Abstract
The Gandhian phase of the anti-colonial movement for India's freedom finds frequent expression in literary representations of the period. There was large-scale support among Indians for Gandhi's intervention in the civil disobedience and Quit India movements. However, R. K. Narayan's novel Waiting for the Mahatma (1955) reflects a certain ambivalence towards the freedom movement. There were many who were impressed by the more benign aspects of the British presence in India and Narayan's own writing came to depend heavily on patronage by British publishers and readers. He was ostensibly writing for an English audience and could not upset the colonial English system which supported him. This article examines the issues of colonial ambivalence in Narayan's fiction, comparing Waiting for the Mahatma with Raja Rao's Kanthapura (1938), in which the author's commitment to Gandhian ideology is firm and unambiguous.
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