fictional concentration is on the numerous
problems of man who is the real “Hero” of a novel. It has been well said that
the “proper study of mankind is man and literature is replete with illustrations
of this maxim. In short, the leader in literature is man himself, as acclaimed
by Shakespeare:
“What
a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form
and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in
apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals.”
5 Owing to the complexity of man’s existence today, it is rather
anachronistic to hold in literary analysis of a novel that “character is the
destiny of an individual.” The truth is that society, and not character, is the
destiny of man. It is the business of a novelist to depict as best he can the
interaction between the man, the milieu and the moment in a given situation. In
a word, the heroic existentialistic struggle of man, his success as well as
failure, constitutes the core of literature, irrespective of the medium of
expression. As regards the continual conflict between the individual and
society, “Man, like animals, submits to the rules of society, but, in addition,
he has an active power to change the forms of social life.” 6 Man,
therefore, as a “Leader”, faces the posers of life in all its multiple aspects.
To
take a few concrete examples from our own country, ideal and charismatic
personalities such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru are portrayed as
“Leaders” or “Heroes” of the Indian National Renaissance and Reformation in
Indo-English literature. For example one may examine R. K. Narayan’s Waiting
for the Mahatma, Raja Rao’s Kanthapura, Mulkraj Anand’s Untouchable,
Nagarajan’s Chronicles of Kedaram. On the other hand, there are
novelists such as Bhabani Bhattacharya, K. A. Abbas, Anand Lall and Kushwant
Singh whose writings represent realistically the miserable lot of the common
man in modern India. A unique, if slightly astringent, example of the esoteric,
cultural and spiritual aspect of man’s life is Raja Rao’s The Serpent and
the Rope.
Thus,
it is difficult to resist the conclusion that literature particularly modern
novel, represents the “leadership” pertaining to all fields of life. Just as
the subject-matter of literature is life with its myriad facets, so also the
“leader “ in literature is man himself in his different or manifold activities.
He is not necessarily a celebrity with the halo of greatness about him. In
fact, the real ‘hero’ in literature is the universal man who transcends the
external trappings of a transient civilization. As it happens, in some
naturalistic novels, the protagonist is inescapably crushed under the wheels
social injustice and prejudices; in the novels of education, or what the
Germans call the “Bildungsroman”, the leading figure becomes chastened through
experience, and in the end, his spirit shines, as it were, like burnished gold
beyond the influence of matter. This must not be construed as an impossible
dichotomy of Man’s personality but must be understood as meaningful symbolic
versions of man and his life. Hence, in the ultimate analysis, literature
becomes the most dependable mirror of our many-splendoured life, as shaped and
affected by our “leaders” whether they are political, social or spiritual. The
nature of the relationship between leadership and literature is like that of
soul and body, meaningless and dubious if absolutely divided. Literature
without reflecting the contemporary and current leadership, noble or ignoble,
is doomed to be sapless and wooden. For, after all, the impersonal element in
literature should not be confused with lack of identity.
1 J.W.
H. Hudson, An Introduction to the Study of Literature. P. 10.
2
Ibid. P.13
3 Great
Dialogue of Plato. P. 121. (A Mentor Classic)
4 A.
Appadorai, Democracy and a Just Social Order. “Indian Express”, dated
19-8-67
5 Shakespeare,
Hamlet. Act II, Sc. ii.
6 Ernst
Cassirer, An Essay on Man. P. 280.