First published in 1973, 'Bharathipura' reveals U.R. Ananthamurthy's (b.1932) lifelong preoccupation with moving beyond caste and class interests in a modern society. Set in contemporary India, 'Bharathipura' revolves around the life of an 'enlightened' modern Indian, Jagannatha, who in order to get rid of his personal burdens commits a 'scandalous' act. His attempt to take 'untouchables' into the local Manjunatha temple exposes the complexities of the caste system and the myth of social justice in modern India. Further, the novel brings to light how the contemporary world recreates and reconstructs the past to protect hierarchical structures prevalent across societies, and also portrays the altering destinies of individuals and communities. In Susheela Punitha's hands, the translation retains the cultural and linguistic ambience of the Kannada society. The detailed Introduction by N. Manu Chakravarthy sets the work in the context of twentieth-century India. The in-depth interview of the author by Chakravarthy, a special feature of this volume, opens a window to Ananthamurthy's art and worldview.

Bharathipura

Literature & Fiction

Ananthamurthy, U.R.

Punitha, Susheela

Literary

Oxford University Press

Examining the caste system, culture, religious rules, and traditions, as well as the ambivalent relationship between handed-down cultural values and the new values of a changing world, Samskara looks at deeper moral and philosophical issues like how to lead a righteous life, the validity of customs, and the concept of brahminism in a contemporary world. A classic of modern Indian literature, it is both a religious novel and a contemporary reworking of ancient Hindu themes and myths. Probing multiple meanings of the word 'Samskara', which means rite of passage, ritual, preparation, transformation, as well as death rites, this novel is an engrossing tale of the personal transformation of a man living in a community that refuses to change with the times. This Oxford India Perennials edition includes detailed notes that explain Hindu myths, customs, Indian names, flora, and other terms, an afterword that explores the various dimensions of the novel's substance and meaning, and an essay by Susheela Punitha based on an interview with the author.

Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man, Second Edition (Oxford India Perennials Series)

First published in 1973, Bharathipura is about the practice of untouchability in a traditional society that is evolving into modernity through new economic forces brought in by a certain class of people. The story revolves around the life of an 'enlightened' modern Indian, Jagannatha. Violent and unexpected events follow Jagannatha's attempts to revolutionize everyone and everything by linking his own transformation to the changes he wishes to orchestrate. With its display of literary discipline in handling intertwining themes, the novel exposes the complexities of the caste system and the myth of social justice in modern India.

Bharathipura (Oxford India Perennials Series)

Ajji, can I have some water?... Just a few drops will do, Ajji. With the searing sky above and the blistering earth below, like cactus the people of this parched terrain are determined to stay alive. Emaciated children scurry along, dejected farmers pawn their ploughs, weary women sleep on empty stomachs... Would those perishing now have died anyway? Or is hunger calling them away prematurely? Filled with social concern, Satisha, the district commissioner, wants to help the afflicted. But he is caught between the politicians who are unwilling to declare the district drought-hit and the murky local realities where a religious outfit strives to protect cows, the desperate youth hold a deity responsible for the failed rains, and petty activists seek to secure their own interests. Can the idealist Satisha win the game where corrupt politicians are rolling the dice and stand by his conviction to help the afflicted? Written during the Indian Emergency, Bara depicts the tortuous realities of Indian democracy, and captures the political and moral dilemmas of the educated middle class

Bara

Gowda, Chandan

World Literature

Samskara is one of the acknowledged masterpieces of modern world literature, a book to set beside Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North. Taking its name from a Sanskrit word that means “rite of passage” but also “moment of recognition,” it begins when Naranappa, an inhabitant of a small south Indian town and a renegade Brahmin who has scandalously flouted the rules of caste and purity for years, eating meat, drinking alcohol, marrying beneath him, mocking God, unexpectedly falls ill and dies. The question of whether he should be buried as a Brahmin divides the other Brahmins in the village. For an answer they turn to Praneshacharyah, the most devout and respected member of their community, an ascetic who also tends religiously to his invalid wife. Praneshacharyah finds himself unable to provide the answer, though an answer is urgently needed since as he wonders and the villagers wait and the body festers, more and more people are falling sick and dying. But when Praneshacharyah goes to the temple to seek a sign from God, he discovers something else entirely—unless that something else is also God. Samskara is a tale of existential suspense, a life-and-death encounter between the sacred and the profane, the pure and the impure, the ascetic and the erotic.

Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man (New York Review Books Classics)

United States

NYRB Classics