Kanthapura Microcosm of Macrocosm

Name: Jankiba Rana

M.A. Semester 3

Roll No. 11

Batch 2014.15

Paper:4  INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH

Kanthapura Microcosm of Macrocosm

             Kantha Pura - a great imagination of Raja Rao. Kantha Pura was discovered and read with interest after Raja Rao won international fame and recognition with the publication of his next novel:

“The Serpent and the Rope”

            Kanthapura gradually came to recognized as a classic of the indo- Angian fiction, as one of the most-authentic and most remarkable village novel ever written by an Indian in English.

A Social Indian Village:

            The novel opens with an account of the situation, the locale, of the village.

            We are told in very beginning that kanthapura is a village in Mysore in the province of kara, it is situated in the vally of himavathy, there it lies,

Curled up like a child on its mother’s lap

The people of kanthapura

In kanthapura we are told of the people their poverty their ignorance, and their petty jealousies.

Prof atma ram says

“ in kanthapura the villagers are depicted in realistic clours.

Rao gives us a rich picture of a village and its people at the time but it is, above all the stay of the independence of a small village that mahes this novel interesting.

Cast divisions:

Kanthapure there is a complex structure of cast division. It has four and twenty houses in Brahmin quarters there is also a pariahquarter, a potters quarter a weavers quarter and a sudra quarter.

Through this the novelist has highlighted the fact that the Indian villages are cast ridden that there is no free mixing of the people even in small an limited community of a village.

The religious faith

Folk song for goddess kwnchamma

Kenchamma, kenchamma goddess benign and bounteous mother of earth blood of life harvest queen rain crowned, kenchamma, kenchamma goddess, benign and bounteous.

Religion is very important and the people are continuously holding religious celebrations.

The symbolic significance

-          In kantha paral the picture of village life is filled up by giving further accounts of the grinding poverty, illiteracy and the conflicts and tensions that mark the Indian village life.

-          Indeed there is a constant shifting and ordering of material selection of significant details so that kanthapura acquiers a symbolic significance.

-          It becomes a migrocosm of macrocosm one out of the lakhs of Indian villages in which live 80% of he people of india.

Response to gandhian movement

In this remote south india village there comes the Gandhi movement through morthy dear and other village boys.

It is moorthy who organizes the Gandhi work in the village. He is indeed the life and spirit behind the movement is kanthapura just as Gandhi was the life and spirit of the freedom struggle in india. But way soon the people of kanthapura as a whole are actively involved and the novel becomes an account of their sufferlus and their heroic sacrifice.

The people of kanthapura have been enthoused with spirit of Gandhi and they march ahead heroically despite all the sufferus and the hardship they have to undergo.