Ghatashraddha is a short story written by U.R.Ananthmurthy. In my sense U.R.Ananthmurthy belongs to that genre of writers, albeit for reasons best known to them, who have vehemently opposed the Brahminical tyranny with its replete ascendancy into the ills of the degenerative caste system.
Set in circa British era in late 1930’s, the story revolves around an Acharya who runs a gurukul, his widowed young daughter Yamuna and a child novice named Nanni.
The story begins as a narrative by Nanni, who perhaps chosen by the writer, as one being a child and the story unfolds from the lens of a child. I wonder, what would the story sound like had it been from an adult’s narrative.
Life seems to go on as usual in the gurukul with the day starting early, complete with the rituals for the day and the prime essence being transmission of the Vedic knowledge as part of the oral tradition, until one day when the acharya leaves the village on work. Nanni develops a special bond with Yamuna; fondly calling her as ‘akka’. Yamuna in due course develops a relationship with a man in the village and gets pregnant and this is the crux of the plot. While the man who impregnates her refuses to take ownership and suggests abortion, Yamuna feels tormented and greatly worried of the consequences. Nanni is a witness to the entire episode of her abortion, her pain, and her helplessness. While the disciples of the ashram appear to be going about doing their usual work in reciting the ‘Vedas’ and in spiritual quest, little does Yamuna know that every movement of her’s was spied by these very disciples of the ashram. As quickly as it can get, the word spreads and when the acharya returns, he learns of the happenings and seems very distraught. The disciples are taken away from the gurukul terming the place to be decadent and inhabited by unscrupulous beings.
In the mean time, the acharya choses that the best recourse to this situation is to expel his daughter through a ritual – Ghatashraddha, which is considered as a rites of passage symbolizing death of the person. The acharya after the symbolic ritual gets married to a woman, just so that his needs be taken care of.
Before, I go further I wish to dwell upon the kind of learning that seems to take place in ashrams such as this one in the story.
The ancient tradition talks about the three steps of learning being Sravana which is listening to the instructions of the teacher, to the words or texts in the form of utterances; the second step being Manana which entails the important process of meditating upon the subjects taught in terms of deeper understanding and the third step being Nididhyasana that entailed critical engagement and realization.
However the latter periods saw much of ‘learning’ restricted to mere memorizing and recitation of words with no love for wisdom - that has the inherent power to transform beings and society. The caste system became more pronounced in terms of supremacy of the Brahmins, rigid division of people and fragmentation of the society, and at its best served to promote the vested interests of certain groups.
Gradually the Varna system and the jatis became a formidable force to reckon with.
The caste system has been a great reflector of aspects of culture in India among others. Much has been already said about the maladies of the caste system, with the power relations and exploitation of the ‘weak’. To pronounce the aspects of power, untouchability is used as a tool when Kateera, a ‘low- born’, runs away from Nanni calling himself as an untouchable is but one instance. The ideas of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’ and as much of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ are widely pronounced in these scenes depicting the relations with people of the lower castes and matters relating to widowhood. Despite his position in the social order, Kateera becomes the arbiter of ritual and purity to a child of the priestly caste, forbidding the touch that would ‘pollute’ Nanni. The mere touch undergoes certain symbolic transformations that bespoke fear, desire, denial that hold deep meanings in the plot.
What is more compelling to the reader is the idea of widowhood in the Brahminical patriarchy. The identity, role and status of women, particularly that of the widow is well depicted in Ghatashraddha. From the evidence of the classical texts it is clear that the upper caste Hindu widow was an anomaly in traditional Hindu society.
Ordinarily the wife occupies an important focus of attention as a symbolic value, with rituals and customs gaining completeness with her presence. On the contrary the wife isolated from her husband, especially in the event of the death of her husband has no recognition or identity of her own in the Brahminical patriarchy. She is overtly despised and unwelcome in any of the “auspicious” ceremonies, and hence dies a social death on becoming a widow. Yamuna, the character in the story who is a widow is subject all of the moral and social restrictions the widows are bound by. Add to this the suppression of her sexuality where she is required to keep her sexuality repressed and forcibly contained as prescribed by tradition. At this juncture a pregnant Yamuna living in a gurukul, belonging to the priestly caste is viewed as blasphemous. Here again the onus of the “sin” falls on Yamuna alone while no one seems to care about the person who impregnates her, who is out of the loop and thus pronouncing gender issues as well.
Control of the sexuality was not in her hands but in the hands of the men, family and the patriarchal structure.
In a way, the caste, class and patriarchy play out together to organize and structure social relations and thereby the social fabric of the society. The story seems to accurately throw up questions that need a religious inquiry – that of the supremacy of the upper castes, repressive measures against the lower castes, what constitutes education or a learned being, identity of beings and bearing on the construction of the society.
What seems more evident is the caste structure and hierarchy with its inherent norms, sanctions, mores, belief systems,
customs, tradition is less resilient, but at this point the one question that seems to surface is – Isn’t a transformation of the human consciousness possible, that which transcends the boundaries of gender, caste, class,creed, race, religion or even nation for that matter? Education in its holistic perspective ideally must bring out this in beings where rationality prevails, which brings about a more sustainable and a just society.
Response /Interpretation:
The story was quite an intriguing story for me, with a powerful plot and interesting characters. At the heart of the story lies the depiction of the nature of human bonds created by the self and the society, also in them being intense as well as fragile at times! Most aspects with reference to the social structure of a Hindu society, the apathy of the woman in a Brahminical society, the caste and gender specifics were seen and interpreted on similar lines by the rest of the group members. However, in the beginning there was one member of the group who did not seem to appreciate the plot since much of the story involved a woman mired in situations which she could barely extricate herself from - owing to superstitious beliefs. In my sense, this literary work does compel the reader to open one's eyes to the maladies of the caste system, which is the central theme of the story. A chary introspection would help the reader to reflect upon the glaring social issues that we, more often than not, choose to overlook!
As mentioned earlier, the story begins as a child's narrative with him seeing life unfurl as he goes about it. One begins to wonder, what would be the story like had it been an adult's narrative; also how would an adult male look at it and would it be different from an adult female's narrative? Perhaps this is something, I ordinarily would not have thought of as a casual reader - I see the changes myself as a student of the Literacy pedagogy course!
I see the worth of the intellectual engagement while reading a text that should be imbibed in children, that helps them become good critics of the text. As Wolf (2004) mentions in Interpreting literature with children, that literary engagement is cognitive work (pp.18). In as much as literature provides pleasure and stirs up imagination in the young, Wolf argues that it is essential to look at literature in terms of children's intellectual engagement (Wolf, 2004). She further goes on to cite Perry Nodelman (1996) who argues that the pleasure experienced represents recognition, connection, and reflection; adding " …the pleasure of recognising forms and genres - of seeing similarities between works of literature; as well as 'the pleasure of understanding' - of seeing how literature not only mirrors life but comments on it and makes us consider the meaning of our own existence" (Nodelman, 1996 cited in Wolf, 2004). This to a great extent sums up the rationale behind a deep engagement in texts which could well prove to be a cognitive work.
In the same spirit, guided by the critical perspectives as put forth by Wolf (2004), I'd like to support my engagement with the text; using the particular forms of literary criticisms such as : a) Genetic criticism, b) text-text criticism, c) transactional criticism, and d) socio-cultural criticism. (Wolf,2004)
Genetic criticism highlights the critical stance taken in viewing the author's life and times which is reflected in his literary work. U.R.Ananthamurthy, a Brahmin by birth, gets into a spirit of inquiry as he goes about writing different literary works, questioning the authority of the Brahmins, the patriarchal society, the role and status of women in society, the caste system and the like; that which is seen as a reflection of his times and beyond in this work - Ghatashraddha. In this piece of work, I think the author stretches a bit beyond what he has experienced being a part of the Brahminical society. Hence, it is a representation of his experience and a stretch of imagination - but a thin line between the two.
Text-text criticism suggests the reader to base interpretations taking into account the literary text - the way it fits into the broader body of literature, comparison of the text with other texts by the same author, in the same genre and with similar stylistic features that help make connections. Taking this stance, yet another work titled 'Samskara' written by U.R.Ananthamurthy bears a similar theme - that of the caste system and superstitions. The ending of both the stories have close parallels in the death of the main characters- while one being a symbolic death in Ghatashraddha; further one can see close parallels in terms of the titles given to the two works - Samskara and Ghatashraddha - which refer to the rites of passage.
Further, transactional criticism takes the individual/reader experiences which guides and shapes the understanding and interpretation. Our literary circle consisted of four members in all, who brought up their life experiences that further shaped our understanding of the text and in as much as engaging at a deeper level, more so with the social issues at hand. Further, this enabled an aesthetic appreciation of the text. Going by Rosenblatt's continuum; we could see ourselves moving from efferent reading to aesthetic reading ( Rosenblatt (1994) cited in Wolf, 2004). However, what is important while we go about transactional criticism, is not to judge the subjective interpretation of the text - but the success lies in the justification and returning to the text without digressing.
Finally, taking the socio-critical stance we were able to delineate the voices within the text - those that were dominant and those that were silenced. The established patterns of authority - power structure and stereotypical representations of women and children, that was so well embedded in the text was put under question.
In sum, these perspectives aided our discussion to engage at a fairly deeper level.
Participation in Literary circles:
Participation in the literary circle helped in more ways than one. Firstly, we were able to listen to different interpretations of a single text within the group. Secondly, we were able to unravel the deeper hidden meanings, which may not have been possible if each of us did it independently. While we went about discussing, we did refer to certain theoretical principles that further informed our discussion in terms of critiquing the text. Since the language contained a lot of Kannada words, the other members scouted for more information just to understand what the writer was trying to say, but as we moved on we were able to go beyond mere information seeking to appreciation of the text and responding to it aesthetically. Finally, the discussion was made more interesting with the personal experiences of the members that aided our understanding and took it to a deeper level.
I also wish to add at this point, that I think we got a bit overtly critical at times!
Reflections:
As for me, analysis of literary texts perhaps would have worked at the subliminal level, but not as explicitly or consciously as it is being done now. As a reader what I understand is that writers craft their stories and characters with deliberate choices in terms of the style, genre, tone and language. These elements in addition to other things like plot, characters, and the like seem to be put together to bring about some interesting and powerful themes. Children's literature in particular has always fascinated me. For one, the various eternal verities that children are exposed and introduced through literature is remarkable. I can't think of a captivating medium that could do the job, so wonderfully as literature does. As for me, literature plays its role in preparing the young to face their fates - alone- by weaving stories around such moments! For example, take Maurice Sendak's Where the wild things are where a little boy leaves home to a place where he faces monsters; or Kyo Maclear's Virginia wolf that depicts a story of a little girl and her mood swings.
In terms of critiquing literary texts, I learned a more structured way of doing it, while being conscious that one need not be limited to these alone. Through group discussions what was enriching was that we could see the text from different lens; which indeed is a learning experience.
Literary engagement for children could be an exciting and a richly rewarding experience. They can be taught to make a transition from superficially engaging in a text to critically responding to it in the very many ways put across by people like Rosenblatt, Wolf, Nodelman and others. Engaging them in high quality literature enables them to enter the textual world and construct meanings in rich ways, apart from the pleasure it provides. This involves a conscious and careful orchestration of the various elements like the plot, characters, time, space, style, genre, theme and the setting among others in the literary text; to make it a rich piece of work.
As a language educator, such literary discussions carry a lot of weight as it helps the children to respond to texts in a critical manner; much of which is lacking in the schools that we see. I reiterate to add that literature, besides providing the fun element, will enable children to engage deeply with the text, take up a critical analyses of the texts, and engaging in 'talk'. Children seem to respond better when they feel they have been given an ear to, when they are confident that their opinions too matter and their experiences count. Literature enables young learners to engage in such accountable talk; which otherwise may have been difficult. Further, this equips children to deal with fictional and non-fictional texts and issues in a much more profound and critical manner; that could help resolve much of the life's issues and that of the society!
At the end of it, the literary circle experience was an enriching one as I could see it through the lens of my other team members as well, gaining perspectives that I would have not thought of before!
Response /Interpretation:
The story was quite an intriguing story for me, with a powerful plot and interesting characters. At the heart of the story lies the depiction of the nature of human bonds created by the self and the society, also in them being intense as well as fragile at times! Most aspects with reference to the social structure of a Hindu society, the apathy of the woman in a Brahminical society, the caste and gender specifics were seen and interpreted on similar lines by the rest of the group members. However, in the beginning there was one member of the group who did not seem to appreciate the plot since much of the story involved a woman mired in situations which she could barely extricate herself from - owing to superstitious beliefs. In my sense, this literary work does compel the reader to open one's eyes to the maladies of the caste system, which is the central theme of the story. A chary introspection would help the reader to reflect upon the glaring social issues that we, more often than not, choose to overlook!
As mentioned earlier, the story begins as a child's narrative with him seeing life unfurl as he goes about it. One begins to wonder, what would be the story like had it been an adult's narrative; also how would an adult male look at it and would it be different from an adult female's narrative? Perhaps this is something, I ordinarily would not have thought of as a casual reader - I see the changes myself as a student of the Literacy pedagogy course!
I see the worth of the intellectual engagement while reading a text that should be imbibed in children, that helps them become good critics of the text. As Wolf (2004) mentions in Interpreting literature with children, that literary engagement is cognitive work (pp.18). In as much as literature provides pleasure and stirs up imagination in the young, Wolf argues that it is essential to look at literature in terms of children's intellectual engagement (Wolf, 2004). She further goes on to cite Perry Nodelman (1996) who argues that the pleasure experienced represents recognition, connection, and reflection; adding " …the pleasure of recognising forms and genres - of seeing similarities between works of literature; as well as 'the pleasure of understanding' - of seeing how literature not only mirrors life but comments on it and makes us consider the meaning of our own existence" (Nodelman, 1996 cited in Wolf, 2004). This to a great extent sums up the rationale behind a deep engagement in texts which could well prove to be a cognitive work.
In the same spirit, guided by the critical perspectives as put forth by Wolf (2004), I'd like to support my engagement with the text; using the particular forms of literary criticisms such as : a) Genetic criticism, b) text-text criticism, c) transactional criticism, and d) socio-cultural criticism. (Wolf,2004)
Genetic criticism highlights the critical stance taken in viewing the author's life and times which is reflected in his literary work. U.R.Ananthamurthy, a Brahmin by birth, gets into a spirit of inquiry as he goes about writing different literary works, questioning the authority of the Brahmins, the patriarchal society, the role and status of women in society, the caste system and the like; that which is seen as a reflection of his times and beyond in this work - Ghatashraddha. In this piece of work, I think the author stretches a bit beyond what he has experienced being a part of the Brahminical society. Hence, it is a representation of his experience and a stretch of imagination - but a thin line between the two.
Text-text criticism suggests the reader to base interpretations taking into account the literary text - the way it fits into the broader body of literature, comparison of the text with other texts by the same author, in the same genre and with similar stylistic features that help make connections. Taking this stance, yet another work titled 'Samskara' written by U.R.Ananthamurthy bears a similar theme - that of the caste system and superstitions. The ending of both the stories have close parallels in the death of the main characters- while one being a symbolic death in Ghatashraddha; further one can see close parallels in terms of the titles given to the two works - Samskara and Ghatashraddha - which refer to the rites of passage.
Further, transactional criticism takes the individual/reader experiences which guides and shapes the understanding and interpretation. Our literary circle consisted of four members in all, who brought up their life experiences that further shaped our understanding of the text and in as much as engaging at a deeper level, more so with the social issues at hand. Further, this enabled an aesthetic appreciation of the text. Going by Rosenblatt's continuum; we could see ourselves moving from efferent reading to aesthetic reading ( Rosenblatt (1994) cited in Wolf, 2004). However, what is important while we go about transactional criticism, is not to judge the subjective interpretation of the text - but the success lies in the justification and returning to the text without digressing.
Finally, taking the socio-critical stance we were able to delineate the voices within the text - those that were dominant and those that were silenced. The established patterns of authority - power structure and stereotypical representations of women and children, that was so well embedded in the text was put under question.
In sum, these perspectives aided our discussion to engage at a fairly deeper level.
Participation in Literary circles:
Participation in the literary circle helped in more ways than one. Firstly, we were able to listen to different interpretations of a single text within the group. Secondly, we were able to unravel the deeper hidden meanings, which may not have been possible if each of us did it independently. While we went about discussing, we did refer to certain theoretical principles that further informed our discussion in terms of critiquing the text. Since the language contained a lot of Kannada words, the other members scouted for more information just to understand what the writer was trying to say, but as we moved on we were able to go beyond mere information seeking to appreciation of the text and responding to it aesthetically. Finally, the discussion was made more interesting with the personal experiences of the members that aided our understanding and took it to a deeper level.
I also wish to add at this point, that I think we got a bit overtly critical at times!
Reflections:
As for me, analysis of literary texts perhaps would have worked at the subliminal level, but not as explicitly or consciously as it is being done now. As a reader what I understand is that writers craft their stories and characters with deliberate choices in terms of the style, genre, tone and language. These elements in addition to other things like plot, characters, and the like seem to be put together to bring about some interesting and powerful themes. Children's literature in particular has always fascinated me. For one, the various eternal verities that children are exposed and introduced through literature is remarkable. I can't think of a captivating medium that could do the job, so wonderfully as literature does. As for me, literature plays its role in preparing the young to face their fates - alone- by weaving stories around such moments! For example, take Maurice Sendak's Where the wild things are where a little boy leaves home to a place where he faces monsters; or Kyo Maclear's Virginia wolf that depicts a story of a little girl and her mood swings.
In terms of critiquing literary texts, I learned a more structured way of doing it, while being conscious that one need not be limited to these alone. Through group discussions what was enriching was that we could see the text from different lens; which indeed is a learning experience.
Literary engagement for children could be an exciting and a richly rewarding experience. They can be taught to make a transition from superficially engaging in a text to critically responding to it in the very many ways put across by people like Rosenblatt, Wolf, Nodelman and others. Engaging them in high quality literature enables them to enter the textual world and construct meanings in rich ways, apart from the pleasure it provides. This involves a conscious and careful orchestration of the various elements like the plot, characters, time, space, style, genre, theme and the setting among others in the literary text; to make it a rich piece of work.
As a language educator, such literary discussions carry a lot of weight as it helps the children to respond to texts in a critical manner; much of which is lacking in the schools that we see. I reiterate to add that literature, besides providing the fun element, will enable children to engage deeply with the text, take up a critical analyses of the texts, and engaging in 'talk'. Children seem to respond better when they feel they have been given an ear to, when they are confident that their opinions too matter and their experiences count. Literature enables young learners to engage in such accountable talk; which otherwise may have been difficult. Further, this equips children to deal with fictional and non-fictional texts and issues in a much more profound and critical manner; that could help resolve much of the life's issues and that of the society!
At the end of it, the literary circle experience was an enriching one as I could see it through the lens of my other team members as well, gaining perspectives that I would have not thought of before!
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