Bhalchandra Nemade, it must be said, is at it again. Its not new for his name to be associated with one controversial statement or the other, for he has been doing it ever since he entered the Marathi literary scene (not without a bang, it must be accepted). His novels trace a wide arc and, as the Chilean writer Roberto Bolano once said about the Honduran novelist Horacio Castellanos Moya, his novels are “insufferable to nationalists.”

Nemade is the writer who can be placed comfortably in the traditional wing of public intellectuals and bhasha writers that are uncomfortable with the notion of English language taking center-stage and representing, to a certain extent, the Indian literary scene in the global arena. The fact that regional language literature in India is being ignored at the cost of pushing forward original writings in the English language has made several writers, including Nemade, uneasy.

And it was precisely this unease that made Nemade lash out against the likes of Salman Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul at a felicitation ceremony last week, organized to felicitate his winning of the Jnanpith Award.

Marathi newspapers carried page-long articles that both exalted and at times, overrated Nemade's literature.Some pieces felt like premature obituaries written on an happy occasion, focusing more on Nemade's life as he had led it throughout all these years, and his journey as a writer; but some- only a few, though- did indulge in the study of the literature that he has created over the years and how it has continued to inspire and influence newer generations of Marathi writers.

Unfortunately, Nemade has never been a great influence on the national- let alone global- scale, for the simple fact that he remains to be translated. Even the few works that have been translated, have not been promoted adequately.

Nemade himself has penned volumes of essays and works of academic significance in English, mostly on the theory of desivad or nativism, of which he is a passionate champion. This, predictably enough, promoted certain intellectuals to call Nemade a hypocrite and be done with it, but its not as simple as that either.

Nemade had shot to fame with his unusual, experimental outlook towards fiction and literature thus expressed in his first novel, Kosala, published in 1963. Upon publication of Kosala, followed by several other novels, poetry collections and critical writings, Nemade came to be regarded as one of the best prose-stylist of Marathi literary tradition. His novels trace a wide arc, and his characters are occupied by the concerns of casteist and religious discourse within the Indian society, usually condensed within the community that the protagonist exists in. Like much of the other works of literary fiction that try- and succeed- in making a social statement, Nemade presents his theories to the readers by placing them within the protagonist of his novel and the small social sphere within which he functions, and then catapulting his concerns to a grander stage. This Nemade does in his trademark prose - perhaps a little difficult to get into, but impossible to put down once understood.

Certainly, all this makes Nemade a writer who is difficult, if not impossible, to translate. Writers of mediocre stature such as Chetan Bhagat have come to represent the current Indian literary scene on the global front, and all this at the cost of shameless ignorance about regional writers who have created a literature that is perhaps unparalleled. More recently global readership has been acknowledging translated literature, and writers from Central Europe, Russia, Japan and Latin America have started receiving international attention. Evidently, the writers of bhasha literature who have been writing and presenting their distinct cultures to the Indian audience (and are being consequently ignored) are of a stature that can parallel and compete with the fascinating literature that is being translated from the aforementioned regions of the World.

The question that Nemade, and countless others writers like him ask is simple: if the world is reading and appreciating translated literature, if the world seems to be more than enthusiastic to welcome writings from languages not of their own, and if the time seems to be promising for literature in translation, why is the Indian literary scene under-enthusiastic about presenting its literature for the world to understand, contemplate and theorize about?

Its a valid question, and one that needs to be addressed seriously. Nemade has been trying to do just that, and, unsurprisingly enough, he had managed to irk certain writers and public intellectuals in the process.

The writers that participated in The Gateway Litfest have pushed their weight behind Nemade and his statements- and rightly so. Eminent Bengali poet and writer Subodh Sarkar called Nemade “more important than Rushdie” and declared that Rushdie has “made no contribution to Indian literature.” The statement perhaps goes too far in demeaning Rushdie's contribution to the Indian literature, but its not wholly false either.

Gujarati writer Sitamshu Yashchandra blamed the English literature that is being produced by the likes of Rushdie and Naipaul for the ignorance and “paralysis” of regional literature.

These statements reflect the deep divide that persists within the Indian literary scene- a divide that should never have existed; a divide between two forms of literature that are rich, unique and expressive in their own right. It doesn't help, however, when writers like Rushdie, who are not without their own “grumpiness” when it comes to lashing out against regional language writers, write in international magazines such as The New Yorker: “This is it: the prose writing – both fiction and non-fiction- created in (the post-independence) period by Indian writers working in English is proving to be stronger and more important body of work than most of what has been produced in the eighteen “recognized” languages of India.”Although published several years ago it still rings of extreme ignorance.

There could be nothing more unfortunate than the fact that there is no trade of sorts within the Indian literary establishment. Rushdie and Naipaul (who remains to comment upon Nemade) have been known to be grumpy old men of literature themselves, extremely self-occupied and defensive of their works. When Rushdie wrote that he doubted Nemade's reading of his work, he was perhaps commenting upon his own sorry state of affairs- I suppose Rushdie himself had hardly heard of Nemade's name before this controversy erupted, let alone read or studied him, as he deserves to be. On the other hand, we have enough reasons to believe that Nemade has not just read but also carefully studied and presumably dissected Rushdie's work closely over the years, and he has made his (arguable) statements with full research to back him.

Bhalchandra Nemade remains a voice of dissent whose remarks have created a valid controversy. Valid because this sort of a controversy would hopefully help in placing on the social and literary stage an issue that needs to be addressed- and urgently so. Whether Nemade's statement hold true or not, the point he is trying to put forth remains essential and valid. In this age of India's faltering literary output, Nemade's- and the other regional literary veterans backing him - is the voice that greatly matters.

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