St Xavier’s College, Mahuadanr

SEM II, Core-3

Themes in Swami and Friends

Education and Oppression

Difficulty within educational settings is one of Swami’s constant conflicts
throughout the novel. Rather than simply depicting the ordinary childhood struggles
of homework and unfair teachers, Narayan uses these familiar obstacles to enact a
smaller version of the colonial oppression. For Swami, school is a place of both
growth and restriction, where rigid rules come into conflict with Swami’s nuanced
inner life.

Many of Swami’s most immediate experiences of oppression occur within

school settings. He encounters violence, humiliation, and requirements that quash his
imaginative and sensitive nature. All of these restrictions on Swami’s individual life
seem to mirror the dehumanizing nature of colonial power on India’s larger
population. At both of his schools, Swami is subject to punishments that cause him
pain and embarrassment, such as being caned or being made to stand on a bench in
front of the class. Narayan’s descriptions of Swami’s engagement with academic work
also hint at the way that his schools fail to engage his full humanity. However, Swami
also derives meaning and a sense of belonging from his schools, even as they cause
him pain. The positive aspects of Swami’s educational experiences indicate that
because these institutions are so deeply ingrained in Swami’s life, he derives some
satisfaction from them, just as the Indians do under English rule finding meaning in
their lives even in unfair circumstances.

School forms the core of social life for Swami and his friends, because
Swami’s friendships are so important to him, and school defines the structure of those
friendships, the school plays a crucial (central) role in developing meaning in his life.
His sense of belonging indicates that he considers the school a kind of home and that
he is invested in the idea of its goodness, despite the pain he experienced there. The
schools’ dual role as structures of both support and oppression plays out vividly in the
way that the school setting can change quickly from organized (ordered) to chaotic
(disordered).
2. Innocence, Family, and Growing Up:

Just as Swami’s story reveals the somewhat illusory (deceptive) nature of

personal identity, so also it slowly strips away conservative (traditional) notions
(ideas) of childhood innocence. While Swami seems at first to embody the typical idea
of a carefree child, his growth over the course of the time shows that even children of
his young age are burdened by serious concerns and real-world threats. Narayan
demonstrates this gradual loss of innocence in large part, through his portrayal of
Swami’s relationships with the members of his immediate family, which grow
increasingly complicated and less protective over the course of the story.

At the start of the novel, Swami is almost wholly dependent on his family. He
carelessly takes them for granted while also calling on them to support his whims and
desires, and their firm but kind presence grounds the seeming innocence that Swami
enjoys in the early chapters. Swami’s mother and father, though strict at times, offer
him safety and resources to pursue his academic and social goals.

As the novel progresses, Swami’s feeling of security with his family begins to
erode, as he discover evidence that his innocent trust in his own safety may have been
an illusion all along. When Swami’s mother gives birth to an unnamed baby boy,
Swami is initially indifferent to his new brother, but soon he comes to love his
brother, and he is also forced to admit that he is no longer the sole (only) focus of his
parents’ and grandmother’s love and attention. He also notices that his father grew
more strict towards his study and growth as his father begins to take a more active role
in making Swami study for his exams, and Swami resents (dislikes) the realization
that his father’s role is not only to protect him but also to pressure (force) him towards
growth. When Swami enters into a conflict with the son of a coachman who tricks
Swami into giving him money illustrates the tension between Swami’s youthful
innocence and his dawning knowledge of the genuine danger of the world around him.

Swami has experienced the genuine danger of the world around him and, at the
same time, come to realize the limitations of his family’s ability to comfort him and
keep him safe. Through this process Narayan shows that Swami shares in the
universal realities common to all coming-of-age stories, even within the unique socio
political context of India under English colonial rule. Swami still lives with his family
at the novel’s end, but he has lost the illusion that his life there is innocent or free of
worry.
3. The Political and the Personal Under British Colonial Rule

Set in a fictional town of Malgudi in south India around 1930, Swami and
Friends is defined by the pressures and complexities of British colonial rule over
India. While the events revolve around common childhood trials and tribulations, the
personal experiences of the hero and his friends are coloured by their political context,
even when they themselves have little understanding of it. By examining British
colonial rule through the lens of an ordinary boy’s significant childhood, R.K.
Narayan demonstrates the pervasiveness, subtlety (delicacy) and the impact of
colonial rule that is present in every corner of Indian life during this era, and that no
individual’s personal life can be truly separate from the profound yet contradictory
effects colonialism.

Though Swami and his friends gain some degree of political consciousness
over the course of the story, their lives continue to be restricted by colonial power in
ways that are largely invisible (unseen) to them. Narayan illustrates this reality
especially vividly through the boys’ experiences forming a cricket team. By
highlighting the prominent and complicated role that a typically English activity plays
in the friends’ lives, Narayan demonstrates that individuals living under colonialism
often have no choice but to tolerate—and sometimes even embrace—the cultures of
their colonizers.

The formation of the cricket team initially serves as a way for Swami and
Rajam to repair their friendship after their conflict, but was also responsible for the
breakup of their friendship, when Rajam is unable to forgive Swami for missing the
match. By using the game both to unite and divide the friendship, Narayan indicates
the extent to which the characters may be at the mercy of English influence, even as
they devote themselves to an English sport.

Political forces work their way into the personal goals and relationships of
Swami and his friends even during their leisure time, again demonstrating that no
private life can be truly independent from politics in the context of a colonized state.