THE IMAGE OF PRE-INDEPENDENCE INDIA IN DASARATHI
RANGACHARYA’S THE LESSER DEITIES
P. Sunila Rani
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 backward. 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 backdrop 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.
Back 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).