Raja Rao's novel

Kanthapura

(1938) is the first major Indian novel in English. It is text of the Civil Disobedience movement of the 1930s that takes for its central concern the participation of a small village of South India in the national struggle called for by Mahatma Gandhi. Imbued with nationalism, the villagers sacrifice all their material possessions in a triumph of the spirit, showing how in the Gandhian movement people shed their narrow prejudices and united in the common cause of the non-violent civil resistance to the British Raj. Paradoxically, given its concerns,

Kanthapura

was first published in London in 1938 and was written when Rao was in France: “I wrote

Kanthapura

in a thirteenth century castle in the French Alps belonging to the Dauphins of France and I slept and…

2163 words

Citation: Aikant, Satish. "Kanthapura". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 July 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9435, accessed 19 March 2024.]

9435 Kanthapura 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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