A Stream of Pure Sanskrit Curses: Caste, Fantasy, and Genre in Nehruvian India

This talk examines Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh’s 1957 poem “Brahmarakshas” [The Brahman Demon] to understand Hindi literature’s engagement with problems of genre and literary form in post-independence India. This long poem, which depicts a demonic ghost of a Brahman who has failed to pass on his teachings, is read as a pivotal satire of the Nehruvian intellectual. In my talk, I argue that contextualizing this poem in the larger canvas of Muktibodh’s writing reveals its deep concern with questions of caste and education. This concern draws attention to the experiments with genre and literary form that shape this work and bring it into conversation with global debates on modernism and realism. This talk will argue that Muktibodh’s long poems, of which “Brahmarakshas” is a key example, are a response to key tensions in the relation of South Asian literary cultures to fundamental problems of twentieth-century literature.