Indira Bai

Indira Bai depicts the story of Indira, a child widow. Indira is an only child that is married, before the age of puberty, to an older man that is apathetic to her experience.^[4] Her husband is depicted as financially unwise and ignores her completely following their marriage for luxurious living.^[4] Indira, pining in unrequited sentiment for her husband, turns to reading for solace after her mother Ambabai's advice.^[4] However, her mother is unsupportive of the material within the books Indira chooses to read, describing the novels as being written by “the mlechchha padres meant to destroy our caste.”^[4] Following the death of her husband, Indira lives as a child widow.^[4] She is restricted by practises that dictate the colour of clothes she must wear, and is not allowed to groom her hair.^[4] Indira's parents leave her with a group of wandering widows that sing hymns, as they fear Indira's readings may be negatively shaping her attitudes.^[4] However, Indira is wary of the group's leader and runs away.^[4] Indira hides with another young student at a lawyer's house.^[4] The lawyer, Amritaraya and his wife Jalajakshi are socially progressive individuals.^[4] Under their care, Indira is able to pursue her interests and they also send her to school.^[4] The school, Saraswati Mandir, is especially concerned with educating young women.^[4] Together, the lawyer and his wife nourish Indira's youth and support her by challenging orthodox notions surrounding child marriage and child widows.^[4] The novel ends with Indira reuniting with her parents.^[4]

Indira Bai is the central character of the novel. Indira is a young girl, who after her husband's death, becomes a child widow.^[4]

Bhimarao is Indira's father.^[4]

Ambabai is Indira's mother.^[4]

Amritaraya is a reformist lawyer who takes Indira under his wing.^[4]

Jalajakshi is Amritaraya's wife.^[4]

Bhaskara is a student that is also living with Amritaraya. He is “the son of a Sundararaya whom Indira’s parents poisoned several years ago.”^[4]

A central focus of Indira Bai is the “encounter…between colonial modernity and the Saraswat Brahman community.”^[5] Furthermore, the novel is centralised in South Canara, a “naturally trilingual region with Tulu, Konkani, and Kannada being the three main spoken languages.”^[6] In his novel Rao incorporates all three languages to accurately depict the socio-contextual tensions of his contemporary, whilst also incorporating elements of “colonial modernity” such as western science, medicine, and technology.^[6] Furthermore, Rao creates a “cultural landscape” in the novel through his incorporation of Sanskrit discourses and music.^[6]

Summarize Fact Check

Indira Bai's central thematic focus is widow remarriage, and education the “device for emancipation.”^[7]

Gulavadi Venkatarao graduated university with a BA.^[8] However, before his career in novel writing, Gulavadi Venkatarao worked in the local police department, within which he was introduced to the treatment of child widows in his contemporary.^[8]

Gulvadi Venkata Rao's contextual experiences living in the Saraswat Brahmin community in the nineteenth century significantly influenced the novel's focus on caste located transformations.^[7] The novel's publishing coincided with the institution of the printing press, which allowed for the dissemination of Rao's novel to “construct modernity in the Canarese region.”^[7]

Bilimale outlines the history underpinning the emergence of the novel medium.^[9] Specifically, the involvement of the educated Saraswath Brahmin class’ involvement in the rebellion against customs of their religion.^[9] The Saraswath class was the first to receive access to education due to their class privilege.^[9] This high social background and literacy skill allowed them advantage in processing English education.^[9] This exposure to diverse education led to the Saraswaths interrogating and aligning against traditional religious ideology and custom, leading debates on topics such as “education for women, widow remarriage, disfigurement of widows,” etc.^[9] This conflict of ideology allowed for progressive literature to emerge in Rao's contemporary.^[9] Bilimale describes the emerging position of the novel form within this social climate as “an important medium in which to portray this conflict and to articulate the terms for its revolution.”^[9]

Bilimale describes Indira Bai's plot within the context of Venkata Rao's contemporary as a reflection of societal frictions.^[9] Bilimale highlights how the characters representing tradition, such as Bheema Rao, are framed as “hypocritical and dishonest,” whereas characters educated with progressive ideologies are “mature and honest.”^[9] The subtext of the novel hence implies that characters that align with “western rationality” are “good.”^[9] Furthermore, Bilimale goes on to argue that the novel reads as a satire since “the tension between opposing values is resolved outside the structure of the novel.”^[9]

Furthermore, Bilimale describes the novel's optimistic approach towards “coming history” as characteristic of many early Kannada novels.^[9]

Critical outlooks have pointed out how while the love present in the relationship between Indira and her second husband, Bhaskar, is foregrounded in Indira's remarriage, there is no “narrative representation” of them “encountering each other” and “acknowledging their love.”^[10] The fact that the other characters had the agency and were instrumental to uniting the two, especially how Indira's love for Bhaskar was not previously articulated, highlights how the novel conforms to the social novel's tendency to depict romantic love, without representing “the rites of passage of ‘romance’.”^[10]

Pandita Ramabai, a convert Christian and social reformer from South Canara, also significantly influenced the characterisation of Indira Bai.^[7] Indira is depicted reading Ramabai’s novels in the novel as a method of rebellion against her Mother Amba Bai.^[7]

As articulated by Mukherjee, the Indira Bai’s release occurred in a context where India was experiencing an increase in “long narrative fiction,” where the novel form was utilized as a tool of social reform.^[11]