Kanthapura: Section 3 Summary & Analysis

Bhatta, unlike the rest of Kanthapura, wants “nothing to do with these Gandhi-bhajans.” He used to sympathize with Moorthy’s cause but gave up after visiting the city to register some business papers and allegedly lend some money. He helped buy an election, managed a widow’s lands, and was “always smiling, always ready, always friendly” whenever he saw an opportunity to profit. Achakka swears that “he would one day own the whole village […] had not the stream run the way it did.”

In his youth, Bhatta was poor and astrologically adept. He is always the “First Brahmin” at the Pandit’s house for the holy obsequial dinner, which he eats slowly and heavily. When he returns home, he runs through his daily transactions. One day, his first wife falls into a well and dies, but Bhatta soon remarries a new girl in an extravagant ceremony.

Bhatta’s wealth inflates and he becomes a major landowner. Every morning, Front-House Suranna and the priest Temple Rangappa fetch him from his house and take him to the river, where people from all over congregate to take out loans when the rain ruins their rice or they need a lawyer. Bhatta often settles disputes himself, calling himself “your humble servant.”

Now, Bhatta owns more than 100 acres of land and everyone in Kanthapura owes him something, but nobody much minded because he was “so smiling and so good” (and charged more reasonable interest than Rama and Subba Chetty, “the ruin of our village”). He even sent a distant relative to study in the city, asking only that he “bring a name to Kanthapura” (or send back money if he strikes it rich). Achakka declares that, given Bhatta’s reputation, his disdain for Gandhi was a surprise—although not really, since “after all there was no money in it.”

One day, Bhatta stops by Rangamma’s Kannayya House. Satamma greets him and asks about his family, and Bhatta replies by explaining that his business is terrible. Rangamma and meditating Ramakrishnayya join, and Bhatta complains about how hard it is to marry off his daughters with the focus on “nothing but degrees or this Gandhi vagabondage.”

Bhatta complains that pariahs are mixing with brahmins, perhaps to one day usurp their place. Rangamma says not to worry, for elsewhere pariahs can even enter the temple once a year, but Bhatta claims that he is the one who truly knows the city and, actually, a temple there is welcoming pariahs. He laments the “strange age” Indians are living in, “what with their modern education and their modern women” who increasingly pick school over marriage, and sometimes even marry Muslims.

Satamma blames recent floods for the “confusion of castes” and Rangamma worries that “the Mahatma is not for all this pollution,” but Bhatta complains that Gandhi has himself “adopted a pariah girl as a daughter.” Bhatta says that he recently visited the Swami in Mysore and saw his “wife’s elder brother’s wife’s brother-in-law” Seetharamu, who told him that the Swami “wants to crush” the Gandhian pariah movement “in its seed.” Seetharamu asked Bhatta to start a brahmin party in Kanthapura before Gandhi convinces villagers to accept even Mohomedans and Europeans. The Swami plans to “outcast every brahmin who has touched a pariah,” Seetharamu explained, and Bhatta returned to Kanthapura as a “pontifical brahmin” to convince others of his caste to drop Gandhism.

Rangamma, Satamma, and Ramakrishnayya sit in silence, hearing a children’s song and the noises of calves, wall-lizards, and bats in the village. They see a shooting star, and Ramakrishnayya says “some good soul has left the earth.” Bhatta tells Rangamma he wants to save her from all this “pariah business,” keep her on guard about “Moorthy and these city boys.” Achakka interjects that “our Rangamma is no village kid”—she reads newspapers from the city and knows about everything from worms that cause disease to modern technologies like radio and airplanes.

But Achakka explains that there was one thing Rangamma never stopped talking about—the day after a Northern sandal merchant stopped in town and told her about the distant land “of the hammer and sickle and electricity,” where women worked the same as men and families could take holiday in palaces when they were tired or having children, and where the Government fed and educated children, gave them jobs and homes and wives “and they lived on happily ever after.” Rangamma said that in that land “all men were equal—every one equal to every other—and there were neither the rich nor the poor.” One village pariah thinks this must be a “strange country” without castes or rice or farmers, although Rangamma replies that her paper “says nothing about that.”

So Rangamma was knowledgeable and “could hold a word-for-word fight with Bhatta,” but chose instead to simply say she would see what Gandhi’s book and Moorthy say about the pariahs. Seething, Bhatta threatens to have Moorthy ostracized if he visits the pariahs, but Ramakrishnayya convinces him to calm down—Moorthy was an idealistic “nice brahmanic boy” not worth harming, and Bhatta calms down and says he hopes that Moorthy will marry soon.

Kamalamma, Rangamma’s sister, stops by with her daughter Ratna. Ratna is a widow but “still kept her bangles and her nose-rings and ear-rings,” dressing and acting like her husband hadn’t died. Kamalamma silenced and denounced her daughter, and Ratna would do laundry in the river alone as other women “would spit behind her and make this face and that, and throwing a handful of dust in her direction, pray for the destruction of the house.”

Bhatta does not mention this, since he is not a woman; plus, Ratna’s father is his second cousin, and he used to play with her when she was a baby, and everyone who claims “she was found openly talking to Moorthy in the temple” is lying. But Bhatta also cannot bear to see Ratna’s “modern ways,” and especially the way she “bared her bodice,” so he runs off.

On his way home, as he passes Rama Chetty’s shop, Bhatta sees “a figure moving with slow, heavy steps” and slowly approaches. “Who’s there, brother?” he asks, and he hears “a cough and a sneeze and the beating of a stick,” and then the figure says, “what does that matter to you?” Bhatta follows the figure into the courtyard and he turns out to be Badè Khan, who prostrates himself before Bhatta.

Waterfall Venkamma, Temple Lakshamma, Timmamamma, and Chinnamma debate whether Moorthy truly wants the mixing of castes. Moorthy’s pious old mother, Narsamma, married his five sisters to large, well-to-do families, but Moorthy was her youngest and favorite even though he wanted nothing to do with marriage.

One day, Moorthy has a vision of Gandhi giving a discourse to a large crowd; he feels a “mellowed force and love” emanating from the Mahatma’s body. Moorthy takes over for a weary fanner and fans Gandhi as he preaches Truth, love of mankind, and  “the God of all.” Moorthy feels called to stay and weeps before jumping onto the platform and prostrating himself at the Mahatma’s feet, saying “I am your slave.” The Mahatma asks what he can do for Moorthy, who asks for a command—the Mahatma’s only command is to seek Truth, but Moorthy is ignorant, wearing foreign cloth and educated at a foreign university. The Mahatma tells him to work “among the dumb millions of the villages” and Moorthy throws out his foreign clothes and books later that evening.

When Moorthy returned to Kanthapura as a Gandhian, Narsamma was distraught but ultimately let him stay, even after he rejected three more marriage proposals for the sake of maintaining his purity. Narsamma wants to marry him to the daughter of the wealthy landowner Maddur Coffee-Planter Venkatanarayana, working tirelessly to convince the family and plan the unlikely wedding. Waterfall Venkamma visits Narsamma’s house to proclaim that the marriage will never happen, and that she is delighted her daughter did not marry a “dirt-gobbling cur” like Moorthy. The next morning they briefly reconcile, but before long, she starts raging again, suggesting that the Swami has ordered the whole village excommunicated unless Moorthy stops “mixing with the pariahs.”

Post-Office-House Chinnamma knows that this is a lie and suggests that only people who mix with pariahs will be excommunicated. Narsamma is unsure whether to believe her or Venkamma, since each claims to have heard the news from Bhatta earliest, and “burst[s] out sobbing” as she considers the dishonor Moorthy will bring his family. Chinnamma and Venkamma try to comfort her, “but Narsamma would have nothing of it” and weeps all the way home.