Rajendra Yadav was in a subtle and surreptitious way the very part of the literary establishment and socio-political structures that he apparently kept attacking throughout in his creative writings. That defined the dichotomy between his intellectual and personal self
At the age of 84, noted Hindi writer-editor Rajendra Yadav died in the capital of the country where he had been staying for several decades. In the immediate aftermath of his demise, there has been a great deal of debate and discussion about the kinds of contribution he made to the body of Hindi literature and literary criticism, the sort of bohemian life he continuously lived and also about the unconventional disposition he unfailingly displayed all around. According to the pre-eminent literary critic, Namvar Singh, Yadav will be primarily remembered for his immensely long spell as an effective and a productive editor of Hans.
When Munshi Premchand, the bilingual writer — he wrote in Hindu Urdu — passed away, his son, Amrit Rai, took the responsibility upon himself for publishing Hans, which he did for a long time. But he later left the publication. The magazine could not come out for many years. Yadav came to its rescue when it was lying completely defunct, abandoned and extinct as there was nobody to look after its health. He took the plunge and began to publish it again. He made Hans overcome innumerable and seemingly insurmountable obstacles. He also enabled Hans to chart some unimaginable and so far uncharted territories. Some said that he rushed to where angels feared to tread. But his self-belief, out-of-the-box thinking and nonchalance worked, and Hans did something hitherto unthinkable. What its editor actually did, and which is really noteworthy, is that he identified numerous, anonymous young creative minds and nurtured them both before and after providing them enough, sometimes more than enough, space in the magazine. He was simultaneously instrumental in generating a favourable environment for the literature from the margins. Most readers of Hans hold this view that it finally turned out to be a magazine predominantly of Dalit and feminist discourses. Many firmly believe that he facilitated the emergence of these discourses in Hindi. Posterity will judge him mainly for his contribution to the growth of Dalit and feminist tendencies, both in life and literature.
I wish to mention another literary critic, and an influential one: Ashok Vajpayee, who considers Yadav a modern literary figure with a downright democratic mindset. According to Vajpayee, Yadav effortlessly and very successfully performed the role of a public intellectual in our times. In keeping with the efforts made by Namvar Singh and Vajpayee, noted Hindu journalist Raj Kishore has made a successful attempt to locate him in the tradition of Bhartendu Harischandra, Ramchandra Shukla, Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, Premchand and Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’. He suggests that none of the above-mentioned literary stalwarts could take notice of what Yadav could actually manage to do single-handedly with his consciousness-raising campaign for a more tolerant and democratic literary sphere in the Hindi heartland.
One can never be sure of what space will be left for and importance given to the Dalit and the feminist perspectives and pre-occupations after the death and disappearance of the erstwhile editor of Hans. But one has valid and justifiable reasons to be hopeful of the possibility that these trends and movements will not scatter and lose momentum. And they will keep generating a lot of trouble and turmoil for all those with a temperament of status quo. The emergence of Dalit and feminist literature in particular has created the sort of furore which cannot be ignored and has to be addressed and entertained in a serious way to grant it the kind of critical appreciation that it deserves. Raj Kishore insists that Yadav was Phule and Ambedkar put together of the Hindi public sphere. Under his editorship, Hans played a similar role in the development of social consciousness of Hindi heartland as Saraswati did in the 19th century for the growth of Khari-boli poetry and Hindi prose.
There is certainly a great deal of merit in what literary critics, journalists and many others have been speaking about Yadav. But my contention is that the phenomenon called Rajendra Yadav is more complicated than normally meets the eye. I had the opportunity to meet Rajendra Yadav some six years ago. He was surrounded by a couple of Hindi journalists and writers, including Maitri Pushpa, whose potential Yadav is said to have recognised early on and promoted thereafter to ensure the artistic accomplishments for the feminist author. In his uncanny but informed, easy-going but unyielding, approach, he came to dwell upon the intricacies and subtleties of Hindi literature as well as human life. People from the periphery and literature of the oppressed and the suppressed, dominated his mind — and so did the entire conversation between the two of us.
What I gathered out of my hour-long interaction with him was that he held enormous desire to live life in a celebratory fashion and loved to make provocative and controversial statements. And he was in a subtle and surreptitious way the very part of the literary establishment and socio-political structures which he apparently kept attacking so valiantly and vigorously throughout in his creative writings and editorial utterances. That defined the dichotomy between his intellectual and personal self. That also was the paradox of the complex and ambivalent man Rajendra Yadav had been from the very beginning.
The triumvirate of Mohan Rakesh, Kamleshwar and Rajendra Yadav took the literary world of Hindi by storm when the three writers began to participate in the literary movement. It precipitated the growth of what is usually called Nai Kahani. Jenendra Kumar, Nirmal Verma and Sachchidand Hiranand Vatsyanan ‘Agyeya’ had already brought about certain radical changes in the ways in which human relationships were seen, understood and interpreted in literature. The triumvirate took a cue from the awesome threesome and went on to revolutionize both the form and content of Hindi short-story writing. As a matter of fact, a paradigm shift took place in the field of Hindi short-story writing when these three started to address the existential angst, loneliness and alienation of the urban middle class along with the questions of female emancipation and individual choice to live life on one's own terms.
In course of time, they parted ways because of their diverse aspirations and at times conflicting and even contradictory pre-occupations. All of them earned prestige, privilege and recognition for themselves in their own different ways. With the passage of time, they all left this world. Mohan Rakesh and Kamleshwar died before.
With Rajendra Yadav’s demise, the disintegration of the triumvirate has become complete. But the literary contributions made by them will not disintegrate. It will remain with us perhaps forever, and surely till Hindi literature is talked about.