Raja Rao’s Kanthapura as a Gandhi Novel

Mahatma Gandhi exercised a formative influence on our language and literature. Indian English Novels of the time came under Gandhi‟s epoch-making social ,political and ideological ferment. The legend of our land appears in the novels of the „Big Three‟ of the Indian English Fiction sometimes in person and sometime through characters representing him as well as through his revolutionary ideals. But Rao differs from the other two of his contemporaries in his treatment of Gandhi. His Kanthapura is a fictional account of Gandhian movement in a distant South Indian village under the leadership of Moorthy, the hero and the most notable Gandhian in the novel. Though Gandhi is absent in person ,his presence is felt throughout the novel. In short , the novel is pervaded by the spirit of Gandhi and his freedom movement.Thus in a word the novel may be called a Gandhiad or a Gandhi purana.