Raja Rao’s Kanthapura: New English
Literatures Perspective
By Dr. Shrikant Singh
Published in Ashvamegh Launch Issue, February
2015
India had a long history of literature in English before the
present interest in post-colonial literatures but her writers were formerly
considered minor trivial and provincial. Indian English novelists had the last
touch with contemporary social reality. They lived in ivory towers built on the
life of landed aristocracy of fairy tales or historical romances or religious
scriptures. With the appearance of Gandhi on the Indian political centre-stage,
the political life of India is recharge and Indian literary values reoriented.
With the publication of Raja Rao’s Kanthapura in 1938, Indian
English fiction took a different and distinct turn. Kanthapura was a
significant shift not only for what it said but also for the way it said. Only
after mastering modernism and giving it local significance could the new
literatures have joined the modern world (Encyclopaedia 1114). Therefore, Raja
Rao in his Kanthapura, created a form of modernism – ironic, sceptical and
innovative technique such as puranic texture and recurrent use of Hindu myths
and legends which is Indian in subject – matter local language usage, local
history, racial or national pride, political independence and demands for
social justice are among the characteristics of the novel, as are concern with
national mythology, with documenting local ways, usually in a realistic
literary style.
It seems that Kanthapura is a unique novel of the time partly
due to its highly innovative form n technique. Its form is unique because it is
predominantly organic and natural – the characters, the event, the crisis, the
glories of the Gandhian struggle and the desolation of the deserted village-the
point where the novel ends – all seem to rise naturally in the Indian air from
the soil just as wild flowers grow on a river bank. This organic quality of
growth is one of the special features of Kanthapura as a novel, as a work of
art. Moorthy, Range Gowda, Bhatta, Ratna, Subha Chetty, Rangamma, Venkamma and
many other men and women seem to be rising from the soil of Kanthapura so
naturally that they breathe life and activity into it and use words as natural
tool of their feelings and innate desires. (Major Indian Novels, 36)
“Kanthapura is a novel of village life – a village in the far
interior of Mysore in south India in the valleys of Himavathy….,” (C.D
Narasimhaiah, 39) but it is no less true that Kanthapura is India in microcosm
and that what happens in this village on the social, religions and political
planes also happens in other villages (and cities) of India. Kanthapura is thus
particular and general, specific and especial, highly individualistic as well
as the universal in the creative writers cosmos. (Major Indian Novels, 23). The
colonial conflict evident from the very first para “there on blue waters, they
say, our carted cardamoms and coffee get into the ships the Red-men bring, and
so they say, they go across the seven oceans into the countries where our
rulers live,” (K:6) and an old man’s view that the British had come to
save our dharma “for hath not the lord said in the Gita, whensoever there is
ignorance and corruption I come, for I, says Krishna, am the defender of
dharma, and the British came to protect our dharma”(k-94) are representative
conflict. Similarly the phenomena of caste-confusion, uprooting of craftsmen,
winding gap between the height and the low and desolation of villages are
common to all Indian villages.
Raja Rao quite successfully makes use of local style of English
language. In fact, he creates an Indian variety of it and uses it with
flexibility, ease and elegance. In Kanthapura, his form of address,
Bhattare from Bhatta, Moorthapa from Moorthy derived from original Kannad is
indeed meaningful expression in English since it catches the original rhythm of
Kannada speech. Many of Indian festivals such as Sankar-Jayanti, Harikatha,
Bhajan etc. are expressed directly in the local language arouse their original
emotions. These apart, the novel also uses some Indian phrase recurrently to
evoke native ethos e.g. “To tell the truth,’ ‘he said this and that,’ ‘Going
this way or that way, ‘ ‘For this reason and that reason’ (k:57), ‘if this
government’s people were really sons of their father (k:99) etc.’ these are
conscious expression of the novelist to enrich his Indian English language. It
was the first conscious attempt to create an English dialect which could be
adjusted to the Indian emotional make up to suit the Indian soil. He tries to
create an Indian English, which could complete with Irish and American
varieties of English. In the foreword of Kanthapura he says, “we have grown to
look at the large world as part of us, our method of expression therefore has
to be a dialect which will someday prove to be as distinctive and colourful as
the Irish and American. Time alone will justify it (k:5). To quote Salman
Rushdie “what seems to be happening is that these people who were once
colonized by the language are rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming
more and more relaxed about the way they use it- assisted by the English
languages enormous flexibility as of size, they are carrying out large
territories for themselves within its frontiers. (Encyclopaedia). But it was
Kanthapura which gives K Pathak first the strength to say, “but the question
whether Indian English were really capable of using English for creative
purposes is already a matter of the past. N case of many writers of new
literatures kinds of language distinguish people and differentiate the local
from the colonizer and alien. Kanthpura’s language does not travel that far yet
by replacing the stiffness of approved standard English with more natural,
personal form of speech fulfilled a literary need.
Kanthapura superbly documents local ways in a realistic literary
style. When there was no water in the village for long, the villagers would ask
goddess Kenchamma, “tell us, Kenchamma why do you seek to make our stomachs
burn?” similarly when Moorthy saw a half sunk linga he said, “why not unearth
it and wash it and consecrate it? .. and so the Sankar – Jayanthi was
started that very day.” (k:13) Rangamma was told by a lady “every fellow with
Matric or inter asks, “what dowry do you offer? How far will you finance my
studies? I want to have this degree and that degree.” (k:33) Bhattare informs
Rangamma the way people think in the city: “the public temples are under the
government …. And I shall let the pariahs in and which bastered of his father
will say, No? … but really aunt we live in a strange age … do you know in the
city they already have grown up girls, fit enough to be mothers of two or three
children, going to the universities? And they talk to this boy and they boy;
and what they do amongst themselves, heaven alone known. And one, too, I heard,
went and married a Mohomedan. Really, aunt, that horrible! (k:33).
The theme of Kanthapura is the continuity of Indian tradition in
a rural setting as well as the political resurgence of the nineteen thirties in
rural India. Deeply rooted in age –old Indian tradition the rural folks are
deeply stirred and activated by the movement for gaining India’s freedom from
foreign rule. Thus the legendry history of representative Indian village is
brought in close association with its newly gained political consciousness, its
deep stirring caused by
Gandhi’s defiance of the British Imperial power and movement of
non-violent, non-cooperation, an effective tool for gaining independence.
Meaning, in Kanthapura, emerges from the relationship between
two world, the fictional worlds created by Raja Rao out of his experience and
the real world. And our understanding of Kanthapura will depend upon our
realization of this relationship. Kanthapura is a novel or realistic
situations, of political resurgence, a work of realism in fiction. It is the
image of real life, observed in a visionary state of mind. In Kanthapura a
significant phase of history of contemporary India is given a sense of
immortality, a characteristic of a great fiction.
Kanthapura Raja Rao adapts the age-old Indian art of
storytelling to the modern experiments made by European novelists and unquestionably
evinces a rare skill in the handling of the narrative technique (kk Patrhak
65). It is written from the point of view of “I” as witness. Achakka, a simple,
old village woman is the witness narrator. The weaving of Puranic texture in
Kanthapura served a definite purpose “just as there are endless and innumerable
purans as, so there are endless episodes in Kanthapura.” (Chetan Karnani 41).
An important aspect of Raja Rao’s narrative technique is the extensive use of
symbols, myths and legends. The novelist employs them in all his writing, and
through them he not only fully explores and communicates his vision of life,
his theme but also gives a compact form to this book. The mythical-cum-symbolic
design of this novel coupled with its political and social overtones prompts us
to believe that the novelist was very serious about his business in commingling
fact and fiction, reality and illusion, the concrete and abstract, and by doing
so he added an additional punch and meaning to his utterances (Dwivedi 162).
Here myth has been used to enlarge the functionality o fiction. In fact myths
are symbolic representation of human soul and represent the deepest expression
of collective human imagination of the locale and as a representative voice of
the entire nation, the national myth of Lord Shiva, Lord Krishna, Ram-Ravana
have been woven into the texture of Kanthapura. The narrator of the novel tells
us that as soon tells us that as soon as Gandhi was born, “the four wide
walls began to shine like the kingdom of the sun and hardly was he in the
cradle than he began to lisp the language of wisdom,” (k:17) and then the image
of Lord Krishna swims before the narrator of the tale:
“you remember how Krishna, when he was a babe of four, had begun
to fight against demons and had killed the serpent Kali, so too our Mahandas
began to fight against the enemies of the country. (k17) Similarly, the myth of
Rama – Ravana very aptly signifies a fierce battle between the forces of Good
and those of the Evil. Thus in Raja Rao’s Kanthapura myths work into text as a
symbolic mode of expression. There seems a tendency towards selective
recreation of reality. In such writers who use myth and history purposively
literature acquires simultaneity with the present (Myth and History 7).
Kanthapura uses both to present India where the past mingles with the present,
and the gods mingles with men. (KV) Religion is so enmeshed with Indian’s life
that even politics has to be served in religious garbs. Jayaramachar while
serving political end’s says “Shiva is he here – eyed; and Swarj too is three-
eyed: self –purification, Hindu – Moslem unity, Khaddar. Then he talks of
Damayanthi and Sakunthala …. Never had we heard Harikatha like this (K:16).”
Viewed from new English literatures’ perspective, Kanthapura is
a breakthrough indo-Anglian novel in many senses of the term. It is modern in
terms of usage of modern technique, local language, theme and locale. The words
of Meenakshi Mukherjee present a very clear picture:
“The novel in the sense we understand it today is concerned with
circumstantial reality with the concrete and particular that are influenced
very largely by time and place. In this sense Kanthapura is a modern novel and
its oral tradition of mythicizing etc. is a well-chosen technique.” It is new
literature also in terms of its relationship to nationalism and nationalist
movement, treatment of issues of national pride, rejection of colonial values,
in documenting local ways in a realistic literary style and of course in the
use of national mythology. Protest which has built into new literatures which
reflect a concern with feminism, social change, social injustice, alienation,
exile and decolonization are naturally absent because Kanthapura predates
Indian post-independence writings. Yet underpinning of some of protest
tendencies cannot be ruled out of it.
Works
Cited:
1.
Coyal, Martin and Others. Encyclopaedia of Literature and
Criticism. Gale Research Inc. New York: 1991.
2.
Pradhan, N. S. Major Indian Novels: An Evaluation. Arnold
Heinemann. New Delhi: 1985.
3.
Rao, Raja. Kanthapura. Orient Paperbacks, New Delhi: 2001.
4.
Narasimhaiah, C. D. Raja Rao. Arnold Heinemann. New Delhi and
London.
5.
Mukherjee, Meenakshi, “Myth as technique in Twice Born Fiction”,
Heinemann, New Delhi: 1974.
6.
Jha, Rama, Gandhian Thought and Indo Anglian Novelists. Chanakya
Publications, New Delhi: 1983.
7.
Pathak, R.S. Indian Fiction in English. Problems and Promises.
Northern Books Centre, New Delhi.
8.
Dwivedi, A. N. Papers on Indian Writing in English. Atlantic
Publishers and Distributors. New Delhi.
9.
Rao, A. S. (ed) Myth and History in Contemporary Indian Novel in
English. Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi: 2000.
Introduction to the Author:
Dr. Shrikant Singh is the Head of English Department at Nava
Nalanda Mahavihar, an international university in Nalanda. In addition, he is a
course writer with I G N O U, New Delhi. His area of Interest includes public
education through organizing seminars, workshops, debates and speeches on
social, spiritual and interpersonal issues. His favourite area of interest is
to explore the Interface between Buddhism and Literatures in English.
