|
  

 

Kanthapura . Rajmohan͛s Wife . Untouchable

S H I S H I R K U M A R C H A U D H A R Y - 2 0 0 6 C S 5 0 2 2 2
 aexts Referred
 Bankim Chandra Chatterjee ʹ Rajmohan͛s Wife

 Mulk Raj Anand ʹ Untouchable

 Raja Rao ʹ Kanthapura

 Brief History
 1930s is generally seen as the decade when
Indian English Novel took off

 ahe early novels were published from a variety

of places ʹ not only metros like London,
Calcutta, Bombay, etc but also small places
like Calicut, Bhagalpur, Bangalore, etc
 Brief History
 ahe titles showcased some sort of expectancy
or titillations
A Peep into ͙
Glimpses of ͙
Revelations ͙

 ahese seem to promise the unveiling of some

mystery ʹ the ͚east͛ or ͚India͛
 Language vs. Identity
 Raja Rao ʹ ͞One has to convey in a language that is not
one͛s own the spirit that is one͛s own͟

 Mulk Raj Anand ʹ ͞the double burden on my shoulders, the

Alps of the European tradition and the Himalayas of my
Indian @
͟

 English may be the language of our intellectual make-up

but not of our emotional make-up.

 Need of a dialect as a method of expression much like the

Irish or the American English.
 Potential Readership
 Authors͛ confusion about their potential readership

 ahe implicit target readers were British

aexts have ethnographic details or lexical and semantic
emphases
 Rajmohan͛s Wife ʹ Local Bengali Vegetables called Salad
 Rajmohan͛s Wife / Kanthapura ʹ Extended description of typical
Indian household / society

Author Lal Behari Day announces in his m
 

that there are no ͚taverns͛ for the young peasants to spend
their evenings in and that there is no concept of ͚courtship͛
or ͚making love͛
 Conditions and Issues
 Social and political upheavals of nationalism

 Social and political issues dominated

 Upliftment of women, untouchables and

peasants

 Rift between Nehruvian and Gandhian ideals

RAJMOHAN͛S WIFE
 Introduction
 Written by '   
 
 in 1864.

 Arguably the first novel by an Indian in English Language

 Appeared as episodes in m

 Published as a novel in 1935

 Bengali Version ʹ ††

 First three chapters are translations of this Bengali version by Mr.

Brajendra Nath Banerji

 Narrative Style ʹ ahird Person, uses Westernized English

 Women
 ahe carefully drawn portrait of Mantangini is a
unique contribution of the traditional and the
radically new
the heroine is always shown with a companion who
serves to highlight the former͛s beauty
several of the images used are taken from long-
standing literary conventions

 Images of women
timid and weak
strong and spirited
 An Image of Modern India
 No description of the rural or feudal India
Set up near Calcutta

 No exclusive comment on the British Raj

Benign image of the colonial rule

 Mantangini - not just a character, but the ͞spirit͟

or personification of modern India itself. ahis is
an emergent, hesitant, yet strong-willed and
attractive India.
 Other Imageries
 p  ʹ Lumpenised proletariat under
colonialism, alienated from its own people and
country

 þ
ʹ ahe sensible, learned and elite class

that is concerned for the rise of a modern India

 þ ʹ ahe elite class that is both corrupt and

unscrupulous
UNaOUCHABLE
 Introduction
 Written by Mulk Raj Anand in 1935 - He was involved in
Indian Non Co-operation Movement

 Considered his finest and most controversial novel

 Story ʹ A day in the life of an ͞untouchable͟ named

Bakha

 Conveys with urgency and barely disguised fury what it

might feel like to be one of India͛s untouchables

 Confused about the targeted readership ʹ uses Pidgin

English and explanatory footnotes
 Main ahemes
 Atrocities of Untouchability
Author constructs events to vent out the feelings of the sufferer
Feelings that follow ʹ Why was I even born, self-pity, afraid of
receiving a favor, sequence of contemplation on fields etc.

 Increasing awareness in the society

ahe characters of Havildar Charat Singh and Iqbal Nath Sarshar

 Reformist Solutions
Philosophic resignation
Conversion to Christianity
Gandhi vs. Nehru
KANaHAPURA
 Introduction
 Written by Raja Rao in 1938

 Gandhian Novel ʹ It portrays the participation of

a small village of South India in the national
struggle called for by Gandhi.

 A fictional but realistic account of how people in

India lived their lives under British rule and how
they responded to the ideas and ideals of Indian
nationalism
 Narrative Style
 Omniscient First Person Narrator ʹ An old woman

 Rao makes a deliberate attempt to follow the

traditional Indian narrative style

 Describes at the onset ʹ ˜

 Use of the English language to make it conform to the

local rhythm

 Various emotional sequences are expressed by

breaking the formal English syntax to suit the sudden
changes of mood and sharp contrasts in tone
 Main Features
 Village as the microcosm of the nation - Entrenched with
caste hierarchies, religious beliefs, etc

 Chronicles the formation of a national identity within a

village affected by events occuring outside the geographical
limits

 Underlines the homogenising tendency of nationalism

͞Swadeshi͟ congressmen adopt the European model of nation
Sankaru insists on speaking Hindi even to his mother instead of
the local language Kannada
ahe Hindi teacher is not from any Hindi speaking region but a
Malayali

 Any pure form of nationhood untouched by colonialism is

seriously questioned
 Main Features
 aension between Brahmanism and Nationalism and collusion
between the former and colonialism

 Paradoxical areatment of the lower castes

 Narrative exhibits a non-historic consciousness in the beginning ʹ

Kanthapura as Sthalapurana, history of Goddess Kenchamma,
mythicizing of nationalist figures, etc

 When colonialism disrupts narratives of the community, it

introduces ͚history͛

 Importance of colonialization in helping to come out of the mythical

mentality and realize the factual truths
 Conclusion
 Indian authors began to write in English to
supposedly target the British Readers

 Conscious of the National Identity

 National and Social Reforms were the driving

force behind the literary works

 Difficulty of Language
 References
 Blog - http://sotosay.wordpress.com/

 ahe Allegory of Rajmohan͛s Wife. þ p



 Wikipedia
thank you