The Progressive Cosmopolis of South Asian Poetry: Critical Essays
“Indian literature is one, though written in different languages”. This statement made by S. Radhakrishanan continues to inform Indian literary historiography in fundamental ways. This so-called ‘oneness’ has however been a matter of critical contestation. Sheldon Pollock, a modern-day Indologist, tends to place the variety of vernacular (bhasha) literatures in Sanskrit cosmopolis with all kinds of originary claims. But keeping in view rather checkered history of Indian literature, its oneness cannot be pinned down to one definitive originary moment. The bhasha critics tend to discover the oneness of Indian literatures in the revolutionary bhakti-past.