Kanthapura as a typical Indian village

1. Department of English
Prepared by: Ranjan Velari
Class: M.A. Sem-1
Roll No.- 25
Paper No.-4
Topic- Kanthapura as a typical Indian
village
Submitted to- Smt. S. B. Gardi & M.K.
Bhavnagar University

2. Kanthapura as a typical Indian village
• The novel opens with an account of the situation, the
locale of the village. Kanthapura is a village in Mysore
in the province of Kara.
• It is situated in the valley of Himavathy. There it lies
“curled up like a child on its mother’s lap”.
• This village has a complex structure. It has four and
twenty houses in the Brahmin quarter; it has a Pariah
quarter too, a potters quarter, a Weaver’s quarter, and
Sudra quarter.

3. • This socio-economic division in a village which has in all sixty or
hundred houses, at once strike one with its novelty.
• Through the above points we come to know that the Indian
villages are caste-ridden, no free mixing of the people even in
the small and limited community of a village.
• The villagers are depicted in realistic colours. Their names are
made descriptive in nature- it is a typical, rural way. For
example, Coffee planter Ramayya, corner-house Moorthy etc.

4. • The people are ignorant, poor and superstitious. But they are also
deeply religious.
• They have full faith in Goddess Kenchamma, the presiding deity of the
village. These points depicts that in a typical Indian village people
have the same qualities.
• The picture of village life is filled up by giving further accounts of the
grinding poverty, illiteracy, and the conflicts and tensions that mark
the Indian village life.
• It becomes a microcosm of the macrocosm.

5. • Kartik month has come to Kanthapura, Brahmin street is decorated with
red lights from copper stands, and diamond lights that glow from the
bowers of entrance leaves. The Pariah street and all other streets are
flapping through the mango grove, hangs clawed for one moment to the
giant pipal.
• The theme is Indian and treatment of the theme is also typically Indian.
The method of narration is typically Indian.
• The Indian grandmother is the most ancient and most typical of story-
tellers, and the narrator in the novel is Achakka.

6. • The language has Indian idiom, Indian imagery and rural colour.
There are literal translations fromKannada, like Maistri,
Mandap, Harikathas etc.
• In a typical Indian village people speak in their mother tongue
because they are not able to understand any other language.
• People use an abusive, vulgar language and such a language is
an integral part of them. And so it is used to express rural
people’s sensibility.

7. Thank You