Summary
Chapter 9
Bhatta is disturbed by the Congress business, and starts to think about who is with him and who is not. He suddenly lights upon a genius idea—he will find a bridegroom for Waterfall Venkamma’s daughter and she will be so happy with him. He considers the men he knows and lights upon Advocate Seenappa, who recently lost his wife. He is confident he can pass him off as twenty-one even though he is thirty-four, and it should not be a big deal that he already has children.
In the morning, he goes to Venkamma, trembling with excitement, and when he tells her his plan she is elated. She begins to brag about this to the other women and the sisters say young Ranga is the luckiest of them. On the wedding day, they see a middle-aged man with a mustache and two missing teeth, but he does have a lot of land and the marriage party is tremendous fun. People say Bhatta and Venkamma are not all that bad. Only Moorthy spends the day wandering and wondering.
Chapter 10
It is now Kartik, the month of the gods, an exultant time filled with lights and celebration and gods passing by in the darkness.
One evening the people hear a to-do in Rangamma’s house and wonder if something is wrong. They bring the lanterns and see the policeman there, who growls to them that he has orders not to let anyone in. They hear noise in Rangamma’s house and see Ramakrishnayya spit angrily.
The people cannot see much so they move to get a view to Moorthy’s room. He is there, light falling on his face and policemen searching through his notebooks and clothes. He nods and even seems to smile and does not get in their way. Bade Khan finally shouts that the other policemen should bind this man, and the people begin to protest this.
Range Gowda says something, and Rachanna begins to cry out loudly, “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!” over and over again. They raise such a clamor that the birds join in. The policemen, irritated and angry, start to beat the men and women, but Moorthy calls out above the din that there should be love and peace and order; after all, Mahatma has often gone to prison. The police inspector slaps Moorthy and at that moment all the Kartik lights go out.
It is all turmoil, with the police trying to catch Rachanna and the others. The police spit on them and bind them with ropes. Madonna’s wife is smashed against a wall and a policeman squeezes her breast, so Range Gowda is spurred to action and beats a policeman to the ground. The police beat the Brahmins now, and grind them into the mud.
Overall, seventeen men are captured and marched to the police station, where they are treated abysmally. Moorthy, though, is put on a bus and sent to Karwar. When a flood of men say they will defend him and plead for him and raise money for him, Moorthy refuses it all and states that nothing will come between truth and himself. Even the holy Sadhu Narayan makes no headway with the steadfast Moorthy, and neither does his elder Sankar, who gives Moorthy his blessing after his unsuccessful pleading.
Sankar leads the meetings in Moorthy’s stead, and they are exultant and impassioned. Ranganna gets an ovation for throwing open the doors of his private temple to Pariahs. One man, though, wishes to offer a counterargument and Sankar politely allows him to come to the stage.
The old man nervously comes up and begins to speak of how when the white man leaves, India will simply have chaos. Before the British came, there was “disorder, corruption, and egoism” (88). Now when they leave there will be corruption of castes, and this will be devastating. He concludes his remarks and someone calls out to ask if he is a Swami’s man, to which the old man says yes. The man in the crowd says the Swami takes royal gifts and is a Government’s man, but the old man does not care; the Swami is neither for the government or against it.
Young men come up one by one and denounce the Swami as being paid to do the British Government's dirty work. Ranganna tells of how the Swami asked to see him one day, and at their meeting told him that he needed Ranganna’s help, for they are Brahmins and not Pariahs and Gandhi’s attempts to bring them together go against the writ laws of the sages. They must unite against this Untouchables campaign, he said emphatically. Ranganna was skeptical and asked how he could accept the aid of a foreign government, but the Swami merely said they were “sent by the divine will and we may not question it” (90). Ranganna found that ridiculous and vowed to open his temple. To the crowd before him he says that they should know what religion “is wearing behind its saffron robes” (91)—instead of the “fattened Brahmins, who want to frighten us with their excommunications, once the Government has paid them well” (91), they should follow the saint Mahatma Gandhi.
At this the police inspector comes up and announces Ranganna is under arrest, so he offers himself up. The irate crowd forms processions and cries out shrilly, but when they reach the Imperial Bank they are violently dispersed.
As the weeks pass, the newspapers print the turmoil that is happening in the country. In the evening, they gather on Rangamma’s porch. Ramakrishnayya speaks of different chapters in the vedanta sutras and then the talk invariably turns to Moorthy. Sometimes Seenu will go to town and report back, and sometimes Vasudev will go see Moorthy. The villagers are certain the Goddess will free Moorthy.
Rangamma announces that she would like to go to the city and see cousin Seethamaru, who is an advocate and can tell her what is going on. Nanjamma says she will go too, so the two of them take a cart to Karwar.
They meet with Seethamaru, who tells them Sankar is handling the case. They go to Sankar, who tells them he loves Moorthy like a brother and has found no better Gandhist. He is doing all he can, but the police say he arranged the assault of the Pariahs on the police. Regardless, he suggests they should stay and see the results.
Complaints against the Government are more and more frequent. Range Gowda is stripped from his Patelship, and the people cry out that this is against the ancient laws, as a Patelship moves from father to son and so on. They all cry out to the Goddess to destroy the Government, and make songs criticizing it as well as Bhatta.
Rangamma returns to Sankar to follow up again, and he asks if she’d like to stay and work for him, maybe arranging his papers and doing Congress correspondence. The two of them felt a kinship and she agrees. This starts a bit of gossip, with Waterfall Venkamma behaving quite viciously, but Rangamma merely shrugs at this.
Sankar had lost his wife and is only twenty-six, but he will not remarry. He brings up his young daughter on his own and people grudgingly accept his widowed state because his wife was so godlike. People help him with his daughter and home from time to time as well. Everyone knows he will never take a false case, and see him as an “ascetic advocate” (96). He takes the lower fee from poor clients, dresses modestly, and smiles at everyone. He does, though, believe Hindi, not Kannada, will be the national tongue of India, and only speaks Hindi to his elderly mother even though she does not speak it at all, and when his friends or even himself utter an English word he has them drop a coin in a box and then gives all that money to the Congress. He makes his whole family fast, but he is always in the best of health. Now Rangama even looks as if she is in better health. She talks, writes, holds classes, and goes to meetings.
The Red-man’s judges eventually give Moorthy three months of rigorous imprisonment. When Kanthapura hears of this, the people fast. Nothing stirs. The next day, rain comes for three days. Ramakrishnayya falls and dies that night. No cow gave its milk that night, and rain patters all night long.
Chapter 11
After Ramakrishnayya’s death the villagers do not know who can read the Vedantic texts. They suggest Temple Raganna, but he cannot read well and Rangamma says he is Bhatta’s man. She suggests Ratna—they wonder if Ratna will pollute the texts but decide she will not.
Ratna begins to read every afternoon and in discussion Rangamma always savages the British Government. She is clearly becoming very learned, and the women ask her to teach them the meditation and yoga she learned from Sadhu Narayan.
Rangamma mentions that she saw in the city that women and girls and widows formed Volunteers, and practice exercises for police encounters. Nanjamma screeches that she cannot fight, and Rangamma relates the story of Rani Lakshmi Bai and how she fought for India during the Soldiers’ Revolt. She says they must think about more than just milking cows, and they ought to be ready to meet Moorthy when he comes home. The women all agree and decide to call themselves Sevika Sangha, or Sevis.
The men start to grumble that the women are pretending to be soldiers and are neglecting their wifely duties. When Suryanrayana complains of his wife, Rangamma accuses him of not being a Gandhi’s man. He protests this but says he just wants his comforts tended to.
Rangamma reminds the women to do their duties, and they grumble and understand, but they are swept up in the changes happening. Rangamma tries to teach them what to do when the police fall on them, and they are nervous but do their best.
Sometimes Seenu and Vasudev come and watch, and remark that they wish they could get the boys to do this too, but they are afraid of going to jail. If they are stuck there, their land will go uncultivated. Plus, Vasudev tells Rangamma, Bade Khan will come for them, as he already spits on and beats them. He has taken up guard at the gate, though right now he has the fever. His woman is not so bad, though, and lets Vasudev in and out.
They decide that they will start the bhajans again, thinking it would be what Moorthy wants. But Moorthy tells Sankar, “Let them prepare themselves for the fight. But no processions or bhajan lest the police fall on them!” (108).
Analysis
Kartik, the month of lights, is darkened by the growing discontent amongst the villagers of Kanthapura. Moorthy and his compatriots have challenged leadership, been beaten, been thrown into jail, and lost important positions due to their activism. Regardless of their commitment to nonviolence, truth, and love, they are still met with violence and oppressive measures. Lest the reader think that Kanthapura’s resistance will crumble if Moorthy is not there to lead it, Rao shows how the women begin to come together in his absence to continue the fight. Rangamma leads their learning and their training, and they form the “Sevis”—a Volunteer brigade of women young and old, willing to put their bodies on the line for Gandhism.
The subject of how women are portrayed in Kanthapura is one that has occupied numerous critics, and there are many divergent views. To begin, the women in Kanthapura are transgressing certain societal boundaries. They are taking a more public role, and those among them who have been marginalized due to their disreputable social stature—Ratna, for example—are less constrained and more respected as they take on leadership roles. As Raanu Uniyal explains, “woman appears as a source of strength and shakti… women emerge as a strong force of social and cultural change.” Through defying societal pressures, widows like Rangamma and Ratna become inspirational to others. The widow “represents authority of the powerless and with her self-sacrificing nature she becomes intrinsic to the movement.”
Uniyal also believes the novel calls attention to other women’s issues, like “caste system, unequal marriage, child-marriage, women’s education and women’s empowerment in the socio-political and economic structure,” and “highlights that a certain meaning be added to women’s lives once the individuals collectively begin to question certain norms of the community.”
Janet Powers Gemmill agrees, noting the positive nature of the changes in the women’s lives: “In Kanthapura, we perceive how the role of the women was gradually transformed as a result of necessity, education, and revolutionary fervor. The traditional Indian woman is shy, retiring, unwilling to show her face before strangers, and always responsive to her husband's bidding. Here, we find women with initiative who are no longer content to go for water, cook meals, and wash clothes, but begin to take on jobs ordinarily reserved for men: reading and interpreting scripture, defending the village, and protesting against the British. Like their model, Rani Laksmi Bai of Jhansi, the emotions of the Kanthapura women are sufficiently aroused to call forth extraordinary feats of behavior.”
A laudatory view of the female characters in Kanthapura isn’t the only reading, of course. In the next analysis, we will look at Gandhi’s own views on gender, but here we will continue to focus on the characters. Ultimately, as M.E.P. Ranmuthugala says, the female characters show a “lack of agency” and their “identities were moulded by men to serve their own nationalist interests.” They have an extremely narrow tightrope to walk between respectability and notoriety, and “they play (or appear to play) both widow and ‘concubine’ based on their actions or the stance they take.” While they do engage in political action, both physically and rhetorically, “the modernity they exhibit is flouted by the traditionalism they bow to: They do not forge separate identities but incorporate Gandhian/nationalist thought into their existing identity of caretaker/mother.” They are important in the struggle but “men set the agenda” in this nationalist struggle that makes it clear it will not “negatively affect the traditional roles the women were given.” The women do not “change the status quo,” and “the novel promotes a vision of women as both modern and traditional where they are tools for men and nationalism.”
