Political fiction is not the easiest form to write, especially when the author intends to show the mass awakening of a people. When confronted with world-altering, radical political movements, writers tend to go for the personal-is-political approach, situating change and transformation in individual journeys. Often, a romance will be part of the narrative, doomed to end in tragedy because the lovers will be from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum and social forces won’t allow them to meet halfway.
Raja Rao’s Kanthapura is a full-fledged political novel, with its intentions proclaimed proudly almost from the start. This is a novel about the awakening of India’s villages to Gandhi’s philosophies of self-reliance, non-violence and the spirit of unity to achieve the ultimate goal of an independent nation.
Kanthapura was published in 1938 — Rao wrote most of it in France, in a chateau, with the Second World War looming in Europe. When it appeared in print, it was considered revolutionary for its time because of its unapologetic marriage of Indian folkloric tradition with the English language.
The story is narrated by an old woman, Achakka, who observes the happenings in the village of Kanthapura, located in modern-day Karnataka: “High on the Ghats is it, high up the steep mountains that face the cool Arabian seas, up the Malabar cost is it, up Mangalore and Puttur and many a centre of cardamom and coffee, rice and sugar cane.” The fruits of this land, as Achakka explains, aren’t for the people who grew them: “There, on the 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.”
Village life in Kanthapura adheres to the rigidities of the caste system as it has for centuries. All this is soon blown up when young and idealistic Moorthy decides to hold a Ganesh-Jayanthi celebration and invites Jayaramachar, “the famous Harikatha-man”. Jayaramachar goes on to perform a Harikatha unlike any the residents of Kanthapura have heard, narrating the story of Siva and Parvati but subverting it to proclaim: “‘Siva is the three-eyed,’ he says, “and Swaraj too is three-eyed: Self-purification, Hindu-Moslem unity, Khaddar.’” The police soon arrive to put an end to the proceedings but the seeds have been planted — foreign clothes are the first to go and the spinning wheels soon arrive. Not everyone is pleased — the upper caste householders proclaim Moorthy to be a ‘veritable Mohammedan’ for the way he is ‘mixing with the Pariahs’ and his eagerness to bring people of all castes and religions together in the pursuit of Gandhian ideals. His mother Narsamma is harangued for the dishonour her son brings on Kanthapura and the threats of excommunication being issued by the Swami against the whole village.
But an idea whose time has come cannot be resisted even in age-old agrarian villages like Kanthapura. It’s not long before the workers of the British-run coffee estate are making common cause with the lower caste villagers, and soon, there’s a tide of political change making its way through almost every household.
The book doesn’t end on a triumphant note — even in 1938, Rao was aware that just gaining independence wouldn’t solve all the problems a country like India would face. Moorthy, released from prison in the final pages of the book, knows all too well that as long as there isn’t an equitable distribution of wealth, “there will always be Pariahs and poverty”. In a conversation with the poet and translator R Parthasarathy in 1976, Rao said that as a writer he tried to “belong to the great Indian tradition of the past when literature was considered a sadhana” (sadhana being a form of spiritual growth). In writing Kanthapura and charting the spiritual transformation of one Indian village, no one could fault him for not being true to his personal philosophy.
The author is a writer and communications professional. When she’s not reading, writing or watching cat videos, she can be found on Instagram @saudha_k where she posts about reading, writing, and cats. That One Book is a fortnightly column that does exactly what it says — it takes up one great classic and tells you why it is (still) great.