A Journal of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya

Discourse
THE NOVELS OF AGYEYA : A SOCIOLOGY
OF LITERATURE PERSPECTIVE
Subhash Sharma
Sachchidanand Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ was a prolific Hindi writer who
wrote in different genres of literature like poetry, short story, novel,
reminiscences, travelogue, diary etc with the same speed, range
and depth. He got social recognition and sanction as a major writer
with the publication of his first novel ‘Shekhar : Ek Jivani’ (Shekhar :
A Biography), volume I and II (a third volume was written but
not published. However, most of the leftist critics like Ram Vilas
Sharma and Namvar Singh did not appreciate and recognize the greatness
of this novel, probably because of three reasons: first, he was not
a ‘declared’ leftist in his ideology; second, he was not a ‘realist’
literateur but an individualist existential writer: third, he was associated
with an organization called Congress for Cultural Freedom which,
in turn, had a symbiotic relationship with United States of America
and its Ford Foundation. However, in 2011 during the celebration
of his birth centenary, Namvar Singh accepted in a public function
at Varanasi that Agyeya was a greater poet than Nagarjuna (whom
he had called the ‘Modern Kabir’ long back). But some leftist writers
like Pankaj Bisht and Ajay Singh branded Agyeya in recent past
as reactionary, a spy of the British Empire and so on. On the other
hand, the rightists have also accused Yashpal as a British spy, with
a vengeance. It is really worrisome that such mudslinging has jumped
from the arena of politics to the arena of literature. To my mind,
both of them are great writers with distinction. Undoubtedly, Raghuvir
56 :: January-March 2012