Raja Rao Biography and List of Works

Indian writer, whose novels are deeply rooted in Brahmanism and Hinduism and explore the essence of Indian thought. Rao's semi autobiographical novel, The Serpent and the Rope (1960), is the story of a search for spiritual truth in Europe and India. The work established him as one of the finest Indian stylists writing in English. Rao has exerted as much influence through his teaching as his writing. In all his work he has tried to define India as a concept and not just as a country.

"Writing is my dharma."

In common with the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, Rao has been concerned with language and consciousness. In the foreword to Kanthapura (1938) he admits the difficulties in employing "a language that is not one's own the spirit that is one's own," and conveying "the various shades and omissions of certain thought-movement that looks maltreated in an alien language."

Raja Rao was born Hassan, in the state of Mysore in south India, into a well-known Brahman family. He was educated at Muslim schools. After taking a degree from Madras University, he left India for Europe, where he remained for a decade. Rao studied at the universities of Montpellier and the Sorbonne, doing research in Christian theology and history. In 1931 he married a French academic, Camille Mouly. Later he depicted the breakdown of their marriage in The Serpent and the Rope. For his first stories Rao published in French and English. During 1931-32 he contributed four articles written in Kannada to Jaya Karnataka, an influential journal.

When his marriage disintegrated in 1939, Rao returned to India and began his first period of residence in an ashram. During WW II, he travelled widely in India searching for his spiritual heritage and in 1942 he was active in an underground movement against the British. During these years he edited the literary magazine Tomorrow.

Rao's involvement in the nationalist movement is reflected in his first two books. The novel Kanthapura (1938) was an account of the non-violent resistance against the British seen from the perspective of s small South Indian village. In the style and structure of the Indian vernacular tales, a talkative old woman tells how a village community obtains from daily life, with its millennia-old worship of the local deity, the strength for non-violent resistance to the British Raj. The work was highly praised by E.M. Forster. Rao returned to the theme of Gandhi in the story collection The Cow of the Barricades (1947).

After the war, Rao spent much of his time in France and travelling throughout the world. He visited America in 1950 and later spent more time living in an ashram. In 1965 he married an actress, Kathrine Jones. From 1965 to 1983 Rio lectured on Indian philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin. In 1988 he received the Nested International Prize for Literature.

The Serpent and the Rope was a modern rendering of the Mahabharata legend of Satayavan and Savithri, which also dramatized the relationships between India and the West. As the hero struggles with commitments imposed on him by his Hindu family, his wife becomes a Buddhist and renounces worldly desires. In the book the serpent symbolizes illusion and reality is symbolized by the rope.

Cat and Shakespeare (1965) was a metaphysical comedy that answered philosophical questions posed in the earlier novels. In the book a cat symbolizes the Hindu notion of karma. The hero discovers, in his attempts to receive divine grace, that there is no dichotomy between himself and God. Comrade Kirillov (1976) was written early in Rao's career and was first published in French. It satirized communism as an ideological misunderstanding of man's ultimate aims, and argued that all foreign creeds gradually become Indianized. The Chessmaster and His Moves (1988) is peopled by characters from various cultures seeking their identities. Rao used the metaphor of the chess game to animate philosophical ideas. In the story Sivaram Sastri, an Indian mathematician in Paris, meets Proust, and recounts his love affairs and friendships.

For further reading: Encyclopaedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999, vol. 3); The Novels of Raja Rao by E. Dey (1992); Raja Rao by C.D. Narasimhaiah (1973) - See also: The Truth of it all by V.K. Shashikumar; India Beyond Sorrow by Kathleen Raine

Kanthapura, (1938)
Changing India, (1939)
The Cow of the Barricades, and Other Stories, (1947)
Whither India, (1948)
The Serpent and the Rope, (1960)
The Cat and Shakespeare, (1965)
Comrade Kirilov, (1976)
The Policeman and the Rose, (1978)
The Chess master and His Moves, (1988)
On the Ganga Ghat, (1993)
The Great Indian Way, (1998)