Book Review

The Shared Crossings: Indo-Hispano-Lusophone Literary Perspectives.

25th Anniversary issue, 2010, of Hispanic Horizon: Journal of the Centre of Spanish, Portugese, Italian and Latin American Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, N. Delhi. Edited by Shyama Prasad Ganguly
It is a rare treat when a journal issue carries 400 pages of largely quality material relating to an area of scholarship that is considerably under- represented in Indian publishing. The Shared Crossings: Indo-Hispano-Lusophone Literary Perspectives, the 25th anniversary issue of “Hispanic Horizon”, probably the oldest and most reputed journal of Hispanic and Lusophone studies in the country, has aptly been edited by its Founder Editor, Professor S.P. Ganguly. In bringing together research on the transactions between Indian and Spanish, Portugese, Latin American and Brazilian literatures, by scholars from all these contexts, and from the UK and USA as well, this issue has taken up the place of an important milestone in comparative literary and cultural studies.

Amongst the truly noteworthy essays in this volume is  a reprint of the first Pablo Neruda Memorial Leuture  delivered in 1995 at Delhi University by one of the most revered Indian comparatists of all time, the Late Professor Sisir Das. William Radice's “My letters from Juan Mascaro” includes the first eighteen of over seventy letters that this Majorcan born translator (for Penguin) of the Upanishads, Bhagvad Gita and Dhammapada wrote to him; and the most memorable of these is the one on verse translations that raises critical issues for translators. Shyama Prasad Ganguly's own research brings a major contemporary poet, Peruvian Cesar Vallejo, within the ambit of Peruvian-Indian literary relations, both in relation to Vallejo's reflections on Krisnamurty, Tagore and Gandhi, as well as in terms of his reception in India as a poet of commitment. Juan Alfredo Pinto, himself a creative writer, charts out new vistas for literary journeys across cultures. Oscar Pujol, a Spanish scholar of Sanskrit texts, brings to this volume rare reflections on Ortega y Gasset's work in relation to Patanjali and yogic thought. Nilanjana Bhattacharya's carefully annotated translation of a section of Victoria Ocampo's autobiography adds a valuable dimension to the Ocampo-Tagore scholarship, while Minni Sawhney's essay reads the Indian “Gora” and the Mexican “Entrecruzamientos” together to reinforce a cautionary critique of essentialist identity politics. Across this series of a range of articles, which refreshingly includes high quality research by young scholars too, the volume ends in the realm of popular culture with Carlos Gohn's piece on the Bollywood style Brazilian soap opera Caminho de India (literally Route to India), that has broken all viewership records on prime time Television in Brazil. This essay also deals with the reception of the serial on internet blog sites, and with it, this volume opens up further questions for cross cultural research in the age of the superhighway.

Finally, even as the vast variety of research represented here convey a sense of the range of the engagement across these literatures, simulataneously, its systematic organization into Indo-Spanish, Indo-Latin American and Indo-Lusophone sections also brings in a well thought out focus on India's engagement with each literary trajectory and vice versa. This 25th anniversary compilation is too rich a volume for it to be allowed recede into the past as just yet another issue of a journal; it is hoped that it will be published soon as a full-fledged book.

(Reviewed by Prof. Kavita Punjabi, Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University)

List of Publications
School of Social Sciences

• “Hind Swaraj Ki Prasangikata” (2nd edition), Dr. Amit Kumar Sharma, Centre for the Study of Social  Systems.
• “Congress-Led Coalition Government” “Crisis to Crisis”, Shipra Publications, Delhi, Emeritus Prof. C.P. Bhambhri, Centre for Political Studies.
• “Unsung Innovators of Kashmir”, Srinagar: Gulshan Books, 2011. ISBN: 978-81-8339-120-7. Sheikh Fayaz Ahmad, Centre for Studies in Policy Science.