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Section 3
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Kanthapura, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Oral Tradition, Writing, and Political Power
Gandhism and the Erosion of Caste
Nationalism and Colonialism
Land, Geography, and Belonging
Labor, Exploitation, and Economic Independence
Summary
Analysis
The sun rises in the Ghats and the carts start up for the day, carrying their goods in every direction. With “a bundle of khadi on his back and a bundle of books in his arms,” Moorthy heads to Kanthapura, where his mother Narsamma asks him to “never show himself again until he had sought prayaschitta [penance] from the Swami himself.” She laments that her son has become a pariah and runs off, spitting and shouting at a pariah she encounters on the way before resolving to “go to Benares and die there a holy death lest the evil follow her.”
Moorthy carries two crucial symbols of Gandhism: books that are intended to bring the Mahatma’s ideas to a wide audience across India, and the khadi cloth that symbolizes Gandhian nationalism’s insistence on economic independence. Narsamma demands that Moorthy recommit to the caste system; her loyalty to caste continues to supersede her loyalty to family.
Active
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When she arrives, Narsamma starts washing her clothes on the Himavathy river’s stones with the other villagers and begins to calm down, so she goes home and starts cooking like her usual self. But Moorthy is not there, so she begins to rage again and tries to calm herself with meditation and prayer.
Narsamma purifies her conscience by washing her clothes in the holy Himavathy River and then meditating. She manages to briefly find spiritual solace from the terror she feels at Moorthy’s rejection of caste, but only because she comes to hope he will change (rather than coming to accept him).
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Narsamma cannot see Moorthy on Rangamma’s veranda, and tells the passing Seenu to search for him there. Bhatta visits and tells Narsamma that he has spoken to Moorthy, whom the Swami has not yet excommunicated. But, “if he continued with this pariah business,” Moorthy will be excommunicated, since he has no intention of stopping and even called the Swami a heartless, “self-chosen fool” without “thinking power.”
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Narsamma is horrified and Bhatta says there is nothing he can do—in fact, he will have to tell the Swami soon, for he does not “want our community polluted and the manes of our ancestors insatiate.” Narsamma finds her son’s arguments at once “reasonable” and unbelievable, but Bhatta assures her she “cannot even imagine the pollutions that go on” in the city. Moorthy returns and goes to the bathroom; Bhatta leaves and Narsamma cries, leaving Moorthy’s food in the hallway, where he eats it “like a servant” as Narsamma eats in the kitchen.
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“From that day on,” Achakka laments, “they never spoke to each other, Narsamma and Moorthy.” They continued to eat separately and Narsamma grew “thin as a bamboo and shriveled like banana bark” as Moorthy spent more and more time with the pariahs. He even openly carries the corpse of a dead woman during her funeral procession, and everybody who saw shouted “oh, he’s lost!” Bhatta runs to the city and, two days later, reports that the Swami has officially excommunicated Moorthy, plus his family “and all the generations to come.”
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Narsamma is distraught, and that night she runs to the village gate, where she spits in all four cardinal directions and then at the pariah huts, shivers thinking of “ghosts and the spirits and the evil ones of flame” and carries on because of “something deep and desperate.” She runs to the river Himavathy and looks at the sky, shudders and falls unconscious at the riverbanks, and is dead by the next morning. The townspeople cremate her on the spot and throw her ashes in the river.
Rangamma wants to hold Narsamma’s funeral ceremonies at her house, but Bhatta refuses to officiate and “sell [his] soul to a pariah.” That night, Moorthy leaves. Achakka explains that nobody knows where he went, or even talks about his departure anymore, but when he comes back he moves into Rangamma’s house. He still eats “by the kitchen door” and goes with the pariahs, brings them cotton and yarn, and teaches “alphabets and grammar and arithmetic and Hindi.” Regretfully, Achakka notes that Seenu, too, is going with him, and they even start teaching the pariahs at the Skeffington Coffee Estate.
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