Hindi, Hindu sans Hindutva

A fascinating account shows how much of the maverick writer and polymath's thinking was rooted in cosmopolitanism

Akshaya Mukul, who wrote the much-feted Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (2015), is back with a new book called Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya. It is a biography of Hindi poet-novelist Sachchidanand Hirananda Vatsyayan ‘Agyega’ (1911-1987). The tome of 808 pages looks formidable but is entirely worth your time if you enjoy immersion in scholarly work that is rigorous in method and racy in style.

Why did the Sahitya Akademi Award and Jnanpith Award-winning Agyeya, a man whose first language was English, write in Hindi? Mukul explains, “While he never abandoned his