A major part of a discussion on a panel discussing Odia literature at the Hyderabad Literary Festival (HLF-2024) focused on Gopinath Mohanty and his reshaping of the ‘Odia literary canon.’ Odia is the language of choice for 2024’s HLF while Norway has been selected as the guest country.
The panelists, Professor Sachidananda Mohanty and translator Sudeshna who translated a chunk of Gopinath’s writings said that the now deceased Gopinath Mohanty’s writings held a mirror up to Odia society in the 1930s. Gopinath Mohanty was an administrative officer who lived among the Adivasis in Koraput in 1930s in erstwhile Odisha and helped reshape public understanding of Odisha.
The talk titled ‘Odia literary canon’ was moderated by Anurekha Chari Wagh. Speaking at the event, Sachidananda Mohanty said how the very essence of a ‘canon’ was to ‘valorise, baptise’ select works to the detriment of others. “While British, American literature often took primacy even among Indian audiences, Odisha was somehow unexplained. A National Geographic documentary defined the geography of Odisha as the wild west of India,” he says.
Sudeshna who translated a part of Gopinath Mohanty’s into English which has been titled Oblivion and Other Stories, said that the former IAS officer offered an explanation of the so-called ‘wild west’ through his writings. “The stories doesn’t stigmatise the region of Odisha but explains how progress when pitted against the backdrop of nature often unsettles, but in a necessary manner,” she said, adding, “The stories focus on the geographic landscapes of Odisha. Red roads winding up and down the Eastern ghats are employed in Gopinath’s Oblivion form a seminal part of the story.”
The panelists remarked that through Gopinath Mohanty’s stories alone a visual of twentieth century Odia society could easily be recreated and hence it holds relevance.
The panelists said that Odia literature is undergoing a shift which in a smaller way is similar to the one Hispanic writers underwent in the United States, at reasserting a lost voice.