Why hasn’t India won Nobel Prize for literature after Independence? Quality of education

In Independent India, state policy has increasingly aggressively, if unintentionally, harmed talents and discouraged independent thought.

Illustration of Rabindranath Tagore by Arindam Mukherjee | ThePrint

Speaking in a distinguished institution, a political leader expressed concern that after Rabindranath Tagore in 1913, no Indian has received the Nobel Prize in Literature. His question—“Is the writing of our country not at the level anymore? Or has it been ignored by international institutions?”—was thought-provoking. But the tone was aloof.

However, when you think about it, the answer is obvious. During the British Raj, India produced a number of great poets, artists, scientists, scholars, and thinkers. Many of them have an international reputation. The solitary Nobel Prize in literature was also received during the British period.

Under the British, our talents flourished. The educational institutions of the British rulers encouraged talents without discrimination on any ground. Did our desi leaders, post-British rule, continue that noble tradition?

It is well-recognised that the educational institutions of British India declined rapidly after Independence. Instead of nurturing talent, new policies, knowingly or unknowingly, worked toward their suppression or migration to the West. Isn’t it curious that during the British Raj, hardly any Indian writer, scientist, artist, or scholar decided to settle abroad? Whereas in Independent India, talent of all kinds began settling in Europe and America, leaving India for good.

To come to the issue, the leader who pointed out our lack of Nobels seems unaware that there are two essential prerequisites to help grow quality writers. One, to connect children & youth with great literature, taking care that they also get time and encouragement to savour it. Second, to maintain a whole system of good institutions and platforms for learning, teaching, writing, publishing, and interacting. To ensure all this, staying away from narrowness or compromise must be a rule.

But desi leaders, preachy and voluble, did the opposite! The British made arrangements in every field of knowledge and science to promote talent—modern public institutions, great libraries, newspapers, magazines, entire new learning disciplines like history, civics, etc., new literary genres, textbooks, certificates, scholarships, honours, awards, medals, titles, and more. All for the public, not any select class, caste, or community. But Independent India could not even maintain their quality, let alone improve it.

Desi leaders began to prioritise factors other than merit and quality in scholarships, awards, admissions, appointments, and promotions. Factors of caste, religion, community, region, and (unofficially) party-loyalty were determined as significant, if not essential, ‘qualification’. As a result, talent has not only been neglected but actively deprived of opportunity.

Such corruption of education has been the most foolish act of the desi rulers. It was the exact opposite of the policy and wisdom of the British rulers. The consequences had to follow.

Soviet style policy

In Independent India, independent thinking, scholarship, writing, publications, magazines, and public platforms withered. State policy has increasingly aggressively, if unintentionally, harmed talents and discouraged independent thought.

Desi leaders started to print, propagate, and teach their own speeches by publishing ‘collected works’ (in line with the communist regimes). Ambitious academics and journalists picked up the cue. They undertook writing eulogies of the leaders on an industrial scale. It was typical ‘socialist’ Soviet style, contrary to the ‘colonial’ British.

No Viceroy of India or even the British Crown ever imagined propaganda to be enforced in the name of ‘academic’ or ‘educational’ activity in Indian schools or universities. The British introduced and maintained high standards in school and college syllabi and prescribed readings. They also made all the great knowledge of the world, past and present, available in the libraries they established for public use. Indians have yet to appreciate this great gift of the ‘colonial’ British rulers.

After Independence, desi leaders presumed themselves the fount of almost all wisdom. Hence, thought it hardly necessary that young pupils should have attractive, accessible editions of the great literature of the world—a first requirement for nurturing good writers. Continuous savouring of the finest literature has no alternative. But after almost eighty years of Independence, even India’s own great literature is not available in beautiful editions to attract young readers.

In comparison, in the West, hundreds of classic literary works, their own and of the world, are always available in dozens of splendid editions. Suitable for every pocket. New, attractive, innovative editions keep appearing. But here, even the Nobel-honoured Gitanjali is not available in a special edition, fit to be presented as a special gift.

This shameful situation is no fault of publishers here. In current democracies, intellectual activities grow or wither according to the government’s attitude. Desi rulers have been more engrossed with promoting their own images, schemes and ideological fixations. Their concern has not gone much beyond taking care of the economy and maintaining their seats of power.

With such ineptitude about education and intellect, English education and publications, already prestigious and established, naturally gained a further lead.

Common people soon realised that there was little possibility of going far in native languages. Resources are missing in native languages. The government was indifferent and didn’t think of ways and means to ensure it. They didn’t encourage work and excellence irrespective of the linguistic choice.

Observing the development and the state policy (or a lack of it), businesses and social institutions began withdrawing their enterprises from native languages. If the all-powerful and resourceful government could function through English—making laws, documents, notifications, regulations, communiqués, committee and board proceedings—why then would the non-governmental institutions waste their resources on native languages?

Stifling of voices

The politicisation of education completed the damage. Presently, the whole purpose of education is limited to making citizens who contribute economically and politically.

Progressing toward a new low, now young professors are encouraged, seduced, and deployed to write vacuous papers and organise propaganda seminars, to propagate the agenda of political parties. Even school textbooks reproduce all slogans as fully and as repeatedly as possible. Social sciences and humanities subjects are turned into propaganda bundles. To train, unwittingly, little more than politically correct parrots. Young writers/lecturers are made to contribute to it by inducement, pressure, and deceit. This is an unpardonable corruption of talents. It is like the folly of drugging one’s own child! Desi politicians are turning innocent young people into vehicles of propaganda. If this is not poisoning the budding talents, what is?

The intellectuals of any country are the carriers of its consciousness and creativity. If they are under pressure to either be partisan writers-preachers or remain silent, ultimately, all of society will be rendered helpless and voiceless.

In Independent India, after creating a formal structure of democracy, leaders encouraged a party mentality akin to that of communist countries. How then, might a Rabindranath or Sahir Ludhianvi flourish?

Ever since Independence, the obsession of the rulers has been to foster one or another ism, from socialism to ‘cultural nationalism’, whatever it may mean. They never cared to keep space open for the growth of talents, where a Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay or a Mahadevi Verma might blossom. They dedicated all the ground to politics and factionalism.

As a result, even unique poets and writers like Ajneya or Nirmal Verma never got their due. Leaders and intellectuals, in folly, sectarianism, and envy, did not let them have their rightful place.

It is true that in all countries the lives of writers have been full of hardships. But their intellectual and operational freedom remained intact. It is a tragedy of the present age that a writer, poet, or journalist finds various obstacles even in presenting the truth one has seen. In such a condition, creative writing slowly dries up.

Both George Orwell and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn underlined that under a situation where you are discouraged from writing on certain topics, literature cannot flourish. In India, the number of such forbidden personae, topics, groups, themes, etc. has gradually increased. Writers, journalists, professors, and ‘public figures’—all know that their advancement is linked more to something other than quality or merit. Then why lament that no Indian has received a Nobel after Tagore?

Shankar Sharan is a columnist and professor of political science. He tweets @hesivh. Views are personal.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)