Alok Rai
India & Magdalen 1968
Born in Jabalpur in 1946, Alok Rai studied at the University of Allahabad before going to Oxford to read for a BPhil English. He went on to complete his PhD, on George Orwell, at University College London, where he held a Commonwealth Scholarship. Returning to India, Rai held academic posts at The University of Allahabad, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, the University of Delhi and the University of Pennsylvania. His authored works include George Orwell and the Politics of Despair and Hindi Nationalism, and he has also translated Munshi Premchand’s Nirmala. Rai continues to live in Allahabad and to work on language formation and how identities crystallise around languages. This narrative is excerpted from an interview with the Rhodes Trust on 11 October 2024.
'I was very conscious of the world politically'
My family background was both very literary and also very firmly nationalist. My grandparents were deeply involved in the nationalist movement, the freedom movement. My maternal grandparents spent years in jail and my paternal grandfather, Munshi Premchand, heeded Gandhi’s call in 1921 for non-cooperation with the colonial government. He resigned his job and spent the rest of his life in deep economic insecurity, but he made a name for himself and he made a contribution as a writer. So, I grew up as someone who was very conscious of the world politically and encouraged to be so and I was also encouraged to develop my interest in language and literature.
We moved to Allahabad in 1950 and that was where I went to both school and university. As I child, I was very keen on sport but my main focus was books and reading. With my background, it was very clearly understood that our first language was Hindi, but we also learned Urdu with a private tutor because Urdu was not available in school. The colonial hangover in our education was huge. I was reading about the Norman Conquest and English kings for quite some time before I became aware that I lived in a different country.
On applying for the Rhodes Scholarship
At university, most of my contemporaries were going to go into the civil service, but because I had grown up with the belief that we should not serve the government, I chose to keep studiously away from that route. The University of Allahabad, like the country as a whole, was on the cusp of change, but when I was there, it was still somewhat of a remnant of a past time. Numbers were fewer and a privileged elite, which included people like myself, was still able to define the tone of the university, though we were somewhat envied and gradually resented. We did traditional, student-type things and we did them in English, even though Allahabad was and is very much a vernacular university.
I was a high performer and I also represented the university in various sports. I debated, I acted. So, the idea of applying to the Rhodes was around. There were people who said, ‘Obviously, you shouldn’t allow yourself to remain confined to Allahabad. Think big.’ As it happens, the very first Indian Rhodes Scholar, Lavraj Kumar (India & Magdalen 1947) was from Allahabad too. 20 years later, I was the second Scholar from Allahabd. I remember the interview was very friendly and the results were announced immediately thereafter, which was wonderful. It was a totally transformative moment, completely unforgettable.
“Your tutors are not very happy”
My background included lots of culturally valuable things, but it did not include anything like Oxford. I didn’t know what to expect. I flew over from India like a total greenhorn. No one had warned me that it was usual to come to Oxford a week or so in advance just to get settled in. So, I arrived just in time for the first day of term, and I was unpacking my clothes and, at the same time, preparing for my first tutorial. It was a deeply unsettling time, frankly, but people were friendly, people were helpful, people were generous, and I picked up the ways of this new place fast enough.
In India, I had been used to being the top of the batch, academically. It was a shock to get to Oxford and discover that there was a lot I didn’t know and I would have to work much harder to make the grade. I still remember being called to see the Warden, Bill Williams, at the end of my first term. We had a cup of tea, and we talked about this and that and the other, and then, very gradually and very gently, he said to me, ‘It seems your tutors are not very happy.’ For me, that was an utter shock. I was used to being feted. I was used to being lionised. Well, after that, I took pains to see that my tutors were happy!
‘Not a narrow linguistic interest’
After Oxford, I went back to India and taught for a few years. This was a very troubled time, in the immediate aftermath of the Bangladesh liberation struggle, and India was suffering from huge price rises and great social turmoil, culminating in the imposition of the Emergency in 1975. That certainly made it clear to me that my way of being political, which was largely about influencing people’s thoughts rather than being part of political life as such, was not possible any longer. So, it seemed a good time resume my interrupted academic career.
I was fortunate enough to be given a Commonwealth Scholarship and I went to London, because I was working on George Orwell, and the Orwell archive is situated at University College London. My first reaction on landing up at UCL was simply shock, because my only experience of university in England had been London. I even went to the Commonwealth Secretariat and asked whether they could transfer me to Oxford. Of course, they didn’t, and I’m very grateful they didn’t, because being a student in London and working at the Orwell archive was such an academically rich experience. I’m interested in issues of language and literature and also in issues of politics, so, Orwell was the natural choice for me, as a writer who was deeply interested in all these things. As it happens, my book on Orwell was published almost simultaneously with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Cold War. I think we might now be in the throes of another Cold War, but that’s another matter.
I went back to India, because I was the only son of my parents and I felt I owed that to them. I wanted to continue as a thinking person, a scholar, but I realised that I needed to define my next point of interest as something that I could work on here in India. What I lighted on was the matter of the making of modern Hindi. Again, it was the convergence of language and politics. For all kinds of reasons, Hindi has invented for itself a fake pedigree of having been derived from Sanskrit. That gives it both a classical heritage, which is both unnecessary and unearned, and obscures its relation with the social context out of which it emerges. My work is basically an attempt to dismantle that myth of antiquity and make explicit the politics that go into the making of modern Hindi and that have, in my view, had very grave political consequences. So, my interest in the making of modern Hindi is certainly not a narrow linguistic interest.
‘Like something out of a play by Chekhov’
I have worked in all kinds of different university environments, and in all of them, I have tried to create a space with my students where we are all happy to talk, happy to take and answer questions. I know I am a better thinker when I am engaging with students than if I am preparing a lecture sitting at my table. That’s why I have such a high regard for Oxford’s tutorial system. I think the only way for education to happen in any real sense is when people engage in a common struggle, rather than imparting wisdom in a one-directional fashion.
I do miss teaching now that I have retired, but otherwise, my life is the same as it always has been. I read, I write, I publish. What I enjoy is engagement with texts, with ideas, and I continue to do that. Recently, I’ve published on how Urdu has become a symbol of Islam and has therefore become a victim of the kind of anti-Muslim politics that is currently dominating India. Language and identity formation in modern India is such a fertile field, and it continues to yield new angles.
Beyond my work, I’m lucky enough to be able to continue living a large, spacious life in Allahabad, in what was my parents’ home. I have dogs, I have a garden, I have fruit trees, and I’m always inviting my friends to come and share it all with me. I am extremely conscious that mine is the last generation that will live this sort of life. In some ways, it’s self-indulgent, but nonetheless, it’s very culturally rich. I sometimes think my life is like something out a play by Chekhov. I can hear the bulldozers and diggers around me, and I’m still holding on.