Chapter - 1

INTRODUCTION

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Indian novel in English is popularly known as “twice-born fiction”

as it is derived from two parent traditions, the Indian and the British.

The novel in India originates in Bengal which happens to be the first

province to launch social reforms and to attain political awakening in

the last quarter of the nineteenth century. P. P. Mehta says, “Bengal

brought to the Indo-Anglian novels the finished products, through

English translation . . . of her great masters of the art of fiction” [1].

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee is the first writer to establish the

novel as a major literary form in Bengal. He succeeds in showing that

the life of an ordinary middle-class Bengali could be the subject of a

prominent novel. He published the first Indian novel in English, Raj

Mohan’s Wife, in 1864. The themes of the English novels written in

India before it attained Independence are either romantic or historical.

Apparently, the novelists of the time have deliberately chosen these two

kinds of themes for their fiction in order to steer clear of controversies.

The works of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Ramesh Chandra Dutt

Sarat Chandra Chatterjee and Rabindranath Tagore are prominent

among the early works of Indo-English fiction. Bankim’s Raj Mohan’s

Wife is a tale of domestic life in a Bengal village. He is considered the

master of the romantic as well as the historical novel. Bankim reigned

as the literary dictator of the renascent Bengal in his own life-time.

Bankim Chandra is well-known for his sense of humour. In his

other novels, The Poison Tree (1884) and Krishna Kanta’s Will (1895),

he presents the stark realities of life as he sees them in the society of

his time. He depicts the plight of a widow in the Hindu society of that

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time. He seems to have the influence of the earlier writers on his

historical novels. His historical romances reveal the inspiration of Sir

Walter Scott. Though Rabindranth Tagore received the Nobel Prize for

Literature for his poetical work, Gitanjali, he is also a famous novelist.

He achieves his first success with Choker Bali (1902), which is later

translated into English as Binodini. It is the tale of a young widow. Gora,

The Wreck and The Home and the World are his other Bengali novels

translated into English by himself. Gora is his political novel in which

he depicts a fusion of the East and the West.

Ramesh Chandra Dutt also writes in Bengali and later translates

his works into English. His Bengali novels, The Lake of Palms (1902)

and The Slave Girl of Agra (1909) are among them. He encourages

widow-remarriage through his hero, Sarat, in his novel, The Lake of

Palms. In his historical romance, The Slave Girl of Agra, he reveals

intrigue, love and jealousy in the Mughal times.

Sarat Chandra Chatterjee writes for the lowly and the lost.

Through his novels, he presents their trials and tribulations. The plight

of destitute widows, Abhaya and Kiranmayi, is presented in his novels.

He lays greater emphasis on the realities of life than his predecessors.

Rabindranath Tagore, Ramesh Chandra Dutt, Sarat Chandra

Chatterjee and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee are considered the fore-

runners of the Indo-English fiction. Apart from them, some other

novelists have also presented the everyday life of Bengal. The themes of

Bengali novels are more or less similar to those of the novels written

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elsewhere in the country. They reveal the Western influence both

covertly and overtly.

During the twenties and thirties of the present century, the Indo-

English fiction has entrenched itself firmly. The themes of the novels

become more realistic rather than romantic. They may be classified as

themes of sociological upsurge, themes relating to the freedom struggle,

Gandhian ideas and ideals, the horrors of partition, the East-West

conflicts, the modern existential dilemma and the quest for meaning in

life. The Freudian psychology has prompted some of the novelists to try

and achieve a kind of realism, that is psychologically authentic, and

adopt the stream-of-conscience technique.

A careful study of all the novels written by Indians in English

since 1864 reveals those Indian writers have successfully achieved their

desired results. K. S. Ramamurthy remarks:

The earliest writers in the field like Bankim Chandra, Toru

Dutt and Ramesh Chandra Dutt were by no means

‘imitators’ but conscious experimenters who adapted an

alien form and medium to a socio-cultural situations and

sensibility which were specifically Indian [2].

Mulk Raj Anand makes the middle-distance realism popular. It is

rightly observed by P. P. Mehta that the Indo-Anglian novel before

Anand was still not fully developed [3]. Anand presents the oppressed

and downtrodden people who are insulted and humiliated by the

members of the high castes, the white Sahibs, the Zamindars, the

money-lenders and the caste-conscious priests. He changes himself

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into a mouthpiece of the underdog. He protests against casteism and

the tyranny of landlords, the greed of money-lenders and the caste-

consciousness and superstitious attitudes of the priests, who oppose

all kinds of change. His famous novels, Untouchable, Coolie, Two Leaves

and a Bud, The Village, Across the Black Waters, and The Sword and

the Sickle testified to his deep interest in the eradication of social evils

and social reformation. Meenakshi Mukherjee aptly says, “Anand was

at the height of his power in the thirties and early forties when a

sociological approach to literature was very much in vogue . . . in India

as well as outside” [4].

In Untouchable, Anand picturizes the activities of a day in the life

of a low-caste boy, Bakha. He works as a scavenger. He is a son of

Lakha, Jamedar of the sweepers of the town. Bakha appears

comparatively clean though he does the dirtiest work of scavenging. In

spite of his dreams, he is a sincere worker.

Bakha’s sister, Sohini, does the household work. She carries

water for the house. She is not allowed to draw water from the well-

used by upper caste people. She has to wait for some kind-hearted

person to draw water for her. One day, when nobody comes forward and

to help her, Kalinath, the temple priest, agrees to draw water for her. In

return for his favour, he asks her to clean his court-yard. When she

goes there, he tries to molest her. Out of fear, she screams and he

shouts, “Polluted”. The crowd that gathered there misunderstands her.

They think that she has polluted the priest by touching him. They abuse

her severely. When Bakha comes to know the truth of the matter, his

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blood boils with fury. But he feels dejected when he realizes that he

cannot avenge himself on the priest.

The novel stresses the problems of untouchability, squalor,

backwardness, ignorance and superstitions. K. R. S. Iyengar has

pointed out how “the problem with blunted edges, perhaps also with

some relieving features here and there, still defies a firm and final

solution” [5].

Anand mentions three types of solutions to Bakha’s problems.

First of all, Colonel Hutchinson, the Salvationist, urges Bakha to get

converted to Christianity and put a full stop to the problem with caste.

Secondly, the speech of Gandhiji, stressing the need for the removal of

untouchability, gives some relief to Bakha. Thirdly, the poet Iqbal Nath’s

consoling speeches about the introduction of a modern sanitary system,

which does the work of the scavengers, hold out the promise of solution.

He hopes that they could live with dignity in a classless and casteless

society. The very thought of the Mahatma and the machine gives him a

ray of hope. Untouchable presents an unforgettable picture of society,

“a picture that is also an indictment of the evils of a decadent and

perverted orthodoxy” [6], according to K. R. S. Iyengar.

Mulk Raj Anand’s Coolie is the story of a hill boy, namely, Munoo.

He goes from place to place for earning a livelihood. He works at several

places. In the end, he dies of consumption. ‘Coolie’ (a derogatory term

in India) reveals an indictment of a society which finds a cruel pleasure

in exploiting the helpless labourer. K. R. S. Iyengar rightly observes, “In

Untouchable the evil is isolated as caste; in Coolie the evil is more

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widespread, and appears as greed, selfishness and inhumanity in their

hundred different forms” [7].

The heroes of Anand suffer because they refuse to protest against

the raw deal meted out to them by the society. They remain silent

sufferers. They look out for a change for the better in the society and

social equality without any effort on their part. Meenakshi Mukherjee

considers the heroes of Mulk Raj Anand ruggedly individualistic [8]. Her

view, that their refusal to conform to the customers and conventions of

the society, accounts for their sufferings may be suggestive of her own

conservative moorings. According to her, the protagonists of his novels

are persecuted by the society for their non-conformity. But she has been

gracious enough to concede that all of them are indomitable in spirit

[9].

Mulk Raj Anand’s Two Leaves and a Bud also presents the

exploitation of the helpless coolies by self-centered foreigners. The

exploiters include a few Indians too – the Sardars, the Mistris, the

Babas etc. The coolies work in a tea-estate. The estate is just like a

prison without gates. The chowkidars bring back those who try to

escape from the estate. The people living are, by and large, callous,

though there are a few sympathetic persons among them such as the

boss of the plantation and his wife.

Anand does not feel shy of siding with the untouchables who

include the downtrodden. He favours the introduction of the Western

science in India. He believes in the idea that the existing social evils can

be eradicated with the help of science.

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Thus, the first phase of Indo-English fiction deals with social

inequalities. The novelists of the time reveal a keen desire for social

reformation for improving the lot of the socially oppressed classes.

Manohar Malgonkar is widely known for his historical novels. A

cordial relationship between Hindus and Muslims forms the main

theme of his first novel, Distant Drums. Two friends, who work together

in the British army, meet later on the Kashmir border. Through the

novel, Malgonkar seems to stress the cordiality that should prevail in

the relations between the people of India and Pakistan.

Malgonkar’s novel A Bend in the Ganges portrays the freedom

struggle and its consequences. It focuses attention on the Civil

Disobedience Movement and the problem of Partition. It deals with

several historical events that took place during the independence

struggle, like the boycott of foreign goods, the secret activities of the

terrorists and the horrors of the Second World War. The novel closes

with the bifurcation of the country. Places and episodes are given

greater prominence in it than individual characters.

In Malgonkar’s novels, the clash is not between the East and the

West, but between the sense of justice, fair play and integrity

(exemplified by the British in India), on the one side, and inefficiency,

dishonesty and a sense of inferiority (which he considers typically

Indian), on the other. In A Bend in the Ganges, he highlights the fairness

of the British and petty mindedness of the Indian officials. He treats

with contempt all those who do not measure up to the British public

school values.

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His primary objective seems to be to amuse his readers.

Consequently, he seems to lack a seriousness of purpose and reveals a

relative immaturity in the choice of his themes. And he lacks an abiding

concern for the common man. Indeed, he evinces a great deal of interest

in human convictions of the partisan kind which tend to vitiate the air

of objectivity he has been trying to lend to his imaginative perceptions.

B. Rajan’s The Dark Dancer (1959) deals with the problems and

chaotic conditions that defaced India after the partition. In the novel,

he presents an ideal character, Kamla, who sacrifices herself in her

attempt to protect a Muslim woman from an attack by two Hindu

hooligans.

Khushwant Singh presents the chaotic conditions, which

prevailed in the country during the partition that preceeded India’s

Independence, in his novel, Train to Pakistan. The horrors of the

partition-period and the atrocities suffered by the people are vividly

described in the novel. The main theme is woven around the love

between a Sikh ruffian and a Muslim girl.

Attia Hosain’s novel Sunlight on a Broken Column presents a

romantic quest that prompts a woman to break loose from her family

fold and her return to it later on the death of her husband. It reflects

the influence of the Western culture on the heroine, Laila. Laila

questions the traditional values of the family and rebels against the

family by marrying one of her choice. But her initial triumph is short-

lived as the person she marries dies. Her return to the parental

household may suggest a triumph of the traditional values. She comes

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to know the fact that her cousin has been waiting for her all his life.

Indeed, the Western culture would not have favoured a marriage

between close relatives of the kind.

Nayanatara Sahgal’s novel, A Time to be Happy also picturizes the

conflict between the East and the West. The hero of the novel is from

the upper class society. He faces the problem of finding his roots. His

education, upbringing and sense of values do not allow him to mingle

freely with his fellow-countrymen. He labours under a sense of

rootlessness as well as alienation, which is a common theme for the

contemporary Indo-English novelist including Arun Joshi. She focuses

her attention on the woman living as a prisoner in her own house

consequent on a loveless marriage. A Time to be happy, This Time of

Morning, Storm in Chandigarh and The Day in Shadow are among her

novels.

Raja Rao’s Serpent and the Rope (1960) also presents the theme

of alienation. It presents a conflict between the East and The West. It is

a study of the marriage between Ramaswamy and his French wife,

Madeline, who represent two contrary world-cultures. It presents the

encounter of orthodox Brahmanism with the liberal French views. The

novel highlights a profound spiritual conflict of the East and the West.

K. R. S. Iyengar considers it “an ambitious and meritorious effort at

achieving a total projection of India in vivid fictional terms” [10].

In his novels, R. K. Narayan tries to present India and Indians as

they are, with an air of detachment that is productive of a great deal of

irony and humour. He seldom makes any effort to whitewash their

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faults and follies. For that reasons, his heroes often tend to be anti-

heroes, who have hardly anything admirable about them. Margayya,

the hero of The Financial Expert, for instance, is a comic figure, thanks

to his mighty pretensions to being a financial expert. He believes that

his expertise in financial dealings has made him rich. The irony lies in

the fact that he ends up as a pauper.

In his other novels, R. K. Narayan introduces half-hearted

dreamers, financiers, speculators, twisters, adventurers, cinema stars,

ascetics etc. Several of them are not from Malgudi but imported from

outside.

In R. K. Narayan’s The Guide, an air of suspense and anticipation

is created by jumbling the present and the past. In Waiting for the

Mahatma, irony is produced through its hero, Sriram. He is pampered

and spoiled by his grandmother. He inherits a lot of property. He is

hardly a lovable man. His aimless life gains a purpose when the

Mahatma and his followers come to their town. He is fascinated not by

the Mahatma, but by the girls who is one of his ardent followers. Sriram

comes near the Mahatma without any knowledge of the freedom-

struggle. In the beginning his interest is only in the girl. But later,

thanks to the impact of Gandhi as well as the girl, he turns a new leaf

in his life. R. K. Narayan’s patriotism does not seem to come in the way

of his ridiculing some persons and events that are typically Indian.

In Ruth Parwer Jhabwala’s novels, social background is given

greater stress than the characters that enact various comedies,

tragicomedies and farces. Her novels include To whom She Will, The

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Nature of Passion, Esmond in India, The Householder, Get Ready for

Battle and A Backward Place. She writes about the society of Delhi. She

is able to present the Indian attitudes and oddities with a detached

outlook, reminiscent of Jane Austen’s, and reveals a European

sensibility. She has a keen eye for details and is able to combine the

comic and the ironic in the Indian life with a rare skill. She seems to

have made a conscious bid to avoid the tragic element in her novels.

She comes close to a tragic theme only in her later novel, A Backward

Place. It is a tragicomedy presenting some expatriate women whose

expectations from India are different. None of them is able to realize

those expectations. The author’s attitude towards them appears

ambivalent. Her first novel, To Whom She Will, deals with romantic love

versus arranged marriages. The author seems to be in favour of

conformity with the customs and conventions prevailing in the Indian

society. Two of her novels The Nature of Passion and Get Ready for Battle

are satires. The titles, she has chosen for them, show the influence of

The Bhagawad Gita on her. The Householder is perhaps the most

delightful novel written by her. Esmond in India has a sadist as its hero.

He is an English man. His dealings with an innocent Indian girl make

the theme of the novel.

Kamala Markandaya’s novels give importance to the principal

characters and their backgrounds – economic, social, cultural and

political. In them, she refers to the heart of South India where there is

no change in life-style for more than a thousand years. Some of her

well-known novels are Nectar in a Sieve, Some Inner Fury, A Silence of

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Desire, Possession and A Handful of Rice. Nectar in a Sieve presents the

rural economics, while A Handful of Rice deals with the urban

economics. A Silence of Desire gives an account of an imponderable

realm of spiritual realities. Possession is said to be the continuation of

A Silence of Desire. The Swami who appears in A Silence of Desire again

reappears in Possession as a mellowed person with a modern outlook.

Modern Indian novelists are influenced by the new techniques in

plot construction, narration and characterization. The narration by

means of the stream-of-consciousness technique is used by Mulk Raj

Anand and Anita Desai in many of their novels. Both Arun Joshi and

Anita Desai have been able to achieve a rare degree of psychological

realism in their works under the influence of Freud.

Arun Joshi introduces autobiographical element in his novels.

His real-life experiences as a student in the United States and his

accumulation of knowledge in the mental hospital are utilized in his

novels, particularly in The Foreigner and The Strange Case of Billy

Biswas. The Apprentice shows the influence of Mahatma Gandhi on

him. His novels reveal the influence of existential philosophers like

Albert Camus, Kierke Guard and Sartre. The Foreigner, The Strange

Case of Billy Biswas, The Apprentice and The Last Labyrinth portray the

existential predicament of his protagonists in an indifferent and hostile

world. In his fifth novel, The City and The River he portrays a different

theme introducing political satire.

Anita Desai’s novels have added a new dimension to the

achievement of Indian women writers in English. In her two novels, Cry,

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the Peacock and Voices in the City the inner climate of sensibility is more

compelling than the outer weather of the visible action. Her aim seems

to be the exploration of the particular kind of modern Indian sensibility

caught in the midst of barbarians and philistines. Her interest is with

the inner world sensibility rather than the outer world of action. She

tries to bring out the fret and fever of the consciousness of her principal

character. Cry, the Peacock gives an account of the recollection of the

events of the past by Maya. She tells us of her married life with

Gautama. Voices in the City lays stress on the inner landscape. The

heroine of the novel, Manisha, commits suicide when her married life

with Jiban becomes an unending struggle.

The suffering during the Second World War, the Quit India

Movement and the Bengal Famine had great influence on the novelists

of the time. There was large scale destruction of shops and houses;

millions of people were made homeless; children were brutally killed;

women were abducted, raped and humiliated in different ways. The

majority of the poor preferred to die in honour and, therefore,

committed suicide. All these had a great deal of influence on the writers

of the time. The themes of the novels thus became more and more

realistic rather than romantic.

Human suffering has become a common theme of Indian novels

including the works of Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao,

Kamala Markandaya, Khuswannt Singh and Bhabani Bhattacharya.

The ways in which they deal with suffering have been different. R. K.

Narayan, for instance, presents the human predicament using an

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indirect, subtle and ironic method, without losing touch with the

realities found in the society. While one finds him at one extreme, Mulk

Raj Anand places himself above the other. He reveals a frank, forthright

and uncompromising attitude in his criticism of the society through his

novels. Meanwhile, Bhabani Bhatttacharya, for one, favours a via

media. The extremist stance of Mulk Raj Anand does not find favour

with him. Nor does he adopt the much-too-subtle approach of R. K.

Narayan.

India’s struggle for freedom inspired a great number of Indian

novelists. In the twenties, it created a national consciousness which

begins to find a larger meaning in disparate social activities in different

parts of the country. The Gandhian thought democratizes the social and

political activities in India by encompassing the commonest and lowliest

people in the freedom struggle. Gandhi’s impact on novelists like Mulk

Raj Anand and R. K. Narayan is worth mentioning in this context. In

most of his novels, Bhabani Bhattacharya also draws inspiration from

the Gandhian thought. After Independence, there has been increasing

corruption, inefficiency, poverty and superstitions in the country. The

novelists have turned their attention to such problems too. Bhabani

Bhattacharya is among them.

Bhabani Bhattacharya was born on 10th of November in 1906 at

Bhagalpur in Bihar. His father Promothnath Bhattacharya was a Judge

by profession. Bhattacharya received his early education at various

places as his father was holding a transferable post in the judicial

service in British India and had to move from place to place as a result

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of his transfer and posting to different stations. At an early age of twelve,

he began to compose poems. He wrote his first article in a Bengali

magazine, Mouchak!

He did B.A. (Honours) from Patna College, Patna, in 1927 and left

for London for higher education. He studied History and Literature at

King’s college, London. He obtained Honours and Doctorate degrees in

History from the University of London. His education in London proved

very significant in his career as a writer. It is in England that

Bhattacharya met Tagore and sought his permission to translate his

stories into English which appeared under the title The Golden Boat in

1930.

During his college days, Bhabani was attracted and influenced by

the works of Tagore and John Steinbeck, W. B. Yeats, Edward Fitzerald

and Romain Rolland. Bhabani himself submitted the idea:

I think by real intellectual awakening when I was a

freshman at the university, for the first time, I discovered

Tagore . . . Also, about the time, I began to delve deeper in

English literature . . . The names must be obvious; one that

is not obvious was Edward Fitzerald. His translation

of Omar Khayyám continued to stir my adolescent fancy

and retained its power even after I had graduated. I should

add that W. B. Yeats was another great favorite. My

horizons started to widen in my senior year in college. I

discovered the plays of Ibsen and Bernard Shaw and novels

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of Romain Rolland, Knut Hamsun and several other

continental [11].

After a distinguished academic career in London University, he

returned to India. In 1935, Bhattacharya married Salila Mukherji. She

was not merely a mate; she was entire fate. She had chosen to use her

talents to collaborate with Bhabani in the creation of his fictional

worlds. She touched each idea with a glow. Bhabani and Salila were

blessed with a son and two daughters.

He held several distinguished positions in America and in India.

He was appointed as press attaché to the embassy of India, Washington,

D.C. in 1949. In 1950, he became Assistant Editor, Illustrated Weekly

of India, Bombay. In 1961, he was appointed Consultant, Ministry of

Education New Delhi. In 1969, he joined East-West centre, Honolulu as

a Senior Specialist. In 1970 he was appointed Visiting Professor,

University of Hawaii. In September 1973, he joined the University of

Washington, Seattle as Walker Ames Professor.

Bhattacharya travelled extensively, and attended various

International Seminars at different universities and shared his views

and opinions with wise men all over the world. The name and fame of

Bhabani Bhattacharya was not only limited to India but also reached

the other countries. Malta Grover writes about his global reputation as:

Bhabani Bhattacharya is a much translated Indo-Anglian

writer who has won global fame. Though his literary output

is scanty, just six novels and a collection of short stories,

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his novels have been translated into twenty six languages

including fourteen European languages [12].

Bhabani was a prolific writer. During his significant literary

career as a novelist and short story writer, he produced six novels, in

addition to many short stories and translations. In terms of

achievement, he stands next to that of Mulk Raj Anand and R. K.

Narayan. His achievement does not lie in the portrayal of life alone, it

lies in the vision of life, which he conveys through it. Harcharn Singh

Boparai remarks:

Bhabani Bhattacharya’s achievement as a novelist can best

be assessed on the basis of his whole work. On this

account, he has emerged as a world-class novelist who has

presented the birth-pangs of a nation’s freedom, and its

agonies and aspirations in a historical perspective; who has

shown concern for man’s physical, mental and spiritual

needs; and who has depicted the human drama at

microcosmic as well as epic scale [13].

His profound literal output shows a versatile writer in him. His

famous works are:

1. The Golden Boat (Translations from Tagore, 1932)

2. Indian Cavalcades (1944)

3. So Many Hungers (Novel, 1947)

4. Music for Mohini (Novel, 1952)

5. He Who Rides a Tiger (Novel, 1954)

6. A Goddess Named Gold (Novel, 1960)

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7. Shadow from Ladakh (Novel, 1966)

8. Gandhi the Writer (1967)

9. Steel Hawk And Other Stories (1968)

10. A Dream in Hawaii (Novel, 1973)

Different kinds of literary influences paved the way for Bhabani

Bhattacharya to become a successful literary artist. First of all, his

higher education in London helped him to use English in an effective

manner. His study of History may be responsible for the influence of

the historical events of his time on almost all his novels. The historical

events like the Second World War, the Quit India movement, The Bengal

Famine and the Chinese aggression have a place in his novels like So

Many Hungers, He Who Rides a Tiger and Shadow from Ladakh.

He also read the popular works of Western writers like

Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Walt Whitman and John Steinbeck.

Bhattacharya himself said thus:

The influences on my thinking in those days came entirely

from the writers in my mother tongue . . . It was a period of

Romanticism in Bengali fiction. The age of naturalism, not

to speak of realism, had not dawned yet. A foreign

influence, strangely was Shakespeare . . . The bookshelves

at home contained a set of Shakespeare’s collected works.

My father, a judge, had no time for literature. But in his

younger days, he had loved Shakespeare. With my poor

knowledge of the English language, I managed somehow to

go through all those big volumes. I do not know how much

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of Shakespeare I understood and how much I absorbed

[14].

Mahatma Gandhi’s influence on Bhabani Bhattacharya is found

in almost every one of his novels. So Many Hungers deals with Gandhi’s

impact on the freedom struggle. It presents the Gandhian ideals of non-

violence and passive resistance. Music for Mohini attempts rural uplift,

social reconstruction and adult education as preached and practised by

Gandhi. In He Who Rides a Tiger, he fights for the cause of the poor and

downtrodden for whom Gandhi struggled undauntedly and untiringly.

A Goddess Named Gold describes the Gandhian vision of economic

development in free India. In Shadow from Ladakh Bhattacharya

presents a case for the synthesis of the Gandhian values of moral

regeneration and modernism born in the wake of scientific and

technological developments. His novels are rooted in Gandhian

philosophy and deal predominantly with the common man in a simple,

direct and natural manner.

Bhabani Bhattacharya’s study of Tagore’s works perhaps

prompts him introduce some of Tagore’s philosophical ideas, such as

the idea of the integration of diverse elements in human life and his

aesthetic views, in his novels like Music for Mohini and Shadow from

Ladakh. John Steinbeck’s works also seem to have influenced the art

and ideas of Bhattacharya. He is inspired by Steinbeck’s concern for

social justice, interest in the common man, and the fusion of moral

earnestness with a sardonic humour and ironic detachment.

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The social conditions of the time have had a great deal of

influence on the mind of Bhattacharya. And he has been able to make

use of them in his novels without allowing his writings to degenerate

into mere journalism, drawing lessons from Steinbeck. He confessed

how the events of his day moved him so deeply and prompted him to

have a creative out-let for his feelings. He has been averse to putting

those feelings in cold storage. He also drew attention to the manner in

which Steinbeck has depicted an immediate and acute problem of his

time successfully in his The Grapes of Wrath. He added that, among the

many English and American authors he has read, John Steinbeck

attracted him most [15].

Bhattacharya believes that a novel should have a social purpose.

But he insists that it should not be imposed on him by anyone else. The

choice must be his own. In other words, he is in favour of the literary

artist being left absolutely free to decide on the subject of his work.

Indeed such a view casts a heavy responsibility on the artist, as he

cannot afford to blame others if his choice of subject happens to be

either improper or frivolous. In fact, Bhabani Bhattacharya himself

tends to have a low opinion on his contemporaries on that score.

Bhattacharya says:

The so-called romantic writer of today seems to woo

actuality by depicting in detail and with sharp

photographic accuracy the sex convolutions of his

Cinderella and his prince, thus giving them roots,

apparently, in the common earth of life and time. Here is

21

an adolescent determined to be an adult. It is indeed

amazing that literature today is so full of adolescence,

preening itself in adult form but being betrayed by

disorders of which it is a victim [16].

Such a charge of adolescence may well be leveled against all

writers who believe that art has to be for art’s sake. And it is bound to

be less than fair to suggest that an artist must invariably be a servant

of the society. Surely, the Keatsian aversion to the artist having a

palpable design on the reader is not entirely devoid of merit.

Bhabani Bhattacharya, however, makes amends for his extremist

stance in this regard, when he says that art need not necessarily be for

art’s sake. For the view suggests that art could also be for art’s sake at

times.

Bhabani Bhattacharya maintains that the creative writer’s final

business is to reveal the truth. In his novels, he deals with various forms

of struggle. He is against hunger, superstition, ignorance, injustice,

forces of tradition, casteism, base desires of man, corruption, sin etc.

The situation in his novels arises as a conflict between good and evil. It

cannot be concluded that good will emerge victorious and evil will totally

be eliminated. According to him, the eternal conflict between good and

evil goes on forever irrespective of the occasional victory of either.

Syed Ameeruddin has pointed out how Bhabani Bhattacharya’s

writings quiver with an outraged social conscience and deep concern

for humanity. Ameeruddin has also stated that Bhattacharya’s novels

22

on the whole are a protest against the deep-rooted social evils of our

country [17].

Bhattacharya says:

Real life is the earth out of which my stories and people

grow. I should add, though, that sometimes life follows art.

To be more specific, I have conceived characters and then

discovered that they have a flesh-and-blood existence. Not

exact copies but basically alike [18].

Bhattacharya’s themes are close to social reality and are based

on real-life experiences. The achievement of verisimilitude in his

portraits was apparently uppermost in his mind. He also shows interest

in the social problems that afflicted the oppressed classes of Indian

society. Thus he touches almost every aspect of the present day India

for weaving a pattern for the stories of his novels. C. Paul Verghese

points out that Bhabani Bhattacharya has a vision of a welfare society

at heart. Verghese says, “His concerns are clear and unambiguous; they

are political, economic, and social. In other words, the dignity of man

both in national and international contexts is uppermost in his mind”

[19].

Bhabani Bhattacharya has been widely acclaimed as realist with

an affirmative vision. K. K. Sharma, for one, seems to have done a

commendable job in highlighting that aspect of the author’s work. In

fact, Bhabani Bhattacharya himself has acknowledged his contribution

in the matter. Bhattacharya holds a mirror to the Indian society. He

23

deals with the social, religious, economic, political and even

psychological aspects of Indian life.

Bhattacharya’s attempt to portray the truth in terms of reality

results in the simultaneous presence of two strains in his novels.

Primarily, a commitment to a social restructuring is found. Secondly,

Bhattacharya believes that for writing a novel with a definite social

purpose, the writer must be aware of his environment and the behavior

of the people around him. These two characteristics seem to have

contributed to the success and popularity of most of his novels.

So Many Hungers and He who Rides a Tiger predominantly deal

with the theme of hunger. Music for Mohini takes up the theme of

cultural synthesis and social regeneration of the country. Shadow from

Ladakh portrays the integration of rural simplicity and urban

sophistication. A Goddess Named Gold focuses attention on

superstition and lust for gold. It is a struggle between man and society.

A Dream in Hawaii marks a variation in theme as it picturizes the East-

West encounters by juxtaposing Indian spiritualism with Western

materialism and uses both India and island of Hawaii for its setting.

Bhattacharya’s altruistic learning and interest in bringing about

a wholesome change in the pattern and structure of the society seem to

have contributed to his positive vision of life in a large measure. But

sadly enough, his hope of bringing about a change in the attitudes of

men as well as the society does not appear to have been realized,

inasmuch as the undesirable aspects of the social behavior and the

contemptible practices of individuals have, by and large, survived in our

24

midst. The practice of using huge quantities of milk for bathing idols,

for instance, is still being continued in many temples.

Bhattacharya has been alive to the existence of diabolic and

angelic aspects in every one of us. He believes that hunger has a

corruptive influence on man. Obviously, he is against blaming hungry

men for their moral aberrations. As pointed out by C. Paul Verghese,

“He believes in the essential dignity of man both in national and

international contexts” [20].

Bhabani Bhattacharya seems to have had a perennial interest in

contrary views and forces. Their juxtaposition in his novels, has, in fact,

been much commented on. B. Shyamla Rao, for one, has drawn

attention to several of them – the present and the past, orthodox and

modernity, mysticism and materialism, science and superstition, myth

and reality as also individual and society [21].

The juxtaposition of various characters, situations and forces has

certainly helped highlight them in several cases. But he does not

usually rest content with the presentation of contraries. While revealing

the conflicts between them, he also tries to evolve some compromises.

His interest in such compromises testifies his awareness of the

problems posed by inimical forces in the society. His attempt, obviously,

has been to blunt the edges of their conflicting claims by means of

syntheses, wherever feasible. Some of the readers may be inclined to

think that the synthesis thus affected often tends to be wishful and

artificial. Yet the sincerity of his compassion and the relevance of his

vision have always been beyond doubt.

25

Commenting on the humanistic concern revealed in the novels of

Bhabani Bhattacharya, K. S. Jha aptly says:

The various types of freedom which man necessarily

requires in order to realize his full potential for a complete

life as envisaged by Bhabani Bhattacharya are – freedom

from hunger, freedom from slavery, freedom from

orthodoxy, freedom from ignorance, freedom from

superstition, freedom from the degradation of caste

barriers and untouchability, freedom from economic

exploitation, freedom from greed and other social evils and

freedom from hatred and other narrow considerations.

There is another kind which the novelist strongly

emphasizes in some of his novels and that is ‘freedom to be

free’, or what may be called freedom of the mind and the

spirit [22].

Bhabani Bhattacharya gives an account of the Indian way of life

in each of his novels. He refers to the various customs, conventions,

superstitions and oddities present in the Indian society usually without

commenting on their merits. Notwithstanding his zeal as a reformist,

Bhabani Bhattacharya fought shy of assuming the role of a

propagandist. All that he did was presenting the stark realities of life,

as he found them, through his artistic creations, with scrupulous

regard for their authenticity and veracity. Indeed he also sought to

synthesize the divergent and inimical tendencies of the society by

26

means of his affirmative vision. Nonetheless, his novels provide a flood

of information on India and Indians.

Like Mulk Raj Anand, Bhattacharya tries to expose the suffering

and humiliation inflicted on the lower strata of society. Humanism

literally means devotion to human interest and concern for the welfare

of society. It proposes to improve the conditions of human beings.

Bhabani Bhattacharya is a humanist, a novelist with a message for his

countrymen. G. Rai rightly points out, “The novels of Bhabani

Bhattacharya embody a positive vision of life which is obviously

humanistic. He seriously concerned with the plight of the destitute and

low-caste people” [23].

Bhattacharya has his own theory on the purpose and method of

writing a novel. On more than one occasion, he has expressed in clear

terms what ‘novel’ has meant for him and what he has tried to do and

succeeded in achieving through this form. A novelist, for Bhattacharya,

is a creative writer, possessing a special gift for such creation and

differing from other ordinary men and women in that he is endowed

with more than usual sensitivity. In an article in The Aryan Path,

Bhattacharya observes:

The creative writer has a well-developed sensitivity though

this does not mean that he understands or shares all

emotions. The things he witnesses, the things he

experiences, are likely to move him more intensely than

what may be called recollection at second hand [24].

27

To him reality is the soul of art. According to him, the creative

writer’s final business is to reveal the truth. This unusual sensitivity

must be stirred by his power of observation. A true artist cannot exist

in an ivory tower of his own and revel in fancies which have no relevance

to human life on our earth. On the other hand his observant eyes are

keen on noting what is happening around him. Bhattacharya says:

I have not missed a single opportunity of observing

incidents, happenings where I can gain something for the

writer in me. Most of my characters have shaped

themselves from real earth [25].

Again all truly creative writers are driven by an urge from within

them to write. It almost becomes an obsession with them. With

Bhattacharya, it is not merely a question of writing for money or to

order. On the other hand, it is a compulsion to find an outlet for the

living images in him. This inevitability of an artist’s craving for

expression is at the root of all art.

A novelist, then for Bhattacharya is a man among men, gifted

with an extra measure of sensitivity and keen powers of observation.

What he sees around him creates an inner urge, a compelling need to

express himself. Then and only then a novel is born. Speaking about

how he became a novelist, Bhattacharya observes:

Then the great famine swept down upon Bengal. The

emotional stirrings I felt (more than two million men and

women and children died of slow starvation amid a man-

28

made scarcity) were a sheer compulsion to creativity. The

result was the novel So Many Hungers [26].

As regard to the medium of expression, Bhattacharya has an

open mind. He feels that the creative writer must have full freedom to

use the language of his choice for any coercion, direct or indirect, in the

choice of medium by an artist, will only hamper the realisation of the

purpose he is struggling to achieve. Meenakshi Mukherjee rightly

comments:

There seems to be an increasing awareness that English is

a plain language which each writer has to fashion anew to

serve his particular purpose, that for an Indian writer this

fashioning will have to be different from what a British or

American writer does, and that the definition of good

English varies not only from century to century but also

from place to place [27].

He writes in English and has two valid reasons for choosing

English as his medium. Bhattacharya remarks, “The English language

is a bridge that carries our cultural values to the world–not only to the

English-speaking countries but to most of the other countries as well

in translation” [28].

Secondly, in English he meets a challenge. Thanks to W. B. Yeats

who suggested and encouraged Bhattacharya to write in English in

order to gain and be assured of a world audience. And this was not a

misguided or misplaced hope, for the novelist has attained world-wide

29

renown and his books have been translated into twenty-six languages,

sixteen of which are European.

It has been a subject of unending debate if art should have a

purpose or not. There are people who declare that all art is recreational;

others who maintain that art is primarily didactic; yet others who

preach art for art’s sake. Bhattacharya can never accept the concept of

novel without a purpose.

For Bhattacharya an artist has a responsibility to society, to the

world in which he lives. He has to work and plead for a better world.

Bhattacharya interprets in artistic medium people’s hunger for food and

freedom, condemns social evils such as prostitution, exploitation,

superstitious beliefs, all anti-life tendencies, stresses the need for mass

literacy, attempts to destroy false faith and liberates men’s minds, and

makes them self-reliant and self-respecting individuals, pleads for

intelligent exercising of franchise and reconciliation of conflicting

ideologies, advocates widow remarriage, rebels against child marriage

and unfurls his banner against untouchability and barriers of caste.

For Bhabani Bhattacharya social realism means the perception

of the essential truth of a situation or incident. He expects a novelist to

give true descriptions with keen observation. He has made the following

observations, “Unless a writer has keen observation and an eye for

noting the details of general behavior of folks, he cannot write a social

novel” [29].

The modern novel has taken on itself such protean forms that it

seems anything under the sun could be safely expressed in that form.

30

Being very meticulous about his own choice of subject, Bhattacharya

feels that the subject matter for a novel must be concrete. Writers of

this generation have had the fortune of living at a period when their

country faces some turning points of national life and a gifted writer

could make use of this turning point as a fit subject matter for his

novels. In other words contemporary events lend powerful and fit

subjects to expatiate on. To set an example, he deals with the

contemporary problems in India as the themes of his novels.

He thought about a novelist as an individual giving descriptions

of life. According to him, realism gives an insight into the essential truth

of a situation or an age. In all his novels, Bhattacharya touched upon

the social and political realities of his period. A novel, according to him,

is to evoke man’s mind from oblivion to a perfect communion between

man and society. Hence, the object of a novelist is to aim at achieving

unity of the man with the society. He observes that novel has an

ennobling purpose to liberate man’s mind from fantasy and aim at

creating a perfect synchronization between man and reality.

Bhattacharya believes that a work of art comes from subconscious mind

of the writer.

The Quit India Movement of 1942 and the Bengali famine which

had swept his own province Bengal in 1943, form the backdrop for his

first novel So Many Hungers, which was published in 1947.

Commenting upon the theme of the novel, Bhattacharya observes, “The

novel is concerned with all the intensified hungers of the historic years

31

1942-43, not food alone: the money hunger, the sex hunger, the hunger

to achieve India’s political freedom” [30].

There are two main strands in the plot of the novel: the story of a

young scientist, Rahoul, which is a representation in miniature of the

struggle for political freedom and the story of a peasant girl, Kajoli,

whose sad moving tale is a pathetic record of what happened to more

than two million men and women who became victims of a famine,

engineered by one man with a selfish motive but aggravated by the

indifferent attitude and neglect of an alien Government and also by the

unprincipled Indians who tried to exploit the situation to mint money.

The novel describes a factual and vivid account of one of the most

shocking disasters in history.

Viewed as a story, his second novel Music for Mohini (1952),

portrays the intellectual and emotional development of the heroine,

Mohini, from a care-free and much protected girlhood to the position of

a housewife and a mistress of a prominent and very influential house

with great tradition. But the novelist’s main concern seems to be of

building a new order in India–an evolution of new culture for the masses

of a big nation. By the time he came to write this novel, India had

become free and it had to evolve her own policy and establish her

identity in the fast-growing world. Mohini’s husband Jayadev, a

thoughtful idealist, ponders over the implications of the coming change.

To him, much more to Bhattacharya himself, political liberty is worth

nothing to common man, if it is not a part of general social renascence.

His only desire is to extract the essence and best of our deep-rooted

32

tradition and fuse it with the spirit of modern time. When he takes on

himself the task of building a new society much through integration, he

has to fight with many antagonistic forces, especially his mother who

stands for old order and tradition. He does succeed. His vision of the

new generation in India is recorded thus, “The new man of his vision,

growing to his full stature, was not to be a hollow incarnation, not a

spiritless copy of ancient Hindu man. That was as stupid as Hindu

moulded in a Western pattern” [31].

Bhattacharya’s third novel He Who Rides a Tiger (1954), is a novel

of protest–protest not only against a political and economic system

which degrades human beings but also against an established social

order which stamps on men as superior and inferior by virtue of

accidence of birth. Though the backdrop for this novel is the same as

his first novel So Many Hungers, the emphasis rests on protest and

rebellion and so naturally the accent shifts from mute, helpless and

passive sufferings to protest and rebellion. And this is worked out

through Kalo, a humble village blacksmith, who takes his revenge on a

rigid caste-ridden society by faking a miracle—a miracle that begins as

a fraud but truly ends as a legend—and passing himself as a Brahmin

priest. At the end of the novel, when his fraud is detected, while the

high-caste Hindus fret and fume, other low caste people hail him as a

brother and a champion of their cause. His story becomes a legend of

freedom, a legend to inspire and awaken.

By the time Bhattacharya came to write his fourth novel, A

Goddess Named Gold, thirteen years vain expectation had passed and

33

independence and freedom had brought no miracle. Here the novelist’s

primary concern is to explain the meaning and significance of political

freedom–the way in which a country should use freedom and what

benefits may be derived if it is rightly used and utilized. A wandering

minstrel presents a taveez to his grand-daughter Meera, with a note

that it will acquire the power to turn the base metal into gold if she does

an act of real kindness. But the taveez fails to act as she enters into a

business deal with a Seth on fifty-fifty basis.

At the end of the novel, disgusted with the taveez, Meera throws

it into the river. Now the minstrel explains the symbolism of the taveez.

And herein lies Bhattacharya’s message: political freedom is not a

‘panacea’ for all ills; freedom alone will not and cannot lead a country

to prosperity. At best it can create suitable environment and provide

splendid opportunity in which men could show forth the best in them

and work for their prosperity by living on terms of equality with their

fellowmen, practising virtues like love, compassion, etc. Freedom is the

beginning of the road where there is no road and no miracle can happen

without effort. To quote Bhattacharya’s words:

Brothers, now that we have freedom, we need acts of faith.

Then only will there be a transmutation. Friends, then only

will our lives turn into gold. Without acts of faith, freedom

is a dead pebble tied to the arm with a bit of string, fit only

to be cast into the river [32].

What matters much is freedom of mind–man becoming self-

reliant and self-respecting individual.

34

Shadow from Ladakh (1966), which won the Sahitya Akadami

award for 1967, sets against the menacing background of the Chinese

aggression against India started in October, 1962, the novel is a study

of Gandhian ethics, reassessing their validity and relevance in the post-

independent India—an India faced with problems and challenges of the

changing times. It preaches by implication that India needs a blending

of divergent sets of values if she is to cope with the challenge of new

times—a plea for a meeting point between Gandhian social ethics and

the tremendous forces of science and technology.

Satyajit and Bhashkar represent the contrasting contemporary

attitudes to life in India. While Satyajit, the exponent of Gandhian

philosophy and the guiding spirit of Gandhigram, a model of rural India

as envisaged by Gandhi, regards Indian village life as an ideal life,

Bhashkar, the Westernized American-trained engineer in a steel plant

stands for modern industrialism. In such a situation when different

points of views and attitudes are adhered to and practiced by persons,

with a strong belief of their being in the right, the only possible solution

is synthesis–choosing the path of sympathetic understanding, of

reconciliation of readjustment.

At the end of the novel, one finds synthesis on three planes:

Synthesis of turbine and spinning-wheel on the economic plane, of

Gandhian asceticism and Tagorean aestheticism on the physical plane

and of violence and non-violence on the plane of international

understanding. Such and only such type of synthesis–finding a suitable

meeting ground–alone would ensure the maximum happiness of the

35

maximum. Bhattacharya records the type of synthesis, he envisages

thus, “Let there be a meeting ground of the two extremes: let each one

shed some of its contents and yet remain true to itself” [33].

Bhabani Bhattacharya’s last novel, A Dream in Hawaii is a novel

that portrays the conflicting principles of the East and the West.

Aestheticism and spiritualism of the East always attracted the West.

Spiritualism and human civilization are said to be closely connected.

Bhattacharya attempted to reveal this perspective through A Dream in

Hawaii. Neeloy Mukherjee aka Swami Yogananda, is a man who left

India to teach the Westerners Indian aestheticism in Hawaii. He meets

his former student Devjani, and falls in love. He grows restless when

Devjani leaves for India. He comes back to India for her.

The novel represents the conflict of values through the characters

such as Yogananda, Gregson and Swift. Swami Yogananda represents

Indian Aestheticism while characters like Walt Gregson, Dr. Vincent

Swift, represent the Western ideology. Bhattacharya also attempted to

expose the various social events in India and the West. The way the

Americans treat Indians living in America is also touched upon the

novel. It is ironical that the Americans are passionate to know more

about Indian Aestheticism, yet they have tendency to mock at them.

Bhattacharya is a visionary—an optimist. His novels end on a

happy note–human forces getting upper hand against dark urges and

social corruption. He believes in the richness of human soul and the

rich spirit sustains him against the evil forces of civilization. If man is

against man it is because the economic and social forces compel him to

36

be so. He is not completely bereft of goodness and life-force propels him

on. And so he has better morrow.

As a realistic novelist, Bhabani Bhattacharya has a keen eye for

situations and characters. He takes up varied aspects and themes in

his novels and presents them realistically. He is not just satisfied with

presenting a superficial view of life, but goes into the depths of realities

of life. He is not confined with the history of one man but he is

concerned with the destiny of the whole society and relationship among

the individuals in the society. He has a broader outlook towards the

issues in the society.

About Bhabani Bhattacharya’s varied themes in his novels,

Sudhakar Joshi rightly remarks:

Bhattacharya’s novels have a penetrating and sympathetic

analysis of the simple but insurmountable problems of

Indian life. His themes generally revolve around poverty,

hunger, pestilence, traditionalism, caste, India’s struggle

against poverty, industrialization and the resulting

controversy of Gandhian panacea versus rapid

industrialization [34].

The proposed research work makes an attempt to explore the

novels of Bhattacharya for the themes of hunger and poverty, feminine

consciousness, Gandhian sensibilities and cultural integration. The

research not only examines the ills and anomalies, such as poverty,

class relationship and decadent values eating into vitals of society, but

also discovers the philosophy, suggested by the novelist, to mitigate

37

social tension and restore harmony. It analyses and comments

competently on Bhattacharya’s promotion of universal brotherhood,

humanism and the richness of human spirit to help others at the cost

of one’s own life and judicious synthesis of divergent values of life as an

effective social panacea. The thesis depicts contemporary social,

political, economic and religious realities of India before and after

independence in Bhattacharya’s six novels.