BEGC 132 Selections from Indian Writing: Cultural Diversity Solved Question Paper June 2026 (IGNOU Bachelor of Arts (General), BAG)

Block 1, Unit 1 20 marks About 710 words Asked in 4 of 5 papers

Question 2. What factors, according to Sujit Mukherjee, should be kept in mind while writing a history of Indian Literature? (20)

Introduction. Sujit Mukherjee was an Indian critic and translator who asked a simple but difficult question: how do you write one history for a literature that lives in dozens of languages? His essay 'Propositions', studied in Block 1, Unit 1 of BEGC-132, argues that India needs its own method of literary history and cannot borrow the Western one as it is.

In Britain or France, a literary historian can follow one major language through the centuries. Mukherjee points out that India has had no single major language of literature in this way for the last five centuries. So any honest history must work out new rules, and these rules are the factors he asks us to keep in mind.

1. Take every Indian language into account. The first factor is plurality. Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Hindi, Urdu and many other languages each carry long literary traditions. A history that picks one language, or treats the rest as minor, gives a false picture. Mukherjee wants the historian to place these literatures side by side and read them as parts of one larger story.

2. Multilingualism is built into the tradition itself. Mukherjee shows that even classical Sanskrit drama was multilingual. Kings and learned men speak Sanskrit, women speak Prakrit and ordinary characters speak Apabhramsha, both forms that grew out of Sanskrit. For him this is an index of a society that was multilingual from the start. A historian must therefore expect many languages, even inside a single text.

3. A single timeline will not work. Up to about the twelfth century Sanskrit dominated, so a history of Sanskrit literature could stand in for Indian literature. After that, the regional languages grow at different speeds and in different places, and Bengali, Marathi or Tamil do not reach their high points together. This is why Mukherjee argues that a neat, period-wise, chronological history of Indian literature is not possible.

4. Languages have always borrowed from one another. Indian languages did not grow in sealed rooms. Stories, forms and ideas moved freely across them. The Rama story alone was retold by Kamban in Tamil, Krittibas in Bengali and Tulsidas in Awadhi. Studying each language in isolation hides this cross-pollination, so the historian has to trace how the literatures fed one another.

5. Some authors belong to all of India. Mukherjee's own example is Tulsidas. Our usual habit files him as a Hindi poet, yet he wrote in Awadhi and shaped the growth of Hindi, he belongs firmly to the medieval period, and he also rises above it as a great poet of Indian literature for all time. A history must find room for writers whose reach crosses the borders of language and period.

6. Oral and performed literature counts. Much Indian literature was first sung, recited or performed rather than read. Folk songs, tribal narratives and devotional poetry travelled by voice long before print. A history built only on written books leaves out a huge part of the tradition, so oral and folk forms must be treated as literature in their own right.

7. High culture, popular culture and outside influence. The essay also asks the historian to notice the gap between learned, high culture and popular culture, and the outside models that shaped Indian writing. Many Indian languages took over conventions first from Sanskrit and later from English, which is why modern Indian literature often carries Western trappings. A good history explains these layers instead of hiding them.

8. Unity of heritage with diversity of literature. Above all, Mukherjee wants a twin focus. Indian literature, in his words, 'is one entity but comprising many languages'. The new method must not throw away the shared heritage, yet it must respect the separate growth of each language. Unity of heritage and diversity of literature have to be held together, not traded against each other.

9. A comparative method suited to India. Because no single language holds the whole story, Mukherjee looks for a critical approach that fits the Indian context instead of an imported frame. The historian has to work comparatively, reading a Tamil text beside a Marathi or Bengali one and asking what they share as well as how they differ. Only then does the running undercurrent of one Indian literary culture become visible across many languages.

Conclusion. For Sujit Mukherjee, writing a history of Indian literature means giving up the comfort of one language and one timeline. The historian must count every language, notice multilingual texts, accept uneven growth, follow borrowings, honour writers like Tulsidas who cross borders and include oral forms, while still seeing the single heritage behind them. That balance is the heart of 'Propositions'.

Block 1, Units 2 and 3 20 marks About 730 words Asked in all 5 papers

Question 3. Elaborate on the common features shared by the Bhakti and Sufi movements. (20)

Introduction. The Bhakti and Sufi movements shaped the religious and literary life of medieval India. Bhakti grew from the Tamil saints of the south and spread across the subcontinent, while Sufism came with Muslim mystics and took root through orders such as the Chishtis. They began in different faiths, yet, as Block 1 of BEGC-132 shows, they shared a striking set of features. These common features explain why the two are often studied, and remembered, together.

1. Love above ritual. Both movements placed loving devotion at the centre of religion. For the Bhakti poet, God is reached through prema, intense personal love, not through sacrifice or learned rites. For the Sufi, the path is ishq, divine love that burns away the self. Ritual, fasting and scholarly debate matter far less than a heart turned wholly towards the divine.

2. A challenge to orthodoxy. Saints of both traditions questioned priests, clerics and empty ceremony. Kabir mocked the pandit and the mullah alike for valuing outward forms over inner truth. Sufi masters taught that rote learning without love was useless. Both movements insisted that truth lies within the seeker, not in temples, mosques or the books of the learned.

3. Simplicity, humility and inner purity. Both paths asked the seeker to give up pride, wealth and show. Bhakti saints praised the humble devotee and lived as ordinary householders or wandering singers. Sufis valued faqr, a chosen poverty, and saw the ego, the nafs, as the main barrier between the soul and God. In both, a pure and humble heart matters more than outward status or learning.

4. Rejection of caste and social hierarchy. Both were socio-religious movements because they spoke for equality. Many Bhakti saints came from groups the caste order looked down on: Kabir was a weaver, Ravidas a leatherworker and Chokhamela a Mahar devotee of Vitthal. Sufi khanqahs and their community kitchens welcomed people of every faith and rank. In both, devotion, not birth, decided a person's worth.

5. The guide: guru and pir. Each tradition gave great weight to a spiritual teacher. The Bhakti seeker looks to the guru, and a well-known couplet of Kabir places the guru even above God because the guru shows the way. The Sufi disciple, or murid, gives himself to a pir or murshid, as Amir Khusrau did to Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi. The teacher and disciple bond sits at the heart of both paths.

6. The language of the people. Neither movement relied mainly on the learned languages of power, Sanskrit or Persian. Bhakti poets sang in Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Braj, Awadhi and Bengali. Sufi poets used Punjabi, Hindavi and Sindhi alongside Persian. By speaking in the mother tongue of ordinary people, both movements helped many Indian languages build a literature of their own.

7. The mad lover and the longing for union. Sisir Kumar Das, in 'The Mad Lover', shows that the most recurrent image in medieval religious poetry is the devotee driven mad by love. The Bhakti poet and the Sufi alike long to lose the self and merge with the beloved. The pain of separation, viraha in Bhakti and firaq in Sufi verse, becomes a path to God, and the world calls such lovers mad.

8. The soul as the longing bride. Both traditions often speak in a woman's voice. Meera sees Krishna as her only husband, and Kabir calls himself the bride of Ram. Sufi poets of Punjab and Sindh also give the seeking soul the voice of a woman waiting for the Beloved. This shared image turns devotion into the language of human love and makes the poetry deeply personal.

9. Music, song and performance. Both movements spread through song more than sermon. Bhakti gave India the bhajan, the kirtan and the abhang, sung in temples and village gatherings. Sufis turned to sama, devotional listening to music, and to qawwali, a form traditionally linked with Amir Khusrau. The Baul singers of Bengal, of whom Lalon Fakir is the best known, blend both streams in their songs.

10. Syncretism and shared spaces. Finally, the two movements met and mixed. Kabir is claimed by Hindus and Muslims alike, and Guru Nanak drew on both, with verses of the Sufi Baba Farid included in the Guru Granth Sahib. Sufi shrines drew Hindu as well as Muslim pilgrims. Together the movements built a common devotional culture that crossed the lines of religion.

Conclusion. Bhakti and Sufism grew from different roots but shared the same core: love over ritual, equality over hierarchy, the guru or pir as guide, the language of the people, the image of the mad lover and song as worship. That is why BEGC-132 studies them together as twin socio-religious movements that enriched Indian literature in many tongues.