HINDI MODERNISM: RETHINKING AGYEYA AND HIS TIMES

Born in 1911 on the border of Nepal, as a boy Agyeya travelled across India, from Kashmir to Tamil Nadu. Later, while in college in Lahore, Agyeya became an underground revolutionary. He advocated for India's freedom, and a decade later he served as an anti-fascist officer in the British army. In the mid-1940s and early 1950s, Agyeya began his work as a prominent literary figure of a subcontinent torn by independence, partition, nationhood, and the Cold War. It was a time when the Hindi world strove to make Hindi the national language. The Berkeley symposium on which this book is based explored the formations of this period-- of the nation, and of the literary vanguard and movements that were created around and against the figure of Agyeya. But is this the only perspective through which to access Agyeya and his influence