Pluvolity ond Literary Tauitions in gy, 0 118 Cultural Diversity Linguiatle Kanthapura RAJA RAO RAJA RAO is a distinguished waiter, philosopher and feachor who ‘one of the earliest! major Indian novels in English, Kanthapura, jp ay Rao started writing In his native language, Kannada, in 1931, buj ‘00n ‘awitched fo French and eventually fo English. Konthopura, his frat is also the fist important work of Indian waiting in English with a distiny Indian flavor, The novel grows oul of the historical context of the 1929, ‘ond 1980s and is a parable on the pollies of the Gandhian movemeny of passive resistonce. The sfory fokes the form of an oral fole narated ty ‘Achakaa, an old village woman, and ao uses English in o choracionic nner to provide it with a Kannada rhythm. In his Preface fo Kanthapura, Roja Roo iniliated a significant debale on the creative use of the English language by wiiters in India. This extract from the Preface connects very well with the way Salman Rushdie creatively experimented with the English language almost half a century later. mar Preface to Kanthapura” “The telling has not been easy. One has to convey in a language that is not one’s own the spirit that is one’s own, One has to convey the and omissions of a certain thought-movement that looks maltreated in an alien language, I used the word ‘alien, yet English i not really an alien language to us. It is the language of our intellectual make up—like Sanskrit or Persian was before—but not of our emotional make up. We are all instinctively bilingual, many of us writing in our own language and in English. We cannot write like the English. We should not. We can write only as Indians, We have grown to look at the large world only as Indians. Our method of expression therefore has to be « dialect which will some day prove to be as distinctive and colourful asthe Irish or the American. Time alone will justify it. After language the next problem is that of style, The tempo of Indian life must be infused into our English expression, even as the tempo of American or Irish life had gone into the making of theirs. We, in Indian, think quickly, we talk quickly, and when we move we move quickly. There ‘must be something in the sun of India that makes us rush and tumble and run on. And our paths are interminable, The Mahabbaratha has 214,778 * Excers from Preface’, Raja Rao, Kanchapa, 2 edo, OUR, New Delhi, 1974: P= various shades — Scanned with CamScannerRajo Rao 119 and the Ramayana 48,000, Puranas + Puranas are endless and innumerable, y 5 Wehave neither punctuation nor the treacherous ‘its’ joe fell one interminable tale, : SEL nd ‘ons' to bother isode follows episode, a thoughts stop our bresth stop, and we move on anther thong, : ca , another thought, This was and aa is the ordinary style or our story telling. I have tried to follow it myself in this story.” ‘Kanthapura ‘Kartik has come to Kanthapura, sisters—Kartik has come with the flights and the unpressed footsteps of the wandering gods; white jghts from clay-trays and red lights from copper-stands, and diamond fights that glow from the bowers of entrance-leaves; lights that glow ffom banana-trunks and mango twigs, yellow light behind white eaves, and green light behind yellow leaves, and white light behind green leaves; and night curls through the shadowed streets, and hissing over bellied boulders and hurrying through dallying drains, night curls through the Bakmin Street and the Pariah Street and the Potters’ Street and the Weavers’ Street and flapping through the mango grove, hangs clawed for one moment to the giant pipal, and then shooting across the broken fields, dies quietly into the river—and gods walk by lighted streets, blue gods and quiet gods and bright-eyed gods, and even as they walk in transparent flesh the dust gently sinks back to the earth, and) many a thild/in Kanthapura sits late into the night to see the crown ofthis god and that god, and how many a god has chariots with steeds white as foam and queens so bright that the eyes shut themselves in fear lest they be blinded. Kartik is a month of the gods, and as the gods pass by the Pottery? Sircet and the Weavers’ Street, lights are lit to see them pass by. Kerik tea month of the lights, sisters, and in Kanthapura when the dus “fll children rush to the sanctum flame and the kitchen fire, and with "Broom grass and fuel chips and coconut rind they peel out fre and light Ghy-pors and copper candelabras and glass Iams Children light them Aree ahen darkness bangs drooping down the ve . gods may be | xn passing by, uiee gods and bright-eyed gods. And as | they pass by, the dust sinks pack into the earth, and night curls again through the shadows of the streets: Oh! Have you seen the gods, siste ~ FeaRaja Roo, Konze, 2 edn, OUP. New Delhi, 1974p 85. Scanned with CamScanner—x 120 Cultural Diversity Linguistic Plurality and Literary Traditions in India Notes Kartit: Kartik is the name of the month thac falls around October and November according to the Hindu calendar, Diwali, the festival of lights, falls on the amavasya (moonless night) of Kartik, that is the fifteenth day from/to the full moon and divides the month of Kartik in half, Brabmin Street... Pariah Street: the village is geographically stratified on the basis of caste groups that live in separate streets Scanned with CamScanner