Social Realism and Psychological Transformation of Women Protagonist in Nayantara Sahgal's Storm in Chandigarh and a Situation in New Delhi - A Study- Juniper Publishers
Archaeology & Anthropology- Juniper Publishers
Abstract
The Research paper aims to focus on Nayantara
Sahgal's position in it as a novelist. It also discusses in detail a
critical study of the social realism and Psychological Transformation
with survival strategies of the woman protagonist in Nayantara Sahgal's Storm in Chandigarh and A Situation in New Delhi.
How Nayanara Sahgal's writing was different from other Indian writers.
During almost six decades of post-colonial history of Indian English
fiction, a wide variety of novelists have emerged focusing attention on a
multitude of social, economic, political, religious and spiritual
issues faced by three conceding periods of human experience. With the
turn of the century the Indian English novelists have surpassed their
male counterparts outnumbering hem quantitatively as well as maintaining
a high standard of literary writing, equally applauded in India and
abroad, experimenting boldly with not only technique but also
incorporating tabooed subject matters in their novels and short stories.
keywords: Social-realism; Psychological transformation; Survival strategies; women protagonist Introduction
Nayantara Segal was born in a family of freedom
fighters, which had politics in its very blood; Sahgal has indeed
written political novels of high quality. Authors like Kamala
Markandaya, Shashi Deshpande and Anita Desai have chosen the problems
and issues faced by the women in today's male dominated world as the
main theme of their works. For instance, some of the novels of Anita
Desai like, Voices in the City and Where Shall We Go This Summer?
Have portrayed the complexities of man and woman relationship. She has
tried to explore the psychological aspects of the lead protagonists. The
women novelists try to create an awareness to bring about a social
change. The novels of Nayantara Sahgal foreground her as a writer with
feminist concerns seeking independent existence of women. She sees women
as victims of conventional Indian society struggling in their quest for
identity. She has a political background and it helps considerately her
political news. She is also different from the feminist novelist
because most of these writers speak about feminism in a domestic way.
But Nayanara Sahgal perspective is a political views. She is the only
woman to outspokenly and boldly write about politics [1].
Nayantara Sahgal could also be considered as a woman
novelist: In almost every novel, Nayantara has a central woman
character, who gradually moves towards an awareness of her emotional
needs. The emotional world of woman is explored and analyzed with
admirable insight and sympathetic perception. Her concern for the women
who are caught in the dilemma of liberty and individuality or stability
and protection of marriage is understandable. She has shown tremendous
understanding of the problems and the predicaments of the women she has
exploited her skill in projecting convincingly the agonized mind of the
persecuted women. Her portrayal of women characters in the novels
invariably bears authenticity to their feminist approach, outlook and
perspective. Her keen observation of the life of Indian women and their
interest in the study of their inner mind are evidenced by their vivid
and panoramic portrayal of their plight.
Values and Attitudes
Nayantara Sahgal's childhood and adolescence were
spent amidst India's political reverberations, the crusade for
emancipation from the British yoke and the influence of Gandhian ideas
of freedom and non-violence. She has, as A.V. Krishna Rao states,
"inherited and cherished a certain set of values and attitudes toward
life which can be best described as a complex of political liberalism,
social sophistication, economic moderation and cultural catholicity in
continual interaction with the Gandhian idealism [2]."
Nayantara Sahgal has a central woman character who
gradually moves towards an awareness of her emotional needs. Nayantara
Sahgal's novel reads like commentaries on the political and social
turmoil that India has been facing since independence. Mrs. Sahgal's
feelings for politics and her command over English are rather more
impressive than her art as a novelist. She is a novelist as well as a
successful political columnist for different newspapers. Her writing is
generally characterized by simplicity and boldness. Her writing abounds
the latest political ups and downs with a tinge of western liberalism.
Her novels portray the contemporary incidents and political realities
saturated with artistic and objectivity. All her major characters of the
novel are drawn towards the vortex of politics [3].
Besides politics, her fiction also focuses attention
on Indian woman's search for sexual freedom and self-realization. As a
women novelist, Sahgal recognizes that her primary obligation is that of
advocating the emancipation of women. She has probed deep into the
female psyche in her novels. She describes in her novel how women’s
exploited even during the modern times by both the individuals and the
society. She tried to Portray the sensibility of woman that how a woman
looks at herself and her problems [4].
She considers her novels political in content and
intention and in her view, each of the novels more or less her
contemporary reflects and political era. The use of the fictional genre
is one of the main aspects of her novels, wherein she can explore the
problems of women in contemporary society. Though Sahgal has been hailed
chiefly as a political novelist, her feminist concern is obvious and
her fighter spirit quite vocal in her fiction. In all her works, there
is juxtaposition of two worlds: the personal world of man-woman
relationship and the impersonal world of politics. The portrayal of her
memorable women characters and the feminist tone in her fictional
discourse make Nayantara Sahgal one of the most outstanding feminist
Indian novelists writing in English [5].
Nayantara Sahgal is not only a novelist of repute but
also a journalist by profession. She confesses that fiction is her
"abiding love" journalism her "conscience". Talking to Ram Jha in 1987,
Sahgal said that her two kinds of writing experiences-that of a novelist
and that of a political journalist-though contrary to each other, are
mutually sustained because, her central focus in both areas in the
same-the concept of freedom in human beings, national and personal and
her increasingly feminist concerns.
Most of her characters belong to the affluent upper
class, she does not caste-ridden middle class or the poor Indian village
just to conform to the accepted image of India. Her range of characters
simplifies her technique. She does not have to struggle to present
Indian conversation in English as most of her characters are the kind of
people who would talk and think in English in real life [6].
Sahgal has first-hand knowledge of political figures
in India, for she spent most of her childhood in Anand Bhawan the
ancestral home of the Nehru's in Allahabad. One could say that politics
is in her blood-Jawaharlal Nehru was her mother's rather, while her
father died because of illness he suffered in prison when he was jailed
for participating in India's freedom struggle. An important political
event forms the background for each of her novels [7].
Storm in Chandigarh is Mrs. Sahgal’s third
novel written after A Time to be Happy and This Time of Morning. It
deals with complex human relationships in which love, friendship,
honesty, freedom and equality play a vital role. The 'Storm' in the
lives of three married couples, Inder and Saroj, Jit and Mara, Vishal
and Leela is portrayed against the political backdrop of the storm or
confrontation between the newly divided states of Punjab and Haryana
over the issues of Chandigarh and Bakhra Nangal territory act...Gyan
Singh, the ambitious Chief Minister of Punjab has announced a strike in
the whole region for the selfish purpose of demonstrating his political
strength. He is only concerned with his personal gains and does not even
hesitate to use violence as a means for achieving his selfish ends.
While Harpal Singh, the Chief Minister of Haryana acts as political
counter oil of Gyan Singh as he is a behavior of Gandhi an ideology of
non-violence. He has always given priority to the interests of people
against his self-interest. The union Home Minister is assigned the task
of affecting a rapprochement between the two warring states of Vishal
Dubey, an honest and promising central officer. Dubey goes to Chandigarh
from Delhi to solve the political impasse but unwillingly involves
himself in the private lives of the estranged husbands and wives
especially those of Saroj and Inder [8,9].
Socio-Political Consciousness
Storm in Chandigarh has five major characters
and the personal and the political worlds run parallel to each other.
The political atmosphere instead of improving seems to have
deteriorated. The people who have some values or ideals are inert and
passive and unable to face reality. Those who are active and aggressive
have no values, they have no scruples. The building of Chandigarh
symbolized a new beginning. Vishal Dubey finds himself amidst a
political confrontation in Chandigarh where Gyan Singh is trying to link
up the issues if language to religion to exploit religious sentiments
for his own interests.
His instigation is a threat to the peace and normalcy
of life but no one is willing to take a stand against it. Dubey is
unable to understand the reason for the violence and attitude. Violence
was a political blackmail. It had yielded dividends in the past and was
again being used a threat. Violence, Dubey feels is the joint product of
the aggressive and the inert; it was a sign of urban discontents. Out
bursts of brutal, calculated violence had become a part of the cities.
The situation in Chandigarh is not one of tension but of paralysis, the
situation in which one felt trapped and helpless. The political dead
lock in Chandigarh is a reflection of the state of affairs in other
parts of the country. The watch word of the government is with Dubey
"wait and watch". People are afraid to accept the challenges, afraid to
act or think. Dubey is conscious of the change even in the basic
approach to life and its problems.
In this novel the novelist focuses attention on this
national ailment. She presents the reality of the political situation in
the late sixties She is successful in capturing not only the political
issues but also the political mood and intrigues. She has also touched
upon the deterioration that had set in the quality of public life and
which was bound to influence personal and private values.
Nayantara Sahgal touches tradition and modernity in
terms of ethics and morality. Ethics and morality have been given
distinct identities and meaning by the modern educated people like
Trivedi and Vishal Dubey. For instance, Debey would not subscribe to
what is commonly understood as morality. Trivedi's suggestion that Dubey
might believe in free love, he declares that he does not accept the
established ideas and about morality.
Sahgal's Storm in Chandigarh deals with the
problem of political tension and violence originating from its being
Chandigarh, the common capital of the two states-the Punjab and Haryana.
The novel depicts violence, chaos and the uneasy political situation of
late sixties of the partition of the Punjab into two newly formed
states Punjabi-speaking Punjab and Hindispeaking Haryana with Chandigarh
as the common capital. The novel deals with the political upheaval in
Punjab in the postindependence period. Beside the political background,
there is also a human background which has not received adequate
treatment. The fictional situation of young hearts broken by compulsions
of marriage and call of new love suggests that marriage is not just
sexual relationship; it means companionship on equal terms. The cause of
disturbance in the relations between man and woman partly lies in man's
own inherent debility to indulge in adultery in the unnatural position
of the husband or the wife in the family. Women characters in the novel
do not like to remain confined within the four walls of their houses.
They prefer to go picnic to relieve the burden of boredom and monotony.
The clash between Gyan Singh and Harpal Singh is a clash of ideologies.
It is a fight between the cults of violence versus the idea of
non-violence. Gyan who shows little concern for emotions and human
beings always is ruthless. Harpal on the other hands more concerned with
human beings than with anything else, each time there is a
confrontation between the two Chief Ministers, Sahgal’s novels present
an authentic picture of India before and after independence.
Psychological Transformation
Nayantara Sahgal's novel Storm in Chandigarh
presents a scathing protest against the denial of freedom and
individuality to woman. Sahgal’s concept of a free woman transcends the
limits of economic or social freedom and becomes a mental or emotional
attitude. The need for freedom for woman, according to her does no
merely mean the defiance of old established conventions; it must also
make her aware of herself as an individual and refuse to tolerate should
not be seen in the stereotypical passive roles as a sex object or as
the one who is fit only to manage home chores and children without any
self-identity of her own. For the smooth functioning of family and the
society at large, woman needs to be seen as man's equal and honored
partner. In her novel, Nayantara Sahgal, "pleads for the new marital
morality based on mutual trust, consideration, generosity and absence of
pretense, selfishness and self-centeredness."
Nayantara Sahgal’s Storm in Chandigarh depicts
the suffering of marital friction apart from the political and social
ups and downs. It narrates the life of Inder and Saroj. Sahgal pens the
suffocating experience of marriage for both the partners. Most
importantly, the writer highlights those wrong features in marriage
which causes separation. Sahgal, in this novel, deals with marital as
well as political crisis. Division in political front and friction in
marital relationships are the main themes of the novel. Duality and
deceptiveness is prevalent in politics and marriage. In this novel
characters come close to each other but without any emotional attachment
and sincerity. There is no sensitiveness or loyalty in their
relationship; It seems a temporary bond.
In the novel Storm in Chandigarh Sahgal
narrates how the attitude of dictatorship destroys harmony of marital
status. Marriage which strongly needs love and faith of both the
partners, can breakdown also in presence of doubt and frustration. The
main protagonist of the novel Saroj has committed mistake before
marriage. She has her first sexual encounter with one of her friends
before marriage. When Inder came to know that, he started tormenting his
wife physically as well as mentally. However Inder himself indulges in
an extra marital affair with Mara. Love and satisfaction, is not much
prevalent in this affair also. Basically Inder is a character who always
denies individuality of women. He considers woman as a parasite; who
could survive only with the support of a male figure. Here the writer
portraits the pathetic plight of Saroj who tries to show her love and
affection towards her husband but in vain.
Throughout their lives, Vishal and Leela remained
strangers to each other. He is possessed by a deep sense of guilt for
living with her without love and his relationship with Leela abruptly
ends due to her death. Vishal's marriage had been a failure. Being a
widower, he is deriving satisfaction in a connection with Gauri, a
Bengali businessman's wife who finds security in arranged marriage but
who needs and establishes a relationship with Dubey which is based only
on sex.
Nayantara Sahgal is quite bold in her political
approach. She dismantles the age old notions of women being inferior.
She is one novelist who is clear in her perception that man-woman
relationship should be based on equality, understanding and love.
Man-woman relationship without love is prostitution and nothing else.
In this novel Sahgal has reflected the turmoil in
life the political drama. The novel is a proof of her clear thought,
vision and maturity. Sahgal is concerned with the sancity of human
relationships. She believes that a relationship causes injury and
inflicts pain if people withhold (hide) their real selves. Thus in Storm in Chandigarh
Nayantara Sahgal demonstrates her keen understanding of individual
relationships and her remarkable ability to tell stories that continue
to enthrall readers over the years.
Sahgal's fifth novel, A Situation in New Delhi
depicts the aftermath of a great popular Prime Minister Shivraj like
Jawaharlal Nehru who dominated the political and national scene for a
full decade. He was the one who sacrificed his aristocratic family's
comforts for the freedom of India. The novel is very much based on
history. It is a novel of political dislocation on two levels, on the
level of the novelist's own life and on the level of her characters. A
Situation in New Delhi focuses the Naxalite movement and student unrest,
and above all, the after of Nehru’s death. The novel deals with the
problems of alienation and frustration of the younger generation of
Indians in the context of opportunistic politics in New Delhi. The novel
begins with the news of the death of Prime Minister Shivraj, the
idealistic and charismatic leader of India. In the novel there is no gap
between the private world and the political world; both the worlds are
reciprocally treated in which actions and characters come together. The
novel is indeed representative of the situation in the whole of India.
Results and Discussion
A Situation in New Delhi fictionalizes the uncertain
state of education and politics in independent India, and was banned
during the emergency. It was first published in abroad and then
reprinted in India. The novel concentrates on a sense of disintegration
giving way to chaos and disorder that engulf the capital.In the novel,
Sahgal weaves a narrative around a number of characters: Devi, the
sister of the dead Prime Minister Shivraj, who is Nehru in disguise; her
son Rishad, a young college-going boy, member of a Naxalite group, who
dies in an explosion in a cinema hall; her friend Usman, the
Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, an admirer of Shivraj's policies;
and Michael Calvert, an old acquaintance of Shivraj and Devi, who
returns to India from England to write his biography. The novel attempts
an estimate of the dead leader's personal qualities, his approach to
nation building, and his power to influence the lives of people. It
builds a contrast between the times before and after Shivraj and begins
with the news of the death of Prime Minister Shivraj, the idealist
leader of India. Here, the three characters, Shivraj, Usman and Michael,
represent the three main religious segments of the Indians, namely,
Hindu, Muslim and Christian. The chosen time of action is the late
fifties and early sixties when Rishad, Devi’s son joins a secretly
operating group of student-terrorists. The nineteen year old Rishad gets
killed in one of his underground operations and his girlfriend
Suvarnapriya becomes the protege of Devi. The novel is the portrayal of
the city torn apart by the failure of political leadership and violent
student unrest. It would be true to state that the entire book is a
tribute of Nehru. Now he is dead. And with his passing away, the country
which he had ruled so well begins to fall apart. His intimate
followers; Devi, Usman and Michael try to live with Shiraj's ideologies.
Devi, a beautiful lady, a widowed mother of a college
student, now in her early fifties, takes up the reins of the officer in
her strong hands. She appoints Usman, an old follower of her late
brother and her dear friend as the Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University.
Usman is forced into accepting the offer as it comes from Devi who needs
him to survive in the office with the political ideology they share.
Usman is over-burdened with the troubles of unrest and violence in the
University campus. He believes that the great ideals should not remain
as mere words in the scripture; in fact, the scriptures live only when
the people follow them. He condemns the political interference in the
academic world and laments for the loss of a leader like Shivraj who had
a unique sense of perception, Usman had taken the Vice-Chancellorship
to bring about some fundamental changes. He is being pushed into taking
back three rusticated students for a rape case. His wife Nadira always
blames him for accepting such a post and she proposes to leave the
country for some other country if not Pakistan. When the tension reaches
its peak Usman advices Devi to resign from the post and from the party.
He realizes he futility of his efforts to free the University from
political influences. He decides to give up the Vice-Chancellorship.
When Shivraj dies, Devi needs Usman body and soul, who makes love to her
as she lies on her bed, mourning for her husband Ishwar's bed is still
warn when Usman occupies it.
Michael, another important character of the novel, is
a renowned English biographer who spent his childhood in India. As a
young British boy, he was fascinated by Shivraj. He visits India to pay
his homage to the great hero by writing his biography. Both, Usman and
Michael have very special relationship with Devi. Both loved her once,
and they still love her. She had accepted their love in a very natural
way and she still accepts it. Though he is a foreigner, he also has his
share of disillusionment in the new political set-up. Michael had
observed Devi closely in relation to her brother. Michael remembered
Devi as a young girl, who had many admirers but chose only her brother
as a companion.
Her commitment to her brother was too strong and
firm. Saghal shows a strange relationship between brother and sister.
Sahgal has never shown clearly wheher their relationship was sexual or
not but they behaved like lovers, or rather as husband and wife. Michael
had noticed that 'physical contact' between the brother and sister "was
no constant, hand touching, his head bent to hers."
Conclusion
A Situation in New Delhi, describes a number of woman
characters who differ from each other one way or the other.Devi seems
to exploit the situation as she uses both Usman and Michael and is
excessively attached to her brother. She is free and independent. She
moves freely among her guests, talking with a gaiety and vitality which
is irreversible. People usually fall in love with her. She has passed
her life as a shadow of her brother. She does not have any knowledge of
official matters. On other hand, Pinky accepts all traditional roles
assigned to her. She is a happy girl and very enthusiastic about her
marriage and obediently consents to her parent's choice. "Girls like
Pinky lived as their mothers and grand mothers had." (P-42). She is
considered a voluptuous young version of Veena. (P-36). After the tragic
incident of Madhu, she is not been allowed to go out of her house
without her mother's permission. But she is very happy with her
trousseau saris and thinks herself lucky. While, Veena, Pinky’s mother
is also an example of traditional Indian woman who cannot think about
anything other than her beauty and her household duties. She has never
helped Pinky in developing her idendity and individuality. She has only
tried to make Pinky a typical traditional woman. She gives a party only
because Arvind, her Son-in-law has come to their town "A Son-in-law was
sacrosanct. God took second place. Sons-in- law who had driven their
wives" relations to drink, desperation and bankruptcy, somehow vanished
blameless into the family's Annals."
Skinny Jaipal is the woman of Sahgal. She has a
passion for the act of living and involves herself fully in whatever she
undertakes. Nadira another woman character is also not properly
adjusted with her husband. Usman desires whole heartedly to share his
deepest and innermost thoughts with Nadira, but Nadira remains stubborn,
uncompromising and refuses to come out of the fortress around her. The
relationship between Usman and Nadira proves that communication is
essential for a harmonious marital relationship. The novel is a finely
crafted book, with its neatly structured action in sixteen chapters.
Sahgal's analysis of the problems that confront a newly independent and
developing country is achieved by focusing her creative attention on the
young men and women of free India which is convincing and sensitive.
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