Novel Kanthapura

[Angelique Syria]

RajaRao was born on 8 November 1908 in Hassan, in the princely state of Mysore (now in Karnataka in South India) into a Kannada-speaking Brahmin family[3][4] and was the eldest of 9 siblings, with seven sisters and a brother named Yogeshwara Ananda. His father, H.V. Krishnaswamy, taught Kannada, the native language of Karnataka, and Mathematics at Nizam College in Hyderabad. His mother, Gauramma, was a homemaker who died when Raja Rao was 4 years old.[4]

Rao was educated at a Muslim school, the Madarsa-e-Aliya in Hyderabad. After matriculation in 1927, he studied for his degree at Nizam's College. Osmania University, where he became friend with Ahmed Ali. He began learning French. After graduating from the University of Madras, having majored in English and history, he won the Asiatic Scholarship of the Government of Hydrabad in 1929, for studying abroad.[citation needed]

Rao moved to the University of Montpellier in France. He studied French language and literature, and later at the Sorbonne in Paris, he explored the Indian influence on Irish literature. He married Camille Mouly, who taught French at Montpellier, in 1931. The marriage lasted until 1939. Later he depicted the breakdown of their marriage in The Serpent and the Rope. Rao published his first stories in French and English. In 1931 to 1932, he contributed four articles written in Kannada for Jaya Karnataka, an influential journal.[5]

Rao's involvement in the nationalist movement is reflected in his first two books. The novel Kanthapura (1938) was an account of the impact of Gandhi's teaching on nonviolent resistance against the British. Rao borrows the style and structure from Indian vernacular tales and folk-epics. He returned to the theme of Gandhism in the short story collection The Cow of the Barricades (1947). The Serpent and the Rope (1960) was written after a long silence, and dramatised the relationships between Indian and Western culture. The serpent in the title refers to illusion and the rope to reality.[6] Cat and Shakespeare (1965) was a metaphysical comedy that answered philosophical questions posed in the earlier novels.He had great respect for women, and once said, "Women is the Earth, air, ether, sound, women is the microcosm of the mind".[7]

Rao relocated to the United States and was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin from 1966 to 1986, when he retired as Emeritus Professor. Courses he taught included: Marxism to Gandhism; Mahayana Buddhism; Indian philosophy: The Upanishads; Indian philosophy: The Metaphysical Basis of the Male and Female Principle; and Razor's Edge.[8]

In 1965, he married Katherine Jones, an American stage actress. They had one son, Christopher Rama. In 1986, after his divorce from Katherine, Rao married his third wife, Susan Vaught, whom he met when she was a student at the University of Texas in the 1970s. In 1988 he received the prestigious International Neustadt Prize for Literature. In 1998 he published Gandhi's biography Great Indian Way: A Life of Mahatma Gandhi.

The 'Raja Rao Award for Literature' was created in Rao's honor, and with his permission, in the year 2000. It was established "to recognize writers and scholars who have made an out standing contribution to the Literature and Culture of the South Asian Diaspora."[11][12] The award was administered by the Samvad India Foundation, a nonprofit charitable trust named for the Sanskrit word for dialogue, which was established by Makarand Paranjape of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi to bestow the award and to promote education and cultural contributions to India and the South Asian diaspora.[11] No cash prize was attached to the award during its existence.[11] The Award was bestowed seven times between 2000 and 2009.

The inaugural recipient of the Award was K. S. Maniam of Malaysia, who was bestowed the award in 2000.[13][14] Other recipients were Yasmine Gooneratne of Sri Lanka,[15][16] Edwin Thumboo of Singapore,[17][18][19] Harsha V. Dehejia of Canada,[11][20] David Dabydeen of Guyana,[21][22] Varadaraja V. Raman of the United States,[23][24][25] and Vijay Mishra of Fiji.[26][27] Meenakshi Mukherjee, chair of the last awarding jury, died in 2009, and the award was discontinued that same year,[27] and has not since been bestowed.

Raja Rao's first and best-known novel, Kanthapura (1938), is the story of a south Indian village named Kanthapura. The novel is narrated in the form of a Sthala Purana by an old woman of the village, Achakka. Dominant castes like Brahmins are privileged to get the best region of the village, while lower castes such as Pariahs are marginalized. Despite this classist system, the village retains its long-cherished traditions of festivals in which all castes interact and the villagers are united. The village is believed to be protected by a local deity named Kenchamma.

Moorthy is then invited by Brahmin clerks at the Skeffington coffee estate to create an awareness of Gandhian teachings among the pariah coolies. When Moorthy arrives, he is beaten by the policeman Bade Khan, but the coolies stand up for Moorthy and beat Bade Khan - an action for which they are thrown out of the estate. Moorthy continues his fight against injustice and social inequality and becomes a staunch ally of Gandhi. Although he is depressed over violence at the estate, he takes responsibility and goes on a three-day fast and emerges morally elated. A unit of the independence committee is formed in Kanthapura, with office bearers vowing to follow Gandhi's teachings under Moorthy's leadership.

The British government accuses Moorthy of provoking the townspeople to inflict violence and arrests him. Though the committee is willing to pay his bail, Moorthy refuses their money. While Moorthy spends the next three months in prison, the women of Kanthapura take charge, forming a volunteer corps under Rangamma's leadership. Rangamma instills a sense of patriotism among the women by telling them stories of notable women from Indian history. They face police brutality, including assault and rape, when the village is attacked and burned. Upon Moorthy's release from prison, he has lost his faith in Gandhian principles as he sees most of the land of his village has been sold to city dwellers of Bombay and the village has changed beyond repair.

Kanthapura by Raja Rao incorporates postcolonial elements byportraying the impact of British colonial rule on Indian society and culture.The novel highlights themes of resistance, identity, and the struggle forindependence, showcasing the villagers' transformation under Gandhian influenceand the blending of traditional and modern values as they fight againstcolonial oppression.

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Postocolonial writings include those written during and after the colonialera. In particular, the works of authors who are writing after colonialismended in a particular world region often write about the late colonial yearsand the advent of independence. Along with nationalism and nationality, race,class, and gender are often primary themes, and many postcolonial authors writefrom a Marxist perspective.

Postcolonial writers often present protagonists who are drawn from thecolonized peoples. While many of them are indigenous to the area, Caribbeanwriters frequently present characters of African heritage; the charactersthemselves or their forebears may have been enslaved.

Conflicts between the colonizers and the colonized frequently dominate thenarrative, but the internal complications among colonized (often calledsubaltern) peoples are also addressed. These concerns include ongoing religiousand tribal conflicts or the ongoing legacy of racial inequality, such asdiscrimination against biracial and multiracial children. While generalsocio-political concerns are included, postcolonial fiction is usuallyconcerned with intimate, interpersonal relationships.

I think that Rao's work can be considered Postcolonial in a couple ofways. The first would be that while the work is written about a decadebefore India gains its independence, the focal point of the plot is a settingwhere colonial attitudes between ruler and ruled are fundamentallyquestioned. One of the ideas in Postcolonial literature is to bring outissues in the dynamics that exist between the social and political valences ofpower. Rao's work does that. Along those lines, I think that thework can be seen as Postcolonial because this questioning of social andpolitical power leads to a new conception of identity. The idea of who aperson is and what should be done are critical elements toPostcolonialism. Moorthy's presence in the village causes a questioningto the identity of the villagers and forces a change in how individuals theworld is seen. The women assuming action in the light of atrocitiescommitted would be representative of this. Postcolonialism literatureseeks to bring out a different condition of individuals who are living underone set of precepts, and Rao's work accomplishes this end.

Today, the authors write almost every time with their bias apparently scattered in pieces throughout the narrative and they are very optimistic about it. They think that readers want to know about our problems. Which is true, nonetheless. However, they forget all the times that readers also want to know their opinions about the possible solutions to the problem. However, these authors do not have anything to talk about the solutions as they openly narrate the same perspective that their characters do in their novels. Who needs an introduction to what are the public opinions of Arundhati Roy? Now, can we believe her to do a Raja Rao? Never!

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