Like every year, the Booker Prize shortlist has garnered a lot of attention in India. We also have an Indian-born author on the shortlist. Regardless, Booker Prize announcements are awaited with keen interest primarily by a minority community in the country largely comprising English language publishers, booksellers, critics, academics and readers. The Booker Prize-winning work is then translated into multiple Indian languages which is a pure economic decision rather than an artistic choice.
A kind of neo-colonialism
The obsession with the Booker is in tandem with our fixation for foreign awards and nominations. A kind of neo-colonialism or an imperialism of the mind is established when books and authors are considered important only vis-à-vis their mentions in the foreign press and nominations for ‘prestigious’ foreign awards. Many authors from the erstwhile Commonwealth clamour to write for the foreign press and gain entry into the exclusive club of a privileged few. If you win it, even better. There is very little attempt to discuss the winning title for its own merit. The awards create blinders. A slavish attitude is perpetuated through awards and longlists that refuse to read or recognise literature beyond honorifics or quotable quotes.
International Booker Prize | Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s The Discomfort of Evening wins
Lest it be forgotten it should perhaps be said that awards are always a reflection of a handful or a jury comprising certain individuals and their likes and dislikes. That is the case with all jury and awards. This lack of criticality around the award is farcical. Also, how has the Booker really helped the reading or writing sphere in this country? It has encouraged a class of writers who write to win awards. Their writing, however, has to qualify for the pre-determined categories as to how the East or the rest of the world is imagined by the West. That debate is still not dated. Gender, colour, caste, conflict have been reduced to writerly templates and plot points to tick off the list of essentials a work of fiction from this part of the world must contain.
The Booker Prize or any big award so to speak has done precious little to improve the Indian readership rather than creating momentary interest in the work or the author. There are some who attain permanent celebrity status based on the laurels of the award. This award-obsessed culture is a trap to jettison conversation about reading and writing and further drown us in the cult of the celebrity, a permanent fetish. We refuse to look beyond the individual. His or her writing becomes secondary and gradually of marginal interest.
Books in India
There are several awards in various Indian languages which regularly honour and recognise literary talent. Those awards barely find a mention in the mainstream media. We have to wait for translations to bridge that gap. While translations from Indian languages into English have peaked over the years, only a certain kind of writing is chosen or curated; writing that mainstream, metropolitan India might want to read from the provinces. This is a major limitation that we have to find ways to address.
While we look away from our own, we constantly strive to understand the foreign, the different. There is a lot of glib talk about the role of literature in expanding the horizon but it shouldn’t be done at the cost of ignoring local knowledge systems and writing cultures. We often talk about building bridges through literature. While that is surely welcome, it should not hold our imagination hostage to foreign awards and juries which do precious little to improve our lives as readers and thinkers especially in a country known for its widely varied and constantly evolving literary cultures beyond the English speaking and writing sphere.
Kunal Ray teaches literary and cultural studies at FLAME University, Pune
