96

CHAPTER - III

'PURE' VILLAGE NOVELS

In my study of the Indo-Aaglian rural fiction I came

across a number of rural novels which could not be fitted

into ary of the identifiable thematic categories, like

village-city encounter, East-West confrontation or industry-

village conflict, and which depicted village life more or

less for its own sake although some thematic concernor the

other is clearly discernible. In this chapter?1 am going to

deal with such novels, .which' I have, for want of a better

nomenclature, called 'pure* village novels. The 'pure*

village novel, as far as the present thesis is concerned, is

a novel in which, to use a sociologists phrase, the village

is depicted as a theatre wherein the quantum of rural life

upfolds itself and functions." A pure* village novel is

essentially an orchestration of various cognate aspects

related to the depiction of a normal pattern of village life,

such as the description of physical features (topography) of
f

the village as affecting the texture of rural life; the

description of socio-agrarian culture with its characteristic

4

set of customs, rituals, beliefs, superstitions etc. and its

characteristic expression in terms of speech and action; the

depiction of characters and their interactions which constitute

the essential texture of rural life; and, finally, the writer's

attitude which lends a unity to the totality of rural life

depicted in the novel.

 97

The novels I have chosen to consider for detailed

analysis in this chapter are Yenkataramani* a Murugan the Tiller

(1927) and Kandan the Patriot (1932), Shankar Ram*s The Love

of Dust (1938), Baja Raos Eanthapura (1938), Mnlk Raj Anands

The Tillage (1939) and The Boad (1961), Humayun Kabirs

Men and Rivers (1945), Khushwant Singh*s Train to Pakistan

(1956) and Bhabani Bhattacharya*s A Goddess Named Gold (1960).

Among these, only two novels, The Love of Bust and Men and Rivers,

are *pure* village novels in the real sense of the term s they

depict village life for its own sake. The others are included

here for two reasons : first, they cannot be fitted into other

categories, secondly, in spite of their,socio-political concerns,

til or focns on the village-life is so authentically sharp that

the concerns do not really distract our attention from the

wealth of village life depicted in them.

Though chronology is the main strategy in the organisa

tion of this chapter, certain deviations have been made to suit

the following manner of grouping. The nine novels are grouped

as follow.s : In section II, the two novels of Yenkataramani are

grouped together for their historical importance and their iden

tical theme, both having a Gandhian bias. In section III, the

two novels of Anand and a novel of Bhattacharya are grouped

together in continuation of the earlier group, since they too

have a Gandhian bias and a socio-historical significance. In

Section IY, The love of Bust and Men and Rivers are treated as

*pure* village novels. Section V contains Kanthapura. the best

rural novel depicting the complexity of the village life, and

Train to Pakistan, the second best of the rural novels.

2.
 98

II

Venkataramani * s Murugan the Tiller (1927), which, has

the unique honour of being the first rural novel in Indian

Writing in English after 1920, is the first saga of the

Indian village life. Although, in actuality, the novel is

a thesis on social awakening and rural economics, it is

included in the group of *pure* village novels because of

its major focus on the evocation of the Indian village life

2
in the pre-industrial years of the early thirties.

First, let us look at the storys Ramchandran, the son

of a landlord of the South Indian village of Alavanti, goes to

the city of Madras, leaving his land to 3 his servant-tiller,

Murugan, first for education and then for service and finally

returns to the village to settle there for good. Murugan

tills the land as a lessee, becomes prosperous and ultimately

becomes its owner. For some time Murugan also is circumstanced

to go to the city. Meanwhile^several incidents take place in

the life of Ramchandran and Murugan during their stay in the

city and all the major and subsidiary characters return to

the village. The *go to the village^or *back to the soil'

movement of Gandhi, thus, gets fictionized in this novel for

the first time in Indian Writing in English.

The rural sensibility is evoked by the very setting

of the novel, with Alavanti and Dusi villages feeding on the

arteries of the region, the rivers of Gauvery, Palar and Arni

lending to the region not only life but also the idyllic
 r!

99

pastoral beauty. The village of Alavanti, in which the

novel is mainly set, is situated on the evergreen and fertile

riverside of the Cauvery in Tamil Nadu. Though, as lamchandran

says, the village life is "rotten, ignorant and poor" (110),

it is as dear as a.paradise to the villagers.

On the riverside of the Oauvery are Nestled* the

beautiful coconut gardens beyond which lie the fields of the

villagers. In the village there are the Brahmin quarters,

the *Agraharams1, "cool and breezy in the coconut gardens."(57).

There are also the peasants1 houses or huts clustered together

in the gardens. And on the Oauvery riverside are seen the

coconut garden and the paddy fields of the landlord lamchandran,

wherein stands the cottage of Murugan, ancestral for over

seven generations.

Bike any other Indian village, Alavanti has "a ruined

village temple vivifying the dull hours of piety and worship

of aged people" (55). The temple goddess, the Ambal, is

reputed for her divine powers in spite of her ruined temporal

state and is "known to be a living deity." (80)

The village of Dusi, to which the action shifts for

sometime, is another typical Indian village "irrigated by an

almost perennial channel from the Dusi-Mamandur lake" (171)

and blessed with the proximity of the river Palar. The

natural lake between two hill-ranges nourishes a cluster of

thirty villages in the rural region. In this village too

there is a temple, but here the god is Vishnu. "Many divisions

and lines of quarrelling have left even their temple In

ruins." (175) The villages are poor in material possessions

though rich in natural resources.

The river-scenes at Alavanti-deserve a special

mention here, since they evoke the authentic rural sensibility.

The bathing ghats on the river, for instance, are the most

fertile sources for all the village scandals, affairs of

love and hate, quarrels and what not. The prattle and whisper

of the village women is

"free, gay and frivolous like a hillstream

cascading down the slopes. That chatter was
pleasant in shallow water which mirrored well
feminine form and motion. The fair sex of
Alavanti sported like nymphs in the flowing
water." (54-55)

Thus jit is here on these bathing-ghats that all the daily

news originates and spreads and even the Cauvery seems

"to linger round the fair gossipers a while

longer, kissing their feet and gurgle
satisfaction at the wondrous tales that are
told of Alavanti*s rich and poor." (198)

It is also here on the river-ghat that the scandal about the

newly married wife of Ramchandran is heard s "Janaki is not

of the same caste as Ramu, but is a Madhav lady, picked up

from an orphanage." (52) Against is here that one witnesses

the idling village women sneer at Janaki, the city-bred girl,

who does not come to the river for bathing but bathes at home.

Further, it is on this lathing booth that one gathers the news

that "Ramu has sold even his house to Periaswami" (121) and

also the news that he is going to sell the beautiful gardens

 m
t Murugan, a lucky fellow whose head will he turned" (121)

on account of this gain. The news of a new Ala-ranti being

built and a new lake being dug out far away among the hills

is first heard on these ghats. These scenes recall to one's

memory the 'ladies* parliament* in an earlier village novel,

Govind Samanta (1874), of Ial Behari Day, and the scene of the

gossiping 'village women folk on the public well* in a later

novel, The Road (1961), of Mulk Raj Anand.

Apart from the depiction of the 'local colour,* the novel

portrays the nuances of the agrarian life of the villagers,

in its variety and concretness. The 'Mother Earth* is the

dearest thing to the villagers. The *love of land* is so

deep-rooted in the minds of the peasants that they cannot

entertain even the idea of parting with it. Ramchandran tells

his wife, Janaki: "I will not sell an inch of land ancestral

for seven generations, even if I die like a pariah dog for want
of food." (108) His mother-in-law insists that he should

dispose of his lands and settle in a city but the real peasant

in him disapproves of it and turns down the suggestion. His

love of his land is irresistible and his determination to

retain the land is irrevocable*

"Why should we sweat in a foreign land for a

pittance that would not cover even the cost of
your gorgeous clothing while in our little
village nourished by the sacred river, all of us
can be free and happy with our one veli of land,
our coconut garden, and our faithful Murugan? --
Janaki, with you by my side, the village is to
me a little paradise." (109)
 .102

Murugan, the lessee to the land of Ramchandran, tills the

land very sincerely, but all the while he cherishes the

revolutionary idea that "the owner of the soil should be its

own tiller#" (151) To have one*s own land is the fondest

dream of a tiller# The cattle, like his land, are part and

parcel of a tiller*s life. Murugan muses on the idea of

possessing them!

"To complete our home, dear, we lack but a

cow of our own. It will help us in many
ways. We* 11 then have milk for the children,
and manure for the fields. It is the symbol
of growing prosperity." (87)

Similarly, a coconut'tree to the South Indian farmer is a

wish-yielding cow, Rote, for example, how Murugan tells his

landlord Ramchandran : "You know that a coconut tree is a

Kama Dhenu - It is the rarest of the gifts of God to men."

(77) The bucolic* wealth of the village is^thus, graphically

described in the novel.

A peasant in India has to fight a multi-pronged fight

for survival. He has to face Nature's vagaries like drought

and heavy rains, storms and changing courses of rivers and

pests and pestilences. Murugan, a real tiller at heart,

knows this S

"Here the mighty floods have left behind the

richest manure on earth, three inches deposit
of silt. It is Nature's own way of replenishing
the wasted soil. It is a blessing in disguise,
we will have double the produce at the next
harvesting." (77)

t
^'.v;vw llBRMR
HARR- B
 103

Poverty is a regular feature of an Indian village, nay,

a disease, a curse! Thoppai, a friend of Murugan, therefore,

ignites the latter to do something unusal, to make money "by

going to the city. His rhetoric on poverty is worth-noticings

Wait at masters backyard everyday till

fall of night for his pleasure to he
paid one evening with some old, rotten
paddy which could not find any market."(91)
Exploitation originates in poverty. Idealistic Ramu tells

his wife, Janaki :

"let us labour like common tillers of the

soil on our own land. Murugan will put us
in the way. Let us set an example to the
rich idlers here, card-playing, love-making,
heart-breaking, bed-breaking rogues and
cheats, who live richly on the sweat of
the poor." (65)

Ignorance, jealousy, bickerings'and unhealthy competi

tion are the other characteristics of the villagers. Ramu

points this out by quoting a counteryside analogy:

"Rural life is the refuge of the weak and

the ignorant even as the village pond is
the nursing place of low life, like toads
l
and snails." (111)

Murugan*s progress from the position of the servant-

tiller to that of the lessee and from the lessee to the

owner is supposed to be a reward of virtue and hard and

sincere work. As we know from the story, innocent Murugan

is carried away to the city by the enticing appeals of the

rash and reckless Thoppai, who wants the former to earn money
 104

not by the labour of his sweat but by employing unfair means.

Consequently, he gets involved in peasant riots, is sent

behind the bars, later he escapes from the jail and, finally,

takes to the uplift of the hillmen and the tribals.

In the structure of the novel, it is seen that all

the characters, who go to the city, finally return to the

village. Ramchandran, the son-in-law of the city-loving

Meenakshi, returns to his village, relinquishing his gainful

job. And when a new village comes up near the old Alavanti,

every villager, including Murugan, gets a piece of land and

a ploughshare of his own. See, for example, the following

passage exuberantly expressing the ecstasy of a tiller tilling

his own land. In the portrayal, of an ideal agrarian life

the passage has indeed no match!

MRamu gave everyone the promised gift of a

plough-share. "When Murugan turned the first
sod of the virgin . soil in his own three
acre holding, his own forever, he felt a
divine thrill of joy which only a farmer knows.
Murugan became the God-anointed tiller. Ehe
plough broke well the rich virgin soil into
a furrow which was reddish and cloven, like
the parted lips of true love." (334)

As The Times Literary Supplement rightly puts it, the novel

"in its pages speaks the voice of the countless tillers of

- N 7
the soil.,,;? Similar are the feelings of Ramu who is more

attached to his village than to the dazzling city : "I am

a lover of my village. The thing has been in my blood for

seven generations." (12) Even though he is drawn to the
city "by the city-loving friend Kedari, his 'nostalgia* for

his land and home never diminishes. See, for instance, his

sincere love for his lands and crops that he expresses on

his return from his' college:

"Muruga, I, have now to till like you, with

spade and plough teach me how to weave'
these coconut fronds into nature's own
beautiful carpet or screen." (58)

later on it is seen that Ramu and Murugan undertake the work

of irrigation projects, reconstruction of villages and farming

with new methods. !Ehe idyllic traditional village life

recedes to the background and a new romanticised and idealised

life springs in the rural region. Fired with -the zeal of

reforming the village life and agriculture by virtue of his

contact with the urban and modern ways of life, Ramu goes on

delivering lectures. Note, for instance, his harangue on

thremmatology!

"The pity is we cross our cows on the meanest

ploughshare bull. Cattlebreeding in this
country is in its infancy, and is not yet a
science. Look at Japan -" (59)

The new village coming up with an Irrigation project is

described in the novel in detail (315-330). The novelist

directly - states that "a new order of men and things has
come up." (321) Ramu wants his village to emerge as a "new

republic in which none shall be a lender or a borrower."(309)

With landreforms and a new order of life in Alavantij

"every one, Brahmin, palee, or padayachee,

male or female, boy or girl, gets three
 J 06

acres each, free and forever." (326)

The idealisation of the village life, thus, reaches

the point of unreality mainly on account of Ramu's rosy

uptopia. Ramu's wife, Janaki, though ciiy-born, very

quickly and smoothly identifies herself with village life.

The greedy landlord, Periaswamy, whose eyes have been so far ,

set on others' lands, gardens and houses and at whose door

"every starved death in the village is found" (216), turns

into a philanthropist. Kedari, the staunch advocate of

city life, ultimately finds a repose in the placid and

4 f

charming village-life. Ramu with the band of the ideal

villagers has, thus, come out a spokesman of the novelist.

The concept of traditional rural economics gets

absolutely changed at the end of the novel. It shows the

impact not only of the Gandhian principles of village

economics but also a stage higher than that. In this pionee

ring rural novel,we even* notice a bit of idealogy regarding

land-holding, co-operation and collectivism. Rote, for

instance, Murugan's speech:

"The evil is from the tenure under which

the acres are held. The whole system is
at fault. He who tills the soil has no
interest in it - If the tiller of the soil
is its owner as well, life would eveiy
where be rich, contended and happy." (114)

Similarly,we get discourses and exhortations on

village reform, modem education, social justice and so on.

Thus, the novel becomes a plea for the 'synthesis' of

 307

tradition and modernity, village and city, East and West

and a manifesto of rural reform. In the words of Prof.

Iyengar, "Murugan is a plea for a return to the village."^

But his statement that "Murugan is an exponent of Gandhian

5
economics" is only a half-truth, since, as shown in the .

foregoing paragraphs, Murugan is an exponent not only of

Gandhian economics hut also of Nehrus economics based on

I
industrialisation and Westernisation. The novel even smells

of the impact of the Russian socialist revolution of 1917

It is really admirable that a novel of the early thirties

so boldly pleads for the modernisation of rural life. And

this same trend is continued by Yerikataramani in his next

novel, Kandan the Patriot (1932).

This being the situation, the observations of

Meenakshi Mukherjee that "Kandan and Ramu are both firm

believers in traditional Indian values and they reject all

g
that is Western" are unacceptable and untenable.

Naturally, one gets tempted to accuse the novel with

didacticism and propaganda on account of its emphasis on

socio-economic reforms. If only aesthetic criteria are

applied to the novel, the accusations stand valid. But

looking to the times, the milieu in which the novel was '

written?one has to agree with the writer that to write such

a novel of ideas* was the need of the time. As The limes

of India has long back pointed out, "it is a novel with a

7
purpose - a beautiful picture of idealistic peace -

And hence to expect much of artistic accomplishment from the

 108

novelist is not correct.- And also the verdict pronounced

by The Madras Mail that

"in Murugan the Tiller the author has given

us a novel of Indian life in South India
today which possesses distinction, grace
and that rare quality, fidelity to everyday
life1,8

is not wrong.

Apart from and in spite of the *reformative concern* of

the novel, we see that a good deal of 'village sensibility*

is evoked in it through village customs, superstitions, speech

and agrarian imagery. Note, for instance, the decorous

village mannerisms -as exemplified in Ramu with reference to

Sita. He feels pity for her when she is ill-treated by her

wayward.husband but cannot talk to her in the open since the

village manners forbid it. Ramu, therefore, tells his wife

Janaki : "Custom forbids my doing it; but you may Janaki,"(193)

When Murugan, Ihoppai and the robber chief escape from the

jail and take shelter in the Eastern ghats, the robber chief

assures them in these courteous words: "May our tribal gods

bless you." (221) Further, when Ramu, as a government

officer, is on the errand of raiding the robbers, he is given

a decorous welcome by them. The robber chief obligingly says,

"He who comes to the hills, even to injure us, is our guest
jroyal" (241), and shows the characteristic Indian sense of

hospitality.

Finally, the 'agrarian imagery* used by the novelist

also lends authenticity to the evocation of village life.

 J09

Note, for instance, the apt and exquisite similies in the

following sentences : "Your words -- flow like a summer

spring in the sandy bed" (7); "Swami's words gladden me

like the early freshes of the Cauvery" (7)j "Flashy successes

like mine, like the rank growth of weed on any soil, are
meant only to ripen in haste" (31 ); "It was only a slender

stream which moved like a serpent" (49); "Ramu, meek and

gentle as the .lamb which would not bleat even if sheared"(68);

"Murugan counted the days of harvest with the glee and

eagerness of an expectant mother" (73); "I know my work,

even as yonder bull knows the irregular track to its field

or back again to its shed" (78); "Thoppai is coming over to

us, crossing the fields with ease and grace like a fawn over
the meadows" (87); "(Ehoppaiis coming like a fox, after

nightfall, in the trail of poor chicken" (88); "She was

beautiful like a Thumba flower in a meadow of common grass"

(207); "His burden of misery - is growing at compound

rates, like a sowcar's bill" (310); and "I am but an

instrument, like the spade in Murugan*s hands." (317)

And note the agrarian metaphors in the following

sentences: "And I am now ploughed - in Economics" (4)?

and "Arts education-- cultivates only the weeds of life."

(41)

Yenkataramani is fond of jewelled phrases and lyrical

words. She whole novel is laden with lyrical passages rich

in gorgeous embroidery, witty sallies and imagery, but as

Prof. Iyengar rightly points out, these ditches "tickle but

do not woundThough the lengthy lyrical descriptions

at times punctuate the story, the rural imagery and scenic

descriptions are really superb. However, the use of sophistica

ted language, both by the villagers like Murugan and the

educated, urbanised men like Ramchandran, strikes us as

rather unnatural.

Compared to the novels of the period prior to 1920,

this novel is definitely superior in both ethical and

aesthetical qualities. The novels of the earlier formative

years, such as Ra.lmoha^s Wife, Govind Samanta and The lake

of Palms, were domestic accounts of rural life, characterised

i

by didacticism, allegory and moralistic preaching. Some of

these novels, however, were excellent sketches of rural life.

But it is Murugan the Tiller and Eandan the Patriot, the

pioneering novels of the post-1920 period, that mark a new

era in the history of Indo-Anglian novel. Though thesis-like

in their make-up, these novels are extremely important as

they manifest for the first time the socio-economic awareness

of the Indians in fictional literature. Though the traditional

Indian village life is eulogised in idyllic terms in these

novels,they are, indeed, the indicators of the trail of the

coming industrial age.

Eandan the Patriot (1932) is, like Murugan the Tiller,

apparently a thesis novel. It is one of the early rural

novels grappling with the theme of rural awakening against

foreign rule, foreign liquor, landlordism and economic

 m
injustice. The novel succeeds primarily as an authentic
picture of an Indian village of the thirties.
The story takes place in rural Tamil Fadu of the
early thirties in and around the villages of Akkur and
Tranquebar. The scenes shift from the village of Akkur to
some of the neighbouring villages and small towns. The
*toddy-shop* at Akkur is a randezvous, where not only leaders
hut also drinkers, idlers and gossip-mongers assemble.
Several villagers and even outsiders from cities like Bombay
join the patriotic movement started by Kandan, the leader.
The novel tells the story of Randan who organizes the -
villagers against socio-political evils. The village
reconstruction work accomplished by the leaders and workers
with the co-operation of the villagers forms the main crux
of the plot.
The village of Akkur is a typical South Indian
village to the east of whichbarely three miles- off, the
sea lies. It has a small railway stations
The railway line gives it only a fresh
charm, a snake-like beauty and fascination
- The station seems to be a place for
reverie." (80)
The novelist describes the railway station in a poetic manner
in these words : "It stands in a shady grove on an arching
curve of the track, like a bird on the leafy branch of a
mango tree,"(80) Akkur is a countryside beauty spot, some
miles away from which flows the river Adyar. It has a
 112

neglected Siva temple with, lofty rains of the pagoda," (145)

The village population comprises mainly peasants and labourers.

The village has the clusters of cottages as the residential

quarters (paracheri)(176). The soil of Akkur is fertile.

Describing the exterior setting of the village, i&ie novelist

writes in a poetic style:

"All around, the vegetation is rank and

luxuriant though so near the sea. The
coconut trees peer into the sky. Giant
banyan and stately mango cover the earth
with a deep shade of solemn green, life
in Akkur seems a little idyll." (80)
The* toddy-shop which plays a vital role in the novel is another

feature of the village which deserves a special mention here.

The toddy-shop1, through which the evocation of rural life

is mainly accomplished in its several aspects, is very

graphically painted. This is, perhaps, the only novel in

which there occurs such a typical village scene. The toddy

booth is "a pleasure shop for the poor."(2) It stands like

"a hermitage in a coconut garden facing a wide sheet of wateir,

the village tank" (2), to which the workmen come for their

bath every evening after the day*s hard work in the fields.

The pleasant and energising toddy drink makes up for the

loss of warmth in their enervated and exhausted bodies. In

the words of the novelist, the shop is "hummed like a beehive"

(2) and the "silver of the sweated poor" (2) flows into it in

an unbroken stream. It is run by Chocklinga, the local magnate,

who has become the lessee. In the novel^the shop has a dual
 113

role to play, viz., as a centre of current political activities

and as a convenient means for the evocation of real rural life.

A miscellaneous group gathers at the shops people of various

castes and temperaments, the old and the young among the

tillers, workers, untouchables and casual visitors have a dip

at this modern shrinei The toddy-shop is a mirror in which is

reflected the 'economic plight* of the village.

The novelist has very accurately felt the pulse of the

village life. He pens the unpleasant side of the village life

with realism and precision. Note, for instance, the following

ironical passage:

"This struggling army of workers had not

a square inch of ground in all the wide
spaces on earth either for home or for
field, but toiled on with sweat on brow
in the narrow ruts of an ancient system now
ploughed to so deep mire by modern economic
forces. Though accepted neither on earth
nor in heaven, they showed the gaiety of
princes in the toddy shop." (5)

The toddy-shop recalls to one's memory the 'village inn' in

George Eliot's Silas Marner. where a gay and heterogeneous

crowd of .drinkers is invariably found. The villagers, like

Nandan, Mookkan, Katteri, Irullan, Karuppan and scores of

/

others, are all slaves of the economic forces. The unhappy

economic conditions of the villagers find an eloquent

manifestation in this shop-scene. The varied and lively talk

of the villagers, "equally busy with the tongue and the pot"(8)

in the evening at the shop, is revealing. Note, for example,

the angry speech of Katteris

 114
I

"A pot of toddy is the only friend the

Pariah has the world over. Have we milk
or honey, fruits or flowers, or any of the
dainties that go to feed our ruling folk?
Have we an inch of ground for home or
field? Even our wedded wives are hut our
master*s farm servants; our darling child
is the shepherd-hoy of the 'pannai'^ roaming
over mud and mire, stones and thorns, tending v
the cows whose milk goes only to feed
another.* (7)
This throws a flood of light on the economic conditions of
the then Indian village sunk in poverty, illiteracy and
superstition.
The rise of a sort of *social awareness* in the tilling
and toiling class is revealed in their speeches and actions*
What the villagers need is guidance from a wise man. And it
is perhaps for this mission that the patriotic Kandan rises
like a God-father. Whenever the villagers become introspective,
they confess their mistakes : **we toil all day long and harely
earn the surplus money for this trifling and only joy of our
livesa pot a cLay." (7) Though-the 'toddy-shop episode* is,
thus, drawn with a certain degree of realism, it is with this
episode that the novel takes a propagandist turn. later on
we find that the same toddy-shop is burnt down by the usual
customers after they turn into civilised patriots and reformers.
This same place, now turned into ashes, becomes a starting
point of 'village reconstruction* and freedom movement. The
struggle for freedom from social evils, exploiters and foreign
 115

rulers, becomes the order of the day in the Akkur region.

The shop which has so far been a great exploiting force,

sucking the money and blood of the villagers, becomes a

1place of deliverance* to the villagers groping in the

dark. When there is proper awakening in the village, some

of the villagers gather around Kandan who inspires them with

these words:

"Now is the time for you, - to change

your habits and make men of yourselves.
Refuse to drink, let u$ give up the toddy-
shop and in its place erect a night school
and I shall be proud to become your
*pial-teacher.* let Akkur set the example
to Tamil Rad. Refuse to work but for manly
wages-- the curse of drinks is making
you common clay with them, and cools your
fire for the righteous things of life.,(34)

Thus, the toddy-shop, a place of vices*, is turned-into an

abode of 'virtues.* If we focus our attention on the

propagandist part of the novel, Kandan is, undoubtedly, the

central character who dominates it. He is the Gandhi-man*

of his village ;, and his aim is not to dazzle the eyes of the

world but to sincerely reform it. To the villagers he is the

"saviour, their prop, in the hour of need, the hero and saint
of the place" (3), who has come from across the blue seas

after receiving higher education to re-construct and reform

his village. Several villagers decide to join Kandan to do

some 'squirrel's best* for the poor rustic lives. Kandan

believes in the non-violent means of achieving the cherished

goal. When the starving villagers set the granaries on fire,

 116

he is hurt in his peace-loving heart. A Gandhi-ite "by creed

he
as he is,/.exclaims s "Arson, arson, alas! the granaries and
hayricks on fire; my fair name and work lost for ever!" (136)

Kandan provides a parallel to Ram in Venkataramani* s

earlier novel, Murugan the filler. It is veiy clear that

Kandan is an 'idealised hero.' The antagonistic forces in a

village, which normally raise their heads against a reformer,

are conspicuous in this novel only "by their absence. The

villagers are shown as charged with the fervour of patriotism

and the flush of reformative zeal; and very easily and

smoothly they join hands with Kandan.

Although Kandan is the 'pivotal* character in the

novel, the novelist does not allow him to dominate the

action to the exclusion of others. There are, then, Sundaran,

the Akkur railway station-master, and his wife Saraswati,

who team up with Kandan in his village uplift work. lake

the Bombay lady, Rajeswari Bai, this lady also represents

'woman participation* in rural work which is "the noblest

work of our age" and which is designed for giving solace to

"these poor rustic lives and improving their lot." (134) Then

comes Ponnan, the redressor of the poors sorrows. Himself

a landless labourer from Tanjore, he wants the haves in the

cc
villages to help abolish the poverty of the villgers. He
A
expresses his agony in these words: "I am at heart a village
bird caught in an urban cage." (115) So he comes out of the

urban cage and devotes himself to the service of the villagers,

the hungry millions. This character represents the conflict

 in
of the rural and urban ways of life and suggests that the
rural ways of life are more solacing to his agonized mind.
Not less important is Nallan, wthe uncrowned king of the
Akkur labour world'1 (34), who takes a lead in removing the
toddy-shop, the centre of vices, in the village. Another very
t

important villager is landlord Chocklinga Mudaliyar, the

lessee of the Akkur toddy-shop, who owns about two thousand
acres of land and pays the heaviest revenue in the village and
who is the leading 'mirasdar' of the taluka and is as powerful
as "a crocodile in water." (35) He effectively symbolizes
t

the feudalism of the pre-independence days in India. In the

beginning,he is antagonistic to Eandan and favourable to the
foreign government. He represents the opportunists in the
pre-independence days, who were a terror to the poor native
villagers. But in-the great wave of Eandan's- movement he too
undergoes a wonderful change. Eandan*s desire to change him
from an "oppressor to a protector" (135) of the villagers, is
ultimately fulfilled. Ihe very people who looted the granary
of his famous Garden House, become his co-workers. Ihe filthy
toddy-shop is burnt down and in its place is raised a
hermitage dedicated to rural service. Here, one has to agree
with C.P. Yerghese that the "characters are so conceived
i

as to give expression to the ideals of the movement are

10
either too good or too bad." She Gandhian principle of
heart-persuasion is exemplified in these, characters. As
Prof. Iyengar rightly points outg
 118

personal and domestic problems mix and fuse

with the large political problem and in the
result a fascinating pattern of motive and
character and action emerges in the novel.n 11
Por instance, an old, ignorant, peace-loving Indian woman with
her narrow world of experience, is portrayed in Chocklinga*s
aged mother. When she learns the bad news of the collision
on the railway station,she exclaims:
"That is why I asked my boy never to work
for these railway lines or metalled roads to
our peaceful, pretty village homes. Our
bulls are lying idle, like wild elephants,
without work, while the motor cars and the
trains waste our hard-earned wealth." (40)
The old woman symbolises traditionalism, simplicity,
straightforwardness and guilelessness of the Indian villagers
of the old days. The village belle, Kamakshi, is cherished
by Chocklinga Mudaliyar and several other village youths.
Thus, one has to admit that though the characters have been
greatly idealised in their roles with reference to the theme
of village-uplift, they have come out completely realistic
as peasants and labourers under the grip of superstitions
and vices.
In evoking the rural life the author has resorted to
the conventional stock devices like the use of the rustic
idiom, regional expressions, agrarian imagery etc., in a
moderate proportion. Unlike Anand and Bhattacharya,
Tenkataramani does not make a conscious experiment with these
 119

devices for the evocation of agrarian life. However, he

uses certain Tamil words like Padayachi (agriculturist)(5)
Panni (farm, estate)(9) Talayari (village headman)(11),
Karnam (petty village officer)(35), Dorai (boss, saheh)(72)
and so on.
A few sparks of 1rural imagery* are also seen in the
novel e.g., At the proper age she will shoot up like a
plantain cluster after the first freshes in the river** (143);
"He ran like a wounded hare, round and round-----the grain
heaps and hayricks" (152); "Kandan is full of fire like
the Vanni tree" (158); *' and a beautifully trained mustache
that grew luxuriantly like nanal .grass on the fertile banks
of the Cauvery." (258) We find farfetched agrarian metaphors*
in the following sentences;
"Yes, Kanda, the greatest danger is that the vineyard
of liberty reclaimed, tilled, and pruned by the labour of the
patriot and manured with the blood of the unknown volunteer
-*' (244-245) and * that this stagnant pool of Indian
life is truly a lotus-pond and not cm alii ditch." (252)
It is obvious from the story that the novelist is
intent on making the novel a vehicle for his ideas of social
uplift. But the artist in Venkataramani makes repeated
attempts to assert himself. Though the novel is deeply
flawed by a strong propagandist bent which expresses itself
I

unashamedly in direct statement and didacticism, it has

managed to survive as a work of art because of the fairly
authentic depiction of rural life. TehkataranBaa. does hot
 m
have, of .course, the stark realistic-vision of a Zola. But

even with all,his limitations, he is not a very insignificant

writer of rural life.

In Murugan the filler and Kandan the Patriot.

Venkataramani presents a very interesting case of the

characteristic conflict of an Indian writer, the conflict

between the artist and the propagandist. The same is true

in the case of the novels of Anand, Bhattacharya and, to some

extent, even Raja Rao. In Venkataramani, for example, although

the propagandist in him is responsible for the structure of

the story, it is the artist in him who lends authenticity

to the texture of rural life. The propagandist in these

novelists is obviously influenced by Gandhian and sometimes

socialistic idealogies and they are so outdated that the

novels, if read from the thesis, point of view, are insuffer

ably amateurish and naive. Venkataramani's novels are

included here from the point of view of the authentic rural

\

life depicted in them, and what is of interest is that the

artist in him has not been eclipsed by the thinker. In order

to highlight the artist in Venkataramani, his navels have been

included in the 'pure' rural novels so that they can be

i

liberated from the childish propagandist stuff that would

otherwise appear to dominate them;'.

Ill

The Village (1939), the first volume of the Ml Singh

Trilogy
12 of Anand, presents a superb blending of pastoralism
 m
and social reforfflism. The name of the novel itself speaks

of its emphasis on the portrayal of the idyllic village life

than anything else* The novel deals -with the boyhood of

lain, a peasant hoy in the Punjab village of ETandpur, during

the early decades of the twentieth century* The tillage is

depicted as seen through the eyes of the peasant boy, Lalu,

who is an insider turned outsider, as he gradually turns into

a rebel against all the village mores, which he finally

escapes by running away from home* Although the novel presents

a sermon on social reform it is ah'5 authentic picture of

village life.

The novel open's with a graphic description of Randpur,

which is situated a few miles away from the district town of

Manabad, irrigated by the Ravi and the Chenab and a network

of canals. The road from the village to the town, which is,

indeed, the artery of the region, is described in these

words s

"The road beyond the canal broadened and

became even with the ploughed fields which
spread for miles and miles to the rim of
the brown hills that talked vaguely to the
sky on the east and north-east of Handpur.M(l2)

As is usual with an Indian village, Nandpur has paths

and byways, "full of puddles, across the fields scattered with,

drying and decaying dung, broken pitchers, ashes, rags and

bits of iron.tt (12) There is a bazaar in the village. There

is, then, the bearded banyan tree" (13), which is the most

common feature of an Indian village and which is a multipurpose

 322

place. In India, there is no village which has no banyan

tree. In Nandpur'^there is a Sikh temple and also a mosque.

The pastoral features' of the Punjab village are graphically

shot by the-novelist's camera. The pastures outside the

village are spotted with grazing cattle and horses. There

is a public well at the foot of a hill on the outskirts of

the village, where boys enjoy swimming.

The 'social structure* of Nandpur is typically Indian.

The village has a mixed population of Hindus, Muslims,

Christians and others. There is a weavers* lane in the village,

which is mainly Muslim-populated. The economically backward

population of the Muslim-weavers is described in the following

words : "- sheep, hens and cocks revelled among their

droppings all over the place, reeking with several varieties

of smell." (51) The Hindus* sense of 'racial superiority*

is seen in remarks like "the Mohammedans are dirty" (51),

though their own habitats are not less dirty than those of the

Muslims. They have also flimsy mud-huts and cottages of twigs.

Only the landlord and the money-lender have brick-houses with

several beams (indicating their status in the society). The

Sikhs regard themselves as "brave lads sprung from the loins

of tigresses." (165) There is seen the smoke of cow-dung

cakes from the hearth-fires of peasant homes, choking the

alleys. The village has various professionals: it has barbers

who are the traditional match-makers and also tricky goldsmiths

"who would put dust into the eyes of the most sharpened hawk."
(114) Thus stands the typical Punjabi village, "with the
broken walls of its decrepit houses pasted with cowdung
cakes" (252) and outside which is seen^a long row of fields

being furrowed by tall, unkempt, sweating peasants---

digging the plough deep into the moist layers of the earth."

(252) Peasantry dominates the village in the rural Punjab

as elsewhere- in India. Epidemics and other diseases are

recurrent occurences in the village. Anand, the realist,

depicts primarily the village life of India, not merely

through idealistic idyllg.' but he describes it as "full of

- -J3

dirt and dust and disease, debauchery and debts", ^ as

Prof. Meh^ta rightly puts it. The remark is literally true ,

in the case of The Village. Or as Haydn Moore Williams points

out in his Studies in Modern Indian Piction in 'English, in

The Tillage there is a strong "earthy cloacal element" and the

narrative of the novel is studded with constant references to
Jk M

"urination and defecation." 4 This part of the novel, really

exemplifies Anands predilection for stark realism.

The Indian village scl6ty is almost exclusively

agrarian. The villagers love of land is a unique character

istic of the village life. And that is exemplified in lalus

father, Nihal Singh, to whom land means everything and who

is very much proud of it. The novelist describes in a poetic

style his ecstatic joy of possesing the land! "He sniffed

the air as if it were nectar and gazed upon the landscape as

if it were heaven full of the ineffable bliss of life." (12)

To a peasant, the pastures, crops and cattle are as dear as

his land. Peasant Bihal is unhappy to see "his good corn,

 124

the corn he had sowed and reaped with love, sold for petty
cash." (116) The peasant sensibility is very realistically
manifested in the novel. A real peasant in flesh and spirit,
Father filial expressess the agrarian philosophy of life in
these words : We peasants do not count in terms of money ----
For v/e folk have to count in terns of buffaloes, bullocks,
cows, land and harvests.(116) The landlords murder by
Lalus brother speaks volumes of the peasants* land psychology.
The novel centres on lalu; a village peasant boy.
like other:: villagers, his dear father also has to go
"through debt and mortgages and the seizure of land by the
landlord." (54) Similar is the fate of the families of his
friends like Guhi and G-hulam. As long as lalu is a school-boy,
he is quite happy in his world of innocence. But as he grows
in age and understanding, he gets disgusted with his village,
ridden with orthodoxy, illiteracy, superstitions, diseases,
jealousies, quarrels and exploitation. He is disheartened
at the unhealthy village life. Prof. Iyengar rightly puts it
in these words:
"The typical ingredients' of village, life
landlord and savkar, sarkar and mumbo-jumbo,
convention and superstition, mass conformity
and mass hysteria, the cupidity and cruelty
of some and the apathy and helplessness of
the many inevitably conspire to daunt
and all but crush the free and ardent spirit
of Lai Singh.
His mind, therefore, rebels against all these village mores
and individuals.
 1 Tradition* has a powerful hold on the minds of the

elders in the village, lain's act of getting his hair cut

in the town raises a commotion in the village. And his

act of eating in a Muslim shop "becomes a sacrilege, according

to the Sikhs and Hindus. Lalu's rebellion against the

traditional village mores and blind folkways shows his urge

for modernity. He also finds in the villager a ;; victim

of all-round exploitation.by numerous agencies. In this

context;MacIver and Page come to one's mind. They writes

"The individual is faced with the problem

of charting his way through the claims of
family tradition, of business practices,
of political loyalties, of sex standards,
of religious presentations - and ultimately
16
of his own conscience."

The lalu Trilogy exemplifies this confrontation in its

complexity and concreteness.

In The Village the novelist's criticism of tradition,

exploitation and other evils has been embodied effectively

in character and situation. The grasping, miserly and

greedy landlord, Sardar Harbans Singh, who can "forfeit the

land of any peasant who has not paid up his rent and buy
off the plots which people mortgage to him," (114) is

realistically drawn. The lascivious and sanctimonious priest,

Mahant landgir, the villagers' synonym for whom is "that dog"

(453), who "ate sumptuous food, dressed in yellow silks,

smoked charas and drank hemp -- whored and fornicated," (45)

is equally faithfully portrayed. The cunning, rapacious

 J 26

money-lender, Chaman Lai, the government official, patwari,

the ' sarkar, the quafckdoctor and the Maulvi-all are
authentically drawn as exploiters f the poor villagers.
Lalu loves his village from the bottom of his heart
but the explosions of prejudice, hatred, hostility and
exploitation make him want to leave it; and consequently,
he leaves it. Once Lalu is caught playing with Maya, the
landlord's daughter. The landlord frames him for a crime
he has never committed; and Lalu has to escape and join the
army, the only resort for a helpless villager.
The novelist, however, has not forgotten to reveal
the 'better side* of the traditional village life, in some
characters and situations. With all his fads of tradition
alism, Lalu's father, Mhal Singh, is painted-as a real
peasant characterised by tenacity, tolerance, and goodness.
His sick-bed farewell to his son, who is going back to the
army after his leave, is characteristic. His words are full
of wisdom and foresight : "Parents breed children not for
themselves but to fight public cause. Let him go out to
life and - perform deeds worthy of his forefathers." (221)
k

Again, the 'sense of solidarity,' which a small community

naturally possesses, is seen in the scene of Lalu*s ieaving
.-V

his home for rejoining the army. The whole village follows
him in a procession to see him off. One remembers a similar
scene in Sudhin Ghose's tetralogy where Balaram, who leaves
for the city for education, is seen off by the villagers.
Anand brings home to the readers this happy feature of rustic
 J27

life in a touching manner. The village is, thus, a

memorable picture of Indian rural life with its dark and

bright aspects drawn with understanding and objectivity.

In the words of Dr. G.S. Balaram Gupta,"The Village is

17
symbolic at once of the tragedy as well as the hope of India.

Certain * customs' mentioned in the novel help to

understand the villagers' social mannerism, and they lend

authenticity to the evocation of village life. A typically

Indian custom is seen in Gujri's addressing her husband as

"the father of Sham Singh (117)* meaning 'her son's father.*

One is reminded, of Kamala Markandaya's heroine, Rukmini ,

addressing her husband with the honorific pronoun 'They.*

Gujri follows the conjugal custom of eating "only after their

menfolk, often out of the remainders of the food left in the

men's plates. (19) At the fair the Hindu shop-keeper' does ,

not like lalu's eating at a Muslim hotel, since "to a Hindu,

meat cooked in a Muslim shop was taboo." (80) Early marriages

are regarded safe by the elders lest their sons "turn loafers
and scoundrels and spoil the prestige of the family." (113)

A few 'superstitions' occuring in the novel merit our

attention here. There is a belief in the superstitious

villagers that "it was lucky to meet a black dog before going
or coming from anywhere." (13) The gullible villagers

believe that the first Mahant disappeared in the air and

"his spirit lived in the golden temple." (37) Kesari goes

daily to the monastery to give offerings to the Mahant, "to

be blessed with child." (153)

 J 28

The use of *rustic speech* is a favourite device with

Anand. His fashion of distorting English words is wellknown*
e.g., palatan (army), topeed red faces (Englishmen), magister,
motu cars and poolicia (police). But such distortions make a
good show only when used in taoderation. The novelist*s
*Punjahized English* (also mixed with Hindi) is exemplified
in several expressions, e.g., "I shall teach them the lesson
of their life. I shall soon twist the necks of our enemies."
(5) Stock abuses like "Oh, you, illegally begotten" (52) are
abundant in the novel. There is always an attempt to present
in English the racy speech of the peasants, rich in its
repertoire of abuse. . - But there is no breach of propriety
since these distorted expressions are mainly used in the
speech of the villagers.
Agrarian imagery* is another device used by Anand
for the evocation of rural sensibility, e.g., "He ran for it
like a lean hound after a rabbit" (13); "Churan^i lay down
panting for breath like* a tir.ed buffalo" (58) and "These
women, they can only bleat and weep like goats." (222)
The Village is, thus, a realistic rural novel. The
protagonist, Lalu, is a representative of the forces of
modernity and progress; the values he upholds' are in sharp
opposition to the traditional values of an Indian village.
Militant as he is, lalu cannot submit to the social mechanism.
So;he is vastly different from several other victim-heroes*
of Anand, such as Bhikhu in The Road. Bakha' in Untouchable.
 129

Munoo in Coolie and Gangu in Two Leaves and a Bud, lain

offers excellent parallel to Gauri, the rebellious heroine

of ghe Old Woman and the Cow.and Ananta, the dashing hero
*
of ghe Big Heart, lain*sis a case of an individual versus

society, ghe rural atmosphere as evoked in the novel is true

to .life. And as Alastair Niven eulogistically declares, ghe

Tillage is perhaps the most rounded portrait of village and

18
rural life that the Indian novel in English offers us."
19
Another foreign critic, Dr. Marlene Eisher, ^ is all praise

(rather over-praise) for ghe Tillage for its rich setting.

Since the atmosphere is not evoked through medattLcal devices

and descriptions but through the actions and reactions of the'

rustics, ghe Tillage has an artistic ring about it. However,

as usual,Anand*s predilection for social awakening' is

obviously seen in the novel. A committed writer as he is, he

is not afraid of being criticised as a 'tendentious writer*

who gives less importance to the artistic aspect of his work.

However, one will have to admit that in this novel (as also
in his ghe Road) the physical aspect of rural life is very

artistically depicted. Only when dealing with the social

aspect, Anand, as usual, tends to be satirical and sentimental,

ghat is why in all his novels we find the upperdogs satirised

and the underdogs sentimentalised. In this novel, he is clearly

partial to the protagonist, lalu, whose bitter reactions to

the traditional mores he convincingly presents. In spite of

its purposiveness, the novel cannot be stigmatised as a work

of art marred'by propaganda, go sum up the discussion with

 330

the apt remarks of Dr. M.K. Naik j

"The Village is, thus, a memorable picture

of pre-independence Indian rustic life,
drawn with understanding and objectivity.
The weaknesses of traditionalism are exposed
through the observer who is alive to modernity
---- yet the saving graces of the old world
values are not forgotten." 20
Mulk Raj Anand1s The Road (1961) is a *pure* village
novel presenting the tale of the- untouchable Bhikhu, who
is another incarnation of Bakha of Untouchable. Bhikhu*s
world, however, is wider than Bakha*s : the fcaaer has a
panoramic world in the countryside, the latter has a miniature
world in the colony of a town. The evocation of the village
life, however, is to be seen in the context of the confronta
tion between the caste Hindus and the untouchablewhich
forms the crux of the story.
A road is to be built from the Punjab village of
Govardhan to the town of Gurgaon and further to Delhi. Bhikhu
and his fellow outcastes hew stones from a quarry to build
the road, which will carry milk and other village products
to the town. The upperclass people refuse to touch* the
stones 'touched* by the untouchables. Thus7a clash of castes
ensues. The road is completed, but the buildersthe
untouchables have to leave the village. The human action is,
thus, enacted by the two caste-groups pitted against each
other. It is also given a dramatic edge in terms of a
love-affair between a caste girl and the untouchableBhikhu.
 331

The village of Govardhan has the usual physical

features of an Indian village. The antiquity of the village

is suggested by saying that it is supposed to be built by

the God of Gods. Accordingly, there is a popular belief

among the villagers of Govardhan that the village "was built

i

by God of Gods." (108) The village is situated in the

vicinity ofthe hills, which divide the Punjab from Rajastan

and echo "the strokes of the hammers of the stone-breakers."

(20) It has a *public square* and a temple and a shrine of

Kali, too. There is also the usual *pipal-platform* without

which no Indian village is complete. It is a multipurpose

spot, a resting and meeting place for the villagers. Even

a goat is seen tethered to a halter under the pipal tree.

The village is full of neem trees, under the cool shade of

*

which the villagers are tempted to sleep during the hot sun.

The village has "a public well with whispering women folk,"
(25) the notorious spot, wherefrom originate and spread all

the rustic scandals and which is also a place for men to

take their open-air bath.' There are also small puddles

outside the village from which the animals drink water.

'

Around the village are farms and fields where the tillers

toil day and night.

The village has a 'Council of Pive (the Panchayat) of

which Thakur Singh is the Head, privileged to possess a special

strip of land in the cremation ground. There is, of course,

 332

a separate 'outcaste colony* outside the village. The

outcastes live in one-room huts, the "tumble-down booths
of homesteads." (42) They live in the huts built on the plot
obligingly given by landlord Thakur Singh. Naturally, they
are always under the pressure of his obligation and at his
mercy. "The reek of their thatched roofs, and the stilting
heat, is punishment enough for them." (40) They are the
"denizons of hell being punished for their misdeeds in the
past." (53)
The actions and reactions of the characters in the
novel are manifested in relation to the work of road-building.
Both upper class and lower class people sincerely want the
road to be built since the village economy is dependent on it.
The "milk of the village will be borne to the ci1y, and more
cash will come to the folk." (22) Even the survival of life
against the recurrent drought depends on the road. The
villagers* reaction to the construction of the road is ail
favourable, lamberdar Dhooli Singh, the leader of the
underdog, brings it to the notice of the poor villagers that
"it is only roads and roads and more roads, and electricity
that will bring prosperity. (22) The villagers are convinced
that the road will give them bread and money since it is
going to link their village with the industrialised town.
Anand's predilection for the machine, which, he believes, is
a potent instrument in paving the road for man's prosperity
and unity, finds a clearer expression in The Road wherein
 133

the outcastes take the help of a road-engine to complete

the construction of the road. It will he a road to Delhi

and further to Destiny. Zai Nicholson very rightly analyses

the point in these words:-

The Road is symbolic, for it is supposed to

open the way of the mind and the heart of Man
to greater human understanding. But social
prejudices and ignorance prevent 'The Road*
from becoming the'way to enlightenment,-
instead it is made into a place of human
21
degradation

The path of social change* never runs smooth. Normally, the

Hindus look down upon the untouchables (chamars) of the village.

Bhikhu*s mother is aware of this and she reminds him:' "Son,

we are chamars - And they are twice bornI"(4) The 'inferior

ity complex* is inherent in the low caste people Bhikhu

also remembers that even though he can walk on the public

road," he could never go into the temple." (5) In the eyes

of the high class villagers^the untouchables are only "low

people, Chamars, who cured the skins of dead animals, and

twined ropes and some of them were even sweepers" (17),

unlettered folk. Bhikhu alone, as an exception, sings songs

and makes verses. He is supported by lamberdar Dhooli Singh

and opposed by Thakur Singh. Between the two groups, there

is not only communal hostility* but also 'economic competition.*

/

The caste Hindus do not like the untouchables to get money by

working on Government jobs. The novelist points out the irony

of the situation in very revealing words:

MKi a-: HU8RAS?

WbiJvtc.wt, It. .vv-uiApWIS,
 134

"Hie superior ones did not want to pool

their labour with the low caste ones. They
had always allowed the untouchables to work
on the land in return for grain; and the
earth had kept them together; but the
togetherness had now been lost because money
wages had come in." (8)
Anand describes several other characters in the novel.
The caste people regard the untouchables as spoilers of
their religion. A caste Hindu goes to the extent of suggest
ing that the stones handled by the low caste people can be
purified by a purificatory rite through the priest Sura3 Mani,
who is actually a "crafty Brahmin dog", (19) and is at the
root of all communal troubles. He is regarded as a 'hypocrite,
"feasting on death-anniversaries" of the villagers and saying
"things with double meaning." (19) He symbolises cunning,
selfishness, guile and lechery. This hypocrite is ill-known
"for his habit of staring at women's behinds' from the corner
of his eyes." (11) He is an incarnation of Pundit Kali Nath
of Untouchable and Bhatta of Kanthapura. Thakur Singh's
people boast themselves as descended from the high Kshatriya
lineage of lord Krishna. To them the untouchables are just
"those dirty men." (16) So, Bhooli Singh, the leader of the
untouchables, is threatened with excommunication, a powerful
weapon with the caste Hindus. Bhikhu's mother, Laxmi, who
is a symbol of decorum, love, tolerance and goodness, also
stands for the 'abject submissiveness' to the superior people.
She wants Bhikhu to love the caste people even if they hate
 135

him. She advises him : "Our respectability and well-being

in life rests with the upper castes." (105) And that is

why she presses him to establish and maintain good relations

with not only Dhooli Singh but also with the hostile Thakur

Singh.

The love motif introduced in the novel does not seem

to have any propriety and significance. landlord Thakur Singh's

daughter, Rukmini, is drawn towards Bhikhu. To her,Bhikhu

appears to be "the first man among the outcastes, gay and good."
(18) But she is forbidden even to "touch the thought of him."

(16) This love episode is gratutbous. The children of the two

adversaries, Dhooli Singh and Thakur Singh, are shown to have

been attracted towards each other. The love-motif does not

contribute to the development of the plot in any way. By so

doing, the novelist perhaps wants to reduce the gap between

the two poles, viz., Dhooli Singh, the Gandhiman, fired with

humanism, and Thakur Singh, the capitalist, puffed up with

casteism. But the scene has become grossly melodramatic.

Bhikhu is exposed to a wider world than Bakha of

Untouchable. Bakha has to face the antagonism of the upper

caste Hindus, whereas Bhikhu has to face a whole gamut of

socio-economic forces. Yes, as Dr. laik points out,

"Anand has no fresh insights into outcasts

psychology to offer, while painting a
22
second portrait of the untouchable,"

though he could have exploited the multi-dimensional situation

to a greater advantage. This apart, Anand is su.c.cessful, as
 336

ever, in evoking the rural sensibility by the skilful depic

tion of the popular beliefs, the use of rustic idiom and
animal imagery, which go to build up the 'local colour' in
the novel.
We get some glimpses of 'rural customs* in the novel.
Bhikhu's mother always says that it is inauspicious to see
a Brahmin's face first thing in the morning." (10) The
orthodox Brahmin, Suraj Mani, regards thatJit is "sacrilege
to look at the sun, or the moon, on the way to answer the call
of nature." (12) The untouchables use talismen to ward off
evil. They attribute every thing to their action (Karma) in
the past life. Eateism has a firm hold on the villagers'
minds. They believe in ghosts who become 'Jinns' and "wander
around the village." (46) A certain star seen through another
star's tail creates a commotion in the village. Their belief
in the horoscope is ineradicable. Being full of odd star-
conjunctions, the horoscope of Rukmini plays havoc. A close
scrutiny of these beliefs etc. shoys that though a gradual
change is being effected in the village economy by irapid
industrialisation and modernisation of the ways of life, the
old taboos and faiths seem to have hardly slackened their firm
grip on the people's superstitious and gullible minds.
Anand is known for his conscious experimentation with
the rustic idiom for the evocation of village sensibility.
His use of effective agrarian imagery is remarkabHa His
'animal imagery' is drawn mostly from Nature which provides a
 337

suitable setting to rural life. To cite a few exampless

"Suddenly, like a lizard frightened of its own shadow, he
darted behind the bushes" (14)| "She was soft and heady
as she advanced in a trance, like a peahen" (16); "like ants
and bees the young were ready to sting their fathers to
death" (82); "At this landlord Thakur Singh ran towards
his house, like a bedraggled cock frightened of the eat"(68);
"More like a frog, as he came hopping across the hedge from
the well" (85); "You are choping like a sparrow when you
dared not speak in his presence" (85); "like a hen sitting
on her eggs, she brooded with a vacant stare" (96); "And
Mahesh came in even like a furious bull" (101) and "He will
be hounded out of the village like a mad dog." (110) The
novelists observation of the countryside animal world is,
thus, microscopic andaccurate to the last degree of reality.
Rural adages and expressions of agrarian wisdom*
are freely used by Anand, and they have greatly Indianised
his English, e.g., "A goat in hand is better to you folks
than a buffalo in the distance," (22) reminding one of an
identical English proverb, "a bird in hand is better than
two An the bush." Other examples are equally interesting
e.g., "your own calfs teeth seem golden." (22) Surprisingly
enough,in The Road , the young and the old, the unlettered --
and the educated, alike' speak in proverbs and witticisms,
25
as Meenakshi Mukherjee rightly points out.
Anand adopts the device of using names with descriptive
adjectives,' first used by Shankar Ram in his Love of Dust
 338

and then by Raja Rao in Kanthapura. By using this device

the writer takes us to the very core of the village life.
The adjectives make the characters spring up before our
eyes and make the evocation of rural life more effective8
They speak of the physical features (mainly deformities),
professions and foibles of men, e.g., Dumbling-Nose lambetrdar
Dhooli Singh, Pox-Race Daya Ram, Cock-Eye Ram Kiwas, Tomato-
Eace landlord Thakur Singh, One-Eye Shivram, Cowherd Mahesh,
Ox Pandu, Old Bapu and Bnunkard Shankar. An aggressive use
of 'Indianisms' marks Anand*s writing lending his novels a
colour of stark rusticity and even vulgarity.
In spite of the dominant motive of social reform, the
evocation of village life is sincere, authentic and convinging.
24
The observations of C.P. Verghese and Dr. G. S. Balaram
Gupta25 on Anand that the latter*s heavy emphasis on social
reform, didacticism and propaganda, mars his attainment as an
artist are beyond dispute. But one has to remember that Anand
is a 'committed writer* and his 'committal to social service
is well-expressed in his vocal letter to Prof. 3.R. Srinivas
Iyengar, where he writes:
"I am doing some village social welfare work
in order to integrate my love for the poor
with actual work for them ---- I never realised,
as intensely as now, the reasons why both Tolstoy
and Gandhi chose the peasantry for their
devotion. After writing for many years about
pains of these people, I now feel that for
their sake, it may not all have been in vain.
 139

' flke Old- Woman and the Gow and The Road
will confirm the poetic truth that the
alleviation of pain and its expiation are
the only values given to our intelligentsia
in the present time.** 26
Or as William Walsh correctly puts it:
"Mulk Baj Anand is passionately concerned
with the villages, with the ferocious
poverty and the cruelties of caste, wiiii
orphans, untouchables, and urban labourers.
He writes in an angry reformist way, like a
less humorous Dickens and a more emotional
Wells."27

Thus, Anand is essentially a *writer with a purpose.* Now

the problem is s Does his purposiveness affect his art and
portrayal of village life? There is a possibility that a
highly didactic writer who concentrates on the social aspect
of the theme may give a very minor place to art, or he may
even neglect it. But fortunately enough, Anand*s portrayal
of the physical aspect of the village life is not affected by
his avowed purposiveness. As far as his depiction of the
social aspect of village life is concerned, his predetermined
bias towards social justice is obviously seen in his treatment
of the theme. And that is why Anand is seen consistently
satirising the high caste people, the exploiters and the rich,
and sentimentalising the poor and the lowly like Bhikhu.
Even in the love-affairs of the caste girl Bukmini and the
untouchable Bhikhu, Anand indicates his sympathies for the
latter. So acute is his sympathy for the suffering humanity
 140

that in his novels- we find him cry with anguish against the
injustice so common in those days. As Prof. Iyengar puts its
"And Dr. Mulk Raj Anand, the leftist, is
angry, he is very angry; hut he .is enough
of an artist to save his excellent novels
from the 3tigma of mere propaganda. And
hence his characters - at any rate, his
Indian characters - axe almost as a rule
recognizably human beings, not automats or
formulae -"^8

The novel is an example of the typical 'Anand ambivalence'

between art and didacticism. It is really difficult to see
how any conscientious writer can escape being a propagandist,
if by 'propaganda* is meant that an artist is committed to
some values. In this sense almost all the artists are
propagandists; whether they are conscious of it or not. Eric
Gill has some illuminating comments to make on this vital
question:
"The fact remains. All art is propaganda,
for it is in fact impossible to do anything,
to make anything, which is not expressive of
values ---- There is no escape from it. The
29
artist cannot escape being a propagandist."
The real problem is to assess how, far propaganda is assimilated
into the work of art. In both The Village and The Road, one
can safely say, the assimilation is successfully managed.
The same tension between art and propaganda is -witnessed
in the next novel that we are going to study. A Goddess Famed
B K ctttn. ch ctryeL
Gold (1960)by/is a masterly satire on the social and economic

/
 141

life of an Indian village called Sonamitti in the Vidarbha

region. The novel opens exactly a hundred days before 15th

August, 1947, the Indian freedom struggle being at -the

background 'of the story. We are introduced to a group of

"six" village women who (defying arithmetic) call themselves

"The Cowhouse Five" because their meetings take place in a

ciwshed. Though coming from different levels of rural society,

they are bound by a common bond of comradeship and nationalism.

Laxmi is one of them. Her husband, Seth Shamsundar, the

t

profiteer, is the target of these ladies. There is, then,

Meera, the heroine, and a roving grandfather, who is referred

to as the minstrel,* with Sarvodaya ideals, who gives Meera

a talisman supposed to turn copper into gold. The gold-greedy

Seth enters into a deal with Meera and this pursuit of alchemy

leads to comic situations. The wandering minstrel comes back

and tells them that the talisman is not the real touchstone

but freedom is the real touchstone for gold. The novel ends

with a patriotic note. Though the structure of the novel, is

governed by a story, satiric in purpose, the novel presents

village life in its various aspects, of the eventful pre-1947

days.
The physical features of Sonamitti, a village in the

coil of the river Kanhan, with several other fillages around

it forming a circuit, are graphically drawn. The name

Sonamitti* is significant, meaning the soil of gold.* The

village is situated on a point, five and seven hundred miles

 142

away, respectively from Bombay and Delhi. Ihere^ is, then,

Bhimtek, twenty miles away from the village, (is it Ramtek
<
in lagpur area?) There is that "aged banyan tree,'under

the eyes of a minor Goddess on a foot-high mud-pedestal." (23)

There is a 'Main Road as well as a 'Tamarind -Alley' in the

village. (The outdoor topography of Sonamitti is vividly

described with a touch of irony directed against the social

structure:

"The meadow lay all along the lorth side

of Sonamitti, a stretch of pasturage reaching
to the fields of Pipli village - The road
passed through the fields of mustard or
millet or maize or cotton, set against the
figure of a loan and made vdlid by a peasant's
thumb-mark." (38)

The Cowhouse, the residence of the Seth, is described as

distinct from the ordinary huts of the poor villagers. The

poor peasants live in "a shabby huddle of mud-huts" (16);

whereas the Seth lives in the Cowhouse* which is described

in these words:
"Stretched on the dung-washed earth were mats
of coloured reed and at the room's corner stood
two brass pitchers of cold water to drink. The
dark-brown walls of mud were decorated with
shiny pictures pasted on them row on row;
colourful prints of goddesses, heroes from
history, landscape. The prints were trademarks
of cloth mills and had. been peeled off saris
and dhotis in the Seth's stock." (11)

The Seth's is a red-tiled brick-house (a status symbol in

 143

the village). Describing an umbrella of the Seth, suggestive

of his distinct position, the novelist writes:

"The people of Sonamitti had seen no other

umbrella of this kind; like the bathgown it
was an item of dignity in the Seth's outfit,
an insignia of prestige." (38)

The novelist gives the social composition' of the village in

which there are the potters, weavers, carpenters, barbers,

physians (vaids), and cartmen, in addition to the peasants

who form the largest section of the population.

Rural life is realistically evoked in the dramatisation

of the theme in terms of the interactions of the characters.

The main theme of tlae novel being the class-conflict on economic

- issues, it depicts scenes of rural poverty and economic inequality

and exploitation on various levels. The novelist focuses his

attention on some of the social evils* following the famine

of 1943* Seth Shamsundar, Laxmi*s husband, corners the stock

of saris and the poor village women get hit by this tricky

act of his. (Che pitiable condition of the village ladies,who

do not get sufficient clothes,is described in these words:

"(Che clothes the women of Sonamitti wore-

saries patched over and over, Jackets cut
from cast-off gunny sack-that was why the
price of old bags was going up. At night,
to save their saris further wear, some of
the women slept almost naked. This, in a
village of rich black earth yielding a hundred
bales of good fibre cotton every season." (S)

(Hie economic imbalance' that follows the ill-known famine

adds fuel to i;he fire of the impoverishment of the villagers

 144

The monetary crisis in the village is recorded in these

words :

MIn rural living money was in poor supply.

Even a small cash loan would often take
people over a crisis- a marriage ceremony,
a hirth, a funeral." (39)

And out of this scarcity of money* arise many consequent

evils like profiteering, hoarding and hlaekmarketing. The

economic imbalance is always a great cause of the social

chaos in the village. Describing this, the novelist writes?

"This fruit-giving earth. Enough earth far

all if shared fairly. So much belongs to so
few. The same tale every where. One man
owns half a village, the tillers have the
rest in five hundred morsels." (69)

'Exploitation* is the greatest evil arising out of such a

crisis. Seth Shamsundar devours everything in the village:

his moneylending business consumes the very spirit of the ,

villagers. This is exemplified in the Seth's act of exploita

tion of the needy people. The novelist has drawn him in a

very graphic style. The money-mad, rapacious Seth

"had bought up in advance the full output

of the village weaver, Dhannu, who had been
forced to tie down his loom to the 'Belly-that-
ate-all,' so he could get the cash he needed
for his father's funeral." (9)

The Seth not only deals in cloth but also lends money.

The village is neck-deep in debt to him and hence it is

"tethered to his still rate of interest." (9) The shrewd

Seth very well knows that one man's poison is another man's
 145

meat. So, in the time of dire scarcity he corners the food

supply and hints' money. He has learnt this trick by
watching his betters during the rice famine in Bengal four
years before. He is not a "nincompoop" (42) but a lion in
business : "Gold, riches these were words that made music
in the Seth*s ear." (90) He is a "shrewd" black-market brain."
(124) A hypocrite of the first rank, he becomes a devotee
of the 'Goddess named Gold,* Sometimes he does acts of mercy
with a selfish purpose of getting merit, She character of the
Seth is a symbol of money-thirst, opportunism and usury. His
character and the village of Sonamitti are universalised in
these words:
"There are eight hundred thousand others.
Each has a Seth of its own. Each Seth waits
to snatch the new power from the people."
(197)
It is the fight with the exploiters (Seths) that forms
the crux of the theme. As the fight with the English is
vital for political freedom so the fight with these native
blood-suckers is essential for economic and social freedom.
Thus, the novel is a -sermon on freedom which is misunderstood
by some for licentiousness, profiteering, exploitation and
shirking away from toil. And that is why Ram Sevak Singh,
a critic, metaphorically says that in this novel "again an
30 *
earthworm grows into a cobra," the cobra standing for these
destructive agencies. The fight with these people, in the
words of Sohagi, a village woman, is with "one of our own
 146

skin and sweat." (25) And here comes the socio-revolutionary

role of the Cowhouse live of Sonamitti.

Meera, the young girl, is known in the village for

her patriotism, zeal for social work and leadership. She

insists the village ladies on joining the anti-government and

anti-Seth demonstration and organises them for that purpose.

She has also demonstrated her resourcefulness and altruism

on another occasion by saving the life of a man bitten by a

cobra, by sucking out the poisioned blood with her mouth. The

Cowhouse live, fired with the idea of eradicating the social

evil, have their first target in the Seth, who is the

husband of their co-worker, Laxmi. The militant team of the

Cowhouse live is aware of this : "We have shouted in anger

at the alien coat-and-pantloons. Our dhoti-clad fellows are

ten times worse." (43) The village ladies fortunately get

the active participation of laxmi for "struggle against the

tyrant even though he was her son's begetter." (14) Already

trained in the method of Satyagraha, they take a 'morcha*

to the cloth-shop of the Seth and threaten him to undress

themselves before him if he does not yield to than. Ironically

enough for the Seth his wife laxmi becomes a rival and

threatens him with these words:

"Naked I will leave this room. Naked I -

will walk on Main Road. All Sonamitti will
see a woman, mother, put to disgrace." (30)

The incident sounds somewhat melodramatic and incredible but

the mood of the village women and their way of thinking truly

reflect the temper and spirit of India during the eventful

 147

days before independence*

The village elections, for which the Seth is one of

the contestarts*are very realistically described. The propagan

da made, promises given, and the tactics adopted by the

contesting parties in the elections are sarcastically described:

"The school boys had been feasting on laddoos and marching

and shouting with great zeal, 'Vote for Shamsundarji.'"(125)

They join the party which feeds them better. Another group

of boys, fed better by the rival party, shouts anti-Seth

slogans. Thus, the "better-fed" (125) school-boys form "the

stronger fighting force" (125) in the village. The writer's

character-delineation is}thus, precise and perfect. And that

has been more effectively accomplished through the 'Talisman

Episode' (Taveez) which plays a vital role in the novel. It

is through the talisman episode that the major characters like

Meera, the MiM.strel, the Seth and the villagers evolve with

their varying characteristics. The talisman is a touchstone

with the power of turning all copper into gold. Owing to a

misunderstanding, the egregious Seth thinks (and so does the

innocent Meera) that the taveez does really have an alchemic

power, and so he enters into a business deal with .;her. And

several comic (and even farcical) events follow, till at

last Meera casts away the taveez into the river. Meera later

on knows that the amulet is a tricky act of the minstrel.

Once, when Meera is sleeping, the copper ring in her finger

is replaced by a gold ring by laxmi on the suggestion of the

minstrel. The Seth,who wants to avitil himself of the amulet's

 148

power, is exposed and discomfited. The acts of kindness

done "by the Seth with a selfish purpose of getting more, are

sarcastically described. The taveez episode is, thus, greatly

revealing : it shows the innocence, grace and generosity of

Meera, the hypocrisy of the Seth, the righteous tactics of

the minstrel as also the gullibility of the villagers. The

half-mystic and half-realistic minstrel is used by the novelist

as a mouth-piece to voice his views on the Gandhian methods of

winning freedom. It is the minstrel who at the end of the

novel, opens the eyes of the villagers and the exploiters,

convincing them that "turning copper into gold" is not to be

taken literally. He tells them that Somamitti itself is the

'land of gold.* To free it from the exploiters is the real

act of turning copper into gold.* It is, thus, symbolically

used.

Gertain minor characters in the village are also

realistically drawn. A village Halwai, like a village barber,

is a "repository of news." (41) He collects it from all

possible sources and "laddies it out along with his sweet

meats." (41) The village constable, Hosiar Singh, is a

British lion. "When you feel his wrath you will drop
down on his knees and lick dust." (24) He is an incarnation

of Bade Khan in Kanthanura. He intimidates the yokels very

easily tut when there is a violent crowd he keeps away from

'it and makes "himself invisible." (80)

The novelist's attitude is quite objective. The Cow

house Five, who are depicted in glorifying terms, are also

 149

satirised. As we know, Laxmi, Meera and others are fainted'

as great reformers. But the novelist also knows the *other

side* of their nature. And this is exemplified in his

imaginative view* of the future in the scene of 'Meera*s

vision* which he describes with euphemism, When some of the

live acquire more and more property in the village, they

grow corrupt, try to compete with each other and turn hitter

enemies. Por example, the cart driver's wife becomes rich

and as a result of this her husband "gives up his work,

stays at home and passes the day sleeping on a soft bed."

(295) Ihe jealousy caused by affluence is very comically

described, fhe vision of Meera, thus, contains a warning to

the villagers and countrymen that freedom should not be

regarded as a 'magic wand* or an 'open sesame.' The novelist

has put forth the bitter reality that ideals are difficult

to put into practice. However, he does not present a

'pessimistic* attitude towards the future of the villagers in .

India. A hope for economic balance and social justice is

conveyed through the following passage:

"Ihe days of the Seths were numbered. Soon

would the pebple, vested with their new
power, fully waken and their thunderous
wrath, would make every tyrant whine for
mercy." (224)

Ihe novel, thus, gives a glimpse of the novelist's vision

of the rural India of the future. Ihrough the noble character

of Sohan lal the novelist gives the advice that no one in a

 150

free country should be content to live on charity. The

building of material resources alone, he further warns, will

not make us happy. Note, for example, his words of warning

to the villagers:

"You cannot have gold enough to save all

India! It is the fight with the Seths
that will save India, not a miracle, not
armfuls of gold." (197)

Apart from theme and character, Bhattacharya attaches

great importance to social customs, superstitions and rustic

speech a& the means for the evocation of the village life.

The villagers of Sonamitti observe various religious rituals.

Scores cf women-assemble under the aged banyan tree to make

offerings to the goddess under it. Even the Seth makes it

"a point to win the Bevi's good-will before launching a new

deal." (94) Parvati, "Siva's spouse, healer of the hundred

woes," (20) is invoked time and again. The 'customary

auspicious marks* have a firm hold on Sonamitti*s life. A

dear man's arrival and departure, for example, are marked by

the marks of "seven elephants and a lotus" (49) on the

veranda floor.

The superstitions prevalent in Sonamitti are an

interesting study. Meeras friend, Munni, tucks twigs in

the former's hair as charms to counter the evil. It recalls

to our mind that in Bhattacharya* s Music for Mohini. bamboo

chips are used as charms and are tied to the locks of Mohini

to ward off the evil. The belief in the positions of stars

is very strong among the villagers. The Seth tells his wife
Laxmi that he has married her because of "a rare star
conjunction in her horoscope. (10) When Hago, son of

L^xmi, is saved by Meera in an accident, somebody assures

Laxmi : "Bo one can save life. Everything is worked out by

fate - The star conjunctions, give him a fairly long life."

(45) In Sonamitti, the 'Bhootani* (ghost) is occasionally

seen dangling on a Beem tree and an *Ojha' (exorcist)

exorcises it. The villagers believe in a yogi's being

reborn in their village. They also believe in a village

God's miraculous power. A minstrel is believed to have

vanished in a train in the presence of a ticket-checker and

a plane flying over the village during war time is fancied

to be a "pilgrim star flying from space to space to reach the

creator's feet." (116) Stories of goats and animals speaking

in human voice are in vogue in the village.

Rustic idiom and agrarian imagery are powerful means

for evoking rural sensibility. Bhattacharya's artistry is

seen at its clearest in the use of these devices. A host of

rural animals, the flora and the fauna are often used in

similies and metaphors. The writer's close observation of

rural life becomes evident in his apt use of the rustic

imagery. Expressions and adages revealing agrarian sensibility

are fittingly used e.g., "They must bend their backs to the
fields" (10), meaning to 'toil hard in the fields.' Rural

terms of abuse are used with restraint. A Child is called

a 'frogling' or a 'monkey' or a 'pig.' Similarly, an

 m
abusive tone is felt in MI will punish, that scorpion" (241);
"Speak lobster" (241); "that son of city-peacock" (242); "that
city mangoose ---- " (242) and so on. Unlike Anand, Bhattacharya
does not wax eloquent in rustic abuses.
The novelists use of the rural imagery is really
superb. To quote a few examples of similes and metaphors :
."A womans life is not worth two cowdung pellets" (6); "The
Seths melon-like face beamed at them" (28); Meera's fair
face has the "complexion of ripe maize" (60); "She is a
wheat stalk drooping with ripeness" (230) and "- failures
are thorn weed in a field of wheat, to be plucked, cast away."
(239) Exquisite animal imagery' (mainly similes and metaphors)
is seen in the following examples : "Munni and Bir&ala saurried
like terrified hens" (16); "She climbs a tree like a monkey,
but diving frogwise! (22); "We must fly in the air like birds
or crawl in the fields like lizards?" (24); "His eyes stuck
to her as wasps to a honey-pot" (52); "You may watch the big
laddoos like a goatman keeping count of his flock" (53);
"Somewhere in the fig tree a wood-pecker was busy, like a
carpenter on his job" (66); The Five Elders with gray
mustaches were all sly jackals" (97); "They are a swarm of
piglings misled by a few wolf-cubs" (193); "And his fancy
will wag like a dog's happy tail" (200); "Then the Bad Woman,
a sparrow in bed and yet a tigress, pointed doorward with a
finger" (231); "It is Bulaki Rao, howling like a jackal" (240);
"Cackle like the fowl folk at dawn" (264) and "Champa, running
 153

like a coit ip. spite of her ample hips." (266)

However, Dr. Chandrasekhar an in his monograph on .
Bhattacharya, points out that many incidents and characters
in the novel are not true to life. According to him, the
presentation of the., amulet to Meera and her subsequent attempts
to make it function and several other incidents have no
credibility even in the setting of a most backward Indian
village. He argues that the Indian peasant, who is painted
as a gullible, superstitious and artless person, is actually
not so. On the contrary, according to him, he is a hard-
boiled realist seasohed by centuries of harsh experience and
is not the type of person to be fooled into believing in a
taveez with miraculous powers. Another accusation of his
against the novel is that the characters are seriously affected
by the novelist*s didactic predilection.* The major characters
like Meera and the Minstrel, according to him, are not
characters from life! they are mystified and even deified.
Dr. Chandrasekharan attacks the novel with remarks like
"realism is scattered to the wind" and criticises the novelist
in words such as "he is in this novel enjoying a holiday from
realism.
C.P. Yerghese and Prof. Iyengar, however, praise the
novel for its significant theme, graphic characterisation,
apt symbolism and effective evocation of rural atmospheref
Yerghese writes : "Perhaps the only novel that exploits
imaginatively the theme of freedom is Bhabani Bhattacharya*s
 154

32
A Goddess Mamed Gold? Iyengars remarks on tlie success

of the novel are equally eulogistic. He writes : "Actually,

A Goddess lamed Gold signifies an advance in Bhattacharya*s

art as a novelist, for the axes here are hardly visible and
33
the grinding is not very audible." Thus, to a sympathetic

reader the harsh accusations made by Dr, Chandrasekharan will

not sound reasonable. Judging the novel as a literacy crea

tion evoking rural li'fe, one has to-admit that it is a success.

The novelists vision of the future rural India sounds

realistic. The novel being an allegory, the characters

take on a symbolic significance. The symbol of the taveez,

however, has become laboured and artificial. The author

intends to propagate the idea of freedom-social, political

and economic. Sonamitti, though a village under the grip of

tradition and superstition, is not to remain stagnant. It is

to change. The theme of change is consciously pursued in

the novel. If changing tradition* is an important character

istic of ruralism then the present novel unfailingly exemplifies

it. It is true that Bhabani Bhattacharya has a thesis to

present in this novel as he does in his Shadow from Ladakh,

and it has definitely resulted in the deliberate patterning

of characters and incidents in the novel. But fortunately,

his didacticism has not affected the evocation of rural life

that he depicts with the thoroughness and objectivity of an

Arnold Bennett, if not of a Zola. Since Bhattacharya has

something to teach, he does not hesitate to make his novels the

medium for social reform.* His declared view that a creative

 155

writer should try to come to grips with contemporary

conditions* is ver y well spelt out in his own wordss

Art must teach, hut unobstrusively, hy

its vivid interpretation of life. Art must
preach, hut only hy virtue of its being a
vehicle of truth.

And this is very exquisitely exemplified in the present novel.

Though a clear thesis on social reform, the novel deserves

to he duhhed as a rural novel hy virtue of the amount of

authentic village life that is portrayed in it.

IV

Shankar Rams The Love of Dust (1938) is in the real

sense of the term a rpurevillage novel* unmixed with

historical, political and religious strands of experience.

It is a plain tale of agrarian life with its ignorance, revenge,

jealousy, bickerings, .family-feuds, land-quarrels, debts,

mortgages, love-makings, court-affairs, murders and the love of

land depicted with restraint and conviction. ,

The human drama is staged hy Velan and Malian, who are

sons, respectively, of Venkatachalam and Mayandi, heads of

two farmer-families in the village of Veeramangalam. The

triangle is completed hy Yalli, daughter of Veerappa, another

farmer in the village. As both the young hoys covet the

hand of Yalli, the two families turn hostile. Parallel to

this hostility is the land-problem. Velan is bent on regaining

his fathers mortgaged land from the money-lender. But on

the same land is set Mayandi*s rapacious eye. Mayandi*s

 356

ambitious sister, Meenakshi, provokes him against Venkatachalam.

Velan is fired with the emotion of taking revenge upon Mayandi.

Meanwhile Cholan, the other son of Mayandi, who is ill-treated

by his parents, kills Mayandi. Velan is arrested as the

suspected murderer and prosecuted. Velan*s case is pleaded<by

pleader Suppiah Pillai. Cholan confesses his crime and Velan

is acquitted. In the meanwhile *Velan*s father dies and as

luck would have it, Velan gets huge wealth by a will of one

villager named Appavu. finally, Velan and Valli are united.

fhe setting of the village of Veeramanglam is described

by the novelist in an idyllic style. The' village is situated

on the banks of the Saveri and like most other South Indian

villages is bedecked with palms!

"Ihe coconut-palm3 with which the village

abounded shook their heads in,the wind like
women possessed, and shook all their ripe
nuts for the scrambling children to pick.11
0)
Describing the vernal pomp of the village, the novelist

writes: In Summer Veeramanglam was a veritable Eden of mango

trees." (2) The whole of summer, the village lads manage to

live and play under the mango trees as late as possible.

^Penning this scene of the sportive and carefree village

lads covetous of mangoes, the novelist writes in his

pictorial styles

"Ehe trees struggling for their existence

divested themselves of all that they could
shed. Ripe Mangoes, squirrel-bitten mangoes,
 157

and even green mangoes were showered on

them in plenty, though every child was
overburdened with mangoes, yet not one of
them was willing to get away from under
the trees." (3)

The village surroundings are also embellished by coconut

gardens., paddy fields, betel-leaf plantations, maize crops

(cholamj, sugarcane and even medicinal herbs. The village

.is rich in the flora and the fauna. In the pastures and

bushes outside the village, there is the growth of margosa

flowers, berries and grass. Packs of hares run helter-skelter

and jackals gallop here and there. There are channel bunds

around the village on which are grown coconut trees. The

novelist has, thus, animated the village setting with his

dexterous pen. The 'pastoral' pomp is superbly drawn.

The village has a temple of Kali, where the villagers

assemble in the evening for setting their matters. Por its

administration and meetings, the village has a meeting place

(Chavadi). As an artist in the rendering of rural scenes,

Shankar Ram is really a virtuoso. His region is not merely

hued with 'local colour* but it is animated with life of men,

birds and trees and crops.

The evocation of the rural agrarian life is accomplished

in several ways. *L,ove of land' is as deep-rooted in the minds

of the farmers as their religion. The land, strewn with green

and yellow crops, is more than anything to a farmer. In an

'agrarian novel* like the present one,land is one of the

characters, and it is as important as any other human characters.

 158

Note, for example, the words of the confirmed farmer,

Yenkatachalam s "Remember that to us, our lands are dearer

than our lives." (166) A farmer like him cannot tolerate

even the idea of parting with his land. Also mark the touch

ing address of Yenkatachalam to his foster son, Yelan:

"-- that parting with my lands would cause

me greater sufferings. My great father
died of dysentery, because, against his
will, my grandfather sold a small out of the
way piece of,land. We love our fields and
gardens as dearly as our own lives. And
do. you think that love is not reciprocal?
I tell you they love us even more, because
they have known our ancestors, and also
know that we have lost them. Every tree in
the garden has a peculiar attraction to us
Which fools cannot appreciate. Every fence,
nay, the very ridges seem to recognise and
extend a -hearty welcome to us-- hertless
men never know these things." (127)

The passage is, indeed, an agrarian prose lyric expressing

the farmer's indescribable love of land. To YenkataclaLam

his beloved 'Snail Earm* is the "pride of his family for

generations." (78) The love of land is hereditary. And

every geedy man in the village covets such a farm. As we

know,from the story, the greedy eyes of the moneylenders,

and of Meenakshi, the ambitious sister of Mayandi, are set

on this golden farm. Though his lands are mortgaged,

Yenkatachalam

"would rather live and die with the knowledgi

 159

that the lands were still his, though not

in his enjoyment, than part with them
for any consideration." (83)

Debts and dispossession of land hasten the doom of a farmer.

Venkatachaiam, who had once been "the dashing swell of the

village," (86) becomes almost an impoverished non-entity when

he loses his lands and runs deep into debts. When he, the

worshipper of land, dies, his well-wisher Madurai wants him

to be immortalised. Hence, he makes a novel suggestion: "let

us bury him in the Snail Parm* he loved so dearly, build a

tomb over his grave and plant all around it beautiful flower
beds." (276) Commenting on this 'representative of the

land-lovers,' Prof. Iyengar voices the feelings of a real

farmer in these words:

"- for a villager like Venkatachaiam, his

land is not just a piece of property, a
negotiable instrument almost, but rather
a part of himself nurtured by his toil, tears
and sweat, and the sharer of his hopes and the
35
cause of his anxieties."

The rival parties in the village, fighting and trying

to outwit each other, are very convincingly described in the

various scenes. The other dramatis personae, through whose

interactions the village life comes to life, can be passingly

mentioned here to illustrate the complex relationships of

the villagers. The rural life is best evoked in the good,

bad and ugly actions and intrigues of the villagers. Mayandi,

father of Malian, palys the role of the villain. He does

 160

not like Venkatachalam and his son Velan to prosper, nor

does he approve of Velan's love making to Valli. He is a
"puny, shameless ass, who lives and flaunts on a widow's
hounty." (147) His motives are sinister and selfish and are
enkindled by his viragoish sister, Meenakshi. He wants the
girl, Valli, to marry his son Malian. He joins hands with
his scheming and ambitious widow sister, Meenakshi, in snatch
ing lands from Venkatachalam; Meenakshi, the "bigboncdl^;
massive and corpulent woman" (13), is always interested in
"discussing the assets and liabilities of the various
villagers." (29) She is a "shrewd woman," (65) who strategi
cally advances sufficient money to Venkatachalam to clear all
his debts and who; at the same time, takes "possession of all
his wet lands on a possession-mortgage contract," (82) accord
ing to which Venkatachalam or his heirs are to forfeit all
i

claim to the property, if the mortgage is not released within

sixty years. With the "Satanic advice" (146) of her brother
Mayandi, she is seen busy with securing by hook or by crook
legal documents for grabbing others' lands. There is, then,
Ayyakkannu, "the boldest fighter of the village, whom nothing
would daunt, but whom Cholera laid low in a few hours." (99)
There is the rustic rogue, Thathan, "a sensation-monger" (187),
who gives widest publicity to whatever bit he has seen and
makes a mountain of a mole. It is he who spreads in the
village the news of the murder of Mayandi. Being "a maniac
obsessed by his own craze for sensation" (183), he breaks the
sensational news that Velan is the murderer of Mayandi.
 1

161
i

Naturally, he is hired "by Malian to be set against his rival,

Velan. Then?there are persons like Kusappatti Kangani and

the Pillai, who are notorious as blood-suckers of the poor

peasants. However, in the village there are good persons

also. Madurai looks upon the village as one community (65)

and pleads for a sort of link among all the families in the

village. He is a liberal and philanthropic villager. Veerappan,

father of the heroine Valli, is a good Samaritan. Suppiah

Pillai help3 Velan in the latters court-matters. Nachippan

is the most jovial of village fellows. The lovers-Velan,

Valli and Malian - are active, romantic and dynamic villagers

who infuse some livelines in the dry-as-dust routine life of

the village. Their love-makings in mango groves and cattle-

sheds are poetically described. As Prof. Iyengar aptly puts

it:

"Shankar Rams Velan and Valli are also rural

types- an unspoilt rural Romeo and his
Juliet capable of suffering and sacrifice
36
and silent love."

As stated in the opening paragraph, the writer has depicted

the villagers with restraint and conviction. His characters

do not seem to be a mere medley of persons but they help

manifest the village sensibility in a vivid manner. The

village life is made manifest also through other scenes such

as the court-episode which describes how desperately

villagers waste their money on fruitless legal matters, on

account of their jealousies, quarrels, competitions and

desperations.
 162

She customs, beliefs and rustic idom are the other

aspects of the rural life, that evoke rural sensibility. In
South India, the fairs are generally held on the sandy
beaches of rivers. One such fair is described in the novel
in these words:
the deities who began to arrive one by
one in palanquins ---- the vast sandy bed
became one seething mass of devout humanity,
which broke coconuts and burnt camphor and
benzoin as offerings to the gods." (48)
The village marriage is another greatly exciting function.
Ihe proposed marriage of Malian with Yalli (which actually
does not^aterialise) is graphically described as dreamily
visualised by the villagers. Another usual scene in the
village is provided by the Brahmin priest in the temple,
"giving a forecast of the year ---- with the help of the newly
cast almanac, laying special stress on the agricultural
prospects." (150) Boys in great numbers attend the session
not for listening to the forecast but for the refreshments
that follow at the end of the discourse. Hie villagers
treating with herbs the injured eyes of the cattle and massag
ing the ailing bodies of men, are shot : by the novelist with
his sensitive camera of words. Certain other 'village
etiquettes' also find a place in the novel, e.g., Yalli asks
Velan: " Yal, is it not a sin to kiss before one is married?"
(135) We also read in the novel that^Mallan cannot marry,

while his eldest br'other, Gholan, remained unmarried." (91)

 163

Certain "beliefs' of the villagers are very useful in

the novel for the proper evocation of village sensibility.

The gullible villagers believe in the "note cancelling grass"

(25), which' they feel, is as efficacious as a talisman. The

evil eyes, the villagers believe, spoil green crops. Desirous

of a secret treasure- trove impoverished Velan wanders in

the burial ground whereby he can solve his fathers economic

difficulties. Telan explains to Yalli : "I know I am in the

grip of Saturn, and misery overtakes me wherever I go."(112)

The New Years Day,* according to the villagers, is decisive

since "the day's happenings, good or bad, were an index to

the tren$ of events throughout the rest of the year." (138)

The villagers are fatalists. They says "Birth and Death sire
the Lord's decree. Who can go against His will?;,(276)

The 'rustic idiom' is made use of here and there but

not with the conscious purpose of an experimentation with

language. The novelist uses some Tamil words probably to

create regional sensibility, e.g., cholam (maize), shandy

(market place), "kangani (labour) and palli (village). For

the creation of proper agrarian sensibility he usesnaming

terms like Potters farm, Snail farm, Solden crag, Heed bush,

Cane field, Strangler's pit and Big channel, which are

significant descriptive names of rural places and fields.

A similar experiment is done by Raja Rao in his Kanthapura. a

novel exactly contemporenous with the present one. Phrases

such as, "a.hundred head of cattle" (36) and "the first crow

of the cock" (47) help create agrarian atmosphere. The rustic

j
 164

imagery is moderately and aptly used. To quote a few

examples : wCoconut palms - shook their heads - like
women possessed ---- w (1); M----- There was also an aged coconut
palm ---- which swung out its head giraffelike (6); "Mayandi
had always the look of a hunted rabbit (14) and He is
a loafing pariah dog ---- (92).
To conclude, the novelist has portrayed the village
life in as plain a manner as possible. Without resorting to
high flown diction, the village life is photographed vividly
and sincerely. The countryside and the villagers are drawn
with the utmost degree of credulity. In the words of Prof.
Iyengarj J1 the essential simplicity, beauty and even nobility
of rural way of life are brought out with disarming sincerity
and power. In the literary history of the Indo-Anglian
fiction,the novel will be remembered as an authentic picture
of the South Indian village iife in the early thirties. The
novel is, indeed, a fascinating prose lyric* on rural life
like the earlier village panegyrics of Yehkataramani, viz.,
Murugan the Tiller and Kandan the Patriot. Being a conventional
eulogy on the traditional village life in India of the
pre-industrial era, the novel should not be weighed by any
other extra-literary criteria or concerns.

Humayun Kabir's Men and Rivers (1945) is another

'pure' village novel which tells the tale of Muslim domestic
life in a village on the riverside of the Padma in the
erstwhile Bast Bengal. The confrontation between man and

ttiffi. BAIA.V. :c t v * " KAK LliRAIT

CM1VAJI ua.vch^*i i. KULHAPWO.
 165

Nature in general, and man in particular, is the theme of the

novel. !Ehe novel deals with the loves and sorrows of the

pioneer farmers, who stake their lives in reclaiming land from

the river Padma, for cultivation. It has no other strands of

experience or affiliations, except %e depiction of pure agrarian

life on the riverside.

Ihe human drama is presented in terns of the relation-*

ship "between two peasant families s one, the family of Nazu Mia

of Eahimpur village and two, that of Asgar Mia of Dhuldi village,

"basically good friends, yet turned "bitter enemies. Nazu

marries Asgar's cousin Amina. Malek is Amina's son from Nazu.

After Malek's birth, she is divorced by Nazu and sent away.

Then, she marries Asgar to whom she bears a daughter, Nuru.

After Nazu's death, the child Malek is entrusted to Asgar.

Malek and Nuru, unawareoof their real relationship, fall in

love with each other and decide to marry. Meanwhile, Amina

dies, and it falls to the lot of Asgar to tell them the truth

that they are son and daughter of the same mother, Amina; and

hence they cannot marry. Disappointed, Malek quits Asgar's

house and goes away.

Fortunately, the novelist himself has statdd in his

preface that s
"Eiis is a simple story based on an ancient
legend of East Bengal. It poses no problems
nor attempts any solutions save those which
are as old as mankind. Men have loved and

.70
 166

suffered since the "beginning of time and

will do so for as long as we can perceive.
The endurance and fortitude of these
children of the soil have heroic proportions
--- India still lives in her villages and
to understand India, the world must learn
*58
to know her villages."-'

I, therefore, intend to study the novel as a tale of village

life, concentrating my attention on the various aspects of

village life as evoked in the novel.

The *physical features of the village are vividly

described. The novelist presents a realistic picture of

the fluvial culture* of Bengal. The rural life in last

Bengal is characterised "by the perennial presence of the

rivers' like the Padma, which are the arteries of the region.
The Padma is a "mighty river (5) notorious for her ; "power

and cruelty." (5). The river is a goddess and life-river,

and at the same time she is a devil and destroyer. In

Autumn, the river is quiet and placid. The Bengali peasants

love her "with almost a physical passion.!1 (6) Their^lives

are wedded to hers." (6) They cultivate plots of land on

her rich hanks. The land on her hanks is the veritable gold.

Rahim Baksh, the old peasant, tells lazu Mia:

"The soil is like gold. You can grow paddy

here and get crops that are beyond your
wildest dreams. In Winter you can grow
mustard and garlic," (7)

The golden soil' of Bengal is similarly praised in Bengali

literature by sevaral other writers like Tagore, Bahkim

 167

Chandra and Bhattacharya. The river hanks "yield a harvest

of gold." (40) The riverside of the Padma, a land of canals,

channels, crocodiles, fish and paddy, is precisely portrayed.

The dialogue between Asgar and Malek at the fag and of the

novel finely summarises the nature of the 'river-culture1 in

Bengal. Asgar's words express the eternal truth about it:

"We are men 0 f the river. We are peasants:

We build our homes on sand and the water
washes them away. We build again and again,
and we till the earth and bring the golden
harvest out of the waste land." (183)

The novelist does not forget the destructive aspect of the

river-culture. Especially in Baisakh and rains the rivers

are abnormal. The Padma with its "cross currents and eddies
and hidden sandbanks" (10) becomes dangerous. She becomes

like a hungry serpent who "swallows families and homesteads

beyond count." (104) Describing her ferocious nature, the

novelist writes : "Padma in Baisakh is hungry, and Padma in

the rains is angry, and Padma in the autumn is treacherous."(53)

The course of the river changes, deltas and islands are

formed, muddy mires are created, no area is safe from natural

calamities like storms, cyclones and floods. Human agencies

like robbers, pirates and sea-rovers become active and pose

a serious threat to human life in the villages. The 'island

villages* are often rendered inhabitable and tfee life of the

islanders becomes insecure. The Padma is, thus, depicted in

the novel as both a protective and destructive power.

 168

The rural Bengal* as seen in Summer is accurately-

shot by the novelist's sensitive camera. Let me reproduce,

for example, the following passage which portrays a drought -

a very common feature in the Indian countrysides

"It was the end of Baisakh. The hot sun

burnt in a copper sky - The earth
looked parched and thirsty. The grass
was burnt and the leaves on the trees
hung withered and brown." (52)

In another passage (page 120) a very severe drought is

described with utmost precision and reality.

Certain scenes from the story provide good material

for the comprehension of village life. A village bridge,*

*

for example, is a specimen of 'rustic engineering*. See,

how precisely the novelist describes it:

"There was still a channel of water

over this the villagers had put up a
bamboo bridge -- a precarious foothold
offered by one pole supported by posts
on either side." (99)

Another rural scene is interesting to note. A sick cow

as treated by the villagers is picturesquely described in

the following words:

"It lay on the ground with its feet tied.

Several men held it down while another man
sizzled its buttocks with a red hot iron.
It was lowing piteously and the noise
drowned the voices of men." (101)

The - writer's minute observation of rural life is evident

in his descriptions of tbe agrarian scenes. Malek gives an

 ( 16!)

uncommon and novel present to his beloved Nuru. To a

peasant,corn is everything even an ornament to offer to
his beloved. This romantic scene is, indeed, matchless in
fictional literature. The novelist describes it in the
following choicest words vocal of love-making in an agrarian
milieus
"Slowly he lifted up his hands and held before
Nuru a chain made of sheaves of corn. The
ripe corn shone like gold and cleverly he
had pleated them to look like a necklace of
seven strands." (135)
Such a fancy cannot strike a writer unless he has a firsthand
knowledge of the agrarian life and its sensibilities. Here is
a realistic description of a market place with a touch of
satire in its
"The 'hat* at Dhuldi was the centre of village
life for miles around. It was not only a
market place where farmers exchanged their
goods - It was a rendezvous where they met
weekly and discussed the hundred little things
' which make up village life. All stories,
scandals and gossip circulated from the centre.
They came back to it, mangified and distorted
almost beyond recognition. It is strange how
quickly news spreads in the villages : there
is no post, hardly any roads, and yet
things which happen in one corner reach the
remotest village almost in no time." (17)
The, gullibility1 and 'superstitious nature' of the
villagers are manifested through their actions. For example,
 170

a Hakim tells Nazu Mia who has killed a crocodile : I

can also use liver. It is well known that crocodile liver

increases strength and courage : it turns lily-livered

poltroons,into lion-hearted fighters." (20) Similarly, a

Faquir is a dominating figure in the village. In his hypnotic

afflatus he mesmerises the innocent villagers with his

'miraculous powers" (28); blesses barren women with fertility,

moneylenders with money, the aged with youth, offering than

ike,
"the elixir of life." (26) See, how^novelist describes this

with irony and cants

11-- some women took from him amulets

to win back the wandering affections of
their husbands or lovers. For everybody
the Faquir had a remedy," (27)

How a "buxom lass" (48), possessed by spirit, is set free from

it by a Faquir is superbly described:

"-- She is terrible to look at when the

spirit is on her. She shrieks and throws
herself upon the ground and kicks wildly
on all sides. The shrieks cease and she
begins to foam at the mouth. - A fire was
lit and the turmeric burnt under the girl's
nostrils -- with free hand, he whipped her
witih a short length of cord. The girl
regained her consciousness and began to
howl, "let me alone." The Faquir turned to
the company and said, 'It is the evil
spirit talking, but I will not let him
off till he leaves the girl for good.* He
continued beating the girl.---" (48-50)
 /

171
Some Muslim customs are effectively exploited by

the novelist for the evocation, of Muslim sensibility and

etiquettes. On learning that Fazu Mia has killed a crocodile,

Ayesha, the old mother, advises him : Allah be promised that

you are all safe. You must send Shirni to the Masjid, and
arrange a Milad Shariff -- n (16) The 'rain-invocation*

rite observed during the drohght days speaks of the peasants'

belief in the charity and kindness of the rain-god. One is

reminded here of similar scenes in Sudhin Ghose's novels.

Himself a Muslim, the novelist gives an authentic account

of Muslim life.

Rustic usage and agrarian imagery contribute to the

evocation of rural atmosphere. As the novel deals with Muslim

life in the village* several words evoking Muslim sensibility

are freely made use of it it, e.g., sftibhe kabah (dawn), tamasha,

shirni, matabbars (village council members), golmal and Hakim.

A purely Muslim simile is used in "Amina -- was beautiful

like a houri", (178) (a houri is a nymph of the Mohammedan

paradise). There is a wild life simile in the sentence, "Today

she (the river Padma) is tense like a tiger about to spring

upon its prey." (54) A riverside simile is found in the

sentence, "Sabu tossed his head and shook the water from his
hair and began to sport like a dolphin." (75)

To wind up the discussion we can say that the novelist

has given a sincere and authentic picture of a riverside

village in Bengal. The hostilities of the two Muslim families

on domestic account are convincingly described. The loves of

 112

Malek and Nuru, the village lovers, are befittingly described.

The vagaries of the Bengal riverside Nature are aptly record

ed. The river is a symbol of life j it creates, sustains,

changes and even destroys. 'In Bengal, the course of rural

life, like that of a Bengal river, never runs smooth. This

fact is illustrated in several scenes in the novel. The

fickle-minded river, Padma, finds a place of honour in the

novel. Spasmodic in nature, she is part and parcel of

Bengals life, and is as important as any other human

character. The tillers of the soil and dwellers of the huts

are sincerely drawn. The presentation of rural poverty,

ignorance, superstition, struggle is nowhere unrealistic or

fantastic. It is all true to life. The life of the Bengali

villagers on the riverside, fraught with hardships and risks,

is faithfully depicted. As the novelist states it in the

preface : "Checkmated, defeated and crushed man may be but

his spirit remains alive." And that is exemplified in a

villager like Asgar Mia who declares s "We build again and
again and we till the earth and bring the golden harvest out

of the waste land." (183) The rough and tumble of the life

of the riverside people is presented without any amplification

of the prevailing conditions.

The novelist has made his novel realistic by using

'local words of wisdom' in the speech of farmers and fishermen

who form the dominating sections of the population of rural

Bengal. The riverside sensibility is well expressed in the

 173

following preverb-1ike words of wisdom : "To go into the

water against a wounded crocodile is to court sure death" (14)

and "There is a great deal of difference between looking a

crocodile and killing it." (75) A fisherman's common sense

and knowledge of season and weather are expressed in sentences

like "We must make our catch before the sun leapt out of the

sea. Or.ce the sun has started to climb the sky, the fish

retires to the depths and will not come up again till evening,"
(156) A peasant's- common sense is also evident in the sentence,

"The season of storms is over and the wild ducks have started

to come." (39) Commenting on the novel, Prof. Iyengar aptly

writes:

"The filiations between man and nature -

the affinity and antipathy, the embrace:, and
the murderous struggle, the storm and the
calm are seen all over the novel.

Though artistically mediocre on account of the profusion of

local colour, Men and Rivers gives a faithful account of rural

Bengal. In its sincere presentation of pure rural life it

offers a parallel to Shankar Ram's The hove of Dust and

Venkataramani's Murugan the Tiller. And in depicting rural

Muslim life it is second only to D.F. Karaka's We Never Die

(I944) which precedes it just by one year. Men and Rivers

is, thus, a lucid tale of the rural Muslim life with authentic

'local colour' and universal appeal. It also recalls to our

foaind the more recent Chemmeen of Sivashankar Pillai, known

for its realistic depiction of the kinship between rural

Nature and rural man. The Marathi riverside novels by

 174

G.N. Dandekar, viz., Kuna Ekachi Bhraman Gatha. Purnamaichi

lekare and Pavanakathacha Lhondi deserve mention here since

they also unfailingly depict the riverside life in different

/r
regions of Maharashtra. It also reminds us of Hemingway's

The Old Man and the Sea. Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi^

George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss.which are matchless local

ouviaL
colour novels^with a fluvial setting. As The Tribune aptly

remarks:

"In this beautiful and moving novel there

are moments of sheer poetry, and the
sincere utterances of these sons of the
4-1
soil are from very life."

Raja Rao's Kant ha-pura (1938) is a tale of a typical

South Indian village in the Kara area of Mysore. The novel

is a saga of village life with a political bias. There is

no conventional hero or heroine in it. The village of

Kanthapura itself, with its presiding deity, Kenchamma, with

its life-giving river Himavathi, with its rustic topography,

/

crops, weeds, and diseases, with its characteristic superstitions

and customs is one of the main characters. The people of the

village, with Moorthy as the leading man, play their different

roles in the novel. Moorthy is the 'Gandhi-man' of the

village, under whose leadership the villagers offer non-violent

resistence and take up village uplift work. In depicting

Kanthapura, the novelist has presented to us a real India in

microcosm. What happens in Kanthapura is what happens

 175

everywhere in India which, in the main, comprises villages.

That &anthat)ura is a novel of village life is evident

even in its topographical details as given by the novelist.

The novel opens with a graphic description of the physical

features of Kanthapura:

"High on the Ghats is it, high up the

steep mountains and many a centre of
cardamom and coffee, rice and sugar cane.
Roads, narrow, dusty, rut-covered roads,
wind through the forests of teak and of
jack, of sandal and sal, and hanging over
bellowing gorges and leaping over elephant-
haunted valleys -- " (7)

In the beautiful valley of the river Bimavathi, the village

lies ''curled up like a child on its mother*s lap.* As the

novel opens we hear the grinding and rumbling of carts,

indicating the busy agrarian life:

"Cart after cart groans through the roads

of Kanthapura The slow-moving carts
begin to grind and rumble, and then the
long harsh monotony of the carts' axles
through the darkness." (7-8)

The hills, valleys and rivers, which form the setting of

the village, are most vividly depicted. like Hardy,Raja Rao

has given 'snapshots of Mature primarily in its relation

to the life of men and not merely to satisfy his love for

description. He has an eye for the details of Mature's

phenomena, which he presents with inimitable accuracy and

vividness. Mote,for example, the following passage:

 176

"--- From the byre comes the noise of the

calves sucking and the^itting sounds of
the wall-lizards, and from the Temple -
Square-Tamarind comes the evening clamour
> of the hanging bats. Suddenly a shooting
star sweeps across the sky between the
house-roof and the byre-roof ---- " (45)
It is said of Hardy by David Cecil that "he could realise the
different noises made by the wind when it blows through a
hollow, a heather and bare stones" and he could discriminate
equally precisely the "feel to the foot of path, of fern, of
heather." Raja Rao too, is unique in his precise yet
poetic depiction cf the outdoor rural life. Take, ibr
example, his description of the month of Vaisakh:
"In Vaisakh men plough the fields of Kanthapura.
The rains have come,' the fine, first-footing
rains that skip over the bronze mountains,
tiptoe the crags, and leaping into the valleys,
go splashing ----- and the coconuts and the
betel-nuts and the cardamom plants choke with
it and hiss back ---- and the cattle come running
home, their ears stretched back -" (157).
It is passages like this, evoking rural life in all its
concreteness, that give the novel its essential rurality# In
a predominantly rural novel, apart from the natural surround
ings, the camera must have its central focus on the village
itself. In Kanthapura. Raja Rao succeeds in presenting a real
village with its ninety or a hundred houses with a complex
structure of the socio-economic divisions. Note, for instance,
the following description:
 177

"Our village lad had four and twenty houses,

lot all were Mg like Postmaster Suryanarayana*s
double-storeyed house by the Temple Corner --
Our Patwari Nanjjundia had a veranda with two
rooms built on to the old house. He had even
put glass-panes to the windows, which even
Postmaster Suryanarayana could not boast of.
Then there were the Kannayya-House people,
who had a high veranda." (10-11)

The novelist goes on to describe the castewise quarters for

Brahmins, pariahs, potters, weavers and Sudras. The economic

distinctions between one villager and another are very

precisely*described : Post-master Suryanarayana has a "two-

storeyed house. (10) Patwari Nanjundia has "even put glass

panes to the windows." (10) Pock-marked Sidda has a real

'thoti* house "with a big veranda and a large roof." (13) The

thoti-house (inner courtyard) is a * symbol of status.* Thus,

the persons who stand out among the men and women of the

village are the moneyed people like Coffee-planter Ramayya and

Range Gowda, a veritable tiger with "the nine-beamed house."(l4)

The number of beams decides the social status of the house

owner. The sociological authenticity of the village as

depicted by Ra;ja Rao is, indeed, unquestionable.

Even a brief study of the names and nicknames of the

Kanthapurians is a thing of great interest. * The villagers

*

wear tell-tale nick-names, for it would be absurd for an

illiterate and insignificant villager to be known by his

initials like a white-collared man. So, some of the names

become descriptive : Waterfall Yenkamma, Nose-scq?tching

 178

Nanjjamma, front-house Akkamma, Husking Rangi, Bent-legged

Chandrayyaj Trumpet Lingayya, Pipe Rammayya, Jack-tree Tippa,

t

Cardamon-field Ramchandra, Temple Rangappa, Gold-tangle

Somanna and Corner-House Moorthy and so on. Even the th names

of places and fields are significant e.g., the Haunted-Taree

field, Bel-field, Tank-field, Big field, Big-tund field and

so on. There are places like Siva's Gorge, Menu Carg and

Gold-Mine Hill. The foregoing list shows that almost every

name has behind it some rural association or the other. The

names so qualified contribute greatly to the individualisation

s

of the village characters and places and also to the evocation

of proper rural sensibility. This brings to one's memory a

similar device of using qualifying names for the villagers,

employed by Shankar Ram in his The Love of Dust, by Sudhin

Ghose in his The Cradle of the Clouds and by Anand in his

The Road.

The main dramatis personae in the novel are portrayed

mainly in the political and social contexts. ;It is to be

noted that the characters are divided into two camps : the

rulers and the ruled. On the political plane, the British

rulers are depicted as oppressors and the Indians as the

oppressed. Moorthy is Gandhi's man, the leader of the non

violent movement in Eanthapura. The young village boy,

Moorthy, who leaves his college and ;joins the freedom-struggle

by :x>rganising the villagers, is a representative of the

thousands' of young men from villages (as also from towns) who

gave up their studies, plunged into freedom-struggle and

courted arrest. No doubt, there is a good deal of idealisa

tion of Moorthy*s character, who is painted as the saint of

the villagfe. He is actually a 'mini-Gandhi* of the village.

His contact with the untouchables is decried by the orthodox

caste -Hindus. Even his ardent admirer, Hangamma, disapproves

of his visit to the 'pariah quarters* and tells him to change

his sacred thread for fear of sacrilege and his orthodox

mother, Narasamma, sneers at him, A village mother is reluctant

\

to give her daughter.in marriage to a 'pariah-mixer* (56) like

Moorthy. The villagers are afraid that the whole village will

be excommunicated because of this unholy act df Moorthy.

About this the whisper goes from house to house and the

villagers believe that Moorthy has taken to evil ways. It is

also believed that he has brought shame on his family and

contaminated the caste Hindus. The novelist has also very

realistically described the untouchable quarters, full of the

stench of the hide and the pickled pigs, where Moorthy dares

to step in for the uplift of the people. Actually, all the

section in the novel is centred round Moorthy. She three

strands of action-the political, the social and the religious,

that go to make up the design of the novel, are as if confluen-

ced in Moorthy. He leads not only thepolitical struggle but

also participates in the socio-religious activities in his

village. It is he who unearths the> 'half-sunken linga' from

the ground and consecrates it in the presence of the villagers.

He takes part in the festival of Goddess Kenehamma and the

observance of Shankar Jayanthi and Satyanarayan Pooja. He is

 180

generous, literal, serene, deferent and brahmanic. Some of

the villagers who support him in the freedom struggle oppose
<

him when he works as a^ social reformer. The cunning Bhatta

and the orthodox Swami work against his reformist plans. The
incident of Moorthy's visit to the pariah-quarters is very
faithfully drawn. The complex reactions of the villagers to
this act of his are realistically portrayed. His activities
are constantly described as 'Gandhi business,' and 'Gandhi
vagabondage.' ( 42 )
The other characters like Dore and Bade Khan, are also
convincingly drawn. Dore is an educated young man who
represents the'then intellectuals in the countryside. He
mocks at Moorthy's activities. Bade Khan, the policeman,
represents the 'servile loyalists.* He ruthlessly bosses
over the poor villagers: he is their master though he is a
servile dog* of the rulers. His character is best developed
in the 'Coffee-Estate episode* where he persecutes and tortures
the poor coolies on the Coffee-Estate. He is a symbol of
shameless servility and souless bureaucracy made visibly
repulsive. He represents the selfish Indians in the pre-independ
ence period. To the admirers of Moorthy he is Just a 'boar
before a lion.* or a '-jackal before an elephant.' (84) We
have, probably, in the character of Bade Khan, a reference to
the British rulers' 'divide-and-rule policy,' according to
which the British tried to control the Hindus through the
pampered Muslim officials. 'There is, then, Zamindar and
pseudo-priest Bhatta, the symbol of usury, orthodoxy and
 181

selfishness. He goes on adding peasants* "lands to his own

domain, though he begins his life "with a loin-cloth at his

waist, and a copper pot in his hand." (35) His "oily

-calender" and his "learned calculations on his agile fingers"

(35) bring him big fortunes. He leaves no opportunity to

cheat the gullible villagers. "Money meant Bhatta -- with

his smiles and his holy ashes, we said he would one day own
the whole village." (35) Bhatta even actively works against

Moorthy by ganging up with Tenkamma and the policeman, Bade

Khan. He goes to the shrine of Kashi to wash off his sins

0
and earn salvation. This cunning fox has his moments of

magnanimity, too. He sends the Fig-Tree House Ramu to the

city for studies. Why should he have done that? He says !

"If you will bring a name to Kanthapura ---

that is my only recompense. And if by
Kenchamma*s grace you get rich you will
think of this poor Bhatta and send him the
money with no interest, of course - for I
have given it in the name of God." (41)

This is an excellent example of the novelist*s objective

outlook towards all his characters. There is, then, the

vigorous peasant chief of the village, Patel Range Gowda,

wedded to the soil. He is a Tiger* to the authorities. "But

then, you know, the Tiger, his words were law in our village.
a

If the patel says it even a coconut-leaf roof will become

a gold roof." (14) He is all-in-all in the village!

"When Range Gowda says 'Yes,* you will have

elephants ard howdahs and processions. If
 Range Gowda says No, you can eat the
hitter neem leaves and lie hy the city
gates, licked hy the curs." (100)

Being co-operative hy nature, Range Gowda upholds the work

undertaken hy Moorthy and proposes Moorthy for the President

ship of the village Panchayat. Some one else proposes Range

Gowda for the Vice-Presidentship. "Every Rama needs - a

Hanuman" (111) and Seen is another member. In his rugged,

rough and rustic manner Range Gowda shouts to the villagers :

"If you are the sons of your fathers, stand up and do what
this learned hoy says." (110) The Brahmin is the spiritual

head of the village community hut in mundane affairs Patel '

Range Gowda*s word is Law. Several other villagers are

described with precision. There is the *village virago,* Water

fall Venkamma, who roars "day and night against Rangamma."(11)

She even speaks of mixing lizard-poison into the food of her

foes. The novelist also mentions at the fag end of the novel

Concubine Chinna who "still remains in Kanthapura to lift her

leg to her new customers." (258) The dramatis personae in the

novel include many more persons. The novelist describes the

poor villagers working as coolies on the Coffee-Estates, who

are not different from other poor villagers. The harrowing

tale of the "half naked, starving, spitting, weeping --

coolies" (67) is touchingly told in the Coffee-Estate episode.

The villagers are portrayed as they ares they are not depicted

as epitomes of virtues nor are they condemned as useless

creatures. It is obvious that the writer has a first-hand

\ ,
knowledge of the villagers hence he can draw their pcaciraits
 183

realistically. There is an unprecedented novelty in the

portrayal of the villagers and the village life, which we
rarely come across in the Indian fiction. And as Prof. C.D.
Harasimhaiah rightly remarks, "this novelty is not an invention
of the novelists, it is there in the village, has always been
there, in this land of villages." Some critics like T.D.
Brunton accuse Raja Rao of crowding the novel with innumerable
characters. That is,why, after stating that Moorthy is the
only focal character in the novel, Brunton writes; "The result
is that a medley of village folk are briefly characterised,
most of them are little more than namesV^ Whatever the
importance of these characters in the total drama of the novel,
so far as the evocation of the rural atmosphere is concerned
they all greatly contribute to it. Incidentally, Brunton does
not realise that the names themselves are individualising
agents in the novel. The typical characteristics of the
villagers, their love-hate relationships, their strong and weak
points are drawn to the last degree of authenticity. The
portraits of the villagers are not merely like-life* but
true to life, to use Scott-Jamess expressions. 45
Tillage life in India is never complete without the
presence of a God or a Goddess. Sometimes their number multi
plies. In Kanthapura, Goddess Kenchamma is installed in a
temple right in its centre. Eenchamma is the red coloured*
goddess Durga. A river, a hill and a temple with the presiding
deity in it complete the picture of the village. The Goddess
is the protector, the life and breath of the village. She
 184

gives meaning to every activity of the villagers and is a

witness to all affairs in the village birth, death,
marriage, funeral, sickness, ploughing and harvesting and
what not. Vows are made to her. Oaths are taken in her
presence. She protects the villagers through famine and
disease. Is Laxmi Holmstrom precisely puts it, "Kenchamma,
the village deity, represents the stability of the village
community.*1* The villagers offer her their first rice and
first fruit. There is a folk song sung in honour of the
Goddess, which reveals as to what Kenchamma means to the
villagers:
"Kenchamma, Kenchamma, Goddess benign
and bounteous,
Mother of Earth, blood of life,
Harvest queen, rain crowned,
Kenchamma,---- " (10)
The novelist's sympathy for the peasant's faith in gods and
goddesses is evident in this episode. Other local goddesses
like Talassanamma and Kanthapurishwari are mentioned in the
novel. The deities are indispensable to an Indian village.
Even their Jurisdiqtions are fixed. Kenchamma's domain is
Kanthapura: she cannot cross the limits of that village.
Goddess Talassanamma protects Talassana : she does not dabble
in the former's Jurisdiction. The Goddesses, however, are not
related to great world forces but to such simple facts as
rural diseases of men and cattle. They are fond of worship
and expect vows and libations from the villagers. Religion
 185

has a firm hold on the Indian villagers' minds. The villagers

observe Shankar Jayanthi and listen to the recital of Harika-
thas and celebrate the festivals of Krishna dna and Ganesh. In
the early part of the novel,this religions fervonr of the
villagers and their faith and piety are described with sincerity
and feeling.
The evocation of village life is accomplished, apart
from the interrelation of theme and characters, through means
like the descriptions of festivals, ceremonies, social customs,
superstitions and the use of rustic idiom. Various ceremonies
and rituals, such as hair-cutting, rice-eating, wedding,
consecration and the seventh-month ceremony ----- find a place
in the novel. The description of the festival of lights in
Kartika is superb. And, therefore, it is worth-quoting:
- "Kartika has come to Kanthapura---- with the
glow of lights and the unpressed footsteps
of the wandering gods ---- lights that glow
from the bowers of entrance leaves; lights
that glow from banana-trunks and mango-
twigs ---- Kartika is the month of the gods -
lights, sisters." (118)
The festivity and gaiety of village life are,thus, matchlessly
evoked ,
|here. The light of Gauri is most poetically described. This
shows how the villagers cling to their age-old faiths for
succour and relief.
Beliefs and superstitions' govern the sensitive minds of
the Kanthapurians. Here are some examples of typical South
Indian superstitions. There is a scene in which the measures
 186

of corn are counted as "Thres-Hm-Four. Hum-Five," and

because of the superstition which forbids the mention of
six, it becomes "Gods extra." (31) Moorthys horoscope
does not agree with that of the daughter of Ramayya and hence
the bride*s party gets disheartened. With the appearanceo#?***eagle?
ploughing commences in the village. The clucking of the
wall-lizards indicates propitiousness. On seeing a shooting
star sweeping across the sky, the villagers say : "Some good
soul has left the earth, (45) When somebody is attacked by
Malaria, tearing a rag from ones sari-fringe, putting into
it a three-pice bit, a little rice and an areca nut, and hanging
it to the roof of the house, eradicates the disease. Chennayyas
Dassappa dies of a cobra-bite in spite of his firm belief that
he would never die of it as he has "the eagle-mark on his hand.
(74) Before tilling the earth the "peasants throw handfuls
of puffed rice in the eight directions for warding off evil
and for a good harvest, (158)
Ttfeough the use of the rustic idiom* a flavour of
rurality is captured. There are similes, comparisons and
vituperative terms which smell of the agrarian soil and culture.
Fine agrarian imagery is seen in s "When Dasi comes to the bar
she is as hale as a first-calved cow" (141); "Warasamma was
growing thin as a bamboo and shrivelled like a banana" (65)$
and "as for water-snakes,---- they are as long as they are
silly, like the tongues of our village hussies." (72) The
idiom and rhythm of the regional language are sometimes
reflected in the novel s "when her sari fell over her shoulders
 m
and bared her 'bodice" (49) and "I didn't tie my daughter to

the neck of a pariah-mixer" (56) Phrases like "a cock does

not make a morning," "crush it in the seed" and "a cat has

begun to take to asceticism" (91) show the impact of regional

speech. The influence is evident in names of endearment, such

as Seetharamu and Moorthappa. Sometimes vulgarity creeps into

the villagers' speech. Abusive words and expressions like

, "you son of my concubine" (121) and "you rat of a woman" (158)

are freely used. Sentences like "concubine Chinna still

remains in Kanthapura to lift her leg to her new customers"

(258) sound vulgar but are, undoubtedly, effective in the

evocation of proper rustic atmosphere.

Here is a distinctive village sensibility (a peasant

sensibility, to be precise) expressed in a foreign medium.

The words are English but the organisation of the material is

Indian and the novelist lias to organise both life-experience

and expression, himself. To express the Indian rural sensibility

through English is, indeed, no easy a task, but Raja Rao has

accomplished it successfully through subtle nuances of

language. As Bhattacharya's EngLish succeeds in recreating

the Bengali rural rhythm, so does Raja Rao's English effectively

create the regional reality of the South. Raja Rao seldom

uses Kannada words but he makes an effective use of Kannada

analogies, adages and idioms. Images and metaphors are his

natural modes of expression, and they happen to touch upon

objects and experience that are distinctively rural and agrarian.

As Dr. S.K. Desai very rightly puts it, "Kanthapura is, from

9
 188

the point of view of language, the outcome of a conscious

programme of experimentation9 and Raja Rao's main strategy

consists in creating new words, idioms, expressions and rhythms

etc. Min keeping with the language of the people"

47 whom he

chooses to depict in his novel.

Kanthapura is not merely a political novel; for the

three distinct stands of experience in it - the political , the

religious and the social - are so dovetailed into one another

that it presents to the reader a realistic picture of an

Indian village of the pre-independence period. C.P. Verghese

rightly observes s

"Since the action is set in a village, the

novel is also an easily -- recognisable
village novel and has affinities with those
novels that record the changeless, yet ever-
shifting spectrum that is Indian village life.
Ihe description of the village - its physical
features and separate quarters for those
belonging to different castes and profession's
and the day to day life of the villagers
with monotonous events of planting, harvesting
and marrying, and occasional celebrations of
festivals allaying the even tenor of their
life is quite realistic. But this realism
is not of a literal kind. Raja Rao's own
emotional attitude to the people, his love
and admiration for the Indian tradition and
his admirable use of the people's beliefs in
the novel, transmute this realism."^

What Mr. Terghese rightly points out is that in Kanthapura

there is no 'literal realism' like the kind of realism we find

 189

in Emil Zola's novels, "but there is 'poetic realism' which

we often get in the novels of D.H, Lawrence or Hardy. It is

Raja Rao's poetic realism that succeeds in giving the 'feel*

of the village life and not its 'hare details.' I don't

think there is any other Indian novel in English which presents

so graphically and 'poetically* the village life in all its

complexity and richness. Unlike Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao

does not make his novel an instrument of social or political

i

propaganda. It is an effective piece of artistic creation

depicting a village with all its 'local colour add spirit.'

Prof. Iyengar very rightly describes the village in these

words;

"A village, a picturesque region, an epoch

of social and political change, a whole complex
of character and motive, reason and superstition
-- all spring up before our eyes demanding
recognition and acceptance : it is almost a
tour de force.
m B* ~
In the 'loanword' to the novel Raja Rao writes a few lines of

explanations
i

"There is no village in India, however mean,

that has not a rich sthalapurana, or a
legendary history of its own'- One such
story from the contemporary annals of my
village I have tried to tell."

It is to be specially noted here that there is a rare combina

tion of objectivity and sympathy in Raja Rao's attitude.

 The speciality of the novel lies in the fact that

these annals of the village are sincerely recorded in it

in the chatty language of a Grand Mother who sees every

thing through the film of her memory. It is a unique Hhing

that we view everything from the Old Grannys point of view,

the camera being always placed in her. The few lapses

committed by the camera are hers, and the punctuations and

diversions made by her while narrating the story are in

accordance with her old age, failing memory, rustic environ

ment and culture. Further, the tempo of Indian village life

is infused into the English expression with success. This,

certainly, is not an easy task to do. "The telling has not

been easy," admits Raja Rao in his 'Foreward' to the novel,

and continues; "One has to convey in a language that is not

one's own the spirit that is one's own." T.D. Brunton,

however, points his accusing finger at the novel, saying;

"But the book is gravely flawed, and again,

I fear, largely due to a confused ambition
to create an 'Indian novel* -- Deppite its
laboured evocation of the busy bustle of
village life, Kanthapura lacks the analysis
and probing of human motives which is the
stuff of fiction."52

Bruton being an outsider has not, I think, grasped the human

motives etc., which an Indian reader can easily comprehened

because of his familiarity with the 'Sthos' present in the

novel. ' What is opaque to a foreigner like Brunton is.quite

transparent to an Indian critic like C.D. Narasimhaiah who

 191

correctly grasps the human motives etc. in the novel and

admires it in these words:

"I do not know how village life gets expressed

in our regional languages hut I do know I can't
cite another authentic account of village life
among novels written in English language."53

Similarly, a perceptive critic like William Walsh'very

correctly finds Kanthauura "dense with the actualities of

54
village existence" and admires its unmistakably focus on

Indian rural life.

Khushwant Singh's grain to Pakistan (1956) is another

'pure' rural novel with a political bias, projecting a picture

of the partition tragedy enacted in a village in the Punjab

on the Indo-Pak border on the banks of the river Sutlej. It

is a tragic tale of the unforeseen and sudden disruption of

the placid village of Mano Majra on account of the communal

flare-up. It is a story of love, hate, anger, revenge and

blood-shed. It is the summer of 1947. She frontier between

India and Pakistan becomes a scene of rioting and blood-shed.

But the village of Mano Majra, where Sikhs and Muslims bare
it
always lived peacefully together, 'partion* does not mean much,

life is regulated by the trains which rattle across the nearby

river-bridge. Then a local money-lender is murdered. A -train

comes over the bridge at an unusual hour, filled with massacred

Muslims. When, some days later, another train crosses the

frontier bridge, this time bearing dead Sikhs, the village

turns into a battle-field.

Shis brutally realistic story of

 .192

violence has personal strands in the love-episodes of Juggut

Singh (Jugga), a supposedly had character, who is in love
with a village helle, Hooran, the daughter of a Muslim weaver,
When the Muslims of the peaceful Mano Ma#ra are to he evacu
ated to Pakistan, the Sikhs plan to sabotage the train so
that it is swept into the waters of the Sutlej. But in the
nick of time, Jugga saves their lives hy making a fiasco of
the Sikhs' plan. He redeems himself hy saving the Muslims'
lives with the hope that his sweet-heart Nooran might he
saved. Even the old rake, magistrate Hukum Chand, is not
devoid of feeling for Haseena, who is also to travel hy the
train. The Sikh Guru and the Muslim Maulana try to establish
peace and communal harmony even during the atrocities.
The topography and the social structure of Mano Majra
are typically Punjabi. The tiny village is blessed hy the
Sutlej with its perennial flow of water. There is a small
railway station near the village, and the Sutlej is spanned
hy a railway bridge. Describing the topography of the village,
the novelist writes:
"Mano Majra is a tiny place. It has only three
brick buildings, one of which is the home of the
money-lender Bala Earn Bal. . The other two are the
Sikh temple and the mosque. The three brick
buildings enclose a triangular common with a large
peepul tree in the middle. The rest of the
village is a cluster of flat-roofed mud huts
and two-walled countyards, which front on narrow
lanes that radiate from the centre. Soon the
lanes dwindle into footpaths and get lost in the
 J 93

surrounding fields. At the western end of the

village there is a pond ringed round by keekar
trees." (2)
Further, describing the social composition of the village, the
novelist writess
"(There are only about seventy families in Mano
Majra, and Lala Ham's is the only Hindu family.
(Che others are Sikhs or Muslims, about equal
in number. She Sikhs own all the land around
the village; the Muslims are tenants and share
the tilling with the owners. (There are a few
families of sweepers whose religion is uncertain.
(Che Muslims cl&rm them as their own Sometimes
they visit the Sikh temple, too. A small colony
of shopkeepers and hawkers has, grown up around
the station to supply travellers withi food, betel
leaves ---- sweetmeats." (2-3)
(Che daily routine of Mano Majrans is shot by the novelist's
camera in the following passages :
"By the time the 10.30 morning passanger train
from Delhi comes in, life in Mano Majra has
settled down to its dull daily routine. Men
are in the fields. Women are busy with their
daily chores. Children are out grazing cattle
by the river. Persian wheels squeak and groan
as bullocks go round and round, prodded on by
curses and the jabs of goads in their hindquarters.
Sparrows fly about the roofs, trailing straw in
their beaks. Pye-dogs seek the shade of the
long mud walls. Bats settle their arguments, fold
their wings, and suspend themselves in sleep."(4)
And when the midday goes by :
"Mano Majra stops to rest. Men and children come
 J 94

home for dinner and the siesta hour. When they

have eaten, the men gather in. the shade of the
peepul tree and ait on the wooden platfcms and
talk and doze. Boys ride their buffaloes into
the pond, jump off their hacks, and splash shout
in the muddy water. Girls play under the trees.
Women rub clarified butter into each other*s hair,
pick lice from their children*s heads, and discuss
births, marriages and deaths.1* (4)

And when the evening passanger from Lahore comes in s

The cattle are founded up and driven bade home

The women cook the evening meal, they eat
their supper -- sip hot creamy milk -- and idle
away the time until the signal for sleep. Life
in Mano Majra is stilled, save for the dogs barking
at the trains that pass in the night. ** (6)
I*.

The agrarian and bucolic life of the placid Mano Majra village

is portrayed with utmost realism and precision. The village

that emerges from the novelist*s pen is not a mere body with

local colour but a living protagonist. Villages in general

in India are symbols of peaceful and still life. As Prof.

Iyengar rightly says, "there are tens of thousands of villages

like Mano Majra where the law has always been peaceful
cc
co-existence."

But as irony would have it, the still life of the village

is totally distupted by some unforeseen incidents. One heavy

night in the August of 1947, the village is attacked by

professional robbers, dacoits. The money-lender, Lala Ram Lai,

is killed by them and Juggut Singh is declared as the murderer.

When the dacoits go away with the booty, they throw bangles
 .19$

over the wall into Juggut Singh's house as a taunt

for his not having joined the looters' gang that ni^it.
Juggut, as we know from the stoifcy, is busy'in love-making
, /

with the Muslim girl Nooran, and hence he is least interested

in looting and robbing. The placidity of the village is, thus,
broken by dacoity, murder and romance. And as bad luck would
have it, all these become a prelude to the great massacre that,
takes place on account of India's partition. One day a train
load of corpses from Pakistan crosses the railway bridge,
refugees pour in and a ruthless slaughter goes on. The Sikhs
retaliate and the tragedy worsens. The peaceful life of the
villagers recedes back when the communal virus infects the
villagers. Old roots of love are destroyed and revenge be
comes the passion of the day. The novelist depicts the scenes
of rioting and bloodshed with brutal realism. Note, for instance,
the following passages describing the village life torn with
violence : "Muslims hear the news of gentlewomen having their
veils taken off, being stripped and marched down crowded streets
to be raped in the market place." (105) And, similarly, Sikh
refugees tell of "women jumping into wells and burning them
selves rather than fall into the hands of Muslims." (106)
Those who do not commit suicide are "paraded naked in the
streets, raped in public and then murdered." (106) The gross
ness, ghastliness and brutality of the rioters is portrayed
with terrific realism in passages on pages 105, 106, 124, 125,
131, 140, 155 etc. of the novel. A newly wedded bridge, for
instance, is "shown her husband completely naked. They held
 .196

Mm by the arms and legs and one man cut -off his penis and
gave it to her. (155) Khushwant Singh thus presents Mano

Majra as a microcosm of communal temper of the rural India

of the partition days. His objectivity is seen in his portra

yals of the characters like Imam Baksh, the Mulla, and Meet

Singh, the Sikh priest, who are symbols of goodness, kindness

/

and mercy. Even in the stormy days of riots,they try to re

concile the rioting parties and establish peace, harmony and

love. In a passage on page 110, the Mulla and the Sikh priest

are seen clasping each other in their arms and sobbing and

weeping over the tragedy. Even the hero^Juggut Singh, the

budmash in the blacklist of the police, becomes almost noble

by his last alct of self-sacrifice wheh he saves from the Sikh

avengers the precious lives of the migrating Muslims in the

train by which his sweet heart Hooran also is leaving. And

also the heartless Hukum Ghand is seen full of the milk of

kindness in his love towards the Muslim girl Haseena. love

knows no barriers of community of country! The noselist is

nowhere seen, being carried away by prejudice or passion. His

is an absolutely objective documentation of .the social life in

India. To quote an example of his sardonic wits "India is

constipated with a lot of humbug. Take religion. Por the

Hindu, it means little besides caste and cow-protection. Por

the Muslim, circumcision and kosher meat. Por the Sikh, long
hair and hatred of the Muslims -" (149)

Khushwant Singh*s ability to create rural atmosphere is

beyond question. Though he does not make a parade of social

 197

customs, religious rituals and supertions, we get some

glimpses of the socio-religious life in the novel. Note,

for instance, the religiosity of the villagers : " there

is one object that all Mano Majrans venerate. This is

a three-foot slab of sandstone that stands upright under a

keekar tree beside the pond. It is the local deity, the deo

to which .all the villagers - Hindu, Sikh, Muslim or Pseudo-

Ghristian - repair secretly whenever they are in special need

of blessing. (2) The superstitious nature- of the villagers

is revealed in some scenes 5 There was no rain. People began

to say that God was punishing them for their sins (1).

Though.the novelist does not make a display of rustic

idiom, sporadic snapshots of outdoor and agrarian rural life

are really superb. See, for instance, the graphic descrip

tion of the advent of monsoon :

'With the monsoon the tempo of life and death

increases. Almost overnight grass begins to grow
and leaf-less trees turn green. Snakes, centipades
and scorpions are born out of nothing. The gcound
is strewn v/ith earthworms, lady birds and tiny
frogs. - Geckos dart about filling themselves
with insects -- " (81)

We get a graphic description of the flooded Sutlaj on page 121

Apt agrarian imagery is sporadically found in the novel.

Tillage life is not necessarily devoid of romance.* When

Jugga takes Nooran down him,she utters : "That is all you want.

And you get it. iZ You are just a peasant. Always wanting
to sow your seed. (13) Jugga-No0ran lovemakimg is described

with a rural simile : "Then he slipped his arms under her

 198

waist and legs kicking about like a crab. " (11) Describ

ing a Punjabi peasant's poor paraphernalia, the novelist,

writes : "A Panjabi peasant's baggage consists of little besi

des a change of clothes, a quilt and a pillow, a couple of

pitchers, cooking utensils, and perhaps a brass plate and a

copper tumbler or two. All that can be put on the only piece
of furniture they possess - a charpoy." (116)

Thus, the whole of the novel throbs with life. As Eaji

Narasimhan rightly observes $ "His (novelist's) accounts of

Sikh life in the Punjab villages are true to life and photo-
56
graphic." (Therefore, C.P. Yerghese's queer remarks that

Khushwant Singh's novels "do not rise far above the standard of
57'
sensational journalism" do not hold good at least with

reference to this classic saga of rural life. All the chara

cters are convincing. Among several others, the character of

the tragic hero7 Jugga,deserves a special mention here Mr its

artistic finesse. As Prof. Shahane rightly puts it i "(Che

frontispiece of the evergreen edition depicts Jugga, the uneou

th, amoral, strong man of rural Punjab against the setting of

people fighting among themselvesJ "Train to Pakistan", as

Prof. Shahane rightly says, "is the finest realistic novel in

the post-second world war Indo-Anglian fiction."*^ The novel

r^Lnds us of similar scenes in Malgohkar's A Bend in the Ganges

and Karaka's We lever Die. In its authenticity of village life

and artistic presentment of the theme,the novel is second only

to Raja lao's Eanthanura and Malgonkar*s Combat of Shadows. Born

and raised for a time in his childhood in a Punjab village,

Khushwant Singh has produced this rural classic out of his

first-hand experiaice of village life. His words s_wMy

roots are in the dunghill of a tiny Indian village" v ace

literally justified by this novel. What we see in his Train

to Pakistan is not Anand*s righteous indignation or Bhatta-

charya*s social reformism or Haja Eao*s poetic vision but a

down-to-earth realism presented with lively spirit, effective

irony and sardonic wit. His village;Mano Ma jra?is not a mere

product of his novelistic imagination but a real, living

Indian village made more alive by the drama of partition,

VI
Prom the foregoing study of the 'pure* village novels,

the following conclusions may be drawn : Prom the point of

view of the writers* attitude* to village life, two opposite

attitudes are immediately noticed; one, the attitude of

admiration and idealisation and the other that of disapproval

and criticism, Por example, the traditional Indian village

life is admired in novels like Murugan the Tiller. The love of

Bust, Kanthanura and Men said Rivers and it is satirised for its

orthodoxy and old, moribund ways of life in novels like

The Tillage. The Hoad, A Goddess Named Gold, and Randan the

Patriot. Train to Pakistan shows a neutral attitude.

As we see in the rural novels, the romantic attitude is

historically the earlier attitude and the satiric-critical

attitude is of more recent origin and the latter reflects the

growing trend of modernisation and urbanisation that set in

with the 1940*s or so. The protagnnist Lai Singh in The Tillage.
 300

for example, hates the old ways of life, rebels against them
and aspires for new ones.
But one thing is certain that both the romantic and
the non-romantic novels present a good deal of realistic
rural life. As far as the geographical realism is concerned*
there is plenty of it : the placid village of Alavanti in
Murugan the Siller, the Akkur toddy-shop in Kandan the Patriot,
the village of Veeramangalam with its paddy fields and coconut
gardens in The love of Bust, the riverside of the Padma in
Men and Rivers and the agro-pastoral outskirts of landpur in
The Village. Kantkapura in Eanthanura. Sonamitti in A Goddess
Warned Sold and Mano Majra in grain to Pakistan - all possess
the idyllie splendour of the Indian countryside.' local col<?ur,
which is one of the chief characteristics of the rural fiction,
is to be found in abundance in all these novels, Ihe evocation
of village life is accomplished mainly through incidents, cha
racters, topography, customs, superstitions, rustic speech and
agrarian imagery.
It can be noted with interest that novelists like Baja
Rao, Anand, Bhattacharya, Yehkataramani, Shankar Ram, Khushwant
Singh and Eabir give an actual geographical location and name
to their villages. She relief configuration* of the Indian
village that we get in these novels is,undoutedly7true to life
and is thickly tinged with local colour,* However, in some
of these novels the nature's phenomena become so inseparably
assimilated with the life of the people that they come out as
alive as real human characters, e.g., the river Padma in
Men and Rivers and the hills surrounding Wandpur in
The Tillage remind us of the Egdon Heath in Hardy * s
 201

Return of the Native. Hie inter-dependence of man, animal

and plant is very convincingly drawn in the rural novels. Hie
living pictures of the mountains, hills, rivers, pastures and
animals in the rural novels go to invalidate the generalisation
of M.S. Derrett that "the world of nature does not occupy a
g|
large place in the Indian novel."'
Particularly, the socio-religious aspect of rural life
as presented in the novels merits our attention. Customs
(folkways), rituals and superstitions form an inextricable
part of the rural religious life. Hie villagers* religion,
as the sociologist, Prof. S.C. Dube, in his Indian Village
puts it, is
"a mixture of animism, animation and polytheism,
with the occasional appearance of monotheism
also. To these must be added a living faith
in spirits, ghosts, demons, witches and magic.
The complex of all these diverse factors
constitutes the picture of the supernatural
world as it is- understood by the people in the
r,62L
countryside."
Similarly, such calamities as famine, diseases, epidemics,
pestilences, premature deaths and failure of crops are taken
by the villagers to Indicate 'misfortune* and handiworK*
T
of maivolent supernatural forces. Such occurences are
invariably attributed to the w.mth of the various local gods
and goddesses. Thus, the 'supra-social* power of religion,
which results in building up a relationship between man and
some other higher power, has a very ineradicable impress on
the rural mind. Religiosity is at the basis of all this and
this has been very impressively exemplified in all these

village novels. It recalls to our mind the village deities

like Ambal in Murugan the Tiller. Kenehamma and Talasannamma

in Kanthaoura. Kali in The Road, the supernatural powers in

Men and Rivers, the superstitious belief in the efficacy of

the talisman in A Goddess Named Gold and the various customs

and superstitions as seen in all these novels. Village customs,

which sociologists like W.H. Sumner call by the names of

folkways* or *rural mores,* are realistically presented.

Whereas The Love of Dust and Men and Rivers faithfully describe

the traditional village customs and superstitions, The Village.

The Road and A Goddess Named Gold and Kanthamra present

i

the confrontation between the old and the new village mores

and faiths. Even the earliest novels, Murugan uhe Tiller and

Kandan the Patriot . present a clash of traditional and modem

customs and beliefs.

All these village novels present the old India as a

land of villages and economic backwardness, poverty, illiteracy

and ignorance, and they also present the resurgent India of

t

the eras of Gandhi and Eehru. We witness in them a constant

conflict between tradition and modernity. And being governed

by religious beliefs and rituals as well as enveloped in

superstition, the average Indian is shown to be reluctant to

63
accept revolutionary changes, as Dr. C.V. Venugopal points
out, (with reference to the shorter fiction in Indian English.)-

It is, indeed, not easy to render the feel of Indian

rural life in an alien medium. As Prof. V.Y. Kantak rightly

 203

observes,
"The difficulty is to find language
equivalents to convey those minutiae of
gesture and expression---- that unique
flavour of rural life or life of the small
towns where everything seems strangely
coloured by superstition and the ritual
of tradition."**

The use of rustic speech' and agrarian imagery' is very

*

effectively made in these novels. Anand's use of rustic

speech (though at times overdone) adds to the authenticity
of rural life. This has been rightly pointed out by Meenakshi
Mukherjee who also notes that "the Punjab peasantry with whom
Anand's best works deal does have a large repertoire of
swear-words in its ordinary conversation." His use of abusive
terms is really remarkable. Raja Rao's use of rural names with
qualifying adjectives and his experiments with narrative
technique are unique. The agrarian imagery as used by the
ruralists is really admirable. Similies and metaphors, axioms
and adages from rural life are effectively used. As Dr. S.K.
i

Desai rightly points out, Raja Rao has used in Kanthanura all
the 'strategies' and 'ways of experimentation' with English
possible for an Indian Writer, such as lexical^ syntactic^
phonological and graphological. Most of the writers have used,
more or less, the same strategies, at least in the presentation
of dialogues.
Indian novelists writing in English are comparatively
more successful with the themes of Village-city, East-West and
Industry which probably demand an intellectual concern, and

the intellectual concern goes well with English. It must

be admitted that the rpure7village novel* in English is not

outstanding, either in bulk or ih worth, except, of course,

ganthanura. and the fact becomes most evident when we compare

it with similar British or American novels or even with

similar novels in the Indian regional languages. It is probably

necessary to mention here a few of the novels from the above-

mentioned groups to emphasize the statement. As mentioned in

the beginning, compared to the rural novels in Indian languages,

the rural novels in Indo-Anglian literature are far behind

in the artistic, presentment of village life. There are, of

course, more reasons than one for this. The Indian language

writer has the advantage of having his own mother tongue as

the'medium of expression. Another reason for this is that

mostly a second rank genius has taken up writing in English:

the first-rate genius has always been operating through the

media of Indian languages. We hardly get a rural novel in

Indo-Anglian literature which stands comparison with Godan.

Karmabhumi and Premashram of Premchand (Hindi), Marali Mannige

of Shivaram garanth (Kannada), Pather Panchali of Y.

Bandopadhyaya (Bengali) or Banagarwadi of Y.D. Madagulkar

(Marathi). Again, when we compare the Indo-Anglian rural

novels with the English .and American rural novels we find that

the former are far inferior to the latter. When I say this,

I have in mind English novels, such as Our Village of Miss Mary

Russell Mitford, which.presents charming sketches of rural

 205

life; Cranford of Elizabeth. Gaskell', which realistically

depicts the life of the village spinsters in the village of
Cranford; Return of the Fative and The Voodlanders of Thomas
Hardy, which portray agricultural life in Wessex^ Gone to
Earth of Mary Webb, which portrays rural life with its
customs and superstitions and The lonely Plough of Constance
Holme, which presents pictures of agrarian life in Westmorland,
We also get parallels in the .American novels like Oldtown folks
and Poganuc People of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, which present
/
picturesque village scenes and characters; Peenhaven of Miss
Sarah Orne Jewett, which deals with farm-life and countryside
life in South America; Denvis Polks of Roland Robinson, which
superbly depicts the Chinese agrarian life. I would also like
to make a mention of the West Indian novelists like George
lamming, Mittelholzer and Jan Carew whose novels are "shot
through and through with the urgency of peasant life, "as the
i 67
commonwealth critic, William Walsh, describes them.
In conclusion, it can be said that the rural life as
projected in the Indo-Anglian novels is adequately varied and
vivid though not on par with that which we witness in the
novels written in Indian languages and in English and American
rural fiction. But the fact that the village as it figures in
these novels is a real Indian village and not a mere product
of the novelists' imagination is a matter of some solace.
The paucity of ^pure* village novels -1 in English may be
accounted for by saying that the genuine Indian rural novelist

/
 2 06

would naturally choose the medium of his mo thee-tongue rather

than that, of English. The very fact that a novelist chooses
English and not his mother-tongue to write a * rural novel'
implies that he has certain concerns other than the depiction
of 'pure' village life. This is borne out by the fact that
even those novels which, out of sheer necessity, were categoris
ed as 'pure* village novels, are, more or less, dominated by
social or political concerns. Even though we havetitted to
look at these novels as those focusing their attention on the
concreteness and complexity of village life, we find that the
concretness and complexity* is rather limited. We don't see
in these novels the poetic apprehension of a Hardy, or the
unsentimental realism of a Zola. In them we rarely find the
sweep and breadth of Pearl Buck's Good Earth, or the essential
dramatic intensity of Mary Webb's Gone to Earth. Though
Yenkataramani, Bhabani Bhattacharya and Anand portray their
villages with some degree of authenticity, we must confess that
they lack the vision to make their portrayal vibrant with
poetry and symbolism. Shankar Ram and Humayun Kabir have worked
on a minor key and produced simple, pretty, idyllic, romanticised
pictures which, though artistic, cannot compel admiration. The
only figure that stands out is Raja Rao, who, by sheer poetry,
manages no evoke the complex texture of the Indian village life.
Kanthapura is a unique little novel, a tour de force, the
success of which can never be'repeated, and it does succeed in
catching some of the essence and the rhythm of the Indian
 207

rural life. However, next to Raja Hao may be placed

E3iu.sh.want Singh, whose solitary rural novel, (Drain to Pakistan,
is another gripping saga of rural life. But the Indo-Anglian
novel still waits for a BlazaC-like or a Steinbeck-like or
a Pearl Buck - like novelist of rural India, capable of
presenting the rural life in all its width and dep^th, in all
its dimensions, physical, human and metaphysical.

N.
 208

Notes and References

1 A.R. Desai, Rural Sociology in India. Popular

Publication, Bombay, Fourth Edn., 1969, p.13.
2 As stated in the introduction, themes in the novels are
likely to intersect and overlap in the discuss
ion in the thesis since a certain thematic
type is found in many novels and one and the
same novel contains many themes. Murugan the
filler, for instance, is treated in the chapters
with the themes of pure village life, village-
city encounter and East-West encounter. This
will be a recurrent feature in the thesis.
3 This quotation is taken from the critical reviews
appended to the second Indian edition (Mylapore,
Madras, 1929) of the novel.
4 K.R. Srinivas.Iyengar, Indian Contribution to English
literature, Bombay, 1945, p.182.
5 K.R. Srinivas Iyengar, Indian Writing in English.
Asia Publishers, Bombay, Second Edn., 1973,
p.279.
6 Meenakshi Mukherjee, The Twice Born Fiction. Reinemann,
Delhi, 1971, p.193.
7 This quotation is taken from the critical reviews
appended to the second Indian edition (1929)
of he novel.
8 This quotation is taken from the critical reviews
appended to the second Indian edition (1929)
of the novel.
9 Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, p.279.
10 C.P. Yerghese, Problems of the Indian Creative Writer
in English. Somaiya Publishers, Bombay, 1971 *
p.118.
 209

11 Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, p.282.

12 Hie Lalu Singh Trilogy. is more fully discussed in
chapter V of -the thesis, as an example of
East-West encounter.
13 P.P. Meh^ta, Indo-Anglian Fiction : An Assessment..
Prakash Book Depot, Bareilly, U.P*, 1968, p.149#
14 Haydn Moore Williams, Studies in Modern Indian Fiction
in English. 71. I, Writers Workshop, Calcutta,
1973, p.42.
1'5 Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, p.347.
i

16 Maclver and Page, Society: An Introductory Analysis.

Macmillan, London, Reprinted 1971, p.197.
17 G.S. Balaram Gupta, Hie Artist as Humanist : A Study of
Mulk Ra.i Anand*s Piction. Thesis, Karnatak
University, Dharwar, 1969, p.140.
18 Alistair Niven, ' The_ LaluJDrilogy of Mulk Raj Anand1,
Readings in Commonwealth Literature. Ed. William
Walsh, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1973, p.12.
19 Marlene Eisher, 'Jfulk Raj Anand : The Novelist as
Novelist*, Pun.jah University Research Bulletin
(Arts). Vol. ITT, No.1, April 1973, pp.257-262.
20 M.K. Naik, Mulk Ra.i Anand. Arnold-Heinemann, Delhi,
1973, p.62.
21 Kai liNicholson, Social Problems in the Indo-Anglian and
Anglo-Indian Novel, Jaico Publishers, Bombay,
1972, p.47.
22 M.K. Naik, Mulk Ra.1 Anand. p.37.
23 Meenakshi Mukherjee, The Twice Born Piction. p.179.
24 O.P. Verghese, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj, Narayan and Others',
Indian Writing Today, Vol. Ill, No.1,
January-Mareh 1969, pp.31-32.
 210

25 G.S. Balaram Gupta, The Artist as Humanist, p.319.

26 Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, p.319.

27 William Walsh, Commonwealth Literature, O.U.P.,

London, 1973, p.7.

28 Iyengar, Indian Contribution to English Literature.p.189.

29 Eric Gill, In a Strange World. London, 1944, p.90.

30 Ram Sevak Singh, 'Bhabani Bhattacharya : A Novelist of

Dreamy Wisdom, The Banasthali,Patrika (Special
Number on Indo-English Literature), No.13,
July 1969, p.68.

31 K.R. Chandrasekharan, Bhabani Bhattacharya. Arnold-

Heinemann, Delhi, 1974, pp.100-103*

32 C.P. Verghese, Problems of the Indian Creative Writer in

English, p.122.

33 Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, p.418.

34 Bhabani Bhattacharya, 'Literature and Social Reality',

The Aryan Path. Vol. XXVI, No.9, September 1955.

35 Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, p.278.

36 Ibid, p.279.

37 Ibid. p,279.
gowifcciy
38 Humayun Kabir, Men and Rivers.Second Edn. 1947, Preface.

39 Ibid.

40 Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, p.480.

41 The Tribune (Quoted by P.P. Meh^ta in his Indo-Anglian
Elction : An Assessment, pp. 79-80)

42 David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist,.Constable and Co.,

London, Reprinted 1965, p.71.
a

43 C.D. Narasimhaiah, Ra.la Rao. Arnold-Heinemann, Delhi,

Undated, p.39
 211

44 T.D* Bruntyfon, India in Fiction : The Heritage of

Indianness*, Critical Essays on Indian Writing in
English, Ids. Haik, Desai, Amur, Karnatak Univer
sity, Dharwar, Revised-Idn., 1972, p.205.
45 Scott-James, Making of Literature. Seeker and Warburg,
London, 1970, p.373.
46 Laxmi Holmstrom, The Hovel of R.K. Narayan. Writers
Workshop, Calcutta, 1973, p.118.
47 Ed. S.K. Desai, Experimentation with Language in Indian
Writing in English -(Fiction). Shivaji University,
Kolhapur, 1974, pp. 6-7.
48 C.P.' Yerghese, Problems of the Indian Creative Writer
in English.no. 145-146.
49 Iyengar, Indian Writing in English. pa 392.
50 Raga Rao, Kanthapura. Hind Pocket Books, Delhi, Undated,
Foreward.

51. Ibid.
52 T.D. Brunton, Critical Essays on Indian Writing in
English, pp. 204-205.
53 O.D, Narasimhaiah, Ra.la Rao. p.39.
54 William Walsh, Commonwealth Literature, p.10.
55 Iyengar, Indian Writing in Ehglish. p.498.
56 3a;ji Harasimhan, Indian Literature. Yol. YI,Ho.2, 1963,
p82.
57 Yerghese, Problems of the Indian Creative Writer in
English, p.119.
58 Y.A* Shahane, 1Khushwant Singh : An Artist in Realism',
Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English.
p. 537..
59 Ibid., p. 333.
 m
60 An extract from Khushwant Singh.*s Address to Expo 1967
Auditorium, Montreal, Canada (Quoted from Prof,
V.A. Shahane's article on Kushwant Singh in
Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English.
p. 333).
61 M.E. Derrett, The Modern Indian Novel in English.: A
Comparative Approach. Brussels, 1966, p.166.
62 S.C, Dube, Indian Village. Allied Publishers, Bombay,
1967, p.68.
63 C.V, Venugopal, The Indian Short Story in English : A
Critical Study, Thesis, Karnatak University,
Dharwar, 1972, p,308,
64 V.T. Kantak, *The language of Indian Fiction in English',
Critical'Essays on Indian Writing in English, p.211
65 Meenakshi Mukherjee, The Twice Born Fiction. p,l77.
66 Ed, S.K, Desai, Experimentation ----- , Introduction
p. vi and text p, 15.
67 Villiam Wal3h, Commonwealth literature. p,56.