Worldereader Vol 1 Issue 1 Jan-Jun Mohapatra

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1 Religious Ramifications in the Selected Poems of A. K. Ramanujan, Jayanta Mahapatra and Niranjan Mohanty Abstract: Dr. Bikram Kumar Department of English Brahmabarada College, Jajpur, Odisha, INDIA In human behavior religion provides ethics with emotionalism. It has a great impact on creative art.when there is the question of righteousness in Art, no need of prophets to practice the authority over human mind rather a proper realization leads to understand the purpose of life. The fragrance of spirituality is not felt in outside but rather felt within the heart of the artist. It is beyond cast, creed, community and ethnicity but to illuminate oneself, marking as a centre of human ecology. Religion is a revelation where spirituality, culture and rootedness get identified. There is a clear imprint of such inclination found in ancient literature. With the scientific and intellectual advancement the dogma has become a creed outworn. The spirit of rationalism and humanism form a complete sense of religion in literature as a whole. In poetry it also provides joy in its essence to make a smile. When this joy is mingled with subtle spirituality, it is transmitted into bliss. A clear observation of such truth is felt in selected poems of three Indian poets writing in English like A.K. Ramanujan, Jayanta and Niranjan Mohanty. In their poetry they have projected the eastern religious concerns along with a kind of meditation in poetry. In my proposal I would like to bring out the essence of their art in religious back ground giving the reference to respective cultures and rootedness. My attempt will be to delineate the spirituality ideology and the sweet beauty of their poetry. I shall also focus on religious ramifications covertly controlling society, culture, economy and politics and bring to light how those are at work to sabotage human destiny as projected in the poems of Ramanujan, and Mohanty. Keywords: Ramanujan,, Mohanty, poetry Indian English poetry has come through a long way of experiment to establish its genre with a befitting stand in global poetry. It creates its own voice which is very much valid and relevant in exploring the various literary scenes of the country. In post independence Indian poetry in English there is a lurking shadow of tradition, culture, custom, religion and heritage of the soil along with the authentic picture of contemporary life. It essentially promotes a self/awareness, an accurate knowledge of native with a keen insight of transformation. 1

2 Like all other branches of literature, poetry deals with human belief. Imagination and intellect are the tools of every creative art along with this belief. In our poetry Indian intellectual discourse has taken a vital part minimizing western paradigms. Most of the time the transcendental experience or thought creates a poetic consciousness. It can simply be indentified as spirituality that leads to mystic ecstasy. In a broader sense it is religion whether western or the eastern that sustains this experience with the essence of humanity, rationalism and classic traditionalism. The scientific spirit broods on rationalism and secular humanity with a power of facts or reason. Religion is not against reason and scientific observation, rather it transcends them. The two great religions of the world, Judaism and Christianity contribute a lot to the western thought. They make the revelation of reason or intellect. It is a fact that fanaticism leads to destruction as great wards have been taken place in the name of religion. However renaissance brought intellectual and scientific advancement but there was a decline of morality due to the lack of religious belief. In the eastern religions beliefs of dualism or non-dualism, one a god or idol worship or the feelings from the Shaiva, the Shakata, the Basishnav, the Boudha, the Jaina motivate the creative mind. Religion is the blissful experience of the Absolute Reality. This experience is revealed through ethics and emotional expression. The purpose of life is to realize god, the righteous way to avoid evil from the path of life. The great vision comes from the embodiment of truth and reality. If is achieved only when the mind becomes purified and subtle, is the vision of spirituality. Religion is developed on the fore ground of spirituality and the realization of god. It manifests the harmony of mind for the better appreciation of supreme reality. In literature religion has a significant expression to attract human mind. Particularly in poetry it has the vital presentation. The great Hindu epics like The Mahabharata, The Ramayana or the holly books like the Vagbat Gita proclaim the strength of spirituality and ultimate realization through cosmic drama. Such feeling envisages moral dealings along with righteousness. In this connection Swami Prabhavananda observes in Arnold Mathew Arnold defined religion as ethical life with a touch of emotionalism (28). The spirit of religion is rightly represented in poetry. In human society it not only points out the righteous nor of life rather, it makes the difference between good and evil and subsequently good wins over evil. Along with the ancient Indian poetry, Modern Indian English poetry is also active to sustain religion in creative or in emotional frame work. Many poets, more or less, brood on the topic. Aurobindo s Savitri and Tagore s Gitanjali portray the religions phenomena in an artistic way. The mystic realization is the key projection in religious poetry. But, in post modern time poetry reveals the particular thought in a roundabout way where the ironic implication is more and the implied meaning converges with the fact of religion and its subsequent meanings. Contemporary Indian English Poetry sustains the echo of religions tone in its structure and theme. To prove the example for better analysis three major Indian English Poets like A.K. Ramanujan, Jayanta Mahapatra and Niranjan Mohanty may be taken in to consideration. These poets have come from different regional, social, religions traditional and cultural background. A.K. Ramanujan is from Sough India and remains most part of his life in America, Jayanta Mahapatra a Christian remains mostly in Odisha and Niranjan Mohanty junior to them, also a reputed poet of Odisha. These poets are not at only all religions poets, however they have focused on the theme of religion in different ways besides their other suitable themes of contemporary life. A.K. Ramanujan a Tamilian born in Mysore in 1929, who after spending the first thirty year of life in India, settled down permanently in the city of Chicago, in U.S.A. though occasionally 2

3 visited India. Despite his long stay in the foreign country he did not forget his roots in his native culture especially in his Hindu heritage. The religions aspect of the human life gets elaborate expression in most of the poems of Ramanujan. The feeling for gods and goddesses is accordingly portrayed in his works as per the traditional belief and social acceptance. His Indian feeling and Hindu impulse achieve their points with precise rhetorical language. The important fact that appears in the analysis of his poems is that he has a comprehensive knowledge of Indian mythology, culture, folk-lore and religion. His expatriate experience did not overlap his knowledge of native background and sustains the embodiment of culture and religion. In his poetry not only he describes about god and goddesses holy places, cruel sense of tradition but also the worship and reverence of animals including serpents in India as they are considered as the ornament of lord Shiva. In Naag Panchami there is the celebration for such reverence to the snakes. Ramanujan gives instance of this festive occasion in his poem Snakes. Mohter gives them milk In saucers (CP-4) With Human relationship, Nature gets its significance in his poetry. His poetry revolves in mapping the mutual independencies of body, nature, culture and time until they cover an immense span of human and natural history (Pandey 134). The mysterious link between aman and nature is found in his poems. Nature has become the presiding deity in his poems. The natural objects like trees. Animals and rivers are represented in his poems like gods and goddesses with mythical and religious significance as accepted by the people. It sustains the strength of emotion and sentiment. In the poem Zoo Gardens Revisited the poet pleads to save the animal life and at the same time he describes the incarnation of god in the form of animal. Lord of lion face, boar snout, and fish eyes, Killer and Killer (CP154) In mythology lord of lion is described as Narsimha who devoured Hiranyakshyap, the father of Prahlad. Boar Snout, refers to Baraha incarration, and fish eyes Matshya incarnation of lord Vishun. The importance of different incarnations of lord Vishun have been described here. A.K. Ramanujan is basically an Indian to reflect religious thoughts concerning Hindu gods and goddesses, native customs and rite and rituals in his poems. His mythological poems entitled mythologies. I, mythologies.2, and mythology.3, richly describe all such thoughts. There is the echo of the holy book of the Hindus, Shrimad Bhagavad Gita which is easily heard in the first two poems. His remarkable poem Prayers to lord Murugan gets its height with the irony of human behavior. Murugan is described as ancient Dravidian god of fertility Joy, Youth, beauty, war and love. He is represented as a six-faced god with twelve hands. The poet addresses him as. Lord of New arrivals, lord of Green Lord of great changes, land f spoor of the tigress, lord of the twelve right hands, Land of headlines, lord of the sixth sense, lord of solutions, lord of lost travelers and lord of answers. It appears as a prayer to the lord to sanction different wishes. But the irony is that the modern man is unconscious and has the withdrawal from the spiritual centre. Another poem of his entitled Conventions of Despair depicts his religions mind as he says: I must seek and will find / My particular hell only in my Hindu mind (CP 34). It reflects 3

4 his strict adherence to his reots. Bruce Kind remarks: How much Ramanujan remained emotionally part of India and how insistent was he to distance himself from any form of the Hindoo (79). Jayanta Mahapatra is also a celebrated Indian English poet who sustains the cultural and religions roots in poetry. He proclaims: I believe poetry will not be noticed until we explore our writing within the context of a unifying outlook on life. Every poet seeks to accomplish this is the poems he writes. But he or the should not forget his or her own roots even though the work is written in English (5) For his most discussed long poem Relationship he got central Sahitya Academi Award in The first section of the poem combines the Hindu deities Shivanda Krishna (Lord Jagannath) as well as historical past. The opening lines appear paradoxical in nature: Once again one must sit back and bury the fact in this earth the forbidding myth The phallus of the enormous stone And feel the tensed muscles of rock yield to the virtuous water of the hidden springs of the Mahanadi, The mystery of recret right that make up destiny (1-3,8-10) Here the phallus of enormous stone refers to lord Shiva whose lings, the phallic symbol is workshiped in many temples in Odisha amongst which the Lingaraj Temple at Bhubaneswar is famous. The Yoni and Linga are female and male sex organs, which represent Shiva and Shakti in cosmic union that itself worshipped in almost all the temples of Odisha. It indicates the fusion of prakrit and purusa. In the section IX of the poem he talks about The ruins of Konark and in the Section VIII about the human bondage and Buddhism. His another poem Dawn at Puri expresses the religions concerns with Lord Jagannath, Puri is a seat of Odiya culture with the temple of Lord Jagannath as its nucleus. Here salvation or moksha happens of the body is cremated at Swargadwara which appears as a belief. In the last part of this poem it is noted: her last wish to be cremated here twisting uncertainly like light n the shifting sand (16-18) Puri has became a local space of Hindu religion. In his poem Myth he writes: Face upon face returns to the barbed horizons of the foggy temple; her lies a crumpled lead, a filthy scarlet flower our of placeless pasts, on the motionless starts (3-6) 4

5 His quest for meaning of living lies in history and religion. In his other poems like In God s Night, From Temple: The Shrine and Declining Gods Mahapatra situates human with the condition of religion or spirituality. Here he explores the themes of religion, culture and time. Mahapatra s visionary world is constructed with the symbols and metaphors for history culture and religion. Niranjan Mohanty is another poet of Odisha who follows the traits of. Most of his poems bring to picture of the geographical situations, history, tradition and religions prospects of Odisha. His poems of history or the temple poems like The Sun Temple at Konarak, A Temple in Ruins and A Temple, Near the Temple or his stone poems like Stone Stones or Making other Believe the language of a stone will a Stone Settle in my room etc implicitly express the theme of tradition and religion. His vision of life is more prominent than other implications. In his poem Ceremony of silence he describes his own feeling with the presence of god: I close my eyes, as if, nothing has happened since I was born, And two huge round eyes out of the strange logwood, guard my sanity the stupid stone of my fuming identity (21-25) In his poetic interpretation he has brought his closeness with lord Jagannath, the great religious spirit of the land. The most realistic picture of faith and the clash between faith and faithlessness lies in the lines: These stones, under the village end banyan tree smeared by faith s innocent blood emerge a goods (1-2) Here God, nature and faith have made a triangular shape of religious implication. The same theme lies in his poem Stone. I wish I were a stone. Lying near the temple s glistening gate and swaying like faith s whole some flower in the seas sacrosanct throat (25-28) Mohanty seems to be a theist who believes the incarnated entity of God. Everything is with him and He is with everything-it is the faith. In human life god in any form appears as the neighbor. As Mohanty writes in A Temple Perfecting the tune of our living / the god groans in votive twilight. Mohanty sustains the concept of religion as the vocation of life. 5

6 All these three modern Indian English poets contributed a lot to the theme of religion and its ramifications in poetic output. Ramanujan is explicit tone the where Mahapatra is very much conscious in delineating Hindu religions bearing the Christian background. Nonetheless he handles the subtle approach to the fact. Mohanty is also sincere to observe the spirituality in trivial things. With his skill he points out religious implications from the day to day human behavior and experience. All these poets have accepted the fact of religion as the part of human life for which their poems have become beautiful and sublime. References: 1. King, Bruce. There Indian Poets: Nissim Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanujan and Dorn Moraes. Madras: Oxford University Press, Print. 2. Mahapatra, Jayanta, The Decline of Indian English Poetry, The Journal of Indian writing in English, 26.2(1998). Web. 3. Pandey, Surya Nath: Millennium Perspectives on A.K. Ramanujan. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors (P) Ltd Print. 4. Prabhavanand, Swami. Realizing God. Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, Print. 6