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Badè Khan
The original head of the Skeffington Coffee Estate, the Sahib is a cruel and violent profiteer who exemplifies colonial greed in India. He employs the maistri to terrorize the coolies, preventing them from resisting or leaving the Estate, and takes pleasure in threatening the seven-year-old Chenna on the child’s first day at the Estate.
Sahib Quotes in Kanthapura
The Kanthapura quotes below are all either spoken by Sahib or refer to Sahib. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Section 5 Quotes
And they all rose up like one rock and fell on the ground saying, “You are a dispenser of good, O Maharaja, we are the lickers of your feet…”
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After the maistri marches the group of coolies up the hill to the Skeffington Coffee Estate and the Sahib threatens seven-year-old Chenna to explain his policies about discipline and punishment, the coolies bow down to the Sahib and proclaim their loyalty to him. They do so because they are frightened, calling the Sahib by the traditional term for a king or ruler (“Maharaja”). By conflating the Sahib’s power over the coolies’ lives as laborers with the traditional role of an Indian ruler, this quote in turn illustrates how political and economic power are conflated under colonialism: the British colonial regime’s Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaec
[Pariah Siddayya] tells you about the dasara havu that is so clever that he got into the Sahib’s drawer and lay there curled up, and how, the other day, when the sahib goes to the bathroom, a lamp in his hand, and opens the drawer to take out some soap, what does he see but our Maharaja, nice and clean and shining with his eyes glittering in the lamplight, and the Sahib, he closes the drawer as calmly as a prince; but by the time he is back with his pistol, our Maharaja has given him the slip. And the Sahib opens towel after towel to greet the Maharaja, but the Maharaja has gone on his nuptial ceremony and he will never be found.
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Siddayya’s story about a “dasara havu” (a kind of snake) that he calls the Maharaja inverts the coolies’ prostration before the Sahib as Maharaja just two pages before. Siddayya, who has worked on the Skeffington Coffee Estate for longer than anyone else, knows about every variety of snake that lives nearby and argues that snakes only attack deserving victims. His deep knowledge of the Estate’s local environment naturally makes him a leader and an elder figure among the coolies, and he passes down this local knowledge orally, creating an tradition that is grounded in place, much like the one that Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut ali
What is a policeman before a Gandhi’s man? Tell me, does a boar stand before a lion or a jackal before an elephant?
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Achakka makes this remark after explaining that the Sahib saw Badè Khan’s presence at the Skeffington Estate as a means to prevent the coolies from rebelling, but the Gandhians decided to educate them nonetheless. Although Badè Khan has a monopoly on the use of physical force after the Gandhians begin incorporating the coolies into their movement, “a policeman” is nothing “before a Gandhi’s man” because a “Gandhi’s man” is unfazed by the policeman’s only tool: violence. Achakka’s statement also attests to the political power that literacy confers on Gandhians who, through reading, suddenly gain the means to contextualize their local Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam v
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Sahib Character Timeline in Kanthapura
The timeline below shows where the character Sahib appears in Kanthapura. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Section 2
...the town’s one-eared dog on his way to the Skeffington Coffee Estate. When Khan arrives, Mr. Skeffington offers him a hut and the butler guides him there. Khan moves in with one...
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Section 5
At the estate, the maistri “banged the gate behind them” and brought them to the Sahib, “a tall, fat man with golden hair.” The Sahib touched seven-year-old Chenna “with the butt...
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...to tell the story of a snake he calls the Maharaja, which hid in the Sahib’s drawer and slithered away when the Sahib fetched his pistol.
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...fever is common, and people can even work with it—but they could not, and the Sahib gives them pills that Siddayya says not to take, for they work in the Sahib’s...
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...pills then “Kenchamma would not forgive him.” The child becomes delirious, the coolies call the Sahib, and the child dies in the Sahib’s arms. The Sahib whips Madanna and makes everyone...
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In ten years nobody has gone back; the old Sahib died and was been replaced by his nephew, the new Sahib, who has brought more...
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When Badè Khan came to the Estate, the new Sahib figured he would be useful. In fact, the brahmin clerks Gangadhar and Vasudev ignore the...
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