INDIANNESS

The Indianness of our regional literatures, according to Dr.C.Paul

Varghese, is taken for granted and no one takes the trouble to analyse it or
study it in depth. It is assumed that there is “no clash between the culture
and the languages which express it” (Varghese 3). But where Indian writing
in English is concerned, it is supposed that English is ill fitted to express
Indian culture in as much as it is a language alien to the Indian soil and
nurtured over the centuries by an alien culture. In the words of Professor
B.Rajan, “The inwardness of Indianness. Can not be captured by a language
essentielly foreign; the sublest and the most vital nuances are accessible only
to a living speech with its roots in the soil and in the organic past”
(Mukherjee 3).

Indian writing in English is a part of a great Indian tradition that

compromises both pre-Independence and post – Independence streams.
Writers feel as if they are the part of a great Indian tradition, which is
amorphous, diverse and undefined. Indian English literature is “one of the
voice in which India speaks. It is a new voice, no doubt, but it is as much
Indian as others” (Iyengar p3). It is an important body of the ‘new
Englishes’, which have developed in different parts of the world. Indian
English novel is now being studied and discussed in the entire English
speaking world by those interested in the subcontinent or in non-native
Englishes. Today Indian English novel has to its credit out a remarkable and
praiseworthy place on map of the world of fiction. Indian English novel
reflects both the thematic and stylistic Indianness. “Untouchable” (1935) is
probably Mulk Raj Anand’s most artistically satisfying novel dealing with
the Indian theme. It exposes class-based society in India. It is a socially
conscious and sociological novel. It focusses attention on a number of social
belief, customs, traditions, social evils, etc of the Hindu Society in 1930s,
more precisely, the curse of the caste and class system. Orthodox Hindu
society is class-ridden. This novel Untouchable was written when India was
a colony and untouchability was rife through India. Mahatma Gandhi makes
a crusade against this social crusade. Mulk Raj Anand depicts the socio-
political scenario of India in 1930s when ‘Swadeshi Movement’ under the
able leadership of Mahatma Gandhi was in full swing :

“As you all know, while we are asking for freedom from the grip
of a foreign nation. We have ourselves, for centuries trampled
under foot millions of human beings without feeling the slightest
remorse for our inquring. For me, the question of these people is
moral and religious. When I undertook to fast unto death for their
sake, it was in obedience to call of my conscience (162-63).

Indianness is the sum-total of the cultural traditions of India. It reflects the

deep – seated ideas – political, economical, cultural and spiritual – that
constitude the mind of India.

Today there are a large number of educated Indians who use the
English language as a medium for creative expression. Their writings now
form part of a substantial body of literature which is referred to as Indo-
Anglian literature. Indo-Anglian writing is a separate genre, as distinguished
from ‘Anglo-Indian writing’ and ‘Indo-English writing’. This has been
enriched by such figures as Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu, Rabindranath Tagore,
Aurobindo Ghosh, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehre. The Indian
writer in English must be able to use his chosen medium with a fair degree
of accuracy both in grammar and idiom. As Raja Rao in his preface to his
novel Kanthapura says, “English is not a ‘foreign tongue’ in India, but it is
the language of our intellectual make – up, if not of our emotional make –
up. He rightly suggests and with the Indian writer in English express. Indian
sensibility and with this end in view, he should learn to write Indian English.
The Indianness of English consists not in the sprinking of Indian words in a
writing. Though it can be there, it really lies in the manner in which writer
dislocates the conventional English syntax to approximate to the patterns
and rhythms of punjabi, kannada or Tamil speech in an attempt to catch the
very tone of voice, the gesture of hand and the twinkle in the eyes of men
and women who figure in a work of art. This is certainly a difficult task, but
there are a number of eminent writers who have overcome the difficulties
posed by the alien medium of expression, and they have achieved
international recongnition.

The novel, short story and drama were practically non-existent in

Indian languages, before the middle of the century. With the introduction of
English in India, there was a spurt of translations and a number of English
classics were translated into various Indian languages. The English classics
became the models for Indians writing in English. Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee became the first Indian writer of a novel in English. He made his
mark with Rajmohan’s wife published in 1864. One thousand and one
Nights by S.K.Ghosh and Indian Detective stories by S.B.Bannerjee are
other works of prose fiction in English created by Indian hands. Mention
may also be made of Toru Dutt’s novel Bianca, The slave Girl of Agra and
The Lake of Pselms by Romesh Chandra Dutt.
 It was only with the nation’s struggle for freedom that the Indo-
Anglian novel really came to existence. Despite its late start, the novel today
has gone far a head of poetry both in quantity and quality. The patriotic
aspirations of Indians are presented in K.S.Venkataraman’s Murugan, The
Tiller and Kandan, The Patriot With the publication of Mulk Raj Anand’s
Untouchable and coolie and Raja Rao’s Kanthapura, the novel in English
may be said to have come of age in India. Today the Indian novelist writing
in English are large in number. Besides Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and
R.K.Narayan, the three foremost Indian writers of fiction in English, there
are such other notable novelist, as K.Nagarajan, Bhabani Bhattacherya,
Manohar Malgonkar, Khushwant Singh, Kamala Markandaya and Anita
Desai. All these novelists and many more have considerably enriched Indo-
Anglian fiction nourishing the Indian element or theme in their works of art,
one among them to be of special mention is Raja Rao.

In the Indo-Anglian novel, the major theme was the struggle for
freedom. But today the themes are many and varied portrayals of poverty,
hunger. disease and the social evils like untouchability, examination of the
survival of the past, exploration of the conflicts in a tradition – ridden
society under the impact of industrialization, Indian socio-political,
philosophical and cultural life, religious attitude and political struggle. The
themes continue to change and grow for adapting themselves to the changing
Indian environment as ‘Indian element’ in Indo – Anglian fiction.

Raja Rao’s profound knowledge of Indian socio-philosophic life, his

passionate involvement with the Indian freedom struggle under the able
leadeeship of Mahatma Gandhi and his literary quest to search a soothing,
seductive and creative language for delineating his thoughts and ideas
having their roots in Indianness have got expression in Kanthapura. The
action of action is Kanthapura, a typical South Indian village on the slopes
of the Western Ghats. The story of the novel covers a volatile period of
Indian history between Gandhiji’s Dandi March in 1930 and Gandhi Irwin
Pact in 1931. The novel describes the Gandhian movement against the
established British rule in India and how it reaches the South Indian village,
Kanthapura. This movement quickens the process of social transformation at
the grass-root level of India. Moorthy is the incarnation of Gandhian
consciousness and he transforms the life of an entire community Moorthy or
Moorthappa explains the economy of the ‘Khadi’ and the importantance of
‘Chakra’ to the ignorant and uneducated women of the village and asks them
to take to spinning insisting on Indian element and Indian attitude towards
life despite stiff opposition from different corners.

Kanthapura projects “a deeply rooted philosophy – man’s posotion in

society is spiritual as well as political. Politics, religion, Indian myths and
philosophical strains are mated together in the novel” (sarangi 37). The
novel has all the content of an ancient Indian classic, combined with a sharp,
satirical art and mythical style. Kanthapura, as a style of its own, reflects
the rhythms and sensibilities of the Indian psyche. Raja Rao in his
‘foreword’ to the novel mentions his style as ‘Sthala – Purana’ in which “the
past mingles with the present and the gods mingle with men to make the
repertory of your grandmother always bright” (kan ix). The mingling of the
past with the present has been established in Kanthapura with the
successful use of sociolinguistic tense blend. An example may be cited to
prove the point :
 And sometimes, when we stood in Rangamma’s courtyard,
Ragamma would say, ‘Now, if the police should fall on you, you
should stand without moving a hair, and we would feel a shiver
run down our backs, and we whould say, ‘No, sister, that is not
difficult. Does not the Gita say; the sword can split sunder the
body, but never the soul? And if say, we should not move a hair,
we shall not move a hair (kan III)

the purpose of ‘tense blend’ is to dramatise the situation and heighten the
effect of narration. Narration is the act of recounting a sequence of events. In
the quoted narration a temporal distance between the narration and the
narrated events is indirectly established. The use of ‘emphemism’
precipitates a teasing determinancy in face-to-face conversation. In Indian
society, people try to avoid a direct reference to certain activities of life. The
following examples establish a common trend of Indian society to certain
things :

Combine chinna Still remains in Kanthapura to lift her leg to her

new customer (kan 184)

Mentioning the sexual acts in Conversation is a ‘taboo’ to Indian society.

Chinna is a lady without any moral. She likes to be sexually enjoyed by new
customers. Seenu’s mother emphemistically refers to Chinna’s immoral acts
to remain polite from her part. In a pessimistic society, she does not need to
emphemistic in the use of language. Actually, the domain of tabbo
words/expressions varies cross-culturally. Another instance of emphemism
may be cited in the novel :

Rachanna shouts, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’, The police Inspector asks

his subordinate, ‘Arrest the Swine!’. People get around Rachanna and try to
protect him. In the mean time, the Inspector orders, Give them a licking’
(kan 90). ‘Licking’ ‘means’ ‘beating’. Beating is of no great act. Order for
beating may cause irritation to the public. therefore, the police Inspector
avoids the term ‘beating’ and uses ‘licking’ which seems to be a relatively
polite word in the Indian context. The terms of ‘address’ and ‘reference’
differ from culture to culture. Terms like ‘sir’, ‘madam’, ‘master’ and ‘son’
indicate a cultural hybridity as well as the socio-cultural nuances in India.
these terms of address are frequently used in English which is an alien
language for the Indians. Sometimes, Indian English ‘address terms’ seem to
be bookish. ‘Your Excellency’ is preferably, used in administration. Art it
refers to the colonial times for the association of very word. Bade khan goes
straight to the skeffington Coffee Estate and asks Mr.Skeffington, ‘Your
Excellency, a house to live in ?’ (kan 22).

‘Sahib’ and ‘Maharaj’ or ‘Maharaja’ express a sense of regard or

respect for whim the terms are addressed. People in colonical times used to
address their superiors as ‘Sahib’. In kanthapura, the police personal are
addressed as ‘Maharaj’. Brahmins, sadhus and priests are called ‘Maharaja’
or ‘Maharaj’. Bhatta is addressed in Kanthapura as ‘Leaned Maharaja’ (kan
29). Bhatta is also known as a moneylender and he exploits people and
deliberately creates a class distinction. The hierarchy in a stratified pre-
independent Indian society can be traced by studying the sociolinguistic
terms of address and reference. Bade khan, the policeman, goes to Rama
Chetty ‘for some provisions ..... (kan 38). On his way, he meets Bhatta.
Bhatta says, It does not matter, sahib. Bade khan replies, ‘Oh, it does not
matter, Maharaja, I fall at your feet’ (kan 38) Bhatta, the moneylender, is
regarted as the “Maharaja’. At the same time, one may note Bhatta’s term of
address for Bade Khan. Both Bade Khan and Bhatta are conscious of their
respective position and recognition in Indian society kinship (blood
relationship) terms like ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘brother’,’daughter’, and ‘son’ are
frequently used in Kanthapura to lay focus on the projection of Indian
elements in the novel.

Though kanthapura is not a mature and spiritually satisfying work

from Rao’s point of view, it is considered as one of the most significant
Indian novels projecting Indian elements in its treatment of theme, thought,
content, from and expression. It does reveal richly Raja Rao’s social and
political preoccupations which he shared with the writers of the ‘thirties’. He
wrote it during his stay in the High province in France. The distance from
the real scene of action helps him to portray the violence and waste and the
courage and glory witnessed by India during the terrible years of its struggle
for liberation with a detachment and objectivity rare in the novels of the
period. This novel gives nothing but a graphic and moving description of the
National movement in the ‘the twenties’ when thousands of villages all over
India responded in much the same way. They all shook off their lethargy and
joined the Congress Movement and Gandhiji’s militant Programme of
‘Satyegraha’ and Civil disobedience. They took to hand spinning on the
spinning wheel, shed their prejudice of caste and cried and relented in their
attitude towards the Untouchables, often admitting them into their social
circle.

Kanthapura is Indian both in them and treatment. Its theme is, to put
it simply, ‘Gandhi and our village’ (Narasimhaiah 1). Kanthapura is a typical
Indian village and it has been described minutely with great realism. The
village and the changing village scenes are so evocatively described that
kanthapura and its inhabitants come to life perfectly. Like a true missionary,
Raja Rao, dealing with Indian elements in his novels, has reaffirmed
humanism as the soul of Indianness in Kanthapura and has waged a war, as
it were, against the inhuman values which eat into the very vitals of
humanity. The caste-hatred, disarangement of the Hindu widowhood, the
current police, the element of exploitation, the evil of today – drinking and
the social prejudices are some of the inhuman factors which corrode the very
foundations of humanity. The stream of life is not clean both in the cities and
the villages for the simple reason that it is caught in the spides veb of
inhuman values all around it. Kanthapura wages a sort of war against those
values which have made human life shabby and pitiable. To great extent, it
is true, traditions (the outmoded conditions of life) are responsible for it,
which make the humanity in a village almost a casuality. The novel is a
gospel work of a missionary, which aims at pointing out the need of the
social reforms in addition to the political ones. From the Indian way of life,
there is much more humantity among the Untouchables than in the
touchables and they easily respond to the human appeal than the latter. There
has been war against the evil of the caste divisions in Indian Hindu society
in our times and there are some who strongly advocate for their continuance,
but the progressive or the new elements amongst them is for their whole –
sale replacement. The caste – feeling in the village of Kanthapura is very
strong, and it continues to hold its way till the village is swept over with the
wave of Gandhian Liberalism. Moorthy, the hero of the novel, is an
embodiment of the new spirit and it is under his leadership that the yowning
gulf between the Brahmins and the untouchables of the village is bridged up.
No deliberate effort is made by the novelist to destroy the caste – divisions,
what he does is to create human feelings in the hearts of the orthodox
sections so that they come to realise the human significance of the
untouchable in the Indian context.

Raja Rao in writing Indian novels has made use of Indian locale and
narrative style as in kanthapura or typically Indian sensibility as in The
serpent and the Rope. His intellectual make up is not purely Indian, as he
stayed out of India for long at the age of 25. His life has been an experiment
in trying to understand how the film of a typically Indian mind is affected in
an alien culture. His attitude is Indian and he tries to realise from Indian
point of view the western attitude towards life. His novels are steeped in the
ideal Brahmanic quality Innumerable references in his novels to this
characteristic makes it clear that he considers this quality as typically Indian
quality. In his novel The serpent and the Rope, it has been stated :

“what is that separated us?” asked Madeline India”

“India But I am a Buddhist”.

“That is why Buddhists left India. India is implicable”.

“But one can become a Buddhist”.

“Yes, and a Christian and a Muslim as well”.

“You mean one can only be born a Brahmin?

“that is an Indian”. All the three of his central characters viz., Moorthy,
Ramaswami and Ramakrishna Rai are Brahmins in so far as they are
symbols of Indian philosophy and culture. The novelist cannot wash his
mind off the fact that he is a Vedentin (follower of the vedas). As a
dedicated writer, Raja Rao is said to have brought novelty and distinction to
Indian English novel, for literature is sadhana not a profession but a
vocation. Explaining his views on literature, he remarks :
 So the idea of literature as anything but a spiritual experience or
sadhana – a much better word – is outside my experience. I really
think that only through dedication to the absolute or metaphysical
principle can be fully creative. Literature as sadhana is the best
life for a writer. The Indian tradition which links the word with
the absolute (sabda – brahmen) has clearly shown the various
ways by which one can approach literature, without the
confusions that arise in the mind of the Western writer viewing
life as an intellectual adventure. Basically, the Indian outlook
follows a deeply satisfying, richly rewarding and profoundly
metaphysical path. All this may sound terribly Indian (svv 45) :

Raja Rao, thus believes, that one can not become a successful writer without
achieving spiritual and metaphysical knowledge. Literature disseminates this
knowledge. Though Raja Rao has commendable knowledge of classical
sansikrit and modern European Literature, he is basically an Indian cultually
and philosophy. he is “an ardent believer in the Advaitic truth of shivoham,
shivoham” (kumar 147).

According to him, Shiva is opposite of Shava. Shiva is not a god. He

is the Absolute Truth and can be realized when a Guru, who himself has
realized and experienced the supreme truth in life, gives one the upadesam.
Though born in a Vedantic family, Raja Rao could not realize the full
significance of Vedanta till he met his Guru, Sri Atmanand to whom he
dedicated his finest work The Serpent and the Rope. According to Rao,
life becomes meaningfull when the duality of existence dissolves. In his first
novel Kanthapura he was ‘a confused and a lost person’ but he had not
realized his metaphysical entity at that time. So he gave up writing for a long
time. It is in The Serpent and the Rope that he has expressed his vision of
life fully :

The Serpent and the Rope came as a result of spiritual fulfilment –

that is to say it was born after I had met my Guru.

All his novels artistically and skilfully express his conception of literature as
‘Sadhana’ laying focus on vedantic philosophical strains to a great extent.
He follows his vedantin philosophy when he is faced with the problem of the
presentation of his characters solely Indian in depth. He regards the Indian
philosophy superior to other philosophical idealogies in the world, in cluding
the Greek philosophy. This has made him smug and self-mystifying in his
attitude towards things. To him, every Hindu is a super – human being. His
Indian hero consequently is an image of self-righteousness, magnanimity
and understanding, where as, in opposition to this, his western counder parts,
like Madeline in The Serpent and the Rope are all too human interested
exclusively in the temporal world and the advanges that accrue from it.

As a distinguished novel in Indo – Anglian literature Kanthapura

does vividly reflect the deepest and profoundest urges and problems of
Indian life. The theme is Indian to the core and its style is thoroughly Indian.
The expression is thoroughly Indianised although it is written in English
Rhymes of speech are very often from kannada rather than from English. In
a nutshell this novel is nothing but an embodiment of Indian sensibility in
English creative writing and illutterate Indians are richly presented in Indian
style. Almost every Indo – Anglian novelist has tried to create Indian
atmosphere to give his novel that solidity which makes fiction seem
authentic. But Raja Rao has been hailed as the most Indian of the Indian
novelist writing in English. His contribution to the languages of Indo -
Anglian writing is really tremendons. While reading his English, foreigners
find it almost normal but the Indians can hear the echo of regional phrases
and typical Indian expressions. Raja Rao is really skillful as an artist and has
created a work of art which has been read and appreciated by people all over
the world.

In Kanthapura, there are descriptions of habits and manners of the

people of kanthapura. They are simple village people and live very simple
lives. One can get a vivid picture of the customs and traditions of the people.
The various ceremonies and rituals performed by the villagers are
graphically described to show No doubt, kanthapura is a typical Indian
village and the people are also typical Indian village folk. The novel contains
some beautiful passes which help in creating an Indian envirnment adding to
the beauty of the novel in terms of projection of Indian sensibility. Raja Rao
skilfully brings the envirnment to Indian life. For instance, the description of
coming of monsoons is really appreciable and amazing :

Trees begin sudden to tremble and hiss .... there is a gurgle and a
grunt from behind the bamboo cluster - and the gurgle and grunt
soarup and swallow in the cauldron, while the bamboos creak and
sway and whine, and the crows begin to wheel round and flutter
........ and then, the wind comes so swift, and dashing that it takes
the autumn leaves with it, and they rise into the juggling air, while
a thumb, and as the thunder goes clashing like a temple cymbal
through the heavens, the earth itself seems to heave up and cheep
in the mon soon rains. It churns and splashes beats against the
tree-tops, reckless and wilful, and suddenly floating forwords it
bucks back and spits forword ...... (Kanthapura).
Raja Rao has used Indian imagery in this passage and the language is
exceptionally beautiful and meaningful.

Many ready – made devices used by the novelist make his novels
typically Indian. One such device is the placing of an Indian myth at the
centre of the novel. The Savitri – Satyavan myth is used in The Serpent and
the Rope and Rama sita and Ravan myth is used in Kanthapura. The
narrative technique of his novels is like that of the ancient Indian writings.
The Indians are garrulous (talkative) by nature; he employes the narrative
technique of the puranas where one episode is followed by another in quick
succession and the story rolls on with the help of various extraneous
material. The narrative is made interesting in Kanthapura by addressing it
to some kind of an audience and the use of speech hesitations, repetitions,
excitement etc. The narrative uses at places the snatches of poetry, old as
well as new, to impart to it the shape of a champer. The rustic touch of the
narrator is the special characteristic of Kanthapura, as the analytical, self-
conscious and high intellectual style specially characterises The Serpent
and the Rope. the style employed by Raja Rao in Kanthapura is “a
curious, fragmented, breathless style deliberataly adapted from the
traditional Indian practice of story telling ...... suited to both Indian
grandmothers and Indian sthala-puranas” (Verghese 144).

Indian legends, folk-tales and mythological stories are interspersed

throughout his novels. Indian families invillages and families everywhere
have them on the tips of their tonques, but sometimes, the effect of their
introduction seems to be so deliberate that it looks like an imposition. The
comparison of Moorthy’s position with Harishchandra or Krishna flows
spontaneously from the narrative. Indian phrase are directly translated into
English and they about in his novels rather unobtrusively in them. The
following are some of the example of images and expressions from Indian
life used in Kanthapura :

1. God has not given me a tonque for nothing.

2. She had a long tongue and that one day she would ask carpenter
kenchayya to saw it out.

3. Narasamma was growing thin like a bambo and shrivelled like a

banna bar.

4. The darkness grows thick as sugar in a cauldron.

5. The sky becomes blue as the marriage shawl.

6. Lean as an area – nut tree.

7. Range Gowda had a golden tongue.

8. Every enemy you create is like pulling out a lantana bush in your
backyard.

9. Our eternal Dharma will be squashed like a louse in a child’s hair.

Like Mulk Raj Anand, Rao uses swear words with the purpose cresting the
effect of local colour, like “the son of my woman”, “those sons of
concubine”, etc. New words have also been coined to impart Indian touch to
the English expression, as the “Gandhi-man”, “Harikatha-men”, “Red-man”,
“milkless”, “salt-givers”, “crow and sparrow story” (instead of cock and bull
story), leaf caps, licker of feet, sparrow voice, God – beaming, invitation rice
and dung basket.

with his background in the formal discipline of Western education,

and a predominantly Western literary orientation, Raja Rao has been
intensely aware of individual experience conditioned by historicity, as well
as of the need for roots in the native tradition. Hence his whole endeavour
has been to integrate into his consciousness of the past tradition, his present
experience in time. Consequently, for “his narrative form he chooses a
mingly of myth’ and realism. Behind the whole archaic existence of Indian
life may be found an operation of the principle of myth as structural essence,
denoting the metaphysical attitude of a traditional society towards time as a
cyclical occurance as distrnct from the western Judeo – christian concept of
time as a straight line” (Dey 25). The action narrated in legend or myth
always happens in what Mircea Eliade has called “the Holy Time of the
Beginning” (p xii). Holy Time belongs to cosmos and thus the repelition of
archetypes in the form of recurrent myths and legends represents the cosmic
rhythm. The legendary structure is “sacred” and infinitely repeatable. In
repeating the myth in actual life in the form of recital of the deeds of
mythical heroes, the archic man lives in sacred Time” (Eliade 23). Hence the
ordinary story-telling tradition offers Raja Rao a feasible narrative structure
to present an “Indian” Identity, though the action is depicted not in the Holy
Time but in the historical present which is always sharply distinguished from
the former. Rao’s Kanthapura narrates “the confrontation between the
static, archaic existence of a Hindu village and the historical reality of the
present in the form of the Gandhian socio-political agitation” (Day 25). In
social and political manifestation, the historical preoccupation is undeniable.
But the Indian ethos has always consistently attempted to perceive a historic
fact, the existential reality of an individual life, in the mould of a set legend
or myth so that the historical person may be annihilated in the archetype
which is eternal. There lies the rationale of Rao’s attempt to balance the two
antithetical forms, the mimetic and the mythic.
 There are references to Indian history in his novels. This has been
done either to remind the readers of the Indian tradition or to make them
conscious of his deep interest in contemporary India, Indian atmosphere and
habits are evoked by constant references to Indian social customs, such as
the shaven herd of a widow, the sari fringe pulled on the face, orange like
things put in the sari hem, clucking of lizard as propitious, adornment of
threshold and worship of cow, every morning in the south, grand mother
planning to get rid of girl’s burden by marrying her off or the men marrying
to have somebody to light the death fire, getting children for propitiating
manes. Kanthapura is a vivid image of an Indian village by such and many
more casual references to Indian life and habit. Not only these but also many
social abuses like untouchability, ignorance, superstition, child marriage etc.
Which existed in India in the Pre-Independence era have been highlighted by
Raja Rao in Kanthapura to focus on the projection of Indian elements.

The fact that most people belonging to the upper castes were against
Gandhi’s movement for removal of untouchability or the upliftment of the
people belonging to lower castes has been shown rather richly. Just like
majority of Indian villages, the society of Kanthapura is caste – ridden and
the people are not only illiterate but also superstitions. The village is divided
into the Brahmin quarter, the Potters’ quarter and weavers’ quarter. Thus,
there is a very clear division of Indian society on the basic of caste. The
narrator is a Brahmin woman and she tells the readers that being a Brahmin
she naturally has never visited the Pariah quarter. Inspite of opposition,
Moorthy continues to work for the upliftment of pariahs. He does not stop
with the pariahs even after the death of his mother. His mother was an
orthodox Brahmin woman and she could not bear it when she heard that the
Swami had excommunicated Moorthy and his family and coming
generations. Moorthy even wanted to teach and educate the coolies living in
Skeffington Coffee Estate. But even a man like him had hesitation in
entering Rachanna’s house when his wife asked him to come in. With a lot
of hesitation, he sipped the milk given to him by Rachanna’s wife. So,
within matter even Moorthy was no exception. He was like other Brahmins.
He could not help it because it was deeply embedded in his Indian psyche.
Before this, Moorthy had never entered the house of a pariah. The Swami
was against Gandhi’s movement for removal of untouchability. He wanted
Bhatta to do something to stop it so that it does not get out off hand. Inspite
of opposition, in the neighbouring town of Karwar, Advocate Rangamma
threw open the gates of the temple for the untouchables.

Ratna’s case is a glaring example of the evil of child marriage and it is

also perhaps an indirect plea for widow remarriage. There are hints in the
novel which clearly show that Moorthy loves Ratna. She was married at the
age of ten and she saw her husband only for a day. Even then she is expected
to dress up like a widow and follow all norms meant for widows. She does
not do so and is criticised by people because of this. Her family members
also want her to undergo the sufferings that the widows have to undergo. It
is because the workers are uneducated and ignorant that the employers are
able to exploit them. Moorthy makes efforts to remove illiteracy and
ignorance. Rangamma also does something similar. She reads the
newspapers and tells the villagers about the happenings in different parts of
the country.

Raja Rao does not stop with the art of narrating events purely as an
Indian artist in treatment of theme but he has indianised the English
language successfully to suit his needs. The words are English but the
orgenisation is Indian and the novelist had to organise it himself. Many
Indian expression have been literally translated into English. In many places,
forms of address are used which are from Indian languages. The language is
saturated with Indian idiom and Indian imagery. Sometimes there are literal
translations from Kannada, and sometimes there is breaking up of the
English syntax to convey emotional upheavals and agitations. Some words
like ahimsa, dhoti, mandap are Indian words which are used without any
translation. Some proverbs commonly used by peasants in Kanthapura. For
instance, 1) saw you like a rat on your mother’s lap, 2) there is neither man
nor mosquito in Kanthapura, 3) only a pariah looks at the teeth of dead
cows. Many Indian idioms literally translated into English and some of the
various devices employed by Raja Rao make generally, his novels typically
Indian. In the words of one modern critic Satish Kumar, “Kanthapura
portrays the whole drama of Gandhian revolution as enacted in a village in
all frenzy and fury. The typical Indian features of real life – its mixture of
politics and mythology, its seraphic freedom from the taint of science and
technology, its ruggedness and even its vulgarity – all faithfully reproduced
in terms of art. Even the language has been creatively moulded by the
novelist to distil the vaciness, and the poetic non-stop narration creates at
once a sense of dramatic immediacy and personal intimacy. Kanthapura
represents not an isolated village in Mysore but the whole country. The
characters are convincingly drawn from all castes of an ordinary Indian
village to reflect Indianness in all walks of life” (Kumar 148).

In Kanthapura, the novelist has also portrayed the villagers quite

realistically. Their names are typically Indian : Bentlegged Chandrayya,
Cardamon-field Ramachandra, Coffee Planter Ramayya, Corner-honse
Moorthy, Front-house Akkamma, Gold-bangle Somanna, Nine-beamed
honse Ranga Ganda, Nose-Scratching Nanjamma, Patwari Nanjundia,
Temple Rangappa and Waterfall Venkamma. They all live in close intimacy
with nature, and are a part of it. For them, nature is a living being, and even
hills, rivers, fields and animals have a distinct presence a personality of their
own. They have not lost their sense of wonder, of the enchantment of nature
and an intuitive wisdom to perceive natural phenomena in terms of man’s
place in the scheme of things. Suddenly a shooting star sweeps across the
sky between the house-roof and the byre-roof and Ramakrishnayya says,
‘some good soul has left the earth’. Here is a distinctive Indian sensibility, a
peasant Indian sensibility in the English language by Raja Rao.

Exploitation and acute poverty form the major part of Indian life. Here
Raja Rao depicts in Kanthapura how the coffee workers are exploited in
many ways; they are given wretched one-room huts to live in, which provide
them little protection against the rains heavy and frequent. No wages are
paid; they are deposited on their behalf with the ‘Hunter Sahib’. The workers
are also exploited sexually. The white Sahib would have this or that woman
who tickled his fancy. If a woman refuses to entertain him, the husband’s or
father’s wages are cut or she is given a whipping. There is no payment of
wages and settlement of accounts. Yet money is needed for births and
marriages, deaths and festivals and caste dinners. The labourers go either to
Bhatta for loans and pay interest or to the Sahib for advance by paying a
commission to the maistri. Life is brutal and humiliating bur no escape at
all.

“when one come to the Blue Mountain one never left it” (P158)
The villagers of Kanthapura are a miserable lot and have to suffer terrible
harship. They feel like pilgrims on a long and tough journey. But the
labourers of the Coffee Estate feel more miserable as they are closed inside
the plantations. The novelist gives a clear picture of the rural Indian life in
this novel. The most most important annual activity in the village is
‘blessing the plough’. The priest consults his books and determines the day,
and Beadle Channa announces it beating his drum: ‘Oh, Oh, this morning
the plough will be blessed’.

‘There, she has sent us her blessings of Kenchamma, give us a fine

harvest and no sickness, Kenchamma Kenchamma, Goddess, and
ever the bulls stood without waiving their tails’ (Kan 159)

The description of the village, the separate quarters for those belonging to
different castes and professions, the day to day life of the villagers with the
monotonous events of planting, harvesting and the occasional celebration of
festivals allaying the fever and terror of their life is quite realistic reflecting
Indianness at all levels. Raja Rao’s own emotional attitude lowards the
people, his love and admiration in Kanthapura. Truly speaking, a survey of
Raja Rao’s fiction reveals a continuous strain of experiment and a deep
knowledge of Indian tradition. His novels, their setting, atmosphere, the
legends, myths and beliefs that influence the life of the characters are
completely Indian and rooted in Indian tradition. In a nutshell, it may be said
that Kanthapura realistically presents the various facets of Indian village
life, the socio-economic divisions in a village society, the supervision, the
religious and caste prejudices, the blind faith of the people in gods and
goddesses, the poverty and jealousies of the Indian peasants, the dusty lands,
shady gardens, snake-infested forests, hills, rivers and changing seasons in
the villages that are all typically Indian in all respects.

The Serpent and the Rope, a major novel of Raja Rao, is out and out
“an Indian novel”, being Indian both in theme and treatment. Its Central
theme is the Advaita doctrine of non-dualism or “oneness of all”, a number
of Indian myths and legends are woven into the texture, and Raja Rao’s
technique of narration is typically Indian. In the words of K.K.Sharma, “It is
an artistic exposition of the highest school of Indian philosophy, the Advaita
of Sri Sankara. The Central theme of the novel is the Indian idea of the
Absolute, the Truth, the Ultimate Reality or substance of the Universe which
is distinguishable from the relative, the illusion or the shadow. This is
explained, in detail, through the well-known analogy of the serpent and the
rope, thoroughly treated by Sri Sankaracharya in his enunciation of the
Advaita philosophy” (Sharma 49). A Vedantist, Raja Rao stresses that man
must not mistake the relative for the Absolute, the illusion for the Reality,
the particular for the universal, the moment for the Eternity, the shadow for
the substance, the rope for the serpent. The novel accentuates the Indian
conviction that man can comprehend this discrimination between illusion
and reality, and that the illusory world vanishes through the true knowledge
especially the knowledge of the self which is attainable in its true form only
with the help of the Guru.

The Serpent and the Rope is essentially a spiritual autobiography.

The narrator, Ramaswamy tells his own story and includes as much as
possible with a view to telling the whole truth. It is not merely the events of
his life that Ramaswamy recounts but he tries to find the truth hidden behind
them. So, instead of a straight forward narration of events in their
chronological order the narrator – protagonist leads us through the
introspective diary entries, inmost thoughts and feelings, analyses of
intimate human relations, personal letters, quotations and tales from the
Vedas, Upanishads, French poetry and discussions of philosophical and
political systems. Also, there are other purely literary devices such as
symbolism and the use of a style that reflects ‘the rhythms and sensibilities
of the Indian psyche’ (Verghese 147) in its texture and syntax, imagery and
aphorism. This spiritual autobiography, which may also be regarded as an
expression of Raja Rao’s own spiritual quest in so far as there is close
resemblance between the hero and the novelist, with its emphasis on getting
at the Truth becomes the unfolding of a Vedanta-based vision of India and
deals with the magnitude, mystery, complexity, philosophy and metaphysics
of India from the point of view of one who seeks Brahman and whose
sensibility and values are uncompromisingly Indian.

The India as presented in the novel The Serpent and the Rope is more
a metaphysical concept, an ‘idea’ than a geographical entity. The Indian
tradition rich and vital, has been forcefully evoked in the very opening
paragraph of the novel. This tradition is part of the Indian consciousness;
Yajnyavalka, Sankara, madhva and their descendants who left hearth and
riverside fields and wandered to distant mountains and hermitages to see
God ‘face to face’ And some of them did see God face to face and built
temples. But when they died –for indeed they did ‘die’ – they too must have
been burnt by tank or grove or meeting of two rivers and they too must have
known they did not die. The novelist condems all those whom the failure of
the Brahmin made possible – the vulgar politician and the present-day
intellectual, a descendant of the decadent Brahmin. It is for this reason that
he rejects the North. He is of the view that the Indian tradition – the
Brahminic tradition – is better preserved in the South than in the North :
“truly speaking, Aryan wisdom seems to have found a more permanent place
in South India than in the Aryan North, because the latter was corrupted by
successive foreign invasions, while the former, though conquered, preserved
its cultural integrity far better.” In his first meeting with Savithri, he notes
how the northeners rush into extreme modernism with unholy haste. We in
the south were more sober, and very distant. We lived by tradition –
shameful though it might look. We did not mind quoting Sankaracharya in
Law courts or marrying our girls in the old way, even if they had gone
abroad. The elder brother still commands respects, and my sisters would
never speak to me as Savithri spoke to her father.” Little Mother too agrees
with Rama : ‘The whole of the North, but for the Ganges, was one
desolation of dirt. Even Savithri, the typical Northener, is of the same
persuasion : ‘The North is finished’, she writes to Rama, ‘....your south still
has so much beauty, wisdom and purity’. Rama in fact, is so much of a
southerner that even Bombay is ‘north’ to him, and in his opinion ‘this
barbaric city’, Bombay, had no right to exist.

The Serpent and the Rope is nothing but “an intellectual feast of
Indian philosophy and religion” (Sarangi 47). The wisdom of the Indian
scriptures – the Vedas, the Upanishadas and the Gita-has been summed up
and presented in the pages of the novel, The characters are taken from
different races and nations and are intellectual and more loaded with
philosophy than the simple villagers of Kanthapura. Ramaswami, the hero-
narrator, professes an objective approach:
 I am not telling a story here, I am writing the sad and uneven
chronicle of a life, my life, with the “objectivity”, the discipline of
the “historical sciences” for by taste and tradition I am only a
historian (231)

In practice, he follows a historical approach as he declares his subject to be

neither ‘real’ nor ‘unreal’. The narrator revolves round the theme of East-
West encounter against a setting that is partly Europe, partly Indian. The
South Indian hero-narrator is well-versed in Vedantic philosophy and is at
home in the mythologies of the East and the West.

Being a vat book with too many people, places, events and references,
The Serpent and the Rope is the story of a failed marriage between Rama, a
South Indian Brahmin boy and Madeleine, a French girl. Their first- born
dies infancy. Then Rama comes back home on his father’s death,
accompanies his widowed stepmother on pilgrimage through the country.
After he returns to France, the couple-though both are erudite, well-behaved,
seemingly sincere-slowly drift apart as they fail to bridge across the gulf of
their cultures. Finally, they decide to be separated. Meanwhile, Rama gets
involved with the eldest daughter of Raja Raghubir singh of Surajpur,
Savithri. Their intimacy matures into a deep platonic love. Rama reaches
self-realisation through Savithri’s” abode of Truth” (403). This novel is a
reassertion of the Hindu view of life. Rama’s father advised him that “India
should be made more real to the West” (17). The novel narrates the concept
of Indian identity rather richly and a spiritual history of the hero-narrator.
The concept of identity is “based on the traditional motion of Brahminism
courageously confronting the greater challenges of science, communism and
psycho-analysis from all over the world” (Shirwadkar 2). The novel begins
with Ramaswami’s assertion, “I was born a Brahmin – that is, devoted to
Truth and all that” (5). He is proud of his ‘gotra’, his genealogy traceable to
the distinguished scholar Yognya Walkya. He feels elated to explain his
genealogical heritage:

“Brahmin is he who knows Brahman” (5)

India as a metaphysical entity enthralls him and makes him emotional as

well as instinctive. For him, India “absorbs everything and makes it her
own” (137). Apart from the great spiritual tradition and socio-cultural
specificity, Indian history, geography and religion attract him :

India, my Lord, as a vast and lost land; a beloved land of many

mountains and cliffs, of Cedars and deodhars, of elephants and
tiger, of pigeons that sing and owls that book. We grow mangoes
in India, Lord Budha, and the woman in country worship trees
...(388)

India is “continuous with time and space, but is anywhere, everywhere”.

(331). It stands “vertical to space and time, and is present at all points”
(331). Ramaswami’s vision of India is ageless like the sages. India has “no
history” :

To integrate India into history – is like trying to marry Madeleine.

It may be sincere, but it is not history. History, if anything, is the
acceptance of human sincerity; Truth is in sincerity and is in
insincerity beyond both, and that again is India (332)

It is always beautiful and sacred to live and to be rooted as an Indian in

India, “The Guru of the World” (332). Indianness can not be cut apart from
Indian philosophical tradition. The Indian’s glowing faith in the ‘Karma’ and
‘Dharma’ has given him cultural unity and certainity. Ramaswami, the hero-
narrator, represents the philosophy of a nation. He has strong regards for the
Rig Vedic dictum – Ekam Sad Vipraah Bahuda Vadanti (Truth is one, the
wise call it by many names). Raja Rao’s Indianness is “a binding force, the
result of many other forces-sense of tradition, culture, heritage, history,
geography, life-altitude, habits, deep-rooted philosophy and social life.
Indianness is an internal and abstract value. It is that mental unity where
differences melt” (Sarangi 49).

The Indian tradition is a metaphysical one. It is vital and living, and

various ways have been used by the novelist to evoke this vitality, this
strength of the Indian tradition. It is a cultural tradition all pervasive and
timeless. It is a continuity and a flow, having layer within layer of meaning
and significance. The central theme of The Serpent and the Rope is that
India represents an idea, the idea of the Absolute which makes the relative
meaningful, but man must learn not to take the relative for the Absolute, the
moment for Eternity, the particular for the Universal, the shadow for the
substance, the rope for the serpent. Only that knowledge is knowledge which
makes for this discrimination, and space, time, the country and the world,
wife, family, friends, all help if one knows they are means to an end-’ the
end of all earthly endeavour is that knowledge. It is against this background
that one must watch the course of Ramasamy’s life in the novel, the way he
belongs to the world and transcends it, the transcending rendered possible in
terms of his own tradition, a tradition which recognises identities as well as
differences and respects them. Rama’s aspiration to self-knowledge is
explored and enacted as he goes through life. The homelessness and sense of
loneliness which he feels is both personal and cosmic. It is the yearning of
the human soul for the Absolute, a yearning which has always been stressed
by Indian thinkers and philosophers. It is this quest which makes one realise
“the divine within us”, and the essential Indianness of the novel lies in this
recognition and this quest.

Ramaswamy declares ‘Jnanam is India’, thereby meaning that India is

the metaphysics of Sankara’s Shuddadwaita pure non-dualism. To
Ramaswamy India exists wherever Jnanam is experienced and
communicated beyond history, as the Truth. It is India that separates
Ramaswamy and Madeleine. Madeleine believes in the actual reality of the
world and of the human being. Her world view is diamet rically opposed to
Ramaswamy’s. But what about her Buddhism? Ramaswamys’ reply to her,
when she says that she is a Buddhist, is significant. He says Hinduism drove
Buddhism out of India and what remains of Buddhism in India is what was
derived from Hinduism. Moreover, even when Madeleine lives like an
ardent Buddhist, she visits Sanctuaries in France. It is only the intellectual
side of Buddhism that emotional life. Ramaswamy who relates ‘the sad and
uneven chronicle of a life, my life, with no art or decoration, but with the
objectivity’, ‘the discipline of the historical sciences’ is eminently suited for
his role as the interpreter of Hinduism in comparison with other religions
and philosophies. He is well-versed in Sanskrit and proficient in English,
French, Italian and his own mother tongue, Kannada. A scholar and
historian, he can place everything in its historical perspective. Given to
introspection, he is temperamentally a seeker after Truth. Above all, he is a
Vedantin. According to him, ‘There can only be two attitudes to life. Either
you believe the world exists and so-you or you believe that you exist – and
so the world. There is no compromise possible.
 As a Vedantin, Ramaswamy’s approach to death and life is an
impersonal one. To him, death does not exist. Hinduism holds that after
death, the soul assumes a new body and that his rebirth is governed by
Karma. To Ramaswamy, ‘Life that prolongs it self beyond death, beyond
all deaths is oxthodox, is the real law’. He says: “Never at any time an to
Death,” says the Rigveda. The only real illusion, Mrityu, Mara is Death.
Man seeks for ever the death of death’. This is the secret of the Brahmin’s
attitude towards death. Liberation in the Hindu tradition is liberation from
repeated births and deaths. This does not, however, mean that Ramaswamy
about death. They too look upon death as a mystery but neverthless believe
in the continuity of life and find the phenomenal world to be bound by the
law of cause and effect and long for communion with Brahman which alone
is untouched by the causal law. It is this continuity of life that is symbolized
by the Ganges and Banaras.

Another aspect of the novel which makes it essentially Indian is “Raja

Rao’s affirmation of the principle of womanhood in the Indian women
characters in the novel The Serpent and the Rope. In his delineation of
Little Mother, Saroja and Savithri, Raja Rao uses the traditional
conception of Indian womanhood in varying degrees” (Verghese 15) Little
Mother with her devotion to the family, her husband, her husband’s first
three children and her own son follows a definite philosophy of Indian life
that is bound up with the duties of a woman to her family. Raja Rao,
therefore, compares her to the Ganges and says: ‘The Ganges also seemed to
carry a meaning, and I could not understand what she said. She seemed like
Little Mother, so grave and full of inward sound’. Saroja is Ramaswamy’s
sister. While describing her as a girl that has come of age, Raja Rao sees in
her the embodiment of Indian womanhood. Savithri, though sophisticated in
her ways unlike Saroja, retains her essentially Indian Brahminical character
and her cultural roots entangle with those of Ramaswamy in a way
Madeleine’s do not. Savithri in her womanhood is designed as a contrast to
Madeleine. She, like Saroja, scarifies her individual interests to the
impersonal principle of marriage. Ramaswamy says : ‘I felt she was so truly
indifferent, so completely resigned to her fate-like all Hindu women – that
for her, life was like a bullock –cart wheel; it was round and so it had to
move on night after night, and day after day’. Savithri too, though much
more modern than Saroja and Little Mother, has a strong sense of Indian
tradition, very much like them. A Cambridge undergraduate, with all her
dancing jazz and smoking, she wears Kumkum on her forehead, puts
flowers at Rama’s feet, touches them with her head, and sings Murare with a
true touch of devotion. No wonder Savithri becomes deeply attached to
Ramaswamy and a mystical relationship arises between them. Savithri even
mythicizes him as Krishna, the divine lover and herself as Radha, the
beloved of Krishna. And she ‘knows her Lord, her Krishna from Janam to
Janam’. The deep friendship between Ramaswamy and Savithri is the
relationship between purusa and Prakrati. So too, Madeleine’s failure from
Ramaswamy’s point of view consists in her dualism, the assertion that
purusa and Prakrati are separate.

The entire novel is “full of extraordinary analouges, correspondence

and echo-complex with inter weaving themes and symbols; mother and
queen, Radha and Savithri, Buddhism and Catharism. It is Raja Rao’s first
successful attempt at making Indian mysticism and vedantic philosophy the
subject of a regular novel” (Kumar 155). The Serpent and the Rope are the
symbols of illusion and reality in Indian tradition and it is Rao’s fond hope
to weave into his novel his ideas regarding illusion and reality. The structure
of the novel is infinitely complex, for it reflects Raja Rao’s unique
personality – his rich and versatile scholarship and the highly metaphysical
bent of his mind which is amazingly mercurial in its movement.
Commenting on the difference between the action of Kanthapura and
The Serpent and the Rope, Krishna Sastry remarks:

While Kanthapura is a novel of action, The Serpent and the Rope

is essentially one of recollection. Both are authentic treatments of
Indian life, but while the one tries to capture exciting drama on
the surface, the other is concerned with the deeper varities
comprehended in an epic sweep (Sastry 19)

The Serpent and the Rope contains the myths of Shiva, Parvathi and
Nandi, Radha, Krishna and Durvasa; the legends of Satyakama and
Ramadevi; the Chinese fable of Wang-chu and Ulysses, Tristan and Iseult.
At some places the legend of one civilization is blended into that of another
while at another place the mythical incident is related to the historical one.
The love of Iseult for Tristan is similar to that of Radha and Krishna or
Savithri and sometimes her Satyavan and Tristan, the relationship between
them is described through the recurrent illusion of Radha-Krishna legend.
Thus, Raja Rao has successfully used Indian mythology, history and folklore
to elucidate the central concepts of illusion and reality in the novel. The
myths and symbols also give the authentic touch to the story which is a
powerful expression of Indian sensibility and Indian philosophical thought.
The Serpent and the Rope is “a truly philosophical novel in that in it
philosophy is not in the story – philosophy is the story” (Naik 169). The
critic further adds : “Its philosophical profundity and symbolic richness, its
lyrical beauty and descriptive power, and its daring experimentation with
form and style make it a major achievement. Few Indian novels have
expressed the Indian sensibility with as much authenticity and power as
The Serpent and the Rope has” (Naik 170)

Indian culture is an extremely flexible one, and in this flexibility lies

the secret of its strength and its permanence. Raja Rao’s description of
Benares may be cited as an apt example. ‘In Benares death is illusory as the
mist in the morning’: Benares is a ‘surreal city’; you never know where
reality starts and where illusion ends. Benares was indeed nowhere but
inside oneself; ‘all brides be Benares born’; ‘I dipped in the Ganges and felt
so pure that I wondered anyone could die or go to war....’; ‘The Ganges
knew our secret, held our patrimony’; ‘The cows have such ancient and
maternal looks’; The Himalaya was like Lord Shiva himself, distant,
inscrutable, and yet very intimate’, Such sentiments are the stuff of which
India is made and by which peasant and Intellectual India lives. The strength
of the Indian tradition lies in its many contradictions. Contrary observations,
often ironical, abound in the novel. The novelist himself, a Brahmin, is
nevertheless sick of the sacred Brahmins that wail for alms: ‘I would rather
have thrown the rupees to the begging monkeys than to the Brahmins who
do three funerals a day, while their belchings and rounded bellies belie it all,
for just fifty silver rupees made everything hold. “The Benares which is
witness to Brahmin degradation is the one that also exhibits the lovely smile
of some concubine just floating down, her rounded bust and nimble limbs,
for a prayer and a client.” “The juice of youth in their limbs” in one sentence
and in the very next: “when you see so many limbs go purring and bursting
on the gnats of the Ganges, how can limbs have any meaning?” These
insights into the contradictions Benares fully bring out the secret of the
strength of the Indian tradition. It has survived, because Indians know how
to adjust, and adapt, to bend and not to break. Indeed, there is not one Indian
but two Indias presented side but side. Raja Rao has given us both the sides
of the picture and harmonised them into a single whole. The rich and the
poor, the pious and the wicked and the concubine, meet and mingle in the
city of Benares. says Narasimhaiah, “Both the Indias are there before us and
there is no attempt to suppress the one and project the other, but the
organization and evocation meant to recapture the real India is the work of a
great mater of his art – to accomdate the vulgar and sublime and make both
of them functional is a rare achievement. Death is Benares has not the kind
of meaning it has elsewhere; “Benares is eternal. There the dead do not die,
or the living live”. Besides, deaths, funerals, workship, wedding processions
and concubines out for a prayer and a client – all seen simultaneously on the
gnats of the Gange in Benares, make him wonder where reality begins and
illusion ends. It is this that gives edge to a saying of Sankara cited with
approval by Ramaswamy that the world is like a city seen in a mirror. “Life
is a pilgrimage, I know, but a pilgrimage to where and to what?” There is
persistent questioning by a gifted but distracted intellectual hero side by side
with the endorsement of age – old popular beliefs. It is this double vision
that makes a tradition vital but also keeps the novel going.

Raja Rao’s art of narration is also typically Indian. It is the method of

the Hindu puranas, a unique blend of history, literature, philosophy and
religion and encylopadedic presentation of the totality of human existence
from the Indian philosophical and cultural point of view. There are long
poetic descriptions of nature and holy places as in the puranas. There is
constant philosophical reflection, again in the tradition of the puranas. It has
the heterogeneity of Hindu scriptures and deals with a number of
miscellaneous themes and ideas. Many of the stylistic features of the novel –
its garrulity and verbosity – are reminiscent of puranas which seem to go on
and on in a seemingly never – ending stream. The novelist has consciously
tried to capture Sanskrit rhythms and its music and magic and has used them
for a story of modern Indian life. The flavour of Indianness has also been
imparted by the use of Indian idioms, proverbs, phraseology and imagery.
Indian words like Anrthi, kumkum, choli etc., have been used rather neatly
and frequent use of quotations from Sanskrit also enhances the effect of
Indianness. In brief, The Serpent and the Rope is an ‘Indian novel’ par
excellence. With its purely Indian sensibility, and its form solidly grounded
in the age – old Indian soil, it stands among other Indian novels like a
Himalaya among petty little hillocks. “It is an ambitious and meritorious
effort at achieving a total projection of India, in vivid, fictional terms”.

Comrade Kirillov is an attempt to prove that an Indian, whatever be

his political leanings, will always have his Indianness uppermost. It is a
plotless novel in which Raja Rao delineates the typical Indian who lives in
England. It is a long short story rather than a novel. It reads like an extended
character sketch. Kirillov, as Padamanabhan Iyer calls himself, is an Indian
who is an ardent and Zealous follower of communism. Raja Rao describes
kirillov as,

“an Indian, his pants too dissimilar for his limbs, his coat flapping
a little too fatherly on his small, rounded muscles of seating, his
lips tender, slow and segregate – out of which eked true words
 and numbers, which his narrow, dun eyes gave an added touch of
humanity to his ancient enigmatic face” (p7)

Kirillov, a South Indian Brahmin was first attracted by “theosophy and then
America and the pain of awkwardness and the simple difficulty of existence
drove him to communism. He read Marx, Engels in German and Fourier and
saint Simon in French and little by little he learnt Russian also. (Mehta 219)
Then came to London. He landed at Liverpool, with little baggage and more
books, and lived a Spartan life of vegatarianism and austerity. He was a keen
student of contemporary politics and found that in everything Marx was true.
For him, all the leaders, labour leaders of England and Mahatma Gamdhi of
India were reactionary. The narrator of the story, a young London reporter
for The Hindu meets kirillov. All that he, kirillov, his wife Irene and S., a
Sikh do was to discuss politics or to provoke kirillov into interpreting
political events in the light of his Marxist theories. But time went on and
kirillov has a son, kamal. Kirillov keen communism has its edges blunted
and when kirillov comes to India, he is an Indian first and communist
afterwards.

Raja Rao’s love for India, which may be read as the nostalgia of an
expatriate, is source of strength of all that is thought and felt by them and
which becomes the weaving thread of the novel’s thematic design and its
ideational pattern. Ramasamy evidently says in the lines that that follow :

“India is wonderful to me. It was like a juice that one is supposed

to drink to conquer a kingdom or to reach the deathless-juice of
rose jasmine or golden myrobalan, brought from the nether world
by a hero or dark mermaid. It gave me sweetness and the deline of
immortality” (SR 15).
A similar love of India is found in Comrade kirillov too who inspite of being
a staunch marxist “could almost speak of India as though he were talking of
a venerable old lady in a fairy tale who had nothing but goodness in her
heart, and who was made of morning dew and mountain honey ...........” (CK
58). It is his Indianness and prefound love for India that prevents comrade
kirillov from total surrender to the foreign ideology and breads the conflict
of his mind. He takes delight in reading kalidasa and Uttarrama – Charita
and talked with R at length about the Indian theory of the word. He is proud
of owning that “from the airplane to the latest theories of democracy,
passing through medicine and mathematics, all has one, and only one,
origin-Holy India” (CK 79). kirillov aften gives vent to ambivalent views
and speaks aganist himself, but this dichotomy of his character is rooted in
his deep love for India and Indian tradition. He loved India “with a noble,
delicate, unreasoned love” (CK 87) and such is also the love of Raja Rao for
his mother – land which finds expression through the sentiments of his
characters like Ramaswamy and kirillov/

Though Raja Rao has depicted both the best and the worst in Indian
life, his main concern has been to bring to focus on the highest truths that
Indian can still revitalize for her own renaissance and also impact to the west
for its spiritual reganeration. “Truth is the only substance India can offer and
that truth is metaphysical and not moral”, says Ramaswamy in The Serpent
and the Rope (p 350). Apart from the Social scenes and the cultural values
painted in The Cat and Shakespeare, the novelist’s Chief object is the
affirmation of the ultimate reality in accordance with the philosophy of
modified non-dualism of Ramanujacharya (vishishthadeaitvad) Symbolized
by the cat-kitten relationship. In the task of interpreting India in this novel,
Raja Rao has moved a step ahead of the pure Advaitic path of knowledge of
Sankara as enunciated in his masterpiece – The Serpent and the Rope, by
adumbrating the doctrine of total self – surrender (prapatti) which derives
directly from Tengalai – devotional school of thought of South India – one
of the two chief off – shoots of Ramanuja’s Vishithadwaitvad. This theory
of self –extinction and self –surrender is comically presented through the
portrayal of the actions and attitudes of characters like Govindan Nair,
Shantha and Usha or even Ramakrishna Pai who, though remaining
uninitiated thoroughout, begins to understand the truth by the close of the
novel. one is taught here through the medium of fiction, though in a partially
successful way, “a new tenet of Indian philosophy as a path of redemption”
(srivastava 25).

Although Raja Rao seems to believe that India can be known chiefly
through the knowledge of Indian metaphysics, he has done full justice to the
depiction of a slice of Indian life at the physical and moral planes. The social
scene in The Cat and Shakespeare shifts from rural to the urban India. A
realistic view of Indian social and political life in a city of kerala evokes the
veritable picture of life as it was lived in whole of India during the days of
the second world – war. Mr.Pannikar rightly remarks in his review of the
novel that “Raja Rao has delved deep into the charm and bane of kerala life,
“a life steeped in superstition, traditions, casteism and corruption and yet full
of colour, freshness, vitality and Vedenta” (Pannikar 124).

The natural aspects of Trivandrum are vividly evoked through

landscape features along with the recapitulation of history. Ramakrishna
Pai’s wife approvingly describes Trivandrum: “Oh, it is just like home,
coconut trees, huts and the sound of the sea” (CS 6). Hailing from Alwaye,
 “She never tired of saying how her old grand – father spoke of the
way the Dutch landed some two hundred years ago, and thank
heavens the kartikuras, house was two miles inland – but you
could hear the sea – and the Dutch took away all the able – bodied
men to fight (or to become Christians), and kartikura house,
being two miles inland, was left in peace” (CS 6).

Even Pai’s lineage smells of chili and cardamom and tamarind as his “wife’s
does of coconuts” (CS 8). What adds significantly to the realism of the novel
is the depiction of the material side of life symbolised by the ration-shop.
Food is the greatest need of life and that was most for it scarce during the
global war; hence the mad race for it and the prevalent corruption in the
ration office. The ration offices were centres of corruption and one is told
that “The kingdom of Denmark is just like a ration office” (CS 83).
Seventeen sacks of rice were lost from the goods wagon and the office files
are alleged to have been eaten by the rats. Some people do not have their
cards but they get ration all the same. In a ration office, one is shown
married even when there is no wife, and fake cards are issued to those who
bribe the authorities. To such accounts of the material side of life is added
the colourful scence of the pomp and show of the procession of the Maharaja
with elephents and horses which evokes the traditions of the princely state of
Travancore of which Trivandrum was a part till the Independence of India.
but these are only short glimpses as the philosophical theme and the comic
technique, which are admirably mixed together in this novel, allow no
elaborate description of either social life or allow no elaborate description of
either social life or conventions and ceremonies. Consequently, the painting
of the social scene remains sketchy though it is pardonable in a novelist who
is by no means a regional novelist interested simply in the social and
material aspects of a defined and distinquishable locality.

Raja Rao’s Chief purpose in The Cat and Shakespeare is to create

an interesting fantasy for the philosophical doctrine of the Cat – hold theory
as a way of deliverance from the mysterious and complex world of
Shakespeare. The simple tale of life in Trivandrum in the mid-twentieth
century is, in fact, the real tale of the whole of India of that time. At the
purely materialistic level, the possession of a three – storied house is as
much a status symbol in the northern India as in the South. Similarly, the
Puranic myth of the fortunate hunter who got the vision of Shiva by
accidently dropping bilva-leaves on the image of the Lord is a popular myth
throughout India. Besides, the feminine principle of a cosmic mother as a
creator of metaphysical truth universally believed in all over India. It is India
in its manifold aspects that one is shown in this short novel of Raja Rao as
also in his other novels, which aim at revitalizing the metaphysical truths
and spiritual values. In this respect, Raja Rao has become an authentic voice
of India, paiting the present and enlivening the past for revealing both the
outer and the inner India. In short, this novel The Cat and Shakespeare is
decribed as “a tale of India” (verghese 154). Raja Rao calls it a
‘metaphysical comedy’ and advises the reader ‘to weep at every page not for
what he sees, but for what she sees, he sees’. In over all terms, the novelist
uses his technical skill to present the Indian world as something real to all.
By making a comprehensive and genuine picture of the essential Indianness
through his literary creations.