“Gandhipurana”

Raja Rao’s Kanthapura is unique in its

wholehearted and sustained analysis of
Gandhian ideology and portrayal of how
such ideologies were able to change the
life of an entire village community.
Quite aptly it has been defined by K.R.S.
Iyengar as a “Gandhipurana”. Rao's
choice of a remote Kannad village as the
setting of his novel is strategic in view of
Gandhian preoccupation with rural India.
The idea of going back to the village or
the upliftment of village-India was the
locus of the Gandhian struggle for swaraj
or independence from the colonial rule.
Gandhi was able to transform this
political and organizational importance
given to the village into an ideological
and cultural programme, aimed at mass
mobilization.
Most of Gandhi’s cherished ideals, -such
as boycotting of foreign goods, spinning
on the charkha to produce material for
one’s own clothes and thereby foster
economic self-sufficiency, practicing of
ahimsa or non-violence towards all,
rejection of caste and gender hierarchies,
involvement of all sections of society,
men women and all as legitimate part of
the anti-colonial struggle, and finally
practice of a moral way of life including
abstinence from intoxicating drinks – all
these are worked out in Kanthapura,
largely through the mediation of the
‘local Gandhi’, Moorthy. Ultimately,
then, Kanthapura is the microcosm of
India itself in the 1930s, and the
transformation of the village under the
impact of Gandhian ideologies, is
symptomatic of the sweeping social and
political changes that were taking place
in India under the leadership of a man
whom the masses called a ‘Mahatma’, or
saint.
Significantly, in Kanthapura, anticipating
the predominantly Hindu, upper-caste
villagers’ resistance to, and anxiety of,
alien ideas, the Congress leaders like
Moorthy and Jayaramachar (the
harikatha man) introduce Gandhi and
Gandhian ideologies in specifically
Hindu/religious mythical terms. In the
process, both Gandhi and his
representative in the village, Moorthy,
are transformed into saintly quasi-divine
figures, beyond human doubts and
questions, so much so that their political
and economic programmes are
acceptable to the people of Kantahpura.
In turn, Moorthy also appeals to the
villagers to participate in the
political/economic movement in
religious and moral terms.
The Gandhian ideas of eradicating caste
and gender hierarchies, and boycotting of
foreign goods, are a potential threat to
the prevalent upper caste Hindu interests
like those of Bhatta, the money-lender.
Brahmins like Bhatta are quick to
understand the economic implications of
Gandhian khadi and anti-foreign goods
movement. It is only by compelling
native people to buy foreign goods that
the colonial administration can siphon
off wealth from this country, and it is
only when people are impoverished that
they will turn to ruthless moneylenders
like Bhatta and Subba Chetty, who will
fed on them by charging abnormally high
rates of interest. Moorthy and his
followers attempt to popularize the
Gandhian ideal of spinning on the
charkha, by first enunciating not only the
economic drain theory but also exposing
the close nexus between the colonial
government and the upper caste
moneylenders.
The Gandhian movement is equally
liberating for the women of the village
and this is also borne out by historical
facts. Gandhi’s call for mass anti-
colonial movement brought out Indian
women from the confines of their homes
like never before, and went a long way in
equalizing gender relations. In
Kanthapura Raja Rao delineates this
process. Not only women, but widows,
traditionally considered to be
inauspicious, come out of their limited
domestic existence and participate in
Gandhian civil disobedience movement.
The process is not always very smooth as
they have to encounter rooted prejudice
in the form of Bhatta and the sharp-
tongued Venkamma. Opposition also
comes from their own homes, when their
husbands refuse to allow them to
participate in such movements, fearing
that in the process the wives will neglect
their duties at home. When Rangamma,
the widow, suggests that the women of
the village form a Sevika Sangha or a
Women’s Volunteer movement, even the
men who claimed to be the followers of
Gandhi treat their wives violently.
An important development with regard
to the awakening of women under the
impact of Gandhian ideologies is traced
out in Kanthapura through the
transformation that the widow
Rangamma undergoes. She is the only
woman in Kanthapura to have gone out
of the village to look after the Congress
Correspondence under the guidance of a
Gandhian lawyer, Shankar. Enlightened
in many ways through her association
with Shankar, Rangamma is able to
organize the women of the village in a
more positive way to participate in the
nationalist movement. Significantly
enough, when Ramakrishnaya, the usual
interpreter of the holy texts, passes away,
it is Rangamma who takes up the task,
traditionally an exclusive prerogative of
men. Rangamma intersperses her
interpretation of the scriptures with
Gandhian ideals of spiritual awakening
to fight the evil forces of colonial rule.
She also teaches the women’s group to
practice yoga to enhance their inner
strength and self-confidence and put up a
tougher resistance to colonial oppression.
Though in Kanthapura Rao does not
provide any radical solution to the
patriarchal assumption that women must,
above all, look after the comforts of their
men folk, the very fact that women do
come out, form a Sevika Sangha under
the leadership of Rangamma, participate
in satyagraha movement, bravely
enduring the brutal police assaults to
mount moral pressure on the
government, and are able to negotiate
some precarious space within the rigid
patriarchal structures of a South Indian
village community does suggest the
efficacy of Gandhian ideologies in
empowering women in Indian society.
Moorthy’s mission in the Skeffington
Coffe Estate to make the migrant coolies
literate, and aware of their basic rights,
to empower them by enlisting their
support in the nationalist movement, is
also what gives Kanthapura its Gandhian
flavour.
Historical details of Gandhi’s famous
march to Dandi to manufacture salt as a
symbolic protest against the colonial
government’s charging of unjust taxes on
everyday items, and the tremendous
impact of such civil disobedience on the
Indian people, gain the significance of
mythical/epic journey in Achakka’s
narration of Gandhi’s ‘long pilgrimage’,
accompanied by his dedicated followers,
to the sea beach at Dandi.
In Kanthapura we have various
configurations of Gandhi as a concept:
the actual one glimpsed through
references to events like his
imprisonment, Dandi march, meeting
with Viceroy etc; the mythicized one
through harikatha; and the transmuted
one in the persona of Moorthy, the ‘local
Gandhi’. It is in Moorthy’s character that
Gandhian ideologies come most alive
and dynamic. Moorthy undergoes an
arduous fast very much in the manner of
Gandhi to purify himself, before he can
preach the ideals of ahimsa and love for
all. He is also able, through his penance,
to overcome his desire for Ratna, and
other worldly attractions. Penance also
helps him to conquer fear as he is able to
protest without fear of imprisonment and
refuses advocates as he believes that
truth needs no advocate.
It is important to note that the response
to Gandhian ideologie is not total or
uncontested in Kanthapura. People like
Range Gowda believe that the theory of
ahimsa is only for saints like Moorthy
and not the common people. In the final
encounter ahimsa is forgotten in the heat
of battle between policemen and
Kanthapureans. The Gandhian ideals of
Ramrajya are also undercut by
Rangamma’s account of socialist
practices in U.S.S.R. as a result of
Bolshevik revolution. At the end of the
novel most youngsters like Moorthy
abandon Gandhian ideologies for the
goal of a socialist republic, and they note
that getting rid of the colonizers through
completely non-violent means is an
impossibility in the real world. But
Moorthy’s parting of Gandhian way does
not invalidate the efficacy of Gandhian
ideologies, but only qualifies the
definition of Kanthapura as
Gandhipurana.
In the final analysis Kanthapura,
delineates the institutionalization of
Gandhi’s ‘experiments with truth.’ It
provides a fictional site for the testing of
Gandhian political discourse on the
body. The novel’s representation of the
satyagrahis’ endurance of verbal abuse
and physical torture provides a range of
contexts for framing Gandhian politics.
The colonized body in "Kanthapura"
emerges as the paradigm of suffering and
as the definition of the Gandhian moral
self; a site upon which sovereign
violence inscribes itself but also
encounters the most stubborn resistance.