REVIEWS
Munshi-His Art and Work–Published by Shri Kanaialal Munshi Diamond Jubilee Committee. (Sole
Distributors: Padma Publications, Bombay. Pages xxiii + 545. Price Rs.15/-).
The volume under review is a worthy tribute to Sri
K. M. Munshi on his attaining the sixtieth birthday. While politics has been
the main obsession with the most talented in our country in recent years, those
who have played a prominent part in public affairs have also, in some cases,
made valuable contribution to contemporary Indian literature and have dwelt on
the more enduring values of Indian culture and civilization. If India has
struggled hard and yearned for political independence, it is in order to have
unrestricted opportunities to give expression to the undying truths which are a
part of her ancient heritage, and bear witness to them in the millieu of modern
life. Thus, from the days of Raja Rammohan Roy, Rishi Dayanand and Sri
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa to the modern day, there have arisen shining
lights,–saints, philosophers, poets, and artists–who have sought to hark back
to the things of the spirit, and to inspire the people of the land with the
immortal ideals of our ancient country. This surge of idealism has been often
compendiously termed the ‘Indian Renaissance’ which, in many ways, is of more
profound significance than the mere spectacular phases of political agitation
and struggle that the nation has passed through and that has filled men’s
thoughts.
Sri K. M. Munshi has laboured in many fields with
notable success, as man of letters, as lawyer, as politician and as
administrator, and has shown a (versatility of talent and an amount of
noteworthy achievement given to few. His colourful personality has dominated
modern Gujerati life and literature, of which he has made himself an authentic
and distinguished interpreter. And while Sri K. M. Munshi has been the author
of nearly fifty books, there is perhaps no other aspect of literary work in
which his contribution is more noteworthy and admirable than as a writer of
historical novels which have placed before modern readers, in a vivid and
unforgettable manner, the glory that was Gujerat or that was Ind. While Sri
K.M. Munshi is an ardent devotee of Gujerat, he has been none the less the
champion of’ ‘Akhand Hindustan’.
The Diamond Jubilee Volume before us contains
informative articles on Sri Munshi as a literary man, as politician, lawyer,
and educationist. Friends and admirers of Sri Munshi like Sjts. N. C. Mehta, V.
N. Bhushan, B. P. Bhatt and M. N. Pandye who have contributed to the volume,
have appraised his literary work and presented summaries with numerous extracts
from his writings which will enable the English-reading public to form an idea
of Sri Munshi’s literary craftsmanship. “The Epic of the Ancient Aryans”, for
instance, is almost an omnibus edition of Sri Munshi’s dramas and stories
dealing with ancient times. Such work is of great value to similar workers in
sister Indian languages, and might well be a model to editors of similar
commemoration volumes. As one of the writers says, “Munshiji in his personality
and achievements is a typical Renaissance man…..Beyond a vague sense of
exhilaration, the average man betrays no symptom of being affected by the
fuller life around him. But the ideal type partakes intensely of it…….Munshiji
is in that grand tradition of the Renaissance man (the tradition of Leonardo,
Erasmus, Rammohan, Ranade, Tagore). His literary activities, his participation
in politics, his brilliance as administrator, educationist, journalist and
organizer of art forms, dance-shows and dramas, fail to close the list of his
interests. He is in the full stream of India in the making.”
K. S. G.
The Significance of Indian Art, By Sri Aurobindo–Published by Sri Aurobindo Circle,
Bombay. (First Edition, February 1947. Price Re. 1-8-0.)
Indian art today is not quite so unfamiliar a
subject as it was some decades back, thanks to the pioneering work of
enlightened critics like Dr. Havell and brilliant interpreters like Dr. Ananda K.
Coomaraswamy. Certainly to the latter we owe much sustained writing which is at
once scholarly and exhaustive. To this illustrious group of authentic exponents
of our heritage belongs the Sage of Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo, whose poetic
vision and spiritual attainment have enabled him to perceive the distinctive
character of Indian architecture, painting and sculpture, as not only
intimately one in inspiration with the basic concepts of Indian philosophy,
religion and culture, but as a specially intense expression of their
significance.
Indeed, nothing can be more valuable at the present
juncture than treatises and pamphlets dealing with the special features of
Indian art from the pen of eminent persons who have established their claim to
worldwide recognition. Naturally, therefore, readers will be eager to partake
of the feast provided, in however small a measure, by a gifted seer out of the
abundance of his sensitive impressions and profound thoughts upon art in
general and Indian art in particular. The present volume is a reproduction of
an earlier unfinished work of the author, and it is thoughtful of the
publishers to have selected their subject and presented it to the public so
attractively.
Starting with an attempt, in the first chapter, to
disabuse lay minds of wrong notions regarding our art-creations and
art-traditions, as a result of the influence of the West upon our education,
the author takes us to more detailed chapters devoted to Indian architecture,
sculpture and painting respectively. If anything like a strong conviction can
be left on our mind after a perusal of this small volume, it will be that, in
order to appreciate own artistic past at its true value, we must first free
ourselves from all pre-possessions engendered by wrong education, and then see
our sculpture and painting as bearing qualities of greatness and continuity due
to its close connection with the religious, philosophical and cultural
background of the race. In expressing our reverent admiration of Sri
Aurobindo’s integration of purpose and pointedness of reference in these pages,
it is best to quote the very words of the author; for, pre-eminently, his
language is characterised by a clarity and power that are apt to be lost in the
attempt to paraphrase his ideas. Adverting to the prevalence of the same form,
the same multiplicity of insistence, the same crowded fullness and indented
relief in our temple architecture, he says: “To find the significance, we have
first to feel the oneness of the infinity in which this nature and this art
live, then see this thronged expression as the sign of the infinite
multiplicity which fills the oneness, see in the regular lessening ascent of
the edifice the subtler and subtler return from the base on earth to the
original unity, and seize on the symbolic indication of its close at the top.”
A more profound interpretation can hardly be thought of to explain the
structure of our Gopurams.
Turning to the vital part of his explanation of
Indian sculpture, his presentation of the European and Indian approaches to the
subject requires reiteration here in his own words: “The line and run and turn
demanded by the Indian aesthetic sense are not the same as those demanded by
the European. It would take too long to examine the detail of the difference which
we find not only in sculpture but in the other plastic arts and in music and
even to a certain extent in literature; but on the whole we may say that the
Indian mind moves on the spur of a spiritual sensitiveness and psychic
curiosity, while the aesthetic curiosity of the European temperament is
intellectual, vital, emotional and imaginative in that sense; and almost the
whole strangeness of the Indian use of line and mass, ornament and proportion
and rhythm arises from this difference. The two minds live almost in two
different worlds, are either not looking at the same things or, even where they
meet in the object, see it from a different level or surrounded by a different
atmosphere, and we know what power the point of view or the medium of vision has
to transform the object.” Could there be a more effective and briefer summing
up of the two types of mind, so foreign to each other?
While on the topic of Indian painting, he sets
down, with a keen grip of the subject, the following: “Colour too is used as a
means for the spiritual and psychic intention, and we can see this well enough
if we study the suggestive significance of the lines in a Buddhist miniature.
This power of line and subtlety of psychic suggestion in the filling in of the
expressive outlines is the source of that remarkable union of greatness and
moving grace which is the stamp of the whole work of Ajanta and continues in
Rajput painting, though there the grandeur of the earlier work is lost in the
grace, and replaced by a delicately intense but still bold and decisive power
of vivid and suggestive line. It is this common spirit and tradition which is
the mark of all the truly indigenous work of India.” It requires mature
experience of art to make a statement so pregnant as this.
One would love to quote more of such enlivening
passages but for want of space in a short notice such as this, as well as the
fact that already journals devoted to art like the ‘Silpi’ of Madras have
extracted useful portions of this luminous brochure in their pages. Before
closing, we can unhesitatingly say that none can remain uninfluenced for long
by the appeal of Indian art, if only he has taken care to study Sri Aurobindo’s
masterly analysis of the subject.
Jebu-rumala and other Stories By Sri Burra V. Subrahmanyam (Navarachana
Publishing House, Mylapore, Madras Price Re. 1-8-0).
The learned author is not unknown to the
English-reading public in India. He is a progressive writer with a Western
outlook and a preference for the Laurencian cult. Though possessed of an
extraordinary insight into Indian life, its thought and manners, and skilful as
and when he chooses, his execution here is unbalanced and unequal. We must
congratulate him, however, on his flowing and natural diction.
This volume includes four stories. Jebu-rumala,
or the Handkerchief, where an Americanized Hindu girl jilts four suitors-taking
advantage of the information the earlier one furnishes of the later–by
flaunting her pretended skill at embroidery. She finally ties herself to an
Indian I.C.S. officer, for the sake of money and position. She is, however,
dissatisfied with other women, replicas of herself, with whom her husband
desires her to move in Society. There is little story in these incidents, which
are all of one uniform pattern, for her modus operandi are the very
same. The characters are all wooden and lifeless. The story has an abrupt end,
and one feels there ought to have been a sort of denouement to finish up the
bargain she stipulated for.
Sveccha–not freedom surely, but libertinism–is a tragedy ending in the suicide
of an altruistic, sophisticated husband, Srinivasa Rao, on the discovery of his
wife Kameshwari’s infidelity with his own chum Ramanayya. The husband himself
is mainly responsible for the tragic end which overtakes him. His mistaken
understanding of Shelley and the doctrines of Free Love, and the education of
his rustic wife into false notions of freedom, lead him to this crisis. Her
refusal to receive his gift of Rs. 2,000 after his death is no silver lining to
her black conduct, especially when nothing undesirable has been set out or even
suggested against her husband’s character. There is the flavour of Fedya
(Tolstoi’s ‘The Live Corpse’) about his resolution to disappear in order to effect
a purely incestuous union, unpermitted by Hindu Society, between the sinning
lovers.
Vamsa-vriksha–(literally, Genealogical Tree), is a detective piece dealing with the
incestuous craze of the high for the low, and the scientific law that family
characteristics, physical and mental, often exhibit themselves–like the crooked
little finger in this instance–in odd generations. This is the story of an
honest, faithful, unsophisticated labourer murdering his own son, simply
because he believes him to have been born of a clandestine union of his wife
Lakshmayi with Subrahmanya, son of his own putative father and master,
Sundararamayya. The labourer, who is not aware of his own parentage, would not
tolerate the cross-breed in his own family.
Paramarsa–(Condolence and Consolation)–is the tragic history of a virgin widow
who, just about to achieve a union with her lover, loses him to her own cousin.
The travail and the agony she undergoes are however stilled, and her heart
deadened once for all, by his early and sudden demise. The author reaches the
peak of his power of dissection of human character here. We are reminded of
George Elliot, her Hetty Sorrel for instance. The narrative is natural and
homely. He takes the story as a supreme example of the mystery of life and sums
up his own conclusions: that human miseries are self-made and are embedded in
illusions, partly set up by ourselves and partly by others; that these
illusions are often the necessary results of our mistaken belief that we
understand everything aright; that grief’s are the shocks we sustain when our
experience is different; and that when all is said and done, “Life is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”