paper no :4 Kanthapura

To evaluate my assignment

Kanthapura as a Novel

The art of storytelling attained a high degree of success in ancient India, as is evident from the popularity the epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and collections of short stories like Kathasaritsagar, Pancha Tantra and the Jataka Tales. In modern times, with the appearance of Indian writing in English towards the close of the nineteenth century, the novel came on to the scene rather late in India. It was the British who introduced the Indians to the novel as a form of literature. The Indian novel in English emerged in the 1920's and established itself as a popular form in the next thirty years. Social realism and the reform movement generated by liberal humanist ideals gathered momentum and assumed a national form between 1920 and 1940 under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. The Gandhian ideals of Satyagraha (demands based on truth) find expression in the novels of Mulk Raj anand and Raja Rao. Their blend of political ideology and social realism ensured that the English prose fiction would be the medium for the definition of a new India and its aspirations. Raja Kao's Kanthapura belongs to the same class of Indian novel in English.

Raja Rao goes beyond common realism and dramatizes the national struggle as a mythic and symbolic event. The Kanthapura village in his novel is a piece of mythic land containing within it the memory of the village community's traditions and beliefs. While R.K. Narayan in The Guide is content to show the progression of events in the life of an individual, Mulk Raj Anand inhis novels like Untouchable and Coolie gives evidence of a total commitment to the socialist doctrine. Anand also presents a cross-section of the Indian society though the national struggle for freedom, which is not only a political event but also a comprehensive emotional experience for the people involved in it. There is a shift of emphasis in the post- independence Indian literature in English. The novelists writing after 1947 show a sense of disenchantment with the actual reality of freedom, and their anger finds expression through a sense of humanistic compassion for the suffering Indian masses.

A theme that has dominated the Indian novel in English is the contrast of cultures between East and West. Those who have written works dealing with this theme include Raja Rao, Balachandra Rajan, Kamala Markandaya and Shantha Rama Rau. While Rajan explores the theme of alienation, Shantha Rama Rau examines the conflict of attitudes and values. Kamala Markandaya, on the other hand depicts the East-West encounter as an inevitable accident of history, and passes no judgement on it. Raja Rao's work is a class apart from that of the other novelists writing on the same theme for his examination of the East-West dilemma is characterized by a deep sense of crisis in human relationships. He believes that individuals are conditioned by religious and cultural diversity and therefore, they fail to recognize the essential oneness of the human spirit, which is the same everywhere.

The Indian novelists in English have experimented with the foreign medium that they have adopted for their literary expression. Their style and language bear the influence of the regions to which the individual writers belong. All the three major novelists - R. K Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and and Raja Rao have attempted an experimental prose style which successfully conveys their appreciation of the Indian way of life that they express through the medium of English. Anand renders the Punjabi expressions in English and thereby enhances the authenticity of his fiction. The simplicity of Narayan's language and style presents the reality of Indian life and character. Raja Rao goes a step further in mingling the grace and tone of the speech rhythms of his mother tongue, Kannada, with that of English, the foreign medium of his novels and short stories.

About Kanthapura: Its Themes and Characters

Raja Rao's Kanthpura is about life in a South Indian village, but its central theme is the Gandhian Satyagraha Movement against the British rule in India. The author introduces parallels to characters and events drawn from the Ramayan. Mahatma Gandhi's story is told in the form of a Harikatha by Jayammachar.

While.studying Raja Rao’s Kanthapura as a text, one needs to have background knowledge of several things. For Instance, you, as a student, ought to know about the sources (ancient and modern) that inspired the author to write this book. The theme, structure, characterization, language and style of a novel are generally determined by the models that the writer has in mind and of which he is constantly thinking while writing the book. Hence, it makes the task of understanding a text easy if one has a fair knowledge of its sources. Similarly, since Kanthapura is a social document about a village in turmoil and the people living in it, one needs to know about the historical time and the political movement that are shown to have caused the upheaveal. Mahatma Gandhi is a living presence in Kanthapura and his philosophy of life it is and political struggle is reflected by the thought and action of several characters.

The novel is projected as a sthala purana, i.e., the mythic tale of a particular place. The Three levels of action political, social and religious present a unified concept of India. The action belongs to the decade of the 1930's when the Indian National Congress Committee spread the Gandhian message of Satyagraha and ahimsa through the length and breadth of India. The villagers of Kanthapura also follow these principles. They take out protest marches towards the Skeffington Coffee Estate and suffer harsh treatment at the hands of the police. Their leader, Moorthy, launches the Civil Disobedience Movement against the British. Gandhi does not figure as a character in the novel, but the various aspects of his philosophy and teachings are projected as the story unfolds. He is compared to the gods, Siva and Krishna, for destroying the demon of foreign rule.

In Kanthapura, Raja Rao conveys a purely Indian experience through the foreign medium of the English language. He uses his style and diction as instruments that achieve a balance between the emotional quality of the Indian experience and its expression in intellectual terms. He introduces into English the speech rhythms of Kannada. Instead of English proverbs, he employs Indian proverbs translated into English. The Indian rhythm of his prose lends it a poetic quality. His descriptions are rich in colour and imagery. Alliteration and repetition add to the flow of his narration.

Kanthapura of Raja Rao's novel of that name is a village in the former Mysore state, now part of Karnataka. It is situated high on the Western Ghats on a winding road that goes down to Mangalore on the Arabian Sea. There are two temples in the village, one dedicated to the Goddess Kenchamma of the Hill and the other to Kanthapurishwari. The village is divided into several quarters according to the different castes. Moorthy, a young man of the village, brings the message of Gandhi to his people, and starts his own satyagraha movement against the British. The Skeffington Coffee Estate on the periphery of the village is a symbol of the British attempt to enslave the Indians. Moorthy cames the message of Gandhian teachings to the Estate, and it causes much turmoil all around as the police tries it’s best to suppress the movement. But the people of Kandhapura remain staunch followers of Moorthy even when he is imprisoned. One of his followers starts a 'Sevika Sangha' group among the women of the village. The people of Kanthapura suffer greatly at the hands of the police but remain defiant to the end.

Though Moorthy unites his community in the name of Gandhi and the principles that he stands for, it remains divided on considerations of caste. The tradition bound orthodox Brahmin do not mix with the lower caste Panahs and Sudras, who contribute equally to the satyagraha with the rest of the people. Even the emancipated Moorthy, a Brahmin by birth, has qualms of conscience when he visits one of the untounchable families. That shows how deep-rooted the distinctions of caste are in the Hindu mind.

The story in Kanthapura is narrated by Achakka, a grandmother of the village. All the characters that figure in the novel are projected from her point of view. She has her own special way of looking at men and women of the village, and if the author has any comments to make on individual characters, he puts them in Achakka's mouth. The figures in Kanthapura are mostly simple-minded and unsophisticated villagers who look at the new winds of change that come to their village with a sense of surprise and suspicion.

Kanthapura is all about the life of a small village community. The leader of this community is Moorthy, a shadow of Mahatma Gandhi who inspires him to teach the villagers the path of satyagraha and non-violence. Moorthy is a self-sacrificing young man with no personal ambition. Without any distinction of caste and class, he cares for all the villagers, and tries to help them in whatever ways he can. In spite of being a high caste Brahmin, he mingles with the untouchables and sympathizes with them in every way. Moorthy is good, religious minded and noble, and the villagers regard him as their Mahatma.

Women have an equal role to play in Kanthapura along with their male counterparts. In fact, they are more active in their social and political roles while looking after the children and the households. Apart from Achakka, three other women have some prominence over the others; they are Rangamma, Ratna and Venkamma. The first two are good Gandhians and they organize the Sevika Sangha in the village, when Moorthy and some of his associates are imprisoned. They also lead the women in protest marches. Venkamma has a vicious tongue, but she is not really bad at heart. The three men of prominence after Moorthy are Range Gowda, Bhatta and Bade Khan. Range Gowda is a noble and well-to-do Sudra of the village, who acts as the Pate1 for collecting the taxes. He does not think well of Bhatta and Bade Khan, who are two of the bad characters in the novel. Bhatta is a learned Brahmin, possessing vast lands, and he lends money in order to grab the fields of the poor and needy. He is opposed to the Gandhian revolution. Bade Khan is a ruthless policeman posted to the village to prevent the people from succeeding in their satyagraha.

In Kanthapura, Raja Rao achieves a fusion of theme, form and narration. He superimposes the Indian tradition of romance over the Western form of the novel. Kanthapura is structured as a sthalapurana, a legendary history of a particular place. The three strands of action - politics, society and religion - are woven together to form the fabric of this novel. As elements,of his narrative technique, Raja Rao employs reflection, dream, flash-back, and episodes. He retains the native Indian style of telling a story in spite of opting for the foreign medium of English. His digressions help to fill the gaps in the story. The continuous monologue of the narrator is particularly suited for psychological analysis of characters. Achakka, who tells the story, in her peculiar flowing style, is a garrulous grandmother of the village, interested in all the happenings, gossip and inter-relations of characters.

Jayaramachar's Harikatha about the birth of Gandhi is a special device, through which religion is mingled with politics. We are told that the Mahatma is going to slay the serpent of foreign rule just as Krishna killed the serpent Kaliya. Jayaramachar's Harikatha is an allegory of India's freedom struggle. Apart from this, Raja Rao also uses myth and symbolism in Kanthapura. A significant myth is that of Goddess Kenchamma of the Hill, which is given at the very beginning of the novel. Gandhi is transformed into a mythical figure in the Harikatha. But the central myth in Kanthapura is that of equating Gandhi's slogan of striving after Swaraj with that of the coming of Ramarajya, the victory of good over evil. And, then, most of the characters in the novel are projected as symbols, which add to the significance of their roles in the story.

At the end, let me quote K.R. Rao who writes in his book, The Fiction of Raja Rao:

Kanthapura does not project the Indian spirit isolatively, but as a living experience moving in time and space. The three levels of action in the novel, political, social and religious, are all related to unified concept of India both as a tradition and as a living culture, as a magnificent past to be rediscovered in the enormous present.

References

1.Rao K.R. The Fiction of Raja Rao. Aurangabad: Parimal Prakashan, 1980. p.49.

2.Iyengar K.R.S. Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Sterling, 1985.

3.Esha Dey. The Novels of Raja Rao. New Delhi: Prestige, 1992

Web Sources

1. Retrieved information on 06th November 2016 at 11:23AM from http://www.enotes.com/topics/kanthapura.
2. Retrieved information on 06th November 2016 at 11:45AM from http://psmoreadings.blogspot.in/2013/03/summary-of-novel-kanthapura-by-raja-rao.html.