Replacing the old Gods with popular lads
“In my Indian Novel in English class at IIT Roorkee, I teach the novel and film of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. This is to stretch the very boundaries of what we consider ‘the Indian novel in English’ even as we survey the elisions and additions in the filmic adaptation of the novel. While Martel’s novel is certainly not a canonical Indian novel, the film compels us to further interrogate why some kernels of the plot have been left out, and others put in by director Ang Lee. I, thus, believe that popular texts can help us challenge and rethink conventional texts through forms, like the filmic and the digital, as well as transhistorical themes that ‘travel’ across historical periods and textual evolution,” Rahul explains.
While the literary aspect of these books is debatable, author Ravinder Singh says, “I think that these books are not being taught because they are literary works of fiction but because they fall in the mass-market category. So students will understand what is selling and why. These books generate a lot of money and readership. So one may debate that classics are more important but popular literature is one of the branches of English writing.”
So what happens to the good old classics? “The ‘classics’ themselves are remnants of a body of canonical literature that itself has been institutionalised by very violent histories of domination and colonialism. Thomas Babington Macauley espoused such a view in his 1835 treatise on the institutionalisation of English in India. So, in my view, any literary or cultural text that displaces that canon has the potential for innovation,” explains Rahul, adding, “The problem, however, is that with Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, the subjects represented and celebrated are again white and European — just as before. So not much has changed then.”
I think that these books are not being taught because they are literary works of fiction but because they fall in the massmarket category — RAVINDER SINGH, AUTHOR