Write the contribution of Raja Rao to the Indian English Literature.

Ans.

Raja Rao’s (1908-2006) reputation as a novelist of metaphysics and philosophy is amply justified by his substantial contribution in upholding these themes in his novels. Women in Raja Rao’s novels are shown suffering from domestic injustice and tyrannical tradition, but the novelist does not suggest any way out of their dilemma. His women characters, who are a little ambitious, end up playing the role of a devoted wife like Savitri in The Serpent and the Rope (1960). Indian culture being rooted into his consciousness fails him to suggest any solution to the besetting woman’s issue. He makes an analysis of modern India from a different perspective and exalts Hindu orthodoxy to a grand metaphysic. His novel The Serpent and the Rope abounds with various themes. It tells the story of an intellectual Rama who is in quest of personal enlightenment and seeks inspiration and elevation from eastern and western views. Raja Rao’s later works includes The Cat and the Shakespeare (1956) and Comrade Kirillov (1976), Kanthapura by Raja Rao shows the influence of Gandhian movement by highlighting the 1920’s and the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1931. He focuses a small village through which he explores the impact of freedom movement on the village and also captures their roles in the struggle for independence. Raja Rao uses his novels to spread his Gandhian message and as propaganda against social evils.

Mulk Raj Anand (1905). R. K. Narayan (1906-2000) and Raja Rao (1908-2006) were the three important Indian novelists writing in English. Speaking of the Big Three, Walsh says,

“It is these three writers who defined the area in which the Indian novel was to operate. They established its assumptions; they sketched its main themes, freed the first models of its characters and elaborated its particular logic. Each of them used an easy. natural idiom which was unaffected by the opacity of a British inheritance. Their language has been freed of the foggy taste of Britain and transferred to a wholly new setting of brutal heat and brilliant light.”

The sudden spirit of creative writing in the eighties expresses the sense of awareness of the plurality of the nation. It transcends the east-west conflict and depicts the new post colonial India with its evolving outlook, which is essentially a blend of tradition and modernism. It brings out the cosmopolitan outlook of the new generation who strives to strike a balance between the inherited traditional values and imbibed foreign culture. Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Upamanya Chatterjee are the writers who reigned supreme with their momentous work. Their work deluge into the hurdles faced by newly independence nation, which at times a harsh delineation of reality. These writers have made bold attempts to recapture the altered perceptions of post-colonial India and the use of revolutionary narrative technique has elevated their position among the writers of Indian fiction in English.

Women novelists have played a crucial and momentous role in enhancing the quality and quantity of the Indian English fiction. They have further added the woman’s perspective and feministic dimensions to the novels. In the past, the work by the Indian women authors has always been undervalued because of some patriarchal assumption. Indian societies gave priorities to the work of male experiences. In those days, women used to write about a woman’s perception and experiences within the enclosed domestic arena. On the other hand, male authors used to deal with heavy themes. Thus, it was assumed that their work would get more priority and acceptance in the society. During the eighteenth century, these factors led towards the decline further. In the nineteenth century, more and more women actively participated in India’s reformist movement against the British rule. It again led to the women’s literature. At that time, their write-ups mainly concentrated on the country’s freedom struggle. Over the years, the world of feminist ideologies began to influence the English literature of India.

The contributions by women writers cannot go unnoticed. In fact the works by women writers constitute a major segment of the contemporary Indian writing in English. Today women are seen establishing their identity in almost all walks of life and they have heralded a new consciousness in the realm of literature too. Anees Jung in her book unveiling India states her ideology in the following words:

In the complex pantheon of diversities, the Indian woman remains the point of unity unveiling through each single experience a collective unconscious prized by a society that is looked in mortal combat with the power and weakness of age and time. She remains the still centre, like the centre the potter’s wheel, circling to create new forms, unfolding the continuity of a racial life, which in turn has encircled and helped her acquire a quality of concentration.