The uses of ‘folk’ in the making, remaking, and reception of Vijaydan Detha’s ‘Duvidhyau’/’Duvidha’

Abstract

My presenta8on will study what func8on the designa8on ‘folk’ serves, whether at the level of
the produc8on of a tale in wriUen literature, its reproduc8on in cinema, and its recep8on in
mul8ple languages by focusing on a single, now-canonical work: ‘Duvidhyau’ (translated into
Hindi as ‘Duvidhā) by Vijaydan Detha (1926–2013), the Rajasthani writer who came to be
emblema8c of folk literature in Independent India—a ‘folk writer’ wri8ng ‘folk stories’ in a
language understood as having mainly/only ‘folk literature’. Duvidha was adapted mul8ple
8mes including two well-known films, Mani Kaul’s Duvidha (1973) and Amol Palekar’s
Paheli (2005). I will begin with the descrip8on of Detha’s prac8ce—how he collected tales,
how he classified and modified what he collected—by Detha himself, close collaborators such as
Kamal Kothari, and translators into Hindi, before inves8ga8ng the uses to which its being a
‘folktale’, its orality and lack of psychologiza8on, are put to by Kaul and Palekar and how this
designa8on affects the recep8on of both the literary work and the films.