207- Thematic Study of Chetan Bhagat's Revolution 2020

1. Thematic Study of
Chetan Bhagat's novel
Revolution 2020

2. NAME: DHVANI RAJYAGURU
PAPER CODE:22414 PAPER NO.:207
PAPER NAME: CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
PRESENTATION TOPIC : THEMATIC STUDY OF REVOLUTION 2020
ROLL NO:04
EMAIL ID: dhvanirajyaguru22@gmail.com
DEP NAME: DEP OF ENGLISH,MKBU UNIVERSITY,BHAVNAGAR.

3. Table of Contents
● Abstract
● Brief Information of Chetan Bhagat
● Brief of Novel
● Thematic Study of Revolution 2020
1. Love
2. Ambition
3. Corruption
4. Family Pressure
5. Family Conflict
6. Realistic theme of Student's Life
7. Degradation of moral and ethical values
8. Revolution
● Conclusion

4. Abstract:
Chetan Bhagat is a prolific writer. He has discussed several themes in his novel taken from
various field of life. His fictional and non-fictional works demonstrate the boundless spirit of the author, which
avoids any attempts to map his art into particular fold. In this novel, he explores the avenues of human world,
the corruption in Indian politics and educational field, the individual live in particular, from an angle that is
marked by originality and newness. He has presented the themes related to the modern India. He has many
ideas in his mind, which he presents through the development of themes in his novel. For his novel, he has
mostly chosen the themes, which are happening in the contemporary society, particular Indian society. They
includes modern education system in India, Indian corrupt political system, problem of students, parents
attitude towards their wards, Students’ longing for coaching classes, etc. His novel mostly deals with the life
and problems of youngsters.

5. Introduction of Author:
● On April 22, 1974, in Dehli, India, Baghat
was born to a traditional Punjabi bourgeois
family.
● His father served as lieutenant colonel in
the Indian army while his mother worked in
agricultural department of government.
● Chetan Baghat, a rising star in the
contemporary modern Indian literature, is a
multitalented personality.
● He is a novelist, columnist, public speaker
and a screenplay writer.

6. Works:
He is the author of ten blockbuster novels, and three non-fictons:
● What not to do at IIT (2004), What young India wants (2012)
● One Night @ the Call Center (2005), Making India Awesome (2015)
● The 3 Mistakes of My Life (2008), India positive: New Essays and Selected Coloums
● 2 States (2009), Revolution 2020 (2011), (2019)
● Half Girlfriend (2014),
● One Indian Girl (2016),
● The Girl In Room 105 (2018),
● One Arranged Murder (2020)
● 400 Days (2021)

7. Brief of Revolution 2020
● Gopal, Raghab and Arati are the best friends from the very childhood.
● Once, all of them tried to get admitted themselves AIEEE. Only Raghab can reach his goal.
● Gopal becomes frustrated and Arati dreams to be an air hostage. Eventually, Gopal met an MLA
and starts earning a lot of money being corrupt.
● Later, Raghav completed his degree from AIEEE but to be a journalist only and consequently,
he started his own news making office naming it “Revolution 2020”.
● Walking this way, Raghab becomes acquainted with several corruptions throughout the whole
India and tries to manifest those through his writings but repeatedly is barred. Truly, he wanted
to rise up against the tremendous corruptions in All Indian Private Education Systems and
others. But, it is also noteworthy that both Gopal and Raghav love Arati more than anything in
the world.
● And in this way, they have a great mental war to get her in any cost.
● Lastly, Corruption in Private Education Systems become the view points in this story as Gopal
remains corrupted with his corrupted achievements and Raghav and Arati start their new lives
after being married.

8. Love:
● He has illustrated the theme of love with different shades and attitudes. While
reading about the relationship between Gopal and Aarti, the readers feel that
they are good companion.
● However, due to his academic failure Aarti leaves him and goes with Raghav,
a brilliant IIT student. So in the beginning, the author shows the love triangle.
● In the course of time, Aarti comes to know that Raghav is an overambitious
and has no time to spare with her. Being desperate, she comes back to
Gopal.
● However, Gopal feels very bad and decides to help Raghav in his mission.
● He also understands that Aarti is the best companion for Raghav only.
Therefore, he plays a drama of having prostitutes to show his infidelities to
Aarti. Finally, Aarti goes back to Raghav..

9. Corruption
● The background canvas of the novel is set in contemporary corrupt Indian society.
● In this contemporary India, there are rewards for honest and hardworking students like
Raghav but for innumerable ‘Gopals’, the surety lies in corrupt means. The honest
‘Raghavs’ may suffer in a corrupt system and Gopals may enjoy the richness, position and
power, effortlessly.
● The theme of corruption unfolds through the story of Gopal’s success in establishing a
private engineering college and failure of Raghav in establishing himself as a successful
journalist.
● These trajectories of Gopal and Raghav – one from failure to success and another from
successful academic career to failure in professional life – supports the theme of corruption.
It is corrupt practice that gives success to Gopal and it is the fight against corruption that
leads to the failure of Raghav to run newspaper R2020.

10. Family Pressure:
● Indian parents are extra careful about the future of their children. Gopal’s father wants his son to be an
engineer from India’s top most colleges. His father is a retired teacher and involved in a court case
against his elder brother.
● Gopal in his first attempt for AIEEE fails to score the required marks. After getting known Gopal’s low
score his father does not talk properly with him. Gopal tells his father that he wants to do B.Sc. His father
cannot control his anger and says Gopal, “who gives a good job to a simple graduate”.
● Prateek is also one of AIEEE and JEE aspirants who wastes his years at Kota. He was preparing for the
exams since last two years but unable to get passed. His parents are teacher who without seeing their
son’s ability send him to Kota. He tells Gopal, “Most of us can’t crack these tests, basic probability. But
who will drill it into our parents’ head?” Raghav’s father is not interested in NIT and tells his son to do
engineering from IIT. The hopes of Indian parents are bigger than their children.

11. Ambition:
● Love story of them, which is set in corrupt contemporary society is driven by the ambition of two prominent
characters, Gopal and Raghav. They both are ambitious to make something great in life.
● The choice of poor Gopal is to make money, acquire position and become powerful, irrespective of being
morally right or not.
● Whereas, Raghav’s ambition is to bring ‘change’ in society. He is ambitious to start a revolution in society to
make a corruption free society.

12. Family Conflict:
● Modern Indian culture and family conflicts are an inseparable part in Bhagat’s novels. Gopal’s father
and Ghanshyam-ji are two brothers who are fighting court case for their disputed land. Ghanshyam-ji
wants full possession on his father’s land by paying less money to Gopal’s father. Bhagat depicts the
cause of conflict between two brothers, which seems realistic with respect to village life.
He says:
Ghanshyam taya-ji, my father’s respected elder brother, had screwed us. My grandfather had
left his two sons thirty acres of agricultural land on the Lucknow highway, to be divided equally. Soon after
my grandfather’s death, Ghanshyam uncle took a loan from the bank and mortgaged baba’s half of the
property, forging the papers with wrong plot numbers and bribing the bank officers. Ghashyam taya-ji made
bad business decision and lost the money. The bank sent a foreclosure notice to us. Baba protested, and the
bank slapped cases on both my father and uncle. The two brother slapped cases on each other.

13. Patriarchal View of Revolution 2020
● The two dominant male figures, Gopal and Raghav exhibit two polarised views
of patriarchy. Gopal who is in love with Aarti since his childhood tries in vain to
woo her. His efforts materialise only after he becomes successful in his life.
● While Gopal and Raghav settle for jobs which help in moulding of the society,
Aarti works as a receptionist in a hotel, though being the daughter of a
renowned man in the town. Her aspiration of becoming an air hostess is not
treated with much importance compared to that of her male counterparts, thus
expressing that the profession of a woman is not of much importance.
● Gopal who is vexed about his failures in love life and economical status goes
to the point of forsaking his life, if not for the politician who happens to come
by, but the life and likes of Aarti are not given that much prominence. She
seeks favouritism with her boyfriends, meaning that she is weaker and is in
need of an emotional support from some male counterpart. When Raghav is
absorbed in his profession, he fails to pay attention to Aarti, thus forcing her to
turn towards Gopal. Thus, it could be concluded that the Indian society is still
patriarchal in its view but in a very subtle manner. The society continues to be
in its same form failing to recognise women as an equal counterpart.

14. Realistic theme of Student's Life
● The realistic theme of students’ life is given here.
● Bhagat writes about a day in the life of aspiring students in Kota:
I could call myself a true Kotaite a month into moving there. Like thousands of other
students, my life now had a rhythm. Career Path resembled a school, but without the fun
bits. Nobody made noise in class, played pranks on one another or thought of bunking
classes. After all, everyone had come here by choice and hadpaid a big price to be here
… I hated the brutal Career Path schedule at first. Lectures started at two in afternoon and
went on until nine in evening. After that students rushed home to eat dinner, and do the
‘daily practice sheets’, a set of ten problems based on the current lesson … I went along
with madness, not so much because of the zeal to prepare, but more because I wanted to
keep myself busy. I didn’t want Kota’s loneliness to kill me.

15. Degradation of Moral and Ethical Values
● Degradation of moral and ethical values is one more theme of the novel.
● In What Young India Wants Chetan Bhagat retorts that the young generation is
indulged in drinking, smoking and illicit affairs. Gopal’s heavy drinking and being
admitted in the hospital, Aarti’s involvement in drinking and MLA Shuklaji’s unfair
practices show the degradation of moral and ethical values in our society.
● When Gopal found that Raghav and Aarti had become a couple in his absence, he
started spending his money on alcohol and smoking. It is a black mark on our youth.

16. Revolution:
● The title of the novel ‘Revolution Twenty20’ gives direction to our reading of the novel with an
aim to look for the theme of ‘revolution’.
● This theme is represented by the character, Raghav in this novel.
● Raghav, an intelligent student, who cracks JEE and AIEEE exams which ensures a happy,
rich and successful life as engineer to him.
● However, he is not meant for such an easy life. He dreams to start a revolution in India – ‘The
Great Indian Revolution’. In India wherein there is ‘the Great Indian Education Race’ to crack
entrance exams or to start private colleges, Raghav’s wishful thinking seems to be a wild
dream and an ambition bound to bring a tragedy.

17. Conclusion:
Thus, Chetan Bhagat in his novel, Revolution 2020 has tried to present the
realistic themes. Chetan Bhagat has tried to cover all the themes related with the
society. The main characters like Gopal, Raghav and Aarti represent the characters
which we can find in our society. All the themes are described in beautiful and
realistic manners. Bhagat is successful in making the reader happy. New readers
who don’t know the literary language can also enjoy the writing style of Chetan
Bhagat. The author has succeeded here in describing all the things in beautiful
manner. He has also succeeded in keeping the readers stick to novel up to at the
end.

18. References:
Bhagat, Chetan. “Chetan Bhagat | Biography, Books and Facts.” FamousAuthors.org, https://www.famousauthors.org/chetan-bhagat. Accessed
7 March 2023.
Chaudhari, Dr. Sunil Gomaji. “The Major Themes in Chetan Bhagat's Revolution 2020.” International Journal Of English and Studies (IJOES),
vol. 4, no. 3, Mar. 2022, pp. 106–110.
KULKARNI, DIGAMBAR S. S. “SOCIAL REALISM: REPRESENTATION OF PROBLEMS OF YOUTH AND FRAUDULENT SOCIETY IN
CHETAN BHAGAT’S REVOLUTION 2020.” An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies , vol. 1, no. 2, June 2016, pp. 1–5.
Shobana, Albertine. “Patriarchy in Chetan Bhagat's Revolution 2020.” Language in India, vol. 18, no. 3, 2018, p. 7. LanguageinIndia,
http://www.languageinindia.com/march2018/auseminar1/albertinepatriarchychetanbhagat1.pdf. Accessed 7 March 2023.
Varatharajan, T.S., and Dr.S. Ganesan. “Chetan Bhagat’s Revolution 2020: A Tale of Love, Corruption and Ambition.” Juni Khyat (UGC Care
Group I Listed Journal), vol. 10, no. 7, 7 July 2020, pp. 226–240.

19. Thank You