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Writing Fiction, Living History: Kanhaiyalal Munshi's historical trilogy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2013

SHVETAL VYAS PARE
SHVETAL VYAS PARE*
Affiliation:
University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia5000 Email: shvetal.vyas@unisa.edu.au
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Abstract

Kanhaiyalal Munshi was a pre-eminent Gujarati author, freedom fighter and politician. A member of the Indian National Congress and a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, he is credited with having developed and popularized the concept of Gujarat ni asmita, or Gujarati self-consciousness. This paper focusses on a trilogy of Munshi's historical fiction namely Patan Ni Prabhuta (The Glory of Patan) (1916), Gujarat No Nath (The Master of Gujarat) (1917–1918) and Rajadhiraj (The King of Kings) (1922). This paper offers a close reading of these texts, to argue that the trilogy offers the possibility of opening up notions of Gujarati identity, and of showing its constructed nature. Munshi's engagement with the ideas of politics, heroism and nation-building reflects the concerns of a movement that is trying to understand both itself and the nation that it is in the process of imagining. Highlighting the subversion of the texts is an attempt to stretch the boundaries of Gujarati identity, and think differently about the meaning of being Gujarati.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , May 2014 , pp. 596 - 616
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Professor Salman (Bobby) Sayyid, Dr Sarvar Sherrychand, Professor Gautam Chakravarty, Professor Elspeth Probyn, my mother and Vipul for their intellectual, emotional and logistical support during the writing of this paper.

References

1 Of the three novels, only The Master of Gujarat is currently available in English, translated by N. D. Jotwani, and in this paper I have used his title and quotes from his translation. Translations from the other novels and from Munshi's autobiographies are mine.

2 Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Kanhaiyalal Munshi were all Gujarati lawyers.

3 Munshi, Kanhaiyalal, Adadhe Raste (Halfway down the road), (Ahmedabad: Gurjar, 1943/1994), p. 183Google Scholar.

4 Munshi, Kanhaiyalal, Sidha Chadhan (The Straight Climb), (Ahmedabad: Gurjar, 1943/2003), p. 193Google Scholar

5 Munshi, Sidha, p. 200.

6 Ibid., p. 207.

7 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1983/1991)Google Scholar; Mukherjee, Meenakshi, Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957)Google Scholar; Said, Edward, Culture and Imperialism (Great Britain: Chatto and Windus, 1993)Google Scholar are among the many books that make some or most of these connections.

8 Yagnik, Achyut and Sheth, Suchitra, The Shaping of Modern Gujarat: Plurality, Hindutva and Beyond (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2005), p. 8Google Scholar.

9 Yagnik, Shaping, pp. 8–9.

10 Meenakshi Mukherjee, ‘Recreating A Past: Fiction and Fantasy’ in Realism and Reality, pp. 38–68 offers an insightful discussion of the form, and mentions variations of it in Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Malayalam and Oriya.

11 Another notable example of this is, of course, the Chapter entitled ‘Playing the English Gentleman’ in Gandhi, Mahatma's The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad: The Navjivan Trust, 1927/1972), pp. 37–38Google Scholar.

12 Nandy, Ashis, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of the Self under Colonialism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 26nGoogle Scholar.

13 Mahatma Gandhi, Foreword, to Munshi, Kanhaiyalal's Gujarat and Its Literature: From Early Times to 1852 (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1935/1967), p. viGoogle Scholar.

14 Dave, J. H., Gheewala, C. L., Bose, A. C., Aiyar, R. P. and Majumdar, A. K., Man of Letters. Vol. 3 of Munshi: His Art and Work, 4 Vols. (Bombay: Associated Advertisers and Printers, 1956), p. 42Google Scholar.

15 Sheela, Bhatt. ‘The Rediff Special/L K Advani’, www.rediff.com, 7 June 2003, http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jun/07spec.htm [accessed 13 March 2013].

16 Sheela Bhatt, ‘The Rediff Special/Modi Plans I-day with a Difference’, www.rediff.com, 8 August 2003, http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/aug/08spec.htm [accessed 13 March 2013].

17 Munshi, Kanhaiyalal, Patan ni Prabhuta (Ahmedabad: Gurjar, 1916/2005), p. 182Google Scholar.

18 Munshi, Sidha, p. 182.

19 Kautilya is another name for Chanakya.

20 Munshi, Patan, p. 62.

21 Munshi, Kanhaiyalal, The Master of Gujarat: A Historical Novel. Trans. Jotwani, N. D. (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1995), p. 112Google Scholar.

22 Munshi, Master, p. 120.

23 Ibid., p. 187.

24 For instance, Kaak is able to get information of an attack planned by a neighbouring kingdom since a boastful ally inadvertently lets the secret out.

25 Munshi, Master, p. 299.

26 Munshi, Sidha, p. 199, speech in English.

27 Munshi, Master, p. 494.

28 Munshi, Kanhaiyalal, Rajadhiraj (Ahmedabad: Gurjar, 1922/2005), p. 67Google Scholar.

29 Munshi, Rajadhiraj, p. 27.

30 Ibid.

31 Munshi, Adhadhe, p. 76.

32 Munshi, Sidha, p. 222.

33 Munshi, Rajadhiraj, n.p.

34 Anderson, Imagined, p. 140.

35 Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 5Google Scholar.

36 Ibid., p. 6.

37 The historical process of strong kingdoms functioning as the ‘conquering cores’ that eventually transformed into European Westphalian nations is traced by Lustick, Ian, ‘The Absence of Middle Eastern Great Powers: Political ‘Backwardness’ in Historical Perspective’, International Organization, 51 (4), 1997, pp. 653–683CrossRefGoogle Scholar. His argument, that these great powers subsequently go on to impede similar processes in other places through colonialism and international control, offers interesting scope for thinking about the formation of the Indian nation.

38 This is something that I am currently exploring in my Ph.D. thesis, ‘Becoming India: Contingent National and Regional Identities’.