CHAPTER 4 GANDHIAN IDEOLOGY IN THE NOVELS OF R. K. NARAYAN

Transcription

1 CHAPTER 4 GANDHIAN IDEOLOGY IN THE NOVELS OF R. K. NARAYAN The impact of Gandhian ideology on Narayan is not the same as it is on Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand but it can be perceived in his vision of life. R K Narayan who displays Gandhian philosophy is neither a politically committed novelist like Mulk Raj Anand, nor a metaphysical philosopher novelist like Raja Rao, but he is simply the novelist as a novelist as William Walsh writes (Walsh 1983: 6). Narayan is basically a native talent natively nurtured (Parameshvaram 1976: 42) who represents the feeling of India, even of South India and uses the English language much as we are used to wear dhotis manufactured in Lancashire (Iyengar 1962: 359). He is an exporter of ethos of South Indian Middle class families in the background of Malgudi. Malgudi is not a place but an experience of soil and soul of India. Most of his novels are set in the background of Malgudi. The values that Narayan uphold are Gandhian in character. His values include moral uprightness, truthfulness and other issues that cover man s life in all areas- social, educational, political and economic. A closer analysis of Narayan s novels reveal that he is more of a moral analyst than is usually acknowledged and Gandhian ideology provides a frame of reference to his novels. In this chapter my endeavour is to study Narayan s novels with special reference to Gandhian ideology. He doesn t come before us taking Gandhian programme as does M R Anand in Untouchables or Raja Rao who takes up the whole village as his canvas in order to show Gandhi s impact on Indian village or India as a 135

2 whole. In this chapter I have taken up his novels like Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The English Teacher, Waiting for the Mahatma, Mr. Sampath, The Financial Expert, The Guide, The Vendor of Sweets and The Painter of Signs to study how Gandhian ideology is at work directly or indirectly in the novels undertaken for the study. The study of his novels shows that he was not completely influenced by the events of the time. Almost all of his novels deal with middle class people and not with politics or other issues. It also shows that he is not a committed writer, propounding any theory or philosophy. At a time when the country was going through the travails of the struggle of freedom, he wrote simple stories about the domestic life of the middle class people living in or around Malgudi, Narayan s imaginary town in South India. To quote Dr A N Kaul, Ibsenism or the feminist idea can inspire Narayan s imagination as little as the political life of Gandhism (1972: 228) R K Narayan, one of the big trio, differs from the other two as he was not committed to any particular ideas like the other two. He is considered a pure novelist. He did not come into direct influence of Gandhi or Gandhian ideology. But this doesn t mean that he remained untouched with the giant personality of Gandhi. Meenakshi Mukherjee implies the same when she places R K Narayan into the much misunderstood category of the non-committed writer whose achievement depends on his capacity to remain uninvolved (1971: 36). In an interview with R K Narayan, V Panduranga Rao asked him, Considering your Waiting for the Mahatma, were you greatly influenced by Gandhi? Narayan replied, No. He was a rare man. But I don t agree with his 136

3 political or economic thinking. But- Truth- and he was absolutely transparent (Rao 1971: 81). So far as truth is concerned he was consistently influenced by Gandhi. The Gandhian movement was not simply a political movement. It was a movement that for the first time in Indian history generated and raised social issues. The ferment that Gandhian thought created encompassed the whole social milieu and touched on issues that affected man as a whole in various facets and stages of life. More importantly, it made Indian men and women aware of themselves. It is this sense of awareness that revolutionized Indians and made them seek their national as also their individual identity. It is Gandhian thought that brought the colonial encounter to the fore. It is in this social situation created by Gandhian thought that, Narayan, like other contemporary novelists, found his subject matter. When Narayan talks of politics pushing fiction out, perhaps he means that politics and political issues have become ends in themselves rather than aspects of wider social issues. He does not mean that political issues would be forbidden for the writer. For Narayan, the end is art, but the spirit remains naturally political. He achieves his end through characterization but his characters derive their authenticity from the social-political scene of the 1930s and the 1940s in India. His major preoccupation as a novelist is with this social scene. Although the social problems in his novels belong to the realm of manners and conventions; his characters are viewed in the context of and in relationship to these social problems. It is unlikely that anyone would have guessed that Narayan's first two novels were the work of a major artist. Swami and Friends is a kind of charming Indian Pen 137

4 rod and Sam, an episodic account of the adventures of two cricket-playing chums as they start high school. The Bachelor of Arts is another episodic account of a young man's graduating from college, experiencing a frustrating love affair, wandering about the country disconsolately, returning home to become an agent for a big city newspaper, and finally marrying under family auspices. In his third novel, The Dark Room, he describes a Hindu wife who submitted passively to an overbearing husband. His work changed drastically with The English Teacher, a thinly veiled account of his own marriage and the event that matured and shaped his character, including the early death of his beloved wife. This novel begins like Narayan's earlier ones with episodic sketches of a young preparatory school teacher's relationships with his students, colleagues, and family. After the tragic death of the wife while house hunting, however, the novel becomes a much deeper and more tightly unified work. With his next novel, Narayan settled upon the kind of characters and narrative patterns that he was to employ in his five remarkable explorations of the fantastic agitations beneath the enervating surface of the life of Malgudi. Near the end of Mr. Sampath, Narayan observes of Srinivas, the principal character, that he felt he had been involved in a chaos of human relationships and activities. Nearly all of Narayan's subsequent novels involve characters and readers in such chaos. Srinivas is a rather aimless young man who has finally been driven by his family to choose a profession and who comes to Malgudi in 1938 when war clouds hang over the whole world to found a newspaper that has nothing special to note about any war, past or future, but is only concerned with that war that is always going on between man's inside and outside (2009: 6). He falls into the hands of a 138

5 printer, Mr. Sampath, who takes a proprietary interest in the success of the paper, but who is lured from his printing trade into a film-producing venture. Even Srinivas is briefly tempted to abandon his paper and take up script writing. Despite frantic activity and great expenditures, however, the movie-making venture collapses. Only Srinivas emerges unscathed. He finds another printer and returns to publishing his paper, reflecting on one of the men involved in the catastrophe he has witnessed One who must wait is the title character of The Financial Expert, Margayya, whom we meet sitting under a banyan tree assisting peasants in obtaining loans from a cooperative banking institution. The society's officers resent Margayya's activities, but his business flourishes until his spoiled young son throws into a sewer the book in which all accounts are kept. During a trip to collect a red lotus needed for a penitential ritual, Margayya meets Dr. Pal, a self-styled sociologist, who has written a pornographic manuscript based on the Kama Sutra. Margayya recoups his fortune by publishing it under the title Domestic Harmony; then, embarrassed by the source of his new wealth, he goes back into a money-lending business that is based on withholding the interest from the first installment on the loan. He becomes so successful that he achieves an honored position in the community and recruits Dr. Pal to attract investors. The scheme collapses, however, when the son, who has been gambling with Dr. Pal, demands a share in the business; Margayya assaults Dr. Pal, who in turn discredits the money-lender with his investors. When investors demand their money back, both Margayya and his son are ruined and driven back into dealings with the peasants beneath the banyan tree. 139

6 Narayan's next novel, Waiting for the Mahatma, is one of his most nobleminded, but least successful. It tells, in the episodic manner of his earlier books, of the misadventures of two young disciples of Mahatma Gandhi during the master's long effort to free his native land. Written after Gandhi's assassination, the book is an admirable tribute, but the fictional characters are too sketchily developed to make it of more than historical interest. Narayan next turned to the work that has generally been recognized as his most outstanding, The Guide, an extremely complicated tale of a confidence man turned saint. In flashbacks, we learn of the rise of Raju from food-seller in the Malgudi railroad station to manager and apparent husband of Rosie, who becomes an extremely popular dancer, and his quick fall when he is jailed for forging her signature to a package of jewels. We meet him first, however, when he has installed himself in an abandoned temple after his release from jail and has begun to play the role of spiritual advisor to a peasant community that accepts him as a Mahatma. Gradually he comes to believe in the role he has created, and to relieve a drought he feels compelled to make a fifteen-day fast that he has suggested as an appropriate penance. As a great crowd gathers, he gains a peculiar strength from, for the first time in his life, learning the thrill of full application, outside money and love. Despite grave peril to his health he continues to fast until he feels that the rain is falling in the hills. The ending of this novel like that of The English Teacher is ambiguous: does Swami Raju die? Do the rains come? Narayan tells us only, "He sagged down" (2003: 247); but he has transcended the madness that once affected him and found a fulfillment denied the printer of Malgudi and the financial expert. 140

7 Such fulfillment is denied also Vasu, the fanatical taxidermist of The Man- Eater of Malgudi, Narayan's greatest picture of the madness that leads to selfdestruction. After successfully flaunting his great strength about the community unchecked through a series of outrageous incidents, he finally devises a plot against Malgudi's beloved temple elephant. The beast seems doomed, but Vasu dies instead; and in one of the most spectacular conclusions to any of Narayan's works, the almost incredible but carefully foreshadowed way in which he destroyed himself is disclosed. In the complementary The Vendor of Sweets Narayan portrays a man who discovers his true identity. Jagan had been freed from patriarchal thralldom when he broke with his orthodox family and followed Mahatma Gandhi. His example, however, proves of no value to a son who prefers American "get-rich-quick" ideas to the self-sacrificial life Gandhi recommended. Jagan indulges the boy by selling sweetmeats to the luxury-loving community; but when the son gets into serious trouble, Jagan feels helpless. He abandons his business and retires to a decrepit garden for meditation. Having freed himself from successive bondages to parents, hero, and child, he finds tranquility unique to this point in Narayan's tales. Only confusion, however, awaits the protagonist of The Painter of Signs, in which Narayan also deals boldly with a new India's urgent and controversial problem of population control. Raman, a highly traditional thirty-year-old bachelor, who took up signboard painting because he loved calligraphy, is cared for selflessly by his aunt until he meets Daisy, a dynamic propagandist for birth control. When Raman induces Daisy to marry him, the aunt embarks on a religious pilgrimage from which she does not expect to return. Then when Daisy discovers that she cannot give up her 141

8 missionary work for marriage, Raman finds that he has destroyed his old life without creating a new one. Reviewers accustomed to the down-to-earth manner of Narayan's ironic fictions were as disconcerted by A Tiger of Malgudi as the frantic villagers who are confronted by Raja, the tiger. Since Raja is the hero-narrator of the novel, Narayan seems to be abandoning reality for fantasy; but A Tiger of Malgudi is no traditional anthropomorphic beast fable. Drawing delicately on Hindu doctrines of reincarnation, Narayan depicts Raja as a creature with a soul, who lacks only the faculty of conversing with humans. His tale is told by those who learn to read his mind: the fictional master that saves Raja from the rest of the wryly depicted human community and the master of fiction who has conjured him up. The tale is of the overcoming of the potential of violence, with which, Raja's master observes, every creature is born. The seemingly whimsical history of a talking tiger thus expands into an ironic fable and prophecy about not just the recent troubled history of Narayan's own country, but of mankind generally. A wise and witty message from one who has aged serenely without missing the significance of a moment of his experiences, this novel should take its place among the most beatific visions of a century that has produced far more diabolical ones. It climaxes the achievement of the major Malgudi novels in depicting the soul's erratic progress from fanaticism toward the tranquil transcendence of the dusty streets of Malgudi. Similar to the Malgudi novels in the theme of progress, R K Narayan s Swami and Friends deals with the adventures of Swami, the hero, and his friends Mani and Rajam. The varied experiences of these friends are described in a realistic manner. 142

9 But the innocent and impulsive Swami lands in trouble when he is carried away by the political movement in India in The activities of the children are interrupted by the Gandhian wave in the chapter entitled Broken Panes. Swami and Friends relates to the subject of education which is one of the important aspects of Gandhian thought. Apparently the novel reads like an adventure story of an adolescent W S Swaminathan and a group of his friends. The protagonist s protest is focused, of course, on one aspect of colonization, that is, the education system. The inability of the child to cope with the examination system, his inadequate involvement in the process of learning is shown to be due to unreal and mechanical system of education system. Right in the first paragraph of the novel we find young Swaminathan shuddering at the very thought of school: that yellow dismal building; the fire eyed Vedanayagam, his class teacher and the Hindu-Master with his long cane (Narayan 1983: 3). Life in the classroom is monotonous: terribly bored, he felt sleepy (4) These first-few paragraphs have a vital significance in the scheme of the novel, for, Swami s apathy and non-involvement in his classroom is shortly going to be channeled by the Gandhian movement of 1931 in which he and his friends participate. Swami doesn t feel at home with Ebenezer who criticizes Hindu religion. The intolerance of the missionary Ebenezer, whom Swami offends by asking questions reminds one of Gandhi s experience of the Christian missionaries whom as a school boy he found fulminating against Hinduism on the cross roads. He developed a sort of dislike for Christianity as in those days Christian missionaries used to stand in a corner near high school and hold forth, pouring abuse on Hindus and their gods 143

10 (Gandhi 1927: 31). Narayan s comic treatment of Ebenezer s character reflects his disapproval of such religious and consequently racial and cultural discrimination perpetuated in the institutions of learning during colonial rule in India. Swaminathan as a student is victimized by the system. He feels offended and sleepy in his scripture class of Albert Mission School where Hindu gods were an object of criticism and laughter. He doesn t tolerate the Christian missionary operating against Hinduism and loves to leave the school. He tells the principal of Mission School in anger and protest, I do not care for your dirty school (Narayan 1983: 63). It is a Gandhi like protest against British educational system in India rooted by the colonial empire. Up to chapter XI, however, the novel details Swami s tortuous learning of sums. The process of learning which means, actually unlearning, provides ample scope for Narayan s humour and irony. The natural curiosity and potential for better expression is shown to be methodically and systematically killed by mechanical education at an early stage of Swami s life. The incidents pile, one upon the other, as Swami bumbles from one adventure into another in Malgudi. In a chapter significantly titled Broken Panes, Narayan announces very solemnly: On the 15 th August 1930, about two thousand citizens of Malgudi assembled on the right bank of Sarayu to protest against the arrest of Gauri Shankar, a political worker of Bombay (94). An earnest looking man clad in khaddar stood on a wooden platform and addressed the gathering (93). The political feelings were aroused when in a high piercing voice the khaddar clad man pursued, Let every Indian spit on England, and the quantity of saliva will be enough to drawn England (94). 144

11 In this simple, transparent, almost reportage announcement by the narrator, we can hear rumblings of the political change that was taking place in Malgudi under Gandhian movement. The thrust of the main speech of the earnest looking man in Khaddar is the need of revival of the traditional Indian heritage in order to fight out the cultural and political enslavement by the British. Swami with his band of friends has stumbled into this meeting. English vs. Indian- a question of identity- is the subject of the speech Swami hears: We are slaves of slaves just think for a while. We are three hundred and thirty six millions, and our land is as big as Russia. England is no bigger than our Madras Presidency, and is inhabited by a handful of white rogues and is thousands of miles away. Yet we bow in homage before the Englishman (95). Stirred by the speaker s eloquence, Swaminathan shouted- Gandhi ki Jai (95). The narrator tells us that Mani and Swami are overwhelmed by the speaker s words. For the rest of the evening Swami was caught in the lecturer s eloquence. Swami and Mani wept over the plight of Indian peasants and were determined to boycott foreign clothes. The crowd burst into slogans Bharat Mata ki jai and Gandhiji ki jai (96). The evening closed with a bonfire of foreign clothes. Swami watched the red glare. He flung his cap into the fire with a feeling that he was saving the country. The next morning there were protests. There was a call for a hartal and schools were being closed down by demonstrators. Swami also became a part of this crowd and could not help following the example of a person who started flinging stones at the panes of school building. He was thrilled when his aim brought down the window panes. After 145

12 paralyzing work at Albert Mission School the crowd moved along Market Road. Swami also joined this crowd. The white dust stirred up by the procession hung like the mist in the air and choked him. He could see before him nothing but moving backs and shoulders and occasionally odd parts of some buildings. His throat was dry with shouting and he was beginning to feel hungry (100). The police lathi charged this mob and Swami fell flat on the ground. The lathi blow was severe and hurt Swami. Next day, the Head Master s cane also did not show any mercy. Swami had been spotted while breaking the panes and the Headmaster did not spare him for this misconduct. This also became the cause for his leaving the school. The novel portrays the involvement of young students who were involuntarily caught in the Gandhian wave that engulfed even the remotest villages of India. This is how Swami got initiated into the Gandhian way of national protest. The evening s programme, we are told, closed with a bonfire of foreign cloth (96). Swami is already familiar with Gandhi s name, not only as a Mahatma but also as a political leader with specific programmes of economic and social, cultural and political significance. And Gandhi s ideas appeal to Swami in a personal way because of his demoralizing experience in the scripture class. Next morning Swami gets involved in boycotting the class because, as he is informed, one of the greatest sons of the Motherland has been sent to gaol (98). In spite of the Headmaster s warnings, thundering shouts of Bharat Matha ki Jai! Gandhi ki Jai and Gauri Sankar ki Jai resound through Malgudi streets. Narayan expands this political scenario further. True to the spirit of Gandhi, Narayan s simple 146

13 language creates a picture that could be corroborated by historical facts of how people s apathy turned into their involvement with the national cause: Half a dozen persons appointed themselves leaders, and ran about crying: Remember, this is a hartal. This is a day of mourning. Observe it in a true spirit of sorrow and silence (99). Indignant at the kind of education he was getting, he was happy when he stoned the building. At this stage of Swami s exposure to Gandhian philosophy, it is too much to expect his young mind to comprehend the full import of the idea of nonviolence. And though Narayan s treatment of Gandhian thought in this novel is comprehensive enough to include its political, cultural and economic aspects, it is treated mainly in political terms; and his focus remains constantly on Swami s character. Be it a huge gathering by the Sarayu or the police lathi charge on the mob, Narayan never lets Swami go out of his focus. Actually it is through Swami s point of view that we are made to register the Gandhian struggle: The mention of the police had sent his blood boiling. What brazenness, what shamelessness, to talk of police the nefarious agents of the Lancashire thumb cutters! (100). In mock heroic style, Narayan describes Swami s adventures through the crowds, till panic strikes him at the sight of the lathi charge. The plain, factual language of Narayan portrays the police violence without any melodrama. The policeman came towards them with upraised lathis. Swaminathan shrieked to them, Don t kill me. I know nothing. He then heard a series of dull noises as the lathis descended on the bodies of his neighbours. Swaminathan saw blood streaming from the forehead of 147

14 one. Down came the lathis again. Another runner fell with a groan. On the back of a third the lathis fell again and again (102). In Kanthapura, it was the collective unconscious of the villages that had rejected the political and cultural dominance of the West. Swami s defiance, on the other hand, is a very personal and individual one. As a matter of fact, this first gesture of defiance of alien authority is very important in the evolution of Swami s consciousness. Swami s defiance is more an expression of his subconscious state at this stage. But this subconscious suddenly becomes conscious when he refuses to brook any more insults and the result is his final rejection of the institution itself. He rushes out muttering: I don t care for your dirty school (107). This rejection of cultural dominance especially through the rejection of Western educational institution is a recurrent theme in some of Narayan s later novels. Krishnan s resignation in The English Teacher is a case in point. There is a constant cross-cultural discussion in The Bachelor of Arts. Jagan of The Vendor of Sweets is an old-time satyagrahi who had given up his college studies in favour of the Gandhian movement. Actually, it is after rejection of cultural dominance of the West that Narayan s characters acquire a personality of their own and realize themselves in their vocations. The second part of Swami and Friends apparently recounts Swami s participation in the M.C.C. matches with his old chums-rajam, Mani and Samuel, the peanut. But this is of only marginal significance. Actually, away from the constricting atmosphere of the previous school, Swami is liberated from artificial norms and is getting friendly with a Muslim boy Akbar Ali. Not that Narayan takes up the issue the 148

15 Hindu-Muslim unity, a significant aspect of Gandhian thought, for extended treatment, but this reference to Swami s friendship with Akbar Ali a nice Mohammedan (110) is significant. It occurs in the novel only after Swami s direct participation in the hartal. For a young boy of Swami s age to talk of Government taxes, especially in the context of a cricket team, sounds unconvincing. It is arguably Narayan s own involvement with various issues of Gandhian thought that colours his characterization. William Walsh is right when he says that even in his earliest exercise the author is bringing to bear a mind very much more impressive than one would expect in the writer of a school story (1971: 8). Politicized early as he was by the Gandhian movement, Swami is aware of the economic issues at stake. Refusal to pay taxes to the exploiting Government was an important issue of Gandhian movement. The narrator remarks while analyzing Rajam s reaction to the payment of taxes. The Government did not seem to know where it ought to interfere and where not. He had a momentary sympathy for Gandhi, no wonder he was dead against the Government (1983: 112). But the question is that of identity. Which Government? Swami asks: Even if we want to pay, whom are we to pay the taxes to? Certainly not to His Majesty or the viceroy. Who was the Government...Probably they would have to send the taxes by Money Order to the Governor! Well, that that might be treason (114). And Swami with such a questioning mind is soon to leave the Board High School also as a protest against the beatings by the Headmaster with a cane in hand. He disappears from where he eventually is rescued by the forest officer. 149

16 Swaminathan has missed the match he so-much wanted to play and as a consequence he is estranged from his friend Rajam who is leaving Malgudi for ever. It is a very touching scene in which Swami becomes for the first time aware what it is to miss a friend. But behind all these adventurous episodes that involve Swami in running away from his friends, it is Swami s groping for individuality which compelled him to free himself from the shackles of educational institutions. Malgudi firmament firmly established in swami and Friends, Narayan explores his theme further in The Bachelor of Arts. Chandran, the protagonist of the novel, is a B A final year student at the Albert Mission college. Some critics consider The Bachelor of Arts as second in the series of the trilogy, third being The English Teacher. Their reading is valid to the extent that Chandran appears to be an extended and a fuller portrayal of Swami. He is shown to be still in the process of searching for his identity which he will finally discover in The English Teacher. The theme of the futility of English education in India continues in The Bachelor of Arts too. It displays the protest of Chandran against any sort of injustice, untruth, slavery, imperialism and distortion of Indian History by the British colonial rule. We can witness an interesting debate between Brown and Chandran on issue of consciousness about India and Europe. Raghavachar, the nationalist professor of History, a Gandhi like protestant feels, If I were asked what country needed most urgently, I would not say self government or economic independence but a classified, purified Indian history (Narayan 1975: 37). Chandran too loves to witness the undistorted face of India, the history of patriots as the makers of India in place of the British colonial distorted history. 150

17 Apparently an important student of Albert Mission College, he is an eloquent public speaker with a nucleus of friends where he dominates. Historical Association brings him in contact with two interesting persons- Veeraswami the revolutionary, and Mohan the poet. Veeraswami contributes a paper entitled The Aids to British Expansion in India. The narrator informs us that it pilloried Great Briton before the Association, and ended by hoping that the British would be ousted from India by force (45-46). It creates precensorship on all papers by Principal Brown. As a protest, Veeraswami offers to read another paper entitled The Subtleties of Imperialism. The narrator s comments on this character give us a clue to Narayan s point of view which does not seem to approve of violence: Veeraswami bristled with prejudices and violence. Imperialism was his favourite demon. He believed in smuggling arms into the country, and, on a given day, shooting all the Englishmen (46). Even Chandran does not approve of violent means. For him, means to accomplish the end are equally important. And it is with a view to emphasizing and upholding the Gandhian ideal of peaceful, non-violent, resistance that Narayan very often introduces contrasting characters who believe in violence. Veeraswami will reappear as Jagdish the terrorist in Waiting for the Mahatma and in a still more magnified form as Vasu of The Man-Eater of Malgudi. Part II of The Bachelor of Arts relates Chandran s life after graduation till he arrives and settles down as a newspaper agent in Malgudi. But his smooth life has once been disturbed by Chandran s romantic love for the girl in a green sari whom he had seen at the Sarayu beach. This brief episode of Chandran s love sickness 151

18 provides Narayan an opportunity to define his hero s romantic excess before he is returned to the Malgudi sanity and equilibrium. Narayan s treatment of man-woman relationship is very close to the Indian social reality of the times. Unlike the prenineteen thirty romance writers like Cornelia Sorabji, S M Mitra, Sirdar Jogendra Singh and Bal Krishna who depicted love scenes in imitation of the English novelists. Narayan s treatment of man-woman relationship is realistic. His portrayal of married love as against the romance before marriage is traditional but authentic. And if we remember the Malgudi ethos of 1930s, it would be easy to understand that there could have been no freewheeling by Narayan in the matter of the passion of love. And, as Keith Garebian aptly remarks: The Indian principle of order has to be followed if Narayan is to represent his society with authenticity, and this principle cancels the eternal triangle of romance in favour of arranged marriage (Garebian 1976: 85). If the caste created no problem, unmatching horoscopes are there to lead to Malathi s marriage to someone else. Chandran s bout of romantic involvement, of course, compels him to leave Malgudi for Madras. And after a brief halt at Madras, Chandran adopts the role of a Sanyasi. Preoccupied with the Guru theme and with exploring its comic potential from different angles, Narayan is usually attracted to the character of a trickster sadhu. This trickster sadhu in Narayan may take on that garb in mere self-delusion in the beginning but, as the plot unravels, Narayan s hero usually ends in genuine self realization and returns to the Malgudi world of common sense. The narrator tells us that Chandran was: 152

19 different from the usual sanyasi. Others may renounce with a spiritual motive or purpose but Chandran s renunciation was not of that kind. It was an alternative to suicide He was a sanyasi because it pleased him to mortify his flesh. His renunciation was a revenge on society, circumstances, and perhaps, too, on destiny (Narayan 1975:108). After eight months of aimless wanderings he reaches Koopal village. The villagers take Chandran at his face value and pamper him with gifts and devotion. But suddenly: He felt a cad, a fraud, and a confidence trickster. These were gifts for a counterfeits exchange. He wished that he deserved their faith in him (111). He cannot remain self-deceived any more. He finds it ridiculous to dress in ochre garbs for nothing better than a girl s love. He realizes that: There was no such thing; a foolish literary notion. If people didn t read stories they wouldn t know there was such a thing as love. It was a scorching madness. There was no such thing. And driven by a nonexistent thing he had become a deserter and a counterfeit (112). This anticipates Raju s realization at the end of Narayan s later novel The Guide. But Raju has to pay a heavy price when he chooses to be a Mahatma in the real sense. Unlike Raju, Chandran is restored to the Malgudi normalcy. Freed from illusion and hysteria, he appears to be changed from within. With no more plans to go to England for higher studies, by which Narayan implies, no more self-deception, Chandran chooses the profession of a newspaper agent in Malgudi. It is pertinent to mention here that this newspaper agent would reappear in Srinivas, the editor of the Banner in Mr. Sampath. Besides its being inspired by 153

20 Narayan s own experiences as a journalist and editor of Thought Narayan s fascination with printing presses and with journalism has a thematic significance for his novels. It is part of Narayan s vision of life in which, as John Updike rightly says, man realizes himself in truthful and purposeful contact with his community (Cited in Jha 1983: 134). And in Malgudi, among other things, news media provide to his estranged protagonist this communal link with its inhabitants. Ambition to free himself from illusions and hysterics, says Walsh, is an apter description of Krishnan (1971: 12) in The English Teacher through the more complex personality of Krishnan. Narayan presents another variation on the theme he has already dealt with in the earlier novels- namely, the relevance of the Western education in a non-western society. He constantly points to the harm English education has done to the deeper aspects of life. In this novel he explores this theme in all its aspects of cultural conflict and mental enslavement and the resultant alienation of an individual from his roots. As the analysis of the novel would show, it would take a complete rejection of the value system engendered by the Western education to restore Krishnan to his cultural roots. At the end of the novel English teacher ceases to be an English teacher and achieves freedom to experiment with education on Gandhian lines. Significantly for the first time, Narayan uses first person narration in this novel. Krishnan is an introspective kind of a person. He is not only a singular consciousness but also the questioning consciousness. It is through his questioning consciousness that we are made to view this issue in the novel. Krishnan is struck 154

21 right in the first paragraph of the novel with a question that is loaded with significant spiritual implications. The self probing aspect of Narayan s hero in this novel is part of his quest for his identity, personal, racial as well as cultural. Gandhian thought provided a basic orientation towards Man. With the growth of social and national awareness that Gandhian thought inspired, there also emerged a realization of the individual s place in India. This aspect of liberation and realization of self coalesced with the Gandhian quest for freedom from Western cultural dominance. This aspect of Gandhian thought was of special importance to Narayan the novelist. This is the first in Narayan that a character asks himself the question-what is wrong with him? In these first two novels, Swami and Chandran do question the colonial situation but the problem does not take on the urgency of self probing and self criticism. Krishnan poised for seeking an answer to his question. This immediately puts him up against the system of Western education. It is ironical though, that he is both a product and an operator of that system by being a teacher of English. Narayan introduces this conflict right in the beginning of the novel, when as an illustration of his discomfort with the system Krishnan relates an incident of how Mr. Brown the Principal of Albert Mission College lectured to the teachers of the English department on the importance of the purity of English language. Brown is reported to have admonished the teachers for not taking care for the proper use of vowels. Psychologically more active (11) than his colleagues, Krishnan disturbs Gajapathy, 155

22 the head of the department with a significant query about Mr. Brown, why does he magnify his own importance? (Narayan 2009: 6). Hints to the answer of his questions are couched in the multiple references to Western education. The source of his anxiety is his being locked up in the educational system. Krishnan s experience of teaching English to Indian students breeds in him a sense of meaninglessness. The role of a teacher in the impersonalized Western educational system is measured against the Guru-shisya tradition of older India: What tie was there between me and them? Did I absorb their personalities as did the old masters and merge them in mine? I was merely a man who had mugged up earlier than they the introduction and notes in the Verity edition of Lear (12). The ironical reference to King Lear is significant here. For, like, King Lear, Krishnan is shortly going to face a total collapse followed by spiritual regeneration after he ceases to remain an English teacher. To this theme of self-evaluation is added another theme, i.e. death and Western education has been a kind of slow death. And this theme is reinforced by the abrupt death of Krishnan s wife Sushila. Experience of Death at a personal level has made him more acutely aware of the meaninglessness of his job as a teacher of English. It is true, as the autobiographical content (Metha 1971: 147) of the novel makes it clear, that Krishnan derives some faith in life from his mystical communion with his wife through a medium. But he needs a total rejection of the system he works in to achieve a complete metamorphosis of his personality. More and more, as we find him struggling with deeper questions of human existence and a meaningful realization of self, he is becoming a stranger to his college job. In his answer to a question about 156

23 a specific literary work he says: Do not worry so much about these things- they are trash, we are obliged to go through and pretend that we like them, but all the time the problem of living and dying is crushing us (Narayan 2009: 149). As he sees more clearly now between fatuities and serious work (150) he thinks that the students are being fed on literary garbage and that English teachers are the paid servants of the garbage department (150). After his contact with the headmaster of the children s school who also has sought a sort of spiritual rebirth and has liberated himself from the shackles of meaningless relationships with his wife and children, Krishnan is more than confirmed what he should do. He has got the answer to his painful dilemma in the last chapter of the novel. He says in categorical terms: My mind was made up. I was in search of a harmonious existence and everything that disturbed that harmony was to be rigorously excluded, even my college work (178). Krishnan s wife hitherto has been involved in serious violence to his essential self. His job as a teacher of English involved him in the daily perpetuation of the enslavement of mind and spirit. It killed his creativity as a poet and inhibited him from free mixing with people of his own community. Besides, it had snapped his cultural roots. He composes a very bitter letter of resignation to Principal Brown, which, though not sent to him in that form, however, reveals Krishnan s attitude. This education had reduced us to a nation of morons; we were strangers to our own culture and camp followers of another culture, feeding on leavings and garbage. The imperative need for Krishnan s liberation is his freedom from Western cultural dominance which the colonial situation had imposed through educational system. And 157

24 he tenders the resignation, as he mentions in the letter, for personal reasons (178). His personal reasons are deeply related to his socio-cultural and spiritual concerns. That is why he was up against the system, cultural morons (179). His final interview with Brown and the explanations he offers for giving up his job reveal Krishnan s attitude still further. He tells Brown that he was taking up work in a children s school. Baffled at Brown s incomprehension because of the latter s Western mind, classifying, labeling, departmentalizing approach, Krishnan simply says I am beginning a new experiment with education (179). This obviously is the alternative programme of education- the basic education- that Gandhi offered as his answer to the English education in India. Krishnan does not find English teaching any work because it does not please as he says, his innermost self (180). This has a ring of Gandhi s inner voice. Some critics see final mystical reunion of Krishnan with his wife as Narayan s indulgence in the realms of occult as a substitute for the profoundly spiritual (Narasimhaiah 1969: 147). But, judging the novel as a whole, it should be clear that Krishnan-Sushila episode reinforces the original theme. His communion with his wife, whether based on Narayan s actual experience of the world of spirits or, a creation of imagination, symbolizes Krishnan s experience of liberation. For, in the scheme of the novel, this ecstatic experience occurs on the night he has bid farewell to the Albert Mission College. Mr. Sampath is another post independence novel of Narayan s along with The Financial Expert, The Vendor of Sweets and The Man-Eater of Malgudi, in which he records the subtle changes that had taken place in India subsequent to attainment of 158

25 independence. However, the thematic concerns remain the same, and seek expression through Mr. Sampath s personality. Srinivas of Mr. Sampath has the similar quest to pursue as Krishnan in The English Teacher. The dimension of the search for identity and self-expression in case of Srinivas is more philosophical. Like all Narayan s characters he seems to be obsessed with the need for a proper vocation. If Krishnan sought his personal salvation in Gandhian experiments with basic education, Srinivas chooses to edit a thought provoking weekly paper called the Banner. Compared to the literary sensibility of Krishnan, Srinivas is more of an Upanishadic character who asks very early in the novel a question which is typical of Narayan. Who am I...till I know who I am, how can I know what I should do? (Narayan 2009: 13). His self-exploration makes him try agriculture, apprenticeship in a bank, teaching and practicing law before he settles down as the editor of the Banner in Malgudi. Starting with the high sounding purpose of setting the world right through its columns, Srinivas has to pass through various comic imbroglios before he once again, settles down as the editor. The interruptions of the film career, where he gets involved as the script writer with Soma & Co. are mere illusions and self-deceptions. He manages to emerge from these unscathed, and wiser to face his life. It seems he has finally got an answer to the question which his brother had asked him years ago: What exactly is it you want to do? (11). As a typical Gandhian character Srinivas does not and cannot avoid politics. When Mr. Sampath evades the questions asked by registrar of Newspapers as to whether he was going to deal with politics in his paper, Srinivas snaps him saying 159

26 Why did you say it was going to be literary? Far from it I shall certainly not avoid politics (23). And he does not. The reaction of Srinivas s brother to the Banner expresses rather aggressively his feelings about its commitment to socio-political matter: Almost every line of your paper is an attack on something. You give a page for politics and it is all abuse. You do not seem to approve of any party or any leader (24). Like Gandhi again, Srinivas tries to seek a frame of reference for the conduct of life from the Upanishads and reinstate like an Upanishadic follower a subjective value in relation to a social outlook (30). But he does not accept the Upanishad s stoic philosophy, though it checks temporarily, his enthusiasm of a social crusader: Life and the world and all this is passing- why bother about anything? The perfect and the imperfect are all the same. Why really bother? (30). And he wishes: If only he could get a comprehensive view of all humanity, one could get a correct view of the world: things being neither particularly wrong nor right, but just balancing themselves (63). From lines like these, Iyengar infers that Narayan s outlook on life is to see the world as a complicated system of checks and counter-checks, the net result being the enthronement of the Absurd (Iyengar 1962: 373). But the final position at the end of the novel is not the enthronement of the absurd but the triumph of Srinivas as a fearless editor of the revived journal. He refuses to be disturbed by Sampath again. At this point it is necessary to point out that Narayan s idea of Evil is congruous with Gandhi s idea of Evil. Sampath, the printer of The Truth Printing Works who prints Banner for Srinivas and later leads him into the illusory world of 160

27 the film industry, is not an absolute Evil. In rational terms, as a modern man in the changing, industrializing society, Sampath and, for that matter, Vasu of The Man- Eater of Malgudi may not be taken as Evil. But then Gandhi did not approve of industrialization as Narayan too does not seem to. It is quite in tune with Narayan s Gandhian outlook on life that he magnifies Sampath s character. Sampath is presented deliberately as larger than life only to be deflated and shown defeated at the end. Besides, Narayan s moral outlook on life does not approve of any looseness in sexual behaviour. This is clear from his depiction of Sampath who deviates from the Gandhian sexual ethics. Sampath s escapades with Shanti, the actress selected for Parvathi in The Burning of Kama, leads only to his rejection by her. Dereliction of duty by public servants is equally the target of Narayan s criticism. In the film world of Soma and Co., the District Board President Mr. Soma Sundaram postpones his assigned duty of opening the bridge on Sarayu, makes quick money from the film industry, and Sampath, the owner of the printing works, closes the press in order to direct the movie with a view to making more money. These characters are presented in all the comic absurdities that such a situation could create. This is Narayan s indictment of the confusion of identity in the post-independence India. Srinivas, who alone comes out of this morass unscathed and revives the Banner again with the help of the police inspector, stands for Gandhian way of life. Nothing less than absolute truth could pass with him as Sampath himself says (214). He is the measuring rod against which Narayan has criticized what could be called the un- Gandhian outlook. His goodbye to Sampath is a goodbye to all that had involved him in unreality hitherto. 161

28 Margayya s character in The Financial Expert provides yet another illustration of Narayan s preoccupation with Gandhian concerns. The distortions and absurdities that Margaya gets involved in due to his passion for easy money is what constitute the plot of the novel. The norms remain Gandhian against which Margayya s character is measured. The movement of the story is like this: Margayya is taking to the ways of untruth and deception by publishing Dr. Pal s book on sex life called The Domestic Harmony, his making fortune, getting involved as the financial advisor and moneylender to the peasants and reaching the position of the financial wizard who receives the deposits and pays a fabulous rate of interest, and ending up where he began, even worse, an insolvent Margayya. But once he gives up his lust for money, he is restored to his normalcy. His estranged family, specially his spoilt son Balu too, is restored to him. That money is evil and lust for it leads to man s ruin is perhaps what Narayan intends to show through such a story. In his singular determination to make money, Margayya ignores his family ties. His association with Dr. Pal leads to his son Balu s turning into a drunkard and an irresponsible citizen. Above all, he himself has lost all peace of mind. Narayan s attitude to the Gandhian idea of the relationship between means and ends is also explicit here. Margayya s making money by publishing a book on sex with lewd pictures is projected as morally questionable. It is significant that Narayan, though unobtrusively, always introduces an episode that reflects his puritanic Gandhian attitude to sex. In Mr. Sampath he has already questioned the sexual attitude of Sampath and of Soma Sundaram, who decide to make a movie on the topic 162

29 The Burning of Kama. Sexual adventures of Sampath himself are shown to have led him to a pathetic end. He comes back to the subject again in The Guide in which Raju-Rosie relationship, if not censored on moral grounds, is shown to have led Raju into a sort of unreality and self deception which turns him into an arrogant person. He is shown to have ignored his mother, the whole Malgudi ethos and is made to suffer for it in jail. In Raju s case, not only the measuring norm is Gandhian, but he is almost compelled by the irony of fate to become a martyred Gandhi himself. In The Vendor of Sweets, the relationship between Mali and Grace, his Korean mistress, is mildly censored by the Gandhian character Jagan. Again in The Man-Eater of Malgudi Vasu s attitude to sex and marriage is presented as a complete antithesis to the Gandhian Natraj. That Gandhian thought coloured Narayan s vision of life as projected through his characters in the novels he wrote and published in the 30s and the 40s should be clear from the above discussion. In 1955, about seven years after Gandhi s assassination, Narayan returned with a more direct treatment of the subject of Gandhi in Waiting for the Mahatma, which is comparable to Anand s The Sword and the Sickle, K Nagarjun s Chronicles of Kedaram and Venu Chittale s In Transit for portraying Gandhi as one of the characters in the novel. Gandhi himself was not at all interested in expounding any political or economic theories. He didn t want to leave behind him any cult or ism. He was deeply hurt to see the pitiable state of Indians at the hands of British. He was also moved by the miserable plight of the untouchables and the underdogs of society. He realized that freedom would bring them self respect and dignity and so he waged a 163