Sarasvatichandra

"This massive quartet was written in Gujarati, which is also the language I translate from. So I grew up hearing about the work and the writer constantly from my mother. There’s a famous classic Bollywood movie based on the book; it focuses on the romantic love aspect and not the many other themes. Since then, there have been several other TV, film, and stage adaptations but a full English translation wasn’t published until Tridip Suhrud stepped up. He is highly regarded for his scholarly works and many translations, notably the Gandhi-related works. He’s also a Tripathi scholar and only he could have taken on this mammoth task. Aside from the intimidating size of the work, Tripathi’s Gujarati is heavily Sanskritized and difficult. Tripathi was a writer, philosopher, and literary critic during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His legacy is so important that the 1885–1915 period in Gujarati literature is called the ‘Govardhan-Era’ or the ‘Scholar-Era.’ Interestingly, while he wrote his public works in Gujarati and wanted to preserve the literatures and language, he wrote his private scrapbooks in English. The series was written over 15 years, spans some 2000 pages, and has over 150 characters. The protagonist is the eponymous Sarasvatichandra, an aristocrat and lawyer. Seeing inequalities and injustices all around him, he wants to create a better world, a utopia . So he sets off on this journey, forsaking his comfortable life and loved ones. The four volumes detail the highs and lows as he deals with the many clashes between traditions, expectations, modernity, and personal desires. Tripathi wanted to give a complete sociopolitical survey of Gujarati society then. So the first part is set just after the 1857 mutiny when the British rise to absolute power and university education begins to change values and ideals at the individual level. The second volume focuses on the modern Gujarati family and how that was evolving. The third volume considers the welfare state, a utopian ideal that Tripathi himself harbored. The fourth volume explores whether religion can help regenerate society and whether a more emancipated kind with women present is feasible. The four volumes represent the four stages of life in Hindu texts: the student, the householder, the hermit/recluse, and the ascetic/sanyasi. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . It’s a Victorian-style “loose, baggy monster” of a novel. Tripathi was extremely well-read in both Sanskrit and English. The book is filled with references to classics like Bhartrihari, Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, Bhagavad Gita and passages from Wordsworth , Shelley, Goldsmith, Cowper, Keats, Shakespeare . But it is also a one-of-a-kind historic document of Gujarati culture and society during colonial times. Gandhi loved it. He said , “To the first part he [Govardhanram] gave all his art. The novel is imbued with aesthetic delight; the characterization is matchless. The second part depicts Hindu society, his art went deeper in the third part, and he gave all that he wished to give to the world in the fourth part.” Prior to Sarasvatichandra , there were two other novels: the 1866 historical novel Karan Ghelo by Nandshankar Mehta and the 1866 social realism novel Sasuvahuni Ladai ( The War Between a Mother-in-Law and a Daughter-in-Law ) by Nilkanth. Technically, Mehta’s novel is the first Gujarati novel. But Tripathi’s quartet is politically and culturally more important. Up until about 1850, Gujarati literature traditionally involved poetry, plays, folk theater, epics, and folktales. Storytelling was mostly performance-based. The modern literature era, to which the above novels belong, began in 1850 during the British colonial era and with the introduction of the printing press. Western influences, British education systems, and more translations from other Indian languages into Gujarati allowed for a lot more cross-pollination so there was a burgeoning of other forms like short stories, travelogues, memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, essays, literary criticism, literary journals. In the postmodern era now, feminist and Dalit literatures are gaining more attention. Still, I feel like we don’t have much experimentation with forms, techniques, and craft. This is likely due to various factors across the literary ecosystem. Mostly, though, I believe it’s because we’re losing both readers and writers of Gujarati literature so the ecosystem is shrinking rather than thriving as it could. And this, in turn, means our literary traditions aren’t evolving as they could. Sadly, it’s a challenge to form a South Asian literary community even within the Anglophone writing world. And then, different languages and different cultures complicate things further. But, more than that, I believe the biggest challenge is that we still get so few seats at the table that there’s an unhealthy amount of rivalry and competitiveness. We’ve all heard that “we already have a South Asian writer we’re representing/publishing this year” from agents and publishers a few too many times. Of the 514 books that appeared on ‘most anticipated’ lists in American publications, only one was by a writer of South Asian origin. That’s just one example . Get the weekly Five Books newsletter The answer, of course, is to not wait for a place at the big table but to start making our own. I started Desi Books in April 2020 to spotlight South Asian novels from the world over and to bring readers and writers together. We’re still evolving but we have channels to bring readers and writers together in conversation like #DesiBooksDiscourse and #DesiBooksReview . Next year, we’ll be doing a lot more. If we can’t uplift and elevate our own, how can we expect other communities and cultures to pay attention to our works? Let me end on a positive note. Circling back to translation, the pyramid, and under-represented languages, I’m heartened to see new, recent initiatives from English PEN and Armory Square . In recent years, the PEN/Heim Grant has also ensured that under-represented languages are getting due attention."