Bolara Babu Rao‘s Vagdevi was first published in 1905 and the second edition, published by Kannada Prapancha Prakashana, Mangalore, came out in 1953.
The events in Vagdevi are mainly set in a town named Kumudapura, but also branch out to other towns within a kingdom named Vasantha Nagara ruled by a Jain king, Srimad Veeranarasimha Bhoopathi. There are no specific time markers to indicate the period in which the events in the novel takes place. Though Vagdevi reads like a traditional old-fashioned prose-narrative set in an imaginary kingdom sometime in the past, the events and the milieu hint that the story is much closer to reality than it appears.
The head of the Kumudapura matha , a Brahmin monastery, Chanchalanetra Swami, is enamoured by Vagdevi’s beauty and wants to have a relationship with her. Vagdevi is a married woman, whose husband is more interested in the pleasures of eating and sleeping. When the proposal is put forward, Vagdevi does not appear shocked. Vagdevi’s parents have very little income and have a useless son-in-law. Vagdevi’s father is inconsequential, but her mother urges Vagdevi to accept the proposal, because she desires a life of comfort. For Vagdevi, physical pleasure is not the end of everything, but she thinks of her future well-being. So, she wants Chanchalanetra to take an oath in the presence of the matha ’s presiding deity that if a son is born to her through Chanchalanetra, he would be made the next head of the matha . Her mother wants Vagdevi’s father and husband to be given suitable positions in the matha so that all of them could live in comfort there.
Vagdevi acquiesces only after Chanchalanetra takes the oath. Their relationship is not shown as the main concern of the novel, only as one of the many corruptions that afflict society and just an initial spark that sets off a chain of events and exposes the whole community. The novel, therefore, does not explore the success or failure of their romance or their respective thoughts or feelings on having done something sinful.
The grafting for the further branching of the novel is embedded unobtrusively in Chapter 6. Chanchalanetra is waiting impatiently in the matha to know Vagdevi’s response. Vedavyasa Upadhya, the puranik of the matha , is reciting the purana -s as part of the daily ritual of the monastery. A distracted Chanchalanetra is irritated by this, curses him and leaves the hall. Vedavyasa is quick to take offence, quits his job and leaves the monastery. This gives him a reason to expose Chanchalanetra and further events too strengthen his resolve.
Vedavyasa takes his complaint to the Narasimhapura Swami, the senior-most among the five swami -s in the kingdom, who rejects it outright. The other monastery heads too refuse to entertain his complaint against Chanchalanetra, who they consider pure and virtuous.
Vedavyasa tries hard to win some support, but by now we see a spectacular rise in the fortunes of Vagdevi. She uses the authority and wealth of the matha and her beauty and charm to dispense favours to people in power and buys their loyalty. The administration, the police force, the courts, are all susceptible to corruption and as long as money and favours are flowing, they are happy to support Vagdevi. Every attempt made by Vedavyasa to seek justice is thwarted.
By Chapter 31, Vagdevi is in complete control of the matha . Chanchalanetra is growing weak physically and falls ill frequently. Vagdevi is concerned and asks him to appoint their/her son as his successor soon. Chanchalenatra now realises his folly and is angry, but cannot go back on his word.
By now the other swami -s had realised the danger to their positions and want to somehow stop the succession because rules prohibit such an appointment, but Vagdevi’s hold on all sections of the administration is so strong that she engineers a riot and the swami -s are humiliated. Her son, Satyanarayana, is installed as the successor.
Chanchalanetra dies soon after and Vedavyasa’s case finally reaches the ears of the king, who directs his senior dewan to see that justice is done. The corrupt officials are transferred or dismissed. The other swami -s regain control of the Kumudapura matha , and Satyanarayana is removed from his post. All those who enjoyed Vagdevi’s patronage desert her. Vagdevi’s fortunes plummet and she wanders around helplessly. Vagdevi, her sister, and Satyanarayana are finally given shelter by a merchant in a nearby town. The merchant’s sister, Venkatasubbi, and Satyanarayana develop a liking for each other and they run away from this squalid situation to an island called Hemala. They change their identities and Satyanarayana starts afresh as a trader and finds success. He would often remember his mother and one day he goes in search of her. Vagdevi is completely broken by now and wants to give up her life. Just as she is about to jump into the river, Satyanarayana rescues her and takes her along with him to Hemala.
Vagdevi goes against the grain and gives us a completely different woman protagonist who is not shown as weak and oppressed or as idealistic or as a woman aspiring to be educated and independent, as was seen in many early Kannada social-realist novels. Vagdevi is ruthless and uses all means to achieve her aim. The oppressor/oppressed binary is slowly inverted as the novel progresses.
A number of sub-plots intersperse the main narrative involving a number of people from all walks of life. Babu Rao offers a couple of interesting satirical scenes with the two dewan s that expose their religious prejudices. When the senior dewan Adikeshava Rao, a vaishnavite Brahmin, invokes the name Rama , the junior dewan Chenna Basavayya, a shaivite Lingayat, closes his ears and says: ‘Why can’t you say Shiva Shiva instead,’ and the moment Adikeshava Rao hears Shiva Shiva , he closes his ears and says Rama Rama . In another scene they argue whether the large metal serving plate should be called Harivana or Shivana . There are enough characters and conversations to show the linguistic diversity of the region – a poor old woman speaks in the local Kannada dialect, a lower caste man speaks in Tulu, a local Muslim man, Maambyari, speaks in Urdu-mixed Kannada, a Muslim policeman, Yakub Khan, speaks in Kannada and Urdu.
T. P. Ashoka, well-known Kannada literary critic, in the introduction to the 2013 edition of Vagdevi , published by Vasantha Prakashana, observes that Vagdevi has no messages to convey and no ideals to prescribe, and though there are no elements of western modernity, the entire novel is an attempt to look at and satirise the desi from the western perspective and so, Vagdevi asks new questions about society and community. Ashoka also notes that the novel portrays a stark and detailed picture of the corrupt hierarchical governance and law and order systems and we also see many interesting specimens of ‘lawyers’, an emerging professional group.
Bolara Babu Rao strips everybody of their moral and ethical clothes. None of the characters evoke any kind of sympathy. One particular strand that we see in some early novels and plays, that of corrupt and debauched religious men, continues here in Vagdevi , and appears in full view, rather than as a sideshow.
In Vagdevi , the matha , as the moral and religious centre of the community, cannot hold, and things fall apart.
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S. Jayasrinivasa Rao is a literary historian and translator living in Hyderabad. He is a teacher at Aurora’s Technological & Research Institute , Hyderabad. esjeisiri.row@gmail.com
