Sachin Ketkar's Blog

 

In India,one of the most sought-after degrees in Arts is Bachelor of Arts with Englishliterature major. However, its popularity is largely due to mistaken preconceptions about it rather than understanding what the program actually is. Hence, it is a good idea to look at whatis NOT in order to understand what it IS and think about why one should or should not doit.  This blog attempts to lay out the widelyprevalent misconceptions about BA with English major in the Indian context and provide greater clarity tothe students who want to enter the field or find themselves stuck in it.

Misconception1: It is ‘a Spoken English’ coaching class.

BA with English major will NOT directly provide youthe basic conversational English or basic comprehension skills, grammar orcompositional skills, in fact, it actually DEMANDS that you ALREADY HAVE these foundationallanguage skills. This gives a distinctive advantage to the students from theEnglish-medium background over those not from the English-medium, though somestudents from non-English backgrounds are also known to do well in this program.Nonetheless, they have to put in plenty of extra efforts working on theirEnglish.

You are unlikely to be a good speaker by reading a Shakespeareplay or a Jane Austen novel prescribed in your syllabus. Hence, if you want to doBA with English to do better in IELTS/TOEFL type exams, or impress your crush withyour fluent English, this program is unlikely to be of any great help. We needto keep this in mind because as Indians many of us take bachelor’s degreeprograms to ensure that we don’t remain bachelors for the rest of our lives (whichis also not as bad as it is made out to be).

 

Misconception2: It is ‘a Written English’ coaching class.

In case you happen to be from an English-medium background,and know that you suck at writing, it would be an error to take up a BA withEnglish major program to fix your writing skills. You are unlikely to be a goodcontent writer or be an expert in writing emails, memos or office presentationsby reading that Shakespeare play or a Jane Austen novel (nowadays ChatGPT cando these things for you).

The need for English for the sake of conversation, comprehensionand composition is usually addressed in the foundational, vocational, abilityenhancement courses and papers that you can take up even WITHOUT doing theBA with English major program. You can take these courses in your college evenif you are doing Bachelors of commerce or science or majoring in subjects like sociology,economics, psychology etc.

In case you think you are a poet or novelist, eventhen, BA with English can hardly be of any great help to you because it is NOTa creative writing program and you can be a good poet or a writer evenwithout doing BA with English (on that note let me point out that neitherShakespeare nor Jane Austen- arguably some of the greatest writers – held collegedegrees in English literature as these degrees did not exist in those days!). Consequently,due to these mistaken preconceptions of the students, the Shakespeare play, orthe Jane Austen novel prescribed in the BA English syllabus in India remainslargely unread, and the exams still cleared.

If you are not discouraged enough, here is a third misconception.But this misconception would actually lead us to greater understanding of whatit really is.

Misconception3: It teaches English Literature.

It does NOT teach us English literature (which in verynarrow and restricted sense means poems, plays, novels, criticism etc). Some thinkerslike Northrop Frye would point out that literature cannot be taught     What it actuallyteaches instead is HOW to STUDY literature in ENGLISH.

By HOW to STUDY, I mean the study-skills, critical thinkingskills, and research skills necessary to study literature. We don’t study poemsor novels in our class, but learn HOW to analyze them, study them, criticallyreflect upon them, research them. We pay special attention to language of literature- literature being a linguistic art, we ask questions about distinctivefeatures of literary language, we ask questions about interpretation andclassification of literary texts, we ask questions about the historical,ideological and cultural contexts of production and interpretation of these texts.And as any human activity makes sense only in its context, we lay a greatemphasis on historical contexts of literature and culture. In short, papers on genreslike poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction, literary history, and literarycriticism.

These activities, traditionally belong to the field ofliterary and cultural criticism and scholarship, and therefore, what you actuallysign up for when you sign up for a BA with English program is the introductory coursein the field of literary criticism and scholarship in English language.

It should be noted here that what once carriedthe label of ‘English literature’ has gone beyond the older definitions of thefield over the past thirty years: it is no longer merely ‘English’ (it mayinclude substantial amount of cultural material translated into English) and nolonger merely ‘literature’ (it may include wider range of cultural narratives:films, graphic novels, or webseries). ‘English Literature’ thus is a field ofquestions, debates and problems and not a set of texts.

I often begin my first year BA English major classesby asking students why the current class is called a first year BA class andnot standard 13 (13 being an unlucky number after all). I try to establish thefact that a bachelor’s degree program in any field provides basic knowledge ina field, a masters program updates our study skills by introducing us toadvance knowledge in the field and finally a research degree involves contributingto more specific field by producing knowledge within our broad area of study.In our case, BA with English program, thus would provide us with the basic andintroductory knowledge in the field of literary and cultural studies in English,hence it is the beginning of one’s specialization rather than an extension ofone’s school education.

In my class, I also point out the woeful colonial historyof university English studies in India, how it started first in the colony (India)and only later it was accepted in the UK. I also refer to the infamous Macaulay’s1835 project of attempting to “form a class” in his words of “who may be interpretersbetween us and the millions whom we govern, -a class of persons Indian in bloodand colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”. Theconsequence of such a project was the deep-seated belief in inherent cultural andeconomic superiority of English and ‘backwardness’ of rest of Indian languages.Hence, the so-called choice made by the students when they chose English majorswas already determined to a large extent by history (And well, English major is THE class where we can discuss these things!). 

Besides, this is the reason why 'Spoken English' classes are so often advertised together with ' Personality Development Classes': we think that only those who can speak in English ' have personality' and those who can't , have no personality at all! While the craze for English in India, thanks to colonialismand globalization, comes close to the craze for sex and social media, it sohappens that BA with English major program hardly has any true vocationalvalue in the job market today. This, of course, doesn’t mean it is useless.

Some of my nice teachers would say that studying Englishliterature makes us a good human being, or a good citizen or provides us withcritical thinking skills. As far as I know, these are things that schoolsare supposed to do, just as they are supposed to provide us with the basiccommunication skills. The condition of the world today reveals that schoolshave not really succeeded in these matters.  A college degree cannot remedy what schoolshave failed to cure-it is too late.  A collegeis not a rehabilitation center for badly educated people (and that means mostof us). 

This bringsus then to the fundamental question: why study it at all.

You may say you opt for it because you love literature,but then you may love literature (as many people do) even if you are studying commerce or science, you can continue reading novels, stories and poems (mostlythe ones you like instead of the ones that are forced upon you) as you keepdoing other things for livelihood.

A cynical politician may say that we study it becauseof our colonial hangover (personally I feel that there are other things thatgive us better hangovers).

A good answer would be more intellectually complicated.  We can say that as modern Indians we aretrying to understand ourselves in this rapidly globalizing world. Culturallyand historically Indian modernity is deeply influenced by western modernity throughcolonialism and globalization from past two hundred years and English languageand literature have played an extremely crucial role in the process. Therefore,critically studying English language and literature (understood broadly) inIndia helps us in understanding our ‘own modernity’ and how it is historically differentor similar from ‘their modernity’, in short, an act of comparative culturalinquiry.

Hence, using a comparative cultural framework,studying English literature can yield us valuable insights.

And there is a less intellectual, but more interestingreason as well: as Sir Edmund Hillary explained why he climbed Mt. Everest, “becauseit is there”.

He is also have supposed have told Tenzin Norgay, “We'veknocked the bastard off”.

After the recent announcement by the HRD that a PhD will be made mandatory after the year 2021 as minimum eligibility for applying for the post of assistant professor, the number of interested students inquiring with me about possible areas and topics for doing PhD has gone up. I have been regularly blogging about doing research in English studies, the questions of methodology and coming up with a research proposal and many people have found it useful. Please also check out my following blogs: 

i) A Beginners Guide to Doing PhD in English Literature
ii) Choosing a Topic for the Research Project in English Literature
iii) Writing a Research Proposal in English studies
iv) Possible Areas of Research on Translation Studies
v) On Theorizing Indian Literatures and Cultures
vi) Application of Dionyz Durisin's notion of interliterariness to Indian literatures

English studies in India, after the late nineteen eighties, has undergone a paradigm shift by moving away from centrality of the Anglophone literatures (‘English’ literature, ‘American’ Literature and ‘Indian Writing in English’) to a more comparative Indian literatures framework. It moved away from the study of ‘English literature’ to ‘literatures in English’. This shift was propelled by multiple factors like the rise of postcolonial studies, ‘ the crisis in English studies’ debates in India, growth in Indian literatures in English translation,  development of translation studies and the Dalit studies,  as well as substantial incorporation of non-Anglophone critical theory (largely continental) and cultural studies into the English studies curriculum.  It is the same cultural need to contextualize English studies in India and make it relevant to the Indian studies that has given rise to growing emphasis on ‘English Language Teaching’.
 I have been working within this reoriented discipline from the past two decades, and hence my suggestions for the topics and areas for an M. Phil or PhD research comes from comparative Indian literatures framework. These topics and areas also reflect my own understanding of ‘the knowledge gaps’ in research in English studies today, as well as my own personal research interests. Hence, obviously these are not the only areas. I will be blogging more on other areas as well in future. A distinction between ‘an area’ and ‘a topic’ needs to be kept in mind. I have offered broad outline of an area, obviously one needs to relate it to specific authors/texts/ languages/ periods to delimit the project. This specific delimitation would be ‘the topic’. I have given examples from my own research and one can come up with any number of parallel ‘topics’ for their own research projects.

1) Hypertextuality and the questions of Digital Archiving of Indian literatures (Bhakti, 19th century etc), the post-print condition

While digital humanities has made substantial inroads into the western humanities academia, it is yet to make its place in India. However, after the explosion of the internet and massive proliferation of post-print digital data (‘big data’), the nature of knowledge, its production , circulation has undergone a profound change, and it is often compared to the print technology revolution in the early middle period of the previous millennium. Digital humanities as a discipline engages with methodological, epistemological and ontological issues of literary research in the context of this post-print digital universe of discourse. In the west, digital humanities  has often been thought of in terms of ‘ waves’ where the first wave focussed on large-scale digitization projects and the establishment of technological infrastructure facilitating the shift from ‘ print’ to ‘ digital’ space, the later developments and waves moved towards creating tools for dealing with ‘ born digital texts. Digital humanities in India is still in its nascent stage and will require transferring of massive pre-print, and print era documents into the digital space , hence dealing with the basic issues of OCR, funding and lack of interdisciplinary expertise. One can look up books like Digital_Humanities. eds. Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, et al. MIT, 2012 and Understanding Digital Humanities, ed. David Berry , 2012 for more information about digital humanities.
2) Globalization and Literary languages in India
The processes of globalization unleashed during the nineteen nineties have profoundly altered the cultural landscape of India. How literatures in Indian languages engages with the disturbing questions of virtual reality, new corporate capitalism, hybridization of languages, ‘post-truth’ and politics of media manipulation, rise of social media and the questions of digital identity, privacy, freedom of expression, pornography, and new forms of religious fanaticism is a critical domain of research. One can study how literatures produced in Indian languages (bhashas) in the nineteen nineties and the twenty first century comparatively. My own research on contemporary Marathi poetry deals with such questions. How do literatures from other Indian languages engage with, and embody these developments?
3)  Dalit literatures of the twenty first century
Caste and gender-based discrimination is deeply rooted in Indian society, and finds its expression in literatures. Dalit literatures emerged during the nineteen sixties, primarily in the form of autobiographies and poetry, and are receiving significant attention in the English studies academia. However, most of the texts that are being studied deal with the lives of Dalit writers during the sixties and the eighties. There is a need to focus on the writers who grew up in the nineties and the twenty first centuries (like Meena Kandasamy and S.Chandramohan  in English and Des Raj Kali in Punjabi) in order to understand the nature of their protest and their negotiation of caste-gender discrimination. We need to ask the questions regarding the role of class, corporate capitalism and technology in this negotiation. We need to compare their writings with the Dalit writers of the earlier generations.
4)   World Literature and Modernisms in Indian languages
Though the concept of ‘world literature’ is fairly old, going back to Goethe at least, it was during the nineteen nineties, after globalization, that the concept started being critically rethought by scholars such as Pascale Casanova, Franco Moretti and David Damrosch. These scholars went beyond the traditional notion of world literature as body of texts or a canon to underscore the transnational, trans-regional contexts of literary production, consumption and circulation. David Damrosch edited World Literature in Theory (2014) is the key anthology that would serve as an introduction to various deliberations around World Literature.

Indian students may draw upon these critical re-conceptualizations, and look at the phenomenon like modernisms (as distinct from modern or modernity) in Indian literatures other than English. For instance, one can look at the writings of the immensely influential writers-scholars such as Suresh Joshi, Dilip Chitre, Agyeya, Krishna Baldev Vaid, Vilas Sarang , G.A. Kulkarni , Namdeo Dhasal and Nirmal Verma ( many of their creative writings are available in English translation)  using the notion of world literature. It will help us to go beyond the stereotypical readings of these works in terms of ‘influences’ or ‘derivativeness’ and ‘inauthenticity’ that is associated with conventional understanding of modernism in India. One can even approach important literary movements of experimentation such as the Theatre of Absurd in various Indian languages using this theoretical approach. 

More specifically, this approach is also helpful in looking at specific seminal authors like Anton Chekhov,  T.S. Eliot, Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Rabindranath Tagore as world literature and their reception in various Indian languages.
5) Reception and the Impact of Poststructuralist, Postmodern Critical Theories on literary criticism in Indian languages (including performative gender studies)
Though English studies have incorporated the continental theories like poststructuralism, postmodernism, cultural studies in its methodology, how have non-English literary studies ‘received’ these theories need to be examined in their cultural and historical contexts.   For instance, critics like Suresh Joshi, Suman Shah, Babu Suthar, Chandrakant Topiwala in Gujarati, Milind Malshe, Gangadhar Patil, Vilas Sarang , M.S. Patil and Harishchandra Thorat in Marathi draw upon these theories  extensively. What is their impact on the bhasha criticism? What does this reception tell us about the historical context and cultural politics underlying literary criticism in the bhashas?

6) Interliterary processes in the post-Independence Indian literatures

Like the notion of ‘world literature’, the notion of ‘interliterariness’ developed by Dionyz Durisin is extremely useful to understand formation of multiple Indian literatures, as it helps us to overcome the notions of ‘ influences’ that perpetuates the influencer-influenced hierarchies and also helps us to understand literatures as processes rather than products. I am grateful to noted Marathi critic late Prof Kimbahune for drawing my attention to this theoretical framework and its use in multilingual Indian context. Dionyz Durisin’s Theory of Literary Comparativistics (1984) is a useful book. One can also look up Amiya Dev and Sisir Kumar Das edited anthology on Comparative Indian Literature for its application in some places. Marian Gallik’s essays on interliterariness and Durisin are helpful.
Check out my own essay on application of the notion of interliterariness to Indian literatures  by clicking here.
7) Rethinking Bhakti literatures and English studies (beyond colonial paradigms of reading bhakti)

Most of the reading precolonial Indian religious literature tend to see it as ‘pan- Indian’ ‘bhakti movement’ and read ‘universal mysticism’ and ‘democratization’ into it. This anachronistic reading of ‘bhakti’ itself was a result of the nineteenth century colonialism and colonial nationalist modernity that projected such modern or quasi-Christian notions derived from the Reformation onto this body of literature. 
My own research on Narsinh Mehta is deeply coloured by this conventional reading of bhakti. However, when I rethink bhakti critically today, I find it more of a sectarian (or rather panthiya or sampradayik) propaganda rather than being a product of any universal mystical community . It will be a good idea to see how these 'bhakti movements’ in various Indian languages are constructed during the colonial period, especially in English. For instance, R.D. Ranade’s book Mysticism in Maharashtra is an influential book of this kind. There is a need to ‘de-romanticize’ bhakti and rethink the relation between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ in Indian contexts. One also needs to take a second look at the dialogic/conflictual relation between ‘bhakti’ traditions and ‘ Indian Islamic traditions’.
8) Literary Historiography, Pedagogy and the History of literary canonization in Indian languages

Literary historiography in Indian languages began with pedagogical concerns during the late nineteenth century. How did such projects influence creation of literary canons in those languages? How does looking at historical contexts of historiographical writings reflect the changing poetics and politics of literary cultures? For instance, how do historiographical writings during the nineteen seventies and the eighties differ from the colonial projects? How does the historiographical writings of the nineteen nineties differ from those in the seventies or at the turn of the century? What does this difference tell us about literary culture of its times? How are pedagogical and canonizing concerns articulated in literary historiographies?
9) Anxiety of Influence and the Politics of Canonization in Modern Indian Literatures
Anxiety of Influence is a powerful theory developed by the American critic Harold Bloom that seeks to de-romanticize relationship between creative writers, and hence a very insightful ( non-Eliotian) take on the question of tradition and modernism. How does this quasi-Oedipal conflict between the authors and predecessors play out in literary arenas in India? My own writings of contemporary Marathi poetry highlight this love-hate tension between the influential modernist poets like Arun Kolatkar, Namdeo Dhasal, Dilip Chitre and Vasant Dahake ,and the new generation poets who emerged during the nineteen nineties like Manya Joshi, Hemant Divate, Mangesh N. Kale, Sanjeev Khandekar and Sachin Ketkar. How does this conflict play out in other Indian literatures?
10) Little Magazine movements and the Literary Avant-gardes in Indian literatures
As demonstrated by Benedict Anderson, print capitalism facilitated the imagination of ‘imagined community’ called nation in the context of colonial modernity. The little magazine movements in Indian languages were ‘non-periodical’ very often ephemeral ventures that were non-capitalistic in their orientation and outcomes of deep discontent with the cultural conservatism of the mainstream periodicals. The dissenting, non-conservative, sexually explicit and radical experimentation with cultural forms (including the visual) was articulated on such fringe, ephemeral platforms during the nineteen fifties and the sixties. In fact, important Dalit writing in Indian languages had to find space in the little magazines.   
Great amount of such avant-garde modernist writings later on became ‘mainstream’ and even ‘established’ over a period of time. Little magazines in Marathi included magazines of the sixties and the seventies such as ‘a-ba-ka-da-ee’, ‘ aso’, vaacha’ and so on. My own research work in Marathi is on and through the little magazines of the nineteen nineties like Shabdavedh, Saushthav and Abhidhanantar that defined themselves as continuing the avant-garde tendencies of their precursors as well as expressing the need to reinvent the idiom of poetry and the need to deal with the altered life and cultural landscape transformed by the forces of globalization. They also expressed their discontent with the idiom of the modernist sixties by pointing out what was once anti-establishment had already become established and clichéd. How did the poetics and politics of the little magazines play out in other Indian languages? How do they compare with the little magazine movements in other parts of the world?

One can also examine ' post-print' (non) periodicals ( e.g. Hakara in Marathi) and blogs in other Indian languages and their cultural agendas when the digital promises to shape our imaginations as ' virtual-global communities'.

Literature, as Ezra Pound famously said, is news that stays news. Resonance of quote comes freshly alive for me when I am teaching  American texts like To Kill a Mockingbird, “Mending Wall”, and a poem by the Nigerian-born–settled-in-America writer Chinua Achebe titled ‘Refugee Mother and Child’ as part of the core introductory course for the Bachelor of Arts with English honours (at the first year or ‘freshmen’) at my University in Baroda, Gujarat.
Teaching Harper Lee’s celebrated novel (1960) about racism and growing up in the American south in the backdrop of the recent racist violence of Charlottesville and  the Las Vegas shooting made me recall Italo Calvino’s definition of a classic as a book that has not finished saying what it has to say.   Though racial segregation may have been legally dead in America after the Civil Rights Movement –the event that forms the historical background of To Kill a Mockingbird, the racial segregation of the American hearts and minds seem far from deceased. It is precisely this failure of the law to ensure justice that forms the central theme of this novel, the theme that is critical even today, when the far right has drastically resurged in the western society, fifty seven years after the novel was published
Chinua Achebe’s moving poem ‘Refugee Mother and Child’ made students discuss the burning issue of refugees that has so deeply influenced the global politics today, whether it is ‘Brexit’ or Trump’s anti-immigration policies. Multiculturalism as a political ideology of globalization seems to be on a decline and one of the things fueling this decline is the Syrian refugee crisis and the underlying Islamophobia. Unsurprisingly, my students brought up the issue of the Rohingya refugees too. Clearly, the poem published in 1971 in America has not yet finished saying what it had to say 46 years ago.                             The Robert Frost‘s classic “Mending Wall”, published in 1914, too, has not finished saying what it has to say , especially when the current President Donald Trump has come to power promising the Americans to build a wall to wall out Mexican immigrants,  103 years after its publication. The speaker in the poem mischievously wants his farmer neighbor to rethink his traditional wisdom regarding ‘ Good fences make good neighbours’by drawing attention to that  there is ‘ something’ -probably something supernatural ( an elf? ) or even natural ( winter) that doesn’t love the wall. I don’t think I am as good natured as the farmer -speaker in the Frost poem to ask the President-who is not particularly known for his interest in literature unlike his coloured precursor- to even consider the fact that the ‘something’ that doesn’t love a wall is neither an elf nor winter, but history.

It is precisely this question of history and its relation to culture and literature that drove home to me how baseless is the anxiety of globalization as cultural homogenization (or Americanization).  Many of my students, especially from the metropolitan cosmopolitan (and yes upper-caste) background, are brought up regularly consuming wide range of American cultural artifacts: from fashion to popular novels like  Twilight, from the Hollywood films to  American TV series like “ the Game of the  Thrones”, from  American junk food to American social media ( Facebook or Tinder). Or even American English.And yet they could hardly comprehend most of the content on the first two pages of To Kill a Mockingbird. Who are the Southerners? Who was Andrew Jackson and who were the Creeks? What on earth is a ‘Methodist’ and what is a human chattel? They could hardly catch the Lee’s sarcasm regarding how the white families in the South could trace their lineages back to the Battle of Hastings, nor could they get the joke about  how Simon Finch,  Scout’s forefather, was escaping  persecution of the Methodist by “ more liberal” Christians in England. How is Robert Frost’s New England different from Harper Lee’s Alabama?

The displacement and annihilation of the Native American population, the American Revolution, the Civil war, racism , slavery, the Puritans and various Christian denominations, American social and cultural geographies that the first two pages of To Kill a Mockingbird pack are things that are part of shared collective memory of the Americans ended u p acting as a boundary that separates the American cultural text from the non-American readers who regularly consume popular American cultural artifacts. In short, artifacts are not cultures, and as the cultural theorist Yuri Lotman would point out, culture is non-hereditary memory of a group and it is always bounded (dividing ‘us’ from ‘them’). The myth of globalization as Americanization is unfounded- we may be consuming more and more American artifacts, but the American cultural memory will never replace non-American cultural memories. And I doubt whether globalization can erase the cultural memory of non-American cultures, because as Lotman has pointed out, the cultural memory is not an archive or a library of past events ,but a mechanism embedded in the present and the contemporary that creates the image of the past and projects it backwards.

Reading and teaching literary texts from other cultures, from Lotman’s perspective, would invariably involve translation and translation according to his theory is the primary mechanism of generation of new meanings and information. Reading such American texts in the non-American societies and cultures would result in translation and generation of new information in those cultures. Globalization accelerates the translation and generation of new meanings in other cultures, leading to added dynamism of cultural change in those local cultures. This dynamism will be chaotic and unpredictable, not a simple Americanisation of the  world. 

Most of the discussions around translation in India, whether academic or otherwise, seem to be struck in an obsolete paradigm. It approaches translation from the perspective of practice- it sees translation as something to be DONE, and hence all the repetitive talk about ‘problems of translation’, whether particular translation is possible or not continues inanely.  Not enough discussion about translation from the perspective of theory and methodology is available in the Indian context, i.e. the questions about how to READ/STUDY/RESEARCH translated texts. There are notable exceptions of course. Here I want to discuss the basic questions of how to READ translated texts for the beginners who have just started researching translation studies.
One obvious pitfall while studying translation is being judgmental (normative) , we are obsessed with the questions like whether a particular translation is ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘readable’. Being judgmental closes the door of the inquiry into the great significance of translations, however ‘bad’, as points of entry to the study a particular cultural history.
                  As translation is a decision-making process starting from the choice of the texts/ authors and the direction of translation (e.g. from Gujarati to English or the other way round) to the decisions involving choices of titles, cultural elements, idioms, literary devices and so on, one way of reading translation is to see how the history of target language culture has influenced these decisions.
                  A powerful theoretical tool in translation studies is Andre Levefere’s idea of translation as a kind of ‘refraction’. Translation, according to Lefevere, can be considered as one of the ‘ refractions’ or all forms of rewritings of texts from one language into other , including cinematic, televisions or comic book adaptations of the Mahabharataor The Godfather to critical commentaries, glosses, summaries of the texts in other languages. Critical articles on Baudelaire by the Gujarati critic Suresh Joshi or the Marathi writer Dilip Chitre ‘refract’ Baudelaire for Gujarati and Marathi audience. Once you see translation as ‘refraction’ you situate it within the larger cultural politics of the period and you can see the role it plays and the agenda behind it. 
                  Translation, like all other ‘refractions’, Lefevere notes are done under certain constraints of translating culture (TL Culture) and the task of reading a translated text is to understand the strategies of translating ( the decisions made by translators) in the context of these constraints.  According to Lefevere these constraints are as follows: i)  the constraint of language  i.e. the verbal structure and texture of the translating language force the translators to make certain choices, ii)  the constraint of poetics i.e. the dominant poetics of the translating culture compel the translator to choose a particular mode of translation (e.g. AK Ramanujan’s choice to translate the oral -performative genre of Bhakti poetry where the word-music is an essential feature into the imagistic -ironic free verse developed by Eliot or William Carlos Williams), iii) the constraint of patronage – for instance the demand to conform to what your publishers want ( or the publisher’s version of what the reader/market wants) or even the state or political patronage ( what the Polit Bureau wants)  and so on. Refractions, Lefevere argues, are basically manipulative and have an agenda of influencing the audience.  Reading translations as refraction helps us to uncover the rich cultural history of the period. Reading multiple translations of the same literary text or author (e.g. Shakespeare, Sharatchandra or Tagore) over a period of time reveals the cultural politics of the period in which these translations were made and help us reconstruct the history of culture.

                  Another significant question while reading translated texts is to consider translation from functional point of view, i.e. asking the questions like what is the role and the function of the translated text in the development of literary tradition. What is the role of translation in inaugurating or consolidating a literary movement (like modernism or Dalit literature)? What role does translation play in establishing a particular poetics or genre (e.g. Romanticism, the Brechtian theatre, or the Theatre of the Absurd, or genre like the sonnet, the ghazals, the short story or the novel. How does translation influencenot the author, but poetics and the form? As the term ‘influence’ is a problematic one (creating a hierarchy between the influencer and the influenced), more constructive way of looking at resemblances between literary traditions and cultures is to see them as what Dionyz Durisin terms as ‘interliterary processes’.

                  Durisin’s view of literary and cultural phenomena as processes avoids the tendencies to create hierarchies. When we see that the product ‘Chai’ is produced by the process (mixing ingredients like sugar, milk or tea leaves and boiling it) we no longer see chai as being ‘influenced’ by ‘milk’. Hence, if you see the films like Dharmatma or Sarkar as involving the Hollywood ingredients, say the elements of The Godfather, you no longer create a hierarchy between Hollywood and Bollywood.   Hence while exploring the function of translated texts in the translating culture, we are interested in ways in which translation contributes to these ‘interliterary processes’.

         As a researcher in Indian literarures, languages and cultures, my interest in Semiotics of Culture as a theoretical framework developed by the scholars of the Tartu- Moscow School of semiotics especially Juri Lotman ( 1922-1993) stems from the fact that it:


I) Sees meaning as being essentially ‘translational’ and ‘culture’ as essentially multilingual  by underscoring the fact that no meaning-making system can exist in isolation or can be autonomous ( in contrast to Saussure) ……this core assumption makes it pertinent to Indian society which is mindbogglingly diverse and multilingual
II) sees literature (printed or oral or performative) as belonging to a expansive category of artistic texts thus going beyond the restrictive and colonial print-centric view of literature ..it can allow us to understand the dialogic and translational exchanges between the printed or oral literary texts and  texts from cinema, paintings, dance or music
III) is of significant theoretical relevanceto Comparative Indian Literatures.  The notion of vertical isomorphism of the semiospheres existing in dialogic interactions with each other at multiple levels  allows us to conceptualize a heterogeneous and stochastic ‘Indian semiosphere’ ( and consequently Indian literatures as being generated by the Indian semiosphere)made up of multiple semiospheres like ‘Marathi’ or “Gujarati’ semiospheres and these semiospheres can be conceptualized as being heterogeneous and stochastic in their own right, interacting dialogically with one another, different spaces within and interacting dialogically with cultural traditions and cultural histories that are neither specific to Marathi nor Gujarati (Sanskrit, Prakrit,  Perso-Arabic, European, Chinese, and so on).

The notion of semiosphere can also equip us to describe the cultural mechanisms underlying what Dionyz Durisin terms ' interliterary processes'. 
Similarly one can conceptualize ‘South Asian Semiosphere’ or ‘Asian Semiosphere’ or a Planetary Semiosphere that generates ‘ world literature’.

One can also understand gender, class and caste as semiospheres. 

IV) is a radical model of cultural historiography  a) It sees cultural historiography itself as a narrative and translational activity involving retrospective narrative reconstruction (translation) of cultural history (which is primarily unpredictable and irreversible) into the explanatory languages of the present ( e.g Habermasian sociology , Butler’s gender studies, Foucauldian analysis of discourse, governmentality or biopolitics )
b) it is a model of cultural change that highlights  differential and non-linear modes of development of the diverse co-existing meaning-making systems…for instance fashion, food and caste change at differential rates and poetry using the poetics of the 1940s ( the Ravi-Kiran Mandal lyricism ) can co-exist with the poetry using the avant-garde poetics of 60s in Marathi
c) It is a model of cultural change that views mechanisms of cultural change as being primarily ‘translational’….. it views the underlying mechanism in the generation of ‘the new’ as being translational

V) It provides tools and ideas for practical criticism of texts and their contexts The notions of semantic tropes, ‘the text-within-text, plot , the idea of symbol as plot-gene, continuous- discrete ( visual to verbal) dialogics and so on.
VI) The mainstream academic cultural studies in India due to its excessive reliance on French, American and British theories (which are monolingual, deterministic in orientation) has failed to come to terms with multilingual and chaotic social and cultural realities of India . 
Its lack of  critical self awareness can be seen in the fact that as it criticizes modernity ( with the ideas of nation or science) as being universalist, Euro-centric and elite on the one hand it has no  issues  uncritically accepting  ‘ Critical Theory’ whose roots go back to Frankfurt or Birmingham or Paris as if they are non-universalist, non-Eurocentric and non-elite.
The mainstream academic cultural studies have become reductive as it sees ‘political interpretation’ as the absolute horizon for all interpretation’ (as Jameson puts it)…. and extremely predictable almost conventional.  However the conceptualization of culture in semiotics of culture  subsumes the political as it sees cultural as fundamentally i) heterogeneous ii) asymmetrical iii) chaotically dynamic and iv) constructivist in terms of epistemology and cognition (seeing semiotic systems as ‘modelling’ systems)…in a sense subsumes political to the cultural rather than reduce the cultural to the political.

My Articles using Semiotics of Culture for Indian literatures :
 i) Indian Writing in English
ii) Indian Poetry in English
iii) Namdeo Dhasal and Dalit Literature
iv)  Modern and Modernism in Gujarati
v)  Avant-garde Gujarati literature
vi) Poetics and Politics of Self-translation

References:

Lotman,Juri. Culture and Explosion. Ed. Marina Grishakova. Trans. Wilma Clark.Berlin and New York. Mouton de Gruyter. 2009. 
--- “On the semiosphere.” Translated by Wilma Clark.  Sign Systems Studies 33.1, 2005
---‘ The Text within the Text’ . (1981) Trans. Jerry Leo, Amy Mandelker , PMLA, Vol. 109, No. 3 (May, 1994), pp. 377-384
---“ Technological Progress as a Problem in the Study of Culture”, trans.  Ilana Gomel Poetics Today, Duke University Press Vol. 12, No. 4, National Literatures/Social Spaces (winter, 1991), pp. 781-800. 
---Universe of the Mind. A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington/ Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 1990. 
---‘Culture as Collective Intellect And Problems Of Artificial Intelligence’, trans. Ann Shukman, Russian Poetics in Translati0n,  No. 6, 1979, pp 84-96
---‘ The Poetics of Everyday Behaviour in the Eighteenth Century Russian Culture’, Translated by Andrea Beesing from “Poetika bytovogo povedeniia v russkoi kul’ture XVIII veka,” Trudy po znakovym sistemam, no.8 (Tartu, 1977), pp.65-89.

Many students and researchers ask me questions regarding probable areas of research in translation studies in Indian context ( click on the links to read my other blog entries on the subject). My response would be as follows: 
In spite of being a vibrant multilingual society, translation studies has not developed as much as it should have in India. There is still a wide-spread tendency among Indian academics to conceive of translation narrowly as a process and mostly in normative terms.  Therefore, very often in seminars and conferences, one comes across the conversations about ‘ problems’ and ‘ issues’ faced in translation often in terms of ‘ loss’ of  the ‘original essence’ in translation. This may be largely due to the stubborn persistence on the colonial notions of both translation and literature.
There is also tendency to take up actual activity of translation of literary texts from Indian languages into English. While this would certainly seem a good idea, our own limitations as non-native uses of English and largely clichéd findings regarding ‘problems faced’ would not make such a project very useful in terms of research. My own advice would be to translate contemporary literary texts, theoretical and intellectual statements into non-English languages.
 However, translation studies (thankfully), since the nineteen-eighties, has undergone a paradigm shift in the terms of methodologies and critical approaches i.e in terms of research questions asked about translation. Translation today can be conceived as a product generated by the translating language (T.L) culture whose contextual reading and functional analysis reveals a wealth of information about the historical development of the receptor culture. Asking whether Gandhiji’s translation of John Ruskin’s UntoThis Last is a ‘good’ translation or not as it has involved ‘loss of essence of the original’ will not help us to understand the immense historical and social significance of Gandhiji’s translation. It is also interesting that this English text was retranslated into English from Gandhi’s Gujarati version by Gandhiji’s followers. 

The idea of what is meant by a ‘literary’ text (the conventional ‘object’ of literary studies) has also undergone a shift, largely due to the radical developments in ‘theory’ and cultural studies. It is no longer conceived merely as a canonical work in print, but also as a non-canonical work in other media (visual, oral, performative) in digital or ‘analogue’ media. Hence the translated text can be thought of any text produced by ‘intralingual’, ‘interlingual’ or ‘intersemiotic’ translation as famously discussed by Roman Jakobson, i.e. one can study visual adaptations, retellings in various formats. Hence, we can study graphic novel renderings, paintings, musical compositions, cinematic adaptations, TV series or even the stage or dance enactments of texts (like Peter Brooks’ Mahabharata) from other languages as translations. 
Translation is a decision-making process involving choices and options at multiple levels including the selection of the source and the target languages, the text and the author to be translated as well as numerous strategies chosen by the translator. The contextual analysis of translation involves deductive interpretation and comprehension of this decision-making process in the context of social, historical and cultural influences i.e. how have these forces impacted the agency of the translator, while the functional analysis of translation involves the analysis of the role of the translation in impacting the prevalent and succeeding poetics and cultural politics of that language. Apparently, literary research in translation studies, like literary studies in general would merge ultimately into historiography of culture. 

Hence research on translation would basically deal with historiography of translation in Indian languages. The research projects on historiography of translation can be delimited in terms of the following:i)  Specific periods (e.g translation during pre-colonial or postcolonial times),ii)  Specific language pairs (e.g.Gujarati- Marathi, Assamiya- Bengali etc) , iii) Specific movements or genres (e.g. The Theatre of Absurd, Dalit literature, feminism, realism or surrealism), this may involve translation of critical texts as well as literary texts.iv)  Specific authors (e.g. Tagore, Saratchandra, Shakespeare, Baudelaire) v)  Specific texts (e. g the Gitanjali or the Wasteland) in your language and multiple translations of these texts.These projects can be combinations of multiple delimiting parameters like, for instance, “The Feminist Translation of Gora into Gujarati”( which I am not sure exists at  all).Other projects can involve preparing bibliography of translated texts in your language and discussion of methodology, findings and theorization. It may involve developing digital tools (which would require knowledge of both cultural theory and computing) for archiving and analysis of translated texts as a part of a digital humanities project.

Links to Related Subjects:

i) Translation Studies in India
ii) Why Translation Studies
iii) On Research in English Studies  
iv) My Published Papers on Translation Studies 
v) My Doctoral thesis on Translation of Narsinh Mehta 
vi) My book on Indian Translation Studies  (Trans) Migrating Words: Refractions on Indian                  Translation Studies


HERE IS A LIST OF USEFUL BOOKS ON TRANSLATION STUDIES

i)                   Baker, Mona. Ed. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London :Routledge, 1998
ii)                  Bassnett, Susan and Harish Trivedi.ed. Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. London and New York: Routledge, 1999 iii)                Bermann, Sandra and Catherine Porter  ed. A Companion to Translation Studies, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014 iv)                Dingwaney, Anuradha and Carol Maier.eds.  Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 1996 v)                  Hermans, Theo. Ed. The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation.(1985), London and New York: Routledge, 2004 vi)                Hewson, Lance. An Approach to Translation Criticism: Emma and Madame Bovary in translation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011 vii)              Kothari, Rita. Translating India: Cultural Politics of Translation. New Delhi, Foundation Books, 2003 viii)            Kuhiwczak, Piotr and Karin Littau  ed. A Companion to Translation Studies ,Multilingual Matters Ltd , Toronto, 2007, ix)                Lefevere, Andre. Translation, Rewriting and Manipulation of Literary Fame. London and New York: Routledge, 1992 x)                  ---. Ed. Translation/History/Culture:A Source Book. London and New York: Routledge, 1992 xi)                Malmkjær, Kirsten and Kevin Windle ed. The Oxford Handbook of Translation Studies Edited by OUP, 2012 xii)              Mukherjee, Meenakshi. Elusive Terrain: Culture and Literary Memory. Oxford University Press, 2008 xiii)            ---. Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English. Oxford University Press, 2000 xiv)             Mukherjee, Sujit. Translation as Recovery and Other Essays. Ed. Meenakshi Mukherjee, New Delhi, Pencraft International, 2004 xv)               ---Translation as Discovery and Other Essays.New Delhi, Allied, 1984
xvi)       Mukherjee, Tutun. ed.  Translation From Periphery to Centrestage. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1998. xvii)             Munday, Jeremy. Introducing Translation Studies. Theories and Applications. London and New York, Routledge, 2001 xviii)           Niranjana, Tejaswini. Siting Translation: History, Post-structuralism and the Colonial Context, Orient Longman, 1992 xix)         Palumbo, Giuseppe .Key Terms in Translation Studies. London and New York. Continuum  International Publishing, 2009
xx)        Ramakrishna, S. ed. Translation and Multilingualism. PostColonial Contexts, Delhi: Pencraft International, 1997 
xxi)      Ramakrishan, E.V. Locating Indian Literature: Texts, Traditions, Translations. Orient Blackswan, 2011  xxii)          Saldanha, Gabriela and Sharon O’Brien .ed.  Research methodologies in translation studies , St Jerome Publishing, 2013
xxiii)       Talgeri, P and Verma, SB. eds. Literature in Translation from Cultural Transference to Metonymic Displacement. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 1988 xxiv)             Venuti, Lawrence ed. Translation Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan        Paul, 2000. xxv)             Wakabayashi, Judy and Rita Kothari. Eds. Decentering Translation Studies: India and Beyond. John Benjamins Publication,  

Many students request me to suggest ‘some topic or an area’ for their post-graduate research projects. More often than not, such queries come from the assumption that post-graduate research is the ‘Third Year of MA’, that is, the teacher suggests the texts, authors and reference material, the students go to the library and basically Google the topic, followed by Control C and Control V and presto-the assignment is ready!

This conception is fairly popular, not merely with the students, but also with their teachers. In fact, the teachers have a lion’s share in spreading ‘the Third Year MA syndrome’. You only have to look at the explosive growth in the ‘Peer-Reviewed Journals of International Research with ISBN numbers’ to publish tonnes of pseudo-research based on the Third Year MA syndrome brought out by college and university teachers to publish their crap and earn ‘API or Academic Performance Index’ points that are mandatory for advancement and promotions in their careers and make some easy money. When teachers follow this model, no wonder the students also emulate their peers.

The defining characteristic of this ‘Third Year MA syndrome’ is the desire to follow the path of least resistance: to read and think as little as possible and finish that damned paper or dissertation with minimum intellectual efforts. The outcome is usually the re-re-re-invention of the wheel and coming up with clichéd and stale work on obvious themes in the canonical writers that adds nothing to what is already known about the subject. There are full-fledged Shashi Deshpande, Girish Karnad, or Diaspora factories at work in academia producing plenty of garbage.   At its worst, this model is plagiarism of earlier bad research, and at its best, it is plagiarism of good research work with one’s own cosmetic surgery added to make it uglier.

I have already written about the basics of research, research question and about the format and fundamentals of writing a research proposal. Hence I am not going to rehearse these things again: Click on- A Beginner’s Guide to Doing a PhD in English Literature and Writing a Research Proposal for English Studies: Some Hints. The tips given here are for those not interested in The Third Year MA model, in short, those who are serious researchers, and are based on my earlier entries. These are not rules, but basically rules of thumb for those beginning their life as serious researchers and hence, are also obvious at times.

You have to keep in mind is that coming up with a viable research topic requires plenty of exploration (reading, thinking, discussing) and may take months. There is no short-cut here. You have to follow your own intellectual preoccupation and curiosity.

1) One of the simplest and obvious tips to start with is to consider the author, genre ( Fiction, poetry, Drama), literatures (like Gujarati literature or Indian Writing in English) or a critical idea (e. g. Gender, or Caste consciousness or both) that appealed to you the most during your BA or MA studies.  However, this is not a strict rule as there is always a possibility that there are other less explored authors, literatures and ideas which you may not be very familiar with. You may also begin by exploring authors, genres, literatures and ideas you have very little idea about.

2) The ideas and texts that appeal to you are not ‘accidents of taste’ but have links with your own life, the things that have happened to you and the relations you have with others and yourself.  Remember, research in literary studies and humanities is very often search for who you are: your own gender identity (the self awareness as belonging to a particular gender), caste identity, class identity, regional or linguistic identities play a significant role in your research and intellectual life. My own research is shaped by my identity as a bilingual- male -middle class poet writing in Marathi and English, born and brought up in Gujarat and trained in study and teaching  ‘Eng. Lit’ as a profession. ( Have a look at my thesis and research work by clicking here)

Again, while the self consciousness about your identity will definitely make your life as researcher more interesting and may also be a valuable contribution to the identity politics, this is not a strict rule and there is absolutely no reason why a Dalit student should not explore science fiction or cyberpunk or a gay researcher should not explore the questions of indigenous/Adivasi culture and literature.   There is no reason why an upper caste and upper class man not research Dalit women’s writing.

3) Researching literature and culture of the society in which you are born and brought up is far more valuable than going for the American, the British or the Continental literatures. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, because plenty of good quality research has already been conducted on these literatures, there is very little one can contribute as an outsider, unless you are going in for a comparative framework. They have already done excellent work on writers like Keats and Bernard Shaw or the themes like the Absurd or Love in Hemingway or Sex in Jane Austen, for instance, and there is very little left for us to add.

 Unless, of course there is a comparative angle. Reception of Keats or Jane Austen in Marathi or Punjabi is indeed a very good idea. But then, so is the reception of Namdeo Dhasal or Arun Kolatkar in Tamil.
Secondly, the research which contributes to your own society and culture is in my view more relevant and necessary than the research which would contribute to the American or Canadian society. As ours is a multilingual, casteist, patriarchal society with a history of colonial experience and globalization, exploring the questions of literary historiography, translation, caste, genders, modernity, regional identities, technology, and consumerism in cultural texts ( not just the literary ones, but also popular cultural texts like films, TV serials and bestsellers) in Indian languages (including English) using comparative frameworks of postcolonial studies, gender studies, Dalit studies and cultural semiotics will make your research interesting and relevant to present times.


So these are my ‘tips’ for the beginners, and I would love to hear more from you and other scholars about what you think of these. You can also check out my blog on  Translation Studies in India and Comparative Literature and you can also check out my blog on Literary theory 

The study of relationship between caste and literature in India has primarily been dominated by the Dalit Studies, which justifiably  interrogates the ' Sawarna-Upper Caste' hegemony in literary and cultural studies from the Ambedkarite position. Statistically speaking the Dalits, ( the former ' untouchables') who are usually categorized as ' Scheduled Castes' ( SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) by the constitution of India, form roughly 30% of Indian population as per 2011 census. Approximately 40 % of population in India comprises of a multitude of castes and communities classified as ' Other Backward Classes' or 'OBC'.  The Wikipedia graph about the OBC is informative.



Friends of South Asia or FOSA has put together a website Friendsofsouthasia.org which provides  useful information about this social category. It notes, " The OBCs comprise, by and large, the lower rungs of the Sudras who, in the past, suffered from varying degrees of ritual prohibitions applied to the a-dvijas (literally, those not twice-born) and remain till today socially and occupationally disadvantaged". It also notes, " "OBCs, by profession, being small cultivators, agricultural laborers, artisans and also being engaged in weaving, fishing, construction work, etc. and these occupations being common to SCs and OBCs, the status of OBCs cannot be treated as very much different from that of SCs ....OBCs constitute a majority of poor and backward population which produced a variety of goods and services, but on terms and conditions unfair to them."

However, in the study of sociology of Indian literature, the category of ' OBC' has not received the importance it deserves. One of the most significant statements comes from a renowned Marathi writer Vilas Sarang (1942-). In his provocative essay, " Marathi Sahityatil OBC Yug' ( in the magazine ' Khel' vol. 7, 2007) he attempts to theorize the relationship between this societal category and the poetics practiced by these writers in terms of the questions of identity. The essay is later anthologized as ' Marathi Vangmaiyatil Madhyamvarniya Yug' in his collection of essays Vangmaiyeen Sauskruti ani Samajik Vastav (2011).  

Sarang points out that this mass of ' Other Backward Classes'  is a heterogeneous and scattered one. It lacks any ' face of it's own'.  Historically, the modernist poets of the nineteen forties and the fifties in Marathi like BS Mardhekar or Vinda Karandikar were from the upper-castes. After the sixties, the Dalits and OBCs started making in-roads into Marathi literary world. While the Dalits were aggressive and assertive, the OBC writers were very often on the ' middle grounds'. Sarang points out that Bhalchandra Nemade, a major OBC writer of this period, failed to provide leadership as he remained closer to the identarian politics of ' grameen' writing and 'sub-culture' ( pot-sauskruti) politics.  As the time proceeds, the ' grameen (rural) literature' will give way to the category of ' OBC' literature, Sarang notes. In short, great shift in literary values is under way. 

Sarang remarks that in terms of literary practice, it did not have a poetics of its own. It often used the brahminical upper caste aesthetics, or used the Modernist idiom, or used the Dalit poetics or often followed the poetics of' grameen' or ' rural' literature. After 1980, Sarang argues, however the situation changed and the OBC writers started asserting themselves in poetry. Their preferred mode was 'realism' which gave rise to ' realistic  and unadorned poetry in Marathi.' They could not identify with the poetic idiom of the poetry of earlier generation be it conventional-romantic one or be it modernist one. It seems the OBCs' search for their own identity, their own face and their own voice will be critical for Indian cultural scenario.

Sarang's conceptualization, irrespective of its accuracy, is fascinating and has far-reaching implications for literary studies in India. It is interesting how he changed the title of his essay from ' OBC' Yug (2007) to ' Madhyam Varniya' ( of Middle Varna) in his collection in 2011, probably to avoid controversy. However, some questions need to probed further. For instance, why did the OBCs stay away from Dalit politics and poetics? What was the impact of the Mandal Commission implementation and the rise of OBCs as a force in Indian politics on the way Indian literature was read and written? What is the impact of  the swing of the OBCs towards the erstwhile upper caste party BJP ( see the statistics from the Hindu given below) on cultural politics of India, especially, the identarian ones? Specifically, with the OBC as a Prime Minister who has a thumping support from the upper-castes as well, what will be the trajectory of OBC identity politics in India? 

As the Friends of South Asia website tells us, the OBC is a dynamic category. What we need today is more contemporary sociological framework in the study of Indian literature to explain this dynamics and I don't think we are anywhere near to deal with this. 

Coming up with a clear research proposal is the foundation of your research project. The clarity you bring to your research proposal goes a long way in impacting the quality and velocity of your work. Any research proposal is basically a statement and plan of your research project that explains what you want to do, whyis it important to do it, and how you propose to do it. The following write-up offers some hints for a beginner who intends to take up a post-MA research project leading up to an M.Phil or a Ph.D in English studies in India. My hints are mainly regarding exploratory, qualitative research in literary studies in an Indian context. English Language Teaching not being my field, my suggestions and observations will come from literary studies.
One of the major difficulties faced by an aspiring researcher while coming up with a sound research proposal is having insufficient clarity about the research question. Many Indian post-graduates approach me asking for what ‘topic’ they should select for their research- or even worse, that they have already found one,  and want me to supervise it. Most of the times these ‘topics’ are dreadfully clichéd, and the researchers often come up with a justification that they selected them because ‘they liked it and are interested in it’. I say, “Good for you that you are interested. I am not.” It is then that they start asking me what topic would be good.  This happens largely because of the ignorance of what research in literary studies is. I suggest the beginner to look up my earlier blog entry ‘A Beginners Guide to Doing A PhD in English’ for help in this regard. In very early stages, one can only decide a broad area of research interest which may tentatively include specific form/s, author/s and literature/s. I suggest that one should go for the area which one can relate to, or appeals to you as a human being, and excite you.
The research question comes from what is called the ‘research gap’, a ‘gap’ in the existing knowledge, an unexplored or an under-explored aspect of the textual archive (the body of texts termed as ‘primary sources’). This gap may be an unexplored or under-explored methodological (or theoretical) angle that one brings in to bear on a canonical archive- as for instance ‘Caste Consciousness in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri’ which deploys ideas and insights from Dalit studies in reading the canonical Indian Writing in English text, or it may be an underexplored textual archive ( primary sources)  using an established theoretical framework -as for example in ‘Postcoloniality and the question of Identity in contemporary Gujarati Poetry’.  Identification of the research gap makes your project specific.
It is important to note that I have assumed that after the ‘crisis in English studies’ debate of the late nineteen eighties, English studies in India have moved far beyond the study of ‘English Literature’ or ‘Indian Writing in English’, and have imbibed the spirit of comparative literature ( You can read my entry on Comparative Literature   and Translation Studies in India on this blog)  in being open to literatures in Indian languages (‘bhashas’ as Prof GN Devy terms them) and open to the expanded notion of the text which includes films, popular literatures, visual culture, oral narratives, and popular culture. This makes the research work inevitably interdisciplinary in nature. I am aware that this assumption is not always accepted by many English departments in India. However, this is the assumption I uphold and promote.
Identifying the ‘research gap’ and arriving at the research question will automatically lead to ‘why’ and ‘how’ of your research project. Obviously, in trying to locate what is unexplored or underexplored in your domain, you have to find out what is already explored. This demands extensive reading of already existing knowledge (‘secondary sources’) in the particular domain. Mentioning what you have read in your research proposal is often called ‘Review of Literature’. This extensive pre-reading is indispensible in formulating your argument which is the backbone of your research project. The argument begins when you either disagree with prevalent views and ideas about your subject or you start being aware of the limitations of these views. The ‘why’ of your research (rationale/objectives/ justification) emphasizes the underexplored aspects of your subject and the limitations of the already prevalent views. The rationale also underscores the contemporary social relevance of your research project (the scope and significance). It implies that the knowledge that you produce will be useful and contributing for the society that you inhabit by promoting enhanced understanding of itself.  In my personal view, the research projects dealing with languages and cultures of the society we inhabit, the Indian society, have more direct relevance than those dealing with societies and cultures which are distant from us.
The ‘how’ or the question of ‘method’ of the research project follows logically from ‘what’ and ‘why’ of it. Using Griffin’s distinction between ‘skills, methods and methodology’ (2005), one can say that ‘Postcoloniality and the question of Identity in contemporary Gujarati poetry’ will evidently use exploratory, qualitative methods involving textual analysis and explication. It might include oral interviews, archival methods, and draw upon the methodological frameworks from comparative studies, postcolonial studies, and identity studies. I recommend Research Methods for English Studies (2005) edited by Gabriele Griffin to everyone who want to do research
As I am talking about exploratory and qualitative research in humanities, it is not necessary to talk about ‘hypothesis’ the concept which belongs more accurately in the domain of natural sciences. As MPhil and PhD programs come with their own time-frames in India, it is not very important to talk about them either. Chapterization of the thesis also comes later and need not be laid down or may be mentioned tentatively. The ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ is usually followed by a list of important books and articles (bibliography) you have mentioned in your ‘Review of Literature’ section. You should use the format given by MLA Handbook (7th Edition).
So the outline of your research proposal may be as follows:
I) The Title and the Topic: The discussion of ‘what’ of your project, the research question in specific terms, and a brief introductory background to the author/s, and texts.II) Rationale (‘why’ is it important): The discussion of the ‘research gap’, ‘Review of Literature’ and its social significance. III) Methodological (Theoretical) Framework: The discussion of the relevant theoretical concepts and ideas and their justification.IV)  Bibliography

In my entire life ,I never considered relationships as important. My chief preoccupation was with what I read, wrote or thought. When it came to relationships , I thought they were too demanding and exhausting and I was no good in relationships. I usually messed them up, screwed up others lives, but basically screwed myself up. For me relationships actually meant anguish, suffering, lots of hard work , struggle and pretense. So I tried to avoid them as much as possible, after all I was lousy ' relater'. But then I had to fix myself by learning some tips and tricks to survive. I read plenty of self-help stuff but it hardly worked. Not surprisingly so. It was this desire to fix myself and learn a couple of tips and tricks to be better at relationships that I enrolled for Landmark Relationship Seminar. And as a regular participant in Landmark program I had some idea that this precisely what this program wasn't about! In the fourth session of the Seminar I got to the source of all my misery, hard work , ineffectiveness, nautanki in relationships: I was living my life from what Landmark Relationship Seminar distinguishes as 'The Fundamental Myth of Being Related- The default context of all human relationship- the paradigm of relationships all of us are born into.'The default paradigm/context - the fundamental myth from where we live our relationships is ' WE, AS HUMANS, ARE NOT RELATED'. Hence our whole struggle, sincere hard work , all tips , strategies, all sorts of stuff we do ' in order to ' be related and protect /,survive relations are disempowering and very hard. I started looking at what all I am doing ' in order to' be related , survive , protect relationships. I take my wife for outings and shopping or movies ' in- order-to' avoid complaints about not being available or giving time. I uses to get up early to help Ashwini get Amogh ready to avoid her complaints about my involvement in Landmark. I bring Amogh toys or take him out to movies ' in order to' avoid his similar complaint. I even pretended to listen. I used to visit friends during festivities or such events ' in order to' maintain relationships. I pretend to be liberal and nice with students and don't hold them to account ' in order to' be popular or avoid they not giving attention. The impact of this was absolute hard work ,pretense and anguish. I had no choice or say in the matter. All of them were 'have to' activities. It was disempowering and exhausting. Plus it hardly worked. All ' in order to ' strategies were pretty ineffective. In the session 4 , there was another context, another paradigm, a liberating, effective, and powerful one created- not as THE Truth, not as a concept or 'good idea' or idealism, but a powerful place to come from, look at and deal with life and relationships. The invented context was ' WE ARE ALREADY PROFOUNDLY RELATED AS HUMAN BEINGS. When I tried it on as a place to come from and a place to stand-an amazing and inspiring world of being related opened up. All the struggle, sincere hard work, and insecurity of trying to create, maintain and protect vanished. I did not HAVE TO do all the things I was doing ' in order to'. I had a choice and say in the matter. I can say 'no' to all these ' in-order-to' activities without loss of power or peace to anyone. I can deal with people's upset from ' nothing wrong' . I create possibility of being straight and loving and empowering at the same time. I don't have to strain in order to be related and being with others as I only have to be present that I am already related and with other people. Obviously the distinction of already being related has nothing to with idealism of universal brotherhood or sisterhood. it is not a concept or an idea. it is a distinction . A distinction, as against a concept or an idea or definition, is what our technology- Landmark technology- is made of. One can use analogy of 'balance': there is a difference between balance as a concept or definition and balance as something to be 'got' so that you can ride a two wheeler. ' Understanding' balance as a concept doesn't help you to ride a two-wheeler. So if you 'get' the distinction ' we are already deeply and profoundly related' it can be extremely liberating and empowering as I experienced it. Now that I am gotten by this distinction, it is all matter of practicing it and mastering it: catching myself when I am coming from is ' I am not related' and doing ' in-order-to' and shifting it to I am already related. And whole new exciting view of the world of being related opens up for me.