IntroductionFootnote 1
After much deliberation and experimentation, Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi (1855–1907) decided that the best way to educate and instruct the people of his countryFootnote 2 was to offer them an ‘objective’ illustration of ‘real or ideal life’Footnote 3 in the form of a new kind of story or a navalkatha.Footnote 4 In 1887, the first volume of Saraswatichandra Footnote 5 was published, followed by three volumes over the next 15 years.Footnote 6 A canonical work in Gujarati literature, the text generated widespread debate and discussion in society and continues to do so. In literary histories, the pandit yug, or the ‘Age of Learning’, is often also spoken of as the ‘Govardhanram yug’, and Saraswatichandra is cited as a classic example of the literature of the period.Footnote 7 Given its social influence and its serialized nature, Saraswatichandra offers an opportunity to examine patterns of social transformation in its time. It was written at a critical moment in the colonial encounter. New systems and social structures were being put in place. A new kind of education was set in motion. As it rolled rapidly towards the Indian subjects, even the most well-meaning defenders of Indian education (if one could speak of heterogeneous sets of practices as education) began to query home-grown means of transmitting and attaining knowledge. Faced with these questions, Govardhanram created the rich world of Saraswatichandra to pull out an answer. The trajectory of his endeavour brings into sharp relief the troubled career of colonial notions about learning in India.
The article focuses on shifts in the very notion of instruction over the four volumes of the novel and presents Saraswatichandra as a metonym for changing patterns of learning in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More specifically, it investigates the social context of the ponderous movement of the novel from the presentation of imitable actions, primarily in the first three volumes, to a re-presentation of the world-view of the characters, largely undertaken in the fourth volume.Footnote 8
The comments of readersFootnote 9 of Saraswatichandra reveal a pattern that corresponds to this movement. The first two volumes are commonly described as exhilarating and captivating. The third volume, on the other hand, is read with more detachment; and by the fourth volume, unease and restiveness sets in. The problematic character of the final volume is also evidenced by the various translations of Saraswatichandra from the original Gujarati: they are all abridged and typically eliminate a large section of the fourth volume.Footnote 10 In fact, no complete translation of the text has yet been published—in any language. In 1968, the text was adapted to a Hindi filmFootnote 11 and, as may be expected, the movie ignored almost the whole of the last volume. In the last decade, a handful of plays based on Saraswatichandra have also been written and performed.Footnote 12 The contents of the fourth volume, again, are conspicuously absent. From early 2013, a soap opera based on the novel began to be aired on Indian television. A reinterpretation of the complex text, this series distils the novel into a love story.Footnote 13
This article takes cognizance of the educational ambitions of Govardhanram's project and places the disjuncture between the fourth volume and the first three in the context of the transfiguration of ideas of learning by the colonial experience. It then examines the reasons for the phenomenal success of the initial volumesFootnote 14 and the indifference shown to the mysterious final volume and draws lessons from its unintelligibility. The discussion foregrounds a fundamental difficulty in interpreting, and locating within a modern paradigm, modes of understanding which have been spoken of in various discourses as ‘traditional’, ‘illiberal’, ‘non-modern’ or ‘pre-modern’. Sanjay Seth, in his Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India,Footnote 15 has explored the deep tensions between indigenous modes of learning and knowing in India and modern WesternFootnote 16 notions of education. The present article discusses the negotiations between these two types of learning within the extended realm of social deliberation constructed by Saraswatichandra. It identifies a key source of tension: the resistance of ‘non-modern’ modes of understanding to representation and codificationFootnote 17 and suggests that attempts at codification can render a domain of experience unintelligible to itself.
The central plot, or the story that formed the basis of a deliberative stage
In Writing Life: Three Gujarati Thinkers, Tridip Suhrud writes that ‘Saraswatichandra is not one unified text . . . Each part has a distinct thematic content, has its own cast of characters and has different beginnings and ends.’Footnote 18 Suhrud further argues that, though the four volumes are distinct, the novel retains a thematic and aesthetic unity, and readers that privilege one story—the one that has been translated, adapted, debated, and filmed—‘do not favour the appreciation of the text as a single narrative’.Footnote 19 Recognizing the breadth and complexity of Sarwaswatichandra, this section provides a summary of one of the key plots that runs through the novel. In attempting to raise broader questions of action and instruction, the article will rely largely on events within this plot.
Situated in a period during which the influence of the East India Company on the native states was increasing, the central story of Saraswatichandra is woven around two protagonists: SaraswatichandraFootnote 20 and Kumud Sundari.Footnote 21 The first volume, Buddhidhan No Karbhar (The Affairs/Administration of Buddhidhan), introduces us to Saraswatichandra, or Navinchandra,Footnote 22 as he calls himself here, who wanders into Suvarnapur,Footnote 23 a state beset by political intrigue, and offers himself up as a protégé to Buddhidhan,Footnote 24 the prime minister of the native state. This volume introduces the reader to Buddhidhan's family and to members of the Court. Buddhidhan, a man of humble origins, has risen to a position of power on the back of his wit and negotiation skills. With the help of the British Resident, he has won over his opponent ShathraiFootnote 25 and regained his position as the prime minister of Suvarnapur. While not an immediately deceitful man, Buddhidhan is opportunistic and street smart. We are also introduced to Kumud Sundari, who is married to Buddhidhan's son, Pramaddhan.Footnote 26 Within Govardhanram's scheme of the ‘real and the ideal’, this volume would be classified as a rendition of the ‘real’. It opens up a stage on which the world of nineteenth-century India is portrayed through the interactions of a wide range of characters. While it is not a social history, this volume reflects on a grand scale some of the common themes of the period.
In the second volume, Gunsundari No Kutumbjal (The Family of Gunsundari), we are given an intimate glimpse into the families of Saraswatichandra and Kumud Sundari and learn more about the intertwined personal histories of the protagonists. Kumud Sundari is the intelligent and educated daughter of GunsundariFootnote 27 and Vidya Chatur.Footnote 28 She has a sister, Kusum Sundari.Footnote 29 The progressive Vidya Chatur has taught his wife to read and write and she, having taken easily to new knowledge, has proven to be a good companion to him, sharing also in his political and ethical deliberations. Together they decide to educate their two daughters, Kumud and Kusum, not only in the skills of the household (grihasta), but also in philosophy and poetry. When Kumud, the elder daughter, comes of age, Vidya Chatur is worried. He recognizes the difficulty in finding a groom for her due to her inclination for deeper thought and philosophical introspection. To hurl such a girl into a household where she would be restricted to functioning only within the domain of the domestic would be unfair. Vidya Chatur soon identifies Saraswatichandra as someone who would be able to share Kumud's life. Saraswatichandra, son of LaxminandanFootnote 30 and Chandralaxmi,Footnote 31 though born into an affluent and politically powerful family, is revealed to be a man of letters—a scholar, as his name suggests. He is, furthermore, drawn to social work and reform and often travels around the country to emancipate and help people. As Vidya Chatur had expected, Kumud and Saraswatichandra grow fond of each other and fall deeply in love.
However, due to jealousy and intrigue within his family, Saraswatichandra eventually breaks the engagement, leaves home, takes on a pseudonym, and wanders around dispossessed. He sends a letter to Kumud's father, announcing his change of mind; and to Kumud he sends a letter that contains nothing but a verse written in gold.Footnote 32 She keeps this verse as a memento and returns to it frequently, particularly in moments of disheartenment.Footnote 33 Soon after, Kumud is married to Pramaddhan. She tries to settle into a family that is largely interested in pursuing wealth and material pleasures. She finds the lack of intellectual stimulation, as was available in her parents’ home, stifling. Yet she performs her domestic duties with sincerity. She has to fulfil her dharma,Footnote 34 for that is what she has always been taught.
Meanwhile, in the present, political upheavals and chance events in the native states have brought Saraswatichandra to come to reside with Buddhidhan and become an important member of his family. This is when he encounters Kumud Sundari once again. Their unspoken affection for each other does not remain concealed from others and this leads to malicious gossip. Unable to deal with this, Saraswatichandra leaves and is later assumed dead. He turns up in Sundargiri,Footnote 35 where the third volume, Ratnanagari Nu Rajtantra (The Statecraft of Ratnanagari),Footnote 36 begins. Kumud, admonished by her husband, sets out for her parents’ house and is feared to have drowned on the way. But she also turns up in Sundargiri, in the care of saadhvis.Footnote 37 The two meet yet again, and having realized that there is a deep emotional connection between them, the ascetics urge them to recognize their true feelings.
In Suvarnapur, Pramaddhan falls out of favour with his family, who have come to recognize his infidelity and cruelty, and dies suspiciously. His death is not mourned. Saraswatichandra now wants to marry Kumud. Apart from his deep affection for her and the remorse he feels at having abandoned her initially, his views on the emancipation of women and a desire to pull her out of the misery of widowhood and solitude make him urge Kumud to accept his proposal, be his partner, and help him work towards the realization of a modern liberated nation. For Kumud, this is unacceptable. Now she has moulded her life into that of a saadhvi and a widow, and although she wants to be a part of the independence struggle and the struggle for an ethical and emancipated society, she cannot be a part of Saraswatichandra's life, even though she continues to be in love with him. The central story, told in the first three volumes of Saraswatichandra, ends with Saraswatichandra marrying Kusum Sundari, Kumud's sister. Yet the novel continues.
A disjointed dialogue, or the mystery of the fourth volume
The fourth volume, Saraswatichandra Nu Manorajya Ane Puranahuti (The Dreamland or Mentalscape of Saraswatichandra, and a Conclusion),Footnote 38 is markedly different from the first three volumes. The central characters of this volume are not the actors we encountered in the earlier volumes—those who spoke to what Govardhanram called the ‘ordinary Indian mind’—but rather are picked from among what he referred to as the ‘educated natives’.Footnote 39 The final volume departs from the mode of the earlier volumes. It is introspective and analytic, abundant with soliloquies and long quotations from English and Sanskrit texts. The entire volume reads like fragments of philosophical, theological, and social deliberations, interspersed with pieces of the story. Through their discussions and debates, the characters seek to understand and represent the values embodied in three civilizations: contemporary Indian civilization, contemporary Western civilization, and ancient Indian civilization.
In terms of sheer size, this volume is almost as large as the first three put together, even though most of the story is played out in the first three. And yet, as mentioned earlier, it is completely overlooked in the popular imagination. Legend has it that even M. K. Gandhi, who enthusiastically recommended Saraswatichandra to many, including members of his family, said the fourth volume could be ignored. For the most part, it did not contribute to the extended deliberative realm engendered by the novel.Footnote 40 What explains this disjuncture between the first three volumes and the mysterious last volume? The next few sections suggest that this disconnect may be best understood in the context of changes in the notion of learning in the colonial period. They also indicate how the trajectory of Govardhanram's project throws light on the very nature of these transformations.
The Scrap Book, or what did Govardhanram believe?
The fourth volume appears to elaborate concerns mentioned briefly in what Govardhanram called his Scrap Book. This Scrap Book comprises a set of notes and reflections written by Govardhanram through the period during which the four volumes of Saraswatichandra were written and published. Originally penned between the years 1888 and 1906, this Scrap Book was annotated and published posthumously.Footnote 41 Reading the Scrap Book, we not only learn about Govardhanram's motivations for writing Saraswatichandra, but also his views on contemporary politics, social issues, reform, ethics, the Puranas, and of day-to-day occurrences in his life. Govardhanram puts forth the mental and analytic processes by which he comes to hold certain views, doubt them and revise them; the Scrap Book is extremely personal, bordering on confessional, and often reads like ramblings to a psychoanalyst.Footnote 42
Any attempt to evaluate or even identify Govardhanram's views on the various topics about which he writes in the Scrap Book—the joint family, widow remarriage, the governance of native states, education of women—can be a dizzying exercise.Footnote 43 Any seemingly clear conclusion about the nature of his views can almost always be refuted by citing a section of the Scrap Book in which Govardhanram conveys a completely contrary view. Theorists read Saraswatichandra and look to the apparent resolution of some of these debates in the novel as confirmation of Govardhanram's views or beliefs. Most notably, the questions of widow remarriage and the merits of the joint family find a certain resolution in Saraswatichandra. The widow, Kumud Sundari, does not eventually marry Saraswatichandra. Govardhanram's justification of this end is arguably weakFootnote 44 and, despite his own initial leanings towards widow remarriage, he eventually settles the relationship between Saraswatichandra and Kumud by consigning Kumud to the life of a saadhvi and arranging for Saraswatichandra to marry Kusum Sundari, Kumud's younger sister. This resolution has been read as evidence of the fragmented and complex consciousness of the colonial and post-colonial subject. And indeed such a reading may be extended to other writers of the period. In fact, if appropriately nuanced, the fragmented subjectivity claim may be made for any writer in any period, for even the most banal writer with a decisive agenda produces tensions within his writing, offers chinks in his seamless narrative, renders a conflicted space from where the stability of the narrative may be questioned and slowly torn apart.
The temptation to read the Scrap Book as a kind of commentary on the novel is understandable. The diaries appear to offer a glimpse into the author's intention and thought processes. However, most of Saraswatichandra represents a move away from the interiority and the analytic theorization of the Scrap Book, and towards an experiment in understanding ‘reality’ from a very different perspective. This move is a self-conscious one and one that Govardhanram himself records on several occasions. In the English preface of the first volume of Saraswatichandra, he pronounces: ‘reality in flesh and blood under the guise of fiction can supply the ordinary reader with subtler moulds and finer casts for the formation of his inner self than abstract discussion’.Footnote 45
Saraswatichandra is an experiment in instruction. In the context of the transformations this experiment undergoes, Govardhanram's own intentions are subordinate in significance to the broader social processes that the novel engenders and is, in turn, shaped by. While the Scrap Book forms a part of his own private deliberations, Saraswatichandra is an attempt at dialogue with the ‘ordinary Indian mind’—or perhaps an attempt to educate it—and it is the extended deliberative realm that the novel creates that is of relevance to the present study.
The discursive divide, or the distinction between the ‘ordinary Indian mind’ and ‘the educated native’
What is popularly called our stage of transition has consisted more or less of a condition in which the communities, professing to be under the influence of one or the other of these civilizations, have been startled by the near approach and close contact of the rival civilizations, and have at times received one or the other of them with curiosity, suspicion and distrust. The part played by the ordinary Indian mind during this stage has been shown in the first three volumes of this work.
Govardhanram Tripathi, Saraswatichandra Footnote 46
Govardhanram's distinction between the ‘educated natives’ and the ‘ordinary Indian mind’Footnote 47 should not be dismissed as the banal distinction between the educated and the uneducated, or the cultured and the philistine, or even the elite and the subaltern. Many of those that he excludes from the class of educated natives are indeed educated, both learned and skilled. Of those that are invited to participate in the dialogues of the final volume, many are not ‘men of culture’. UddahatlalFootnote 48 and Virarao,Footnote 49 both ardent abolitionists and modernizers, are represented as insensitive and unrefined—philistines and anarchists. The class of educated natives does not even encompass the elite: Buddhidhan, Laxminandan, and other powerful characters are all spoken of as the ‘ordinary Indian’. Kumud Sundari, though seen as sensitive, educated, of refined manners and morals, becomes a representative of the ordinary Indian mind, a rather admirable example of it.
The distinction is indeed very curious. The educated natives, he terms that class of people ‘directly evolved by [sic] the actual contact and growing relations of [sic] these [Indian and English] civilizations themselves’.Footnote 50 The educated natives are thus an outcome of a conversation with the colonial culture. This class of people (in which Govardhanram includes himself) engages in active negotiation with another civilization, or what he called a ‘rival civilization’.Footnote 51 Those involved in this negotiation, whether through reform, revival, conservation, or synthesis, are considered ‘educated’. The educated native reflects elements of what Christopher Bayly calls the ‘Indian liberals’—those who ‘sought representation in Government service, on grand juries and, later on elective bodies. They demanded free press, freedom of assembly and public comment. . . . Liberals emphasized education, particularly women's education.’Footnote 52 And yet they ‘were indeed quite often morally or physically coercive towards, and “disciplining” of, harmless popular practices, women, the poor and minority groups. . . . [They were] often complicit with caste privilege, regional chauvinism or religious communalism. Some liberals hypocritically claimed their modernity, while easily capitulating to archaic social practices.’Footnote 53 As Bayly points out, however, ‘it is intellectually shallow’ to consider their engagement with the Empire as a matter of ‘simple greed, fear or mere imitation’.Footnote 54 The distinction between the ordinary Indian mind and the educated natives, therefore, was not intended as normative. Furthermore, the ordinary Indian mind encompassed the educated native. The educated native is able to immediately access and work within the ‘non-modern’ modes of knowing and learning. The educated native is the ordinary Indian mind in engagement with Western modes of knowing.
Key to understanding the trajectory of Saraswatichandra and its influence is an appreciation of the shifts in its audience. As discussed in the following sections, the first three volumes galvanized the ordinary Indian mind (and so also the educated native qua ordinary Indian mind) to participate in an extended deliberative realm. The fourth volume, on the other hand, occasioned an exclusion of the ordinary Indian mind with the introduction of a new form of instruction.
Subjects of education, or why educating the Indians was not easy
Our education has done far less for Indian culture than for the material and political progress of India. She looks to our schools and colleges for equipment in the struggle for existence: for the secret of happy living, vivendi causae, she looks elsewhere.
Arthur Mayhew, The Education of India Footnote 55
. . . our object to raise the character of the people by education and not by their purses is still far distant.
General Report on Public Instruction Footnote 56
A significant, though no doubt inconclusive, outcome of the great Indian education debate was the introduction of Western education to India.Footnote 57 Several scholars argue that in the century-long battle between the Anglicists and Orientalists,Footnote 58 the Anglicists were victorious. Events such as the infamous Minute by Macaulay in 1835Footnote 59 and the setting up of three universities in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta in 1857 are marked as evidence of this victory and, consequently, of the triumph of Western knowledge and English education over Indian learning traditions. In The Great Indian Education Debate, Lynn Zastoupil and Martin Moir have refuted this claim. They point out not only that Macaulay was not the last word on education policy in India,Footnote 60 but also that the setting up of the three universities was no indication of English education being involuntarily stuffed down the throats of the natives.Footnote 61 While it can be argued that the Indian elite colluded with the Anglicists to bring Western education to India, for the large part, the Indian elite sought this collaboration for reasons that were more pragmatic and mundane than love of a certain form or mode of knowledge. Western education was welcomed in the hope that it would bring with it a sense of social equity, eradication of caste and superstition, reduction in poverty, and, most importantly, employment opportunities in the bureaucracy. It is no surprise, then, that one finds throughout the nineteenth century a constant complaint from reformers and educators, both English and Indian, that the Indian student was using Western education instrumentally to get ahead.Footnote 62
The status of indigenous traditions of learning after the arrival of Western approaches to education is particularly relevant to this article. For scholars such as Zastoupil and Moir, ‘native learning’ survived the onslaught of the Anglicists and continued to thrive under the patronage of the Orientalists in spaces such as Sanskrit colleges and Madrassas. What the Orientalists regard as native learning or indigenous traditions may be worth inquiring into. While the Orientalists and the Anglicists differed greatly in their view of the kind of education that was appropriate or preferable for India, there was no disparity in their basic conception of instruction. The Orientalists sought to present (mostly classical) ‘native texts’ as the appropriate subject of education, whereas the Anglicists chose to highlight the superiority of Western texts. For Govardhanram and his contemporaries, both these sets of ‘educational material’ fit into a system of modern Western education, which, though greatly diverse and differentiated, relied on an identifiable structure for the transmission of knowledge. By adhering to a progressive and universalistic structure, this mode of learning allowed various elements to be organized into an ‘educational system’. In contrast, the varied configurations of learning, loosely grouped together as ‘indigenous education’, were less easily organized into a system. As Sanjay Seth argues in his Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India, one cannot speak of the multiple Indian traditions of learning as constituting an educational system at all.
[I]n India, knowledge was always in the plural, always took the form of so many knowledges and practices: esoteric and restricted knowledges accessible to only some social group, ‘practical’ and widely available knowledges, varying according to caste and region and religion, and none of all this organised as an ‘educational system’.Footnote 63
Seth also alerts us to the fact that indigenous traditions of learning were not replaced by Western education, but that they continued to mould the way in which Western knowledge was received.Footnote 64 He further argues that indigenous learning practices cannot be seen as merely amounting to another form of learning, and should instead be thought of as constituting a distinct mode of being. In other words, the Western education system and indigenous learning traditions seek to organize life in completely different ways. As a consequence, there was no overt conflict between Indian traditions of learning and the Western education system: they could exist simultaneously since they were not oriented to the same functions, and did not occupy the same domain.
Perhaps more acutely than any of his contemporaries, Govardhanram recognized that the domain of education or the ‘education system’—no matter whether the subject of its study was Shakespeare or Kalidasa—could only refer to the modes, practices, and languages of learning that came from ‘the other civilization’. While he was ambivalent about whether he wanted to adopt this system wholeheartedly and remained undecided about what it had to offer, he began writing Saraswatichandra from within modes of learning and instructing that were different from the system that was rapidly being put in place. Understanding this difference allows us to see why the ordinary Indian mind—to which the early volumes of Saraswatichandra are primarily addressed—is not the antithesis of the class of the educated natives. Rather, this synecdoche refers to the entire class of people who operate within the loose structures of indigenous learning.
Both Seth, in setting up the argument, and Govardhanram, in playing it out, frame that which exceeds the liberal modern structures and institutions of education in terms of indigeneity. In invoking this indigeneity, they however differ radically from the Orientalists, who too were concerned with native learning. For the Orientalists, questions of indigenous education were deeply tied to those of identity—an identity located in its pure form in the classical past, to be mined from under the debris of contemporary degeneration. With Seth and Govardhanram, the category of ‘indigenous knowledges’ opens up rich and wide deliberative spaces. Though their enunciation relies primarily on Indian experiences, practices, and forms of learning and being in order to sketch out the elusive ‘other’ of Western liberal education, it would be more productive to read their understanding of these other configurations of learning as unencumbered by an Indianness or Indian identity. That is to say that while knowledge practices in India were unlike those that Western liberal education structured, these modes of knowing and being were simply those that existed outside of it.
The subject of instruction, or what did Govardhanram want to teach?
The ordinary Indian mind is thus the principal subject of instruction not because it is uneducated, but because it is only the ordinary Indian mind that would be able to operate within the registers of instruction that Govardhanram was seeking to put in place in the early volumes of Saraswatichandra. It is not obvious, however, what Govardhanram intended the content of instruction to be. One reading of Saraswatichandra would be to evaluate the text as Govardhanram's dramaticFootnote 65 mouthpiece. The character Saraswatichandra was created by Govardhanram in his own image, and his actions and deliberations can be read as a playing out of the author's own intentions and thoughts. This would suggest that a careful reading of Saraswatichandra in conjunction with Govardhanram's notes, letters, and interactions with family and peers would allow us to infer what he wanted his countrymen to learn. After all, in the age-old debate between philosophy and literature, played out in the Western tradition from Plato and Aristotle onwards, the argument of the apologist for literature is that literature allows for philosophical material to be presented in an entertaining form—a sugar-coated pill. There are two reasons why it is difficult to accept the proposition that Saraswatichandra was this kind of sugar-coated pill. The first has to do with the difficulty, mentioned earlier, in pinning down Govardhanram's own point of view. On a range of issues, including widow remarriage, the joint family, and the value of Western forms of governance, one does not know where Govardhanram stands. In fact, Govardhanram appears to have found the idea of having a definite opinion on these matters vulgar. He complains in his Scrap Book:
Mr. Keshavlal Ghodi says I am bound to form some opinion of mine on the Consent Age Bill; Mr. Kale said I ought to have joined its supporters, unless I was an opponent . . . Mr. Keshavlal Ghodi thinks everybody must form temporary opinions on the topics of the day as a matter of duty . . . As regards the nature of my opinion in this matter, I have no time or desire to form or draw up any whole opinion.Footnote 66
If the author had no concrete agenda, one may safely assume that the book was not written to teach it. The second reason lies in Govardhanram's view of his readership. Though it may appear from his own comments that Govardhanram was implying that his audience was too naïve or stupid to engage in theoretic or philosophic deliberations and thus required sugar-coating (‘. . . the reading class in Gujarat were, for various reasons, difficult to reach through abstruse or discursive matter . . .’), he created an extremely erudite and difficult novel to read, which is one reason why Gujarati literary histories cite Saraswatichandra as a good example of the literature of the pandit yug.Footnote 67
How to instruct, or learning from exemplary actions
The content of the instruction provided by Saraswatichandra is inextricably intertwined with the mode of instruction it utilizes. The text creates a complex world of statecraft, domestic affairs, love, and conflict. It offers a picture of contemporary society (the real), as well as a portrayal of the counterfactual (the ideal). However, not everything in the real world is portrayed as undesirable, and not everything in the world of the ideal is desirable. It is not obvious, therefore, how the novel is meant to provide instruction that would raise people ‘to be higher and stronger than they are’.Footnote 68
The early volumes of Saraswatichandra present a wide range of characters from a variety of walks of life, and of various temperaments and moral fibres. These volumes also present a gamut of actions. Some actions are portrayed as heroic and others as cowardly; some are painted as pragmatic, some as foolish; some are important and others are inconsequential; there are inspiring actions, but also insipid or commonplace ones. These characters and their actions are displayed on a literary stage to form the basis of deliberation and reflection by the reader. Part of a fictive world, the truth or falsity of these actions are not in question, the novel makes no claims to be a historical novel or one based on true events. The normative value of the actions depicted in this world of Saraswatichandra is indeterminate: very often, the same sets of actions, performed by the same characters, appear appropriate in one context but inappropriate in another. Also, the value of the actions does not rely solely on the perceived moral standing of the characters that perform it: good characters often do foolish things and deceitful characters often present acts of valour and integrity. Good and bad characters are not distinguished as such by a stark difference in the kinds of actions they perform. Often a character the reader intuitively recognizes as desirable is very similar to the one he or she dismisses as a rogue. For example, in the first volume Buddhidhan captures the reader's affection and Shathrai is rendered the villain. Shathrai's actions are manipulative, petty, and largely directed towards personal gain. Buddhidhan, too, is manipulative and one could argue that, in the final analysis, his actions, too, are motivated by personal gain. However, his acts of cunning seem necessary to rescue the native state from the hands of Shathrai. Not only do these actions not offer conclusive moral solutions, but they also offer merely contingent solutions, the rightness or appropriateness of which depends on the context.
Undoubtedly, these actions also appear to offer different justifications and lessons to different readers. Saraswatichandra and Pramaddhan represent completely different sets of values and perform very different sets of actions. Saraswatichandra, as his name suggests, strives to achieve knowledge and light, and Pramaddhan indulges in the accumulation of wealth. We might expect Pramaddhan to be seen as a villain, since he represents in some sense the very opposite of what Saraswatichandra, the main protagonist, appears to stand for. But this is not the case. Several readers wrote to Govardhanram, complaining that he was unfair in his characterization of Pramaddhan.
In this way, two similar sets of actions by similarly flawed characters, similarly motivated, nevertheless evoke very different responses from the readers. More importantly, they open up a forum for reflection, both public and private, on the nature of action itself. The instruction made available in Saraswatichandra is the learning possible through stories. As a story without morals, Saraswatichandra instructs through a range of possible exemplary actions that become tools for deliberation.
Novel as forum, or the way Saraswatichandra worked
Despite its difficult style and fine literary flourishes, the text, self-professedly an instruction manual, was eminently accessible to the people. Even those who could not read or write discussed the story, its characters, and actions within the text.Footnote 69 These discussions were very often public and led to raging public fights. Letters to the author, the publisher, and newspapers poured in. Some expressed agreement or disagreement, some talked of their experience of the novel, and others shared their experiments with particular actions described in the novel.
One reader wrote a novel, Pramaddhan Ni Prabhuta (The Greatness/Significance of Pramaddhan), to make his case that Pramaddhan should be appreciated better than he is in the main novel.Footnote 70 This happened with several characters; readers responded to events and actions in the novel and demanded a different solution, or a revaluation of the apparent solution offered. They discussed and quoted the characters and their actions in light of their own actions and situations. They imitated some actions and rejected others. When these experiments did not work in their own lives, they returned to the novel to reevaluate and consider a different set of actions.Footnote 71
Several young lovers identified with Saraswatichandra and Kumud Sundari.Footnote 72 Married women empathized with Gunsundari. They discussed their own lives and possible choices, but through the lives of the characters. Even those who did not share in the plight of these characters joined in to reflect on their actions. Often these reflections allowed for an expression of their personal situation and, in the act of distancing themselves from their current situation and objectifying it in the characters of the novel, the trauma of acting alone with recourse to only one's own life experiences was avoided. The world of Saraswatichandra offered the wisdom and experiences of several lives.
The book also created a platform for public intellectuals, reformers, and other literary figures to share their views on contemporary concerns.Footnote 73 It did so, however, without either the urgency of immediate action, or the compromise of pragmatic politics. Dayaram Gidumal, a Sindhi reformer, exchanged several letters with Govardhanram. The resolution of the novel was unacceptable to him, since the widow, Kumud, remains unmarried, while Saraswatichandra is married to the sister of the woman he loves; and in the spirit of reform, he penned his opinions to Govardhanram:
I tried to put my self in the position of the hero and I felt sure I would have never accepted a second sacrifice on the part of my loved one in order to quiet my own remorse for a wrong I have done her at first. I felt if I had wedded Kumud, in my heart of hearts, in my very soul, I could have never wedded Kusum at Kumud's bidding.Footnote 74
Learning from the book was not restricted to its audience. Govardhanram often evaluated his own actions through the characters of his novels. In an entry in his Scrap Book, he writes of his daughter's marriage:
Curious coincidence! Jayanti betrothed on 25th, and I get the first proof of the second part of my novel on the 26th. The betrothal pinches me, and I compare myself to Vidyachatur, who accepting in haste a woman's arguments, betrothed Kumud to Pramaddhan, and dropped all talk of Saraswatichandra.Footnote 75
The serialized publication of the text ensured that the story progressed in step with the responses of its audience. As the second and third volumes were published, vox populi on the fate of the characters, their lives and actions began to be formed. Govardhanram's peers too, both reformers and men of letters, did not conceal their opinions on the published volumes and generously offered recommendations. Whether Govardhanram took into account all these voices, or even some of them, we have no clear way of knowing, but we can say with conviction that he was aware of the way in which his instruction manual was working, long before the whole novel was completed.Footnote 76
To read Saraswatichandra is thus to share the world of its readers, its fans, and its critics. And in that moment Saraswatichandra is not just a novel, a private, secular, printed, circulated piece of fiction, but a text more rooted in the lived experiences of the author and its readers. It operates at several levels and many planes of existence and is almost epic in proportion.Footnote 77 It comprises as much improvisation based on public opinion, as it is itself an influence on public opinion.
An encounter with the ‘other’ education, or more clues to the mystery of the fourth volume
This mode of instruction served the first three volumes of the text well. All sections of the audience had responded well to Govardhanram's attempts to initiate a learning process by showing a world of exemplary actions. In the final volume, however, he felt the need to focus on a direct engagement with the educated natives—‘Macaulay's bastards’ as they began to be called. It had only been a few decades since Macaulay pronounced his Minute on Education, and yet his distrust and suspicion of Indian knowledge systems had taken root. Macaulay not only found native knowledge far inferior to English education, he did not even consider it knowledge (‘medical doctrines which would disgrace an English farrier—Astronomy, which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding-school’).Footnote 78 As a man of his times, a modernist, a reformer, a dabbler in tradition, a university graduate, a lawyer, and an inspiration for many young educated menFootnote 79 brimming with enthusiasm for the education and emancipation of their fellow countrymen, Govardhanram anticipated what Lord Curzon was going to say to young graduates and future educators in 1902:
What you have to do is not stuff the mind of your pupil with the mere thoughts of others, excellent as they may be, but to teach him to use his own. One correct generalisation drawn with his own brain is worth a library full of second hand knowledge.Footnote 80
The desire to create men that were ‘higher and stronger . . . who [would] be better able to look after and manage for themselves than the present hapless generation’Footnote 81 of his countrymen compelled Govardhanram to consider seriously the demands of this new education. After having presented a lively and varied world of intrigue, love, friendship, loyalty, dharma, and adharma in the initial volumes, Govardhanram sought to translate, explain, and codify this world in the fourth volume.
The traditions, objects, and practices that Govardhanram had intuitively turned to for knowledge and pedagogy appeared inadequate, or at the very least insufficient, in light of the new system. Govardhanram even began to doubt that he understood his own culture and people. Having already accepted that ‘the best stuff even on our Subjects are spoken by Englishmen, and not by natives’,Footnote 82 Govardhanram delved into the Western classics and ancient Indian texts in search of a better understanding of his own people. In the spirit of the new education, he charted out his study plan:
I must study customs, social matters, political life, variable temperatures, tempers, and idiosyncrasies of castes and localities, first in Gujarat and then throughout India. These things also to be studied through rituals and ceremonials, caste-practices and instincts and traditions and changes.Footnote 83
He, like his protagonist Saraswatichandra, intuitively understood the processes of learning and teaching, for he demonstrated extraordinary skill in creating a site conducive to widespread learning. And yet, when asked what he thought was being learnt and taught through this method, Govardhanram fumbled, and turned instead to the lexicon of the new education. And drew ‘generalizations’.
The desire to re-present, or why Kumud Sundari does what she does
We have in previous sections attempted to understand the ways in which Saraswatichandra, as an instruction manual, ‘worked’ on the people. We turn now to a shift in the novel's strategy, to an attempt to re-present this knowledge practice, in the language of the modern, to an audience coming from a very different kind of tradition from the one the language originates in. Saraswatichandra, as a representative of the educated natives, takes on the role of a mediator between these two kinds of knowledge systems.
Dipesh Chakrabarty, in his Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, highlights a distinction between two types of histories: one set of histories, which he calls History 1, comprises abstract and universal categories (for example, ‘abstract labour’ in the history of capital, which is Chakrabarty's focus); and another set, History 2, that tells the stories of those elements of a culture that defy codification and cannot be translated across cultures via intermediate abstract categories.Footnote 84 In the context of Saraswatichandra, the learning made possible by the first three volumes may be seen as operating at the register of History 2, and Govardhanram's attempt to draw generalizations from this learning may be understood in terms of the attempt to codify it. It is the difficulties involved in such an exercise that can be seen to produce the disjuncture precipitated by Govardhanram's fourth volume. Further, the result of this effort is a transmogrification of the ‘non-modern’ into something unintelligible to itself.
In the interest of space, we explore this through the attempt to represent one character, Kumud Sundari. Kumud may be identified as an ideal and desirable representative of Indian tradition. Her actions, for the most part, are exemplary. But it is not easy to articulate what they exemplify. Kumud rarely explains or even reasons out her actions.Footnote 85 She performs her role as a daughter, wife, and lover, but at no point in the novel does she offer an explanation of what she does or why, except perhaps to say that it is her duty. It appears that to be able to understand what Kumud does, a ‘re-presentation’ of her actions must be undertaken. A translation of her actions into a comprehensible body of ideas now becomes absolutely essential. The reader would have to take on the task of the theorist and extract from Kumud's performance her attitude and response to a social situation, her intentions and motivations for action, and her moral considerations—in short, a theory to explain Kumud Sundari. Within the novel, Saraswatichandra attempts this task. As lover and admirer of Kumud, he looks to her as a repository of ‘right actions’. He dives in to identify these right actions and understand Kumud's ‘world-view’—or, rather, the world-view of the culture within which her actions can be understood as right actions. In order to understand her actions, it becomes necessary for Saraswatichandra to pull out of her actions a code to explain her functioning, to give reasons for her behaviour. When in conversation with Kumud, Saraswatichandra tries very hard to characterize her, sometimes getting exasperated by her silences and her attempts at explanation, which are often in the form of pithy sayings and proverbs. Towards the end of the fourth volume, Saraswatichandra and Kumud Sundari find themselves alone with each other in an isolated cave. A part of their conversation reads as follows:
Saraswatichandra: Come sit here near me on this bench—I will explain why desire Footnote 86 too can have its uses.
Kumud Sundari: No I am fine sitting on the ground. It is best to keep fire away from the butter.
Saraswatichandra: That is also true and in bringing it to my notice you have pointed me to the root of your freedom from desires. Kumud Sundari! You have indeed understood the idea of destroying desires, and along with the understanding you also lend the strength to do so.Footnote 87
Following this conversation, Saraswatichandra goes on to explain to Kumud how her actions are, as a matter of fact, an attempt to destroy physical desires. He then goes on to elaborate why, nevertheless, there is some reason for, and value to, the existence of physical desires. Several things are happening here. Kumud's action of not wanting to sit close to a man she loves, in seclusion, on a stormy night, in a cave, may just be an action signifying nothing but the action in itself. In representing it, Saraswatichandra makes it an ethical code, and attributes it to Kumud's character. She now becomes for him someone who believes in the destruction of physical desires, even though the action of a woman not wanting to indulge in physical proximity with her former lover need not present a glimpse into any philosophy, let alone one advocating the destruction of desire. Their conversations typically progress in this manner throughout the volume, with Saraswatichandra paraphrasing Kumud's actions or pithy sayings. In his representation of her, Kumud's uncomplicated, and sometimes fairly ritualistic and routine, actions appear either as caricatures or as significant pointers to a deep philosophy—a philosophy to which she herself has no access.
Moreover, in reading her actions as an indicator of her ‘essence’ or ‘essential nature’, Saraswatichandra keeps getting entangled in a loop. As soon as he is able to extract one essential characteristic, Kumud defies the norm that is supposed to govern her behaviour and acts in a completely contrary manner. For instance, she does not speak of freedom from physical desires to her sister, Kusum Sundari, whom she thinks should marry Saraswatichandra. In fact to Kusum, who wants to live her life independently, Kumud speaks of the need for a companion and of the desire for the smaller pleasures of everyday living, which she will indeed experience but will not be able to fulfil in a solitary or independent life. When asked by a friend about her relationship with Saraswatichandra, however, she explains to her the duties of a married woman.
Kumud: Sister, the dharma of duty towards one's husband is similar from all avenues, and I have decided not to stray away from that.
Bansari: Malati had also taken a decision, which in that instance was also counted as dharmika . . .
Kumud: Malati did not have questions like mine. On the one hand was the approval of her parents and on the other was her beloved—she only had to decide which of the two she wanted to please. Like me, she did not have the wicked yearning to break away from the bonds of her husband. I have decided that I want to stay away from such a yearning.Footnote 88
On reading a conversation such as this, it is possible to characterize Kumud as part of a dogmatic and resistant old tradition. Again, on finding out about her husband's death, when Kumud weeps uncontrollably, Saraswatichandra cannot understand her remorse or sorrow. She has, after all, left her husband's home. She has defied her community and escaped to join the saadhvis. Why now does she want to go back to fulfilling her dharma as a widow?
Kumud! If the world sees you as a monument of rebellion, what is their fault in it? In the same heart in which you feel such affection for me, you also feel sorrow for Pramaddhan. It is this characteristic that is caricatured as ‘women's nature’. . . .Footnote 89
Quoting Alexander Pope, he then writes: ‘Woman's at best a contradiction still!’Footnote 90
It may seem, to Saraswatichandra and to the modern critic, that Kumud's essential characteristic is only inconsistency! This, however, does not seem adequate as an explanation. Kumud cannot be both dogmatic and inconsistent. She cannot embody the voice of a resilient tradition and also be rendered a new woman who makes her own choices.Footnote 91 It is important for us to understand why Kumud Sundari's choices are so problematic. Kumud does not have any reasons for her choices; this is not to say that she is inarticulate, but even in her long speeches and monologues there appears to be little justification of her actions. The absence of justification is not just a lack of rational explanation—there is not even an articulation of the ‘beliefs’ behind her actions.
It is hard to represent what it is that Kumud Sundari, as an ideal, is supposed to be teaching the people; it is very difficult to extract a lesson. Any attempt at articulating or representing her actions only results in a codification of them. And yet her character and her actions are immediately instructive to the people discussing the novel. How do we deal with this paradox? A possible way to characterize Kumud Sundari is as someone who is a consistent actor within a particular culture, the set of ideas of which Saraswatichandra is unable to articulate. It is only in trying to represent her actions in a certain manner that he tends to either caricature them or do violence to them. In enclosing them within the framework of a codified discourse the actions appear either unintelligible or evasive.
Instruction and codification, or the shift from showing to telling
India has reason to pause and note whether the sacrifice of its own old views and modes of life in favour of [those of] their counterparts in Europe commands a balance on the credit or the debit side.
Govardhanram Tripathi, Scrap Book Footnote 92
Govardhanram gave up the study and practice of law in pursuit of an understanding of his contemporary society. After a brief flirtation early in his intellectual career, he abandoned the Reformist movement when he recognized that neither he nor his fellow Reformers had an adequate understanding, either of the traditional institutions of the society that they were trying to reform, or the new institutions that they desired to replace them with. Rather than investigate the language of and the impulse to reform, Govardhanram created Saraswatichandra in the hope of instructing his people towards the creation of a better community.
The stark pattern the novel evidences is a disconnect between the first three volumes and the fourth, in form, content, and reception. The present article has framed this disjuncture in terms of the shifts in the audience of the novel from the ordinary Indian mind, which operated within the registers of ‘non-modern’ ways of knowing and learning, to the educated native, that section of the ordinary Indian mind that sought to engage with Western knowledge. The early stages of this instruction manual were intelligible and the first three volumes of the novel facilitated learning through the imitation and internalization of characters and discussion over the plot and its significance for the lives of the audience. Increasingly, as the novel progressed, Govardhanram began to address his fellow educated natives. The impulse to represent and explain, perhaps built into the textual form that he chose, gained momentum as the text advanced. As the novel drew to a close—and some might say even after it really did—he felt the need to draw out and articulate the lessons of the project.
This proved extremely elusive. For example, Kumud Sundari, an embodiment of the ordinary Indian mind, proved a very difficult subject to represent. Though she herself possessed the tools for reflection and deliberation, she did not provide any characterization of her own actions. Furthermore, even Saraswatichandra was unable to represent her, even though he did try to. Kumud never negated his explanations of her actions, and she often agreed with his interpretations of her nature. It is quite evident, however, that while Saraswatichandra had not been able to arrive at any comprehensive understanding of Kumud, Kumud herself was oblivious to the impulse to explain her actions. Moreover, the fourth volume did not ‘work’ with the audience and continues to be ignored in the popular imagination.
Without leaning on a deep indigeneity, or indeed cultural relativism, it is possible to identify the source of the tension between what we have been calling ‘non-modern’ ways of learning and the modern system of education. The difficulties experienced in the attempt to explain and abstract the ‘views and modes of life’ of a people reflect the problems involved in the sublation of these forms of knowledge into universalizable theories, no matter how carefully one attends to such a project.Footnote 93 Further, it has been argued here, such an attempt renders a culture inaccessible to itself. The ordinary Indian mind—as represented by the characters of and the interlocutors on the first three volumes of the novel, both educated and uneducated—appears to operate within a culture that has no world-view. Enriched by philosophical deliberations, it appears, at the same time, superficial.Footnote 94 Post-colonial scholarship has provided important insights into the ways in which the ‘non-modern’ interrupts universal narratives, logics, and theories by frustrating attempts at generalization and abstraction. It is crucial to also attend to the ways in which the attempt to universalize distorts the ‘non-modern’ itself.Footnote 95 This article provides evidence to suggest that attempts to codify the ordinary Indian mind and translate its deliberations using the modern lexicon result in making them incomprehensible to itself. What route may one take to engage and speak to the ordinary Indian mind? How might one situate its concerns within the ever-pervasive domain of universalist and abstract categories? Is such a task even possible? In highlighting the continued and lively presence of worlds such as those of Saraswatichandra and its audience, this article remains hopeful of the possibility of fulfilling such a project.
