The social vision of Raja Rao with special references to Kanthapura

Abstract

Raja Rao's short stories, his novels bring a wider scope for Indian thought, tradition and quest. It is
well known to all that Rao is not a prolific writer. But within the meagre range of his works, he has
preserved and promoted Indianness from many viewpoints. The Indian people, on average, are even
today closer to their traditions than the modern European people are to their own lures. In comparison
to the European writers, the Indian English writers seem to have made very scant use of myths in their
works. ‘Kanthapura’ is the story of the impact of Mahatma Gandhi and the Satyagraha movement on a
small South Indian village which is the microcosm of the rural India. But Kanthapura is not merely a
political novel; its economic and social concerns and the religious undertones are sub mused into myth
and legend. There are great metaphysical questions also in the novel. The spiritual and metaphysical
questions are masked by the romantic realism of the novel. The novelist probes the deeper questions of
order and disorder, good and evil by equation the freedom movement with the ‘Ramayana’. Though
Kanthapura is a small village yet its activities reflect the whole nation.
Key words: Indian thought, Social vision & Kanthapura.