Why Indian English literature owes a lot to Raja Rao's Kanthapura

Book: Kanthapura
Author: Raja Rao 
Publisher: Penguin (Modern Classics)
Pages: 241

If you were to ask the average Indian reader today whom they consider the pioneer of Indian writing in English, most answers would point to an author with the initials ‘CB’. If you were to ask a student of Indian English Literature, chances are that Raja Rao’s name would never come up as an answer. In fact, even for those who have heard of him, their engagement with his work is usually limited to hearing a passing mention in a ‘History of Indian English Literature’ class. It was the case with me. When I was asked to review a book written by Raja Rao, I remembered the name Kanthapura almost immediately, and the fact that it is widely considered as the first major Indian novel in English. I could not remember much else. The reason for sharing this anecdote here is to point out the realisation that came through that brief interaction – a lofty tag such as ‘the first major Indian English novel’ can often reduce a genuinely path-breaking work to a piece of historical trivia. It is exactly what justifies the need for the reissuance of works written during the colonial period, muck like Raja Rao’s Kanthapura.

The reader today may not be able to comprehend what’s so special about a slow-paced account of the Gandhian struggle in a casteist village in south India written in seemingly never-ending breathless sentences. There is a lot that Indian English literature owes to Raja Rao and Kanthapura, such as, for starters, delineating the process of conveying ‘the spirit that is one’s own’, in a language that is alien. Indeed, Kanthapura isn’t as much about its story, or its narrator Achakka, or its leading man Moorthy (who is often considered to be Raja Rao himself), as it is about making the language of the oppressor one’s own, and conveying through it the sights, sounds, smells, flavors and tempo of Indian life. It was therefore as much a vision document for the future of Indian writing, as it was an accurate account of life in an Indian village during the British era. That in itself is no mean feat.

If you ever read this book (which I highly recommend that you do), make sure you spend a few minutes absorbing the ideas in the brief author’s foreword, as it shows you carefully how everything about the book was chosen. The entire story recounted by Achakka, a narrator who witnesses everything without ever influencing anything, like the sutradhar in Indian theater, or writing the sentences in the style that they are written in the great epics of Indian mythology; everything about the way the book has been written successfully infuses Indian literary tradition into English writing. In many ways, young Moorthy’s struggle of introducing Gandhian philosophy to the conservative residents of his village who consider it sheer heresy, mirrors Rao’s own efforts to produce a work that is Indian at heart, despite writing in English and being miles away in Europe at the peak of the Nazi era. Though this was certainly not an easy task, as Rao himself admits in his foreword, that the Devdutt Patnaiks and Amish Tripathis of today are able to break sales records with their reinterpretations of the Indian epics, shows that the struggle was a successful one. 

At 214 pages, it may afford the impression of being a quick, single-sitting read, but that is hardly the case. The book doesn’t appear to try to entertain, or even inform. If anything, Kanthapura with its serpentine sentences, quaint vocabulary (‘banana libation’, ‘son of a concubine, and ‘sugar candy’ to name a few of my personal favorite words), and its tendency to consistently veer away from the plot, is a book that requires commitment on the part of the reader to finish. If you’re the kind who enjoys art that doesn’t dumb itself down for the ease of the consumer, Kanthapura is well worth the effort.

Paras Sharma is a mental health professional who leads iCALL - a telephone and email-based helpline operating out of Mumbai. He is also a founding member of Madness Mandali – an artist collective that produces unique and collaborative Indian art and literature projects.