Summary
Chapter 17
The next morning, everyone knows the Sahib will want the coolies back, and they start to cry out and wonder where Moorthy is. As the police begin pushing the coolies back to the Skeffington Estate, children throw rocks at them and women scream.
Rangappa is beaten after throwing a stone and hitting a soldier. The women call the police “dung-eating curs” (148) and in response the police rush at them. One of them gets on top of Puttamma to rape her.
The streets are filled with shrieks and lamentations, and all they can see are uniformed policemen. They rush to the temple for solace, and “the whole world seems a jungle in battle” (150). That prior night the men had all been taken away from their houses, and some of their women were tied up so they could not resist.
The women rush from house to house, dismayed at the damage they see, looking for refuge. They see policemen beating an elephant, and children’s cries echo in their ears. The coolies are still marching and there are barricades on the Karwar road.
They wonder about Radhamma, who is with child, and then they see her with another group of women running, being whipped by policemen. Radhamma espies them and gets to them, and as they are trying to get to Nanjamma’s place, Radhamma collapses and has the child, even though she is only seven months along.
They hear a cry from the post office and find Ratna there—a policeman who raped her slinks off. She sobs and sobs that she tried to get away but could not. They huddle together and Ratna washes herself and tells them this is not a safe place. When they hear her, they realize this is the voice of Rangamma—this is not the child they once knew or the young widow they cursed.
The temple is their goal, but they realize the Pariah women have lit Bhatta’s house on fire. Pariah women and children shriek in the streets. They make it to the temple but they are startled when one of Bhatta’s veranda roofs crashes in a storm of sparks. Satamma moans for her own house but Timmamma warns her not to go to it, for the police are still out there.
The women beat their breasts before the unadorned god, crying to Siva to protect them all. They give libations and say prayers for their husbands and sons. In the distance, they hear more crashes from Bhatta’s house, and when Satamma bitterly curses him, Ratna admonishes her that they are all Satyagrahis.
The coolies of the Estate are raising a clamor to receive the coolies who were being dragged in. Drums sound in the distance and they think it might be the Himavathy people coming to help them. Vedamma trembles suddenly and says she has a fever, so Ratna says she will go get blankets. The women do not want her to, but she tells them to stop being “a woman” and let her go. As she runs out, a policeman sees her, so she runs back inside and they barricade the door against him. He tries to get in but finally locks them in there and leaves.
For hours they cry and beat on the door and try to get out, and finally Ratna suggests they light the sacred flame and do bhajan. She tells stories about Rangamma to calm them, and stories of the women of Bombay who were beaten. Radhamma’s chill rises and they try to keep her warm as Timmamma holds the child. Inside there they forget all about the Pariahs and police and Moorthy and the Mahatma and “felt as though we were some secret brotherhood in some Himalyana cave” (155).
However, they are still terrified and bang on the door from time to time to be rescued, and finally Pariah Rachanna’s wife is on the threshold, letting them out after hearing the moaning and yelling. They get up and go outside, marveling at the difference in the landscape with Bhatta’s house no longer there.
In the morning, Puttamma seems to have gone mad, moaning over what happened to her. The women console her that the gods will forgive her.
They know their men are close and wait anxiously for them to arrive.
Chapter 18
Three days later, something seems to be going wrong. Car after car of men in European clothes drive up the Kenchamma Hill. There are many soldiers, as well as coolies that they’ve brought. Policemen pour into the temple square and drums beat, and someone announces that they are rebels, that the Government is supreme. They have come to claim and auction everyone’s fields, and the women get tears in their eyes.
Satamma angrily says she is not a Moorthy person or a Mahatma person, and that she is leaving. She does not want to come to Ratna’s, which is where the women are going to go to figure out what to do, but she grudgingly comes along.
They head to Sami’s house where Ratna lives, and all the women gather there. They are confident that the city boys are coming to their relief, that “they would win us back our harvests” (159). More and more women, children, and old people join them.
They are happy to see Pariah Madanna, who had been hiding in the jungle, and their joy increases when they see the city boys emerge, “like princes, fair and smiling and firm” (159). A Volunteer explains that they knew the Government would auction off their lands and thus hundreds of men are coming from the city to help, and they’ve decided to hold a Satyanarayana Puja, and the men will escape from the police and the soldiers, and more and more men will come, and the Government is afraid of them. They share what has been happening in the cities, like Peshawar, where the Mohammadens conquered it and expelled all white men. They conquered without a single gunshot, and they would not shoot the Indian soldiers sent against them. One woman screams out that those Indian soldiers are monsters, but the Volunteer says they might be, but the Mahatma says that they are out to convert them, and their will and love will do so.
The women see what is happening to their lives: there are policemen everywhere, in their inner sanctums; there are Pariah-looking coolies; the cars are going up the Bebbur mound and the fields; and things are broken everywhere. They feel like they cannot go on but Ratna rebukes them and they say they only have this small amount of land and will have nothing to eat. She tells them not to be frightened and the Congress will take care of them.
Worried, they go to their homes. They do not think prayers can pay dues, or rice can come back into the granaries, or fire can consume Bhatta’s promissory notes. But then they realize their error, and cry out for Moorthy to forgive them, and they will “go to the end of the pilgrimage like the two hundred and fifty thousand women of Bombay” (162).
They begin working to prepare their procession, and Ratna explains that at dusk someone will blow the conch and the men from the jungle and by the river and the village and city men in the fields will all come out, and they will go to the field for Satyagraha.
More people are arriving for the auction, and the women notice there are women among them, and they curse them, especially when they notice it is some of their own. The women begin to lament and shriek.
They notice Sankaru, who is holy, and are glad. Evening begins to fall, and there are cries from the Sudra and Pariah lines. They think they might be saved for one more night, as it will be too dark to reap, but the white men make the coolies in the trucks take out huge gaslights. Sankaru rushes to them and calls for Ratna to blow the conch.
Ratna does so, and everyone forms the procession. They sing and clap and hold the sacred torch and flame. The police come to shut them down but see it is a religious procession and hear them singing a religious song and know they cannot do anything for the time being. The police become more and more infuriated with them, especially as it gets darker and Ratna keeps blowing the conch and they are crying out to Mahatma. Suddenly all the men and boys join them, swarming around them, and they are so happy.
The city boys announce they are going to the barricades, and move toward the Bebbur mound. They see shapes there, and are afraid they are soldiers, but the women say they too are soldiers, and the country is theirs. As they move closer the police close in and begin to beat them. The procession collapses, the throne falling to the ground and flowers becoming trampled. Yet they feel the gods are in the air, and someone yells out to raise the flag of revolution.
The group rushes down the aloe lane and the police throw stones at them. They see a break in the hedges and beyond the barricades, trucks and men and coolies. They scream out "Gandhi Mahatma ki jai" and the coolies look at them and do not stop working, but the police fall on them.
Near Rangamma's field they see dozens of soldiers with bayonets coming forward, and “we whirl in shrieks and shouts and yells, and we leap into the harvests. And a first shot is shot into the air” (168). For a second there is complete silence, then everything erupts into noise and chaos. They fall and run and try to get into the fields. They argue with the soldiers but Ratna urges them on. They hear more gunshots but keep going and the soldiers are retreating and they are a moving crowd under the stars.
They want to rush and hide in Bhatta’s sugarcanes and, holding their children, stumble into them. They are afraid of snakes but stay anyway. They can see the coolies continuing the harvest and the maistri watching them. Then there are shadows out in the Estate, so they think it is the coolies who will not let them down.
There is a white-clad man carrying a flag and they hear the crunching of police boots but they are not sure what is happening. A command is called out and the lights go out and the coolies stop working, and there are only the stars, the dome of the Kenchamma temple in the moonlight, and a lantern from the Skeffington bungalow.
Suddenly the coolies cry out and throw a flaming dhoti at soldiers; they call to mount the barricades. The police fire at the coolies and some of them fall down. There is crying and moaning as larger groups of men rush the soldiers.
The women cannot bear to do nothing so they come up behind the crowd and some of them are fired on, taking bullets. They try to bandage each other, and then run after a city boy who leads them away. The voices of the men and boys filter up from the fields.
Suddenly there is a moment in which the soldiers do not know what to do, for the coolies are pouring across the barricades, the women and the men are there, and they seem outnumbered. However, a white man orders them to fire. The soldiers do so, and come at them, and there is much kicking and howling and the women are flung to the ground. They are dispersed.
A silence falls. They wonder where Ratna and Nanjamma and Vedamma and Chinnamma are, but someone shushes them. Kanthapura is there in the moonlight, completely silent. But then they hear the voices of the white officer and whispering soldiers, and know they will attack again.
And the attack does come, but because one of their own opens a gas canister and the soldiers hear and fire because they think it is a gunshot. They run as fast as they can, and one of them tries to hoist the National flag on the barricades, but the men are shot and fall over and over again. The women spread out into the field and try get away.
One contingent of soldiers rises up before them and a city boy proclaims that they are nonviolent. The soldiers reply that they have to be loyal to the British Government. Their words become a hand-to-hand scuffle, and the city boys are joined by coolies. They cry out not to be violent, but more and more men are shot and die, and the women lament that Moorthappa and Rachanna are gone, as well as so many others.
It is a terrible, remarkable scene of the Gandhi flag beneath the moon but so many men, thousands of men, cry and groan and crawl and gasp. Rachi, Rachanna’s wife, wishes in her despair that she could just burn the whole village down, and other women come together and start the fire. The narrator and her women moan that they are losing their houses but there is nothing else they can do in the face of this loss. They would rather have it lost to fire than to the Government.
They begin retreating from the village, encountering more beatings but making it into the jungle and walking down the banks of the river. Across it is Mysore State and they dip into the holy river. Men come to meet them and lead them through to the village. The villagers hang garlands on their necks and call them pilgrims of Mahatma.
The villagers invite them to stay here in Kashipura, and they agree.
Chapter 19
It has been a year and two months since the events chronicled. Many of the villagers live here in Mysore. The narrator lives with Timmamma. In the afternoons they gather to listen to the Upanishads.
They hear Rangamma and Seenu will be released soon. Ratna had one year, and she recently came to them to talk to them about what she experienced in the prisons. The Mahatma made a truce with the Viceroy and the peasants will pay back revenues and will not boycott the toddy shops. People think things will be the same but that is impossible, for “something has entered our hearts” (180).
They ask after Moorthy, and Ratna explains he is out of prison and she has a letter she reads from in which Moorthy explains who he has met and what problems he’s discussed and wonders what the goal is of all this—Independence? Swaraj (self-governance)? He knows that as long as there are iron gates and barbed wire around the Skeffington Coffee Estate and coolies and gaslights and cars rolling up the Bebbur mound, there will be Pariahs and poverty. He hopes Jawaharlal will change things.
Ratna left for Bombay the week after and Rangamma will come soon. Mahatma is to go to the Red-man’s country and get them Swaraj.
Only Range Gowda went back to Kanthapura once, and he came and told them he had to drink three handfuls of the Himavathy water. But he had really gone to get his jewels. He said there “was neither man nor mosquito in Kanthapura, for the men from Bombay have built houses on the Bebbur mound, houses like the city, for coolies, and they own this land and that, and even Bhatta has sold all his lands” (182).
Analysis
Moorthy, Gandhi’s proxy, may not be present during the last major battle between the villagers of Kanthapura and the representatives of colonial authority, but the spirit of Gandhism infuses the villagers’ behavior and beliefs—or, at least, it mostly does. The villagers are rightfully distressed by the murder of Rangappa, and cannot help but forget their teachings on loving everyone and scream out, “Butchers, butchers, dung-eating curs!” (149). Their hearts are “burning with anger” (150). Satamma wants to break away from the righteous struggle to save her own house, and cannot help but “[speak] of the hay and the rice and the beds and the only roof she has over her head” (153). Satamma also gives voice to the rage many women feel against Bhatta, saying bitterly that “Satyagrahis or not, he has starved our stomachs and killed our children,” to which the other women except Ratna chorus, “Well done, well done” (153).
Most of the women also express their fears about their lands being harvested and auctioned, wondering “Prayers never aid revenue dues, nor would the rice creep back to the granaries, nor fire consume Bhatta’s promissory notes. Mad we were, daughters, mad to follow Moorthy” (161). While these fears and doubts do not last long and the women recommit themselves to the struggle, the fact that Rao includes them is a testament to how regular Indian people did not always find it easy to embrace Gandhism. Yes, they understood why the movement was important, and they certainly did not relish colonial oppression, but they still felt ties to their land, their homes, and their social standing, and did not always find it easy to be selfless paragons of nonviolence, love, and peace.
There are several disturbing examples in this section that demonstrate how the violence of the state is especially visited upon women’s bodies, as it often is in times of unrest and war. Indirectly, the terrifying and tumultuous events force Radhamma to give birth to her child two months early, but directly, policemen rape Puttamma and attempt to rape Ratna. Though India’s patriarchal system might not make it easy for the rape victims to be open about what happened to them, or even may be censured themselves, the women in the text make it clear that they understand each other, that they know what it is like to inhabit a woman’s body and experience men’s violent acts against it.
The women also come together in a beautiful but painful moment of solidarity when they are trapped in the temple. In the dark, hiding from the soldiers, they hold the newborn child, try to calm the fever of the new mother, and listen to Ratna’s stories. They felt as if they were “some secret brotherhood in some Himalayan cave” (155). And tellingly, it is another woman—Rachi, Ranganna’s wife—who helps her sisters out by releasing them.
The women of this novel see themselves as soldiers, the “soldiers of Mahatma, and this country is ours” (166). They “whirl in shrieks and shouts and yells, and… leap into the harvests” (168). They put their bodies on the line, taking bullets and blows. They decide they will take the fate of Kanthapura into their own hands by burning it down and leaving it behind, which, given how hard those actions are, is a testament to their resolve and strength.
What to make of the end, then? As the novel was published in 1938, it cannot account for the later years of Gandhist struggle and the eventual achievement of independence and swaraj. The main actors—Moorthy, Rangamma, Ratna, Seenu—are still out there, working to secure those goals. The end is anti-climactic, at a point of stasis. Change has happened, though, with almost everyone else living a new life somewhere other than Kanthapura, and only one villager is left in the burnt-out village–Concubine Chinna, who “still remains in Kanthapura to lift her leg to her new customers” (182). This could be a throwaway comment, intended to be amusing or maybe bittersweet, but it also may have a larger resonance: critic M.E.P. Ranmuthugala sees it as a commentary on the sort of women who are considered crucial parts of the nationalist struggle and necessary in and for the new India. It is ultimately only “the traditional women who are expected to survive in the new India Mahatma Gandhi and Rao propose. The deviant woman is not acceptable in this new India.”
