Assignment
Topic : Blend of Myths and Reality : A study of Raja Rao’s Kanthapura
Name : Pina Gondaliya
Roll No : 25
Enrollment No:2069108420200012
Course : 4 Indian Writing in English
Submitted to : English Department MKB University
Raja Rao :
Raja Rao was Indian novelist writing in English during the middle decades of the 20th century. He was born 8 November,1908 in India. Raja Rao’s writings is a certain meditative quality which distinguishes him considerably from most other Indian English writers. His first novel Kanthapura , is in a largely realist vein. It describes a village and its residents in southern india. The story narrator by older women. The novel explores the effects of India’s independence movement. Kanthapura is best known novel , a specially outside India.
Raja Rao is a leading English- language Indian author who is best known for his novels in which he examines the metaphysical themes by involving characters with divese ideas, outlooks and backgrounds. As these individuals establish relationships they are prompted to compare and reexamine their personal, political, spiritual and cultural values and through them Rao frequently contrasts Indian philosophy and spiritualism with Western society’s emphasis on dualism and rationalism.
Myth and Reality :
Kanthapura , a regional novel expanded into Sthala-purana and a microcosm of Indian. It is Indian inits theme myths, images, narration and style. The theme of Kanthapura is concerned with the impact of Gandhi on the religious, social,economic and political life of a quite obscure village of south India,called like child on its mother’slap.It is shows how the clarion-call of Gandhi turns thousands of youths into soldiers against the rule of england, shouting, clamouring and struggling for the emancipationof their motherland from the shackles of slavery. It shows how the Red-men exploited India for their own good and carry it across the seven seas,making the over-brimming “granaries as empty as a mourning house”, and how the middle men swindle the farmers with their gaping sacks. It shows that how the priests and the swamis misuse religion for their own comfort, alienate man from man and preserve cobwebs of ignorance and how religion steers life and sustains it in straits.It shows how the society is split into pieces: the Brhamin keeps the pariah at arm’s length; it shows how the society is afflicted with the dowry system, human boundage, maltreatment of the widows, drinking, corruption, untouchability and resentment against co-education.
What is interesting is the world of Kanthapura that the novelist creates with all its natural setting. The novelist glues the readers right from the beginning.
Story is narrated against the background of an Indian with their distinct Indian traits and Indian sensibility close contact with nature, betraying a distinctive sensibility. Indian sensibility is essentially religious and politics gets spiritualised. India's most important political leaders and social reformers have all been great figures and social and political ends have been in the guise of religion. There are at least three strands of experience in the political, the religious and the social.
Kanthapura is a microcosm of the Indian society with division of people into castes, untouchability, poverty, exploitation by usurers and foreign rulers and ruthless tyranny at their hands.
The divisions of the village into the Brahmin quarters, the Potter quarters and so on speak of the age-long cast system and untouchability; the size and shape of the quarters speak about the prosperity of the few and the poverty of the many. If the people are exploited by the petty shopkeepers, they are fleeced and torture by the big shopkeepers.
The Indian sensibility Finds further expression in the use of myths and rituals. The central myth of Kanthapura is of rama-sita-ravana, which is used to illustrate the fight between Mahatma Gandhi and the British. Siva is the three eyed god, so is Swaraj. Parvati wooded and won Siva through penances, so does Gandhi, endeavour to attain independence through penances, so does Gandhi, endeavour to attain independence through ordeals. Independence is like sita sullied at the hands of Ravana and Gandhi, like Ram, strives to regain her. Gandhi is Rama, jawaharlsl Nehru is Bharata. Further, the Mahatma is like Lord Krishna, precious child, with a band of followers; Krishna began fighting at the age of four and fought against the demon and the serpent Kali. Gandhi tries to slay the serpent of the foreign rule. Even moorthy sees Lord Krishna safe on the pipal leaf and Prahlad safe through fire. Moorthy is Rama and Seenu, Lakhsman. The agent of the Swami also uses the concept of Ram-Raiya and of the rule of ten - headed Ravina.
Kanthapura, though not a mature and spiritually satisfying work from Raja Rao's point of view is one of the most remarkable novel in English because of its distinctive treatment of thoughts content from and expression. It reveals Raja Rao's social and political preoccupations which he shared with the writers of the thirties. The novel is a confident affirmation of the integrity of English as the Indian Fiction writer's medium. To evolve a whole new whole new way of articulation in English and to maintain it consistently through an action-filled drama speaks of the advanced level of language naturalisation. It's like setting a test for a claim to use English for expressing Indian sensibility. The theme as it is developed provides but poor occasion for Philosophic speculation or for reflecting on the acts of mind.
