Summary
Chapter 12
The rains have come, and people pray for a fine harvest. Priest Rangappa gathers at the temple with the villagers and bathes and adorns the goddess, and the people yoke their ploughs to the bulls. They are happy to see Range Gowda, whom they still consider Patel. Everyone longs for Kenchamma the goddess to show her face, and cry for her to rain down her blessings. The bulls run and splash the rice, tossing flowers from their flanks, and rush past Skeffington and Bhatta’s fields.
They will plow, manure, and sow. They want a soft rain, then dry weather, then a soft rain. They believe Moorthy will come when the winds rise. Everyone wants to prepare offerings and libations and spin more, and anxiously ask Rangamma what day he is coming. She thinks Saturday or Tuesday, and they see in the paper that he is finally out and will be coming soon. Sankar organizes a huge meeting to receive him before he heads to the village.
Venkamma hears of this and goes to Rangappa to organize her daughter’s nuptial day on the very same day they think Moorthy will be coming—Tuesday. The women are frustrated, but know that they cannot ignore another woman’s daughter being married, as they have their own daughters, so they grudgingly agree to go.
On Tuesday, they think Moorthy will come on the blue bus, and the Pariahs and Range Gowda and anyone else who does not have to go to Venkamma’s wait anxiously for him. They imagine what Moorthy’s journey to them will look like, but time passes and he does not appear.
Later in the day, they hear Seenu calling to them, and rush to Rangamma’s house where a coterie of policemen have surrounded it. Seenu tells them that Moorthy was taken off the bus and brought here. The people are distressed, but Rangamma comes out and tells them that for Moorthy’s sake they should disperse. They agree, but watch the policemen talk to Rangamma, Ratna, and Seenu.
At midnight, the policemen leave. They notice that there is a second Bade Khan, a younger one, who also takes a Pariah woman and lives at the Skeffington Coffee Estate.
In the morning, they see Moorthy by the river and think he looks “as ever” (117).
Chapter 13
Moorthy explains that it is the time to take action. They must also pray for the Mahatma, who is on a long pilgrimage to the Dandi beach to manufacture salt. While this is happening, they must get strong and put aside the polarities of the Brahmin and the Pariah. They are all one, and they must be united. They wonder what is in this Moorthy, whom they knew as a child but now is something much more.
Moorthy keeps them updated on the Mahatma’s journey, and the thousands who gather along the road, of the Patels who resigned their jobs, of the hopes that the British will leave India and they will be free. They wonder if something will happen when the people reach the sea.
Soon an evening comes when they know the next day the Mahatma will end his journey and manufacture salt. They cannot sleep, and in the morning they go to the river and bathe like the Mahatma would be doing. Everyone gathers, but Priest Rangappa asks them quizzically what they are doing, and they know Bhatta has gotten to him.
The papers tell them the next day that Mahatma took a handful of salt after his bathing and everyone went home and prepared it and distributed it. The police are not happy with this and start to drag men to prison and spit on them. They would do more if there weren't so many white men among the watchers of the pilgrimage. Now every day men go to the sea and make salt, and are put into jail, and more villages send their people because “the call of the Mahatma had sung in their hearts, and they were for the Mahatma and not for the Government” (121).
They ask Moorthy when they will march like the Mahatma and he replies when he gets the order from the Karwar Committee. Rangamma suggests to the women that they practice their drills. They are enthused about this, and become more and more used to it. They imagine being hit, falling over, and try to remain brave and harmonious.
Chapter 14
One morning, Seenu tells them the Mahatma has been arrested. They see Range Gowda and Moorthy and Rangamma and Pariah Rachanna at the temple, with Moorthy “all speech and Range Gowda all gestures” (124) and they wonder what is being decided. Seenu explains that next week there will be a "Don’t Touch the Government" campaign and today they will fast, the Congress panchayat will meet, and in the evening there will be bhajan.
Nanjamma asks Vasudev if the Skeffington people will join, and he says they are with them, but there are not many. Bicycles pour through the streets carrying orders to the panchayat.
Later everyone gathers at the temple, and feels as if they are of one caste. Moorthy finally comes before them and tells them the time has come to begin the campaign. They will not pay taxes and they are to picket the toddy booths, for “toddy trees are Government trees, and toddy booths are there to exploit the poor and the unhappy” (125). They will establish a parallel government and their first action is to appoint Range Gowda as Patel again. Their hearts swell. He continues that they are not fighting the white man or the white man’s slaves (the police and revenue officials), but the “demonic corruption that has entered their hearts, and the purer we are the greater will be our victory, for the victory we seek is the victory of the heart” (125). He counsels them to “send out love where there is hatred” (126). He extols the merits of nonviolence and truth and love, claiming that it will lead to the harmony of the world.
Everyone agrees with him, and then he tells them the panchayat has decided Friday the 17th will be the beginning. This is a few days away and in the interim they can pray and purify themselves.
When the day comes, men, women, and children come together with musical instruments and a cart adorned with lotuses in which Moorthy, Range Gowda, Rangamma, and Pariah Rachanna sit, and they march to the village gate. Vasudev brings twenty-three Pariahs from the Estate. There are 139 in total, and they march to Boranna’s toddy grove.
In the distance, they see the red horse of the police inspector and they tremble. Then they see more and more policemen, holding their lathis, and they are worried. The inspector tells them they are forbidden to march to the toddy grove and Moorthy smiles and says he knows. The inspector warns them that the Government will use all the force it possesses to put them down. Moorthy thanks him, and they continue on.
As they move forward, the police surround the men and try to push them back, and when Pariah Ranchanna runs out and tries to climb into one of the tries, the police hit him with the lathi. The people cry out and clap hands and sing and shout, and push forward as one. The police rain their lathis down upon them and more and more people move toward the fence and try to pull it down. Rangamma cries for the women to push forward, and they feel a new force within them. The more they are beaten, the more they are used to it.
Finally, though, the policemen quell their rush, and they huddle together, looking for loved ones. They feel accomplished, knowing they've done something good. The police put them in different vehicles and take them different places to disperse them, and the narrator and others are left in the middle of the jungle at night and fear the wild animals. Rangamma tells them to form a line and they march, singing, trying to calm their nerves. A man with a cart from Ranchapura on the road hears them and offers them food. They ask if he can take them to Kanthapura, and they will pay him, and he agrees and other carts come as well.
People in the village admire them for standing up to the police, and, feeling courageous, the women speak of how they must drive the British out. The people of the village accompany the women back to Kanthapura, keeping them safe and reveling in their bravery.
Chapter 15
The villagers begin a procession on market day, and when someone asks where they are going, Nanjamma says they are going to picket the toddy shops. Moorthy tells her to be quiet, but smiles when an old flower seller, Betel Lakshamma, asks if they are the ones that marched for the Mahatma and defied the police. She asks if they can free her and her people from the revenue collector but Moorthy is a bit cagey, and says they are against all tyrants and they shall see.
The group marches on the Karwar road to the Kenchamma grove, and their hearts start to beat fast as they stand by the grove, spaced apart up the Skeffington road. They had never stepped on that road before, as they always imagined the Sahib standing there and trembled as they went by.
The police are already there. Moorthy approaches the gate and is calm, waiting for the first coolie to come out with his week’s earnings and go to the toddy booth. It begins to rain and the procession worries the coolies will not come out. They hear something coming, but it is the maistri, and Moorthy orders them forward. There is a sense something might happen now, and the wind rises.
The police inspector opens the gates and the coolies come out. They are forlorn and look down at their feet as they walk. They are marched to the Boranna’s toddy booth and Moorthy and the villagers look at them, and also move to the toddy booth. Everyone wonders what Moorthy will do.
Moorthy tells them to squat down before the toddy booth, and they obey and lay down in front of it. The policemen are trying to tighten around the booth and beat the coolies forward, but they will not walk over the people. Boranna comes out and screams at them, and they all begin to chant. Rangamma has them lie down, and the police begin to beat them. Moorthy is hit in the mouth. People scream and cry out, and it is pandemonium but they stay in place as best they can. The police throw pots of water on them, all over them, sometimes up their skirts. They rise up and fall down, refusing to be violent in return.
When it is all over they wake up in a truck, then are released and march home. Some men were taken to jail, but they would not take Moorthy.
In the morning there are new huts and new faces; over thirty of the Godaveri coolies have come to live there. They proclaim that “the army of the Mahatma is an increasing garland” (140).
Chapter 16
Villagers all around the area begin picketing the toddy groves as well, and make songs calling the toddy tree a “crooked tree” (141). Sometimes people come to Kanthapura to fetch one of the villagers to come to their own village and help them, and this makes them all feel good. There are hunger strikes and beatings, and stories circulate of what happens in prison.
But every day the villagers of Kanthapura remain committed to Moorthy and the cause, and picket many toddy shops. They ask Moorthy what is next, and he says in June the tax assessments will bring trouble. They are looking forward to this.
Revenue notices come into their hands day after day and they refuse to pay. A new Patel comes and the policeman and the landlord’s agent, and they all insist they must pay. The people refuse, even when women are beaten in their husband’s steads. A few villagers pay, but most of them do not.
They hide their jewels and valuables, anticipating policemen coming to their homes. None do, but one morning they wake to see all the roads and cattle tracks barricaded. In the afternoon, a beadle shouts loudly that if the revenues are not paid and the laws obeyed, then there will be a punitive tax levied.
In the evening, Moorthy steals from home to home, warning them all that the real fight is now beginning. If the police come to their homes, they should ring the sanctum bell and Moorthy and his men will come as soon as they can.
All night the streets and lanes are empty; it is silent.
Analysis
To begin, it is best to explain what toddy is and why it is so consequential in the text. The sap from a toddy coconut tree, or palm tree, is extremely sweet and, when left to ferment, will turn into a mildly alcoholic drink. In Kanthapura, the coolies are supposed to drink the toddy from the owner’s estate and thus bring him profit beyond what he gets from their labor. The coolies spend much of their daily wages on the drink, and Moorthy and the other members of the panchayat decide to call attention to that exploitation and prevent it from happening. The toddy tree thus remains a potent symbol of imperialist control throughout the latter half of the novel.
Turning to the question of women and their roles in the Gandhism movement addressed in the prior analysis, we will add to it the dimension of how Gandhi himself conceived of the ideal woman and of her role in the new India. In their article on the topic, Anshuman Mondal discusses how Gandhi has several phases in his conception of women, coming to see them as crucial to the nationalist movement only many years after he began his campaign. He extended his definition of courage to include women, seeing them as actors in this struggle but only “without threatening the sanctioned spaces of Hindu patriarchy.” The domestic space was a separate sphere from the public one, but now seen as complementary. Women’s “courage,” then, would take place within the home.
As the 1930s progressed, even though the noble widow was a useful figure, this movement “was never designed to answer women’s social issues” and “its purpose was the very opposite: to idealize ‘woman’ as a ‘sign’ in the respective ideological contests over which vision of India should prevail. In the specific context of communal strife and rising Hindu nationalist militancy, identification with non-aggressive, non-assertive, accommodating and loving feminine principle was designed to restore attention to the kind of nation Gandhi wanted to be.” Overall, then, Gandhi “did not challenge the domestication of female experience nor the fundamental premises of Hindu patriarchy,” and women’s role in the public sphere was “conditional upon service to the nation.”
Another phase is sexuality, and as M.E.P. Ranmuthugala states, “Mahatma Gandhi himself always felt women were asexual.” The heroines in Kanthapura are widows, and Indian societal tradition says they will not engage in sexual acts. They are to renounce worldly pleasures when they are widowed, but still take care of the men in their lives. Gandhi was “constantly surrounded by women, both as followers and as care givers,” and in the novel a host of women “follow Moorthy but… also tend to [his] material needs by providing him food and shelter.”
Rangamma, Ratna, and other women in the text are the apposite examples of the new woman of India, “who differentiated herself from the common woman in terms of her sexuality, virtue, and dedication to the house. She was also learned, thus combining the modern with her traditional upbringing.” Ratna poses a slightly more complicated picture in Kanthapura, deviating slightly from Gandhism’s new woman because she is more independent, more deviant. She thinks for herself and does not fully embrace the conventional behavior of widowhood. She talks back to her elders a bit, wears her hair differently, and runs like a boy. But by the end of the novel, “being involved in the nationalist struggle agrees with her and she becomes more deferential and the widows too accept her.”
