Kantapura

by Raja Rao, Hartojo Andangdjaja (Translator)

Kantapura merupakan salah satu novel Raja Rao yang menjadi bukti keterlibatannya dalam gerakan nasionalis. Mengambil gaya penuturan epos klasik India, novel ini menceritakan gerakan kemerdekaan di Kantapura, sebuah dusun kecil dan terpencil di India Selatan. Gerakan kemerdekaan di desa itu dibangkitkan oleh pemuda bernama Moorthy yang pernah mendengar pidato Mahatma Gandhi dalam suatu rapat raksasa di kota. Digerakkan oleh semangat ajaran Gandhi, Moorthy kembali ke desanya untuk memimpin rakyat di sana. Pergerakan rakyat ini mendapat rintangan, bukan hanya dari imperialisme Inggris, tapi juga oleh sistem kasta, kepercayaan, kebudayaan lokal.

Genres: India, Fiction, Classics, Indian Literature, Historical Fiction, Literature, Post Colonial

286 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

Raja Rao (Kannada: ರಾಜ ರಾವ್) has long been recognised as "a major novelist of our age." His five earlier novels—Kanthapura (1932), The Serpent and the Rope (1960), The Cat and Shakespeare (1965), Comrade Kirillov (1976) and The Chessmaster and His Moves (1988)—and three collections of short stories—The Cow of the Barricades and Other Stories (1947), The Policeman and the Rose (1978) and On the Ganga Ghat (1989)—won wide and exceptional international acclaim.

Raja Rao was awarded the 1988 Neustadt International Prize for Literature which is given every two years to outstanding world writers. Earlier, The Serpent and the Rope won the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award, India's highest literary honour. More recently, Raja Rao was elected a Fellow of the Sahitya Akademi.

Born in Mysore in 1909, Raja Rao went to Europe at the age of nineteen, researching in literature at the University of Montpellier and at the Sorbonne. He wrote and published his first stories in French and English. After living in France for a number of years, Raja Rao moved to the US where he taught at the University of Austin, Texas.

Notable work(s):
Kanthapura (1938)
The Serpent and the Rope (1960)

Notable award(s):
Sahitya Akademi Award (1964)
Padma Bhushan (1969)
Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1988)
Padma Vibhushan (2007)

Reviews

[Prerna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book was like reading a bad translation of a text originally written in a regional language of India, except it was originally written in English and I know the unique grammatical style in the form of long running sentences (but not in the stream of consciousness style) was deliberate, a tribute to the oral storytelling legacy of India.

I keep wondering why so much of literature in India is about conflict and trauma, and mostly about conflict induced trauma. It's honestly hard reading Indian texts, it's like the author squeezed out every drop of emotion from a fabric previously heavy with it, into each word. It usually leaves me mentally exhausted. Call me a coward, but I specifically avoid stories about our struggle for independence. Because I know I'm going to be saturated, I know it will be an emotional burden. Call me unpatriotic, but I just cannot bear that boiling pot of collective rage, despair and helplessness. But thankfully, stories on the Indian independence struggle also always have a constant redemptive element: rebellion.

But you know, rebellion doesn't always mean victory. It's much more nuanced. You also have to read about people who devoted and lost their lives to the cause, without ever having seen the fruits of their struggle. The protagonist of this book, Moorthy, is one such tragic hero.

While I found the book mostly difficult to read and I often thought that story was being needlessly dragged, I greatly appreciate the author's authenticity, the various shades of Indian society represented (although sometimes subtle, there's an excellent commentary on and representation of the caste system throughout the book) and the depth of characterization.

We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our method of expression therefore has to be a dialect which will some day prove to be as distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American. Time alone will justify it.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!


Mala warned me that I’d be scratching my head. And it was lovely! But this ND editions provided sixty pages of helpful notes which reduced somewhat that head scratching. But not so much that there was no pleasure left!

The story is the common story of a rural village undergoing political change. But I’m not immediately certain that this kind of story is so common; in our current literary climate which so frequently features alienated individuals as protagonists. Here the community is the protagonist. And there are many individuals within this community. They become one in order to fight a violent colonial occupation. The novel is violent. Alone to experience how violent the practice of non-violence becomes, the violence which practitioners of non-violence must undergo, suffer, is reason enough to read this one.

Since we are in the realm of Gandhi here one is inevitably tempted to respond to the frequent, uninformed common wisdom that, Pacifism and non-violence and non-resistance may be good ideas, but they don’t work! And violence does? And further, today when everyone in the know knows that religion is the cause of violence, we again have to wonder about the most violent regimes of the twentieth century, the fact that they were all secular and that one of them survives into the twenty-first century, still ruling the world -- and compare with Gandhi’s own religiously grounded non-violent organization. It takes an army to resist violence! And it takes willful ignorance of the evidence to declare both the non-functioning of non-violence, and religion as the source of violence. Just look around, folks.

Prose? Our narrator, a village wise woman, cultural repository who indeed knows the village of Kanthapura inside and out, backwards and forwards, is a master of the run-on sentence, the breathlessness of it, and hers should be filed along with that set of aesthetically astounding descriptions of violence, and she can list a list right in along with those run-ons! This is how story telling is!

Tradition. From the article I link below, I learn that Raja Rao is among a trio of early writers of Indian fiction in English. The adoption of the language of the colonial occupiers cannot be a neutral fact, to my lights. But what I know about Indian fiction pre-Rushdie is nil. But we are in an excellent position, however, here on goodreads, being surrounded by so many excellent readers from India. Specifically, Mala tells me that, despite the opinion of the article linked below, Kanthapur is not Raja Rao’s best ; to be considered also she recommends, The Serpent and the Rope and The Chessmaster and His Moves. Sounds reasonable!

Read it for its prose, read it for its politics, read it as a history lesson, read it as a nice change from yet another boring writer-dude from NYC, read it as an important canonical work, read it for the pleasure of it, read it as a lesson in violence, read it to see another small corner of the world, read it because you will be cooking paneer dal of some kind tonight. Read it because it’s an excellent little novel.





___________


"India As Metaphysic?: Revisiting Raja Rao’s fiction"
By Kanishk Tharoor ;; 1 January 2015

"Raj Rao was the last of the canonical “founding fathers” of Indian English-language fiction to pass away. The triumvirate—which included RK Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand—were all born in the first decade of the twentieth century, and expired softly about a hundred years later. Their lives and careers bridged a century of enormous transformation in India. Wrestling the Indian experience into English, they set the stage for generations of writers who could inhabit the language without feeling out of place.

"With so many South Asians now twinkling in the firmament of English letters, it’s easy to forget how new such writing was at the time. Anand’s friend George Orwell described English-language Indian literature as a “strange phenomenon” and a “cultural curiosity.” He doubted that it would manage any lasting significance. “It is difficult to believe,” Orwell wrote, “that it has a literary future.”

"His position looks rather ridiculous given the successes of the last fifty years. English-language fiction has safely ensconced itself among India’s various literary traditions. It offers a deeply rutted path for younger writers to follow, bumping along. They no longer need to ask for the validation of Western publishers. The domestic market for Indian English fiction (whether highbrow or “mythological thriller”) is incomparably larger and more established than it was in Rao’s day. English is a natural medium for Indians to express their imaginations to each other, and not simply to readers in the West."
http://caravanmagazine.in/books/india...
[thanks to the complete review guy!]

[Vaidya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember driving along the road from K.R. Pet to Nagamangala and coming across a board that said Kanthapura. I knew this was going to be my next book.

I expected stories from around this place, of the Hassan belt, but Raja Rao's Kanthapura existed elsewhere - on the banks of the (fictional) Himavathy river, nearer Karwar, near Puttur and still walkable from the Cauvery. Like Malgudi, it is fictional.

Unlike R.K. Narayan's tales about a few people living in Malgudi, this is the tale of the town itself - its quiet ways, its characters, and then its non-violent uprising against British rule, the uprising being crushed, and the people having to abandon the town. There are no happy endings, just that life goes on, in a different place.

The language is poetic, and very literally translated from Kannada. There are the rhetorical - "The police are your uncle's sons?" and the more recognisable "I fall at your feet" (aD-bidde). But given that the narrator is an old woman, it fits. The names are also funny and accessible - Nose-digging Nanjamma, Waterfall Venkatamma, etc. There's also a fair degree of Magical Realism keeping in nature with being an old woman's recounting of actual happenings with some embellishments. The writing is more in line with regional writers like Shivaram Karanth, S.L. Bhyrappa and U.R. Ananathamurthy, and I mean that in a good way. Even though the language is English, the core stays firmly local.

Also, here's a review of Raja Rao's works by Kanishk Tharoor in the Caravan: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/books/i...

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather than being an outmoded novel with an immaculate linear edifice and compressed plot, Kanthapura follows the oral convention of Indian sthalapurana, or legendary history.

As Raja Rao explains in his original foreword, there is no village in India, however despicable, that has not an opulent mythical history of its own, in which some famed figure of myth or history has made an appearance.

In this way, the storyteller, venerates the past, keeps a native audience in touch with its lore and in so doing allows the past to intersperse with the present, the gods and heroes with ordinary mortals.

Set in the milieu of Gandhian national movement, the novel tells the story of how Gandhian Satyagraha movement took a South Indian village by storm.

The novel has three strands of action: a) politics, b) society and c) religion, which converge.

The political background of the novel needs no explanation, as the dominant theme of the novel is the Gandhian Satyagraha movement. The presence of Gandhi can be felt all through the novel, notwithstanding the fact that he does not make physical appearance. His numerous activities have been mentioned in the novel such as his famous Dandi March.

In the Gandhian struggle against the British rule, the villagers of Kanthapura get involved to such an amount that they keep track of his march and celebrate by their own march to picket the toddy shop. The social strand can be found in the novel in the connection with the community of the village.

The way the novel mentions the problem and discrimination of caste and how it divides the community into different sections is essentially social. In Moorthy's character both social and political strands converge.

All the three levels of action are unified when he starts organizing the common people in the name of religion for the political purposes.

With the Mahatma's political programme translated into the paraphernalia of worship as practised in the Hindu religion, the whole political action of Kanthapura, generated by an avatar, an embodiment, has to centre in a temple, the temple of Kanthapurishwari. The election of the Congress Committee is preceded by a god's procession and devotional song.

The aim of the Congress has to be explained with an offering of camphor and coconut to the gods. It is right in front of the gods in the temple that the very vow of spinning, practising non-violence (ahimsa) and of speaking the truth, is to be sworn.

In Kanthapura, the action is restricted to the village itself with none of the characters venturing too far out, yet the village is not insulated against the happenings in other places. In fact, the stimulation for action is not local.

The grand events that form the focal points of the novel take place in response to events elsewhere - Lahore, Bengal, Gujarat, etc. The village community moves from an insulated identity towards a national identity. In one sense, Kanthapura chronicles the formation of a national identity within a remote village.

This thematic is also supported by the manner in which the village becomes a kind of a microcosm of the nation.

The narrative tends towards mythicizing. For example, Moorthy's fast, Ramakrishnayya's death, the receding of the flood, and nationalist struggle itself are mythicized.

The narrative takes recourse to vedantic texts and Puranas and inserts nationalist struggle into them. For example, in a ‘Harikatha’, Jayaramachar brings in an allegory between Siva, Parvati and the nation.

The three eyed Siva stands for Swaraj. Later Rangamma standing in as the commentator of Vedanta after the death of her father reads the Puranas allegorically, interpreting hell as the foreign rule, soul as India and so on.

The prose of Kanthapura has a poetic quality of its own. Rhythmic effect is created through indulgence in the repetition and bringing together a number of clauses. The effect is such that it sounds almost like a verse.

This can be seen in the opening pages of the novel when Rao talks about winding roads of the ghats in Kanthapura. More or less the same effect can be noticed when Rao describes the battle between the goddess Kenchamma and the Demon.

An excellent example of rhythmic prose in the novel is the description of the Kartik Festival:

"Kartik has come to Kanthapura... with the glow of lights and unpressed footsteps of the wandering gods;. white lights from clay-trays and red lights from copper- stands, and diamond lights that glow from the bowers of entrance-leaves; lights that glow from banana trunks and mango twigs, yellow lights behind white leaves, and green lights behind yellow leaves, and white lights behind green leaves; ..."

There is no doubt that the prose style of the novel has an oral quality to it.

The story of the Kanthapura is narrated by someone who has a socially discrete manner of telling a story, which makes it only natural for the story to have this oral excellence. The narrator of the novel is Achakka, a grandmother of the village. She has a rich experience of life but her origin is modest.

In order to augment her narrative Achakka makes comprehensive use of folklore components and traditional myths. These elements boost the consistency of the narrative of Raja Rao's novel.

This is one of the finest Indian-English novels ever to have been penned.

Addendum in 2024:

In the now well-known preface to Kanthapura Raja Rao has stated that the meandering, repetitive manner ofstory-telling is not only an oral tradition but is also part of the literary tradition in India. He refers to the 2,14,778 verses of the Mahabharata and the 48,000 verses of the Ramayana to substantiate his view. In Kanthapura the constant shuttling back and forth in time is easily justified as an old woman’s leisurely manner of story-telling. The narrator thus provides a convenient point of view though she is never sharply individualized. We know nothing about her beyond the fact that she is a widow who has now no one except Seemu (who may be her son or grandson) and has seven acres of wet land and twelve acres of dry land. This numerical precision is again meant to convey the simplicity of the way of life where a man’s property is measured not in terms of money but in terms of cattle and land. Her function is representative and her strength lies in being anonymous. She is just one of the many women of Kanthapura who responded to the call of the Mahatma conveyed through Moorthy. Her faith in the Goddess Kenchamma, her respect for the local scholar Rangamma, her unquestioned affection for Moorthy and her trust in him, all these feelings she shares with other women of the village. No quality is given to her that detracts from her representative nature. In this sense she has a choric function. [The Twice-Born Fiction – Meenakshi Mukherjee]

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyrical, Evocative, Realist. To be frank, I never expected to like an Indian English novel published in 1938 this much. It was so good, so so very good.

I have this weird hazy rule where I don't review anything I read as part of my university syllabus as I like to keep these two things separate for reasons.

If you spot any reviews, it is usually because I read the book before they were prescribed in my uni or I reread them with a fresh eye after that sem ended.

So I would just say that there is a technical mastery of "proper English here, at the same time making it "Indian", which is fascinating. I could go on and on about the mellifluous prose and the stream-of-consciousness narrative. I could talk at length wrt the place of faith, religion and devotion here. Hell, I could just write an essay about the use of songs. Basically, just go read this book. You won't regret.

[Belinda · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a shining example of the kind of books that professors set for mandatory reading that make you want to scratch your own eyeballs out with a rolling pin.
I don't even know where to begin to explain exactly why I hate this book so much.

It may go something like the terrible grammar and the stupid characters and the over describing and the author's pomposity and the and the and the and the AND THE AND THE AND THE AND THE!!!

How many times can one man use the words "AND" in one paragraph? According to one little random page test I just conducted, the number is 34.
THIRTY FOUR TIMES.


That is all.

[Uzma Shamim · Rating 3 out of 5]

After having gone through some of the reviews here which exclaim at the kind of incomprehensibility of language that Kanthapura is about, I approached this novel with considerable apprehension.

My apprehensions however, left after the first few lines itself. I knew this was going to be one of those narratives that just flow, a novel written with such poetry. But I do understand where the dislike over Kanthapura’s language and structure stems from. Kanthapura is a work in English but is striking in the way it stands for the Indian register of language. It is acutely provincial and nativized in its tone and larger framework and might be hard to follow for anyone not familiar with this system of writing.

The national struggle and the Gandhian era during the colonial period have been projected to be the larger thematic concern of the text. How a tiny, picturesque but orthodox village in South India rises to the call of liberation is undoubtedly a major premise of the novel. However, equally major are other issues situated in this nationalist discourse, the most important one being the role of the woman and how the struggle for independence within the boundaries of Kanthapura is largely shouldered by them. A lot of critics have pointed out that the women occupy the centre-stage but are still merely puppets in the narrative where the plans are made by men like city-educated Moorthy (highly unreal) in the shadow of another great male, the Mahatma. But it is important to realise that for a novel situated in the era that it was situated in, the kind of focus and voice that women occupy here is unprecedented. We have them all with virtues and vices: Ratna, Rangamma and of course, Waterfall Venkamma! At the end of the day, the action starts and ends with them, the men are always secondary. At one point the narrator writes, ‘We lifted our voices and sang, and we forgot the pariahs and the policemen and Moorthy and the Mahatma and we felt as though we were some secret brotherhood in some Himalayan cave.’

If you want to know about the various methods of Gandhian resistance then this book is for you. Be it fasting, picketing, spinning or going to jail in defence of non-violence, all are adequately and quite deftly portrayed in this text. Also interesting is evocative manner of using geography of the terrain to describe literally every incident. You might lose track of the course of the Himavathy or the extent of the Bebur mound, but they are likely to stay in your imagination for a while.

Coming to something which I guess has largely been neglected by most critics in mainstream literary criticism of the time is the issue of caste identities in Kanthapura. It’s often hailed as a novel which is representative of a large cross-section of the South Indian society. But representation is not enough, the way that representation happens also matters. Kanthapura, even after the wave of nationalist aspirations is a closed, homogeneous society. The pariah is till the end, the pariah. All the institutions of religiosity and even national awakening are centred around the temple which the lower castes do not have access to. Their messiah, Moorthy, is a Brahmin and so are the women who take on the mantle of activism. The ideas of purity and pollution are all governed by the Brahmins of Kanthapura and the Other (the weaver, the coolie etc) always remains outside in her quarter, where the control of the plantation owner or the police, is always greater and more exploitative. Even though Rao's intention might be to accurately reflect the conditions of society at that time, as a writer with so much power of redefining social relations or giving voice to the voiceless, he clearly fails in the task of creating a work that would resonate with whosoever reads it.

Sorry Forster but it's definitely not the finest novel to come out of India.

The Gandhian project turns out to be a failure in Kanthapura leading to its ruin. We don’t get to know if anything comes out of Moorthy’s new found passion for Nehru. History doesn’t mention the thousands of Kanthapuras that might have existed but literature doesn’t let us forget.

[Charlie · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 STARS

CW: death (including of loved ones), violence, blood, rape, mention of prostitution

This book was a chore to read. Purely enjoyment-wise I could not find one good thing to say about this book... I read this for my Postcolonial Studies course and naturally, I can appreciate this for the time it was written in and there is plenty to think about and analyze. The most fascinating aspect for me was definitely the narrative choices and the role of women in the story which I hadn't expected when I started reading.

But, as Goodreads is not the place for me to dive deeper into analyzing texts and I usually rate books based on a combination of a book's legacy and how much I liked it overall, I cannot give this more than 1.5 stars. It took me so long to get through this because the narrative voice is all over the place. Yes I can appreciate the author mentioning that this is a deliberate choice and meant to echo oral storytelling customs in India, but it made this a labor to read because sentences went on and on and the syntax kept repeating.

Nevertheless, as always, I know I'll be able to discuss about this a lot in class. But still, nothing about this book and story endeared it to me. I definitely would have stopped reading this, had it not been for uni. But maybe you'll enjoy it more?!

[Swetha Godavarthi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I have read by Raja Rao, and I was hooked after reading the first few lines. Not for the plot, but for the musical, lyrical quality of his prose. Words tumble in great succession and bring alive the town and people of Kanthapura. As the narrator tells us of the approaching monsoon, you can almost hear the rumbling of the clouds and the whoosh of the wind. Such is the power of not just Raja Rao's words, but the way the words are strung together.

The book is a fictional account of a quaint little village in the southern part of India. Of its simple people and their beliefs and prejudices. And how the village rises when the cries of Indian freedom struggle reach its doorstep. Having a woman narrate these happenings, grounds the novel in the everyday fears and worries of the womenfolk. Unlike, other accounts of freedom struggle, the novel hits you not because you see tremendous sacrifice and acts of bravery, but because you see small sacrifices and small acts of kindness mingled with doubt and fear. Kanthapura, the village of women, that is ancient and yet current, and its people, who continue to inhabit the India of today.

[Prashanth Bhat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kanthapura- raja rao

ಮಹಾತ್ಮ ಗಾಂಧಿಯ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ ಹೋರಾಟ ದಕ್ಷಿಣ ಭಾರತದ ಒಂದು ಹಳ್ಳಿಯವರೆಗೆ ತಲುಪಿದ ಬಗೆಯನ್ನು ಸೊಗಸಾಗಿ ವಿವರಿಸುವ ಕಾದಂಬರಿ ಇದು.
ಪ್ರಕಟವಾದದ್ದು 1937ರಲ್ಲಿ.
ರಾಜಾ ರಾವ್ ಇಂಗ್ಲೀಷ್ ಭಾಷೆಯನ್ನು ಬಳಸುವಾಗ ತೆಗೆದುಕೊಂಡ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ ಬೆರಗು ಹುಟ್ಟಿಸುತ್ತದೆ.

ಕಾಂತಾಪುರ ನಮ್ಮ ಹಾಸನವೇ!
ಈಗಿನ ಹಾಸನವಲ್ಲ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ ಪೂರ್ವ ಹಾಸನ.
ಈ ಮೊದಲ ಪುಟಗಳ ನೋಡಿ.

'ಸ್ಥಳ ಪುರಾಣವಿಲ್ಲದ ಊರು ಅಥವಾ ಹಳ್ಳಿ ಭಾರತದಲ್ಲಿ ಇಲ್ಲವೇ ಇಲ್ಲ. ಅದು ಎಷ್ಟೇ ಕುಗ್ರಾಮವಾಗಿರಲಿ, ಅದಕ್ಕೆ ತನ್ನದೇ ಆದ ದಂತಕಥೆ ಇದ್ದೇ ಇರುತ್ತದೆ. ಒಬ್ಬ ದೇವರು ಅಥವಾ ದೇವತಾ ಪುರುಷ ಆ ಊರಿನ ಮಾರ್ಗವಾಗಿ ಸಂಚಾರ ಮಾಡಿರಬಹುದು. ರಾಮಾಯಣದ ರಾಮ ವಿಶ್ರಾಂತಿ ತೆಗೆದುಕೊಂಡಿದ್ದು ಆ ಊರಿನ ಅರಳಿ ಮರದ ಕೆಳಗೆ, ಸೀತೆ ತನ್ನ ಸ್ನಾನದ ನಂತರ ಬಟ್ಟೆಗಳನ್ನೂ ಒಣಗಿಸಿಕೊಂಡಿದ್ದು ಆ ಚಿಕ್ಕ ಬೆಟ್ಟದ ಕಲ್ಲುಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ, ಇಲ್ಲವೇ ಮಹಾತ್ಮಾ ಗಾಂಧಿ ತನ್ನ ದೇಶ ಪರ್ಯಟನೆಯ ಹೊತ್ತಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಈ ಊರಿನ ಮಾರ್ಗವಾಗಿ ಬಂದಾಗ, ಉಳಿದುಕೊಂಡದ್ದು ಆ ಚಿಕ್ಕ ಗುಡಿಸಿಲಿನಲ್ಲಿ. ಹೀಗೆ ಇತಿಹಾಸ ಮತ್ತು ವರ್ತಮಾನ ಕಾಲಗಳ ನಡುವೆ ಬೆಸುಗೆ ಹಾಕುವ, ದೇವರು ಮನುಷ್ಯರೊಡನೆ ಬೆರೆಯುವ ಸಂಗತಿಗಳು, ಪ್ರತಿ ಊರಿನ ಹಿರಿಯ ಜೀವಗಳ ನೆನಪಿನ ಭಂಡಾರದಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಕಾಶಿಸುತ್ತಲೇ ಇರುತ್ತವೆ. ಅಂತಹುದೇ ಒಂದು ಊರಿನ ಕಥೆ ಇಲ್ಲಿದೆ.

ನಮ್ಮ ಹಳ್ಳಿ, ಇದರ ಹೆಸರು ಬಹುಶಃ ನೀವು ಕೇಳಿರಲಿಕ್ಕಿಲ್ಲ, ಅದು ಕರಾವಳಿಯ ಕಾಂತಪುರ.

ಪಶ್ಚಿಮ ಘಟ್ಟಗಳ ಎತ್ತರದ ಪ್ರದೇಶದಲ್ಲಿ, ಅರಬ್ಬೀ ಸಮುದ್ರಕ್ಕೆ ಮುಖ ಕೊಟ್ಟು ನಿಂತ ಪರ್ವತ ಶ್ರೇಣಿಗಳ ಮಧ್ಯದಲ್ಲಿ ನಮ್ಮೂರು ಇರುವುದು. ಮಂಗಳೂರು ಮತ್ತು ಪುತ್ತೂರು ಎಂಬ ಊರುಗಳ ನಡುವೆ , ಏಲಕ್ಕಿ, ಕಾಫಿ, ಭತ್ತ, ಕಬ್ಬಿನ ಗದ್ದೆಗಳ ನಡುವಿನಿಂದ ಸಾಗಿ ಹೋಗುವ ಚಿಕ್ಕ ಮತ್ತು ಧೂಳು ತುಂಬಿದ ರಸ್ತೆಗಳ ಮಾರ್ಗವಾಗಿ, ಹೊನ್ನೆ, ಹಲಸು, ತೇಗು, ಗಂಧದ ಗಿಡಗಳಿಂದ ತುಂಬಿದ ಕಾಡುಗಳನ್ನು ದಾಟುತ್ತ, ಗಿರಿಕಂದರ ಪ್ರಪಾತಗಳ ಅಂಚಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಓಲಾಡುತ್ತಾ, ಆನೆ ಕಾಟವಿರುವ ಕಣಿವೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಬಿರುಸಿನಿಂದ ಸಾಗುತ್ತ, ಅಲ್ಲಿ ಎಡಕ್ಕೆ ಮುಂದೆ ಬಲಕ್ಕೆ, ಹೀಗೆ ಸಾಗಿದಾಗ ನಮ್ಮೂರಿನ ಬಯಲಿಗೆ ಬಂದಿರುತ್ತೀರಿ. ಅಲ್ಲಿ ಇರುವ ಗೋದಾಮುಗಳಿಂದ ಮಸಾಲೆ ಪದಾರ್ಥಗಳನ್ನು, ನೀಲಿ ಸಮುದ್ರದಲ್ಲಿ ನಿಂತಿರುವ ತಮ್ಮ ಹಡಗುಗಳಿಗೆ ತುಂಬಿಸಿ, ಫರಂಗಿಗಳು (ಇಂಗ್ಲೀಷರು) ಸಪ್ತ ಸಾಗರದಾಚೆ ಇರುವ ತಮ್ಮ ದೇಶದೆಡೆಗೆ ಸಾಗುತ್ತಾರೆ.

ಒಂದಾದ ಹಿಂದೆ ಒಂದರಂತೆ ಸಾಗುವ ಚಕ್ಕಡಿ ಬಂಡಿಗಳ ಸದ್ದು ಕಾಂತಪುರದ ರಸ್ತೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಯಾವತ್ತೂ ಕೇಳುತ್ತಿರುತ್ತದೆ. ಎಷ್ಟೋ ರಾತ್ರಿಗಳಲ್ಲಿ, ಕಣ್ಣು ಮುಚ್ಚಿ ನಿದ್ದೆ ಹೋಗುವ ಮುನ್ನ ಕಾಣುವ ಕೊನೆಯ ದೃಶ್ಯ ಆ ಬಂಡಿಗಳ ಸಾಲು ಸಾಲು ದೀಪಗಳದ್ದೇ ಆಗಿರುತ್ತದೆ. ಹಾಗೆಯೇ, ���ಿವಿಗಳಿಗೆ ಬೀಳುವ ಕೊನೆಯ ಶಬ್ದ, ರಾತ್ರಿಯ ಮೌನವ ಸೀಳಿ ಬರುವ ಆ ಚಕ್ಕಡಿ ಚಾಲಕರ ಹಾಡುಗಳದ್ದೇ ಆಗಿರುತ್ತದೆ. ಆ ಚಕ್ಕಡಿಗಳು ಊರಿನ ಮುಖ್ಯ ರಸ್ತೆಯಿಂದ ಸಾಗಿ, ಕುಂಬಾರರ ಓಣಿಯನ್ನು ದಾಟಿಕೊಂಡು, ಚೆನ್ನಯ್ಯನ ಕೆರೆಯ ಹತ್ತಿರ ಬಲಕ್ಕೆ ತಿರುಗಿ, ಅಲ್ಲಿಂದ ಮೇಲಕ್ಕೆ ಸಾಗುತ್ತಾ, ಸಮುದ್ರದಿಂದ ಸೂರ್ಯ ಉದಯಿಸುವ ಹೊತ್ತಿಗೆಲ್ಲ ತಮ್ಮ ಗುರಿ ತಲುಪುತ್ತಾರೆ.'

ಈ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಜಾತಿ ,ವರ್ಗದ ಮೇಲು ಕೀಳು ಚಿತ್ರಣವಿದೆ, ಧನದಾಹಿಗಳಿದ್ದಾರೆ, ಜಿಪುಣರಿದ್ದಾರೆ, ಗಾಂಧೀಜಿಯ ಚರಕ ಇದೆ. ನಮ್ಮ‌ ಆಚರಣೆಗಳಿವೆ, ನಂಬಿಕೆಗಳಿವೆ ,ಬ್ರಿಟಿಷರಿದ್ದಾರೆ, ತಮ್ಮ ಪಾಡಿಗೆ ತಾವು ಯಾರ ತಂಟೆಗೂ ಹೋಗದ ಸಾಮಾನ್ಯ ಜನ ಇದ್ದಾರೆ.‌
ಈಗ ಹೊಸದಲ್ಲದ ಸ್ತ್ರೀ ಸಬಲೀಕರಣವಿದೆ.
ಒಟ್ಟಾರೆ ಹೇಳುವುದಾದರೆ ತನ್ನ ಕಾಲಕ್ಕಿಂತ ಇದು ಕನಿಷ್ಟ ಪಕ್ಷ ಐವತ್ತು ವರುಷ ಮುಂದಿನ ಕಾದಂಬರಿ ಎಲ್ಲಾ ವಿಧದಲ್ಲೂ.

ರಾಜಾರಾವ್ ಅವರ ಮುಂದಿನ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಭಾರತದ ಆಧ್ಯಾತ್ಮಿಕ ಔನ್ನತ್ಯ ಎದ್ದು ಕಾಣುತ್ತದೆ. ಅದರಿಂದ ಭಾರತೀಯ ತತ್ವಶಾಸ್ತ್ರದ ಪರಿಚಯ ಇಲ್ಲದವರಿಗೆ ಅದು ಕಬ್ಬಿಣದ ಕಡಲೆ.
ಬಹುಶಃ ಅವರ ಪುಸ್ತಕಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಅತ್ಯಂತ ಸರಳ ಇದುವೇ.

ತತ್ವಜ್ಞಾನದ ಗಂಭೀರ ಚರ್ಚೆ,
ಕನ್ನಡದ ಕಂಪು ಬೀರುವ ವಿಶಿಷ್ಟ ಇಂಗ್ಲೀಷ್,
ಸಂಗೀತ ಕೇಳುವಂತಹ ಭಾವ ಹುಟ್ಟಿಸುವ ಭಾಷೆ ಇವು ಮೂರು ರಾಜಾರಾವ್ ಅವರ ಬರಹದ ಮುಖ್ಯ ಗುಣ‌.

ಓದಬೇಕಾದ ಲೇಖಕರು ಇವರು.
ಓದಬೇಕಾದ ಪುಸ್ತಕ ಇದು.

[Dhwani Shah]

Kanthapura is supposed to be a spoken epic and not in English but due to the limitations of Mr. Raja Rao's aptitude in Sanskrit and the traditional of oral chronicles gradually fading away in colonial India, what we have with us is a book, a Sthalapurana as Mr. Rao deems it, narrated by an elder woman, that brought in a new generation of Indian literature written in English. The structure of the sentences and the pattern of communication is inspired from Kannada. This is evident from the first line where the placement of subject and predicate is conveniently exchanged. Though I understand the importance of this literary style, I can't bring myself to like it. It drones on, with a comma here and a comma there and more commas, and some more, now you understand what I am getting at. I think if I knew Kannada or if someone was reading this out to me, I would have liked the book better. I did enjoy the narrative events and characters, I just wasn't into the style.

Kanthapura is a small village in South India with odd 130 houses, the village sectioned into quarters for Brahmans, Weavers, Potters and Pariahs. The village is held together by traditions, of old and new generations, and of the different castes and class. This stratification of culture causes stratification of power and wealth. The book focuses on the friction between big and little tradition, as said by R. Parthaswamy. The big tradition of the oppressors, Brahmans and later, colonial power in adjunction to Brahmans. The little tradition is of the oppressed, the people who aren't allowed in temples and live in poorer sections of the village. The caste politics dominant in the village is witnessed by the narrator affixing the caste and profession of each individual before their names, for example Temple Rangappa and Pariah Rachanna. The patriarchy in the village is also easy to spot, with rampant domestic violence, widows called prostitutes if they wear bangles and the power men hold over women on every page. All of this is before they become Satyagrahis.

The Gandhian struggle placed moral struggle before political and social struggle. It called for assimilation of all castes, it asked women to take the frontier of satyagraha and it put truth over everything else. The inhabitants of Kanthapura took up this struggle, sang Harikathas about Gandhi, called him an incarnation of Shiva and in the process, changed the demography of the small village. The chilling report of the revolution against the colonial rule, the incessant use of arms by the police on the non-violent satyagrahis is suited for the particular type of language construct used by Mr. Rao. The pages which depicted the physical struggle were filled with anxiety, didn't give you a chance to breathe while you were reading them because the narrator had her breath held while hiding in the fields. The commas served their purpose well.

The gradual assimilation of castes and genders, the destruction of notion of inferiority and varnashrama made Kanthapura the poster village of India's freedom struggle. The authority of Rangamma and Ratna, the determination of Moorthy and the commonality of Gandhian principles among everyone unfolds beautifully. It doesn't make you tear up only because Mr. Rao didn't want it to. The ending of the book is one of the saddest and the most hopeful that I have read in a while.

It ends as a Sthalapurana. It tells you history of a village that no longer exists.

[Darnia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Buku ini sebenarnya mengangkat tema yg menarik. Lahir dan berkembangnya sebuah gerakan kemerdekaan yg terinspirasi oleh Mahatma Gandhi, yg terjadi di sebuah desa bernama Kantapura. Gerakan ini awalnya dipelopori oleh seorang pemuda bernama Moorthy, yg telah membuang studinya untuk kembali ke Kantapura dan membangkitkan perasaan merdeka di kalangan kaum Paria, kaum terbuang di desanya. Merdeka dari para tuan tanah yg sewenang-wenang, merdeka dari para polisi korup dan terutama merdeka dari pemerintahan yg bobrok. Dengan resiko terbuang dari kastanya dan dimusuhi oleh orang-orang berpengaruh, gerakan dan cita-cita Moorthy menyebar hingga ke wilayah-wilayah di sekitar desanya. Endingnya epic, gw harus mengakui. Dan uniknya lagi, buku ini ditulis menggunakan sudut pandang seorang wanita tua dari desa tersebut.

Trus, kenapa hanya dua bintang? Lebih kepada bahasa yg digunakan. Karena penerjemah edisi lama dan baru-nya sama, sepertinya memang permasalahannya ada pada bahasa yg digunakan sang pengarang sendiri. Kalimatnya sangat padat, hingga satu paragraf panjang bisa memuat hanya 4-5 kalimat yg memiliki kata sambung yg berderet-deret. Menurut prembule, buku ini ditulis menggunakan bahasa Inggris yg cukup sederhana, dan kata sambungnya hanya menggunakan "DAN". Hanya saja, jadi agak susah mendapatkan gambaran di benak gw perihal peristiwa yg sedang digambarkan pengarang. Akan tetapi, sebagai sebuah buku klasik, buku ini juga ditulis dengan gaya epos klasik India (gw gak tau yg seperti apa). Belum lagi, tokohnya yg banyak dan namanya susah diingat, makin mengukuhkan jikalau buku ini memang kurang sesuai untuk otak sederhana gw.


I've read the 1997's first edition with ISBN: 979-419-227-9, published by Pustaka Jaya.

[Gaurav Garg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have never seen such experimentation with language and grammar as in this novel. It truly reflects the state of society in times of British rule over India. The author seems to be thinking in Hindi and writing in English. To put it in words of his editor Parthasarthy,'We might be intellectually English but emotionally we are Indians.'

A great insight into society and culture and religion and casteism and Gandhi and British. That is the way you will find the expression in this book. Human emotions have been dealt with quite well. Typical Indian thought process shown and one does feel closer to reality of those times even though the work is only inspired by the reality.

This book can be annoying for few readers but I did not mind the experimentation by Raja Rao. One also understands the Gandhi-ism better with this book and reasons as to why so many people were supporting him. A must read atleast for all Indians.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rao uses English to try to communicate an Indiana vernacular mode of storytelling, with very intriguing (if long-winded) results. The story itself revolve around the rise of Ghandi, and ends on a rather ubiquitous note.

[Juwi · Rating 1 out of 5]

contrary to what E.M.Forster thinks, this is not the best novel written in English by an Indian

[Yoyovochka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Untung aja sejak awal dibilang oleh pihak penerbit kalau gaya penulisan buku ini memang sengaja dibuat seperti epos-epos klasik India karena saya lihat di ulasan dalam bahasa-bahasa lain ada banyak yang kurang paham dan walhasil memberi buku klasik ini nilai super duper rendah, yang menurut saya kejam. Meski, yah, ini balik lagi ke selera masing-masing kali ya.
Tentang buku ini:
Penuh dengan narasi dengan percakapan yang sangat minim. Jadi, buat yang hobi baca buku penuh dengan dialog, kayaknya lewat aja deh. Buku ini bercerita tentang perjuangan orang-orang Kantapura untuk terlepas dari cengkeraman penjajah Inggris. Gerakan ini diawali oleh pemuda pengikut Gandhi bernama Moorthy. Pada awalnya, bahkan hingga detik terakhir pun memang susah meyakinkan penduduk India saat itu untuk bergabung melawan penjajahan karena sebagaimana kita tahu, penjajahan dan kolonialisme macam ini memang menguntungkan pihak-pihak di atas yang diajak kerja sama, terlebih lagi saat itu sistem kasta di India masih kental-kentalnya. Meski begitu, perjuangan terus berlanjut dan masyarakat dari golongan Paria terus bersatu.
Akhir buku ini ditutup dengan cerita yang membuat saya berpikir dan ingin meneruskan cerita itu di benak saya karena sumpah, nggak tahu akhirnya gimana (kecuali kita tahu bahwa India sekarang merdeka).
Yah, gitu aja, sih menurut saya. Bukunya bagus, enak dibaca, dengan gaya sastra klasik pada umumnya. Satu bintang saya kuranı karena bingung akhirnya si Moorthy ini ke mana? dipenjara atau meninggal? hmm

[Danja · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you, SuperSummary. Without you, I would have lost track of whatever there was happening.

Look, I get the intention of the writing style. However, I don't care about the intention if the book is painful to read. I couldn't focus on the story because those long-ass sentences (if a single sentence spans over 1/2 of a single page, my brain is logging off).

Would have liked an annotated edition... but then I would have spent even more time with this book.

[Prashanth Bhat · Rating 5 out of 5]

ಮೂರನೇ ಸಲವೂ ಅದೇ ರಸಾಸ್ವಾದನೆ‌. ಇದನ್ನು ಓದುವಾಗ ಇದು ಕನ್ನಡದ್ದೇ ಪುಸ್ತಕ ಎಂಬ ಭಾವ. ಗಾಂಧೀಜಿಯವರ ಅಸಹಕಾರ ಚಳುವಳಿ ,ಕರುನಾಡಿನ ಒಂದು ಹಳ್ಳಿಗೆ ಬಂದ ಬಗೆಯನ್ನು ಚಂದವಾಗಿ ಹೇಳಿದ ಕಥೆ ಇದು.

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is the world but a tapestry of impressions? In Raja Rao's Kanthapura, what appears initially, quite consciously to be a microcosm, of unequal castes, warring faiths, of intimacy, and judgementality, soon opens up about the influence of the large world upon it and its vision of the outside. Raja Rao lets his experience and ethnography way in to depict life in a innocent-seeming little village in coastal Karnataka. There is a "Waterfall Venkamma" and "Post Office House Chinnamma" for in habitats where all know all, that is how people are bookmarked. Everything appears too close. Time feels to be unwavering. And when something shattering occurs it must be incorporated into the theologies of catastrophism already in place. With heaven and hell, cities of gold, gods and their incarnations, and divine kings. Raja Rao's interest in the intellectual traditions of India and obsession with metaphysics must surely have aided him in erecting this monument where seamlessly the outside gets translated into the rural. USSR becomes a "city much bigger than Europe"!

But of course, the crux of the novel is the disruptiveness of Gandhi - who enjoys, much in the tone of the rest of the book, a Harikatha narrating the Purana of his birth, or rather, his incarnation, upbringing, political activism, and impact upon an average village in rural Karnataka. This novel is a chronicle of how in the 30s Gandhi's message of communal harmony and pleas to eradicate untouchability brought out all regressive and nihilistic forces in the human animal. People who seemed all-familiar and very cute opposed the transformations that came about and revealed a strange mix of hate, resistance, and vigour. And all innocence is broken. There is gossip, humiliation, betrayal, and death in this masterpiece. In a way it is India's own To Kill a Mockingbird.

[Himmilicious Himmilicious · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved reading Kanthapura.This novel is a complete mixture of Religion,Mythology and History. What I personally liked the most that in this novel, the grand harikathas finely blend politics with religious and mythology. The fights between mahatma and british draws the picture of the fight between Rama and Ravana, between the forces of good and evil like Krishna against the Kalia or Kansa, Prahlad against his own father, Harishchandra against the Asuras, Besides, the mahatma is Mohan (Krishna) slaying the serpent of foreign rule. Again Gandhi is compared to Rama as well as Shiva, Motherland is compared to Sita and the british Government is compared to Ravana.

Shankara is a "veritable dharmraj" and swaraj is compared to the three eyed shiva. As a gandhian economic programme Moorthy distributes chakras among the village women and inspires them to spin chakras and weave cloth. He asks people to boycott foreign goods

"the money that goes to red man, will stay within your country and the mother can feed the foodless and the milkless and the clothless."
Advocates Shankara wears Khadi and appeals to others to do so.

An awesome read. :)

[Abhishek · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a poem, an emotion, a movie, a chronicle, a life. It is everything a fine book can have. Kanthapura opens with the normal lives of its habitants and ends with their extraordinary journey. Journey from Comedy to Tragedy. Journey of changing Political Ideologies and the idea of India. A fine example of brevity, wit and beautiful storytelling.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of India's struggle for independence from British control as told from one small villages perspective. A young man called Moorthy comes to the village to lead them in a nonviolent revolt using the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. Although they practice nonviolence they are met with extreme violence from the government. The story is told in very lyrical prose by Raja Rao and has a very romantic melodramatic quality to it as if reading a mythical fable. There are a lot of references to beliefs and cultural customs of the villagers but the book has several pages at the back of the book that explain most of the terminology to make it more understandable. One thing the book made me aware of was the extremely harsh treatment that the Indian people suffered under the colonial system and, although not nearly as brutish and cruel, how similar to American slavery.

[Bhumika Kapoor · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is a good one but mind that it is heavy with Gandhian principles. The protagonist Moorthy is a adherent follower of the principles of Ahimsa and Satyagraha. The village people give him the reverence equivalent to that given to a "Mahatma". There are many instances when Moorthy's being a brahmin poses a slight hinderance in his venture but he overcomes all of them and continues to fight againt the atrocities of the "Government". These goals cost Moorthy his lives. Many other villagers loose their lives in the processions that they carry out.
The ending of the novel is a bit dis-satisfying as the title village "Kanthapura" is left barren, all in ruins. Only the patel of the village stays back there and other people settle in some other village.
Rao's use of language is appreciated. His language has the capability to retain the essence of the south indian culture.

[Madrit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was difficult to read due to the language used. But still I made through, and it turned out to be amazing.

** Spoliers below **

It made me live through that time and feel the sadness of people of Kanthapura. But the beauty of the story lies in that sadness. And I want to read it again someday.

[Dhanush · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific story of how independence struggle caught up in a sleepy Karnataka Village.

[charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

dnf - a uni read. might get around to finishing it at some point but enjoyed the parts i did read.

[Frankie Frabizzio · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely stunning. what an addictive and moving reading experience

[Vanessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I enjoyed learning about the anti-colonial movement and the Gandhian movement, but I could not warm up to Rao's writing style. I know that writing in English is a protest in and of itself and that combining the language of the colonizers with the style of oral storytelling... but it just wasn't enjoyable for me.

[Rhea · Rating 3 out of 5]

lowkey. so hard to read.

[Mahesh Sharma · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you really want to feel the Sanskritized English and the magic of Sthalpurana, this is the normal for you.