They have burnt our dead, too, by the Himavathy, and their ashes too have gone out to the sea.
You know, sister, Moorthy is no more with us. The other day, when Ratna was here, we asked, ‘When is Moorthy to be released?’ and she says, ‘Why, Aunt,’—and how deferential Ratna has become! — ’he’s already freed.’—’Freed!’ we exclaimed, — ’Yes, since the pact with the Viceroy many a prisoner has been released.’— ‘And when is he coming here, Ratna?’—’I don’t know, Aunt, for he says — well, I’ll read to you his letter.’ And she read the letter. It said: ‘Since I am out of prison, I met this Satyagrahi and that, and we discussed many a problem, and they all say the Mahatma is a noble person, a saint, but the English will know how to cheat him, and he will let himself be cheated. Have faith in your enemy, he says, have faith in him and convert him. But the world of men is hard to move, and once in motion it is wrong to stop till the goal is reached. And yet, what is the goal? Independence? Swaraj? Is there not Swaraj in our States, and is there not misery and corruption and cruelty there? Oh no, Ratna, it is the way of the masters that is wrong. And I have come to realize bit by bit, and bit by bit, when I was in prison, that as long as there will be iron gates and barbed wires round the Skeffington Coffee Estate, and city cars that can roll up the Bebbur mound, and gaslights and coolie cars, there will always be Pariahs and poverty. Ratna, things must change. Jawaharlal will change it. You know Jawaharlal is like a Bharatha to the Mahatma, and he, too, is for non-violence and he, too, is a Satyagrahi, but he says in Swaraj there shall be neither the rich nor the poor. And he calls himself an “equal-distributionist”, and I am with him and his men. We shall speak of it when you are here.’
Ratna left us for Bombay the week after. But Rangamma will come out of prison soon. They say Rangamma is all for the Mahatma. We are all for the Mahatma. Pariah Rachanna’s wife, Rachi, and Seethamma and Timmamma are all for the Mahatma. They say there are men in Bombay and men in Punjab, and men and women in Bombay and Bengal and Punjab, who are all for the Mahatma. They say the Mahatma will go to the Red-man’s country and he will get us Swaraj. He will bring us Swaraj, the Mahatma. And we shall all be happy. And Rama will come back from exile, and Sita will be with him, for Ravana will be slain and Sita freed, and he will come back with Sita on his right in a chariot of the air, and brother Bharatha will go to meet them with the worshipped sandal of the Master on his head. And as they enter Ayodhya there will be a rain of flowers.
Like Bharatha, we worship the sandals of the brother saint.
There was only Rangè Gowda that ever went back to Kanthapura. She was here, with us, his Lakshmi, and Lakshmi’s second daughter — the first one was in prison — and her three grandchildren of the one, and the seven of the other. She was in Patel Chenne Gowda’s house, for they had heard of Patel Rangè Gowda, and they had said, ‘You are one of our community, come in and stay with us all this life and all the lives to come, sister!’ And she waited for Rangè Gowda. And one day he came back — and we had gone to light the evening light of the sanctum, and the children came running and said, ‘There’s a tall man at the door, and he’s frightening to look at,’ and when we went to see him, it was Rangè Gowda, and he was now lean as an areca-nut tree, and he said he had just come back from Kanthapura. ‘Couldn’t leave,’ he said, ‘till I had drunk three handfuls of Himavathy water,’ but he had gone, to tell you the truth, to dig out his jewels, and he said the Corner-house was all but fallen, except for the byre, and Rangamma’s house was tileless over the veranda, and Nanjamma’s house doorless and roofless and the hearthstones in every corner. ‘All said in a knot,’ he concluded, ‘there’s 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, said Maddur Chennayya, has sold it all to the Bombay men, and the Bombay men paid him well, and he’s now gone back to Kashi. “In Kashi, for every hymn and hiccup you get a rupee,” he said it seems, and he and his money have gone to Kashi. Waterfall Venkamma, it appears, has gone to stay with her new son-in-law, and Concubine Chinna still remains in Kanthapura to lift her leg to her new customers. I drank three handfuls of Himavathy water and I said, “Protect us, Mother!” to Kenchamma and I said, “Protect us, Father” to the Siva of the promontory, and I spat three times to the west and three times to the south, and I threw a palmful of dust at the sunken wretch, and I turned away. But to tell you the truth, Mother, my heart it beat like a drum.’
Raja Rao on the Reception of Kanthapura
Kanthapura had a bewildering destiny. I wrote most of the novel in the thick, high tower of a thirteenth-century castle, the chateau de Montmaur, in the Hautes-Alpes. The castle of Montmaur was the hunting retreat of the dauphins of France. As I sat and wrote, day after day, I felt the snow high behind me, though I did not see it from my tower. In front and in the valley beneath meandered the little river, and beyond lay another wall of high, green mountains. The river was a peaceful, white and gurgling stream. The peace was pure, but then there was great and immutable history, for it was the time of Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy, and the fierce civil war under Franco, where both Hitler and Mussolini were collaborating, plying their new machines of destruction.
The book was first published in the February of 1938. It had a certain literary success, but was not widely read, so complained Sir Stanley Unwin, my publisher. An English literary agent wrote an urgent letter to me, asking permission for the translation rights for Kanthapura into Czech. Hitler had just walked into Prague. What they wanted it for was certainly not because of its literary value, but its essential Gandhian motif. Of course, I agreed at once. But I never heard whether it was published or not — the translation, I mean — for the war had soon spread all over Europe. Fortunately, however, I was back in India, because of health reasons, and if I had stayed in Europe, I would probably not be writing all of this today. I had contact with the anti-Mussolini, anti-Hitler and anti-Franco groups from all over Europe. A vegetarian and a Gandhian had no place under Marshal Pétain. I heard later that the French police had been given orders to arrest me.
But before I left Menton for India in July 1939 with friends of mine, a Dutch novelist A.M. de Jong, whom I had met earlier, had asked for the translation rights of the book, and of course I had said he could have it. The ominous cloud of war was hanging over Europe. And I understood de Jong’s intentions, for indeed, Hitler invaded Holland while I was in Sevagram. Europe was lost, but India was not free. But when peace came, however, both to Europe and India, Achyut Patwardhan, the leader of the Gandhian uprising between 1942-45, was going to Holland for an eye operation, if I remember right, and I asked him to try and contact A.M. de Jong in case he could find time. Achyut telephoned de Jong’s home, and heard from the writer’s son that his father had been shot by the Nazis. The Dutch novelist was, in fact, Achyut was told, arrested while he was translating Kanthapura. I have not been able to verify this story, having not visited Holland during my several visits to Europe.