literature. It has replaced mere intuitional reactions to social reality by a more reliable understanding of the working of social phenomena. It has helped us in seeing man not exclusively as an individual, but in the context of social forces that largely determine his destiny, and of the contradictions within society and the conflicts emanating from them. It gives us a wider, richer view of life's reality and conse- '•' quently enlarges the scope of its treatment at the hands of creative writers. And there is no denying the fact that during the last many decades, it has inspired some of the finest writing in the world. It gives a new dimension to our awareness of life and it pulsates with a new passion, the passion of our times, which may be termed, 'the social passion*. This also gives the lie to the hitherto widespread belief that a writer must remain a detached spectator of lifers drama, th^t if he is involved with social or political work, he loses his detachment and becomes a publicist. Agostinho Neto was leading the struggle of his people in the jungles of Angola and yet was able to produce some of the most poignant verse written in our times. So have some of the young Palestinian writers, and the exiled writers of South Africa. So have Pablo Neruda, Luis Aragon, Nazim Hikmet and Faiz Ahmed Faiz and many others who have wielded their pen in the service of a great cause, and have achieved heights of artistic excellence. For us in India, it is not a new phenomenon. Kabir, who stood up against autowacy and institutionalized religion, has left behind immortal verse, which has been on the lips of our people for well over five hundred years. Coming back to the question of life and the writer's sensibility, I believe that it is life that has primacy. When he begins writing, a writer enters a region which is certainly 'fluid5, in a state of flux, but which is not a vacuum. He begins to treat life in the raw. He carries with him, so to say, a slice of life on which he begins to work. It may be the memory of a concrete incident or that of a face or of a situation or the sense of the irony within a situation, something given to him by life. There is nothing called a 'pure' product of the human mind. It is life from which ideas emerge and not vice versa. Of course, a writer can mentally spin out a situation and then fill it in, and give it flesh and blood existence. But invariably behind such an exercise too lies a rich storehouse of life's experience. It is the concrete reality of life which makes us see its hidden ironies, its contradictions, its vagaries, etc. The writer's sensibility enables him to sense the irony of a situation; but he cannot concoct a situation out of nothing. That does not mean that there is no concoction done in literature. Indeed, there is a lot of it even at the hands of the best and most authentic of writers, but the basis is always provided by reality. It is not done in a vacuum. And invariably it is done by the writer's creative imagination which may even transform the real situation to something beyond recognition. And yet it will be true to life, because it' originated from life. 42 Journal of Arts and Ideas