Nationhood and Nativisation in Raja Rao’s “Kanthapura”

Abstract

Raja Rao is considered to be as one of the widely acclaimed Indian American international authors and one of the pioneer literary voices in the Indian/English literature. Even though only three of his literary publications were being claimed worldwide yet he delineated the Indian struggle and the political turmoil joined with cultural celebration and broken realities. His role as an active member of the political Indian movement helped in with his higher education to write and analyze the Indian socio political and the colonial oppression in India. His novel Kanthapura published in (1938) by Rja Roa is considered as figure in the colonial Indian literary productions and part of the Indian historical revival movement. It tells the story of a small village Kanthapura and its people’s struggles under the British colonization, the story address the pre-independence era and just like any other colonial literary text the concepts of nation and identity were being highlighted as the Indian people fight for their freedom and self-liberation. The novel had examined a large number of the problems regarding the culture, political, social, spiritual, education, identity and so on. The novel uses strong tone to revel the intensity and the passion of the Indian people as they fight for their rights and freedom. The limitation of this study will be textually focused on Raja Rao’s Kanthapura (1938). Furthermore; theoretically, this study employs the notions of nationhood and Nativisation by focusing on post-colonial concepts such as Hybridity, identity, Nationhood, alienation, signals, Survival and expressions to establish the Indian struggle during and after the British colonization. This study main objective is to examine the Indian colonial and post-colonial social and psychological oppression under the British, furthermore, to investigate the notions of nationhood and nativisation as they Indian people fight for their independence and self-liberation. Finally, this study will exam the colonial and post-colonial confusion as the oppressed individuals suffering to discover and re-create their own sense of belonging.