From margin to mainstream

Indian writers of late have been gathering quite a few laurels, at home and internationally. Arundhati Roy has become something of a latter-day saint;

Rohinton Mistry has appeared on that literary honour roll, Oprah's Book Club; and writers like Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh and Pankaj Mishra, to name just a few, leap like mountain goats from success to success.

However, beneath all this celebrity, writing is not as glamorous as those such as Chitra Divakaruni would have you believe: there are many brilliant writers and scholars writing in regional languages and even Sanskrit who have little or no national recognition (although they are very well-known in their own circles).

In order to bring these people, who are so far outside the world of book launches at five star hotels and reviews in The Guardian, more into the spotlight, several groups are giving awards to writers that have made significant contributions to literature or scholarship in languages other than English.

Last weekend, for instance, the little-known Ramkrishna-Jaidayal Dalmia Shreevani Nyas award was handed out in New Delhi to Sanskrit scholar Dr Prabhudayalu Agnihotri.

The prize money is a whopping Rs 2 lakh, and it was awarded to the 90-plus Dr Agnihotri not only for a lifetime of scholarship (he has written over 75 books), but specifically for a psychology treatise written entirely in Sanskrit.

"Most of the people who receive this award are aged. Some have even died between the nomination and the actual award ceremony," says M H Dalmia, the head of the Dalmia foundation, "so that the award has had to be given posthumously."

This is probably what condemns the Dalmia awards "" its scope remains limited because its recipients, by the very nature of the award, have to be quite old. This is not the best way to drum up new interest, especially among the youth where it would be the most helpful (the fact that Sanskrit competes in many schools with French and German, languages that are very much alive and kicking, doesn't help either).

O P Jain, the founder and chairman of the Sanskriti Foundation, which also gives out awards every year, has a completely different philosophy. He has instituted an age limit on his awardees "" they must be between 25 and 35 years of age. "Our awards are all about recognition," he says.

"And when should this recognition be given? When you've already achieved all you can? Or when you're just starting out, when you're doing good work, but you're struggling, and it would actually mean something? We want to reward the quest for excellence, not necessarily the achievement of it. The awards for that will come anyway."

The Sanskriti awards for literature and journalism "" there are others, for other artistic and cultural achievements "" for works in English and Hindi, as well as regional languages, are one-time only, and once someone has won one, he or she shall not be eligible for another.

In the case of the Dalmia award, however, according to M H Dalmia, if two candidates are more or less equal, the Board of Judges will always prefer the older nominee, since the younger can always apply later in life.

Another example are the renowned Katha awards, which recognise excellent writing in regional languages and in English.

According to Geeta Dharmarajan, the executive director of Katha, "There is a lot of regional publishing happening "" in over 22 languages. There is a huge readership, which is growing. It's a completely wrong conception that reading in the rural areas is dying out; this is probably perceived because the medium in urban areas is largely English, and publishing in any other language is simply invisible.

The fact is that fiction published in regional languages such as Malayalam has a very literary content and quality of writing. It's our aim to bring these writers into the spotlight "" to change what is marginal into what is mainstream."

It's not an easy job, especially since nowadays, anything that is too "literary" such as Sanskrit, or indeed writing in a language other than English is seen as too "cultural" """high" culture as opposed to "popular" culture, that is, writing in English.

Organisations like Sanskriti, Katha and even the Dalmia foundation are attempting to bring something that people just don't see as relevant to their everyday lives, into everyday life, make culture and art more accessible by encouraging the application of it, and celebrating its engagement.