Six Acres and a Third

Introduction
The novel, Chha Mana Atha Guntha by Fakir Mohan Senapati heralds the inauguration of the age of modern Oriya prose. The novel, widely praised for its realism, combines an ironic, reflexive, seemingly postmodern narrative style with the analytical spirit of a work of social inquiry, unearthing causes that lie beneath superficial phenomena. The importance of such foundationally original works as Chha Mana derives not only from their intrinsic literary merit but even more from their pioneering innovativeness, which can be fully appreciated only in the evolving historical context of that literature. Fakir Mohan Senapati himself stands at the source of one of the two broad lines of development of the early Indian novel, the realistic-satirical, just as Bankim Chandra Chatterji stood at the head of the other line, the historical-romantic.
SATYA P MOHANTY, HARISH TRIVEDI
I Senapatis Novel: Historical Document and Literary Text
akir Mohan Senapatis Oriya novel Chha Mana Atha Guntha was first serialised in the last decade of the 19th century (1897-99) and published as a book in 1902. It inaugurates, as many scholars have noted, the age of modern Oriya prose. Written in a resonant Oriya that echoes a variety of linguistic and dialectal registers (incorporating, both stylistically and thematically, such languages as Sanskrit, Persian and English), Senapatis text may well represent what the Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin called the process of novelisation. Bakhtin identified a distinctly modern phenomenon in which languages, meanings, and values are dialogised, brought into ironic and nonhierarchical contact with one another a phenomenon, he argued, that can be best represented by the modern literary genre we call the novel. Senapatis Chha Mana, set in the early 1800s, provides readers a glimpse of colonial modernity in India from an ironic vantage point; its linguistic explorations and complex narrative form dialogise colonial society and culture (see the essay by Sawyer that is part of this special section for a detailed analysis of the novels narrative form). Chha Mana Atha Guntha has been widely praised for its realism outside Orissa by, among others, U R Anathamurthy and Sisir Kumar Das. But the novels realist mode itself opens up new questions for the reader. Recalling Georg Lukcss evaluative distinction between a descriptive naturalism and a more analytical realism, it can be argued that Senapatis approach is of the latter kind [on this, see Mohanty 2006]. Chha Mana combines an ironic, reflexive, seemingly postmodern narrative style with the analytical spirit of a work of social inquiry, unearthing causes that lie beneath superficial phenomena. Senapatis analytical realist approach (as Ulka Anjaria points out in her essay) is uniquely suited to the genre of satire, especially with its inversion of traditional social meanings, a genre used
in closely comparable ways by the post-independence Hindi novelist Shrilal Shukla in his Raag Darbari. Senapatis complex and self-reflexive narrative style raises questions about how we should interpret the authors own values and intentions (on the difficult question of gender, for instance, see the essay by Horan, and also Sawyer). In many obvious and subtle ways, Chha Mana invites readers to re-imagine colonial Indian society from below by providing a realist view that is not just sociological or philosophical, but also simultaneously and necessarily literary.

I I The Literary Context

Though a couple of novels had already been published in Oriya before Chha Mana Atha Guntha [Mishra 2001: 240], Senapati is unanimously regarded as the father of the Oriya novel. It is nearly always true of works of such foundational originality that their importance derives not only from their intrinsic literary merit but even more from their pioneering innovativeness, which can be fully appreciated only in the evolving historical context of that literature. The early triad of modern Oriya writers of whom Senapati was one, together with his close contemporaries Radhanath Ray (1848-1908), the romantic-patriotic poet of nature, and Madhusudan Rao (1853-1912), the sagely bhakta poet and educationist not only inaugurated new generic possibilities but also demonstrated the creative potential of Oriya, the language they all wrote in. This is one aspect of any writers achievement, of course, that cannot come through adequately even in the most resourceful of translations, and it should therefore prove
We are grateful to Satya P Mohanty and Harish Trivedi for help in putting together the papers for this special section. Ed
Economic and Political Weekly

November 18, 2006

especially illuminating that one of the essays here, by G N Dash, richly documents the crucial movement for the upsurge of Oriya language to which Senapati made his vital contribution. Senapati also has a significance beyond Oriya, in the larger context of the development of the novel across the many major languages of India. Sisir Kumar Dass magisterial History of Indian Literature 1800-1910 (1991) focuses on Senapatis realism and evaluates the significance of his novel through that literary-historical lens: [it] is not only free from all traces of the Bankim (Chandra Chatterji) tradition, but it created a new world of fiction which was further expanded and enriched later in the century by.Premchand and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay (1991: 296). Senapati is here identified as standing at the source of one of the two broad lines of development of the early Indian novel, the realistic-satirical, just as Bankim indisputably stood at the head of the other line, the historical-romantic. Since Premchand (1880-1936), whose first novel began appearing the very year following the publication of Chha Mana as a book, seems neither then nor later to have read Senapati or indeed, in the lack of translation, even to have heard of him; the connection Das acclaims between the two writers must be seen as more of broad genealogy rather than that of influence or even inter-textuality. Another common aspect of the achievement of these two novelists was explored recently in a conference, held to mark (more or less together) the 125th birth-anniversary of Premchand and the 163rd birth-anniversary of Senapati, where both authors were viewed as the saviours of [their respective] languages and who had a common agenda of retrieving indigenous languagesby modernising them [Satpathy 2006: 8-9], a role that may be seen as that of subaltern self-assertion against the encroachment of other hegemonic languages. Altogether, the four essays published here, and the conference in Delhi (January 2007) to which they are a curtain-raiser,

should provide an opportunity for a reappraisal of the achievement of Senapati from diverse points of view. No less importantly, the occasion should help us situate, in a long and comparative perspective, the evolution of the early Indian novel as well as the general theme of the view from below in modern south Asian literature. EPW Email: spm5@cornell.edu
[The international publication of a new translation of Fakir Mohan Senapatis novel Chha Mana Atha Guntha (Six Acres and a Third, University of California Press, 2005; in India, Penguin, 2006) provides the occasion for an agenda-setting conference at the University of Delhi: The Literary View from Below: Fakir Mohan Senapatis Six Acres and a Third and the Tradition of Radical Social Critique in Modern South Asian Literature (January 3-5, 2007). The conference, building in part on the four essays published here, attempts to contribute to the ongoing development of a creative and progressive south Asian canon that can shape curricula and new scholarly work in literary criticism and related disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.]

References

Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981): The Dialogic Imagination, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, US. Das, Sisir Kumar (1991): A History of Indian Literature 1800-1910, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. Lukcs, Georg (1963): The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, translated by J and N Mander, Merlin Press, London. Mishra, Rabi Shankar (2001): Chha Mana Atha Guntha: The Language of Power and the Silence of a Woman in Meenakshi Mukherjee (ed), Early Novels in India, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. Mohanty, Satya P (2006): Introduction, Six Acres and a Third by Fakir Mohan Senapati, translated by Rabi Shankar Mishra, Satya P Mohanty, Jatindra K Nayak, and Paul St-Pierre, Penguin-India, New Delhi. Satpathy, Sumanyu (2006): Saviours of Indian Languages, report on the conference held by the Sahitya Akademi on Fakir Mohan and Premchand: Saviours of Language, Bhubaneshwar, March 3-5, 2006, published in Newsletter: Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, July.

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