Six Acres and a Third
Encyclopedia
Six Acres and a Third is a 19th century's India
n novel by Fakir Mohan Senapati
(1843-1918), published in an English language
translation by the University of California Press
. Written long before the October Revolution
in Russia
, the book is the first Indian novel to deal with the exploitation of landless peasants by a feudal Lord in British India. Its author is known as the "Father of Modern Oriya Literature
".
Fakir Mohan Senapati's novel is written from the perspective of the horse, the ordinary villager, and the foot-soldier — in other words, the labouring poor of the world. Although it contains a critique of British colonial rule, the novel offers a powerful indictment of many other forms of social and political authority as well. What makes Six Acres unusual is that its critical vision is embodied in its narrative style or mode, in the complex way the novel is narrated and organized as a literary text. Senapati's novel (the Oriya original was serialized in 1897-1899 and published as a book in 1902) is justly seen as representing the apex of the tradition of literary realism in 19th century Indian literature. But its realism is complex and sophisticated, not simply mimetic; the novel seeks to analyze and explain social reality instead of merely holding up a mirror to it.
The linguistic innovations of Six Acres and a Third, Senapati's first novel, need to be appreciated in this wider context. These innovations changed Oriya literature forever, and inaugurated the age of modern Oriya prose, but they are based in a vision of social equality and cultural self-determination. Senapati was no romantic nationalist, and his conception of language was based on his progressive social vision. In his prose works, he sought to popularize an egalitarian literary medium that was sensitive enough to draw on the rich idioms of ordinary Oriyas, the language of the paddy fields and the village markets. If he saw the imposition of other languages like Persian, English, or Bengali on Oriyas as a form of linguistic colonialism, it is because he considered the interests of Oriyas — much like the interests of any linguistic community — to be tied to democratic cultural and social access to power.
” Project, USA and the South Asian Program of Cornell University
. It brought the three perspectives to bear on Fakir Mohan Senapati's Oriya novel Six Acres and a Third.
The two panel discussions that flanked the conference addressed the central question of language in Indian literature. Senapati's novel, panelists such as Namwar Singh, Harish Trivedi, Manoranjan Mohanty, G. K. Das and Chaman Lal (Delhi), Amiya Dev (Kolkata), V. Narayan Rao and Satya P. Mohanty (U.S.) argued, was a play on languages. While Namwar Singh resisted the Bakhtinian implications of this thesis, all agreed that the novel could be read as a cautionary account of the process whereby a rich heteroglossia was giving way to an impoverished monolingualism, designated by the nationalist shift to the concept of the mother tongue.
Senapati's novel fitted perfectly into Rao's scheme of looking further back than the 19th century for a vision of an Indian literature without linguistic borders, a theme that Kavita Panjabi, drawing on her Sindhi background, later echoed. To Rao the novel along with Gurujada's Telugu play "Kanyasulkam", a new English rendering of which is due out shortly from Indiana University Press, was crucial to a quest for an alternative modernity, premised not on reform, as in Bankim and Tagore, but on a playful parody of all forms of domination. Satya P. Mohanty reiterated the theme during the closing panel. He further outlined the epistemic dimensions of the parody and satire employed in Senapati's novel by showing how they irradiated the view from below.
The four sessions of the conference demonstrated the triad of rubrics guiding the deliberations. Under the interpretative rubric Ananta Giri of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Sachidnanda Mohanty of the University of Hyderabad and Diptiranjan Pattanaik of Utkal University read the decolonising agenda of the novel in terms as different as "transformative critique", "narrative irony" and a form of non-engagement best described as "upanishadic." The same interpretative lens focused on gender elicited sharply polarised views on Senapati's construction of woman. Bidyut Mohanty and Savita Singh dwelt on Senapati's breaking of the feminine mystique through the projection of the stronger woman. Pragati Mahapatra, however, saw signs of a new patriarchy in Senapati's holding on to the angel-witch polarity.
If a central issue in translation studies is local cultural adaptation, then Senapati's novel justly exemplifies this. It not only travels across languages; it also freely mistranslates in an effort to localise. G.J.V. Prasad of JNU traced this pervasive practice as far back as the ancient Tamil text, Tolkapiyam, where it exists under the name, "mori-preyarti". The name catches the spirit if not the letter of translation as the word is understood today. It refers to "Tamilakam", the "infusion of the Tamil spirit into a deserving text", something that serves as an analogue for Senapati's "oriyanising." Sudish Pachauri of Delhi University ably showed that this quality carried across by reading from Nawalpuri's 1959 Hindi translation of the novel.
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n novel by Fakir Mohan Senapati
Fakir Mohan Senapati
Fakir Mohan Senapati born on January 13, 1843, at Mallikashpur in Balasore, played a leading role in establishing the distinct identity of Oriya, a language mainly spoken in the Indian state of Orissa...
(1843-1918), published in an English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
translation by the University of California Press
University of California Press
University of California Press, also known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish books and papers for the faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868...
. Written long before the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, the book is the first Indian novel to deal with the exploitation of landless peasants by a feudal Lord in British India. Its author is known as the "Father of Modern Oriya Literature
Oriya literature
Oriya is an official language of the state of Orissa, India. The region has been known at different stages of history as Kalinga, Udra, Utkala, or Koshala. The language is also spoken by minority populations of the neighboring states of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. The...
".
About the novel
Fakir Mohan Senapati’s novel Chha Mana Atha Guntha, or Six Acres and a Third is set in colonial Indian society during the early decades of the 19th century. It tells a tale of wealth and greed, of property and theft. On one level it is the story of an evil landlord, Ramachandra Mangaraj, who exploits poor peasants and uses the new legal system to appropriate the property of others. But this is merely one of the themes of the novel; as the text unfolds, it reveals several layers of meaning and implication. Toward the end of Mangaraj's story, he is punished by the law and we hear how the "Judge Sahib" ordered that his landed estate, his "zamindari," be taken away. It is sold to a lawyer, who — as rumor in the village has it — "will come with ten palanquins followed by five horses and two hundred foot-soldiers" to take possession of Mangaraj's large estate. The ordinary villagers react to this news by reminding one another of an old saying: "O horse, what difference does it make to you if you are stolen by a thief? You do not get much to eat here; you will not get much to eat there. No matter who becomes the next master, we will remain his slaves. We must look after our own interests."Fakir Mohan Senapati's novel is written from the perspective of the horse, the ordinary villager, and the foot-soldier — in other words, the labouring poor of the world. Although it contains a critique of British colonial rule, the novel offers a powerful indictment of many other forms of social and political authority as well. What makes Six Acres unusual is that its critical vision is embodied in its narrative style or mode, in the complex way the novel is narrated and organized as a literary text. Senapati's novel (the Oriya original was serialized in 1897-1899 and published as a book in 1902) is justly seen as representing the apex of the tradition of literary realism in 19th century Indian literature. But its realism is complex and sophisticated, not simply mimetic; the novel seeks to analyze and explain social reality instead of merely holding up a mirror to it.
The linguistic innovations of Six Acres and a Third, Senapati's first novel, need to be appreciated in this wider context. These innovations changed Oriya literature forever, and inaugurated the age of modern Oriya prose, but they are based in a vision of social equality and cultural self-determination. Senapati was no romantic nationalist, and his conception of language was based on his progressive social vision. In his prose works, he sought to popularize an egalitarian literary medium that was sensitive enough to draw on the rich idioms of ordinary Oriyas, the language of the paddy fields and the village markets. If he saw the imposition of other languages like Persian, English, or Bengali on Oriyas as a form of linguistic colonialism, it is because he considered the interests of Oriyas — much like the interests of any linguistic community — to be tied to democratic cultural and social access to power.
Comparative study of Six Acres and a Third with the 19th century's other Indian novels
An international conference entitled "The Literary View from Below", held in Delhi (January 3-5, 2007), was organised by the DCRC, Delhi University, “Fakir Mohan SenapatiFakir Mohan Senapati
Fakir Mohan Senapati born on January 13, 1843, at Mallikashpur in Balasore, played a leading role in establishing the distinct identity of Oriya, a language mainly spoken in the Indian state of Orissa...
” Project, USA and the South Asian Program of Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
. It brought the three perspectives to bear on Fakir Mohan Senapati's Oriya novel Six Acres and a Third.
The two panel discussions that flanked the conference addressed the central question of language in Indian literature. Senapati's novel, panelists such as Namwar Singh, Harish Trivedi, Manoranjan Mohanty, G. K. Das and Chaman Lal (Delhi), Amiya Dev (Kolkata), V. Narayan Rao and Satya P. Mohanty (U.S.) argued, was a play on languages. While Namwar Singh resisted the Bakhtinian implications of this thesis, all agreed that the novel could be read as a cautionary account of the process whereby a rich heteroglossia was giving way to an impoverished monolingualism, designated by the nationalist shift to the concept of the mother tongue.
Senapati's novel fitted perfectly into Rao's scheme of looking further back than the 19th century for a vision of an Indian literature without linguistic borders, a theme that Kavita Panjabi, drawing on her Sindhi background, later echoed. To Rao the novel along with Gurujada's Telugu play "Kanyasulkam", a new English rendering of which is due out shortly from Indiana University Press, was crucial to a quest for an alternative modernity, premised not on reform, as in Bankim and Tagore, but on a playful parody of all forms of domination. Satya P. Mohanty reiterated the theme during the closing panel. He further outlined the epistemic dimensions of the parody and satire employed in Senapati's novel by showing how they irradiated the view from below.
The four sessions of the conference demonstrated the triad of rubrics guiding the deliberations. Under the interpretative rubric Ananta Giri of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Sachidnanda Mohanty of the University of Hyderabad and Diptiranjan Pattanaik of Utkal University read the decolonising agenda of the novel in terms as different as "transformative critique", "narrative irony" and a form of non-engagement best described as "upanishadic." The same interpretative lens focused on gender elicited sharply polarised views on Senapati's construction of woman. Bidyut Mohanty and Savita Singh dwelt on Senapati's breaking of the feminine mystique through the projection of the stronger woman. Pragati Mahapatra, however, saw signs of a new patriarchy in Senapati's holding on to the angel-witch polarity.
If a central issue in translation studies is local cultural adaptation, then Senapati's novel justly exemplifies this. It not only travels across languages; it also freely mistranslates in an effort to localise. G.J.V. Prasad of JNU traced this pervasive practice as far back as the ancient Tamil text, Tolkapiyam, where it exists under the name, "mori-preyarti". The name catches the spirit if not the letter of translation as the word is understood today. It refers to "Tamilakam", the "infusion of the Tamil spirit into a deserving text", something that serves as an analogue for Senapati's "oriyanising." Sudish Pachauri of Delhi University ably showed that this quality carried across by reading from Nawalpuri's 1959 Hindi translation of the novel.
See also
- Six Acres and a Third, By Fakir Mohan Senapati: The Classic Nineteenth-Century Novel about Colonial India: Translated from Oriya by Rabi Shankar Mishra, Satya P. Mohanty, Jatindra K. Nayak and Paul St.-Pierre, with an Introduction by Satya P. Mohanty (Published by University of California Press)
- Oriya LiteratureOriya literatureOriya is an official language of the state of Orissa, India. The region has been known at different stages of history as Kalinga, Udra, Utkala, or Koshala. The language is also spoken by minority populations of the neighboring states of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. The...
- RebatiRebatiRebati , the famous Oriyashort story by Fakir Mohan Senapati, is considered as the first Oriya modern short story,Fakir Mohan Senapati , the prime figure of modern Oriya Fiction ,was considered the Vyasakabi or founder poet of Oriya language...
- Makers of Modern Orissa :By J. K. Samal, ʻIffat Ārā, Pradip Kumar Nayak:Published 1996by Abhinav Publications,ISBN 8170173221
- http://www.erudit.org/revue/ttr/1996/v9/n1/037246ar.pdf Translation as writing across Languages : Samuel Beckette and Fakir Mohan Senapati : Paul St Pierre
External links
- http://fakirmohan.org/ - Website for Fakir Mohan Sahitya Smruti Parishad
- http://www.indianetzone.com/2/fakir_mohan_senapati.htm - Fakir Mohan Senapati
- http://fakirmohan.org/