Myths of the nation : national identity and literary representation by Sethi Rumina

Author:Sethi, Rumina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948, Raja Rao, Indic literature (English), Nationalism and literature, Politics and literature, Literature and history, Group identity in literature, Nationalism in literature, Narration (Rhetoric), Myth in literature
Publisher: Oxford ; New York : Clarendon Press
Published: 1999-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part II

‘Fragments’ of the Nation

3 Peasant Uprisings and Fictional

Strategies

What is at once striking about Kanthapura is why Rao thinks he needs history in the writing of a novel, and why he favours a particular interpretation of historical events. The answers to these questions issue from the analysis in the previous chapters. History not only lends credibility to the depiction of political events but also allows a respectable interchange between past and present for interpreting current politics. Widely interpreted, history can also include poetry, mythology, or cosmology, as traced from the early narrative traditions of the puranas. Kanthapura is a syncretic compound of material which is both historically valid and questionable. It is interesting that Rao sees the fabulous as part of the venture of putting together an historical narrative. Of course, it can be alleged that history in this popular form can, at best, have only a rather flimsy relationship with itihaas (thus-it-was). I am interested, on the other hand, in seeing how far the dimensions of fictionalized history implying both fiction as history as in the context of the novel, and history as fiction as in the broad framework 1 have adopted can succeed in creating nationalist consciousness.

In this chapter, I move from a comparative analysis of ideological positions to the consideration of historical political action. More specifically, the translation of historical events into the narrative action of the novel is seen against historical representations of peasant movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In terms of the novel, I review the situation of the coolies at the Skeffmgton Coffee Estate and their lack of enterprise in an exploitative situation until the advent of Gandhi when they are inspired into participating in the national programme. In contrast, accounts of instances of subaltern insurgency in several parts of India, and within Karnataka itself, are cited to emphasize the local nature of peasant rebellion and the equivocal and plural quality of Gandhi s appeal. The contrast is intended to underscore the ideological representation

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.