kanthpura as a regional novel

Name:- Kubavat Kishan

Roll no:- 13

M.A Semester no :-1

Year:-  2014-15

Paper no :- 4

Paper name :- Indian Writing In English

Assignment Topic:-Kanthapura as a regional novel

Submitted to :-  Department of    English 
M.K.Bhavnagar University

Ø      About the author

              Raja Rao comes of a very old south Indian Brahmin family. He was born in 1909 in the village of Hassana, in Mysore. His father was a professor of canaresse in Hyderabad. After having matriculated from Hyderabad, he want over to Aligrah for higer education. There he was lucky enough to come into contact with Prof. Dickinson. He inspired him to study French language and literature. He inspired him to study French language and literature. He took his B.A degree from Nizam college Hyderabad.

                He was awarded government scholarship by the Hyderabad University, and on this scholar ship he went  to France to continue his study of French literature there. First, he Studied at the university of Montpellier, and then worked for the Doctorate degree at the university of Sorbonne under the supervision of such an eminent scholar as Prof. Cazamian, a name familiar to all students of English Literature.

Ø      His work

Raja Rao is not a very prolific writer. He writers and slowly, revises frequently, and his works have been published at great intervals, because he wants to achive perfection.

His Work are:-

1.   Kanthapura, 1938

2.   The serpent and the rope , 1960

3.   The Cow of the Barricades and other stories, 1947

4.   The Cat and Shakespeare, 1965

5.   The policeman and the Rose and other stories , 1978

Ø      About the novel

v  It was with this novel that Raja Rao made his debut as a novelist.

v  It is a vivid, graphic and realistic portrayal of the Gandhian  struggle for the freedom of the country.

v  This is artistically the best of his novels.

v  E. M. Forster  has praised it as “the finest novel to come out of India in recent years.

v     Kanthapura as a regional novel

v  Regionalism Explained and Defined :-

A regional novel is a novel which deals with the physical features, people , life , customs , habits , traditions , language, etc., of a particular locality. However, this does not mean that regionalism is mere factual reporting or photographic reproduction.

            The Regional artist emphasises the unique features of a particular locality; its uniqueness, the various ways in which it different from other localities. But as in all other art , so also in regional art , there is a constant selection and ordering of material . In other words, regional art is also creative.

         Through proper selection and ordering of his material the novelist stresses the distinctive spirit of his chosen region and shows forther , that life in its essentials is the same everywhere. The differences are used as a means of revealing similarities; from the particular and the local, the artist rises to the general and the universal. The selected region becomes a symbol of the world at large , microcosm which reflects the great world beyond.

vA New Sathala – Purana :-

Kanthapura is aregional novel in this larger sense. Kanthapura  is a microcosm for what happens in Kanthpura was happening all over the country during those stirring days of the Gandhian freedom struggle. Besides, as Raja Rao tells us in the very first sentence of his well known preface to the novel, every village in India has rich Sthala –Purana or legendary history. Kanthapura too has such a legendary history, and the novelist has narrated it in detail for the benefit of his readers.but he has also created a new Sthala-Purana for this region dealing with the brave struggle and self sacrifice of the people of Kanthapura for the sake of the freedom of their mother Bharat-mata. Thus, Kanthapura is a great regional novel as well as a Sthala –Purana by itself.

vThe village and the people : UniversalElements

Kanthapura is a regional novel and as such we are given a detailed account of its topography, of its crops , of its poverty, of its division in to various quarter the Brahmin quarter, the parish quarter etc.., and of the illiteracy, superstitions, petty rivalries and jealousies of its people.

The novel is a portrait- gallery full of the portraits of a number of living, breathing human beings. There are both major and minor figures, and both come to life in the hands of the novelist. As the action proceeds, his presentation of the region gains in depth and complexity, and it is realised that;‘Kanthapura’ is symbolic of a wider and larger world, that in short it is a microcosm of India herself. The picture is further enlarged and enriched by the presentation of the life of workers on the skeffington coffee Estate symbolic of the suffering of the industrial workers under a colonial rue.

Kanthapura is a great regional novel for in it the novelist rises from the particular to the general, to the depiction of the universal human passions, sorrows and suffering.

vThe Local Legend : Goddess Kenchamma

Every village in India has its own sthala- purana or legendary history , and Kanthapura is no exception to this rule. It has a legend concerning the local goddess kenchamma who protects the villagers from harm and presides over their destiny. We are told that kenchamma is the mother of Himavathy, and than is give a detailed account of its past ; kenchamma is our goddess. Great and bounteous is she.

She killed a demon, ages ago, a demon that had come to ask our young sons as food and our young woman as wives. Kenchamma came from the Heavens. It was the sage Tirpura who had made penances to bring her down and she waged such a battle and she fought so many a night that the blood soaked and soked into the earth, and that is why Kenchamma Hill is all red. If not, tell me sister, why should it be red only from the Tippur stream upwards for a foot down on the other side of the stream you have mud, black and brown, but never red. Tell me how could this happen, if it were not for kenchamma and her battle? Thanks heven, not only did she slay the demon, but she even settled down among vs, and this much I shall say, never has she failed us in our grief. If rains come not, you fall at her feet and say kenchamma, goddess, you are not kind to us. Our fields are full of younglings and you have given us no water.

Tell us , kenchamma, why do you seek to make our stomachs burn? ‘ And kenchamma through the darkness of the sanctum, opens her eyes wide oh if only you could see her eyelids quiken and shiver and she smiles on you smile such as you have never before be held . You know what that means. That very night when the doors are closed and the lights are put out, pat-pat-pat ,the rain patters on the tiles and many a peasant is heard to go into the fields. Squelching through gutter and mire. She has never failed us, I assure you our kenchamma.

vLocal Rituals

There is also an account of a number of local rituals. “There is the ritual of yoking the bulls to the plough under the rohini star or of the traditional belief that the beginning of kartik, gods can be seen passing by , “blue gods and quiet gods and bright eyed gods” or the goddess kenchamma. All these make up the fabric of living of which the narrator is a part.

 Thus, the reference to the rituals of a ploughing, of worship and sacrifice, becomes a means of establishing the atmosphere in which the villagers live, as well as a device for concretising the point of view , delineation of the character of the unsophisticated narrator who can assimilated all facts into a mythical structure, for whom no fact become really significant unless it can be identified as part of a myth.

vThe new sthala- purana : Mythicising of  local Heroism

Not only has the novelist given us an account of the legendary history of Kanthapura , he was also created a new sthala-purana for the region. This has been done by mythicisng the heroism of the local hearts and heads in the cause of their motherland.

As Northrop Fry, points out in a myth “some of the chief character aregods, other beings larger in power than humanity.” So also is the case with the novel. Moorthy is presented as a figure much above the common run of men . A dedicated, selfless soul, he is idealised tothe extent or being regarded  as a local Mahatma. And of course there is the real Mahatma also, always in the background though nowhere physically present .The village women think of him as the sahyadri mountain big and blue, and Moorthy as the small mountain. Range Gowda , the village headman,thus describes Moorthy ;

He is our Gandhi. The state of Mysore has a Maharaja but that maharaja has another who is in London, and that one has another one in heaven, and so everybody has his own Mahatma, and his moorthy who has been caught in our kness playing as an child is now grow up and great , and he has wisdom in him and he will be our Mahatma.

 Just as there is the local goddess kenchamma who protects the village kanthapura and a greater god who protects all, Moorthy is the local avtar while Gandhi is the greater deity. The level of a god by identifying his activities with one particular feat of Krishna, though it does not always mean fidelity to facts :

You remember how Krishna when he was but a babe of four had begun to fight against demous and had killed the serpent kali. So too our Mohandas begun to fight against the enemies of the country....... Men followed him , as they did Krishna. The flute player, and so he goes from village , to sky the serpent of the Foreign rule.

If here the ‘kaliya-daman’ offers a parallel to the destruction of the Foreign rule, later on the battle between Rama and Ravana offers a similar mythical analogy. None of these analogies can be systematically followed through to find exact point of correspondence, but they do temporarily illuminate the historical situation of the thirties, and give an insight in the unlettered mind of the village people that Raja rao has attempted to present in kanthapura, the kind of mind in which myth and fact are not clearly distinguishable. Moreover , for such a mind a fact does not become significant until it can be related to a myth. For the grandmother in kanthapura , swaraj is Sita , Mahatma is Rama, and Jawaharlal is brother Bharata;

He will brings us swaraj, the Mahatma. An Rama will come back from exile and Sita will be with him , For Ravana will be slain and Sita freed, and he will come back with Sita on  right in a chariot of the air and brother Bharata will go to meet them with the worshipped sandal of the master on his head. And as they enter Ayodhya, there will be a rain of flowers.

vMythicising of facts ; It’s Advantages

This mythicisng of facts serves a two fold purpose in kanthapura. It’s narrator is an old illiterate woman and mingling of myth and fact would be her natural manner of observation and reflection. Thus, it is a device of characterization. Seondly, Raja Rao adheres to the Indian classical tradition by idealising or mythicising the central character . Morrthy is an idealized character, who like Christ takes all the sins of the people upon himself and undergoes a penance for purification, a young man who conquers physical desire and self-interest.

Indeed in the context of modern Evropean realistic tradition, he will appear unreal as a character. But this is not meant to be fiction in the realistic tradition; it is a local legend, and  therefore the presence of a God like hero is more appropriate here. A myth necessarily deals with an idealised man larger than life and Raja rao uses the device of mythicisig facts in order to gives his hero that exalted status.

Conclusion

 Thus, Kanthapura is a great regional novel , as well as an interesting sthala purana. The novelist rises from the particular to the general by the use of myth and legend gives to the freedom struggle of the kanthapurians an all India character. The weaving of ancient myths into the structure of the novel, gives it the quality of timelessness which all great works of art have. By mythicising the heroic- struggle and self-sacrifice of the people of the south Indian village, he has created a new sthala-purana,a new local leged. The novel illustrates how new legends or sthala-purana, a new local legend. The novel illustrates how new legends or sthala-puranas are made , how the ordinary and the commonplace acquires larger than life dimensions in the imagination of poets and bards,or gossipy narrators like Achakka.