Conversations on Modernism

This volume engages with pertinent questions that the literary historians, theorists, young scholars and academics have asked : How indigenous was literary modernism in India? Did alien ideas fill the vacuum created by a kind of disinheritance of tradition? Did the Partition of the subcontinent trigger off a cultural collapse and a creative resurgence simultaneously? The emergence of the new story called for an understanding of the specific socio-political context within which literary modernism flourished. The dynamics of the new consciousness, post the progressive writers, is the focus of these discussions. Sukrita Paul Kumars conversations with some major Hindi-Urdu writers, critics and philosophers in this book have the potential to build larger debates on modernism in Indian literature, specially with reference to Hindi and Urdu. The conversations with some eminent Indian writers, critics and philosophers in this volume are exploratory, evocative and pertinent. Inspired by the rich body of fiction that emerged as Nai Kahani in Hindi and Naya Afsana in Urdu in the post-Independence India, many intriguing questions on literary modernism in India are raised and discussed here. These dialogues map the new dynamics of consciousness robustly found in the stories of the iconic Hindi and Urdu writers who appeared soon after the formidable generation of avowedly progressive writers such as Krishan Chander, Yashpal and Rajendra Singh Bedi. These insightful conversations aim at creating a better understanding of literary modernism in India, specially with reference to Hindi and Urdu literature. In Conversations on Modernism, Sukrita Paul Kumar, literary critic and poet, is in dialogue with: Qurratulain Hyder; Nirmal Verma; Jeelani Bano; Joginder Paul; Namwar Singh; Muhammad Ali Siddiqui; Wazir Agha; Kathleen Raine; Margaret Chatterjee; M. M. Agrawal; Ramesh Chandra Shah; Krishna Sobti.