Kanthapura: Section 7 Summary & Analysis

Moorthy tells Rangamma that he blames himself for the evening’s violence and plans to fast for three days in Kanthapura’s temple. He heads directly there over Rangamma’s protests and begins to meditate. Later, Rangamma and Seenu bring bananas but Moorthy rejects them, saying that he will only drink “three cups of salted water” per day. Rangamma begins to cry and Seenu tells Moorthy that “this is all very well for the Mahatma, but not for us poor creatures,” but Moorthy still wants to try. Ramakrishnayya comes and brings Rangamma back home.

Moorthy says the gayathri mantra “thrice a thousand and eight times” before drifting slowly into a deep sleep. He meditates through the next day as people come and go in the temple, until Waterfall Venkamma rouses him by laughing and accusing him of polluting the village. “I shall love even my enemies,” Moorthy tells himself before returning to meditation. He “sends out rays of love” and sings a poem by the 15th century poet Kabir until he begins to weep and sees “a great blue radiance” filling the earth. He “falls prostrate before the god” and chants, “Sivoham, Sivoham. I am Siva. I am Siva. Siva am I.”

Moorthy returns to meditate by the temple’s central pillar and wonders why he can “meditate so deeply,” release his thoughts so easily. He feels a “vital softness” he has not felt since childhood, praying as he sat in the Himavathy river while his mother washed clothes, trying to see Hari everywhere. At that time he felt himself sink into the earth “and then there was a dark burning light in the heart of the sanctum,” and he went in the temple “like a sparrow,” flooded by light and fear of “the Holy.” He opened his eyes and saw “nothing but light and that cool, blue-spreading light had entered his limbs.” His last such experience was his vision of the Mahatma.

This morning, Moorthy feels like he could fly and fall back to earth, catching “a little of that primordial radiance” and feeling love “pour out of him” with every breath. Ratna visits him and he feels differently toward her, no longer seeming “so feminine and soft and distant” like a sister. She prays with him—although she seems too young to truly understand Moorthy’s idea “that the sins of others may be purified with our prayers”—and returns home.

Rangamma brings salt for Moorthy’s water. He drinks and shivers at “the coolness in his empty stomach” but then feels a surge of strength, even though he is still too weak to speak back to Rangamma and rejects her offer of food.

A large crowd assembles around Moorthy—Dorè laughs at him, and he is visibly losing strength. By nightfall, only Rangamma is left, and Moorthy explains that he believes “fearless, calm affection towards our fellow men” can convert enemies. He hopes to win over Badè Khan in particular. Achakka admits that “Rangamma did not understand this, neither, to tell you the truth, did any of us.”

The second day, Bhatta visits a weaker-still Moorthy, who simply smiles back, “for love was growing in him.” On the third day Moorthy feels “such exaltation” that “he could touch the stones and they would hang to his hands, he felt he could touch a snake and it would spread its sheltering hood above him.” Standing, he finds himself too dizzy to walk. He lies down and falls unconscious.

When Moorthy awakens, Rangamma, Seenu, and Ratna are watching him and Pariah Rachanna and Lingayya stand nearby. Moorthy feels that “something was the matter,” looks around Kanthapura, and suddenly breaks into tears, “for somewhere behind the dizzy blare [of the sunshine in the valley] was a shadow that seemed to wail like an ominous crow.” Rangamma offers him an orange, but he says that he cannot eat it and asks for salted water. He drinks and returns to sleep.

Rangamma asks Ratna to watch when Moorthy wakes, and she prays to God for him. When he awakes, Moorthy feels stronger and leads a bhajan attended by people from throughout Kanthapura, including even Badè Khan—but very few of the brahmins. Moorthy vows yet again to “send out love where there was hatred and compassion where there was misery.”  He is overcome with a vital peace, and the next morning, he breaks his fast and begins preaching his “Don’t-touch-the-Government campaign.”