The Golden Honeycomb: Fictionalisation

THE GOLDEN HONEYCOMB: FICTIONALISATION OF
THE INDIAN PRINCE

Prof. M. Rajagopala Chary and K. Sampath

The paper seeks to examine Kamala Markandaya’s The Golden Honeycomb with a view to bringing out the fictionalisation of history of the decline and fall of the Indian Princes. Kamala Markandaya’s essential achievement is her live sensibility and effortless art.

            The Golden Honeycomb (1977) portrays the decline and fall of the Indian Prince. It is a stupendous work of 469 pages and stands out among the novels of Kamala Markandaya as one which steers through a setting that is at variance with that of her other novels. In this novel we come across a series of touching events, pitiable strikes, baffling agitations and lockouts. The novelist turns her attention to the freedom struggle. The Prologue to the novel presents the country as a dominion in British possession. The commercial minded East India Company has the subtle intriguing nature to hold on to India and conquer its princely states one by one. It becomes all the more incumbent upon Britishers to hold on after the Declaration of Independence by the USA in 1776. The popular statesman Lord Randolph Churchill, delivering his speech to M.Ps. appealed to them:

........to watch the most sedulous attention, to develop with most anxious care, to guard with the most united and undying resolution, the land and the people of Hindustan, that most truly bright and precious gem in the Crown of the Queen, the possession of which, more than that of all your Colonial dominions, has raised in power, in resource, in Wealth and authority this small island home of ours ... has placed it on an equality with perhaps even in a position of superiority over, every other Empire of ancient or of modern times.

This declaration foretells the British view in India to adopt all kinds of tactics to bring the princely states under their rule. Markandaya, dexterously mixing “fact with fiction”, presents the emasculation and alienation of royalty from their people through an ingenious British scheme, the subsidiary Alliance, which reduced the princely states to mere “golden honeycombs”.

The Golden Honeycomb reveals the best imaginative effort of Markandaya’s consciousness and her brilliant workmanship of art. A.N. Dwivedi says: “It is undoubtedly Kamala Markanday’a’s memorable ‘fait accompli’ in which she turns her all-absorbing mind to the momentous, historical events shaping and affecting India’s fate during the British regime. The novel gives a vivid description of the pomp and glory, luxurious and voluptuous life of the Indian Princes, the durbars, decorations and other paraphernalia of the royalty.

The story treated in the novel concern the Devapur State whose ruler, Bawajiraj-I, is deposed for his so-called seditious activities. The agent, an Englishman, and the Dewan, a shrewd Brahmin serving the State as Chief Minister, exercise their minds to choose their ruler a Kshatriya youngman of eighteen years who is recently married to a girl of thirteen. He ascends the ‘Gaddi’ of Devapur as Bawajiraj-II. The British had picked him up for a Raja because they wanted him to be a puppet in their hands. Being elevated from a mere land owner’s son to being Maharaja he lives in pleasure with pomp and show. Unfortunately Bawajiraj-II meets with an accident in a hunting spree and dies prematurely, leaving behind his wife and son. The son succeeds to the throne as Bawajiraj-III. He becomes the benign Maharaja of a rich and prosperous Indian State. Bawajiraj-III performs his duties conscientiously. He enjoys his leisure. He hunts, rides and excels in polo and cricket. This bland and delightful pattern is only interrupted but tempestuous commoner Mohini. The child of this turbulent union is Rabi. Father a prince, mother a commoner, throne dangled in front of him not as a right by succession but as a prize to be conferred by the paramount British power in return for good behaviour, Rabi becomes the focus of opposing influence. Rabi is caught up in the conflict of powerful opposing influence involved in electing his succession to the Gaddi of his father. The central characters, around whom the story revolves are: Bawajiraj-III and his son Rabindranath.

The heir-prince, Rabi is enlightened on several aspects and a nationalist feeling is infused into him by the Pandit, the tutor. This enlightened Rabi’s endowments and love of freedom. He hates his father due to his submissiveness to the British Empire. At the instance of his father, Rabi sits on the throne half-heartedly, which shows his disagreement with his father’s servile attitude.

Rabi’s capricious reactions at the Durbar have been ‘painful realities’. He realises that his father need not be subservient to the foreigners. His love for freedom and keen perception enable him to have knowledge of the inevitability of the peoples’ support for India’s liberation. His meetings are successful and as his popularity grew ‘the crush gates of the farther courtyard’ are kept closed. He becomes a leader of the people.

Once Devapur experience picketing and the Maharajah’s car is surrounded by a mob which stopped him from proceeding on his tour.

Rabi’s nationalistic awareness is explicit in his conversation with the Maharajah!

‘Your Highness’, he said then, “We feel-”
“We” cried the outraged Maharajah, ‘Who is “we”?’
“We, the people”, said Rabi, without display, but very plainly. “We feel that insupportable levies and treaties must be rescinded, whatever the consequences. We shall continue the struggle to that end”.

‘In the process you will tear the State apart’, said the furious Maharajah.

‘Not I. We,’ said Rabi, who was equally furious...(P. 416).

He openly opposes the ways of his father in particular and the monarchy in general. He wants a free India. Maharajah is not happy with the freedom struggle. India achieves Independence and the princes of India were left with two choices. They had to sign the Instrument of Accession and accede either to India or to Pakistan. By participating in the national freedom movement, Rabi wins popularity and helps to bridge the gulf between the ruler and the ruled.

The title of the novel suggests that both the British and the Indian Princes are cocooned from reality, and that the ‘golden honeycomb’ thus created by them soon starts crumbling in the face of stiff opposition from the masses. The British adopt ‘divide and rule policy’ and the Indian princes are equally apathetic towards the needs and demands of the masses. Both look upon themselves with an air or superiority and crush the public with levies and taxes. The Britishers used to maintain the Imperialism in India, but atlast they had to bow before the unbending wishes of the people under the leadership of Rabi and Usha. Bawajiraj III may be a silent spectator to the great change now imminent, but his wife Mohini sides with her son, Rabi and Usha in the national upsurge for freedom. The Maharajah is visibly upset with the freedom movement, but it is beyond him to curb it. It is also blessed by the Dowager Maharani, Manjula, Janakidas and Jaya. Ultimately, India attains her independence. The dream of the people is finally realised, and now they can look forward to a bright future.

Markandaya’s The Golden Honeycomb reveals at once her extraordinary sense of conscious realism and historicity unmatched in Indian English Fiction and only rarely evident in the contemporary British fiction. In this, she ranks with such English novelists as Thackeray and Trollope and with such Indian English novelists as Mulkraj Anand and Manohar Malgonkar. This novel is her ‘magnum opus’. It demonstrates Markandaya’s attachment to her motherland, her people, and her country’s hoary history.

Markandaya’s The Golden Honeycomb compares favourably with Anand’s Private Life of an Indian Prince and Manohar Malgonkar’s The Princes in so far as it depicts the fall of the Indian Princes and their luxurious life. All the three novels underline the English ruler’s determination to impose their authority on India taking it for granted that India cannot but surrender: They also portray the ambivalent attitude of the princes towards the British and their resistance to the independence of India. Vicky, Abhayaraj and Bawajiraj-III, the protagonists of the Private Life of an Indian Prince, The Prince and The Golden Honeycomb respectively, oppose the Indian Independence for fear of threat to their authority. But Rabi The Golden Honeycomb and Abhay of The Princes oppose the British rule. Rabi fights for freedom and equality whereas Abhay accepts the fate of princedom helplessly. A. V. Krishna Rao comments that Markandaya’s novel “creates a sense of history in the reader’s mind by depicting the events that rocked that State of Devapur for three generations. She therefore achieves a sense of historical continuity ­a quality of tradition - while recording the vicissitudes of fortune that befell Devapur, a representative princely State”. Markandaya delineates the details with meticulous care and presents the characters with a sympathetic attitude. Like Anand and Malgonkar, Markandaya shows exemplary respect for the recorded historical facts but uses them with stunning irony and economy of phrase in depicting the ‘fall of the princes’ and the growth of individual consciousness. Prof. Sreenivas Iyyangar pays a merited tribute to her when he refers to “the sufficiency and suggestiveness of her prose”.