The JCB Prize for Literature: Celebrating Indian Literary Fiction

Vandita Bajaj, Class of 2020

The JCB Prize for Literature was instituted earlier this year with the intention of providing greater exposure to Indian authors as well as recognizing the integral role played by translators in the nation’s diverse literary tradition. The winner of the award is to be announced on 27th October 2018 and will be awarded Rupees 25 lakhs as prize money (the five books that make it to the shortlist will receive Rupees 1 lakh each). Additionally, if the winning book is a translation, the translator also wins Rupees 5 lakhs. The prize money makes it the richest literary prize in India.

The value of the prize isn’t solely the monetary reward; the focus is also on enhancing the public image of the chosen works and their authors. Rana Dasgupta, award-winning novelist, essayist, and Literary Director of the JCB Prize said to GQ magazine: “We have a large marketing budget to get the conversation going around their work, and through it, on Indian literary fiction. Take the Booker Prize: the prize money is £50,000, while the annual budget is actually about £1.5 million. The winning titles’ sales multiply 8–10 times. It’s that sort of impact that we’re trying to create.”

In his role as Literary Director, Dasgupta’s responsibilities include “holding the prize to the highest literary standard” and appointing the five-member jury that decided the longlist, shortlist and the winner. This year’s jury is headed by Indo-Canadian Filmmaker Deepa Mehta, and includes entrepreneur and scholar Rohan Murthy, novelist and playwright Vivek Shanbhag (his own novel Ghachar Ghochar written in Kannada and translated into English by Srinath Perur, has garnered critical acclaim), astrophysicist and author Priyamvada Natarajan, and translator and Indian classical languages expert Arshia Sattar. Anuya Jakatdar, co-host of the popular Books on Toast podcast, described the jury as “the most intense and acclaimed book club anyone can be a part of.”

The ten books that made it to the longlist, announced last week, include works by literary bigwigs such as Nayantara Sahgal (When the Moon Shines by Day), Kiran Nagarkar (Jasoda) and Jeet Thayil (The Book of Chocolate Saints), who have been recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Award. The list also features two debutante writers Devi Yeshodharan (Empire) and Shubhangi Swarup (Latitudes of Longing). Two translated titles made it to the longlist — Perumal Murugan’s Poonachi, translated from Tamil by N. Kalyan Raman, and Benyamin’s Jasmine Days, translated from Malayalam by Shahnaz Habib.

The emphasis on translated Indian literature is the result of a conscious effort to bring to the limelight writers of regional languages as well as translators, whose work in increasing the accessibility of literature often goes unnoticed. JCB’s bid to encourage translations is evident in the rules set by them; publishers can submit a maximum of four entries, and out of this two have to be translations. This year, 22% of the total entries were translated works. The number is expected to go up to 50% — 60% in the coming years as publishers will commission more translations to be able to submit four books. While the subject of translations has been hotly debated with the question of “what is lost in the process” being raised repeatedly, Vivek Shanbhag argues that “translation always get you a new reader and new responses. People who do not share the same culture and ethos also respond. When a work goes beyond its original language, it acquires a new and different meaning, which is always a pleasure for a writer.”

In the forthcoming years, the JCB Prize hopes to generate the level of excitement and conversation as the Man Booker and the Pulitzer. Indian readers of literary fiction, too, use these awards as guides to decide what they should be reading next. The White Tiger by Arvind Adiga sold 200,000 copies in India alone, with HarperCollins publishing it after Indian publishers rejected it, once it won the Man Booker Prize. Moreover, people associate Indian literary fiction with authors of Indian origin, such as Jhumpa Lahiri and Salman Rushdie, whose global celebrity status guarantees conversation around their work. The JCB prize is open only to Indian citizens and hopes to make the authors household names, driving discussions around their works and paving the way for a new generation of writers and translators.

The objective of the prize is to curate an archive of literary works that will endure the test of time and speak to readers, both current and future, about the time in which they were written. In a multilingual country like India, there exists a tremendous variety of experiences and viewpoints; the JCB Prize for Literature is a promising endeavour towards understanding and appreciating the vast array of stories told by contemporary Indian authors. Perhaps the prize can do for the rest of us what it did for jury chair Deepa Mehta — “open a door to today’s India”.

While the distinguished Jury of JCB has given us their longlist, here is the verdict of some of Ashoka’s Professors on essential reads in the genre of Indian Literary Fiction:-

Professor Aparna Vaidik (Associate Professor of History): Srividya Natarajan’s A Gardner in a Wasteland (2011) is one of the most irreverent texts that students will read during their time at Ashoka. It’s a graphic novel on Jotiba Phule’s tongue-in-cheek take on Brahmanical belief systems. Imagine ‘Brahma sulking in polluting seclusion, menstruating through multiple orifices all over his body’! The text weaves the writings of Jotiba Phule (Gulamgiri and Shetkaryacha Asud) in with contemporary conversations around caste oppression, gender inequality, class hierarchies and racial injustice. The blending of the historical and the contemporary is done seamlessly in the text with the help of the graphics. It is beautifully illustrated by Aparajita Ninan.

Professor Janice Pariat (Assistant Professor of Creative Writing): Chetan Raj Shreshtha’s debut, The King’s Harvest (2013), consists of two novellas, both set in Sikkim. Chetan is a wonderful, evocative writer, and these stories, old and contemporary, bring the place and its people to life.

Another notable work is Peace Has Come (2018) by Parismita Singh. It is a collection of achingly good short stories springing from Bodoland, a turbulent part of upper Assam. Parismita, who’s also a graphic novelist, has quiet, understated literary grace and style.

Professor Rita Kothari (Professor of English): The one name that leaps to mind is U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara (1965). It’s a novel about the disintegration of an organic Brahminical community in an agraharam in Karnataka. The disintegration of the self, community, caste, and many other certitudes make this a significant novel to understand both traditional India and its relations with modernity. The novel is highly sociological and also existentialist in the questions it asks. Given the fact that this novel was translated by A.K.Ramanujan, India’s most well-known translator, who provides an amazingly textured understanding of “samskara” (and its multiple meanings) in the introduction, it is also a wonderful translation. This is a landmark in Indian literature.

Professor Tisha Srivastav (Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies): A historical fiction novel, Empire by Devi Yasodharan (2017) is set in the time of the Chola empire, which is present-day Tamil Nadu. The protagonist, Aremis, is an intensely capable female Greek guard/markswoman who walks into the royal palace, wars, and falls in love with a man (she also flirts with bisexuality). While Aremis is depicted as skilled but unsure, her confidence grows through the plot. At one level, many passages are sometimes considered, sometimes stretched, but often quite self-reflexive about history, war, kings, positions and bardic lore.

As someone who reported on the tsunami in India for over a month, reading up on what one could find in English, on the ecological coastal history of Nagapattinam/Kanniyakumari districts in Tamil Nadu, I have retained a bird’s eye view fascination for the area. Which is strangely why the novel also satisfies one with a close up feel of street activity, away from royal chambers. Lines like “Toddy sits before us like captured moonlight” often mark a poet’s eye in this remarkable debut.

The morbid, slightly theatrical cover disappoints more than anything between the pages. The book itself is a thoughtful, empathetic, well-paced, long read. Try it for a glimpse of another state of India in another time. If you already like semi-thrillers inhaling a made-up tale about the past, well, this one is just a story refreshingly told.

P.S. When the novel came out, the Indian internet website SCROLL carried a respectful back and forth between the novelist on Chola sources and a historian. The mutual argument — what constitutes historical fiction.

The novel is available in print and on the Juggernaut app.

Professor Anjum Hassan (Visiting Professor of Creative Writing; Books Editor for Caravan): A Rebel and Her Cause: The Life and work of Rashid Jahan is a collection of short stories and plays by a now largely unknown but radical for her time Urdu writer, doctor and feminist, Rashid Jahan, from the early 20th century. The work appeared a few years ago translated by Rakhshanda Jalil. She also writes a wonderful introductory essay on Rashid that helps us imagine her as a person and a writer.

The author is an Arts & Culture staff writer for the Edict.