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.