ओकोट प’बिटेक

कृतियाँ

• 1966लविनो का गीत

  पहले अचोली में लिखी और लेखक के अपने अंग्रेज़ी रूपांतर में प्रकाशित लंबी कविता: लविनो शिकायत करती है कि उसका पति ओचोल, जो मिशन-विद्यालयों में पढ़ा है, उसे और अपने लोगों के तौर-तरीक़ों को तुच्छ समझता है; यह पूर्वी अफ़्रीकी साहित्य की क्लासिक बनी और इसके बाद “ओचोल का गीत” (1970) आया।

• 1970पश्चिमी विद्वत्ता में अफ़्रीकी धर्म

  मिशनरियों से लेकर प्लासिद तेम्पेल्स और जॉन म्बिटी तक अफ़्रीकी धर्मों के अध्ययन के विरुद्ध विवाद-ग्रंथ: अफ़्रीकी देवताओं को सर्वशक्तिमान, सर्वज्ञ और शाश्वत बताकर विद्वानों ने उन्हें “यूनानी” बना दिया है; अफ़्रीकी धर्मों को उनकी अपनी अवधारणाओं में वर्णित किया जाना चाहिए और उनके अध्ययन को ईसाई क्षमा-याचना से मुक्त किया जाना चाहिए।

मत

Okot p’Bitek is on the map as one of the sharpest critics of the way African thought was studied in the 1960s, and as a poet who turned that critique into literature. In African Religions in Western Scholarship (1970) he argued that the study of African religions had served others’ purposes: early anthropologists used it to show African primitiveness, missionaries to find “preparations” for the Gospel, and African nationalist scholars – he named John Mbiti, Bolaji Idowu and J. B. Danquah – to prove that Africans had always known the Christian God. By describing African deities as omnipotent, omniscient and eternal, they had dressed them in the clothes of Greek metaphysics; the jok of the Acholi, for example, were not beings of that kind. Placide Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy belonged, in his view, to the same project of making Africa fit Christianity. African religions should instead be described in their own concepts and as part of a whole way of life, which he attempted in Religion of the Central Luo (1971). In Song of Lawino (1966) Lawino defends the dances, food, songs and medicine of her people against her husband Ocol, who has adopted the manners and the contempt of the colonial elite; the poem and its sequel Song of Ocol (1970) became a reference for debates on culture and modernity in East Africa. Dismas Masolo (1994) discusses him among the critics of ethnophilosophy, and Samuel Oluoch Imbo (2002) reads his work as a contribution to African philosophy through oral traditions.

जीवन और संदर्भ

Okot p’Bitek was born in Gulu in northern Uganda on 7 June 1931, the son of a teacher and of a singer and composer, from whom he learned the oral poetry of the Acholi. He attended King’s College Budo and trained as a teacher; in 1956 he toured Britain with Uganda’s national football team and stayed to study education in Bristol, law in Aberystwyth and social anthropology at Oxford, where his thesis (1964) dealt with the oral literature of the Acholi and Lango. Back in Uganda he lectured at Makerere and in 1966 became director of the National Theatre and Cultural Centre in Kampala, from which he was dismissed in 1968 after criticising the government. He then taught at the University of Nairobi, founded the Kisumu Arts Festival and held posts in Iowa, Texas and at Ife in Nigeria; he returned to Makerere as professor of creative writing shortly before his death in Kampala on 20 July 1982.

अन्य प्रमुख कृतियाँ

• Song of Lawino (1966; Acholi Wer pa Lawino)
• Song of Ocol (1970)
• African Religions in Western Scholarship (1970)
• Religion of the Central Luo (1971)
• Two Songs: Song of Prisoner, Song of Malaya (1971)
• Africa’s Cultural Revolution (1973)
• Artist, the Ruler: Essays on Art, Culture and Values (1986)