Mulk Raj Anand # Indian Literature

 Mulk Raj Anand

Mulk Raj Anand is known for his realistic and sympathetic portrayal of the poor in India. He is considered a founder of the English-language Indian novel.He started his writing career in England by writing some short reviews in T. S. Eliot's magazine, 'Criterion'.Through his writings he revealed that in addition to the foreign colonialism of Britain there existed layers of colonialism within Indian society. This internal colonialism stood in the way of India's transition to a modern civil society. While exposing the overarching divide between the British and a colonized India, he reveals an Indian society creating its own layers of colonizers and colonized thereby rendering the fledgling Indian nationalism an extremely problematic concept. In 1935 he founded the Progressive Writers' Association along with other two writers Sajjad Zaheer and Ahmed Ali. In 1946, he launched the magazine about fine arts named 'Marg' which was mainly funded by JRD Tata and later got financial support from Tata Group. 

In 1953, Mr. Anand won the International Peace Prize given by World Peace Council.

In 1968, he was awarded Padma Bhushan by the Government of India for his extraordinary contribution to the field of literature and education.

In 1971, he received Sahitya Akademi Award for his highly popular novel 'The Morning Face' (1968).

He was honored as India's Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck for his memorable novel "Untouchable'.

Untouchable(1935) 

Anand’s first book, ‘Untouchable’ argues for eradicating the caste system. It depicts a day in the life of Bakha, a young sweeper, who is "untouchable" due to his work of cleaning latrines. The book was inspired by Anand’s aunt's experience when she had a meal with a Muslim woman and was treated as an outcast by her family. Once, in Virginia Woolf’s drawing room, Anand was mocked by a young critic Edward Sackville-West for trying to write a novel about a lower-caste protagonist. Then George Russell suggested him to talk to Gandhiji.With some of the suggestions of Gandhiji he finally edited this novel and E. M. Forster had written a foreword to this novel. Finally the novel got published in 1935. The book is divided into different sections and the first sections starts with an imaginary town of Bulashah. Lakha who is the leader of all Bulashah’s sweepers has an eldest son Bakha who is 18 years old who is very intelligent and vain. He is obsessed with British dress and habits. Bakha's brother is Rakha who is shown to arrange food for the family and his sister Sohini was molested by the pundit Kali Nath. Bakha was treated well by Charat Singh who gave him hockey. At last the novel ends with the presence of Gandhiji advising them the ways to their social illumination and with the news that the coming of flush toilet may completely obliterate one day the class of the Untouchables that Bakha hopes. 

Coolie (1936)

The book is highly critical of British rule in India and India's caste system—one of the biggest societal problems that plague the society. The plot of the novel revolves around a 14-year-old boy, Munoo, and his plight due to poverty and exploitation because of the various social and political structures. The novel traces the journey of Munoo from Kangra Hills in a native village near Bilaspur as an orphan, taken care of by his uncle who left him work in a middle class family in Sham Nagar. Incidentally, during playing a monkey game Munoo bites the couple's little daughter and escape their beatings by riding on a train where he encounters Prabha Dayal and reaches Daulatpur to work in the former's factory. But Dayal's business partner Ganpat defrauded him and the factory was closed, leaving Munoo again on the streets. Then he followed a circus team to Mumbai and secured a job as a factory worker. He came under the influence of Ratan who became a victim of a workers' riot. At last Munoo was employed by the half-Indian Mrs. May Mainwaring, a wealthy woman to pull the ladyship’s rickshaw through the steep streets of the town of Shimla. The work is taxing, but Munoo is grateful for it and relishes the familiar sight of the nearby mountains. At that point, however, he begins to show the telling signs of tuberculosis: fatigue, a high fever, and a bloody cough. In short order, despite Mrs. Mainwaring’s solicitous care, Munoo dies. He is just 15. 

Two Leaves and a Bud (1937)

Located in the tea plantations of Assam, the novel deals with the theme of oppression of the poor. It revolves around a peasant who tries to protect his daughter from a British soldier. It was later adapted to a Hindi film, 'Rahi', by Dev Anand and simultaneously released in English as 'The Wayfarer'. Gangu is influenced by Buta, the Sardar of the Macpherson Tea estate to leave his home in Hoshiarpur to come and work as laborer in a tea estate in Assam. He has a daughter Leila and a son Buddhu besides his wife, Sajani. The promise of a good salary and a free gift of a piece of fertile land and huge savings are temptations which are too strong to resist for Gangu. But soon after arriving at Robertson Tea Estate, Gangu starts understanding that he has been deceived by the Sardar Buta. Narain, a coolie from Bikaner reveals that once a coolie comes there, he would neither be able to go back of his own will and not to be allowed to escape .The coolie lanes are so dirty that hookworms breed and flourish in abundance. The danger of cholera always pervades there. But, for the capitalists, coolies are thieves, liars, and lazy. They are not even considered as human beings. John De La Harve, the plantation Doctor is anxious about the unhygienic conditions there and the epidemics. He considers the coolies sub-human. Harve suggests mosquito nets and he is scorned by Croft-Cooke. Soon malaria breaks out and Gangu’s wife Sajani dies of it. Gangu does not have money even to perform the last rites and goes to borrow from Croft-Cooke. But returned empty handed. The villain of the novel is Reggie Hunt, the Assistant Manager.Those who are young and beautiful are either fooled or forcibly taken away as was done to Neogi’s wife. They are rewarded ornaments like ear or nose rings and their husbands given land. Those who oppose are beaten,wounded and fired at gun-point. Reggie Hunt brutally enjoys Neogi’s wife and wounds her. He destroys the family of Chameli and takes her along with him to his house. When he gets fed up with her, she is thrown out. He openly lives with three coolie women. Narain, a coolie rightly comments that nobody’s mother or sister is safe in the tea plantation. Death is considered as the attainment of relief amidst the misery of workers. One day Hunt approached Leila, Gangu’s daughter with lust as she plucked tealeaves alone. He followed Leila to her house. When Gangu comes to block his way, Reggie shoots him dead. A trial follows and Mr. Justice Mowberley and a jury consisting of seven Europeans and two Indians find Reggie not guilty of the charges of murder and release him. The irony of fate is such that Gangu, who comes to the tea plantation at Assam to begin a new life, meets his sudden death. Dr. La Harve is humiliated for showing sympathy and supporting the cause of coolies. He is terminated from service and his beloved Barbara, the daughter of Croft Cooke becomes cold towards him. His romance with Barbara comes suddenly to an end. The white doctor becomes the mouthpiece of the writer, whose misfortune is directed at the superstition and stupidity, illiteracy and the ignorance of the peasants. 

Punjab Trilogy : Anand's Punjab Trilogy brings three novels together… . Village, Across the Black Water and The Sword and the Sickle . Although each novel is complete in itself, together through the individual story of a peasant youth they narrate tale of social and political unrest in rural India. The trilogy has been brought together by Saros Cowasjee, a noted Anand scholar who had also written a very insightful introduction to his writings. The trilogy follows the journey of Lal Singh, alias Lalu. Village shows him as a callow youth in the village of Nandpur, Punjab who ends up joining army to escape a trumped up charge by the landlord.

Across the Black Water, This book is the only Indian English novel that is set in World War I and portrays the experiences of Lalu whose company of soldiers were shipped off to France and portrays his horrifying experience as a soldier in trench warfare in the British Imperial army fighting the infamous battle of Ypres and Festubert in the Great War. 

The Sword and the Sickle, deals with the topic of social and political structures, specifically, the rise of Communism. The title for the book was given to Anand by George Orwell. The novel was in keeping with British and American writings of the time. Lalu, instead of being rewarded , was inhumanly demobilized on the suspicion of his anti- colonial leanings. On returning home he discovered all his kinsmen including his parents died in the midst of famine. Only his middle brother who was to marry at the time of his leaving the home became an ascetic and left home. 

The Big Heart is a moving tale of conflict, love and passion centred on a group of craftsmen trying to come to grips with automation that threatens their livelihood and traditional way of life.The theme of the novel is the conflict between hereditary copper smiths and the capitalists. It is a novel about a village of artisans in Amritsar District in the early 1940s. Ananta, a coppersmith, who has had the experience of participating in the Gandhian struggle for freedom in Bombay returns to his hometown of Amritsar after having worked in the more industrialised cities of Bombay and Ahmedabad. Ananta, while coming from Bombay, accompanies a woman, Janaki, and keeps her as his mistress and enjoys romance. But she is slowly dying of Tuberculosis. Like most people of his craft, he has difficulty making a living as the introduction of machines is throwing the craftsmen out of work. The cause behind all this, is that, two Chowdaries - Muralidhar and Gokul Chand set up a factory, which has rendered the local coppersmiths jobless and hopeless.The coppersmiths face both destitution and a break up of their whole society based on age-old traditions and customs. Yet, Ananta can see both the utility and the inevitability of the machines and the need for the coppersmiths to band together so that the power of the machine could offer a new life for those whom it threatens. But unsettled, tense and suspicious as the coppersmiths are, a spark of demagogy culminates in violence and wanton destruction which ends in sudden, unexpected tragedy as Ananta's Gandhian approaches are unwelcomed and Ralia, in his utter madness kills Ananta, hitting his head against a machine repeatedly. The story ends with the machine emerging as the winner over humans.

Private Life Of An Indian Prince

In keeping with his other writings dealing with the topic of social and political reform, this book deals with the abolition of the princely states system in India. This book describes the time of independence of India from the British. During this period, on one side the country was partitioned into India and Pakistan while on the other side, Princely States were provided an option to merge with either India or with Pakistan by signing an instrument of accession with either government. The story is about Prince Victor Ashok Kumar of Shampur. As usual, lust is his primary nature. Sardar Patel has invited him to sign and inform him about the facilities which can be offered in independent India. Maharaja Ashok Kumar of Sham Pur asserts complete independence for his small hill-state rather than join the Indian Union. A febrile romantic, who has inherited more of the vices than the virtues of his ancestors, he is encouraged by his nymphomaniac mistress Ganga Dasi, a powerful and illiterate hill-woman whom he has installed in his palace to the exclusion of his three legitimate maharanis. To feed his mistress’s greed, he extorts large sums of money from his starving peasantry. This provokes a revolt in Sham Pur which in turn incurs the extreme displeasure of the government in Delhi.His personal impulses and passions blind the Maharaja from the larger social issues involved. He meets Ganga’s challenge with hysterical tears, and his people and the Government of India’s with melodramatic gestures and self-deluding lies. Needless to say, he loses both contests. Exiled to London, he seduces a shop girl with all his former princely finesse. But he cannot forget his mistress and his love for her brings about his downfall. In his State, Praja Mandal and the communal forces want to merge with India as the governance of the state law and order has not been able to be restored. Dr Hari Shankar a medic is his advisor who is aware of the reality for partition and accession and tenders proper advice but the Prince has no time to bother about this. He knows about the petty bad position of jails and poverty of his people, and the brutal ways of the police handling people, still he is bothered about his lavish life. He is more interested in arranging Shikar with his American friends. With changing circumstances, his lady Ganga Dasi beds his American friend and later elopes with his friend. Prince visits London and plan to murder his friend with whom Ganga Dasi is living. He succeeds but the crime is caught. He is brought back before the authorities where he is declared lunatic and sent to an Asylum in Pune. While the novel is not an autobiography, like many of his earlier novels, it follows an autobiographical tone. In 2004, a commemorative edition including this book was launched by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The introduction was written by Saros Cowasjee. 

Morning Face : Mulk Raj Anand’s Morning Face is the second in the series of Anand’s autobiographical novels. This novel was first published in 1968. The book won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1971. The book features Anand's autobiographical narrative that was first used by him in Seven Summers. Anand describes about the protagonist’s growth from boyhood to adolescence, from the age of ten to the age of sixteen, from the beginning of the First World War to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. Here the protagonist’s growth from innocence to awareness, from a sensitive boy to a youthful rebel gets unfolded to us especially in the narrative in terms of the traditions of realistic fiction. In this novel Krishan Chander is one of the four sons of Babu Ram Chand. Krishan Chander, who is both author and hero, emerges as the creation of Anand’s realistic imagination. The character also reveals Anand’s deft use of the first person narrative mode of autobiographical fiction, to suit the purposes of the realistic novel. Morning Face is not an autobiography but an autobiographical fiction. In the novel synthesis of the autobiographical content and the fictional component have been dexterously fulfilled by the author. Particularly this novel embodies a synthesis of historical autobiographical truthfulness and moral aesthetic vitality. 

Theatre of the Absurd: An introduction

 Theatre of the Absurd

The Theatre of the Absurd is a dramatic movement that was made up of many diverse plays, most of which were written between 1940 and 1960 by certain European and American dramatists who agreed with the Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus’s assessment, in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942), that the human situation is essentially absurd, devoid of purpose. When first performed, these plays shocked their audiences as they were startlingly different from the conventional plays produced prior to this. In fact, many of those plays were labeled as “anti-plays" as not only it seemed to lack the structural cohesion that used to characterize the earlier plays that were staged but also the characters perform frantically and their busyness serves to underscore the fact that nothing happens to change their existence. This style of writing was first popularized by the Eugène Ionesco play The Bald Soprano (1950). Broad comedy, often similar to vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly extensive were some of its characteristic aspects, with either a parody or dismissal of realism that underlie the concept of the "well-made play" . 

 

Coinage of the term: Critic Martin Esslin, in an attempt to clarify and define this radical movement,coined the term in his 1960 essay "The Theatre of the Absurd", He defined it 

" absurd" as all of the plays emphasized the absurdity of the human condition.  We tend to use the word “absurd” synonymously with “ridiculous", as the actions ( or inactions) taken by the characters can not  resonate anything ''reasonable" . Esslin referred to the original meaning of the word– ‘out of harmony with reason or propriety; illogical’. He focuses on the playwrights Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, and Eugène Ionesco. Esslin says that their plays have a common denominator—the "absurd", a word that Esslin defines with a quotation from Ionesco: "absurd is that which has no purpose, or goal, or objective."In the first edition of The Theatre of the Absurd, Esslin quotes the French philosopher Albert Camus's essay "Myth of Sisyphus", as it uses the word "absurdity" to describe the human situation: "In a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. … This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity." 

Background : The plays focus largely on ideas of existentialism and express what happens when human existence lacks meaning or purpose and the communication breaks down. Critics do believe that Theater of the Absurd arose as a movement from the doubts and fears surrounding World War II and the consequent shattering of the traditional, moral and political values and attacks as Esslin wrote  in his introduction to the book Absurd Drama (1965), the comfortable certainties of religious or political orthodoxy. The decline of religious faith in the Twentieth Century is partly responsible for the growing notion that life had no identifiable purpose. Esslin notes that this decline was “masked until the end of the Second World War by the substitute religions of faith in progress, nationalism, and various totalitarian fallacies”. Whereas one who believes in the afterlife, sees life as a means of getting there; one who does not believe that, is left to either conclude that there is no purpose or to find an alternative justification for his/her life. These plays put forward a challenge to accept the human condition as it is, in all its mystery and absurdity, because there are no easy solutions to the mysteries of existence, because ultimately man is alone in a world which has no meanings, which has no definitives and therefore, the shedding of easy solutions, of comforting illusions, may be painful, but it leaves behind it a sense of freedom and relief. And that is why, in the last resort, the Theatre of the Absurd does not provoke tears of despair but the laughter of liberation to accept the sense that there is no such thing as a  " happy ending ".

It aims to shock its audience out of complacency, to bring it face to face with the harsh facts of the human situation as these writers perceive and represent and we,too, along with them, move,doubt, act, react and eventually laugh at the quest for meaning and the futile endeavor to find truth. 

Precursors of Absurdism:  Friedrich Dürrenmatt says in his essay "Problems of the Theatre", "Comedy alone is suitable for us … But the tragic is still possible even if pure tragedy is not. We can achieve the tragic out of comedy. We can bring it forth as a frightening moment, as an abyss that opens suddenly; indeed, many of Shakespeare's tragedies are already really comedies out of which the tragic arises." Esslin cites William Shakespeare as an influence on this aspect of the "Absurd drama".Shakespeare's influence is acknowledged directly in the titles of Ionesco's Macbett and Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. 

 Absurd playwrights often employ techniques borrowed from earlier innovators. Writers and techniques frequently mentioned in relation to the Theatre of the Absurd include the 19th-century nonsense poets, such as Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear;  Bertolt Brecht's distancing techniques in his "Epic theater";and the "dream plays" of August Strindberg mark its importance in breaking off the conventional play performances. 

One commonly cited precursor is Luigi Pirandello's  Six Characters in Search of an Author.Pirandello was a highly regarded theatrical experimentalist who wanted to bring down the fourth wall presupposed by the realism of playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen and his " well made plays". Six Characters uses the technique of Metatheatre, in which through roleplaying and plays-within-plays a highly-theatricalized vision of reality is criticized and the binaries between author/ director, characters / actors are seen to be entangled. 

A precursor is Alfred Jarry whose Ubu plays scandalized Paris in the 1890s. Likewise, the concept of 'pataphysics'—"the science of imaginary solutions"—first presented in Jarry's Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysician (Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician)was inspirational to many later Absurdists. 

Themes and representations: The Theatre of the Absurd examines the fundamental absurdity of choosing to live one's life normally when confronted with an uncaring and meaningless universe. Absurdist plays contextualize these two aspects of existence, presenting the characters as either behaving routinely in absurd situations, or behaving absurdly in routine situations, or any combination of the two. While Theatre of the Absurd is, by definition, absurd, themes of futility, anxiety and isolation are commonly present throughout these works. 

Theatre of the Absurd actively rejects conventional notions of narrative and  a well aligned plot —--- a clear beginning and end with a purposeful development in between and opting instead for chaotic and seemingly nonsensical plots.There is usually a great deal of repetition in both language and action, which suggests that the play isn’t actually “going anywhere.” In Waiting for Godot, the stage directions indicate that Vladimir and Estragon are constantly moving. For example, they repeatedly “rummage” through their pockets and “peer” into their hats. These actions are so frequent, however, that the audience begins to feel as if they are watching the same thing over and over again. They could even be called static actions as they contribute nothing to the flow of the play.

The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man's reaction to a world apparently without meaning, or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces.These ideas that inform the plays also dictate their structure. Absurdist playwrights, therefore, did away with most of the logical structures of traditional theater.Time and space are typically mutable, ill-defined, or absent. Many plays are cyclical, ending at the same place they began, such as in the case of Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano or Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, with all preceding action either disregarded, forgotten, or rendered irrelevant.  Logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech and to the ultimate conclusion—silence. Language, too, in an Absurdist play is often dislocated, full of cliches, puns, repetitions, and non sequiturs. 

Characters may react to certain statements or events with uncharacteristic levity or gravity or disregard cause-and-effect altogether. However, the characters perform frantically, their busyness serves to underscore the fact that nothing happens to change their existence. In Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1952), in a timeless universe emerge two lost creatures, Vladimir and Estragon, usually played as tramps, spend their days waiting—but without any certainty of whom they are waiting for or of whether he, or it, will ever come.Though they have each other, they are at the same time isolated from one another. One indication of this is that they are never able to adequately communicate; their conversation goes in circles, emphasizing  the isolation of the individual, or man’s inability to connect with others.The characters in Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano (1950) sit and talk, repeating the obvious until it sounds like nonsense, thus revealing the inadequacies of verbal communication. The ridiculous, purposeless behavior and talk give the plays a sometimes dazzling comic surface, but there is an underlying serious message of metaphysical distress. 

 The Absurd plays typically demonstrate how traditional human rationality and expectations have gone awry in a world of chaos. They often begin from the point of familiarity for the audience, such as Estragon and Vladimir's evocation of the classic vaudevillian double-act in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot or the use of the pre established Shakespearean characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. This establishment of familiarity is  either immediately or steadily subverted, challenging the audience's understanding of theatrical and narrative norms and confronting them with a dramatic representation of life's inherent absurdity. By the narrative's conclusion, the audience is typically left with a sense of uncertainty, prompting them to examine their own lives for examples of absurdity and existential confusion.

Above all, the absurd dramatists sought to reconcile man with the modern world. Esslin eloquently states that “the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions–and to laugh at it” . The absurd dramatists were the first to propagate this idea of acceptance in the face of absurdity. In doing so, they not only challenged the preconceptions of what does and does not constitute theater, but also redefined the art form and created a space in which succeeding movements could flourish.

Sources :

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/the-theatre-of-the-absurd/&ved=2ahUKEwiQ9Y2C2Z-CAxW4TmwGHXTmBToQFnoECCIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw10Qlf72L56gztVyDYhowSo

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342109178_The_Theater_of_the_Absurd&ved=2ahUKEwjMwJT675-CAxWUbmwGHdDaDkYQFnoECAEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3kEW7GiUPi5zS556BiWrLN

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Raja Rao: A brief critical overview of the selected works

 Raja Rao's works constitute a new departure in the direction of philosophical statements in symbolic fictional terms as he tried to incorporate Indian metaphysics and philosophy into his fictional work.

"India is not a country like France is, or like England; India is an idea.” These lines from Raja Rao’s seminal novel The Serpent and The Rope exemplify, in a sense, his approach to writing.aRja Rao was an active and an important part of the Quit India Movement that took place in 1942. Raja along with Ahmad Ali co-edited a mind-blowing journal, Tomorrow.

Rao has always played a dynamic part in the nationalist movements. During his time in Bombay, Raja had an association with Chetana, the cultural society that is known to propagate Indian thoughts and values. 

Rao's spiritual quest took him to various ashrams: he met Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry, Ramana Maharshi at Tiruvannamalai (in Tamil Nadu), and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Sevagram. In 1943 Rao succeeded in finding his guru, Sri Atmananda Guru, in Trivandrum: the epigraphs of Rao's novels The Serpent and the Rope and The Cat and Shakespeare are taken from Atmananda Guru's works on Vedanta.

"The Expiation of a Heretic" (1933), an autobiographical poem expressing the feeling of an Indian expatriate, is Rao's only excursion into Kannada verse.

The concept of life as lila ("play of the Divine") is present in The Cat and Shakespeare.

The Meaning of India (1996) brings together his nonfiction work published earlier in journals as varied as The Texas Quarterly, Encounter, and The Literary Criterion (Mysore). The Meaning of India also includes articles as well as speeches (such as his acceptance speech of the Neustadt International Prize in 1988) and prefaces to anthologies of essays (such as the memorial volume to Indira Gandhi). Just one piece, "The Silence of Mahatma Gandhi," was written especially for this collection.

Novels of Raja Rao

Kanthapura : Raja Rao’s Kanthapura is one of the finest novels to come out of mid-twentieth century India. On the surface level, the novel ‘Kanthapura’ (1938) by Raja Rao recounts the rise of a Gandhian nationalist movement in a small South Indian village of the same name. The story is narrated by Achakka, an elder Brahmin woman with an all-encompassing knowledge about everyone in her village. She narrates the story in the style of a sthala-purana, a traditional history of a village, its people, its gods, and local practices. It is the story of how Gandhi’s struggle for independence from the British came to a typical village, Kanthapura, in South India. Young Moorthy, back from the city with “new ideas,” cuts across the ancient barriers of caste to unite the villagers in non-violent action––which is met with violence by landlords and police. The dramatic tale unfolds in a poetic, almost mythical style which conveys as never before the rich textures of Indian rural life.‘Kanthapura’ begins by Achakka's lengthy first sentence, which situates her village in the broader context of India and the British Empire as a whole. Dominant castes like Brahmins are privileged to get the best region of the village, while lower castes such as Pariahs are marginalized. Despite this classist system, the village retains its long-cherished traditions of festivals in which all castes interact and the villagers are united.The village is believed to be protected by a local deity named Kenchamma. She supposedly battled a demon “ages, ages ago” and has protected Kanthapura’s people ever since. The villagers frequently pray to her for help, perform ceremonies to honour her, and thank her for their good fortune. Kenchamma exemplifies the traditional religion that Kanthapura’s people gradually come to leave behind.In the novel, the protagonist Moorthy is a Brahmin. Everybody in the village calls him as ‘corner house Moorthy’ or ‘our Moorthy’. The villagers treat him as a ‘small mountain’ while Gandhi as ‘big mountain’. Moorthy goes from door to door carrying the message of Gandhi even to the Pariah Quarter and makes known about the political, social, economic resurrections. The British government accuses Moorthy of provoking the townspeople to inflict violence and arrests him. While Moorthy spends the next three months in prison, the women of Kanthapura take charge, forming a volunteer corps under Rangamma's (major female character) leadership. Rangamma instills a sense of patriotism among the women by telling stories of notable women from Indian history. The novel ends with Moorthy and the town looking to the future and planning to continue their fight for independence.

Thus, ‘Kanthapura’ evokes a sense of community and freedom, construed as a spiritual quality which overcomes all bounds and crosses all barriers. In his foreword to Kanthapura , Rao writes, "There is no village in India, however mean, that has not a rich sthala-purana, or legendary history, of its own. . . . One such story from the contemporary annals of my village I have tried to tell." The novel describes the impact of Gandhi and the struggle for freedom on a small village in southern India. Through his narrator, a garrulous grandmother, and his range of characters, Rao re-creates village life and reveals human nature in its rich diversity. Two stock elements of the village, the temple and the greedy moneylender, are present, but in Kanthapura the baseness of Bhatta, the village priest who grows rich by lending money, is a study of the degeneration of the Brahmin. Rao also gives a graphic account of the exploitation of the coolies in the nearby Skeffington coffee estate. The novel was a pioneering effort; Meenakshi Mukherjee refers to Kanthapura as "a remarkably radical text, in which he [Rao] experimented with language and used a collective feminine perspective, fusing myth and history in an innovative narrative mode." The narrative structure of Kanthapura exhibits many features of the Puranas, such as the upakatha ("subsidiary narrative"), which allows the narrator to digress freely. Like the harikatha, an oral performance of the Purana by a single speaker, the idiom of Kanthapura is colloquial, and the narrator uses songs to enliven the story. Rao never presents Mahatma Gandhi as a flesh-and-blood character in his novels; he shows Gandhi's impact through the influence of Moorthy, an educated young villager who has a mystic vision of the Mahatma. Kanthapura is a work of social realism, but it is not confined to that plane alone; as critic H. M. Williams has observed, "Kanthapura, which looks in many ways like a realistic epic of the freedom struggle, turns out on introspection to be the first of Raja Rao's explorations of the nature of India." R. Parthasarathy calls the novel a “microcosm of village India” and that was perhaps Rao’s ultimate aim with Kanthapura.

The Serpent and the Rope: 

Rao’s second novel, The Serpent and the Rope (1960) is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1964. The book explores themes of reality, existence, and self-realization. Throughout the novel, protagonist Ramaswamy's thought process develops in line with Vedantic philosophy.It is an autobiographical account of the narrator, a young intellectual Brahman, and his wife seeking spiritual truth in India, France, and England. The novel takes Rao’s first marriage and its disintegration as its subject. Reflecting the flavor and wholeness of the traditional Indian way of life, where fact and fable, philosophy and the matter-of-fact blend into one, this semi-autobiographical novel can be called timeless, just as India herself seems timeless and other-worldly by virtue of her unchanging rituals.Rama is described as a kind young man who is somewhat frail because of his tubercular lungs. He has been living and studying in France and has married a French woman, Madeleine. Rama plans to finish his thesis on the Albigensian heresy and then to move back to India, bringing Madeleine with him. Early on in the novel, from the moment Rama first references his wife, the reader gets a sense that something is not right in their marriage.The novel also portrays a very definite period of time, describing the full implications of the meeting of East and West on the most intimate plane through the story of Rama, an Indian, and Madeleine, a French girl, who meet at a French university shortly after World War II.in Rao's novel, the West is not merely Madeleine, whom Ramaswamy marries, but a multitude of characters: her cousin Catherine; her uncle Charles Rousselin and aunt Zoubeida; Lezo, the exile from Spain; the religious Russian, Georges Khuschbertieff; the French taxi driver, Henri; the porter at Girton College, Cambridge; and the patron at the café at Aix. Their marriage is the central theme of the book, and it is in telling the story of this marriage that Rama reveals, more deeply than most writers are able to suggest in their lifetime, the meaning of love. For these two people it becomes a question either of preserving their identities or of sacrificing an inherited background to make their marriage a success. Rao explores the theme of marriage through parallel instance: Tristan and Isolde, Abelard and Heloise, the Upanishadic story of sage Yajnyavalkya and Maitreyi, Satyavan and Savithri, Rama and Sita, and Krishna and Radha. Many other repeated motifs relate to Buddha's great renunciation, Paul Valéry 's "Le Cimetière Marin," and the Cathars. The scene shifts back and forth in time and space with frequent flashbacks. Rao has said that the novel is an attempt at "a Pauranic recreation of Indian storytelling: that is to say, the story as a story is conveyed through a thin thread to which are attached (or which passes through) many other stories, fables and philosophical disquisitions, like a mala ".Family ties on both sides do not help, and Rama's trip back to India for his father's illness forcibly reminds him of the underlying contrasts between India and Europe, and of a certain conflict between them and himself. While there he meets his friend Pratap's fiancée, Savithri, an event which is to bring many forgotten questions to the surface and to alter the whole perspective of his life. The folktale about Prince Satyakama and the princess who comes out of a pumpkin provides a parallel to the life of Ramaswamy and Savithri. When Rama returns to France, he and Madeleine have to face their problems and find their own solutions in parting their ways. Rao attempts to infuse something of the rhythms of Sanskrit into his English prose. Some Sanskrit literary texts mix prose and verse (champu-kavya). Rao incorporates poetry (French and German), Sanskrit hymns and chants, the bhajans of Mirabai, Provençal songs, snatches of opera (with musical notations), diary entries, legends, and folktales to give his prose a distinctive texture.

The Cat and Shakespeare 

It was published in 1965. It is also philosophical, but in the comic mode, and presents an authentic picture of life in India in the 1940s. It is a kind of sequel to The Serpent and the Rope, which posited mukti (salvation) through jnana (knowledge). The symbol of the cat is from the philosophy of Ramanujacharya, which lays emphasis on Divine Grace, and salvation through bhakti (devotion). Just as the kitten allows itself to be carried by the mother cat, so humanity can attain salvation by complete surrender to the Divine. An earlier version called "The Cat" was published in The Chelsea Review in 1959, but in terms of composition, the novel came earlier. According to Naik, "The Cat and Shakespeare was actually written about two years after The Serpent and the Rope was completed in 1955-1956."

Ramakrishna Pai, the narrator, and Govindan Nair are clerks in a government rationing office in Trivandrum in the 1950s. Pai's wife, Saroja, is so busy managing the ancestral property that she has no inclination to travel to Trivandrum to look after her husband. Nair, Pai's neighbor, helps him at every step; through his grace, Pai is vouchsafed a mystic vision. The novel includes bizarre incidents such as a scene of cat worship in the ration office and a trial in which the cat is a witness. While The Serpent and the Rope shows the hero struggling for enlightenment and looking for a guru, The Cat and Shakespeare shows the grace of the guru in operation. Holy men are stock characters in Indian fiction. The majority of novelists--for example, Anand, Khushwant Singh, Narayan (in The Guide [1958], and Manohar Malgonkar present them as frauds who exploit the faith of gullible people. Rao's Govindan Nair is far from the popular image of the holy man; that this guru is credible is a measure not only of Rao's talent as a novelist but also of his deep understanding of the Indian spiritual tradition and the concept of the jivanmukta, a person who has attained salvation while continuing with worldly life. The language of The Cat and Shakespeare is simple; yet, Nair can express complex truths because he works through parables similar to those in the Upanishads. 

Comrade Kirillov (1976), 

It was written a few years before The Serpent and the Rope, is a sketch of an Indian communist whose real name is Padmanabha Iyer. It was first published in a French version by Georges Fradier in 1965. The epigraph of the novel is from Dostoevsky's The Possessed (1872), and Rao's characters are as obsessed with India as Dostoevsky's Shatov is with Mother Russia. The style is involved, featuring long words and sentences. Critics such as Naik, D. S. Maini, and Narsingh Srivastava feel that this novella lacks form and seems to be merely a rehash of material left undeveloped in Rao's earlier work. P. K. Rajan admires the book for its satire, though he feels that the novel is "divested of literary form" and is "deficient in what precisely is Raja Rao's superb achievement in Kanthapura, a sublime artistic cohesion." But other critics--such as Esha Dey, V. V. Badve, and Vineypal Kaur Kirpal--praise its form; Kirpal, in fact, believes that the novel has "perfect structural unity." 

The narrator, "R," a friend of Padmanabha Iyer (Kirillov), resembles the novelist himself. Kirillov marries a Czech girl, Irene, and they have a son, Kamal. When Irene dies in childbirth a few years later, Kamal is sent to his grandfather in south India. The novel is lyrically intense in its description of "R" taking the child to the temple of the Virgin Goddess at Kanya Kumari and thus providing a kind of vicarious homecoming for the Moscow-bound Kirillov and Irene, who loved India. The narrative is interspersed with a twenty-six-page excerpt from Irene's diaries covering the period 1939-1945, which provides a different perspective on events. The book includes interminable discussions of communism and allied matters. Rao appears to be saying that an Indian communist is a contradiction in terms, that an Indian can only be a Gandhian.

The Chessmaster and His Moves

If The Serpent and the Rope highlighted binaries in metaphysics, a certain form of non-dualism emerges in The Chessmaster and His Moves. In The Chessmaster and His Moves worldly existence is likened to a game of chess. Many literary critics believe that Rao modelled this novel on the principle of Advaita Vedanta, or the belief that the true self or atman is the same as brahman or the highest metaphysical reality.

The novel consists of deep meditations on life, death, divine unity, time and love. The protagonist of the novel is Sivarama, a Tamil Brahmin mathematician. Rao was obviously attempting to play on the much-discussed mathematical dimension of Indian metaphysics, particularly the concept of brahman. At one point in the novel, Sivarama says, “My mind was essentially metaphysical… thus evading humans. For after all, the human has no ultimate significance.”

In the midst of all these complicated questions, the most prominent one the novel seeks to address is the fundamental question that every human asks himself or herself at some point in time — “Who am I?” This is a question that haunted Rao throughout his life as he attempted to arrive at some reconciliation about himself as an Indian author writing in English about Indian sensibilities in a foreign land.

Critical opinion is sharply divided on the merits of The Chessmaster and His Moves. Edwin Thumboo calls it "the most international novel we have" and "Rao's greatest achievement." R. Parthasarathy considers it "a metaphysical novel without equal in our time." Prema Nandakumar, however, is forthright in condemning it in her book review published in The Hindu: "The tedium is often unbearable . . . Raja Rao goes on and on mesmerized by his own voice." Naik feels that The Chessmaster and His Moves is little more than a reworking of material already presented. As he says in Indian English Literature 1980-2000: A Critical Survey: "The chief difficulty with The Chessmaster and His Moves is that at every step, it fills one with an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu; the narrative reads almost like a more prolix and rather confused retelling of Raja Rao's acknowledged masterpiece, The Serpent and the Rope."

Short Stories of Raja Rao 

On the Ganga Ghat (1989) is a series of stories delineating a variety of characters, including birds and animals, in the holy city of Benares. Rao's claim that the eleven chapters are part of a linked narrative "so structured that the whole book should be read as a single novel" is difficult to justify. The last chapter includes musings on life in general and on Benares in particular.In the first story "The Cow of the Barricades," the title story of the earlier collection, has an allegorical dimension. This story is about India's struggle for independence (the theme of Kanthapura), the cow is a real creature as well as a symbol of Mother India, and the "Master" parallels Mahatma Gandhi. In "India: A Fable," too, the subjects are valid both as symbols and at the realistic level. Critics have praised this story, which mixes fact and fancy, but the uninitiated reader may find the philosophy obtrusive. the holy cow named after the goddess Gauri is an expressive symbol of the Indian synthesis of tradition and modernity. The sacred cow dedicated to a god is a part of ancient Indian tradition, but Gauri, who dies of a British officer's bullet during the riots for freedom, becomes a martyr in the cause of modern Indian nationalism. "Narsiga" shows how the national consciousness roused by the Gandhian movement percolates in the simple mind of an illiterate urchin. In the process, however, the ancient legend of Rama gets inextricably mixed in with Gandhi's life and character as Narsiga imagines the modern Indian leader "going in the air … in a flower-chariot drawn by sixteen steeds." "In Khandesh" recaptures evocatively the commotion caused in a sleepy little village by which the British viceroy's special train is to pass.The True Story of Kanakapala, Protector of God" and "Companions" are legends from serpent lore, a traditional subject in a land in which a serpent festival is still celebrated. "The Little Gram Shop," on the other hand, is a starkly realistic study of Indian village life, and "A Client," the only story in the collection with an urban setting, provides an amusing glimpse into the Indian system of arranged marriages. Two of the three new stories in The Policeman and the Rose show how in his later work Rao's interest shifted from the social and political planes to a metaphysical apprehension of life. Only one story in this collection is a character sketch in the manner of earlier efforts like "Javani" and "Akkayya." "Nimka" is a portrait of a White Russian refugee whom the Indian narrator meets in Paris. A princess by blood, she now ekes out a living by serving as a waitress in a restaurant. Drawn to India through Tolstoi and the narrator, she declares that India for her is "the land where all that is wrong everywhere goes right."

It is in "India: A Fable" and the title story, "The Policeman and the Rose," that Rao has successfully made shorter fiction the vehicle of profound metaphysical statement. The central theme in both stories is humankind's quest for self-realization, though "India: A Fable" presents the theme with far greater economy of narrative content. The narrative in "The Policeman and the Rose" makes strange reading until one understands the key symbols. The narrator, who declares that every man is arrested at the moment of his birth by a policeman, recounts the story of his several births in past lives, since the day he was a contemporary of ancient Rama. In his latest birth in modern India, he goes to Paris, opens a "shop of Hindu eyes," and earns a reputation as a man of God. Upon his return to India, he falls ill, and he then goes back to Paris a much chastened man only to find that he has been declared dead and a statue erected to him. His return in flesh being now inconvenient, he is compelled to return to India, where at last he offers his red rose at the lotus feet of his guru at Travancore, the retired police commissioner. Finally getting rid of his policeman, he becomes free. The major symbols here are the policeman, who arrests everyone at birth and who is the ego sense (the guru, who has overcome his ego, is a retired police commissioner); the red rose, standing for rajas, or passion; the lotus, standing for truth; and the eye, which is the eye of religious faith. The entire narrative is thus a fictional statement indicating that salvation lies in surrendering one's ego at the feet of the M. K. Naik

Spoke of Rao that his short stories, though small in number, encompass Indian life and culture on individual, social, political, and metaphysical planes, and they offer authentic glimpses of Indian character and thought. Their English is imbued with a strong Indian flavor.

The Great Indian Way: A Life of Mahatma Gandhi, is a biography of Gandhi. 

"Without Gandhi," wrote Raja Rao once, "there can be no world of tomorrow." Now at the dawn of a new millennium, and Gandhi internationally acknowledged as a most influential figure of the twentieth century, the Great Indian Way offers fresh, important perspectives on his life — and Gandhism.

The book focuses especially on Gandhi’s South African days. The birth of Gandhism, Raja Rao holds, lay in the confrontation between the Briton, the Boer and the Indian "coolie". Gandhism was tested and fashioned in many a struggle in the "dark continent": the most cataclysmic of all, perhaps, the mass strike by Indian coal miners in Newcastle against the move to hold Indian marriages invalid. Thus was born the truth-warrior — and satyagraha and non-violent resistance forged — in a pilgrimage processional almost, the great march by more than two thousand Indian men, women and children from Newcastle to the Transvaal frontier. Gandhism touched the very nerve centre of the British Empire and within fifty years catalysed the political transformation of India and the world.

In South Africa too it was that Gandhi sought the right way to live and experimented with all that he later practised both in his public and private life. By the time Gandhi left South Africa for India in 1914, the manifesto for India’s freedom was already well scripted. In India, it unfolded on a much grander scale.

Raja Rao weaves together the whole chronicle in epic dimensions — in vigorous, rhythmic, moving cadences, uncovering hidden meaning in an aside here, a parable there unfolding the Mahatma’s life and the meaning of Gandhism on a vast canvas.

Australian Literature: an overview

  Australian Literature: an overview

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. Australia's capital is Canberra, and its largest city is Sydney. The country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. Indigenous Australians inhabited the continent for about 65,000 years prior to the first arrival of Dutch explorers in the early 17th century, who named it New Holland. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, therefore, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. Thus, Australian literature can be categorized into three segments------- Indigenous/Aboriginal literature, Classic Australian Literature and Contemporary Australian literature.

INDIGENOUS/ ABORIGINAL LITERATURE 

At the point of the first colonization, Indigenous Australians had not developed a system of writing, so the first literary accounts of Aboriginal people come from the journals of early European explorers, which contain descriptions of first contact, both violent and friendly. Early accounts by Dutch explorers and by the English buccaneer William Dampier wrote of the "natives of New Holland" as being "barbarous savages", but by the time of Captain James Cook and First Fleet marine Watkin Tench (the era of Jean-Jacques Rousseau), accounts of Aborigines were more sympathetic and romantic. 

David Unaipon (1872–1967) is known as the first Aboriginal author who provided the first accounts of Aboriginal mythology written by an Aboriginal: Legendary Tales of the Aborigines. Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993), the first Aboriginal Australian to publish a book of verse was famous Aboriginal poet, writer and rights activist credited with publishing the first Aboriginal book of verse: We Are Going (1964). Sally Morgan's novel My Place was considered a breakthrough memoir about the experiences of the Stolen Generations, thus, bringing indigenous stories to wider notice. My Place is a story of a young Aboriginal girl growing up to false heritage and not knowing where she is from, an autobiographical account of Sally Morgan’s discovery of her family’s Indigenous roots, revolving around Morgan's own hometown, Perth, Western Australia, and also Corunna Downs Station-------- a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author’s mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories. 

The voices of Indigenous Australians are being increasingly noticed and include the playwright Jack Davis and Kevin Gilbert. Jack Davis identified himself with the Western Australian Nyoongah tribe, also spelt Noongar, and he included some of this language into his plays. In conjunction with Davis’ use of his native language, academics have inferred that his work includes themes of Aboriginality and Aboriginalism. These literary concepts are used to communicate the relationship between cultures in his plays. Aboriginalism is much like Orientalism, where White society sees those of different race and culture as 'the other'. The concept is portrayed as white society needing to fix those cultural differences, which is referenced in Davis’ plays Kullark, The Dreamers, and No Sugar etc. Aboriginality encompasses the response to Aboriginalism and the reaction of Indigenous writers in reclaiming their culture and history. It is seen as a protest against white imperialism and assimilation policies that dominated the beginning of white settlement in Australia. The concept, Aboriginality, within literature also includes proposals of how both white and Indigenous people can move forward. This concept was introduced in the 1960s when Aboriginal literature was first published, proposing a new way forward.

 Indigenous authors who have won Australia's high prestige Miles Franklin Award include Kim Scott who was joint winner (with Thea Astley) in 2000 for Benang, and the main contexts in the novel deals with the process of "breeding out the colour". This was a process in which children were forcibly removed from their homes and assimilated into the white Australian society. These children were forced to "breed" with white Australians in order to lessen the appearance of the Aboriginal in them. The novel presents how difficult it is to form a working history of a population who had been historically uprooted from their past following Harley, a young man who has gone through the process of “breeding out the colour”, as he pieces together his family history through documentation, such as photograph and his grandfather’s notes, as well as memories and experiences. Harley and his family have undergone a process of colonial scientific experimentation called “breeding of the colour” which separated individuals from their Indigenous Australian families and origins. Again in 2011 Scott achieved Miles Franklin Award for That Deadman Dance, exploring the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people, European settlers and American whalers. Alexis Wright won the award in 2007 for her novel Carpentaria. Melissa Lucashenko won the award in 2019 for her novel Too Much Lip, which was also short-listed for the Stella Prize for Australian women's writing.

Many notable works have been written by non-indigenous Australians on Aboriginal themes. Examples include the poems of Judith Wright; The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (The story is written from the perspective of Jimmy Blacksmith, an Indigenous Australian man on a mission of revenge. The story is a fictionalised retelling of the life of the infamous indigenous bushranger Jimmy Governor.) by Thomas Keneally, Ilbarana by Donald Stuart, and the short story by David Malouf: "The Only Speaker of his Tongue". 

Classic Australian Literature

For centuries before the British settlement of Australia, European writers wrote fictional accounts of an imaginings of a Great Southern Land. The British satirist, Jonathan Swift, set the land of the Houyhnhnms of Gulliver's Travels to the west of Tasmania. In 1797 the British Romantic poet Robert Southey—then a young Jacobin—included a section in his collection, "Poems", a selection of poems under the heading, "Botany Bay Eclogues," in which he portrayed the plight and stories of transported convicts in New South Wales

POETRY: Among the important authors of classic Australian works are the poets Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, Dorothea Mackellar (wrote the iconic patriotic poem My Country). Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and bush poet of the colonial period. Lawson had no romantic illusions about a 'rural idyll', his grim view of the outback was far removed from the romantic idyll of brave horsemen and beautiful scenery depicted in the poetry of Banjo Paterson, whom he assaulted in his most successful prose collection is While the Billy Boils, published in 1896 that virtually reinvented Australian realism. Most of his work focuses on the Australian bush, such as the desolate "Past Carin'", and is considered by some to be among the first accurate descriptions of Australian life as it was at the time. His recurring characters include Joe Wilson, Jack Mitchell, Steelman and Smith, Dave Regan, Jim Bently and/or Andy Page, Brummy Hewson. Banjo Paterson was an Australian bush poet focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood. Paterson's more notable poems include "Clancy of the Overflow" (1889), "The Man from Snowy River" (1890) and "Waltzing Matilda" (1895), a bush ballad regarded widely as Australia's unofficial national anthem. Lawson and Paterson clashed in the famous "Bulletin Debate" over the nature of life in Australia with Lawson considered to have the harder edged view of the Bush and Paterson the romantic. Significant poets of the 20th century included Kenneth Slessor, A. D. Hope (wrote a book of "answers" to other poems, including one in response to the poem "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell.), Judith Wright and Les Murray (described himself, perhaps half-jokingly, as the last of the "Jindyworobaks’ ", an Australian literary movement whose white members sought to promote indigenous Australian ideas and customs, particularly in poetry).

NOVEL: The first novel to be published in Australia was a crime novel by Henry Savery. Early popular works tended to be the 'ripping yarn' variety, telling tales of derring-do against the new frontier of the Australian outback. Writers such as Rolf Boldrewood (Robbery under Arms), Marcus Clarke (For the Term of His Natural Life: novelisation of life as a convict in early Australian history. At times relying on seemingly implausible coincidences, the story follows the fortunes of Rufus Dawes, a young man transported for a murder that he did not commit. The book clearly conveys the harsh and inhumane treatment meted out to the convicts, some of whom were transported for relatively minor crimes, and graphically describes the conditions the convicts experienced. The novel was based on research by the author as well as a visit to the penal settlement of Port Arthur, Tasmania. ), Henry Handel Richardson (The Fortunes of Richard Mahony) and Joseph Furphy (Such Is Life: It is a fictional account of the life of rural dwellers often described as Australia’s Moby-Dick because, like Melville’s book, it was neglected for thirty or forty years before being discovered as a classic.) embodied these stirring ideals in their tales and, particularly the latter, tried to accurately record the vernacular language of the common Australian. These novelists also gave valuable insights into the penal colonies which helped form the country and also the early rural settlements. Rolf Boldrewood: Thomas Alexander Browne (6 August 1826 – 11 March 1915) was an Australian author who published many of his works under the pseudonym Rolf Boldrewood. The name Boldrewood came from a line in the poem Marmion by Browne's favourite author, Sir Walter Scott. He is best known for his 1882 bush ranging novel Robbery Under Arms, considered a classic of Australian colonial literature. Writing in the first person, the narrator Dick Marston tells the story of his life and loves and his association with the notorious bushranger Captain Starlight, a renegade from a noble English family, set in the bush and goldfields of Australia in the 1850s. As a ripping yarn, originally told in periodical instalments, the story mostly centres around the lovable villains, who are adventurers and thieves but nevertheless with high moral standards and, in some ways, trapped by circumstances of their own making.

In 1838 The Guardian: a tale by Anna Maria Bunn was published in Sydney. It was the first Australian novel printed and published in mainland Australia and the first Australian novel written by a woman. It is a Gothic romance.

Miles Franklin (My Brilliant Career) and Jeannie Gunn (We of the Never Never) wrote of lives of European pioneers in the Australian bush from a female perspective. Ruth Park wrote of the sectarian divisions of life in impoverished 1940s inner city Sydney (The Harp in the South). The experience of Australian PoWs in the Pacific War is recounted by Nevil Shute in A Town like Alice. 

Contemporary Australian Literature

       Patrick White (1912–1990) became the first Australian to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973 "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature". White's first novel, Happy Valley (1939) was inspired by the landscape and his work as a jackaroo on the land in the Snowy Mountains, but became an international success and won the Australian Literary Society's Gold Medal. Born to a conservative, wealthy Anglo-Australian family, he later wrote of conviction in left-wing causes and lived as a homosexual. Never destined for life on the land, he enrolled at Cambridge where he became a published poet. White developed as a novelist, but also had major theatrical success—including The Season at Sarsaparilla. White followed The Tree of Man (is a domestic drama chronicling the lives of the Parker family and their changing fortunes over many decades. It is steeped in Australian folklore and cultural myth, and is recognised as the author's attempt to infuse the idiosyncratic way of life in the remote Australian bush with some sense of the cultural traditions and ideologies that the epic history of Western civilisation has bequeathed to Australian society in general. The title comes from A. E. Housman's poetry cycle A Shropshire Lad.) and Voss ( , which became the first winner of the Miles Franklin Award. A subsequent novel, Riders in the Chariot also received a Miles Franklin award—but White later refused to permit his novels to be entered for literary prizes. He turned down a knighthood, and various literary awards—but in 1973 accepted the Nobel Prize. David Marr wrote of biography of White in 1991. Flaws in the Glass is the autobiography of White. White used the fictional setting of Sarsaparilla in his novels The Solid Mandala and Riders in the Chariot and his dramas The Season at Sarsaparilla and The Cheery Soul. His play Night on the Bald Mountain is considered to be the first true Australian tragedy.

Peter Carey: His first novel Bliss deals with the resuscitated life of Harry Joy. The second novel Illywhacker is a metafiction and magic realism narrated by the confidence man Herbert Badgery telling the story of his picaresque life in Australia. Carey won 1988 Booker Prize and 1989 Miles Franklin Award for his novel Oscar and Lucinda. Carey won 2001 Booker Prize and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for his novel True History of the Kelly Gang, a fictional autobiography of Ned Kelly. Jack Maggs is a reworking of Dickens’ The Great Expectation, based on Magwitch and his search for Pip. My Life As a Fake (2003) drew its inspiration from McAuley and Stewart’s 1944 poetry hoax, whereas his Theft: A Love Story (2006) lampooned the international art market with a story of art fraud. Carey’s other 21st-century efforts included Parrot and Olivier in America (2009), focusing on a character modelled on 19th-century French social observer Alexis de Tocqueville, and Amnesia (2015), which employs cybercrime as the lens through which to view the Battle of Brisbane (1942), a clash between U.S. soldiers and Australian military personnel and civilians during World War II. A Long Way from Home is the last novel of Carey. 

David Malouf: Johnno, the first novel by Malouf is a semi-autobiographical novel written in first person past tense and the narrator, nicknamed as “Dante”, tells the autobiographical account of his friendship with Johnno. An Imaginary Life is the second novel (novella) of Malouf, telling the story of the Roman poet Ovid during his exile in Tomis. Remembering Babylon is a magic realism, covering the themes of isolation, cultural conflict and consciousness of a boy Gemmy Fairley marooned in a foreign land and raised by the aborigines wrestles with his own identity on moving back to Europe. Ransom is a retelling of the story of Iliad from books 22 to 24, beginning with Achilles’ mourning on the death of Patroclus.

 Geraldine Brooks: Her first novel Years of Wonders is a fictional account of the historical Bubonic Plague in 1666. She won Pulitzar Prize for fiction for her second novel March, retelling Louisa May Alcott’s novel “Little Woman” from the point of view of protagonist’s absent father Mr. March. Brooke tells the life of King David from the point of view of Prophet Nathan in his novel The Secret Chord, the title of which is taken from Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah. Brooks’ Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women is a non-fictional book that enquires the possibility of Islamic Feminism.

Colleen McCullough: Named a “living treasure” by the National Trust of Australia in 1997, Colleen McCullough, author of The Thorn Birds (1977) and the Masters of Rome series of historical novels (1990–2007), remained one of the country’s most prolific and best-selling novelists.

Thomas Keneally: Among his publications in the new millennium were American Scoundrel (2002), a biography of the infamous American politician and Civil War general Daniel Sickles; The Daughters of Mars (2012), a novel about volunteer nurses during World War I; and Shame and the Captives (2013), a fictionalized account of prison breakouts by Japanese prisoners of war in New South Wales during World War II. 

Richard Flanagan : Novelist, historian, and film director who won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best book for his novel Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish (2001), the story of a convict living in 19th-century Tasmania. Flanagan’s engaging mystery The Unknown Terrorist (2006) offers a cynical view of the world in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, and his The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013) was much praised for its brutally stark depiction of the life of a prisoner of war during World War II. 

Grunge lit (an abbreviation for "grunge literature") is an Australian literary genre usually applied to fictional or semi-autobiographical writing concerned with dissatisfied and disenfranchised young people living in suburban or inner-city surroundings. It was typically written by "new, young authors" who examined "gritty, dirty, real existences", of lower-income young people, whose lives revolve around a nihilistic pursuit of casual sex, recreational drug use and alcohol, which are used to escape boredom or a general flightiness. Romantic love is seldom, as instant gratification has become the norm. It has been described as both a sub-set of dirty realism and an offshoot of Generation X literature. The term "grunge" is from the 1990s-era music genre of grunge. Since its invention, the term "grunge lit" has been retrospectively applied to novels written as early as 1977, namely Helen Garner's Monkey Grip. Grunge lit is often raw, explicit, and vulgar, even to the point of Justine Ettler's The River Ophelia (1995) being called pornographic.

Fear of terrorism in the post-September 11 world is central in Janette Turner Hospital’s political thrillers Due Preparations for the Plague (2003) and Orpheus Lost (2007). The Secret River (2005), another tale of the life of a British convict in Australia, earned Kate Grenville the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best book. Other Australians who published novels of note in the first decades of the 21st century were Sonya Hartnett, Roger McDonald, Alexis Wright, Steven Carroll, Steve Toltz, Christos Tsiolkas, Anna Funder, Patricia Mackintosh, and Sofie Laguna.

Writing Resources :

 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.britannica.com/art/Australian-literature&ved=2ahUKEwjF3rbon_n7AhWCT2wGHeDtBV0QFnoECA4QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2YMd-eyms_iWZYyLN16dmL

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Australian-literature/273022&ved=2ahUKEwjF3rbon_n7AhWCT2wGHeDtBV0QFnoECEMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw08p297WOvT7Ow7lhBiq0_W

Strong Roots LAQs

  1. Describe Kalam's childhood.Or, How was the childhood of Kalam? 

Ans. In 'Strong Roots', the excerpt of the autobiography entitled 'Wings of Fire' by the Former President of India, Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam, we are taken down to the memory lane of his childhood days. He was born into a middle-class Tamil family in the island town of Rameswaram, located in the erstwhile Madras state. His parents Jainulabdeen and Ashiamma were regarded as an ideal couple for their benevolent and simplistic approach to life. Kalam was one of many children. He was a short boy with rather undistinguished looks, born to tall and handsome parents. They used to live in their ancestral house, which was built in the middle of the 19th century on the Mosque Street in Rameswaram. It was a fairly large pucca house, made of limestone and brick. Though Kalam's austere father used to avoid all inessential comforts and luxuries, but he used to provide them with all necessary amenities, in terms of food, medicine or clothing. Kalam used to eat with his mother in the floor of kitchen. And he had a vivid memory of the high priest of Rameswaram temple, Pakshi Lakshmana Sastry, a close friend of his father and their discussion of spiritual matters. They lived amidst communal harmony and amity. Thus, in every way, the author had a secure childhood, materially and emotionally.

2. "I normally ate with my mother" Who ate with his mother? Name his mother? Where did he eat with his mother? – What did he eat with his mother? [1+1+1+3 = 6] [H.S. – 2018,2022]

Ans. A. P. J Abdul Kalam, the former President of India, and the author of the autobiographical excerpt 'Strong Roots', ate with his mother. 

The name of Kalam's mother was Ashiamma who was an ideal helpmate of his father. 

Kalam ate with his mother, sitting on the floor of the kitchen. 

 Kalam's mother used to place a banana leaf before him, on which she then ladled rice and aromatic sambar, a variety of sharp, home-made pickle and a dollop of fresh coconut chutney which he used to eat. 

3. Describe the house of Kalam. 

Ans. In 'Strong Roots', the excerpt of the autobiography entitled 'Wings of Fire' by the Former President of India, Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam, we are taken down to the memory lane of his childhood days. He was born into a middle-class Tamil family in the island town of Rameswaram, located in the erstwhile Madras state.They used to live in their ancestral house, which was built in the middle of the 19th century on the Mosque Street in Rameswaram. It was a fairly large pucca house, made of limestone and brick and was about a ten minutes walk from the Shiva Temple which made Rameswaram so famous to pilgrims.

4. " Our locality was predominantly Muslim" . . . Who is the speaker? How does the speaker describe the locality? What picture of communal harmony do you find in the description? [1+2+3= 6] [H.S. – 2017] 

Ans. The speaker of the above extract is A. P. J. Abdul kalam, the former President of India, and the author of the autobiographical excerpt 'Strong Roots'. 

The locality in which Kalam used to live with his family was though predominantly Muslim, but there were quite a lot of Hindu families as well. Both these communities used to live amicably with each other. His house was about a ten minute walk from the Shiva Temple which made Rameswaram so famous to pilgrims. There was even an old Mosque to where his father used to take him for evening prayers. 

The picture of communal harmony can be found in two references. One is, the people of different religious creed used to wait for his father outside the mosque to offer him bowls of water to dip his fingertips in them and say a prayer. This water was then carried home for invalids. Such trust and respect is definitely a sign of communal harmony. The other instance is his father's close bonding of friendship with the high priest of Rameswaram temple, Pakshi Lakshmana Sastry and their discussion of spiritual matters. Indeed, there was an air of amity in the locality. 

5. ‘The people of different religions would be sitting outside waiting for him’ – Who is referred to here as ‘him’? Where did the people wait? Why did they wait there? What would happen thereafter? [1+1+2+2 = 6] [H.S. – 2020]

Ans. In the above extract from ' Strong Roots', Kalam's father Jainulabdeen is referred to as 'him'. 

The people of different religions, as had been described by Kalam in his autobiographical excerpt ' Strong Roots' , used to wait outside the old mosque in their locality. 

The people waited for him outside the mosque to offer him bowls of water so that he would dip his fingertips in them and sanctify the water with a prayer to cure the invalids. 

After being cured when the people visited their house to thank him, his humble and selfless father ased them to thank Allah, the merciful. 

6. ‘His answer filled me with a strange energy and enthusiasm’ – Who is the speaker? Whose answer is being referred to here? What was the answer? [1+1+4 = 6] [H.S. – 2019]

Ans. The speaker of the above extract is Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, the former President of India, and the author of the autobiographical excerpt 'Strong Roots'. 

The thoughtful answer from Kalam’s father, Jainulabdeen, is referred to here.

When innocent Kalam asked his father to tell people to help themselves with an understanding that adversity leads to self scrutiny, Kalam’s father calmly gave him the following answer. Whenever human beings find themselves alone or stuck in a difficult situation, they looked for a company that could guide them to either come out of the situation or to tackle them. In this regard, Kalam’s father acted as a mediator. He strived to propitiate the demonic forces with prayer and offerings. Though he accepted that this was not the correct approach. But in hard times men seek this help. He thus remarked that one should introspect the relevance of his sufferings and act accordingly.

7. How did Kalam portray his father in the text 'Strong Roots'? 

Ans. ' Strong Roots' is an excerpt from Kalam's autobiography Wings of Fire, in which Kalam described his parents. His father, Jainulabdeen had neither much formal education nor much wealth; despite these disadvantages, he possessed great innate wisdom and a true generosity of spirit. Though his austere father used to avoid all inessential comforts and luxuries, but, he provided them with all necessities in terms of food, medicine or clothing. His father was his spiritual mentor who could convey complex spiritual concepts in very simple, down-to-earth Tamil. He once told him that in his own time, in his own place, in what he really is, and in the stage he has reached-good or bad-every human being is a specific element within the whole of the manifest divine Being. So we need not to be afraid of difficulties, sufferings and problems. Because adversity always presents opportunities for introspection. He also remembered that his father used to start his day at 4 am by reading the namaz before dawn. After the namaz, he used to walk down to a small coconut grove we owned, about four miles from our home. He would return with about a dozen coconuts tied together thrown over his shoulder, and only then would he have his breakfast. This remained his routine even when he was in his late sixties. Jainulabdeen had an immense ideological and spiritual influence upon Kalam. 

8. What was the daily routine of Kalam's father? 

Ans. ' Strong Roots' is an excerpt from Kalam's autobiography Wings of Fire, in which Kalam described his parents. Kalam's father was a self- restraint, self- disciplined man. Kalam described that his father used to start his day at 4 am by reading the namaz before dawn. After the namaz, he used to walk down to a small coconut grove we owned, about four miles from our home. He would return with about a dozen coconuts tied together thrown over his shoulder, and only then would he have his breakfast. This remained his routine even when he was in his late sixties. Jainulabdeen had an immense ideological and spiritual influence upon Kalam. 

9. What spiritual thoughts were taught to Kalam? Or, " My father could convey complex spiritual concepts in very simple, down to earth Tamil"--- How did Kalam's father convey the thought of spirituality to Kalam? How Kalam's was influenced by him? [4+2=6]

Ans. Strong Roots' is an excerpt from Kalam's autobiography Wings of Fire, in which Kalam described his parents.His father was his spiritual mentor who could convey complex spiritual concepts in very simple, down-to-earth Tamil. He once told him that in his own time, in his own place, in what he really is, and in the stage he has reached-good or bad-every human being is a specific element within the whole of the manifest divine Being. So we need not to be afraid of difficulties, sufferings and problems. Because adversity always presents opportunities for introspection. 

Kalam, throughout my life, tried to emulate his father in his own world of science and technology. He had endeavoured to understand the fundamental truths revealed to him by his father, and felt convinced that there exists a divine power that can lift one up from confusion, misery, melancholy and failure, and guide one to one’s true place. And once an individual severs his emotional and physical bond, he is on the road to freedom, happiness and peace of mind.

10. "Why don’t you say this to the people who come to you?" Who says this and to whom? What is referred to by the word ‘this’? Why do the people come to the person spoken to? [1+1+3+1 = 6] [H.S. – 2015]

Ans. Kalam, in his innocent childlike quest asked the above quoted extract to his father. 

' This ' referred to the following calm answer given to Kalam by his father. Whenever human beings find themselves alone or stuck in a difficult situation, they looked for a company that could guide them to either come out of the situation or to tackle them. In this regard, Kalam’s father acted as a mediator. He strived to propitiate the demonic forces with prayer and offerings. Though he accepted that this was not the correct approach. But in hard times men seek this help. He thus remarked that one should introspect the relevance of his sufferings and act accordingly. 

The people came to Jainulabdeen, Kalam's father for his spiritual guidance as he was but a go-between in their effort to propitiate demonic forces with prayers and offerings.