TOPIC : Kanthapura as Microcosm Of Macrocosm PAPER - 4 : Indian Writing in English

STUDENT’S NAME : Gohil Yashpalsinh B.

CLASS : M.A. Sem-1

ROLL NO. : 24

YEAR : 2012/13SUBMITTED TO : Ms. Heenaba zala (English Department,               Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji  Bhavnagar University)

Raja Rao(November 8, 1908 – July 8, 2006)

Kanthapura – a great imagination of Raja Rao.

Kanthapura was discovered and read with interest after Raja Rao won international fame and recognition with the publication of his next novel “The Serpent and the Rope.” Kanthapura gradually came to recognized as a classic

of the Indo- Anglian fiction, as one of the most- authentic and most remarkable village novel ever written by an Indian in English.

Kanthapura as A South Indian Village

The Location of The Village

The novel opens with an account of the situation, the locale, of the village.

we are told in very beginning that Kanthapura is a village in Mysore in the province of Kara. It is situated in the valley of Himavathy, there it lies,

“ Curled up like a child on its mother’s lap.”

The People of Kanthapura

In Kanthapura we are told of the people, their poverty, their ignorance, and their petty jealousies.

Prof. Atma Ram says, “in Kanthapura the villagers are depicted in realistic clours.

Cast Divisions

In Kanthapura there is a complex structure of cast divisions.

It has four and twenty houses in Brahmin quarters. There is also a Pariah-quarter, a Potters quarter, a Weavers-quarter, and a Sudra–quarter. Through this, the novelist has highlighted the fact that the Indian villages are cast-ridden, that there is no free mixing of the people even in small an limited community of a village.

The Religious Faith

Folk Song for Goddess Kenchamma :-

Kenchamma, KenchammaGoddess Benign And BounteousMother Of Earth, Blood Of LifeHarvest Queen, Rain CrownedKenchamma, KenchammaGoddess Benign And Bounteous

The Symbolic Significance

In Kanthapura the picture of village life is filled up by giving further accounts of the grinding poverty, illiteracy, and the conflicts and tensions that mark the Indian village life. Indeed there is a constant shifting and ordering of material, selection of significant details so that Kanthapura acquires a symbolic significance. It becomes a microcosm of macrocosm, one out of the lakhs of Indian villages in which live 80% of the people of India.

Response to Gandhian Movement

In this remote south Indian village there comes the Gandhi movement through Moorthy, Dore and other village boys.

It is Moorthy who organizes the Gandhi work in the village. He is indeed the life and spirit behind the movement in Kanthapura, just as Gandhi was the life and spirit of the freedom struggle in India. But very soon the people of Kanthapura as a whole, are actively involved. And the novel becomes an account of their suffering and their heroic sacrifice. The people of Kanthapura have been enthused with the spirit of Gandhi, and they march ahead heroically despite all the suffering and the hardship they have to undergo.

KANTHAPURA

Aptness of the Title

Thus we can say that the Kanthapura is not a novel dealing with the life of doings of any individual hero . it is certainly not the story of a particular person, but the masses of the village, their suffering, of their exile, of their momentary defeat, a defeat which has seeds of ultimate victory in it.

It ends with an account of their life in Kanthapura and gives us a sense of abiding fulfillment which they have attained.

If there is any hero in the noel, it is Kanthapura itself and its people. So, the title of the novel “Kanthapura” is appropriate and suggestive.

Thank You.