Download Oratory like any other piece of literature is also an art-an art

M.J.P. Rohilkhand University Bareilly
Supervisor :
Dr. Ashutosh Saxena
M.A., Ph. D.
Reader,
Dept. of English
Hindu College, Moradabad
Research Scholar:
Tushti Sharma
SUMMARY
Oratory like any other piece of literature is also an art-an art
of public speaking eloquently, that is, fluent, forcible and
appropriate expression or it may be called the art or practice of
making a speech before an audience. The outward difference
between speech and writing is a source of much confusion,
mistaken or ‘flat earth’ views about language appear when we
apply to speech inappropriate prescriptive ideas about formal
written language. However, it is equally mistaken to suppose that
speech has no grammar or distinctive structures and forms- it has.
Speech is historically prior to writing and most people speak
long before they are literate. But written English is often seen as
more prestigious because literature lends its prestige to the written
form in which it is published. But spoken English is often
spontaneous, while written texts are tidier, structured and subject to
editorial revision. In the past the literate were more or less identical
with those who enjoyed power, wealth and prestige- for many
people, writing retains this supposed superiority. Early studies of
language were based on written texts- it is only recently that
linguists have described the patterns and structures, which
characterize speech.
However, it is called the ‘real’ or original form of the
language. For centuries in which most ordinary people were
technically illiterate spoken English enabled them to carry out all
the business of their daily lives. In the 20th century the
2
development of efficient and inexpensive recording technologies
has made it possible for speech to be reliably recorded. Already we
see the results of this. In ancient Greece and Rome, oratory was
studied as a component of rhetoric, that is, composition and
delivery of speech, and was an important skill in public and private
life Aristotle and Quintilian discussed oratory and the subject with
definite rules and models. It was accepted as an integral part of a
complete education during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. But
basically, it formed the part of the church.
Oratory offers perhaps the most vivid illustration of the
power of spoken words, power in a literal sense. On the motor
theory of language origin and function, the source of this power is
the individual relationship of words to perception and action.
Supported by the other elements described, the words used by the
orator create images in the minds of the hearers and implant
patterns of action. They are able to do this because words are not
empty symbols but neutral patterns derived from the motor
programs associated with action and perception.
When Swami Vivekananda, Dr. Radhakrishna and Pt. Nehru
saw that some things were wholesome and others unwholesome
they established an art, or a style by observing their different
properties when they found. Some things useful and others useless,
they marked them for imitation or avoidance. In fact, their
observations were confirmed by their experience and studies. This
3
is the reason that their speeches contain all the recognized parts of
oratory as invention, arrangement, expression, memory and
delivery or action. They spoke well and constituted the art of
oratory. Of course, ability in speaking is produced by nature, art
and practices. It is true that all these orators had these qualities in
abundance, and fulfilled the purpose of oratory, that is to inform, to
move, to please the hearers.
All these orators identified the symbolic power of voice as
the representational power of synecdoche, the ability of a part to
stand for a whole (the voice for the individual for the colony or
nation). At times we discern that the symbolic power of voice
became metaphoric or transformative power in their cases. Though
we know that speech can effect the metamorphosis of self and
society, in them, virtually every description, every thought, every
meaning revealed the transformation that occurred as they spoke in
English. Their tall, dashing and magnetic frame did reflect their
great talent. Their speeches bore the qualities that Adams attributed
to Otis’s speech breadth of knowledge, copiousness, quasi-sacred
authority and the power to induce passion in others. They broke
new grounds as the performance artists of their era introducing
oratory as a newly important genre of public discourse to their
times.
The life and philosophy of Swami Vivekananda, Nehru and
Radhakrishnan have many facets and it is impossible to do justice
to their wonderous life, wisdom and achievements not only in the
4
field of religion, philosophy and politics but in the highest world of
the spirit. Swami Vivekananda was the great exponent of the
modern Indian Renaissance. He spoke and wrote on religion,
philosophy, literature, art and also on social life, on the progress of
humanity and almost on every subject he threw new light. During
the last century, there has not been another thinker of Swami’s
profundity or another Yogi save Radhakrishanan who fathomed so
scrupulously the mysteries of life. Both rightly stressed that a
perfect human world cannot be created by men who are themselves
imperfect, and with equal emphasis they declared the egocentric
gospel of individual liberation.
What they sought to achieve was the emergence of divine life
on earth, not the isolated self realization of a few individuals, and if
they sought divinization of the inner being, they also placed in the
forefront the transformation of our whole environment. They
prophesied the advent of a new age, when the world will be one
and social conflicts and the bitterness of life will be no more- a
future to which man can look forward with hope and faith.
They presented mankind with a new hope and a new mission.
They contributed much to India’s nationalism. Apart from their
philosophic and mystic achievements, they also played a great part
in appraising the true value of Indian culture in discovering its
fundamental values of their relation to the central ideas which have
recreated India, age after age, since the Vedic times.
5
The Swami had no time to revise or refine his sentences and
yet his sentences rarely, if any, give pass to any error or flaw. This
is a unique quality in itself. Of course, his sentences can be
restructured but in most cases they will lose their oratorical effect.
His language is flexible and not pedantic. A modern writer will
perhaps restructure it in this way. It is the man-making religion,
education, and theories that we want. It is of course compact and
tightly structured sentence but it lacks rhetorical flare of the
former.
Philosophy, in his pages, bears herself with grace as well as
gravity. Like Newman, Vivekananda’s ‘Addresses in the
Parliament, ‘Addresses from Colombo to Almora, miscellaneous
speeches theological philosophical have their own interest- ethical,
philosophical and literary. A literary critic would appreciate the
way he interpreted abstract and abstruse philosophy of Hinduism in
concrete and comprehensible terms and made it, for the frist time,
accessible to the world.
Nehru was a born visionary. It was this vision, which helped to
become speaker. His speeches have literary quality and are not
mere storehouses of cultural, sociological, historical or legendary
information pertaining to a community or a people. They bear a
harmonious confluence of philosophies and spirituality of India on
the one hand and the secular aspects and values of Indian culture,
on the other. A cumulative effect of the deep-seated ideas and
ideals political, economic, secular and spiritual and the cultural
6
heritage of India that formulated his mind naturally came out in his
speeches. But there is no sardonic clash between the culture and
the language, which express it. The literary quality is very much
there although it stems from his environmental upheaval and
mental disruption. His personality comes through vividly in all his
speeches.
His English education enabled him to extract the best in
western thought and to interpret the Indian ‘Mind’ in lucid English
over which he had a command from his boyhood. His western
education moulded his attitude towards life, which became rational
and scientific. He opposed institutionalized or organized religion
and superstitious, fanatic and chauvinistic practices that shook the
very foundation of India’s cultural heritage. It was due to form a –
fusion of the oriental and the occidental essences in his mind. He
was a unique amalgam of two distinct cultures; his formal
education was English but his traditions were Indian. His intellect
was rooted in materialistic environment with awry spirit in the
vedas.
Dr. Radhaksinan too was one of the outstanding figures of
our generation besides being a great philosopher and thinker. His
contribution to India’s intellectual life has been many sided and
posterity has proved that his contribution to English oratory
remains something unique. An intellectual par-excellence as he
was, to try, to speak justifiably about him is like a small lamp
when the mighty sun is fully shining. His contribution to world
7
thought could not be unique and precious, had he not spoken it in
English. At a time when western philosophers were becoming
parochial and claiming that outside their own traditions there was
no philosophy and Indian values were at stake and it was
apprehended that India would be totally westernized, it was given
to Dr. Radhakrishnan to demonstrate to them that Indian
philosophy was also something lofty and great and that Indian
culture and civilization were powerful and comprehensive enough
to meet all the challenges that modern life might offer,
Radhakrishnan, the English educated Indian and well-versed in
Sanskrit interpreted the Hindu thought in this challenging situation.
He embodied in his life and works the synthesis of East and west,
the meaning of philosophy and religion and the significance of
Indian’s past.
He was not a mere man of thought. He was not mere man of
action. He was not a mere man of emotion too. He was at once a
man of thought, action and sentiment. Nature made him of clay
which was most sparing. He combined in himself all the qualities
of greatness and this very magnitude of his endowments gives us
some idea of the comprehensiveness of his vision. It was
purposeful that providence endowed him with its choicest gifts in
such lavish proportion. Perhaps he would have never conceived
that he would achieve such a great reputation as an orator also.
Like a true literary artist he studied philosophy, read the book of
life, observed and also admired the beauty behind nature.
8
His lectures, discourses and speeches bear a harmonious
confluence of philosophies and spiritual treasure of India on one
hand and the secular aspects and values of Indian culture on the
other. A cumulative effect of the deep-seated and ideals- political,
economic, secular and spiritual and the cultural heritage of India
that formulated the mind naturally come out in his speeches.
Dr. Radhakrishnan stated that Hindu philosophy aims at more
than mere speculative understanding but on that account it does not
cease to be philosophy. Thus, his great achievement lies in his
helping to put Indian philosophy in its right place on the
philosophical map of the world and the recognition he won in the
western world for Indian philosophy as a major system of thought.
The burden of his worldview is the necessity of faith as a solution
to the confusions of the modern age –a faith both in God and Man
and a faith rational end tolerant. If, today, in the west there is an
increasing understanding of the philosophical content of Indian
thought, if several western philosophers are now conscious of the
great contribution India has made and can still make to world
philosophy, the credit-at least the major part of the share of it, goes
to Dr. Radhakrishnan. Had he not striven, over a large number of
years, to give a lead to contemporary Indian philosophy, the
philosophical activities in India would not have acquired that
alertness and importance which characterize it today. Though India
of the last two centuries as a subject nation has decayed and
remained stagnant in many ways, she has not lost hold of the ever9
burning spiritual torch handed down from ages. Somewhere we
catch a glimpse of a lightening flash from behind the
overwhelming dark clouds. History records instances when the
wise men of the East have opened the eyes of the west to the higher
values of life.
These three great men of history were the celebrities of the
era who appealed to intellect, imagination and the emotions and
called upon the audience to take action. They were ‘giant spirits’
which occasionally strided across the world of pygmies shedding
fresh light, giving new life and expanding the frontiers of human
vision and consciousness. The speeches that they have left are full
of high inspiration, divine intuition and prophetic vision.
We are amazed to explore that their speeches were delivered
on the spur of the moment. Their speeches are first hand
experiences, first hand impression unprepared, unaltered. Words
came to them as leaves come to a tree, the words had a sensual
appeal to them and they exulted in the reach and power of their
rhetoric. In them a beautiful and subtle poetic imagination
struggled to bend, if not to subvert a genre to its own purposes. it is
not there to sabotage the meaning, the thought or the topic but
takes it to the farthest reaches of imagination and comprehension.
They spoke astonishingly beautiful English (King’s English) in the
simplest possible manner, which resulted in creating the desired
impression on the minds of the hearers. Undoubtedly, they were
good speakers who looked the parts, were well groomed and
10
appropriately dressed, appeared healthy and relaxed, made good
eye contact, had a pleasant vocal timbre and clear diction. They
matched the content of their presentation to the listener’s needs and
delivered their message confidently in language that an audience
understood. They understood their material and communicated it in
such a way as to establish a rapport with their audience.
Their oratory may not touch the heights of sublimity and may
lack elegance of classical or English oratory but its relevance lies
in the fact that it was delivered at a time when very few Indians
attempted to speak in English. Theirs were masterminds that never
erred in choosing the right word for the right topic, right subject,
right occasion, and right angle and had perfect control of sciencestructure while speaking in English. Again the greatness of these
orators lies in the fact that the range of their subjects was very
comprehensive and varied. Unlike Greek, British or American
orators they covered not one or two aspects of life but dealt with
whole life. Very few foreign speakers could speak on religion,
philosophy or humanism. Their approach was temporal or
materialistic but the approach of Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan and
Nehru was rather pragmatic. They piloted the ship in which
mariners in quest of peace and calmness of mind were sailing.
Indeed, the orations of Swami Vivekananda, Pt. Nehru and
Dr. Radhakrishnan are brilliant gleams of light to the dark pages of
the contemporary history of the Hindus, and to the history of
English literature for, very few care to read them, nay, very few
11
realize the worth and beauty and relevance of these gems. May
they be our guides from darkness to light, from falsehood to truth
and from death to immortality.
12