Very often, it is assumed that the “vernacular” language texts in India do not undergo any anxiety of proving themselves Indian while works written in English do. In her research paper, “A Literature of Frustration and Failure”: The Anxiety of Indianness in the Making of Sindhi Literature as an Indian Literature”, published in the esteemed Q2 journal Journal of Sindhi Studies, Dr Soni Wadhwa, Assistant Professor, Department of Literature and Languages, focuses on Sindhi post literary activity that unfolded in the first 20 years after independence to show that Sindhi has a history of going through anxiety of belonging in India.
Abstract
Studies of Partition frequently turn to literature to understand how displacement processes, among other things, impact aesthetics and representation. The article takes a broader view of aesthetics as representation: it demonstrates how turning to the literary archive of a moment and a community gives rise to questions about the politics of individual texts and literary historiography. Centred on Sindhi literature produced in India after Partition, it shows that examining the literary productivity of the community needs to involve questions of literature as political survival. It focuses on the earliest essays from the Sindhi literary scene in India (published in the Sahitya Akademi journal Indian Literature). The article argues that these essays register anxiety about the survival of a language trying to come into being in an already existing and complicated language-nation relationship. It unpacks three registers of anxiety visible in the literary archive to broaden the scope of the conversations around the Sindhi language and its literature.
This research has been conducted to advance interest in and conversations around Sindhi literature in India. Since Sindhi does not have a state in India, most people are not aware that it exists as a language and that it has a rich literary tradition.
After this article, Dr Soni Wadhwa intends to explore different writers, themes, and movements in Sindhi literature.
Collaborations
The research has been funded by George Mason University.