LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Chandra Lekha in He who Rides a Tiger by Bhabani Bhattacharya

J. Madhumitha, M.A.
Poornavalli Mathiaparanam, M.A., M.Phil.

Bhabani Bhattacharya's Women Characters

Bhabani Bhattacharya is successful in portraying woman characters. Bhattacharya presents the picture of Indian woman full of vitality, high ideals and a ray of hope for humankind. Usually his novels depict different types of alienated woman characters, who seem to be at war with both the Self and the Society. Likewise, in his novel He who Rides a Tiger, Bhattacharya portrays the woman character Chandra Lekha to reveal his affirmative vision of life.

He Who Rides a Tiger

He who Rides a Tiger is based on the ancient saying, "He who rides the tiger cannot dismount". This novel is considered to be the masterpiece of Bhattacharya. The choice of this title for a narrative that focuses on a female character is, indeed, interesting with several possible interpretations. The visual imagery that comes before our eyes is that of Kali, a Hindu goddess widely popular in Bengal, who rides a lion/tiger. She is known to be ferocious and is vehemently assertive against all dangers, distracters and evil forces. An apt backdrop for the chief character of this novel. But then the western saying links the content to a male, by using he. The author appears to champion the rights of women to seek and gain their rightful place, and thus through the use of he appears to bring a sense of unity between men and women in their saga of fight against adversity.

Times (London) describes He who Rides a Tiger as 'a rare and beautiful novel'. The fusions of social and artistic concerns of the author are found in this novel. In this novel Bhattacharya has depicted the sufferings of people during the Bengal Famine. To describe this sufferings and miseries he has used the character of Lekha and her father Kalo as an effective tool.

Chandra Lekha, the Chief Character

In He who Rides a Tiger, Chandra Lekha the chief female character suffers the terrible tragedies on account of the catastrophic famine. She lost her mother at her birth. She loved her father more than anything in the world. Her father gave her all the possible things he could and he also named her Chandra Lekha, the moon-tinted one, which no other Kamar did. He sent her to the local English convent school even when his fellow caste men and other high caste men criticized him. But Lekha was also subjected to caste discrimination throughout her studentship in school.

The Plight of Occupational Castes

Kamar caste is an occupational caste associated with making iron implements. They are distributed in villages and towns as blacksmiths. Within the varnasrama dharma of traditional Hindu society, they kind of occupy middle rank, but they could be treated by the members of the upper castes of the region as a sort of low caste, with some of the disadvantages that are imposed by this system on low castes.

In Bengal they are usually called karmakars. The question that was faced by a kamar caste member in the early part of the twentieth century was whether one should give up their caste duty of performing the job of blacksmith and move over to other soft professions through acquiring school education. Jobs were not easy to get, and were very few. Often children of the landed gentry and members of castes such as Brahmins, who have had a long history of formal schooling and were thus more prepared to receive schooling and benefit by it consistently, got almost all the well paying jobs available then in the market.

The Indian process of affirmative action, that is, caste reservation for admission to schools and colleges and thereafter in government service, was not effectively introduced in states such as West Bengal for such groups as Kamars, compared with the South Indian provinces,. However, earning your daily bread, although it is not much, is still possible through mastering your varnasrama dharma duties for such occupational castes. Going to school and to prosper based on schooling was still a distant dream then for many occupational castes.

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