109. Sayaantan Mondel

Abstract 109
sayantan mondal     

Tentative Title: “From the Complacent Default to the Hungry Deviation: A Study of Hungryalist Poetry of 1960s

Abstract

The fact that there exists categories like mainstream and non-mainstream, canonical and non-canonical proves a point emphatically that our perception has its defaults and occasional deviations, dissents make us aware of them. Such dissenting deviations from ‘the default’ create scopes for the witnesses to understand ‘the default’ more closely. And also create new directions, new possibilities to be considered. In this paper, I propose to look into the Hungryalist movement of 1960s which not only challenged the contemporary Mainstream literary genres but also initiated a process of tearing apart the language, the dictum used in contemporary literary practice. By focusing particularly on the poetry of Malay Roy Choudhury (Hungryalism was not confined to poetry alone, it had powerful components in music, paintings and in many other traditions of art) who initiated this movement by writing The Hungryalist Manifesto ( published in Kulchur: ed. Lita Hornick), this paper will try to contextualize the movement in contemporary socio-historical milieu and will also attempt to find answers to the questions like why the government took offensive of such a movement? what was the necessity of shaking things out of its complacence? How true was the claim of the Hungryalists who felt that the post-colonial dream of a new, ecstatic , resurgent India had turned sour due to license and permit raj of a corrupt bureaucracy-politician nexus and the country was hurtling towards a nightmare?

This paper will refer to archival materials like review of these poems in contemporary journals and magazines, correspondences among the Hungryalist poets, with European writers such as Allen Ginsberg to show how this voice of dissent was received within and without India and what impact it created on readers’ perception and reading habits.