Kerur Vasudevacharya’s “Indira” – Part 1: The Story

Not all early realist novels supported social change.  In the novels discussed in earlier posts, the people who opposed women‘s education, widow remarriage, and general change in society, were on the other side and the authors of these novels strongly advocated reforms, though Bolara Baburao's and Gulvadi Annajirao's approaches in their novels can best be termed ambiguous.  Kerooru Vasudevacharya's Indira (1908) is an example of the orthodox 'anti-social change' point of view.

Indira is essentially a story of the romance between Indira and Ramakanth.  The story of Indira's and Ramakanth's love has all the 'classical' ingredients – first meeting, falling in love, separation, misunderstanding, parental objection, and finally marriage.  Ramakanth's father, Kamalakantha, Indira's father, Jayarao, and Devayani, a young educated widow, were friends in their youth in Srirangapattana. Kamalakantha and Jayarao both develop a liking for Devayani, but she has a soft corner for Kamalakantha and wanted to marry him.  Jayarao did not like this and once when Kamalakantha was away on some work and did not return for many days, he uses this opportunity and informs Devayani that Kamalakantha had got married in some other town.  Kamalakantha too had sensed that Devayani liked him and he too wanted to marry her.  When he returned from his trip, Devayani refuses to meet him.   

When Kamalakantha got to know what had happened and when his desire to meet Devayani and explain matters were rejected by her, he leaves town, hurt and dejected.  He later marries a girl of his parents’ choice and Ramakanth was born some years later.  Jayarao too marries a girl of his parents’ choice and Indira was born to them.  Devayani chose to remain a widow.  Ramakanth's and Jayarao's respective wives die early.  

Jayarao continued to live in Srirangapattana, and so does Devayani.  Jayarao's business matters meant frequent trips outside his town and Indira grows up into a young girl under the loving care of Devayani.  Devayani had not forgotten Kamalakantha and when she learnt that his son, Ramakanth, had come to Bangalore in search of a job, she wanted to see him and through a mutual friend, requested him to come and see her.  Ramakanth comes to Srirangapattana and in course of time meets Indira in Devayani's house.  

Friendship soon turns to love.  Jayarao, on returning, saw this growing closeness with increasing concern.  He wanted to get his daughter married to a titled young man, through whom he too could assume some importance in society.  His greatest ambition was to acquire the ‘Rao Bahadur’ title from the British.  Moreover, he did not want Indira to marry the son of someone who thwarted him in his bid to marry Devayani.  He tries to send Ramakanth outside the state by offering jobs. Many such attempts and misunderstandings later, Indira and Ramakanth come together finally to get married.

Gulvadi Annajirao's "Rohini athava Saraswatha Mandala"

Gulvadi Annajirao‘s Rohini athava Saraswatha Mandala was published in 1906.  I haven’t yet seen a copy of this novel, but I have put together a brief sketch of the novel with the help of various secondary sources.  A copy of Rohini exists in the Library of the British Museum according to A Catalogue of The Kannada, Badaga, and Kurg Books in The Library of The British Museum – compiled by L. D. BARNETT. 

Gulvadi Annajirao too belonged to the Chitrapur Saraswat community as Gulvadi Venkatarao, and Rohini and Venkatarao‘s Indirabai are similar in many ways. This novel too deals with widow remarriage, though with slightly radical overtones.

Rohini is not a virgin-widow like Indirabai, and the person who loves her even before she was married, Narayana, hesitates to marry her after she becomes a widow.  Though Narayana has a different reason for not marrying Rohini — he feels that she is a ‘parastree‘(another man‘s wife) — Annajirao criticizes this and introduces a roving character called Ramasharma (who shows up intermittently in the novel) who makes Narayana understand that Rohini is a widow now and is not another man‘s wife anymore and that Narayana would not be doing anything so virtuous as marrying a widow in his entire life.

Annajirao does not blindly extol the virtues of reformers, and criticizes people who go around as reformers for its external grandeur (Rohini‘s father Mukundarao, who insists on taking her to the prayers at the Upasana Mandir of the local Brahmo Samaj) and also those who masquerade as reformers (A friend of Rohini‘s first husband called Vishweshwararao) luring young people into their nefarious activities. He criticizes orthodox religionists for sending injunctions at the slightest pretext and excommunicating people from their caste.

Annajirao‘s anxiety regarding the sanctity and safety of the Brahmin community comes forth strongly.  Narayana wants to establish a ‘Brahmin Samaj’ instead of the radical ‘Brahmo Samaj.‘ This ‘Brahmin Samaj’ would aim at creating a community where educated and learned Brahmins come together without any inter-subcaste hatred. Ramasharma adds to this by saying that unless the Brahmin community changes with the times, Brahminism would be destroyed by ‘mlechcha‘-s (outcastes/untouchables).  For Annajirao, the ‘Saraswata Samaja‘ in the title of the novel does not only refer to his Chitrapur Saraswath community, but ‘Saraswath‘ in the larger sense of ‘a learned and erudite‘ community.

Rodda Vyasarao Venkatarao's "Chandramukhiya Ghatavu"

Chandramukhiya Ghatavu written by Rodda Vyasarao Venkatarao was published in 1900.  Though the novel does not have the overarching reformist agendas that Indirabai and Bhagirathi had, but it highlights the position of women in a hierarchical society. In terms of ‘giving a message,’ this novel is similar to most of the early realist novels.  Chandramukhiya Ghatavu disappeared from public and literary view almost immediately and was discovered by Dr D. A. Shankar in the British Museum, London. This novel was edited by Shankar and republished in 1998.

The main crux of this novel is the blind beliefs and superstitions that afflict Hindu society, and how women are made to suffer to uphold these dubious beliefs.  Briefly, the plot is of how an unemployed Brahmin youth, Haradatta, feels burdened by his wife and three children.  He is forced to work as a watchman in a factory and the meagre salary is not enough to feed his family and his vices.  Haradatta resorts to manipulating some accounts at his disposal, is discovered and thrown out of his job. In revenge, he forges some papers and decamps with three thousand rupees.  He resurfaces in the garb of a holy man as that costume would help him evade the police looking for him and also as a lucrative profession to lure superstitious and gullible people.  Some convincing tricks later, the husband of a childless couple goads his wife, Chandramukhi, to serve the fake swami, so that he may grant them a child.  Haradatta gives her an intoxicant mixed in milk which she drinks and dies soon after.  The police who were on his trail finally catch up with him and he is sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment for his misdeeds.

This novel is only of 28 pages, but as only the second realist novel in Kannada, Chandramukhiya Ghatavu is remarkable for its narrative technique.  The novel opens with a first-person narrator, Kalicharan, a reporter for the daily Pioneer in Bhagalpur.  Almost like the beginning of a detective novel, Kalicharan receives a terse mysterious telegraphic message from his friend Dhirendra, a police inspector in Alipore, asking him to reach Alipore the next day.  The mystery continues as Dhirendra receives Kalicharan without giving him even a hint of the purpose of his urgent message, and at the dead of night, gives him a package and asks him to leave Alipore immediately.  Kalicharan opens the package upon reaching Bhagalpur and discovers a manuscript of an autobiographical account of a life of a ‘sanyasi’/‘swami’ with Dhirendra’s comments, and a request to publish the account after deleting irrelevant details.  From the second chapter onwards, it is the purported autobiography of the ‘sanyasi’/ ‘swami,’ published and presented by Kalicharan.  Haradatta turns out to be the ‘sanyasi’ and the second first-person narrator.  The novel is constructed as an autobiographical/confessional account of a ‘sanyasi’ discovered and presented by Kalicharan.

The novel is set in Eastern India, in Bihar and Bengal, and the names of places and of people suggest a different kind of setting for a Kannada novel. Chandramukhiya Ghatavu which began as an English novel with a Hindi name (Aysa Kysa Hua) serialized in The Indian Social Reformer written by a Kannadiga that ended abruptly finally reemerges as a Kannada novel set outside the Kannada speaking areas, the present day Karnataka.