Narayan would probably chuckle if we spoke of his ‘thought’, but I have in mind his own title for a three-issue journal he brought out in 1941. He called it Indian Thought. His novels in India have invariably been published by him under the aegis of Indian Thought Publishers. We are perhaps then justified in suggesting that Narayan had a life as a thinker, apart from his life as a writer of fiction, not to speak of the thought latent in his fiction. It will be interesting to look at his occasional essays in this context and to attempt a construction of a world of ideas and the ideas primarily prevalent in the world of Narayan's creation. This would become significant if we can link what he says in his characteristic tongue-in-cheek pieces with his fictional writings and also with his other discursive forays like the travel writings, the books on Indian mythology and his autobiographical works.

Narayan wrote journalistic pieces for The Hindu every Sunday for many years in the early 30s as well as the subsequent decades. He would write these on the basis of personal observation, reflections during his long walks in Mysore city and around the Kukanahalli Tank, and as a result of his meetings with innumerable characters in the city as eccentric as his own fictional characters.

Abstract: In her article “African Literatures and Cultures and the Universal of Motherhood” Remi Akujobi analyzes the place and the role of women in African tradition and interrogates the loci of motherhood in the production, circulation, and consumption of motherhood as a sacred, as well as a powerful spiritual component of women's life as represented in African literature and culture.

Introduction

Motherhood is often defined as an automatic set of feelings and behavior that is switched on by pregnancy and the birth of a child. It is an experience said to be profoundly shaped by social context and culture. Motherhood is also seen as a moral transformation whereby a woman comes to terms with being different in that she ceases to be an autonomous individual because she is one way or the other attached to another—her child. In many societies, motherhood is wrapped in many cultural and religious meanings—cultural as in what society thinks a mother should be, that is, some elements associated with a mother and what the practiced faith of a particular society attaches to motherhood. Motherhood assumes different names and shapes depending on the society that is practicing it. The word procreation or giving birth and nurturing new life, whether physically or otherwise, has led to different definitions for the words “feminine,” “maternal,” and “feminine spirituality” in many cultures, and religious traditions.

Contemporary Indian Writers in English (CIWE) presents critical commentaries on some of the best-known names in the genre. With the high visibility of Indian writing in English in academic, critical, pedagogic and reader circles, there is a perceivable demand for lucid yet rigorous introductions to many of its authors and genres. Indian writing in English, in each of its genres — fiction, poetry, non-fiction and drama — has a diversity of themes, forms and styles. CIWE titles explore precisely this rich diversity. Attention to the narrative form of the novels/poems is accompanied by a detailed reading of the central themes in the author. The plan of the series is to provide as complete a survey of an author's oeuvre as possible, within a manageable length.

CIWE seeks to strike a balance between providing an introductory study as well as a critical appraisal of the writer's work. The former serves the informed, non-specialist reader, while the latter suits the academic — with its essay/seminar/assignment projects — in literature classrooms. The theoretical approaches are wide-ranging — from structural analysis of narrative to feminist literary criticism. Every text in the series provides biographical information, close textual analysis, a survey of the author's chief thematic concerns, bibliographic information for those who wish to pursue further reading, and a comprehensive list of topics for discussion. The last section is meant to aid further reflection on the author or texts, and is indicative of the potential every author in the Indian writing in English ‘canon’ possesses.

A significant development that helped to create a positive atmosphere for the June elections was the formal entry of a world body—the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN)—into the Nepalese politico-electoral arena. The UNMIN was established on 23 January 2007, by Security Council Resolution 1740, with its main focus being to help conduct the Constituent Assembly election in a free and fair manner.

The UNMIN established a tangible presence by setting up an Electoral Assistance Office in Bahadur Bhavan. Fida Nasrullah, a middle-aged Lebanese woman, was appointed Chief Technical Adviser. The arrival of more international election experts in Kathmandu helped spread a galvanic election atmosphere throughout the country. This atmosphere was further enhanced when the UN started monitoring the weaponry of the Maoist rebels and their army personnel. This was crucial to ensure the election met international norms.

In March 2007, the UNMIN reported over 31,000 Maoist army personnel, who were placed in 28 cantonment sites under the supervision of unarmed UNMIN monitors. A total of 3,475 Maoist weapons were stored in seven main cantonment sites, under round-the-clock guard. The following month, the UNMIN registered and stored 2,855 Nepal Army weapons, again under 24 hour guard, as agreed by the peace pact.

The Chief decided to team up the newly-arrived UN international advisors to the Commission with his domestic staff in an attempt to bolster the capacity of the local operatives. It was hoped this collaboration would help achieve the common goal, of a successful election.

As the monsoon passed that eventful year, the political situation in Nepal worsened day by day, due to the fresh outbreak of violent agitation by the traditionally under-represented ethnic groups.

In addition to the Madhesi agitation, the Janjati groups (or indigenous nationalities) started their own agitation in the mountains. Janjati can be understood as indigenous groups/nationalities that originally came from the north and migrated into different parts of Nepal. They speak a variety of Tibeto-Burmese languages, and originally practiced various religions. The government categorised 59 groups as Janjati, ranging from privileged groups—such as Newars and Gurungs—to disadvantaged groups, like the Chepang or the Raute. Irrespective of their economic and social status, most Janjati groups were angry because they were forced to abandon their own traditions and to adopt the language, costume, customs and life-style of the ruling elite—Bahun-Chhetri group. When Janjati groups saw that their issues of identity and representation were not sufficiently addressed—despite the 2006 change—they took advantage of the political fluidity and started agitating.

The main demands of this group were for a full proportional electoral system and restructuring of the country, based on ethnicity, geography and language. They wanted their voices to be heard, and carried out violent strikes, agitation and blockades, which sometimes lasted weeks, to draw attention to their agenda.

Similarly, the Dalits and other under-represented groups also came out onto the streets demanding their fair representation. These activities worsened the already fragile security situation.

The Chief's initial days at the Commission were fully occupied with meeting different stakeholders, in order to gain their trust in the election process. These included local partners and international contacts. Trust-building was essential for a successful election, after what was one of the highest intensity internal armed conflicts in the world. A lot was at stake; in the context of an increasingly globalised world, the success of Nepal's post-conflict election had direct ramifications for global peace and security.

The international community had become concerned about the conflict in Nepal after the imposition of a state of emergency in November 2001. This came only months after America's 9/11, and the inception of the resulting war on terror. The Nepalese government had resorted to a military solution to the Maoists' insurgency, mobilising the Royal Nepal Army. This military action resulted in serious human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests, detentions and extra-judicial killings by the state. As the violence escalated, the international community became nervous and took the initiative to resolve the armed conflict in Nepal as soon as possible.

One of the first steps was taken by a Geneva-based organisation called the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre), which strove to promote communication between the Maoists and the government. Padma Ratna Tuladhar, a human rights activist and facilitator of the peace process, put the Centre in touch with the palace and the Maoists.

Abstract: In their article “Comparative Literature in Iberian Spanish and Portuguese” María Teresa Vilariño Picos and Anxo Abuín González present the current situation of comparative literature in the region. Their description of the discipline's intellectual and institutional situation suggests that starting with the mid-twentieth century scholars on the Iberian peninsula adopted comparative literature's theory orientation and proceeded in applying the framework in the study of literature. Vilariño Picos and Abuín González pay particular attention to the development of intermediality and digital humanities, fields which attract scholars who work in comparative literature in particular and produce(d) seminal scholarship. Further, they suggest that scholarship ought to place emphasis of the value of the local in a global context and to explore linguistic difference, while at the same time accompanying this exploration with theoretical reflection on the importance of digital humanities.

Introduction

We should not be surprised—given the lamentations about the state of affairs of comparative literature since its inception in the nineteenth century—that the discipline is associated with “crisis” (see, e.g., Gumbrecht and Moser). The reasons for this view are multiple and well-known. Not least important is the decline of the study of literature conceived as an expression of national identity, as was traditionally the case in comparative literature. We now know that the crisis of the discipline was accompanied by a considerable extension of its area of study and its implication with other spheres of thought.

This chapter will deal with Narayan's non-fictional narratives, and concentrate on his style of writing memoirs, travel accounts and guide books. The three texts that would be discussed are My Days, The Emerald Route and My Dateless Diary. Between them we see much of R. K. Narayan himself and his relation to the world around him. In other words there is both the ‘paysage interieur’ and the openness to the other – both the inner and the outer, the personal and the public. This combination of memoir and confession makes for autobiography. We have already seen how deeply autobiographical a writer Narayan is and a study of these three texts will only underscore the profoundly personal nature of Narayan's writings. The three texts taken for analysis tell us not only a great deal about Narayan as a persona behind the writing but also about writing itself. The books are as much about writing as they are about the self in the act of writing. We see then, generic disruption, an openness to experiment with traditional forms, a deliberate teasing mix of fact and fiction, confession and memoir, reality and myth. Above all, even when he is supposed to be dealing with fact we see the admixture of fiction. Narayan, as S. Krishnan pointed out with reference to Grandmother's Tales, writes ‘faction’. We can apply the term to all three texts studied in this chapter.

Many people would think that Narayan is too ‘pure’ a writer to be sullied with concerns like caste, class and gender, but the fact is that Narayan did engage with these issues. Malgudi is divided on class lines, with the elite living in Lawley Extension and the lowly living elsewhere, in or off Ellaman Street. In Waiting for the Mahatma Gandhi goes to the home of the poorest of the poor avoiding the Municipal Board Chairman's hospitality. So the Dalit does exist in Malgudi's Brahminical world. Swami and his friends go to the poorer quarters to fight with the coachman's son. Undeniably Narayan's world is primarily of the Tamil Brahmin, but there are non-Brahmin characters present all the time. In a short story like “Fellow Feeling”, Narayan foregrounds caste. He does so in The Guide in his depiction of Raju's liaison with the devadasi dancer Rosie. Mali's relation with the foreigner Grace in The Vendor of Sweets and Raman's relation with the iconoclast modernist Daisy in The Painter of Signs are also instances of relationships which bring out caste differences. In The Dark Room Narayan writes his boldest novel on the issue of Woman though this sympathy for the cause of Woman is not absent from a great deal of his other writings like Grandmother's Tale. This section will, therefore, attempt an exploration of Narayan's treatment of the themes of caste, class and gender, in order to demonstrate his location and relevance in a contemporary discourse.

Abstract: In his article “Comparative Literature in Indian Languages” Anand Balwant Patil discusses developments in humanities scholarship in India. He posits that giving much space to “modern” Anglo-American aesthetics in university curricula is itself a politics of aesthetics. The changed political status quo after 1947 effected a change in the mediation of Anglophone aesthetics in humanities scholarship. For example, India has no school of postcolonial studies to offer a blueprint of the “postcolonial project” to counter balance the influx of Anglophone scholarship. Patil presents a discussion of the status quo of comparative scholarship in India, its theoretical underpinnings, and argues for the development of home-grown comparative scholarship in the humanities.

Introduction

The developments in Indian comparative discourse have taken place according to Lord Macaulay's (1835) predictions in the theory of downward infiltration of education in the Indian caste system. This history of hierarchical comparativism cannot be studied without a reference to the rigid frame of four castes and varna-s: the Brahman priestly caste, Kshatriya warriors, Vaishya tradesmen, and Shudra servants. Within this frame there are thousands of subcastes and tribals with separate cultures, crafts and neo-casteist classifications of literature (mainstream, rural, regional, dalit, and tribal, respectively) in the same language. This is one of the hurdles in making learning more dialogic and dwarfs development of, in Emily Apter's words, “democracy of comparison” (9).

Only a few years before the first meeting of the elected Constituent Assembly, the political scene in Nepal had been radically different. The most momentous event was that which occurred on 1 February 2005, triggering extensive changes across the Himalayan kingdom.

On that cold February morning, the day started with the usual rituals at the Narayanhiti Royal Palace, the centre of power in Nepal at that time. The palace staff were busy doing their chores. Over 1,800 of the best trained soldiers of the Royal Nepal Army, who were protecting the Palace and its regal residents, were preparing for their day after the reveille. Other staff were tending cows, and thorough bred horses of Arabian, English and Nepalese strains, in the animal shelters. One of the prized horses was a personal gift from Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain.

At ten, King Gyanendra entered a studio in the palace precincts. The palace staff kowtowed to His Majesty as he passed. A select group of journalists and photographers were eagerly waiting for him. Flash lights blazed and there was a rush towards His Majesty.

The King nodded a stern acknowledgement as he entered the room, appearing all set to make a live nationwide telecast. As King Gyanendra took his seat, the triangular national flag hung limply on his right side, and the square-shaped royal standard jutted obtrusively on his left. Both were crimson in colour, signifying military power—the strength of the Nepalese monarchy. Behind his chair was the coat of arms, the official seal of His Majesty's Government of Nepal.

Unaware of hostile undercurrents, the Commission started preparing for the elections, scheduled for June 2007. The Bahadur Bhavan faced innumerable hurdles, owing to the post-conflict situation. More importantly, handling the former rebels—who threatened to walk out of the election process whenever they did not get what they wanted— was extremely difficult. For example, during the allocation of party symbols to be used during the elections, the Maoists threatened to walk out if they were not given the hammer and sickle symbol. The Commission could not oblige because the other communist parties objected, saying the hammer and sickle was the symbol of all communist parties. But after a series of negotiations, the Commission found a solution: granting the hammer and sickle to the Maoists—while placating the other parties by placing the common symbol inside a small circle. Despite this creative outcome the EC was criticised for pleasing the Maoists.

In addition to these post-conflict challenges, the Commission faced obstacles, owing to Nepal's geographical diversity and poor infrastructure. In more than half the country, there were no roads and the Commission had to rely on air travel. That too was not easy. In one incident, the helicopter containing training materials could not fly to the mountainous Solukhumbu district for a week, due to bad weather—meaning preparations for the training had to be redone. The biggest difficulty was created by the frequent shortage of petrol, diesel and kerosene. As a result, the Commission had to reschedule crucial trainings and other election preparations in many districts.