Articles
About ANNA
THE
VERSATILITY OF ANNA – Dr.R.E.ASHER, University
of Edinburgh, Scotland
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It would seem to be a basic feature of human nature to retain
a special affection for the initiator of a series of a pleasant
things. Thus, no visit to a foreign country one learns to love
ever gives quite so much pleasure as the first. The first great
cathedral or temple one sees always retains a grandeur that once
visited later never seems to match. The first orchestral concert
one attends is remembered as the most exciting and pleasing of
all.
The some is true of the first book one reads in a language other
than one’s own. It is this which provides a number of reasons
why I am pleased to be invited to join in this volume of tributes
to Arignar Anna, the distinguished Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.
For it happens that the first book I ever read in Tamil-apart
from such things as school readers, which fall into quite a different
category was his drama ‘Ore Iravu’.
Before this, I had quite naturally heard much about the glories
of ancient Tamil literature and had read such of the classics
as were available in translation-notably the three major translations
of Dr.G.U.Pope. But a good part of the appeal of Tamil lies in
the fact that it is one of the few languages’ with a literary
tradition of two thousand years or more that has continued right
up to the present day. From the start, therefore, I was eager
to know whether contemporary literature had anything worthwhile
to offer. C.N.A’s Ore Iravu (one Night) was enough to suggest
that it had. I see no reason to revise my initial impression that
this is a good play.
Many excellent plays get off to a slow start as a result of the
difficulty experienced by the dramatist in presenting the setting
and motivation for the main part of the action. By a skillful
succession of short (superficially unrelated) scenes to present
the setting and dominant atmosphere of play, C.N.A. here holds
our attention right from the start. The pace is then maintained
throughout by means of dialogue in a very modern idiom.
It is not easy in a discussion of modern Tamil writing to draw
a clear line between theatre and cinema. Indeed a somewhat different
version of Ore Iravu(One Night) made by no means unsuccessful
film. Because of the “box office” demands in India
that the action of a film should be regularly interrupted by song-and-dance
routines, few Indian films (with the notable exceptions of the
work of Satyajit Ray) are found entirely satisfying aesthetically
by foreign audiences. This, however, should not be allowed to
blind us to the literary merits of certain scripts when written
by a master of dialogue. Such a case is the script of ‘Velaikkari’
(Servant Maid) which, with the songs conveniently relegated to
an appendix, reds as a straight play with many of the qualities
of Ore Iravu. Indeed on one point, namely the realism of its dialogue,
it might be held to be superior.
Velaikkari (Servant Maid) is, of course, a film play with a message;
and indeed Thiru Annadurai has reputation of always using his
considerable literary talents for the purpose of making political
of social “propaganda”. The controversy about the
nature of literature with one side claiming that it must have
a social content and the other arguing the case of “art
for art’s sake” – is both an old one and one
that will always be with us. With-our taking a stand on this,
one can note that Thiru Annadurai’s literary creations are
of two sorts though with no clear line draw-able between them.
Some of his stories, for instance, make good reading because of
the way in which they present fascinating characters or situations,
and not by virtue of an important “message”. An example
of this is Nadodi. This has a lot in common with the author’s
theatre-and-film plays, in that it is almost entirely made up
of dialogue-dialogue moreover, of a very colloquial style. But
as a good short story must, it depicts the personality of the
few involved in the action of the story by short, telling phrases.
A novel, by way of contrast, can, and indeed must, fill in more
detail, both through narrative and dialogue. It demands a different
sort of skill and a different kind of technique. And here is yet
another literary technique of which C.N.A. has shown his mastery.
The author’s own awareness of his control of this medium
is apparent in the opening chapter of Rangoon Radha, where by
implication the outcome of the story is is started almost at the
beginning of the book. In spite of this, the reader is still curious
to know how the action will develop to reach this conclusion.
It is inevitable, with narrative having an importance in a novel
that it clearly does not have in a play or even in a short story,
that the language of this book should be more formal than that
of the other writings so far mentioned in this essay. Stylistically
it stands mid-way between the colloquial Tamil of the plays and
stories, and the language of Thiru Annadurai’s non-fictional
compositions. And, however much one may like and admire his work
in the field of prose-fiction and drama, there can be no doubt
that his main claim to have made a significant contribution to
the development of Tamil prose style lies in his powerful oratory.
But is interesting to not that this eloquence that has given him
so many followers is to be seen in Thiru Annadurai’s novels
also-even in conversations like authentic conversations. There
is an example in the first chapter of Rangoon Radha. Though not
undeserving of the work “eloquent”, this passage is
nevertheless a good way from the magnificent, complex and intricately
constructed sentences that are the hall-mark of an Annadurai speech.
To hear him speak in public is an essential part of the education
of anyone who is interested in understanding something about modern
Tamil and in learning what the Tamil language is capable of. It
is impossible to have any acquaintance whith Tamil and Tamil Nadu
for long without being aware of this.
But what many of us who had been taught by our Tamil friends to
appreciate the linguistic talents of Arignar Anna were not aware
of, was his quite extraordinary mastery of English. Then came
the Second International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies,
at the concluding session of which we were privileged to hear
the Chief Minister speak in English. After this, no delegate to
the conference could fall to understand how he has gained such
a following through his speeches in his mother tongue. For this
was a great performance, mingling humour with sentiment, no native
speaker of English present on the occasion could have surpassed,
or even equaled. Nor should the technical mastery displayed make
us forget either the moderation of the views expressed or the
sincerity with which they were put forward. There was no sigh
of the “Extremist” that C.N.A. used occasionally to
be reputed to be.
One aspect of his supposed “extremism” that one occasionally
hears of is the way in which reputedly he never uses a borrowed
word when writing or when speaking in public in Tamil. Any page
of his works of fiction or drama will show this to be untrue:
for C.N.A. is no pedant. Thus one frequently finds such words
and phrases. The essential feature of C.N.A.’s Tamil style,
in fact, is his use of words and constructions that are appropriate
for the context and for the occasion. If dialogue is to be realistic,
it must contain grammatical forms and vocabulary items (whatever
their source) that are actually used by speakers of Tamil in normal
every day conversation. Moreover, certain words might be acceptable
in the narrative parts of a work of fiction that can have no place
in the fully formal style appropriate to a public address. Anyone
with a sense of occasion must accept that nowadays a formal speech
before an audience demands the use of what, for want of a better
description, one must call “pure” Tamil. It is part
of the greatness of C.N.A. as creative user of Tamil that he has
appreciated this, whilst at the same time acknowledging that there
are contexts where this form style would be entirely inappropriate.
The versatility that these few pages have attempted to hint at
is of a sort that most of us can only admire and envy. Yet they
are only part of the story, for the history of the present Government
of Madras State shows that, in addition to all of this, Thiru
Annadurai is an outstanding administrator and statesman. To achieve
this standing and at the same time to make contribution to one’s
literature ( and C.N.A.’s speeches, as well as his more
obviously “literary” endeavours, are an important
contribution to Tamil literature) is very rare. There have, it
is true, been examples in Britain of Prime Ministers making a
name for themselves as writers too (one thinks of Benjamin Disreali
and Winston Churchill among others) and there is the very special
case of Jawaharlal Nehru in India.
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