Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Mahatma as Proof: The Nationalist Origins of the Historiography of Indian Writing in English
- Chapter 2 “The Mahatma didn't say so, but …”: Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable and the Sympathies of Middle-Class Nationalists
- Chapter 3 “The Mahatma may be all wrong about politics, but …”: Raja Rao's Kanthapura and the Religious Imagination of the Indian, Secular, Nationalist Middle Class
- Chapter 4 The Missing Mahatma: Ahmed Ali and the Aesthetics of Muslim Anticolonialism
- Chapter 5 The Grammar of the Gandhians: Jayaprakash Narayan and the Figure of Gandhi
- Chapter 6 The Mahatma Misunderstood: The Arrested Development of the Nationalist Dialectic
- Conclusion: Dangerous Solidarities
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Mahatma as Proof: The Nationalist Origins of the Historiography of Indian Writing in English
- Chapter 2 “The Mahatma didn't say so, but …”: Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable and the Sympathies of Middle-Class Nationalists
- Chapter 3 “The Mahatma may be all wrong about politics, but …”: Raja Rao's Kanthapura and the Religious Imagination of the Indian, Secular, Nationalist Middle Class
- Chapter 4 The Missing Mahatma: Ahmed Ali and the Aesthetics of Muslim Anticolonialism
- Chapter 5 The Grammar of the Gandhians: Jayaprakash Narayan and the Figure of Gandhi
- Chapter 6 The Mahatma Misunderstood: The Arrested Development of the Nationalist Dialectic
- Conclusion: Dangerous Solidarities
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In 1938, Raja Rao (1908–2006) published his short story “The Cow of the Barricades,” a revisiting of the themes taken up in his most famous novel, Kanthapura (1938), where Rao describes the effects of Gandhian politics on a small village in Uttar Kanara. Rao had for a long time been a commentator and writer on contemporary developments in India for English language audiences, and the story was picked up in the New York-based journal, Asia and the Americas. In the short, imagistic and fabular narrative, life in an unnamed village is made difficult by the violent repression of Indian National Congress-led boycott activities by Indian soldiers “from Peshawar and Pindi” who are working for “the red man's Government” (Rao 1947, 177). When workers at a nearby mill decide to help, they immediately come into conflict with the president of the local Congress committee, a Gandhian named “the Master,” who characteristically recommends a nonviolent strategy for resistance. The workers want to build a barricade in order to fend off the coming attack:
But the Master said again, “No, there shall be no battle, brothers.” But the workmen said again, “It is not with, ‘I love you, I love you, ’ that you can change the grinding heart of this government,” and they brought picks and scythes and a few Mohammedans brought their swords and one or two stole rifles from the mansions, and there was a regular fighting army ready to fall on the red man's men.
(Rao 1947, 179)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Mahatma MisunderstoodThe Politics and Forms of Literary Nationalism in India, pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2013