The Peripheral Process ( Sīmāntak Prakrīyā ): Rajkamal Chaudhary's Magadha Modernism

abstract: The Hindi and Maithili writer Rajkamal Chaudhary (1929–67), often associated with anti-poetry ( akaviā ), was one of the most experimental and controversial figures of his generation. His poetry is a situated blend of renunciant and revolutionary speech that derives its expression from the eastern Gangetic cultural, political, and soteriological legacies. This article explores his incomplete poem written in 1965, Dās Kavitā (Slave Poetry), and his final major poem, Mukti Prasaṅg (1966; Episodes of Liberation). Read together, they reflect continuities and ruptures of the modernist period from the margins of the postcolonial Third World.