“In the age of coca-colonization of culture the writer has to stand for pluralism and catholicity”, said eminent poet-critic Prof. K. Satchidanandan.
Delivering the ninth Frontier Lecture titled Writer, Politics and Commitment: A Personal View, at the Seminar Complex on August 6, 2004 he mapped the complex and at times troubled relationship between the writer and his/her society.
Structuring his talk in three movements, Prof. Satchidanandan who is also the Secretary of the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, moved from the larger plight of the contemporary writer to a more focused reflection on the need for an inclusive understanding of the concept of commitment. Citing examples from literary cultures all over the world, he illustrated how the history of persecution became an integral part of the history of literature itself. He said that there were no ivory towers for the writer to withdraw into; on the contrary s/he very often had to buffet the waves of violence and intolerance all alone.
Today, it also becomes imperative to historicize the notion of commitment, as it is impossible to speak of it in the same terms in which it was spoken of in the 1930’s.Theories of interpretation and meaning have radically altered the ways in which we receive and interpret literary texts. As the act of reading becomes more and more crucial to the meaning-making of a text, responsibility of commitment has shifted, in a way, from the writer to the reader. Resistant readings of canonical texts like the Mahabharata by the dalits and women, are today understood as acts of survival in an unequal society.
Even as the idea of literature broadens to include hitherto suppressed voices like that of the dalits, of the working class and of the women within its fold, norms are subverted and hegemonies challenged. Aesthetics is in constant flux as these marginalized groups reveal the fault lines of our literary canon. He also stressed that the convention of identifying certain forms of writing as progressive and certain others as reactionary is outmoded as any text can be read today from different ideological positions. Rigid concepts of literature are dangerous. In his presidential address, Prof. T.B. Venugopala Panicker of the Department of Malayalam underlined the importance of commitment in the literary debates down the ages. The talk by Satchidanandan was followed by an interactive session in which many members of the audience discussed issues of concern with the writer. The session concluded with the vote of thanks delivered by Prof. C. Rajendran of the Dept. of Sanskrit.