ROOTED SENSIBILITY

Unlike the social sciences, the study of English Literature in India seems likely to dimi¬nish gradually into a waste¬land. While we produce an increasing number of eminent sociologists, historians and economists, our literary critics—with a few notable but little noticed exceptions—are mostly a demoralized or desic¬cated lot. One reason for the withering of our literary criti¬cal landscape is the difficulty of finding a use for literary studies in a predominantly utilitarian ethos which allows little room for something as ‘useless’ as literature; a second may be the Leavisite refusal to study literary texts as aspects of cultural history rather than as autonomous moral bodies and timeless verbal icons; a third is perhaps a growing recognition of the relative alienness of English literature; a fourth is undoubtedly the abysmal condition of our libraries which makes access to source materials, and in Eng. Lit. Crit. even to secondary material, an im¬possible or at least a Her¬culean business. Given this mind killing context, the writing of a book on Hardy, which the local branch of the novelist-poet’s own publisher has thought worth bringing out, deserves a little credit by itself. However, although the author’s genuine and deep involvement in his subject is manifest in this book, it is his ardour and sincerity of purpose rather than his critical achieve¬ment that, in my view, merit a measure of praise.