The Master and the Eternal City

Though the various connotations of the title must also have existed for contemporary readers, it was surely its most apparent meaning, with its obvious allusion to social reform, the puritanical rather than that which suggested the lurid, which accounted for the initial appeal of the novel. It was the era of high nationalism; Hindi was seeking to set up its own respectable literary canon; and if nation, woman, social reform, and the reordering of the city landscape could be brought together thus educatively, the novel could do none other than win public approval. But the novel’s enduring popularity may have had more to do with the interplay of the various meanings, and of voices other than the calm, analytical, auctorial, which make possible more than one reading of how seva and sadan came variously to be conjoined but also queried.

In addition to its vividly dramatic dialogues, its deep psychological insight into persons and processes, the narrative is also girded at all times by a keen sense of social history. It registers crucial societal transitions, even as they take place, from known patterns of life to new, untried ones. One transition is of that from the country to the city; many of the central characters undertake or undergo this traumatic passage. After her marriage, Suman is transported from her well-to-do home in a rural district to the stench of the narrow lanes in the inner city and the claustrophobia of the small dark rooms in which she houses with her elderly husband. Sadan, in running away from his landowning village home, finds himself filled with fear and foreboding as he dashes across field and wood to catch his night train to Benares. Two miles outside the village there is a pipal tree, its dense foliage filled with ghosts which appear in all shapes and forms to hinder the wary traveller. Sadan freezes into inaction and can cross its dark presence only when he hits upon the idea of singing verses from Tulsidas’ Ramayan at the top of his lungs to fend off the evil spirits which lurk there.

The city itself is changing rapidly. In the second decade of the new century, it continues to be dominated by the old time rais or gentry, the great landowners of the district residing in their town homes, and the equally powerful merchant aristocracy with its widely spread kinship networks. But alongside the gentry, the colonial government has allotted some public space to the new professionals whom it has nominated to the municipal board, which has newly been granted some autonomy in civic government. The rhetoric of social reform, as yet thinly represented by these new professionals, is beginning to gain ground and provide unexpected twists of matters long considered settled. But even social reform is a double-edged sword, which can be used to further various ends, especially when it is directed at women. For, at the centre of the novel, as also of Benares, is yet another crucial transition; the courtesans of the city are no longer to be allowed to practice their art publicly. The social reformers have taken up the cause of fallen women. This touches the heart of the relationship Suman and Sadan could have with each other. Suman’s private problems become linked to the city’s problems and its changing face. Private and public are thus inextricably intertwined.

Excerpted with permission from OUP