Global AI Narratives India: Responses to AI and Science Fact-Fiction in Hindi, Bengali, and Malayalam Literature
During the opening panel of the GAIN India Workshop 2021, bestselling science fiction author Samit Basu (The GameWorld Trilogy and Chosen Spirits), remarked that in India, a linguistically diverse country, the literary traditions of different languages often exist independently and in relative isolation from one another. This is especially likely to be true of a genre like science fiction, which has not been in the literary mainstream of many languages. Hidden under the citadels of highbrow literature, science fiction in different Indian languages has had the opportunity to develop different trajectories and different forms.
The fourth GAIN India panel – Responses to AI and Science Fact-Fiction in Hindi, Bengali, and Malayalam Literature – aimed to explore these observations further. We wanted to provide a platform where literary practitioners from different Indian languages could converse about the intersections between science and fiction in their respective traditions and highlight any hidden exchanges that might exist between them.
Panel recordings can be viewed here.
Organising the panel
Our goal for this panel was to include speakers from at least three to four languages, in order to glimpse possibilities for extensions into other workshops and conversations in the future. We also wanted to offer speakers the opportunity to speak about their languages in their languages. We could achieve this through simultaneous translation channels on Zoom.
For this inaugural panel we hosted Manoj Kumar Pandey, Samrat Sengupta, and Shiju Sam Varughese to speak about the status of science fiction and AI narratives, in Hindi, Bengali, and Malayalam respectively. Prior to the event each panellist shared videos of extracts from works in these languages, to give a glimpse of different science fiction imaginings in India.
We were also glad to be joined by Professor Tejaswini Niranjana, a cultural studies scholar and a highly accomplished translator from Kannada to English, as the panel chair.
All speaker bios can be viewed here.
Tejaswini Nirangana on the science fiction genre
Tejaswini Niranjana recalled reading the novel Karvalo by the prominent Kannada novelist Poornachandra Tejaswi. Karvalo tells the story of a middle-aged scientist in search of a rare lizard in the Western Ghats. It is now seen as one of the pioneering works of science fiction in Kannada. However, Niranjana described it as an instance of a ‘genre emerging in hindsight’. Karvalo was written as a work of imaginative fiction, and was only later classified as science fiction. The search for science fiction in Indian languages assumes the category and then retrospectively looks for its presence. She asked whether it would instead be more productive to consider imaginative writing not bound by considerations of a genre.
Niranjana proceeded to offer examples of ‘science fact-fiction’ writing in the South Indian trio of languages, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam. She highlighted the strong tradition of translating science fiction from English into Kannada. Works by writers such as HG Wells, Jules Verne and Mary Shelley are available in multiple translations and there is no dearth of engagement with contemporary science fiction. At this point Niranjana posed two questions for the panellists and listeners. What do the choices of the works to be translated reveal about the literary public in a particular language? and Is the literary engagement with science and AI now giving way to the cinematic takeover of these themes, partly, but not entirely, aided by a considerable increase in online content and a proliferation of online platforms?
Manoj Kumar Pandey on Science Fiction in Hindi
Our first speaker, Hindi author Manoj Kumar Pandey, discussed the marginality of science fiction and AI narratives in Hindi. He made the observation that the standardisation of Hindi in the 20th century likely had a profound impact on the development of the science fiction genre in the language. As a variant of Hindi, known as Khadi Boli, was perfected to become the state language, it grew distanced from its tributaries like Awadhi, Brij Bhasha, Bhojpuri etc. Consequently, it became divested from the multiple registers of imagination that these languages contributed via multifarious folk forms and vernacular storytelling traditions. The Khadi Boli variant did aid in the development of a particular brand of middle-class social realism which produced a number of contemporary classics, but Pandey added that the Hindi literary world is yet to emerge out of that style; it has yet to avail the creative possibilities lying dormant in the linguistic diversity steamrolled by a standardisation process.
Pandey noted further that science fiction did not take off in Hindi due to a certain resistance in the Hindi public sphere to engage with science in the vernacular. Despite the presence of early classics like the fantasy novel Chandrakanta (1888) by Devakinandan Khatri, most writings on science and science fiction remain in English. Pandey noted that the relative dearth of popular science writing and even textbooks in Hindi has meant that science and technology narratives have not found fertile ground. But he still remains hopeful of the future of science fiction in Hindi as some new writings have shown the promise of weaving science in fictional narratives and working with the possibility of speculative and even political science fiction.
Shiju Sam Varughese on the history of science fiction in Malayalam
The next speaker, Shiju Sam Varughese, presented the history of science fiction and AI narratives in Malayalam with a wealth of examples. As Pandey had noted about Hindi literature, Varughese explained that after some initial forays, the Malayalam literary scene became dominated by social realism with a focus on social issues and writings serving critical and therapeutic purposes. He highlighted the role of a national movement in defining decades of literary agenda in Malayalam, and observed that the growth of the hugely influential popular science movement meant that there was a lot of writing on science, but due to a missionary focus on popularising science within a broadly rationalist framework, fictional engagements with science were few and far between.
However, this changed significantly by the 1980s, as the people’s science movement became more open to creating science fiction. That being said, the emerging science fiction in Malayalam still remained tethered to contemporary science, and the authors avoided taking imaginative leaps, resulting in the proliferation of works in the tradition of what Varughese termed realist science fiction.
The 80s also witnessed the emergence of AI narratives along with science fiction in Malayalam, with the surfacing narratives following three broad tendencies. One exhibited a positive appraisal of AI where the technology was viewed as an enabling albeit a silent and passive companion of the humans. The next one involved weaving the trope of sex robots into fictional narratives. Lastly, some works embraced an open portrayal of conflict between humans and AI, leading to experimentation with dystopian and apocalyptic themes.
Varughese ended his presentation by noting that present day Malayalam writers are beginning to do more exciting work unencumbered by the burden of history. Varughese also noted the strength of contemporary translations, and like Tejaswini Niranjana, emphasised the rapidly growing world of Malayalam sci-fi films and the displacement of written literature as the dominant mode of narrativising science.
Samrat Sengupta compares Bengali literature to Hindi and Malayalam
Finally, Samrat Sengupta’s presentation explored interesting differences between Hindi and Malayalam on the one hand and Bengali on the other. Despite the common view of Bengali and Malayalam as kindred spirits – a view fostered by the long stints of communist rule experienced in both West Bengal and Kerala – Sengupta’s presentation revealed that Bengali, unlike Malayalam, has had a relatively consistent tradition of fictionalising science.
Sengupta divided the writing of science fiction in Bengali into three distinct traditions. The first one is designated Kalpabigyan, majorly constituted by science fantasies and involving experimentations with multiple registers of time (Kalpa, the term for ‘aeon’ in Indian languages) and imagination (bigyan). Sengupta called the second one Bigyanbhittik Galpa (stories based on science) and the third Science Fiction in English. He observed that the latter tradition is prospering excitingly in Bangladesh, and also hinted at the forms of cultural and literary exchanges which exist between Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal in India.
Another notable aspect which emerged with Samrat Sengupta’s presentation concerned the presence of an impressive number of laghu patrikas (sci-fi magazines) in the Bengali literary landscape in the twentieth century. This is perhaps another aspect in which Bengali is unique among Indian languages. These magazines included titles such as Ascharjya (Wondrous), Bismoy (Surprise), and Fantastic (named by the internationally reputed modernist film director Satyajit Ray).
Sengupta emphasised that Bengali writers have never shied away from creating original science fiction. Prominent best-selling authors include Hemendra Kumar Roy, Anish Deb and Shirshendu Chattapadhyay.
Finally, Sengupta also noted that contemporary science fiction in Bengali is not only etching out tales on science and technology (AI included), but is also embracing a more political and philosophical bent by taking up themes of precarious future society and questions of human civilisation in a larger global political framework.
Concluding remarks
India is a linguistically diverse country, and we are pleased to have made a start exploring how various literary traditions have emerged and interact on the topic of science fiction. We had speakers representing linguistic traditions from north, south and east India. Certainly, the material covered in these presentations was extremely rich and needs a thorough follow-up to isolate themes and questions for future research. We now have a better sense of the scale of the task at hand, and the kinds of insight and collaboration this project promises to yield about approaches to AI and science fact-fiction in different Indian languages.