From Indianness to Humanness: Raja Rao and the Politics of Truth

Raja Rao is not merely a metaphysical writer, as many scholars of the first Commonwealth generation depict him, but rather a much more complex one whose literary dimensions transcend the commonplace essentializing ‘Hinduness’ conveyed by many critics over three decades. I offer instead an amplification of Rao’s idea of India by framing his novels in a cross-cultural space which evolves during the course of his entire oeuvre on both philosophical and political levels. This dynamic ambivalence has its foremost predecessor in Mahatma Gandhi’s politico-spiritual legacy, Satyagraha (‘the force of Truth’) which becomes the centripetal and cohesive force of Raja Rao’s fiction.