Kanthapura Summary
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Kanthapura recounts the rise of a Gandhian nationalist movement
in a small South Indian village of the same name. The story is narrated
by Achakka,
an elder brahminwoman
with an encyclopedic knowledge about everyone in her village; she tells the
story in the meandering, nonlinear style of a sthala-purana,
a traditional “legendary history” of a village, its people, and its gods.
Achakka begins her tale by situating
Kanthapura in its immediate landscape, the Western Ghats mountain range in
southwest India that has recently become a center of the British colonial spice
trade. The village’s patron deity is the goddess Kenchamma, who
fought a demon on the Kenchamma
Hill above Kanthapura ages ago and has protected the villagers
ever since. Achakka introduces the village’s numerous residents of all caste.
She introduces the educated and well-off brahmins, including the wealthy
orphan Dorè,
who proclaims to be a Gandhian after attending a term of university in the
city, and the much more beloved Moorthy,
who refuses to marry into one wealthy family after another. Then she introduces
the potters and weavers, who are largely turning to agriculture, and finally
the pariahs,
who live in decrepit huts at the edge of town. But caste does not always
translate to wealth. The loincloth-wearing brahmin Bhatta and
the shrewd but honest patel and sudra Rangè
Gowda are the village’s two most powerful figures.
One day, Moorthy finds a linga (small
idol depicting the Lord Siva)
in Ahakka’s backyard and the brahmins begins convening prayers for it; soon
thereafter, Moorthy begins collecting money from everyone in the village to
have a Harikatha-man
named Jayaramachar perform
his religious discourse about Mahatma Gandhi’s promise to save India
from foreign domination. This creates a commotion, especially as Moorthy begins
to convert other villagers to Gandhi’s cause and a Muslim policeman named Badè
Khan moves into town. Patel Rangè Gowda will not give Khan a place to
stay, so he goes to the nearby Skeffington Coffee Estate, where the
presiding Sahib offers
him a hut among the workers. Meanwhile, Moorthy convinces various villagers to
start spinning their own wool and weaving their own khadi cloth,
since Gandhi believes that foreign goods impoverish India and sees weaving as a
form of spiritual practice.
But Bhatta despises Gandhism, for his
business runs on high-interest loans to small farmers who sell their rice to
city-people. He decries the modernization of India and the erosion of the caste
system, so he proposes establishing a brahmin party to fight Moorthy’s
spreading Gandhism and wins the support of many villagers, most notably the
rambling Waterfall
Venkamma, the priest Temple
Rangappa and his wife Lakshamma,
Moorthy’s own mother Narsamma,
and his own wife Chinnamma.
Moorthy, who has a vision of Gandhi giving a discourse and decides to dedicate
his life to the Mahatma’s work, wins over the wealthy widow Rangamma,
at whose large house he stockpiles spinning-wheels and books about nonviolent
resistance. The powerful Swami in
Mysore promises to excommunicate anyone who “pollutes” the traditional system
by interacting with people from different castes, and when Narsamma finds out
that her son Moorthy will likely be first, she is distraught and refuses to
associate with him. But he does not budge and, when the Swami excommunicates
his entire family after Moorthy is seen carrying a corpse, Narsamma dies on the
banks of the nearby River
Himavathy and Moorthy moves into Rangamma’s house.
The narrative cuts to the Skeffington
Estate, where the maistri convinces coolieworkers
from impoverished villages around India to come do backbreaking work in
horrible conditions at the estate. Their wages are low and the Sahib finds
every available means to keep them indentured at the Estate for life, from
beating them to raising the prices on daily goods to stealing their wages to,
most insidiously, encouraging them to spend their money drinking at the
nearby toddy stand.
Nobody has managed to leave for ten years, even as a new Sahib has
taken over who is kinder than the first (except to the women, Achakka notes,
whom he systematically raped until he became embroiled in a legal battle for
murdering a father who refused to give up his daughter). But Moorthy’s
Gandhians, with the help of the brahmin clerk Vasudev,
begin teaching the coolies to read and write and recruiting them to join the
protest movement. Badè Khan breaks up one of these lessons, which only
strengthens Moorthy’s resolve, and soon a coolie named Rachanna moves
off the estate and into Kanthapura. During the commotion some of the coolie
women grabbed the Khan’s beard, and Moorthy takes personal responsibility for
this attack, which runs counter to the Mahatma’s doctrine of nonviolence. He
fasts for three days, meditating continuously in the village temple and
receiving visions of Siva and Hari as
Rangamma, the wise elder brahmin Ramakrishnayya, and the widowed
pariah girl Ratna care
for him. He grows stronger, responding to threats from Waterfall Venkamma and
Bhatta with love and resolving to launch what he calls the “don’t-touch-the-Government
campaign.”
Moorthy approaches Patel Rangè Gowda
with his plan, and the powerful town representative and landowner quickly
resolves to follow the Mahatma. Together, they convene a Village Congress,
which promises to serve as a local branch of Gandhi’s Congress of All India.
Moorthy visits the house of the former coolie Rachanna, who is now living as a
pariah in the village, but finds himself anxious at the thought of going inside
or drinking the milk Rachanna’s wife Rachi offers
him, since he grew up as a brahmin and has never actually been so close to a
pariah. He does so nonetheless and soon convinces a congregation of confused
pariah women to spin cloth and join the movement. But when he returns home,
Rangamma makes him enter through the back and drink Ganges water to purify
himself.
Bhatta soon realizes that he can lead
Venkamma to “set fire where we want” if he can find her daughter a husband, so
he arranges a marriage with his favorite lawyer, the middle-aged widow Advocate
Seenappa. Shortly thereafter, during the holy festival of Kartik,
the police come to Rangamma’s house and arrest Moorthy. Rachanna cries out,
“Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!” (or, “Glory to Mahatma Gandhi!”), a battle cry that
the Gandhians employ when the police attack them through the rest of the book.
The police begin beating and arresting the rest of the villagers, taking 17 in
total and releasing all but Moorthy.
In jail, Moorthy refuses the help of
lawyers and spiritual leaders until Advocate Sankar, the Congress
Committee Secretary in nearby Karwar city, tells him that the national movement
needs him released. Moorthy falls at Sankar’s feet and the lawyer holds an
enormous meeting for his benefit, although a nameless old man (whom the Swami
has paid off) speaks in defense of the British government and the “Beloved
Sovereign” Queen Victoria. The Police
Inspector comes to the meeting and arrests another of its
leaders, Advocate
Ranganna, and news spreads fast in Kanthapura by means of a
newspaper Rangamma has begun to publish. The villagers read it voraciously,
with even the illiterate insisting that others read it to them, and they debate
when and whether Moorthy will be released.
Rangamma and the Gandhian Nanjamma go
to Karwar to visit Advocate Sankar, who is notorious for being an honest and
socially-conscious man. Rangamma decides to stay for awhile, and meanwhile the
colonial government fires Rangè Gowda, installing another patel for the village
in his place. Moorthy is sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, and the wise
elder Ramakrishnayya dies after stumbling into a pillar during heavy rains the
following day. During his cremation, the Himavathy River overflows and swallows
his ashes.
The villagers decide that the widowed
girl Ratna should replace Ramakrishnayya to lead the village’s readings from
Hindu scriptures, and after Rangamma’s return she begins to interpret the texts
Ratna reads as calls for the end of British rule in India. The women resolve to
form their own Volunteer group, and Rangamma begins to lead them in group
meditation and drills to practice nonviolent resistance to beatings from the
police. On an auspicious day soon thereafter, the villagers perform a ceremony
honoring the Goddess Kenchamma before planting their fields, and Venkamma
decides to move her daughter’s wedding to the same day as Moorthy’s homecoming
from prison so that villagers will be forced to choose their allegiance. On the
day he is supposed to arrive, the villagers wait to receive him but he does not
come, until they realize that the police have secretly escorted him back into
Rangamma’s house and go there to greet him, shouting Gandhian slogans and
nearly starting another clash with the police.
Moorthy again takes the helm of the
village’s Gandhian movement, reminding the others about their obligation to
speak Truth, reject caste hierarchy, and spin wool each morning. The villagers
follow the news of Gandhi’s protest of the British salt tax, in which he
marches to the sea and makes his own salt, and they bathe in the holy Himavathy
River at the precise moment Gandhi reaches the ocean and the police start
arresting his followers en masse. Moorthy and Rangamma continue to
lead the others in practice drills, waiting for orders from the national
Gandhian Congress, but soon discover that the Mahatma has been arrested and
decide to officially launch the “don’t-touch-the-Government campaign” by
protesting toddy stands, refusing to pay taxes or abide by the colonial
government’s orders, and setting up a “parallel government” for their village
that keeps Rangè Gowda as Patel.
Two days later, 139 Kanthapura
villagers march to the toddy grove near the Skeffington Coffee Estate and
Moorthy refuses to honor the Police Inspector’s orders to back down. The
Gandhians climb into the grove and begin tearing branches off the trees as the
police beat them down with lathis and
arrest three villagers: the pariah Rachanna and the potters Lingayya and Siddayya. They
corral the rest of the protestors into trucks, which drive them off in
different directions and drop them by the side of the road in various parts of
the Western Ghats. The protestors march back toward Kanthapura, encountering
cart-men who support Gandhi’s movement and offer to take them home for free as
well as people in the nearby village of Santhapura who decide to join
their Satyagraha movement.
The next week, the villagers repeat
their protest, encountering various people from the region who proclaim their
oppression under British rule and ask Moorthy to help them. When they reach the
toddy grove, the Police Inspector marches the coolies off the Skeffington
Estate to Boranna’s toddy
stand, but the Gandhians convince the coolies to join the protest instead of
drinking. The police are more violent this time, and they seriously injure
Rangamma, Ratna, and Moorthy before dumping the rest on the side of the road,
as before. But when they return to Kanthapura, the Gandhians discover that many
of the coolies and Gandhi sympathizers from the region have decided to join
them, and their movement continues to grow as they launch various other
protests, get 24 toddy stands in the area to shut down, and closely follow the
accelerating national protest movement.
Besides the few brahmins who still
oppose the Gandhi movement, the villagers refuse to cooperate with the
government, which infuriates the police and leads them to more and more aggressive
tactics. The police barricade every exit out of town, secretly arrest numerous
protestors (including the movement’s two main leaders, Moorthy and Rangamma) in
the middle of the night, and begin assaulting female villagers. One officer
nearly rapes Ratna, but Achakka and some of the other women Volunteers find her
just in time and decide that she will be the new leader of the protest
movement. This group of women, whose perspective the narrative follows closely
from this point onward, hide out in the temple and watch Bhatta’s house burn
down. But a policeman sees them and locks them inside overnight, until the
pariah Rachi lets them out.
Three days later, the villagers
undertake their fourth and most consequential protest against the police. Rich
Europeans come to Kanthapura as the government begins auctioning off the
villagers’ land, and they bring coolies from the city to begin working the
fields. Gandhians from around the region, including Advocate Sankar, flood into
the town to help the protest effort. Achakka and the other women begin
questioning their loyalty to Gandhi, wondering whether nonviolent resistance
will truly save their livelihoods, but soon the march is underway and the
police are more vicious than ever before. One of the protestors raises the
Gandhian revolutionary flag and the police begin firing against the protestors,
massacring them even as they proclaim their commitment to nonviolence. The
women hide out in sugarcane fields as they watch their neighbors and
party-members get slaughtered, and as they begin to flee Kanthapura, Rachi
decides to burn the village down.
Rachi makes a bonfire and sets the
village alight before all the women continue marching as far as they can from
Kanthapura, across the mountains and into the jungle, where people honor them
as “pilgrims of the Mahatma” and offer them a new home in the village of
Kashipura. In the year since Kanthapura’s destruction, Achakka explains, the
villagers have scattered and moved on with their lives, and Moorthy has been
released from prison, although he gave up on Gandhi, who started to compromise
with the British, and decided to join Jawaharlal Nehru’s movement for the equal
distribution of wealth. Rangamma is still in jail, and the only person who has
returned to Kanthapura is Rangè Gowda, who tells Achakka that the village has
been sold away to city-people from Bombay.
Jennings, Rohan. "Kanthapura Plot Summary." LitCharts. LitCharts
LLC, 28 Jun 2018. Web. 12 Dec 2018.
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