Six degrees (and a third) of separation from Fakir Mohan

[Salman Rushdie is poor, substandard writer: Juctice Katju Times of India PTI | Jan 25, 2012

Referring to the Jaipur festival, Katju said one would have expected "serious discussion on literature, particularly indigenous literature" of the likes of Kabir, Premchand, Sharat Chandra, Manto, Ghalib, Faiz, Kazi Nazrul Islam and Subramania Bharti. … Katju maintained that the whole history of the great Indian literature, rich in its variety, from Valmiki and Vyas to modern times should have been discussed. There could also have been a discussion on foreign writers like Dickens, Shaw, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, Upton Sinclair, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gorki and Pablo Neruda, he said. …

He said India is facing massive socio-economic problems today and literature should address these. "The struggle which Kabir waged against narrow sectarianism, which Sharat Chandra waged against the caste system and women's oppression, which Faiz waged against despotism, which Subramania Bharti waged for nationalism and women's emancipation, which Dickens and Gorki waged against exploitation and social injustice - these are the matters which should have been discussed at Jaipur. Instead, Rushdie dominated most of the show," he said.]

[Falling In Love With The Novel from The Middle Stage - Dec 7, 2011

Oriya writer Fakir Mohan Senapati’s limber and anarchic Six Acres and a Third, every bit as powerful today as it was when first published in 1902. Other great books of an Indian pantheon might include UR Ananthamurthy’s Samskara and Bharathipura (Kannada), Salma’s The Hour Past Midnight (Tamil), and the Bengali novels of Mahasweta]

[Fakir Mohan Senapati and the Indian novel from The Middle Stage - Oct 9, 2011

Oriya writer Fakir Mohan Senapati appears to have asked himself: “Is there an Indian way of writing a novel?” Ramanujan had to identify or isolate his answer; Senapati had to invent his. Senapati poured his idiosyncratic novelistic awareness into a story called Chha Mana Atha Guntha, published in serial form in an Oriya magazine from 1895-97, then as a book in 1902, and at long last in an English translation adequate to its linguistic energy and narrative agility as late as 2006.]

Katju is unaware of Fakir Mohan Senapati, it seems. Odisha Peoples’ Unity Council is organizing 2nd Fakir Mohan Memorial Lecture and Award Presentation ceremony on January 31, 2012 at 5.3o pm in the Constitution Club, New Delhi. [TNM55]