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2 - Raja Rao and his Fictional Characters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2012

Letizia Alterno
Affiliation:
Editor-in-Chief, The Raja Rao Publication Project, University of Texas
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Summary

“We must become as little children

before we enter the realm of truth…”

(Sri Radhakrishnan, 1959. Foreword. In Arthur Osborne, Ramana Maharshi and the Path to Self-Knowledge, Bombay: Jaico: xi-xii)

“For in every adult there lurks a child – an eternal child,

something that is always becoming, is never completed,

and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education.”

(C. G. Jung, Selected Writings, London: Fontana, 1983: 194)

“Guru is Brahma, Guru is Vishnu, Guru is Maheshwara,

Guru is the supreme Brahman, to such a Guru I offer my salutation.”

(Adi Shankara, Hymn to Dakshinamurti)

Unlike his contemporaries, Raja Rao – one of the so-called “Big Three” of the 1930s with Mulk Raj Anand and R K Narayan – constructed a more psychological dimension around his portrayals of human life. His writing deeply scrutinises the realm of Indian consciousness and its potentialities through his self-analysing characters, caught in the throes of an anguished existence affected by their sociohistorical contexts. By illustrating their search for truth through Indian mythical parallels such as the stories of Rama, Nachiketa, or Yagnyavalkya, Rao has also touched upon some primeval images and ideas common to the “collective unconscious” of Indian and other ordinary readers.

Rao's artistic interest has constantly been focused on the divine presence in man, and more specifically on the exploration of the world according to the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta.

Type
Chapter
Information
Raja Rao
An Introduction
, pp. 14 - 29
Publisher: Foundation Books
Print publication year: 2011

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