Name : Maru Janakkumar J
Paper : 4[Indian Writing in English
pre-independence
Semester : 1
Roll No : 26
Topic : In kanthapura Raja Rao
tries to define nation
Email
id : marujanak17@gmail.com
Submitted to : MK Bhavnagar University,
Bhavnagar
Kanthapura- Raja Rao
v Introduction :
Raja Rao was born on November 8, 1908
in Hassan, in the state of mysorein south India, into a well-known Brahman
family. His native language was kanaresa, but his post-graduation study was in
France, and all his publications in book form were in English. He lived in
France from 1908n to 1939, and returned to India in 1940, after the Second
World War. Kanthapura was his first novel in English. his other novels are “
the cow of the barricades, great Indian way: A life of mahatma Gandhi, A passage to India, the
serpent and the rope, cat and Shakespeare, the chess master and his moves.”
vHer work:
·
Teacher
Ø Raja Rao taught philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin from
1966 through 1980, when he retired as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy.
Ø "...it is as teacher that I know Raja Rao best... Raja Rao began
his formal affiliation with the University [of Texas] as a member of the
Faculty of Philosophy in 1966. ... He was a campus icon, acclaimed for his
lectures on Buddhism and Eastern thought. “Teacher is perhaps the first word that comes to mind when
one thinks of raja rao. ‘novelist’ yes, ‘philosophical novelist’ even better,
and though ‘scholarly sanskritist’ (salman rushdie’s peculiar description in
the New Yorker) is not right, it is not altogether wrong either.”
·
Writer
Ø Raja Rao is a writer who insists with honesty and fervor that he is not
the creator of his works.
Ø "I write. I cannot not write. Yet he who writes does not know that
which writes. So, does one write? If so who? Which?
Ø Why write? Two birds, says the Ramayana (our oldest epic) were making
love, when a hunter killed the male bird. The cry of the widowed bird, says the
text, created the rhythm of the poem. ...
Ø Why publish? Those others may hear the cry of the bird hunted and
killed whose mate is lost in sorrow. Uncovering the vocables is a poetic
exercise. The precise word arises of love that is pure intelligence. That is
why in Sanskrit the word Kavi means the poet--and the sage." --Raja Rao
vRaja Rao’s define four type of-
1) History
2) colony
3) nationalism
4) nation
vRaja Rao’s views of nation:
The beginning of the
1930s mark an important benchmark as far as Indian Nationalism is concerned
because Indian National Congress ,under the stewardship of Gandhi, emerged as a
true ,national ,pan-Indian body, encompassing in its fold all the cross-sections of the society that were hitherto denied an entry into the
mainstream politics. The Indian National Congress had forged to a considerable
extent, a sense of Indianness across the vast stretch of the land, unifying and
preparing the people to accept the transition from regional to national in
their approach and attitude. This resulted in the emergence of national
imaginings of identity. Thus it became a period that witnessed a national
urgency to foreground the idea of a unified nation as it was at the core of the
decolonization project India had taken up. And incidentally, Indian English
novel too emerged as a major voice to reckon with during the same time. As
Meenakshi Mukhrjee notes, it was not a coincidence that Indian English fiction
emerged in India in the 1930s, the decade prior to independence, when there was
an urgency to foreground the idea of a composite nation.
vRaja Rao is a Nationalist
novelist:
Ø Returning to India in 1939, he edited with Iqbal Singh, Changing
India, an anthology of modern Indian thought from Ram Mohan
Roy to Jawaharlal Nehru. He participated in the Quit India
Movement of 1942. In 1943–1944 he co-edited with Ahmed Ali a
journal from Bombay called tomorrow. He was the prime mover in
the formation of a cultural organisation, Sri Vidya Samiti, devoted to
reviving the values of ancient Indian civilisation; this organisation failed
shortly after inception. In Bombay, he was also associated with Chetana, a
cultural society for the propagation of Indian thought and values.
Ø
Rao's involvement in the nationalist
movement is reflected in his first two books. The
novel Kanthapura (1938) was an account of the impact of Gandhi's
teaching on non-violent resistance against the British. The story is
seen from the perspective of a small Mysore village in South India. Rao borrows
the style and structure from Indian vernacular tales and folk-epic. Rao
returned to the theme of Gandhism in the short story collection The Cow of
the Barricades (1947). In 1998 he published Gandhi's biography Great
Indian Way: A Life of Mahatma Gandhi. In 1988 he received the prestigious
International Neustadt Prize for Literature. The Serpent and the Rope was
written after a long silence during which Rao returned to India. The work
dramatised the relationships between Indian and Western culture. The serpent in
the title refers to illusion and the rope to reality.[2] Cat and
Shakespeare (1965) was a metaphysical comedy that answered
philosophical questions posed in the earlier novels.
vFiction:
Novels
Ø Kanthapura (1938) The Serpent and the
Rope (1960) The Cat and Shakespeare: A Tale of India(1965)Comrade
Kirillov (1976) The Chessmaster and His Moves (1988)
vFiction:
Short story collections
Ø The Cow of the Barricades(1947)
Ø The Policeman and the Rose (1978)
Ø The True Story of Kanakapala, Protector of Gold
Ø In Khandesh
Ø Companions
Ø The Cow of the Barricades
Ø Akkayya
Ø Javni Nimka
Ø India—A Fable
Ø The Policeman and the Rose
Ø On the Ganga Ghat (1989).
vconclusion:
Raja Rao describes very well totally
Indian backbround with all aspects in the novel kanthapura . through using all
these raj rao makes one identity of india. “One nation, one identity.”
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