EXCLUSIVE | Why Bihar’s Literary Heritage Deserves Global Recognition, Poet-Diplomat Abhay K. Explains

In an interview with Ashutosh Kumar Thakur, Poet-Diplomat Abhay K discussed the intersections of poetry and diplomacy, the importance of translation, and his efforts to bring Bihar's literary heritage to global audiences.

Poet-diplomat Abhay K. has said that India's future leadership depends on reviving its traditions of knowledge creation and preservation, drawing inspiration from the legacy of Nalanda University.

Source : Ashutosh Kumar Thakur

Show Quick Read

Key points generated by AI, verified by newsroom

• Poet-diplomat Abhay K. bridges cultures through translation.
• He highlights Bihar's literary depth, challenging common misconceptions.
• Diplomatic experience informs his poetry, mapping global human stories.
• He advocates for forgotten languages, preserving diverse cultural heritage.

The literary map of India is being redrawn by those who refuse to see borders between the ancient and the modern, or the local and the global. Ashutosh Kumar Thakur recently spoke with Abhay K., the poet-diplomat whose work has become a vital conduit for the vernacular voices of North India. From the diplomatic corridors of Brasília, Antananarivo, and now in Baku, to the linguistic heartlands of Magahi and Maithili, the conversation delves into the alchemy of translation and the enduring power of the written word.

Q: You were born in Nalanda, a site of ancient global learning. How does the ghost of that lost library influence the way you approach the preservation of knowledge today?

A:  That’s right. Nalanda is where the idea of a universal seat of learning with a standardised courtyard plan of residential and teaching infrastructure evolved for the first time in the world, which later came to be known as a university.  

Nalanda had the best library in the world in the first millennium CE, which attracted the great Chinese monk Xuanzang to travel all the way from the then Tang dynasty capital, Changan, to Nalanda to find an authentic copy of the Yogacharabhumisutra. When he returned to China, he carried back 657 texts from Nalanda. 

India was a world leader when it had a great library. Knowledge is the key to leadership anytime, anywhere in the world. Even today, the countries that are leaders are the countries that invest in knowledge. That’s the significance of Nalanda’s great library. When we lost it, India lost its leadership in the world. Today, we must revive the memory of Nalanda and found institutions for knowledge creation and preservation. 

Alchemy Of Diplomacy And Poetry

Q: The tradition of the poet-diplomat, from Octavio Paz to Pablo Neruda, suggests that the two roles are not contradictory but complementary. Does the precision of diplomatic cables ever bleed into the economy of your poetry, or is poetry your way of reclaiming the ambiguity that diplomacy seeks to resolve?

A: That’s true, there is a long lineage of poet-diplomats, who have been Ambassadors of their countries and have also managed to win the Nobel Prize in literature. It includes not just Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz, but also George Seferis and Saint-John Perse, among others. 

Poetry and Diplomacy share several common attributes, which include brevity ( how to say more in a few words), apart from precision in communication. Both poetry and diplomacy leave many things unsaid, use figurative language, as Emily Dickinson puts it, "Tell it, but tell it slant."

Seeing The World Beyond The Tourist Lens

Q: Your collections, The Seduction of Delhi, The Prophecy of Brasilia, and The Magic of Madagascar, read like a poetic mapping of the world. How does residency in a foreign land differ from tourism when it comes to capturing the genius loci of a place?

A: That’s what I try to do wherever I am posted. Usually, a diplomat stays in a country for about 3 years, unlike a tourist who visits for a few days, and gets to absorb the nuances of the culture and history of that country, yet has a sense of detachment, unlike a native who lives there permanently, knowing well that one has to depart after 3 years and explore a new country. 

During the course of his/her stay, a diplomat interacts, engages, reads, absorbs, unlike a tourist who visits for sightseeing and entertainment, and pens one’s thoughts, engages in dialogue with the living and the dead, and if it is of a creative bent of mind, also creates new literary landscapes, writes poetry. 

Q: In The Alphabets of Africa, you curate a poetic encyclopedia of an entire continent. How do you avoid the outsider’s gaze when translating the vast complexities of African geography into English verse?

A: I believe the true calling of a poet is to become the voice of the voiceless. To write about Africa, I become an African. I see the whole of humanity as an African species dominating the world. Then I will no longer be an outsider.

I use the alphabetical framework to deal with the vast complexities of Africa, weaving in space and time with the thread of the alphabet. 

Lessons From Kalidasa To Contemporary Diplomacy

Q: You have translated Kalidasa’s Meghadūta. What can a 5th-century Sanskrit poet teach a 21st-century diplomat about communication?

A:  Kalidasa teaches us what it means to be human, to be fully alive, to not turn into bio-robots, through his lyrical reverence for both animate and inanimate, blending in nature and sensuality, to tell a tale of timeless tale of separation and longing, and the role of communication, even through a cloud, in keeping the flame of love alive. 

Rediscovering Bihar’s Literary Heritage

Q: The Book of Bihari Literature covers 3,000 years. Was this project born out of academic curiosity or a personal sense of cultural debt?

A:  I realised one in Madagascar that I did not know much about the literature of Bihar and started to explore it. As I kept discovering great poems and short stories, written in various languages of Bihar, an idea of putting together an anthology of Bihari literature was born. This is how the book came into being. 

Q: Why has the Bihari identity been so historically divorced from its rich literary pedigree in the popular imagination?

A: Because the other forms of Bihari culture, such as Bhojpuri films and songs, are more easily and widely available and are easy to consume. It takes reading and cultivation of taste to dive into the world of Bihari literature. Such dominance of one cultural aspect of any place creates stereotypes. For example, Magahi hardly gets noticed among the dominance of Bhojpuri and Maithili in any literary discourse about Bihar, even though Magadhi Prakrit is the mother of both Maithili and Bhojpuri, as well as several languages, such as Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, among others. 

Q: You translated Fool Bahadur, the first Magahi novel. What was lost and what was found in its transition to English?

A: I felt that the gems of Magahi literature must be made known to the rest of the world, and Fool Bahadur came to me as a commentary on human nature. Though published in 1928, I felt as if it were written yesterday. The characters in Fool Bahadur appear to be timeless. 

I have kept the translation as close to the original as possible. Thanks to translation, a Magahi classic, Fool Bahadur, is now part of the world literature. 

Bihar’s Languages Beyond The Hindi Belt Narrative

Q: For too long, the linguistic identity of Bihar was subsumed under the Hindi belt umbrella. How do you distinguish the soul of Maithili literature from the grit of Bhojpuri or the whimsy of Magahi?

A:  I think the publication of The Book of Bihari Literature does away with that myth. Bihar contains multitudes. In fact, Bihari languages were presented as dialects of Hindi, but it’s actually the other way round, Hindi is a daughter of Magadhi Prakrit and is much younger than the Bihari languages. Sarahapa is considered the first poet of Hindi, who was a Siddha of Nalanda Mahavihara. 

Q: Define the soul of the North Indian vernacular in one word.

A:  Vibrant. Not only North Indian vernacular, which I prefer to call as North Indian languages, but all Indian languages have a great deal of literature being created in them. 

Q: Many of these languages are classified as dialects of Hindi. Do you view your translations as an act of linguistic decolonisation?

A: As I have shared earlier, the truth is quite the opposite. Hindi is actually a dialect of Magadhi Prakrit.  My translations show the rich heritage of language and literature in Bihar’s multiple languages, much older than Hindi. 

Q: How does the rhythmic cadence of a Magahi folk song inform the structure of your English free verse?

A: I think I grew up absorbing the musicality of the Magahi tongue, and in some way or another, it has an influence on my writing in English. 

Nature, Monsoon And A Planetary Consciousness

Q: In your long poem Monsoon, the weather is the protagonist. Is nature the only truly universal language?

A:  Well, I was inspired by  Kalidasa’s Meghaduta and Ritusamhara, while living in Madagascar, and I thought of making Monsoon, which originates nearby, as the poet’s messenger during the time of the lockdown, and send a message to the poet’s beloved in Kashmir. 

Q: Which is harder: writing an anthem for the Earth or a love poem for a city?

A: For me, writing and advocating for a common anthem for our planet has been a matter of great joy and pride. I think we need to have a common anthem that can be sung by the whole of humanity, irrespective of where we come from, irrespective of whether we belong to a particular nation-state or are homeless refugees. 

Each lover creates their own map of the city. Poetry plays an important role in creating literary landscapes of cities. 

Fortunately, I have been able to do both. 

The Writer’s Routine And Sources Of Inspiration

Q: Your work moves between centuries and continents. Do you have a specific ritual or a sacred hour where the diplomat sleeps and the poet wakes up, and how do you handle the silence between books?

A: I try to retreat every day to my poetic world before going to bed, while I dream and until a few hours after I wake up, before the pressure of diplomatic work takes me somewhere else. I also spend weekends reading, writing, and reflecting. 

I am always working on some book or another in my mind. I spend a lot of time reading while I am not writing. I also like to paint while I am not writing. 

Q: If we were to look at your personal library, which writers’ pages are the most dog-eared and worn? Who is the one author you turn to when your own well of inspiration runs dry?

A: I often go back to Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s Rashmirathi, Premchand’s short stories, and Kalidasa’s Ritusamhara to find inspiration and renewal. 

I often read works of Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, T.S. Eliot, and Wislawa Szymborska, among others. 

Writing For Today And Posterity

Q: Do you write for the reader of today or the archivist of the next century?

A: Both probably. And this is true for all writers, isn’t it? One does not know for sure whether one’s books will be read for a week, for a month, for a year or for centuries and millennia to come. Sometimes, it’s just pure chance. But the subjects of love and longing, nature, humanity’s quest for knowledge, for a planetary and universal consciousness, I write about, would live as long as humanity continues to exist on earth and in the universe. 

Q: How do you want the world to remember you: as a poet, a novelist, or the bridge-builder of translations?

A: As a poet, as a diplomat, as an artist, as a translator, as a tender human being in love with life, transiting seamlessly from one identity into another. 

The Realities And Misconceptions Of Diplomatic Life

Q: What is the most misunderstood aspect of diplomatic life?

A: People assume diplomacy is glamorous, but as W.H. Auden wrote, it is closer to “this nightmare of public solitude”—a truer description of the job. Diplomats are not lotus eaters. They have a difficult job of staying in foreign lands, away from their beloved homeland, away from their families, and moving from continent to continent, like nomads after regular intervals, leaving behind friends, arriving in a new land as a stranger. They have the hard job of navigating cultures and languages, cuisine and weather, among others. In such circumstances, they have to build bridges of friendship among nations, advance national interests and nowadays handle the pressure of instant communication and social media round the clock. They are often away when one of their parents passes away back in their homeland. It’s not a job for the faint-hearted. 

Excavating India’s Literary Past

Q: What is your next great excavation into the Indian literary past?

A: I am exploring the world of Indian Poetry in English and how it has evolved over centuries. I am also trying to explore how and why Magadha became one of the empires 

One Story To Understand The Human Condition

Q: Finally, for the global literary fraternity: If you could choose one poem or one story from the Bihari vernacular tradition that every person in the world must memorise to understand the human condition, which would it be?

A: It would be ‘Chilled to the Bone’ by Mithilesh from The Book of Bihari Literature, which tells a tender tale of love between an elderly couple who have nothing to give each other except their warm bodies in the thick of a brutal winter. It’s a story that so poignantly portrays the universal human condition. 

Ashutosh Kumar Thakur writes on politics, society, literature, arts and environment, reflecting on the shared histories and cultures of South Asia.