THE IMAGE OF PRE-INDEPENDENCE INDIA IN DASARATHI RANGACHARYA’S THE LESSER DEITIES
India went through the ordeal of the British colonial rule for nearly two hundred years. During this period Indian economy was fully exploited by Britishers. India, being a very large country with a huge population, provided the ideal market for the machine-made English goods. Because of the industrial revolution England was in a position to export many mass-produced goods. These goods were brought to India so that they could be sold to local people. With the invasion of these machine-made goods the traditional handicrafts industry of India collapsed, leaving millions of rural artisans jobless and destitute. Thus, the British economy prospered at the expense of India. With the destruction of handicrafts the pressure on agriculture increased and the land failed to withstand such a heavy pressure on it. This resulted in the acute poverty of the Indian masses.
Some of the Telugu novels dealing with the pre-Independence era portray the sad economic and social situation the vast majority of Indians went through. Apart from poverty, other related problems faced by Indians during those dark days such as social inequalities, illiteracy, and blatant exploitation of the poor by the rich and powerful, have been faithfully depicted in the novels of Dasarathi Rangacharya. I have chosen his The Lesser Deities (Chillara Devullu) and I propose to demonstrate how in this novel, which is now helpfully available in English translation, a faithful image of colonial India emerges.
The Lesser Deities depicts the socio-economic and political situation of Telangana during the nineteen thirties. Telangana was a part of the erstwhile princely state of Hyderabad. Telangana was never under the direct rule of British. Hyderabad was ruled by the Asaf Jahi dynasty. Under the Nizam’s rule, Telenagana remained economically and socially very ward. People had to struggle hard to meet their basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing. Illiteracy, superstition, institutionalised exploitation, bonded labour and several other evils were widespread and deep-rooted. The last Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, ruled with an iron hand but depended on the feudal lords – the Zamindars, Jagirdars, Deshmukhs and other of various denominations- to an excessive degree. The Nizam gave all the agricultural land in his state away to these feudal lords in return for fixed revenue and never intervened when they collected exorbitant rents and taxes from the tenants and marginal farmers.
These Zamindars were called “Doralu” and for all practical purposes they were the rulers of the villages. In the villages during those days, the Dora would be at the top in the social hierarchy. After the Dora, it is the Karanam or Patwari (a government official who kept the land and revenue records), and the Police Patel or Munsiff (another government official in charge of law and order) who occupy the second and third positions. These three- the Dora, the Karanam and the Police Patel are the ‘lesser deities’, the main deity being the ruler, i.e., the Nizam.
Against this drop Rangacharya portrays a realistic picture of rural Telangana in The Lesser Deities. The novel’s scope also often extends to include the city-based institutions of police and courts of law and the important social, religious and economic upheavals of the time. The primary focus however is on the village with its various divisions and subdivisions along caste lines.
Pani is a unique character in the novel. He is an outsider and a musician by training. He has come to the village on the invitation of the “Dora” Reddy to give music lessons. His music melts stones. The purity of his heart and his love for beauty have a telling effect on others. He is at the centre of the romantic interest of the novel among other things. Romance has its place in the narrative, but it does not transgress decorum. Manjari, the only daughter of Reddy, has a captivating personal charm; her mind and heart are pure and vulnerable to suggestion. Although she falls in love with Pani, she only pines for him in silence and does not confess her feelings to anyone, perhaps not even to herself. The attitude and behavior of the villagers defy analysis and rational explanation. Everybody appears, to Pani, to have mental reservations. Reddy suddenly assumes the role of a demon and beats people at the slightest provocation. The Patwari is mysterious and he always speaks in riddles. Vanaja, the slave girl in Reddy’s mini-fort, behaves as if she is more sensitive and has a better heart than all others. She has a profound disdain for all men and not for nothing. She has lost count of men with whom she has been obliged to go to bed. She abhors promiscuity but sexually desires Pani. However soon realizes that she is impure and therefore unfit to be his wedded wife. She sublimates her sexual love to brotherly fondness. She presents an ideal contrast to Thayaru, the Patwari’s lascivious daughter, who on being spurned by Pani, bestows her sexual favours on the visiting spiritual guru, the Vaishnavacharya.
The revolt of Lambadas, the tribals who live on the margins of the village society, is an important development in the novel. The Lambadas are hard working tillers of the soil. They are dispossessed of their lands by the Scheming Patwari and they are left with no choice than to revolt. The police, summoned by the Patwari, come to the village to prevent the possibility of violence. The policemen prove themselves to be devils incarnate. They frighten the Lambadas with guns, severely beat them and misbehave with their women. When the police sub-inspector forces himself on Lakshmi, the beautiful wife of Bhikya, she fights like a lioness, and meets with her death in the process of protecting her honour. The policemen demand and get everything free of charge and make merry at the cost of the hapless villagers. This form of blatant economic exploitation was common place during the Nizam’s rule. The bania seems to speak for the whole village when he says, “Whenever the Government officials come, I must supply provisions free of cost. It is the Patel and Patwari who fatten at my expense.”
The Lambada men are then marched to the city and produced before a magistrate. A policeman kills one of them. While he is acquitted the Lambadas are sent to prison, among other things, for refusing to get converted to the religion of the rulers. They however eventually wreak their revenge by hacking the Patwari to pieces.
in the village Ram Reddy continues with his atrocities. He catches a simple villager Peerigadu stealing tamarind from the government grove and when the villager does not stop on being ordered, he feels challenged. When finally Peerigadu is caught, he beats him so severely that the poor fellow dies on the spot.
Towards end of his life, however, Reddy is a changed man. The transformation in him is sudden but it is possibly occasioned by the psychological suffering his daughter is going through on account of her unrequited love for Pani. Reddy is deeply struck by remorse and begins to experience visions of Peerigadu gaping at him, brandishing a stick, and of Pani driving a spear through his body. It is as though demons lay in wait beneath his window all these years and have now closed in on him. He painfully realizes that the villagers, who have been doing his bidding without protest all his life, do not love him one bit. They completely ignore him, shut their doors on him the moment he is perceived to be weak. The suffering and the subsequent death of Reddy absolves him to an extent from all his sins.
As Pani rightly observes, Reddy is far superior to the Patwari in terms of being honest with himself. When he is struck by a terminal disease, he repents for his dreadful deeds. The Patwari is not allowed such chance. He dies an ignominious death at the hands of the Lambadas.
Rangacharya’s
The Lesser Deities thus presents a very convincing picture of the Telugu society as it obtained in the Telangana region during a particularly bad phase in its history. Inhuman institutions such as bonded labour, feudal land-lordism, corrupt police and courts of law, and forced religious conversions during the Nizam’s rule have been so deftly depicted in the novel that one feels the life of the times coming alive on its pages. The creative and extensive use of the Telangana dialect of Telugu lends the novel local colour and gives it a rare authenticity.
Note:
1. The following edition has been referred to throughout: Dasarathi Rangacharya, The Lesser Deities, trans. Chakravathi Seshacharya (Hyderabad: PS Telugu University 1997).
