ABSTRACT
In this essay Chakradhar Mohapatra takes exception to the expression loka sahitya [folk literature] and suggests a crucial distinction between the terms loka [folk] and gramya or gaunli [relating to villages]. Heargues that “folk literature” should be more appropriately designated as “village literature”. Chakradhar observes that urban literature tends to universalize and standardize expressions whereas village literature preserves the irreducible individuality of a language. He shows how translating a village song even into a cognate language is an extremely difficult undertaking. He then goes on to underscore the threats which the artificial Sanskritized idiom popularized by eminent modern writers like Radhanath Ray and Madhusudan Rao posed to the very survival of the Odia language. He sees in Fakir Mohan Senapati’s writings an attempt to retain and celebrate the vitality and distinctiveness of the language deeply rooted in its rural milieu. Accepting women to be the authors of most of these songs, Chakradhar maintains that these have largely sprung from the lived experience of grief and loss. For their survival, village songs depended not on writing but on memory and transmission through performative practices. Chakradhar voices his anxiety about English education rapidly eroding literature created in the villages. Chakradhar’s endeavour acquires significance when placed in the context of earlier attempts made by scholars like Shyam Sundar Rajguru and Mohini Mohan Senapati, who sought to locate the roots of Odia literature in its rich oral tradition. This contributed to the expansion of Odia literary canon and led eminent public figures such as Fakir Mohan, Gopabandhu Das and Nilakantha Das, who were engaged in bringing about a cultural renewal of Odisha, to see in the living idiom of the literature created in villages an alternative source of vitality.
