Hari Mohan Jha’s Khattar Kaka: Humorous Subversion of Hinduism in Mithila

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As the religious meanings and practices of Hinduism came to be codified in the mid-twentieth century, apposite forces were at work, critiquing and interrogating the same. This paper disentangles the biographic and literary work of the renowned twentieth century modern Maithili litterateur Hari Mohan Jha and his fictional character Khattar Kaka, a caricature who critiqued the increasingly Brahminical and closed world of Hinduism. Kaka’s subversive humor amounts to a critique of ritualistic, popularly known as karmkandi, Brahmanism prevalent among upper caste Hindus. Jhas’s resuscitation of Carvaka, interchangebly Lokayata, an ancient Hindu philosophical thought, offered a critical view of the Maithili speaking Hindus in northern India. This amounts to an exercise of modernity as much as intertextuality.