Towards a Limited Emancipation:

Women in Raja Rao s }

"Kanthapura
S E N A T H W . P E R E RA

W^ITUDIES U
NDERTAKEN OF
Kanthapura thus far have focussed
for the most part on the manner in which the novel characterizes
the "Indian renaissance" under Gandhi's leadership. The ap-
proaches taken by M . K. Naik and K. S. Ramamurti are typical in
this regard. Naik declares, in Dimensions of Indian English Litera-
ture, that
Raja Rao's Kanthapura ( 1 9 3 8 ) is easily the finest evocation of the
Gandhian age in Indian Englishfiction.This story of a small south
Indian village caught in the maelstrom of the Gandhian movement
successfully probes the depths to which the nationalistic urge pene-
trated, and getting fused with traditional religious faith helped redis-
cover the Indian soul. ( 1 0 5 - 0 6 )

K. S. Ramamurti, similarly, considers Kanthapura a "miniature

version of resurgent Bharath in which we see the pilgrim's pro-
gress of a great nation marching towards the promised land of
freedom carrying on its shoulders the burden of poverty and
hunger" (64). While these "standard" approaches are significant
to the study of Rao's oeuvre, they often fail to recognize that the
novel could be read also as a rite de passage undertaken by Indian
women during the struggle for Swaraj—a process which led
these women to re-examine archaic institutions that they had
unquestioningly accepted for so long, to abandon many of their
prejudices, and to control their destiny in a way they were not
able to do before. The level of emancipation achieved, of course,
is very limited; what is patent, however, is that these women who
initially banded themselves together to battle the Raj succeed
in initiating a movement which is imbued with its own dynamic

ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 2 3 : 4 , October 1992

100 SENATH W. PERERA

and rationale—a movement that could be thwarted but not

destroyed.
It is now commonplace to draw parallels between colonialism
and the position of women in society. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth
Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin claim in The Empire Writes Bach, for
instance, that women
share with colonized races and peoples an intimate experience of the
politics of oppression and repression, and like them they have been
forced to articulate their experiences in the language of their op-
pressors. Women, like post-colonial peoples, have had to construct a
language of their own when their only available "tools" are those of
the "colonizer." ( 1 7 4 - 7 5 )
Feminist commentators take this argument a step further. To
Susan Sontag, all women
live in an "imperialist" situation in which men are colonialists and
women are natives. In so-called Third World countries, the situation
of women with respect to men is tyrannically, brutally colonialist. In
economically advanced countries (both capitalist and Communist)
the situation of women is neocolonialist: the segregation of women
has been liberalized; the use of physical force against women has
declined; men delegate some of their authority, their rule is less
overdy institutionalized. But the same basic relations of inferority
[sic] and superiority, of powerlessness and power, of cultural under-
development and cultural privilege, prevail between women and
men in all countries. ( 1 8 4 - 8 5 )

Kanthapura, of course, was written long before the upsurge of

interest in Women's Studies; still, it is apparent that the claims
made by these commentators are to some degree valid for this
novel. Soon after the women establish a Sevika Sangha in Kanth-
apura, Najamma experiences this nightmare:
I dreamt my husband was beating me and beating me, and I was
crying and my bangles broke and I was saying, "Oh, why does he beat
men [sic] with a stick and not with his hands?" and when I saw him
again, it was no more my husband, it was Bade Khan. ( 1 0 6 - 0 7 )
Bade Khan, the most odious representative of the Raj in Kanth-
apura, merges with Najamma's husband in this dream. Clearly,
the two forms of authority are not always separable, and Rao,
here, anticipates the observations of later critics. Because Rao
1

privileges the struggle against British rule, however, these other

 RAJA R A O ' S "KANTHAPURA" 101

concerns are often buried in the text; consequendy, it is neces-

sary, on occasion, to "read against the grain" (Spivak 25). Such a
reading strategy indeed helps to produce the "Other text, " which
is "a narrative hidden from the official story" (Said vii).
Some crides are not prepared to search for this "Other text,"
however. Shantha Krishnaswamy claims, in The Woman in Indian
Fiction in English, that "sex does not enter the picture as a differ-
entiating factor" (32) in Kanthapura. This cride adds, subse-
quendy, that nowhere in Rao's work
d o we find the w o m a n having a role equal to that o f the m a n . S h e
neither determines h e r life, n o r defines herself as m a n does. She can
be a part o f his transcendent vision only by d e n y i n g h e r own
reality. (56)

Krishnaswamy is surely wrong to insist that gender is not a

determining factor in Kanthapura. The tide of the novel is suffi-
cient indication that women are the major players, and as Meena
Shirwadkar—another critic who focusses on the issue of women
in Indian fiction in English—so rightly observes, the narrator's
constant invocation of the goddess Kenchamma ensures that a
female principle pervades the novel (87). Krishnaswamy's sec-
ond point is challenging, however, and must be addressed. There
can be no doubt that the women follow the directives of their
men, initially. They venerate leaders, like Moorthy, and are sub-
servient to their husbands in their own homes. Indeed, the
transformations would not have taken place in Kanthapura with-
out the inspiration of Gandhi's message and Moorthy's leader-
ship. At crucial moments during the struggle these women look
to their men for protection. After one of the first attacks on the
satyagrahis in Kanthapura, the women rest: "And when the beds
were laid and the eyelids wanted to shut, we said, 'Let them shut,'
for we knew our men were not far and their eyelids did not shut"
(156). As the novel progresses, the women begin to have doubts
about the movement not only because of the lathi charges, but
also because they are on the verge of being evicted from their
lands. Still, they shake off their doubts, and decide to continue
with the struggle, secure in the knowledge that "Men will come
from the city, after all, to protect us!" (162). Patent in these
statements is the recognition that women need men as their
102 SENATH W. PERERA

protectors, and as their spiritual and political guides because

they are incapable of fending for themselves.
This subservience, this dependence is particularly evident in
marital relationships. According to Kumari Jayawardena,
Gandhi's ideal woman was the mythical Sita, the self-sacrificing,
monogamous wife of the Ramayana, who guarded her chastity and
remained loyal to Rama in spite of many provocations. Sita was
"promoted" as the model for Indian women. (96)
Such women are not uncommon in Kanthapura. The Brahmins,
for instance, talk highly of Sankar's late wife, Usha, who was
"such a godlike woman. She would never utter a word loud, and
never say 'nay' to anything. And when she walked the streets, they
always say what a holy wife she was and beaming with her wife-
hood" (95-96). Significantly, these sentiments are expressed by
the female narrator who implies that this "Sita model" is a goal to
which all women should aspire. Such behaviour would be re-
garded very highly in the kind of society Usha lived in, but recent
criticism claims that these ideals were propagated to ensure that
women remain subservient. Maria Mies concludes:
Gandhi was perhaps hardly conscious of the fact that his ideal of
womanhood, which he considered to be a revival of the Hindu ideal,
contained in fact many traits of the puritan-Victorian ideal of woman,
as it was preached by the English bourgeoisie.
(Qtd. in Jayawardena 96)
When the women fail to live up to these "norms," or begin to
organize their lives according to their own needs, the men use
their physical strength to bring them "back into line." This
phenomenon is most apparent when the women start the Sevika
movement in Kanthapura once Moorthy and the others are
imprisoned:
And when our men heard of this, they said: was there nothing left for
our women but to vagabond about like soldiers? And everytime the
milk curdled or a dhoti was not dry, they would say, "And this is all
because of this Sevi business," and Radhamma's husband beat her on
that day he returned from village inspection, though she was seven
months pregnant. (105)

Clearly, the women in Kanthapura are exploited, and during the

early part of the novel they are denied the freedom, to control
 R A J A R A O ' S " K A N T H A P U R A " 103
their own affairs; still, the issue is somewhat complicated because
Gandhi regarded a woman's ability to endure suffering as a key to
the success of his non-violent protest movement. He says,
"woman is more fitted than man to make ahimsa [non-violence].
For the courage of self-sacrifice woman is anyway superior to
man" (qtd. in Jayawardena 97). It could be argued, of course,
that this is yet another surreptitious move on the part of men to
ensure that women remain subservient; in other words, by im-
pressing upon women that this ability to endure suffering is a
posidve, the men succeed in perpetuating the status quo. Yet the
true satyagrahi is supposed to employ these traits for peaceful
non-cooperation. Gandhi advocates passive resistance to oppres-
sion not passive acceptance:

Non-violence i n its d y n a m i c c o n d i t i o n means conscious suffering. It

does n o t m e a n meek submission to the will o f the evil-doer, but it
means the pitting o f one's whole soul against the will o f the tyrant.
W o r k i n g u n d e r this law o f o u r b e i n g , it is possible for a single
i n d i v i d u a l to defy the whole m i g h t o f an unjust e m p i r e to save his
h o n o u r , his r e l i g i o n , his soul, a n d lay the f o u n d a t i o n for that e m -
pire's fall o r regeneration. (49)

The significance of the relationship between men and women is

neither fully explored not resolved because the men are eventu-
ally taken away by the forces of the Raj; consequendy, there is very
litde interaction between the sexes towards the end of Kanth-
apura. The novel then focusses on the freedom struggle that in
one village at least is now organized by women. The women not
only use their fortitude and their ability to perform ahimsa to
combat colonial aggression, but in the process some of their
number take significant strides towards their emancipation.
Ratna is one individual in the novel to defy both the op-
pressors of the Raj and the conservative traditions of the village
and to achieve some measure of success. To be a Brahmin widow
in a rural environment during this period was to be placed in an
unenviable position. Widows were either required to perform sati
or to shave their hair and to lead a very secluded life. Ratna
challenges the constraints imposed by widowhood, although the
first brahmin, Bhatta, and the spiteful Venkamma challenge her
at every turn. Her rebelliousness is best captured here:
 Also Help in Gandhian part

104 S E N A T H W . PFRF.RA

Bhatta rose u p to go, for h e c o u l d never utter a k i n d w o r d to that

y o u n g widow, who not o n l y went about the streets alone like a boy, but
even wore h e r hair to the left like a c o n c u b i n e , a n d she still kept h e r
bangles a n d h e r nose rings a n d earrings, a n d w h e n she was asked why
she behaved as t h o u g h she h a d n ' t lost her h u s b a n d , she said that that
was nobody's business, a n d that i f these sniffing o l d country hens
thought that seeing a m a n for a day, a n d this when she was ten years o f
age, c o u l d be called a marriage, they h a d better eat m u d a n d d r o w n
themselves i n the river. ( 3 0 )

Rao, in such passages, comes perilously close to propounding a

thesis, for some of Ratna's words echo Gandhi's stated views on
widowhood:
Voluntary w i d o w h o o d consciously a d o p t e d by a w o m a n w h o has felt
the affection o f a partner adds grace a n d dignity to life, sanctifies the
h o m e a n d uplifts r e l i g i o n itself. W i d o w h o o d i m p o s e d by r e l i g i o n o r
custom is a n unbearable yoke a n d defiles the h o m e by secret vice a n d
degrades r e l i g i o n . ( Q t d . i n Jayawardena 96)

What is noteworthy, however, is that Ratna gradually wins the

respect of the others to the extent that, when Moorthy and
Rangamma are imprisoned and their land is on the verge of
being auctioned to the "sahib-looking people" (157) from the
town, some of the women confidendy declare, "come, we will go
to Ratna; for Ratna is our chief now and she will lead us out of it"
(158). The women, of course, demand too much of Ratna. (In
Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood, Nyakinyua and Wanja,
though formidable leaders of the community in their own way,
are unable to prevent Ilmorog from being taken over by Chui,
Nderi, and the other odious people from the city; Ratna, sim-
ilarly, does not prevail over the stooges of the Raj who have
bayonets, bullets, and the full force of the law on their side.) Her
transformation from a despised widow to a leader of the saty-
agrahis, however, is remarkable.
Even more influential than Ratna is her aunt, Rangamma.
Rangamma, as the narrator declares, is "no village kid" (28).
Rangamma proves that this confidence is not misplaced when,
after Moorthy's incarceration, and the death of the local inter-
preter of Hindu texts, Ramakrishnaya, she takes on both roles.
One of the strategies adopted by the harikatha man, and later,
Ramakrishnaya, to educate the villagers on the iniquitous rule of
 RAJA R A O ' S "KANTHAPURA" 105
the Raj is to draw parallels between the ancient Hindu texts and
the struggle for Swaraj in India. Rangamma, too, utilizes this
strategy to convince the villagers: "Sister, if for the thorny pit the
illusioned fall into, you put the foreign Government, and for the
soul that searches for liberation, you put our India, everything is
clear" (102), she says at the beginning of one meeting. The
narrator concludes: "and the more we listened the more she
impressed us, and we felt there was a new strength come in
Rangamma" (102). In Khushwant Singh's I Shall Not Hear The
Nightingale, which is also situated in a period when the agitations
against British rule in India were gathering momentum, Sabhrai
attempts to inspire her cowardly son by relating the deeds of
their ancestors; Rangamma, similarly, exhorts the satyagrahis by
reminding them of the contributions made by women in India's
past:
And the worthiest of them was Rani Laksmi Bai of Jhansi. Why, she
rode the horse like a Rajput, and held her army against the British,
beating them on the left and on the right, and the British went back
and back, but one day they defeated her and she died upon her horse
fighting to the last,fightingfor her enslaved Mother [India]. ( 104)
Rangamma not only has the ability to inspire the other women
with her original interpretations of Hindu texts and her recu-
peration of heroic deeds, but she also acts as a practical orga-
nizer, rivalling Moorthy. When Moorthy is imprisoned, she
organizes a Sevika Sangha in the village, and when she meets
with resistance from the men, she displays tact and the ability to
compromise. Once again, like Moorthy, she persuades the
women to "stand without moving a hair" ( 100), when confronted
by the lathi charges. But even more impressive is the manner in
which she urges the men to continue with the struggle and to
establish associations of their own, when after Moorthy's con-
finement, the men choose to be lukewarm towards the cause
because they do not want "to sit behind the cage-bars like kraaled
elephants" (107).
This brief examination of Rangamma and Ratna demonstrates
that the women in Kanthapura did possess the propensity to go
beyond the confines they were placed in. Unfortunately, except
for Moorthy, the characters in the novel are generally drawn "like
106 SENATH W. PERERA

figures in a tapestry" (Krishnaswamy 32) ; as a consequence, Rao

is not always able to portray all these women in depth.
Rangamma and Ratna are two exceptions, but given the large
number of characters in a relatively short novel, he is forced to
make compromises in portraiture even with these women. Jay-
awardena speaks of the important role played by education in
changing the position of women in India (87-90). Rao recog-
nizes this importance, too. Consider this somewhat idealized
picture of "the country of the hammer and sickle" (2g) that
Rangamma has imparted to the illiterate villagers:
W h e n the w o m e n were g o i n g to have a c h i l d , they h a d two m o n t h s '
a n d three m o n t h s ' holiday, a n d w h e n the c h i l d r e n were still y o u n g
they were given m i l k by the G o v e r n m e n t , a n d w h e n they were grown
u p they were sent free to school, a n d w h e n they grew o l d e r still they
went to the universities f r e e . . . . A n d she t o l d us so m a n y marvellous
things about that country; a n d m i n d you, she said that there all m e n
are e q u a l — e v e r y o n e equal to each o t h e r — a n d there were neither
the r i c h n o r the poor. (29)

Even though there is some irony in this passage, Rao regards the
woman's conclusions with approval. What is unfortunate is that
Rao is guilty, here, of giving Rangamma extensive knowledge of
politics and the scriptures without informing the reader how she
came by this knowledge—a problem that has also been identi-
fied in Ngugi's portrayal of Kihika in A Grain of Wheat. Conse-
quently, Rangamma is not totally convincing as a character.
Maria Mies offers this assessment of the role played by women
in the struggle for Swaraj:
T o draw w o m e n into the political struggle is a tactical necessity o f any
anti c o l o n i a l o r national liberation struggle. B u t it d e p e n d s o n the
strategic goals o f such a m o v e m e n t whether the patriarchal family is
protected as the basic social unit o r not. T h e fact that w o m e n them-
selves accepted their l i m i t e d tactical function within the i n d e p e n -
dence m o v e m e n t m a d e t h e m excellent instruments i n the struggle.
But they d i d not work out a strategy for their own liberation struggle
for their own interests. By s u b o r d i n a t i n g these goals to the national
cause they c o n f o r m e d to the traditional pativrata o r sati ideal o f the
self-sacrificing w o m a n . ( Q t d . i n Jayawardena 1 0 8 )

If Kanthapura is an accurate novelistic account of what took place

in rural India during the struggles, it certainly reinforces some of
 R A J A R A O ' S " K A N T H A P U R A " 107

Mies's assertions; the issue could be viewed from yet another

angle, however. Susan Sontag argues that
[t] he priorities of struggle vary from nation to nation, from historical
moment to historical moment—and depend, within a given nation,
on one's race and one's social class. It seems beyond question that the
liberation of women in Vietnam has to be subordinated at the pres-
ent time to the struggle for national liberation. (109)
Such an approach could pardy explain and pardy justify the
subordination of the women's struggle in this novel. More to the
point is that the national struggle has undoubtedly contributed
to the women's struggle here. If it is true that "without the force
of the women, there would not have been a revolution in Kanth-
apura" (Jha 221), equally valid is the assertion that the women
would have remained hidebound by tradition and totally depen-
dent on men, if the Gandhian movement had not given them the
opportunity to exercise their independence.
To those who equate achievement with power and material
possessions, a perusal of Kanthapura brings few rewards. Even
K. R. Rao, whose approach to the novel is sound, becomes a
shade too optimistic when he declares that, "at the end of the
novel, we have the suggestion of a new village being built on the
broken debris, thus symbolizing the unbroken continuity of the
Indian tradition, its élan vitar (21). After all, the novel ends with
Kanthapura destroyed, some of the villagers in exile in Ka-
shipura, others imprisoned or scattered in various parts of India,
and still others killed by the police. The success of the movement,
as a consequence, must be measured by what the women have
gained spiritually. Certainly, the narrator projects towards the
end of the novel a serenity and an equanimity that she had never
displayed before:
You will say we have lost this, you will say we have lost that. Ken-
chamma forgive us, but there is something that has entered our
hearts, an abundance like the Himavathy on Gauri's night, when
lights comefloatingdown the Rampur comer, lights come floating
down from Rampur and Maddur and Tippur, lights lit on the betel
leaves, and withflowerand kumkum and song we let them go, and
they will go down the Ghats to the morning of the sea, the lights on
the betel leaves, and the Mahatma will gather it all, he will gather it by
the sea, and he will bless us. ( 1 8 0 )
108 SENATH W. PERERA

To Nihal Fernando, "the reference to [the] Himavathy, the

daughter of the goddess Kenchamma, and a river with associa-
tions of purity, fertility, and primordial vitality" captures the
"emotional and spiritual revitalization" which is a pleasing conse-
quence of the women's "traumatic political experience" (225).
This equipoise is achieved primarily because of their involve-
ment with Mahatma Gandhi's movement. Yet the women secure
another goal in the novel, and here Gandhi's contribution is
tangential. Significandy, the one whose heart "beatfs] like a
drum" (182) when he leaves Kanthapura at the end is Rangé
Gowda, who was once described as "a veritable tiger amongst us"
(6). To Rangé Gowda the women would turn when they needed
reassurance; however, his poignant response to Kanthapura in
which there is now "neither man nor mosquito" (182) can be
contrasted with the reactions of the women, when confronted
with the same village in its death throes:
And old Rachanna's wife, Rachi, can bear the sight no more, and she
says, "In the name of the goddess, I'll burn this village," . . . and she
rushes towards the Pariah lines and Lingamma and Madamma and
Boramma and Siddama follow her, crying, "To the ashes, you wretch
of a village!" And they throw their bodices and their sari-fringes on
the earth and they raise a bonfire beneath the tamarind tree
... (176)

At one level, these women set the village ablaze because they do
not want the fruits of their toil to fall into "enemy" hands. "If the
rice is to be lost let it be lost to the ashes" (176), declares one of
their number. This incident, however, could also be construed
differendy. While a traditional approach does not allow one to
draw a parallel between this passage and, say, the symbolic "bra
burning" incidents of the 1960s, the episode, nevertheless, be-
comes emblematic when subjected to a post-modernist reading.
Roland Bardies states in 'The Death of the Author" that a text
consists of multiple writings, proceeding from several cultures and
entering into dialogue, into parody, into contestation; but there is a
site where this multiplicity is collected, and this site is not the author,
as has hitherto been claimed, but the reader: the reader is the very
space in which are inscribed, without any of them being lost, all the
citations out of which a writing is made; the unity of a text is not in its
origin but in its destination. (54)
 RAJA R A O ' S "KANTHAPURA" 109
Even though the full significance of their action is lost on the
women who perpetrate the deed, and perhaps on the author
himself (who, after all, could not anticipate in 1938 the vast
changes that were to take place in the women's movement in the
last three decades), the modern reader can recognize other
layers of meaning by adopting a Barthesian approach. This "bon-
fire," then, symbolizes that these women are no longer totally
circumscribed by the demands of hearth and home, have suc-
cessfully discarded outmoded traditions that had only served to
reinforce the servitude placed upon them, and have challenged,
if not totally overcome, the twin forms of patriarchy that had
oppressed them for so long. By reducing Kanthapura to ashes,
and by leaving the village, the women make a statement to the
effect that their subjugation is a phenomenon of the past. The
women are now equal partners with men in the next step towards
libération.
P. C. Bhattacharya observes that to the "Kanthapurians there
was no final defeat, no farewell but only fare forward, no ending
but always a new beginning" (268). This assertion is particularly
applicable to the women in the novel. There is, of course, much
that is unacceptable and much that remains to be achieved—the
female labourers in the Skeffington coffee estate no doubt con-
tinue to be harassed by their masters, and one of the final images
of the novel is that of Concubine Chinna who remains in the
burnt village "to lift her leg to the new customers" (182). Yet by
portraying the plight of the women the way he has, Rao makes
the reader aware of the necessity for change, and in his depiction
of Rangamma and Ratna he demonstrates the way in which some
changes could be achieved.

NOTE

1 N a j a m m a has so internalized the "logic" of this patriarchal system that her quarrel
is not with the beating per se but with the m a n n e r in which it is carried out.

WORKS CITED

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, a n d H e l e n T i f f i n . The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Third World Literatures. L o n d o n : Routledge, 1989.

Barthes, R o l a n d . " T h e Death o f the A u t h o r . " The Rustle of Language. Trans. Richard
H o w a r d . Berkeley: U o f C a l i f o r n i a P, 1989. 49-55.
 110 S E N A T H W. PERE RA

Bhattacharya, P. C . Indo-Anglian Fiction and the Works of Raja Rao. Delhi: A t m a R a m ,

1983-
F e r n a n d o , L . N . A . ' T h e Treatment o f the T h e m e o f Sociocultural Interaction in
Indo-Anglian Fiction 1953-1976: T h e Novels o f M u l k Raj A n a n d , Raja Rao, a n d
R.K. Narayan." Diss. Flinders U . o f S o u t h Australia, 1986.
G a n d h i , [Mohandas]. The Writings of Gandhi: A Selection. E d . R o n a l d D u n c a n . L o n -
d o n : Fontana, 1983.

Jayawardena, Kumari. Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. L o n d o n : Z e d ,

1986.

Jha, Rama. Gandhian Thought and the Indo-Anglian Novelists: Mulk Raj Anand, RajaRao,
R K Narayan, and Bhahani Bhattacharya. D e l h i : Chanakya, 1983.

Krishnaswamy, Shantha. The Woman in Indian Fiction in English (1950-80). New Delhi:
Ashish, 1984.

Naik, M . K. Dimensions of Indian English Literature. New D e l h i : Sterling, 1984.

N g u g i wa T h i o n g ' o . A Grain of Wheat. L o n d o n : H e i n e m a n n , 1967.

. Petals of Blood. L o n d o n : H e i n e m a n n , 1977.

Ramamurti, K. S. "Kanthapura, K e d a r a m , M a l g u d i a n d T r i n i d a d as Indias in M i n i a -

ture: A Comparative Study." Alien Voice: Perspectives on Commonwealth Literature.
E d . Avadhesh K. Srivastara. L u c k n o w : Print H o u s e , 1981. 61-74.

Rao, K. R. The Fiction of Raja Rao. A u r a n g a b a d : Parimal Prakashan, ig8o.

Rao, Raja. Kanthapura. New York: James L a u g h l i n , 1963.

Said, Edward. Foreword. Selected Subaltern Studies. E d . Ranajit G u h a a n d Gayatri

Spivak. New York: O U P , 1988. iii-x.

Shirwadkar, M . Image of Women in the Indo-Anglian Novel New D e l h i : Sterling, 1979.

Singh, Khushwant. I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale. Bombay: I B H , ig8o.

Sontag, Susan. " T h e T h i r d W o r l d o f W o m e n . " Partisan Review 40.2 (1973): 180-206.

Spivak, Gayatri C . "Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography." Introduc-

tion. Selected Subaltern Studies. NY: O x f o r d , 1988. 3-32.

The novel can be

considered a Gandhi-
epic. It portrays Gandhi’s
influence on the minds of
Indians. Gandhi’s
fascinating personality,
though Gandhi did not
appear in the novel, is
felt. He
remains in the
background. Raja Rao
tried to present Gandhian
ideology and Movement
very
impartially. There is no
idealization. Kanthapura
is the magnum opus of