Like a River Fed by Many a Stream: Reflections on the Confluence of Cultures

About the Author

Dr. K. Ayyappa Paniker (b.1930) one of the foremost scholars of modem India, is a distinguished poet, academic, critic, editor and translator. His important works include Ayyappa Panikarude Kritikal (Collected Poems, 4 Volumes), Ayyappa Panikarude Lekhanangal (Collected Essays, 3 Volumes) and Ayyappa Panikarude Vivartanangal (Translations of Poetry). He has authored several monographs and edited Medieval Indian Literature (English, 4 Volumes), Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature (English, Revised Edition) and Shakespearude Kritikal (The Complete works of Shakespeare in Malayalam) besides a series on early Indian writers in English. He edits a poetry journal in Malayalam, Kerala Kavita. He has represented India in several international fora across the world. He has won several awards including Sahitya Akademi Award, Kerala Sahitya Academy Awards, Mahakavi Ulloor Award, Kumaran Asan Award, Bhilwara Award, Gangadhar Meher Award, Sahitya Parishad Award and Kabir Samman. He was an Indira Gandhi Memorial National Fellow, Birla Fellow for Comparative Literature and Fulbright Fellow and has contributed greatly to creative and critical literature in Malayalam and English.

This illuminating lecture is a rare monument to Dr. Ayyappa Paniker's vast scholarship, his concern for cultural identity, his commitment to plurality and his struggle for a world where difference and diversity only encourage international amity and the local co-exists with, and provides substance to, the global and the particular and the universal exist in a deep dialectical relationship.