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| Home > Book Reviews of Literary icons > Chha Mana Atha Guntha
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| | Chha Mana Atha Guntha
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Fakir Mohan`s "Chha Mana Atha Guntha" is a vivid account of the exploitation of poor village folk by Zamindars. Mamu, again is a story of exploitation of village folk by petty government officials and clerks "Prayaschita" potrays the predicament of a semi-educated youth who persistently defies the old order of things with an over enthusiasm for new western values.
Exploitation of the poor villagers by Zamindars and the rise of a new class of exploiters among the petty officials and clerks under the British Government were the two dominant traits of ninteenth century Orissa`s social history and Fakir Mohan chose to write about them in "Chha Mana Atha Guntha" and "Mamu". In this last novel he studied the conflict between traditional Indian values and western values as understood by the educated youth of the time, which clearly suggests that he was neither a traditionalist nor an over-zealous advocate for the new wave of westernisation that was sweeping the country during his time. Exploitation of the poor by the rich was a dominant theme in Indian fiction, especially in the Thirties and Forties. Fakir Mohan is perhaps the first Indian novelist to write about it, thus anticipating works like Premchand`s "Godan". Though Fakir Mohan was almost a contemporary of the great Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, he was surprisingly different from Chatterjee about the choice of theme as well as language and style. Fakir Mohan`s colloquial style is in sharp contrast to Chatterjee`s high flown Sanskritised prose.
Set in colonial Indian society during the early decades of the19th century, Six Acres and a Third (Chha Mana Atha Guntha) tells a tale of wealth and greed, of property and theft. On one level it is the story of an evil landlord, Ramachandra Mangaraj, who exploits poor peasants and uses the new legal system to appropriate the property of others. But this is merely one of the themes of the novel; as the text unfolds, it reveals several layers of meaning and implication. Toward the end of Mangaraj`s story, he is punished by the law and we hear how the "Judge Sahib" ordered that his landed estate, his "zamindari," be taken away. It is sold to a lawyer, who - as rumour in the village has it - "will come with ten palanquins followed by five horses and two hundred foot-soldiers" to take possession of Mangaraj`s large estate. The ordinary villagers react to this news by reminding one another of an old saying: "O horse, what difference does it make to you if you are stolen by a thief? You do not get much to eat here; you will not get much to eat there. No matter who becomes the next master, we will remain his slaves. We must look after our own interests."
Fakir Mohan Senapati`s novel is written from the perspective of the horse, the ordinary villager, and the foot-soldier - in other words, the labouring poor of the world. Although it contains a critique of British colonial rule, the novel offers a powerful indictment of many other forms of social and political authority as well. What makes Six Acres unusual is that its critical vision is embodied in its narrative style or mode, in the complex way the novel is narrated and organised as a literary text. Senapati`s novel (the Oriya original was serialised in 1897-1899 and published as a book in 1902) is justly seen as representing the apex of the tradition of literary realism in 19th century Indian literature. But its realism is complex and sophisticated, not simply mimetic; the novel seeks to analyse and explain social reality instead of merely holding up a mirror to it.
Central to this narrative mode is a narrator who actively mediates between the reader and the subject of the novel, drawing attention away from the tale to accentuate the way it is told. Until we become comfortable with this narrator and his verbal antics, join him in witty interchange, and ponder our own implication as readers in the making and unmaking of "facts," both narrative and social, we cannot say that we have fully engaged with Senapati`s sly and exhilarating text .
One of the underlying concerns of the narrator`s discourse is the question: Who has social and political power? His parodic and humorous invocation of various forms of authority is not just a form of debunking, for it invites readers to engage in a form of moral inquiry as well. Behind the question about power lies a more radical question: what, if anything, justifies power? If social power derives from ownership of property and wealth, which are themselves lost (stolen) as easily as they are won, then both property and power seem insecure possessions, vulnerable to the vagaries of luck and historical accident. Ultimately, these questions lead to the suggestion that all property may be theft after all, and the only true owners are those who create social value, the labouring masses.
The linguistic innovations of Six Acres and a Third, Senapati`s first novel, need to be appreciated in this wider context. These innovations changed Oriya literature forever, and inaugurated the age of modern Oriya prose, but they are based in a vision of social equality and cultural self-determination. Senapati was no romantic nationalist, and his conception of language was based on his progressive social vision. In his prose works, he sought to popularise an egalitarian literary medium that was sensitive enough to draw on the rich idioms of ordinary Oriyas, the language of the paddy fields and the village markets. If he saw the imposition of other languages like Persian, English, or Bengali on Oriyas as a form of linguistic colonialism, it is because he considered the interests of Oriyas - much like the interests of any linguistic community - to be tied to democratic cultural and social access to power.
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