Kanthapura

by

Raja Rao

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Kanthapura makes teaching easy.
The regional Hindu religious leader based in the city of Mysore who supports the brahmins’ campaign against Moorthy’s Gandhian movement. The colonial government gives him 1200 acres of land to defend the rigid caste system that keeps much of Kanthapura’s population impoverished and powerless. He excommunicates Moorthy for “polluting” the caste system by “mixing with the pariahs.” Although he never directly appears in the book, he is incredibly powerful and exemplifies the decentralized, distant mechanisms of colonial rule.

The Swami Quotes in Kanthapura

The Kanthapura quotes below are all either spoken by The Swami or refer to The Swami. 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:
Oral Tradition, Writing, and Political Power Theme Icon
).
Section 4 Quotes

There was something deep and desperate that hurried her on, and [Narsamma] passed by Rangamma’s sugarcane field and by the mango grove to the river, just where the whirlpool gropes and gurgles, and she looked up at the moonlit sky, and the winds of the night and the shadows of the night and the jackals of the night so pierced her breast that she shuddered and sank unconscious upon the sands, and the cold so pierced her that the next morning she was dead.

Related Characters: Achakka (speaker), Moorthy, The Swami, Narsamma
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Kanthapura LitChart as a printable PDF.
Kanthapura PDF

The Swami Quotes in Kanthapura

The Kanthapura quotes below are all either spoken by The Swami or refer to The Swami. 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:
Oral Tradition, Writing, and Political Power Theme Icon
).
Section 4 Quotes

There was something deep and desperate that hurried her on, and [Narsamma] passed by Rangamma’s sugarcane field and by the mango grove to the river, just where the whirlpool gropes and gurgles, and she looked up at the moonlit sky, and the winds of the night and the shadows of the night and the jackals of the night so pierced her breast that she shuddered and sank unconscious upon the sands, and the cold so pierced her that the next morning she was dead.

Related Characters: Achakka (speaker), Moorthy, The Swami, Narsamma
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis: