Critical Vision of Manager Pandey
Deo Shankar Navin
MANAGER PANDEY: SANKALIT NIBANDH by Manager Pandey National Book Trust, 2011, 277 pp., 115
February 2011, volume 35, No 2

During last few decades the areas of Hindi Criticism have expanded and Manager Pandey is one of the critics in the decades after Independence who defined that literature is not separate form society and hence growth of literature cannot be disassociated from the growth of society. The tools of Manager Pandeys critical method have been shaped by his views in favour of the deprived and downtrodden. He has argued for new vision and conduct in a context of his belief that any movement can be successful only if its becomes a part of holistic social change.Eighteen such essays which define the new dimension for theory and practices of criticism are published in Manager Pandey: Sankalit Nibandh. The book is divided in four parts: Criticism of Criticism, Democracy of Novel, Society of Poetry, Culture and Society.

In the essay entitled Aaj Ka Samay aur Marxvad, he discusses the poem Karl Marx by the German poet Hans Magnus: It is a travesty that the revolutionary ideas all over the world die not because of the opponents but because of the opportunism of the adherents. In the essay Muktibodh Ka Aalochanatmak Sangarsh Manager Pandey comments: Marxists not only fight against the classenemies, but they also learn from their practical life and win over their own weaknesses. Pondering over the critical writings by Muktibodh in Kamayani: Ek Adhyayan and Kamayani: Ek Punarvichar and writing about the selfcriticism by Marxists and about the life vision and political vision developed during the Nayee Kavita movement, Manager Pandey highlights many new ideas of Muktibodh. And indeed Manager Pandey himself is the successor in the same current. He highlights the dialectics of the creative writer and critique but also compares the BrechtLuckach debate with the debate between Muktibodh and Ramvilas Sharma.

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