What has overwhelmed me even more since I started examining the papers at the Harry Ransom centre is the huge quantum of material waiting to be resurrected and brought to light—not only the above two volumes of the Chessmaster trilogy, but other novels, plays, essays and translations, besides several older and occasional pieces. For instance, I came across two unpublished essays, one on the Watergate scandal in the United States and another intriguingly titled ‘How to Defeat Communism’. Rao, I know now more than ever, was an outstanding thinker, philosopher and champion of Indic civilization, in addition to being one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. That is why we must not only commemorate him, but also endeavour to do justice to his unfinished projects.

4

Raja Rao is generally regarded as one of the most important Indian English novelists.4 The reasons for his pre-eminence are both historical and artistic. Rao is important historically because his first novel, Kanthapura, was published during the 1930s, when Indian English fiction first began to gain recognition. Although Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s incomplete romance, Rajmohan’s Wife (1864), is considered to be the first Indian English novel, it was only in the 1930s that this genre began to demonstrate the maturity and accomplishment of a major literary mode. This coming of age was heralded by the publication of Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935), R.K. Narayan’s Swamy and Friends (1935) and Rao’s Kanthapura (1938). Hence, the historic significance of Rao.

Artistically, Rao is important because of his unique formal and thematic accomplishments. Although his published output of five novels seems modest in comparison to Anand’s or Narayan’s more prolific output, Rao’s achievement is probably more impressive. Formally and stylistically, he is the most adventurous of the three. As M.K. Naik has elaborated in his monograph Raja Rao (1972), Rao has consistently tried to modify the Western form of the novel to suit his Indian subject matter.

In fact, it would not be incorrect to say that he reinvents and Indianizes the novel as no one else has. He accomplishes this feat by using traditional Indian genres such as the Purana, the sthalakatha and the beast fable to structure his works. Thus, formally, his novels are based on Indian models. Furthermore, they are written in an English that is uniquely Indian in style, tone, mood and rhythm. The Indianness of style is achieved by relying heavily on translation, quotation and the use of Indian proverbs, idioms and colloquial patterns. Rao adroitly manipulates vocabulary and syntax to enhance the Indian flavouring of his English.

The result is a style that, although distinctly Indian, is evocative and perfectly intelligible to Western readers as well. This language is unique to Rao, a highly refined medium of expression that suggests truths beyond those normally available in our everyday speech. To put it somewhat dramatically, Rao has restored sacredness to the word.