The immediate need when addressing a person’s death is to find an appropriate adjective or noun to sum up their life. But such an approach often leads to misattribution and misinterpretation. It is difficult in practical terms to describe a septuagenarian who has lived a multi-faceted life. This stems from multiple challenges – an outsider’s lack of access to actual life events and a general inability to fathom the complexity of an era gone by.
Vishnu Khare, a grandmaster of the Hindi literary world, became the inadvertent source of this serious problem when his extraordinary life came to an end after a week-long struggle with a brain haemorrhage, which he suffered while living alone in Mayur Vihar, New Delhi. Although he is remembered as a poet of high calibre, Khare was reticent to the point of silence about his own poetry.
While everyone admired his acumen and sharp abilities as an honest critic, we are left with just one book on criticism by him. He wrote two books on cinema, which went quickly out of circulation, due to the very poor state of the Hindi publishing world and a small number of uninformed readers. Even so, Khare was arguably the most remarkable literary person working in the Hindi language after Independence.
The public intellectual as littérateur
With a wide spectrum of knowledge, command over several languages, an enviably sharp memory, unparalleled critical insight and a commitment to building public consciousness, Khare redefined the role of the literary individual. As a public intellectual, he intervened in almost all major literary debates, guiding them in fruitful directions. And amidst all the controversies, he probably enjoyed having many detractors.
Khare was deeply respected by his opponents despite his acrid criticism. Unlike in the case of many of his contemporaries or legendary predecessors, he never wavered from his critical position. His commitment to truth and his unfaltering dedication to pursuing it, his zeal for raising the bar of excellence with his writing, his uncompromising intellect, and his innate poetic talent combined to create a towering image respected by his colleagues, predecessors, and even newcomers to literature who were 40 or 50 years younger.
Starting his work as a translator remarkably young, Khare translated TS Eliot’s The Waste Land when he was merely 19. His translation was commended by the famous Hindi poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, who mistook the young Khare for a much older and mature literary figure. It is believed that Khare made sure not to meet Dinkar to avoid triggering the senior poet’s legendary wrath.
Khare worked as a professor of English, as programme secretary at the Sahitya Akademi, and then as an editor at Navbharat Times. His journalism and his poetic sensibilities combined to enable him to evolve as a public intellectual. In a sense, he was only following in the footsteps of littérateurs from the West who had parallel careers – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1849-1932), for instance, was a statesman, while Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (1850 - 1893) was a judge.
Given the increasing complexity of the modern world, a public intellectual is burdened with the responsibility to be well-versed in local and national politics, global and national literature, music, cinema and culture. Perhaps this explains why, instead of writing sensitive poems about nature, Khare wrote about, among other things, street smartness, with questions about morality and declining honesty.
A writer who taught more than he wrote
It would be no exaggeration to say that literature has suffered the death of one of the very few reputed, trusted and celebrated public intellectuals whose contribution to Hindi literature was both innovative and unparalleled. Some critics have argued that Khare’s literary output was limited, but they have failed to take into account the depth of his works. A writer like him had to be on top of changes in society, technology, politics and the arts, while maintaining a deep familiarity with classical texts.
Thus, Khare’s name can be bracketed with those of a handful of other extraordinary contributors to Hindi literature after independence), such as Jainendra, Yashpal, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, Sachchidanand Hiranand Vatsyayan “Ajneya” and Muktibodh. In fact, Khare arguably surpasses the colossal versatility even of Ajneya in terms of his critical analysis and his socio-literary activities, which he continued with till his last days.
Much of his contribution during the latter half of his working life was through essays and careful comments offered to young writers, which are fresh and alive in both public and private memory. The enormous impact of the penultimate years of his life and activities can be seen in the way hundreds of unknown or small-time writers (including me), who benefitted from personal interactions and long conversations, have of him.
A critic is primarily a teacher. It can safely be said that Khare remained a strict teacher all his life, even in his scathing reviews. A teacher’s success can be measured by the accomplishments of his students. Hazari Prasad Dwivedi’s importance can be underlined by the work of significant literary figures like Namvar Singh, Kedarnath Singh, Kashinath Singh, Vishwanath Tripathi, or Kumar Vitthal, all of whom are essential names of Hindi literature in the 20th century. These poets and writers were Dwivedi’s students either at the Benaras Hindu University or at Chandigarh University.
As a teacher, Khare too has left his influence on many readers and writers. Time alone will reveal the ultimate impact he had on them. But it is clear that he cannot be evaluated only on the basis of the books he has written – his advice, suggestions and, indeed, corrections intended to improve the works of others reveal him as a careful architect of the modern sensibilities of modern Hindi readers and writers.
A question ran through many minds during Khare’s last rites: would it have been better had he stayed at Mumbai instead of accepting the post of vice-chairman of the Hindi Akademi in Delhi? Not that it was an attraction for institutions or laurels or benefits that drove him to the capital. But Khare knew that real change begins within great institutions and centres of learning.
Two weeks before his death, during a personal meeting with him on September 5, Teachers’ Day, at India International Centre in Delhi, I had told him that his biography should say that he lived righteously and struggled like a warrior till his last breath and with the last drop of his blood.
I did not know that I would have to write a tribute to him so soon. I did not know his blood would clot his brain so abominably. To many of us, Vishnu Khare will always be the caring teacher and committed intellectual that he was in his lifetime.