Ink, Insight, and Influence: Celebrating the Scholar Who Taught Us to Think

Image Source: The Hindu

A remarkable festschrift, Language, Literature, Culture and Cinema: Essays in Honour of Professor Harish Narang, has appeared, celebrating one of India's most distinguished scholarly voices. Edited by Anuradha Ghosh, Madhumita Chakraborty, and Mukesh Ranjan, the book is a sumptuous brocade of essays that reflect Prof. Narang's inter-disciplinary brilliance and his reputation as a teacher, translator, and cultural thinker.

Intellectual Highlights

The book spans 33 chapters, each of which captures Prof. Narang's influence on postcolonial studies, translation studies, and cultural theory.

Contributors are former students, colleagues, and admirers who present an overview of his pedagogical and scholarly impact.

The book is structured thematically, covering Indian and African literatures, diasporic fiction, folk cultures, and the interfacings between literature and cinema and ethics.

Thematic Spectrum

Section One is on Punjabi and Kashmiri poetry by such poets as Pash, Batalvi, and Mahjoor, and Premchand and Manto literature.

Section Two examines minority and tribal styles, and Section Three examines contemporary genres and technology usage.

Parts Four to Six address transnational voices, including MG Vassanji and African writers, comparatively and in gender terms.

Section Seven looks inward, examining Prof. Narang's own writing and translating, and finds his creative and ethical path.

The concluding section looks back on the complex interplay between literature and language, a cornerstone of his own scholarly work.

Legacy in Layers

The work is preceded by a foreword from Prof. Kapil Kapoor, Padma Bhushan awardee, and succeeded by an afterword from Prof. Vaishna Narang, adding personal and academic richness.

It is simultaneously a tribute and a source—transcending disciplines, generations, and geographies.

Prof. Narang's stint at Jawaharlal Nehru University is recalled not only for excellence in academic work, but for moulding critical, socially conscious minds.

Sources: The Tribune, JSTOR, Cal Poly Academic Affairs, The Hindu Book Review, Aakar Books Catalog