Re-covering the Problems of Caste and Untouchability in U. R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara

Abstract

The problem of caste and the struggle of literary voices for a solution against casteism has been a topic of concern in Dalit Literature. U. R. Ananthamurthy is one among such writers who looks upon the caste division as a challenge against the rise of social inequality and through his works tries to critique such modern existentialist crisis based on caste and untouchability. It should be noted that being a member of the Navya Kavya movement, U. R. Ananthmurthy was under the impression of Ram Manohar Lohia and Mahatma Gandhi for their concern about the problem of caste and untouchability in the Post-independent Indian society. In a similar context, U. R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man (1965) echoes the evil social practices based on caste and Brahminical hierarchy by presenting the existential and intellectual crisis of Pranesacharaya, the most learned Brahmin of Durvashapura village. Keeping due attention to the views of Gandhi and Lohia, the proposed article would like to explicate how far Ananthamurthy was influenced by the views of these socialists and to which level his method of presenting casteism in Samskara follows the criterion style of Munshi Premchand and Mulk Raj Anand who were also the disciple of Gandhian ideology about caste and untouchability. This article would also like to focus on how this discrimination in caste based on social superiority and inferiority has constructed an exploitative relationship between the Brahmins and other upper castes, and the untouchable; and how it functions and would finally lead to nothingness where everything would be at a terrible situation of destroying the very society itself.