Who is afraid of Chetan Bhagat?

There is a storm-in-an-English-teacup brewing in Delhi University. Once again, it is the Department of English. This time, however, we are not accusing each other of being nationalists or anti-nationals. In fact, we are doing what universities should do and, indeed do, all the time. We are debating syllabus for undergraduate elective courses, as legitimate an academic exercise as it gets, but if opinion in mainstream media and trends on social media were any indicator, it would seem that the whole world – inside and outside Delhi University – is terribly exercised/excited/flabbergasted (choose your adjective). I write this to provide some perspective on the matter. And I shall begin with an anecdote. In late 2013, writer Amitav Ghosh's publishers, Penguin India, had organised a series of events to celebrate the silver jubilee of the publication of The Shadow Lines, one of his several seminal novels. In a packed house, during the Q&A session at one such event in New Delhi, a young Delhi University student posed the question: “Do you think the quality of Indian literature in English has deteriorated over the years with the popularity of pulp writers such as Chetan Bhagat?” A bemused Ghosh responded, “I do not think so. On the contrary, it is a sign of the maturity of the Indian publishing industry that all kinds of writing is getting written and published and read.” (I paraphrase from memory the substance of the student's question and Ghosh's response.) I could not be sure if Ghosh was just being polite or diplomatic, and was just making an attempt to sidestep the issue. Either way, that day he echoed my sentiments on the issue. Ever since Chetan Bhagat appeared on the horizon of Indian writing in English and became remarkably successful, he has been at the centre of a fierce debate about the future of this genre, with opinion mostly ranged against him and few voices in his favour. My contention in this whole debate is that we have not identified the correct questions. In my opinion, it is facile to ask whether Bhagat's writing has 'quality' or if it can be called 'literature'. The question of quality can never be objectively settled and hence it would be useless to waste time, paper and bandwidth over it. Much of the opprobrium vented upon Bhagat emanates from his supposed mediocre writing, apparent lack of complex plots and characterization, and what critics have called his myopic vision of Indian reality, that is, an absence of appreciation of the trials and tribulations of unprivileged Indians. To my mind, important as these questions may be, they miss a few very significant questions, which are 'What has Chetan Bhagat done to the sociology of Indian writing in English? In what ways has he broken the proverbial glass ceiling, if he has?' In my opinion, the whole debate needs to be framed in different terms. I am reminded of two great scholars here. One, Meenakshi Mukherji, the doyen of criticism in Indian writing in English, and two, Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist. In her groundbreaking work of literary criticism, Twice Born Fiction, Mukherji speaks of the derision heaped upon her, when, in the 1960s, she proposed to take up Indian English writing for her doctoral work. She was told that there is nothing like 'Indian Writing in English’ despite the fact that the trio of Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and RK Narayan had already been acknowledged as masters of this genre. The category was then known as ‘Indo-Anglian’ writing. It was only after her research that the term which we today take for granted, 'Indian writing in English' and university courses are structured around, gained currency and 'respectability.' To establish an analogy that many may deem ironic, I dare say that Chetan Bhagat invented the category of 'Popular Indian writing in English'. I would not attribute that invention to either Shobhaa De or Amar Chitra Katha, as has been suggested, because despite selling in millions, neither created a whole new class of Indian readers of English. In this context, a distinction is being made between ‘popular’ and ‘commercial’ literature. I believe that this distinction, though entirely legitimate, is purely academic and holds meaning only for critics and academics. It is as if Bhagat has slashed through the proverbial Gordian knot and established himself as the 'king' of the popular English language writing in India by releasing it from libraries, classrooms and seminar rooms, and flinging it out into the open market, where ‘literary’ merit is determined solely by the balance sheet bottomline and not by any 'aesthetic experience' but by the experience of reading pleasure, a category – we in English departments – have begun to open up under the large rubric of post-theory. This brings me to the second point of my argument. It has been alleged that when Bhagat first sent his manuscript to publishing houses, it was accompanied by a detailed marketing strategy for the book, and subsequently he bought the entire first print-run of his book. I cannot vouch for the veracity of these claims/rumours but even if that is true, and I would rather it was, it amounts to nothing more than buying what Bourdieu has called 'social and cultural capital'. Given that the English publishing industry in India is class-bound in the extreme and is controlled by a handful of people known to each other through family and old-school ties, it is nearly impossible for a new writer to get published unless s/he panders to the post-colonial angst of the English speaking/living cultural elite of India, for which deriding the middle class aspirational climb on the ladder of English language is a favourite pastime. This class, like any other elite elsewhere, guards its cultural capital through all means possible, one of which is the 'taste' determining machines of academia and mass media. To this group, Bhagat is the outsider and the enfant terrible who cannot be allowed to sup at the high table unless he learns his – actually their – manners, to which Bhagat had earlier responded with utter indifference but now seems to be gloating after the inclusion of Five Point Someone in the undergraduate English syllabus for non-English honours students. With this ‘inclusion’, we are witnessing a politics that often plays out at the intersection of the popular and the esoteric. Must the popular, with all its philistine character, always remain outside the academe, or must its insurgent tendencies be ‘tamed’ by according token respectability to it, and thus co-opting it within the esoteric? (Vikas Jain teaches English at Zakir Husain Delhi College (Evening), University of Delhi) Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs and views expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website are personal and do not reflect the opinions, beliefs and views of ABP News Network Pvt Ltd.