Post on 02-Jun-2020
CHAPTER IV
HE WHO RIDES A TIGER
The harrowing experiences left incomplete in So Many Hungers, get
completed in He Who Rides a Tiger. The spectre of the Bengal femine and
the problems people encountered are pictured in this novel. The famine is the
valley of the shadow of death through which the characters have to pass
before they attain their full stature as human beings. Of the Hero,
P K.R.Chandrasekhar observes: "Kalo, in particular, chastened and purified by 3
his experiences and sufferings, learns the secret that to be true to one's own
self is the greatest achievement of man".'
The novel reveals that greatest achievement of man in life is to be true
to himself. Kalo, a blaksmith, lived with his only daughter Chandra Lekha
in Tharna town. The girl's unusual cleverness and attainments, the touching
tenderness of the mutual affection of father and daughter are clearly brought
out in the beginning of the story. The shadow of the Bengal famine now
begins to fall over Tharna town. Food grains become scarce and
unemployment becomes an acute problem. Weavers and other traders sell
Chandrasekharan, K. R. Bhabani Battachar ya (Arnold Heinemann f Publichsers (India) New Delhi - 1 ) 1974, p. 9.
their implements for a pittance and leave the town. The author describes the
dawn of the famine thus:
The dark year started three or four months after
Chandra Lekha won her silver medal. It was
almost the darkest in the history of Bengal. A
plague took the land in its grip, the plague of
hunger, in the wake of war.'
Bhattacharya continues to describe the war situation thus:
The Japanese army stood poised at the eastern
front, facing a wall of resistance. But no
barricades had been put up against the enemy
within the borders: no rationing of food grains,
no price control, no checking of the giant sharks
who played the cornering game on a stupendous
scale . . .'
He Who Rides a Tiger, (Delhi : Hind Pocket Book (P) Ltd., 1955) p.18.
Ibid, p.18
The result was hunger, poverty and privation. Bhattacharya painfully
records people's miseries thus:
Barns were empty - the peasants had been induced to sell off their
grain. Markets were empty - the grain was hidden away. The tillers of the
soil, reduced to starvation, had no recourse but to sell land, to buy back the
produce of the land. And now rice was five times the old rate.
"Weavers sold their looms to traders from big cities who toured the
country side for bargains. Artisans sold their tools. Fishermen's boats were
chopped up for fire wood to sell. The plague washed up in fierce tides.
Bengal was dying. Tharna was dying" .4
Kalo is also drawn by hunger and famine to Calcutta in search of job
and food. The capital is the workshop of war weapons. As Kalo's hands are
strong as a hammer, he is prepared for any hard work for the sake of
sustenance. He is so poverty stricken, he has no money to travel from one
place to another, he travels like thousands of people ticketless and boards on
running trains. There are also cries of people in distress.
Hungry, we die . . . . Give us a few grains of
food, Baba. . . . . give us a ride to the great city.
Food even for dogs and cats . . . Take mercy on
the dying ones, Baba, permit us to leave . . . .
Give us a chance to eat, thou ocean of mercy.
God will bless you."
On his way to Calcutta, Kalo is jailed for three months of hard labour
for stealing a few bananas to eat lest he would die. Bhattacharya remarks,
"Thieving was very much out of his line: Dislocated by the hunger of
all times, he was on his way to the great city in search of work and the very
marrow of his bones was ashamed because he had to travel by footboard"."
In depicting the life of Kalo during the period immediately following
his release from prison, Bhattacharya gives a pathetic account of the plight
of the destitutes in Calcutta. Hunger makes him carry dead bodies of
destitutes into Municipal trucks for disposal. Still worse job, he gets in to
procuring girls for flesh trade. Unexpectedly he gets a good brokerage.
One day, in one of the brothels for which Kalo is working as an agent,
he sees a rich customer getting into one of the rooms. Soon after he hears the
plaintive, protesting cries of a woman. The voice sounds strangely like that
of Chandra Lekha. Immediately, the customer leaves the room in anger.
"bid, p.26
Ibid, p.33
Driven by strange foreboding, Kalo enters the room to find to his horror the
girl is none other than his daughter. Realising the gravity of the whole
situation, he locks the girl Immediately out of the hell-like atmosphere. He
brings her to his habitation. She narrates how she became a vict~on to
brothel, which makes Kalo shed tears and at the sametime he was indignat
at the meanrnindedness and cruelty shown by the unscrupulous exploiter. He
remembers the oft repeated words in prison.
"We are the scum of the earth. They hit us where it hurts badly - in
the belly. We have got to hit back".7
Society has now hurt him and his daughter is the worst of viction of
the society's onslaught on the have-nots. He must take revenge upon the
society which is hostile to his family. Totally embittered with the selfish
society that turns the innocent girls into prostitutes and honest men into
thieves, Kalo prepares his revenge. He creates a fake temple and makes a
living for himself and his daughter posing himself off as a brahmin priest.
Soon. he becomes powerful, wealthy, influential and revered. In course of
time his easily acquired prosperity, opulence and social prominence show
signs of corroding his true self.
' Ibid. p.39
But every now and then, he has a pricking in his conscience. AS a
result of this, he is tormented by moral and spiritual conflict between love
and suffering, power and prestige on one side and desire to be honest and
true to himself. He is riding on a tiger. He has to make a right decision to
save himself from the situation. He should either dismount from the tiger and
get killed or kill the tiger of deceit and face the consequence. In his struggle,
he is able to kill the tiger of deceit and make believe; he acts dramatically.
He discloses his identity before a large gathering, a mixed gathering of all
classes and castes. While the Caste Hindus fret and fume for having been
cheated by a blacksmith, praises and felicitations come from other people.
Biten congratulates him thus:
You have triumphed over those others and
yourself. What you have done just now will steal
the spirits of hundreds and thousands of us. Your
story will be a legend of freedom, a legend to
inspire and a ~ a k e n . ~
Bhattacharya focusses the tragic predicament caused by the hunger of
the people, who wish to lead honest life and sincere in their work. They get
caught in the hands of tragic sequences.
Ibid, p.232
Famine and Hunger are the worst tragedies faced by Bengalis. ''The
Great Hunger had struck the land of Bengal in the wake of war: The danger
of the masses of people uprooted from their old earth and turned into
beggars, and the hunger of the all owning few for pleasure and more
pleasure, a raging fever of the times. Uprooted women with their own kind
of hunger had to soothe the other hunger, had to cool the raging pleasure
fever with their bodies" ". This is how Bhattacharya narratzs the bitter days
of femine, the sudden sweep of disintegration, the rootlessness and the end
of human decency. This bitter day found a place in the history. The poverty
killed the grace of Bengalis.
Kalo understands at last how four fifths of his savings has been lost.
The money has been swindled from him by the city sharks. Lekha sells her
. . . medal. She also sells all saleable things. In the famine, Kalo thinks while
at prison that his daughter Lekha may have to roam the fields with hundreds
of others, like a hungry animal, digging out soft wild roots and wading in
pools for a few shrimps.
The very thoughts of his daughter's suffering in the land of famine
make him feel despair and it is a continuous agony for him. A tragic tension
is built up in his mind. After his release from jail, Kalo sees the fields in
Bengal are heavy with yellowing rice. There will be heavy harvest but who
will own it? In the country around Tharna, the peasants have mortgaged their
Ibid, p.54
~ a d d y crops months before they are grown and with that money, they have
bought rice from the dealers at five times the old rates. The money is spent,
the rice is eaten and the peasants continue starving or eat half stomach while
their lands yield rich harvest while they cannot even see or think of
possessing them. The great city is bulglng with uneinployment problem
besides the agony of starvation. These are terrible scenes of poor and the
pitiable condition of the people.
The harrowing experience of poverty to which people are subjected to
by the rulers' mismanagement and maladministration is terrible. Kalo
watches a scavenger employing a rubbish can near the pavement while a few
people in hunger look at hoping to have a few crumbs of food. There are
agonising cries in every street, Kalo hears.
"Baba , . . hunger kills me, Baba . . . give me one sip of rice water
. . . I cannot bear this any more. Baba . . . it was a woman's wail of
desperation, a wail from the bowels of Bengal".Io
Even in this desperate condition, Kalo takes a greater rupee from his
waist cloth and hands to the woman on the streets who asks him alms. When
a sickness keeps raising in his throat, he drinks from a tap and sleeps on the
pavement.
'' Ibid, p.50
Kale sees a funeral p r~~ess ion in which two men at the end of the
~rocession stand in an open car and dip their hands into wicker baskets out
of which they scatter quantities of rice in the street. Once in a while they
fling a palm full of copper coins. An excited crowd of beggars push and
scramble to pick up the coins. Some of them are content with their collection
of rice. Bhattacharya comments on this scene thus: "The chanting of the
Name was meant to propel the departing soul skyward. Without that and the
complicated ritual which followed the departed soul would remain
earthbound. The rice and coppers scattered on the street as well as the
funeral feasts would earn a goodly measure of merit for the soul of this
Brahmin and ensure its warm reception at the portals of heaven,
What would happen to the departing souls of
those dying on the streets? Kalo asked himself.
Were they doomed to be denizens of the seven
hills? For them there was no chanting of the
Name, no scattering of rice, the rice that would
feed their eather form. No Brahmin priest spoke
in timeless words from the Veda or applied the
holy fire to the fleshless faces on the funeral
pyres.
"Would the hundred thousand dead hover in unseen shapes over the
great city eternally? Was heaven meant for the rich alone?"."
Kalo is made to do what he does. That is to become an agent to
procure girls for brothel. For this, the police, the judge, money and the
general public are responsible. Society red-eyed with rage, has branded him
as evil when he has done nothing really wrong. It is a misfortune, he is
engaged in a work which he hates, but no other alternative survival is
available for Kalo. Is it tragic predicament? Society pushes to such a tragic
situation.
In He who Rides a Tiger, Bhattacharya records the misery of the
poor, but also the cruelty of the rich. The situations are so skilfully
developed, and ably presented the harrowing contrast between affluence and
poverty, power and helplessness, goodness and hypocricy. The indignation
of the novelist is all the more poignant because Kalo is forcibly dragged into
the toil. That is the tragic predicament of the protoganist in the novel. Once
his face is painted black he decides to take the mask off and express the real
faces of the human monsters.
' l Ibid, p.53
He does this and gets happiness in his success, though his heart is not
at peace. He is racked by qualms of conscience and beset with Lekha's
gloominess. He has taken personal revenge but not remedied the wail that
comes from the bowel of Bengal.
Kalo, the Mangal Adikari, like the others in the city. bulges with
riches, glitters with loveliness, throbs with life and joy. Kalo is unable to cast
off the unspeakable misery, revolting ugliness, and creeping horror of slow
death. His achievements fail to remove the child hand that lies upon his
daughter's heart, (t glacial wall that has . . . her sprightliness. He is helpless
which is nothing but his tragic predicament. He cannot overcome i t nor can
he find a way out from it. It is shocking to realise that he himself is not out
of that prediction which he has created for the selfish and hypocritical.
Despite his being placed in tragic predicament, Kalo has the courage
to face the situation in order to kill the lie and explode the myth: "Evil is to
be faced and fought with its own knivesu.'* The whole problem they
confront is due to hunger. When the man's basic need is not fulfilled, even
the honest and sincere individual becomes a rebel against the society and the
rulers.
l2 Ibid, p.227
For the tragic predicament here is food, the very essential thing, when
that becomes an unattainable thing, no doubt even the docile individual
becomes a rebel as it is in the case of Kalo. Bhattacharya observes:
Something had seized the people so that their
apathy was broken. Great demonstrations were to
be seen in h e streets almost everyday. They were
not composed of down and outs' among the
hunger-marchers were men from workshops,
students from colleges, clerks from offices.'"
When the entire State is under the grip of famine, the sufferings of the
people is less said the better. It is a real human tragedy, still worst is, it is
a living death. Everyday people lived in hope to have a morsel of food. Low
and middle income group suffered greatly. Their plight is harrowing and the
peasants seeing their children suffer for want of food is all the more a worse
situation. They are in a tragic predicament. The solace they hoped that would
come at least sometime later, is fleeting. No end to their misery is in sight.
When this is the pathetic side, in the otherside of Society as Bhattacharya
observes:
'"bid, p. 167
Kalo had thought over a curious contradiction of
the tones; while men died of hunger, wealth grew
and while kindliness dried up, religion was more
in demand. It was only the outward fotrn of
religion, the shell of ritual, empty within."
Bhattacharya draws the attention of the reader through his artistic
medium to the misguided faith. The evil outgrowth and dogmaticism which
have crept into the lives of the Indian mass in consequence they also fail to
see the realities. In order to drive home that the famine in Calcutta is man-
made, he turns the reader's attention towards the hoarding of food grains by
the unscrupulous rich businessmen and they revel to see the people paying
through their nose heavy price for the purchase of a day's rice. The agony
of the have-nots and happiness of the "haves" and in between the innocent
poor people are caught. It is their tragic predicament. But Kalo stands a man
apart from this social order. According to Shiv.K.Kumar, "It is through this
low born but honest and magnanimous blacksmith, Kalo, that Bhattacharya
presents his humanistic philosophy" . I "
l 4 Ibid, p. 113
Shiv.K. Kumar, "Indo Anglican Literature", Literature in Modern Indian Languages. V.K. Gokak, ed. (New Delhi : Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1957), p.284.
The main concern of the novelist in writing He Who Rides a Tiger,
is partly political and mainly economical and social. The Quit India
Movement, people imprisoned for the sake of loving their country, defiance
of bans, hunger strikes in jails are the reminds of the socio-po!itical and
economic situation that prevailed during the pre-independent days.
The tragic predicament that is focussed into the novel is not only due
to the Bengal famine but also the cause of 11 World War. The casual attitude
of the thoughtless British soldiers to the spectacle of hunger and suffering
and their enjoyment of boys fighting for food, reveal the image of India and
the sorry state of affairs that prevailed during the colonial rule in India.
Kalo's own experience shows the nature of the ordeal endured by the
thousands of people. Bhattacharya sketches everything within the resources
of his art when he gives us a view of the plight of the destitutes in the city.
We see the hungry men beaten up by the police. Men die in such large
numbers that the bodies have to be taken away by the truck loads.
He Who Rides a Tiger is a novel that focusses the real problems the
poor confront in their day to day life. Day in and day out their survival
becomes an ordeal; food is not within their reach to acquire, shelter is
beyond their reach, education unthinkable, dress less said the better - that is
the way of their existence. That is their tragic predicament. The caste
Systems come in for chastisement in the novel.
The symbol and agent of protest against the tyranny of caste is shown
in how Kalo's sister Purnima, is hastily given away in marriage to an elderly
widower when the parents discover that a young man of low caste, Basav is
in love with her. Her unhappy married life leads her to comrnit suicide.
When Basav taunts Biten about the cruel incident, he renounces his caste
forthwith, he says that he is no longer a Brahmin and removes his sacred
thread as well.
Here again casteism played the havoc and each individual faces the
tragic situation because of it. As the denunciation of the caste system is one
of the purposes of the novelist, he alludes to it in sensual places in the novel.
The system is so well entrenched that Chandra Lekha's attending school
meets with severe criticism both from the high caste and the low caste people
of Tharna. The point emphasised by Bhattacharya here is that caste became
a habit of thinking as much as a way of life and i t is not that much easy to
eradicate it.
ffl According to K.R.Chandrasekhar, the objective of the novel besides
h
showing the tragic predicament, it portrays:
Two evils - the evil of exploitation which results
in hunger and degradation and the evil of the
caste system. Two characters symbolise the
protest, Kalo against exploitation and Biten
against Caste. IG
Forced by circumstances and inherent compassionate feelings. Kalo
becomes a rebel against social atrocities.
The development of Kalo as a rebel is described in a way as to suggest
that the rebellion in him is a product of a pernicious system which has to be
challenged. Bitcn's imprisonment is the price he has to pay for protesting
against the callous treatment given to the hungry by the authorities. The
agitation to which men desperately resort to when they are no longer able to
bear the pangs of hunger.
When Kalo and Lekha are comfortably settled in the temple, they
witness a procession of destitutes carrying a banner and shouting "Food! we
demand food for the hungry!" Viswanath, the old gardener, joins the
procession though he himself is now safe in the protection of Mangal
Adhikari. The trustees of temple discharge him from the service for action
of rebellion. Bhattacharya indicates the protest against hunger becomes a
broad based movement with which all patriotic people begin to identify
themselves and also that it becomes merged with the larger movement of
national freedom.
l6 Chandrasekharan, K.R. p.70
Besides the patriotic fervour. He Who Rides a Tiger focusses that the
individuals suffer because of social customs and political apathy to remove
the existing social evils. The selfish motives with which people offer worship
at a temple are brought out in the novel through a few episodes. We also get
a glimpse of the motives with which most of these people make their
offerings to the deity. Among them there are people who refuse to give
priority to the sick man whose object is the salvation of the soul.
Bhattacharya seems to suggest that ritualistic worship even in a false temple
with a faked image can be of help to a dedicated worshipper by serving as
an anodyne against sorrow and by avoiding the growth of mental powers
through concentration.
The Bengal famine forms the backdrop of He Who Rides a Tiger and
constitutes the mainspring of Kalo's action. The emphasis shifts in the later
part of the novel to the characters of Kalo and Lekha and to the manner in
which they react to their situation. Lekha's character is steady and of a piece,
and her action shows her consistency despite ups and down she faces in life.
Lekha functions throughout as the keeper of her father's conscience.
The case of Kalo is different. He experiences a moral and spiritual conflict
between love of ease, power and prestige on one side and desire to be true
to himself on the other. He is finally able to kill the tiger of deceit and make
believe when he acquires the moral strength to be himself. The struggle of
Kalo is a struggle for integrity despite the tragic predicaments he faces.
As for the problem presented in the novel i t is one of identity, and
ironically, the problem of ident~ty is Kalo, which is not physical but social.
But the social problems he encounters results in the tragic predicament.
Kalo's tragic predicament starts with the death of his wife while giving birth
to the baby daughter, his aspiration for a change in life style, finds
expression in his naming the daughter Chandra Lekha. We can even say that
Kalo's aspiration for a new status with money, is an unconscious indication
to a problem which ultimately leads to his tragic predicament.
He thinks that people in his area should come and congratulate his
daughter for having secured a medal in an essay writing competition. So
slowly he becomes conscious of a new significance to be attached to his
family. Bhattacharya observes that the father in him "sat expectantly on his
verandah, waiting for the great ones of town to visit his house and pay
compliments to the girl who had put to shame even the great Calcutta city''
but 'no one came'. It was as though nothing had happened in Tharna
town". l7
l7 He Who Rides a Tiger (Bombay, Jaico Publishing House. 1955). p. 1.
Kalo gets so much upset when the people in the area fail to recognise
his daughter's achievement. It soon becomes a sore and gaping wound in the
wake of war and specter of famine stalks the wholz of Bengal. Bhattacharya
sums up the crisis of 1943 : "the plague washed up in fierce tidss. Bengal was
dying. Tharna was dying". '"
The tragedy that strikes the whole of Tharna is so intense that people
are evacuated from the place. It is a ~nisfortune and for Kalo it is a blow to
his high aspiration. He is placed in a tragic situation all of a sudden which
he has least dreamt of. He is forced to leave his town in search of work, any
work, any where it is offered, what he wants is food for himself and to his
daughter.
Kalo is forced to leave his town in search of work and food. The great
exodus begins from Tharna as well as other villages. The hungry marchers
are beaten up mercilessly by the police guarding trains to Calcutta. To kill
his hunger, Kalo steals three bananas and lands up in prison for commiting
the offence. Bhattacharya achieves at this point a vivid and dramatic
development in the portrayal of Kalo's character.
l8 Ibid, p.16
As Ihab Hassan points out that "The disparity between the innocence
of the Hero and the destructive character of his experience define his
concrete, existential, situation^".^' This reveals Kalo's encounter with con-
ventional values - makes him recoil from the reality of inhumanity. He sees
that he is caught in the whirlpool of problems for no fault of his own, from
where begins his tragic predicament.
Bhattacharya shows a good control over the delineaation of Kalo's
character, namely the moral aspect - that is, the way a person reacts to a
situation and translates his reaction into action and the mental process - that
is the way a person thinks about himself and the relevant situation are well
manipulated by the author in the novel.
The novel can be studied as a well ordered and artistic structure of
individual experience in a specified circumstance or how the individual faces
chain of problems which places his tragic predicament. The novelist takes
care to portray the individual's reaction when they are caught unawares or
they undergo agonising problems because it is their tragic predicament caused
by man made situation.
l9 Ihab Hasran, Radical Innocence (Pornection : University Press. 1961).
Either it is Bengal famine or Kalo's imprisonment or for that matter
his daughter's landing in a house of ill fame - all show that the piquant
situation each one is placed in is not in his hands. The complex urban
problems, urban vices, the presence of mass movements, thc faith in
superstitions, belief in fate, all contribute to tragic situations.
According to Syamala Rao in:
He Who Rides a Tiger, Bhabani
Bhattacharya gives us a pathetic picture of
innumerable indignities and cruelties to which
human beings are subjected during the famine.20
The famine caused untold havoc in the lives of innocent people and
pulled down the mankind to a despicable level and honour was its easiest
target and it did everything possible to crush it and destroy i t . It caused not
only the influx of people into the cities but it made them do anything for the
sake of survival.
Because of poverty and hunger for food, people were involved in
various kinds of perverse activities and exploitation. The human essence was
squeezed out and in consequence only a debased human frame was left out.
" Syarnala Rao, B. Bhabani Bhattachrya (Blackie & Sons Pvt. Ltd., Madras, 1988), p.74
Taking advantage of the situation the unscrupulous elements in the society
began to leave, catering to the temptations of the flesh and eyeing up village
damsels in order to sell them for flesh trade. Everything was reduced to mere
bestiality and the law of jungle prevailed.
As Syamala Rao observes:
Bhabani Bhattacharya since he deals with so
calarnitious an affair, makes use of every possible
artistic device to ensure the reader's reaction and
his compressionability. He lays before the evil
that come to prevail without any restraint at all
and the concentration of evil on the limited
canvas of the novel has unfathomably profound
impact . "
Bhattacharya has skillfully structured his novel He Who Rides a Tiger
and exploited the plot in an excellent manner. The theme of the novel
touches the core of the human heart. The novel not only pictures the naked
horror of the famine but also reveals the ruthlessness of the society and
above all the psychological and superstitious nature of the people. Despie
*' Syamala Rao. B. Bhabani Bhattacharya (Blackie & Sons Pvt. Ltd.. Madras, 1988), p.74
of the economic and social injustices meted out to the innocent people
especially the poor. According to Balrarn S Sorot:
Through the story of Kalo, the hero of the novcl.
Bhabani Bhattacharya illustrates that neither a
rigid adherence to the estahlished social code nor
abrupt break from i t is beneficial to man. The
true happiness and the fulfilment in life can be
attained only after a moderation of temperament
with a due regard for the established conventions
and equal awareness of the requirements of the
modern age."
As regards Kalo, he has a firm faith in the traditional values of life.
The caste hierarchy is sunk deep in his spirit which corrodes his finer
sensibilities.
Though unable to understand the validity or the utility of the
established order in society, Kalo never questioned its relevance. His is a
simple set of values. Honesty, hardwork, and faith in law and justice are the
core of his being. His only question is why there is so much of injustice and
22 Balram S. Sorot, The Novels of Bhabani Bhattacharya (Prestige Books, New Delhi : 1991), p.75.
inhumanity in society especially based on caste, power and money. When he
is at loss to find an answer. he gets disillusioned. The oppressive awareness
of his low birth, poverty, hunger, three months's rigorous imprison~nent for
a neglibile offence, his work as a brothel house agent. are the factors which
make Kalo, a social rebel.
Kalo thinks that for his tragic predicament social injustice is
responsible. He throws away old values by which he lived, now he wants to
rise in rebellion against all such values because they gave him nothing, rather
made him a slave to those oppressive ideals, As the tension mounts in his
mind, it becomes unbearable to him. When the opportune moment comes,
Kalo has to make a manly decision "to kill the tiger" and thereby descend to
solid earth from his lofty seat.
Chandra Lekha is bent upon destroying herself for the sake of Kalo :
further forces his decision, and finally, he reveals the astonishing truth that
he is not a Brahmin and the crisis of his spirit ends and Kalo attains his real
self again. His outlook has been broadened. He feels now neither superior
nor inferior to any class or caste. In consequence, Kalo comes to synthesise
the old and the new in his personality. He gets the equanimity of mind with
an equipoise to see things life in good perspective.
When tragic situations in sequences strike him one after another, he
becomes rather mentally upset and curses his stars. But at one stage he
understands that his tragic predicament is nature-made more than man-made.
Of course, human beings with their greed aggravated i t , but thc possibility
of seeing the light after passing through the dark tunnel of' tragic
predicament, he consolidates his position; he now believes that in life,
sometimes a big compromise has to be made, for the sake of survival.
Bhattacharya despite focussing his characters enmeshed in tragic
predicament, fuses the traditional and the modern values in the most
conspicuous feature of his writing. At one stage, he tows with the idea of the
integration of approaches and the blending of values, by far the most
significant idea that Bhattacharya conveys through this novel. In He Who
Rides a Tiger, all the characters are complex, torn by competing loyalties,
precariously balanced between antagonistic forces within and without. But
Kalo becomes the protoganist of the novel who sees the realities, passes
through conventions, lives through agonising episodes ultimately gets into
tragic predicaments. Sometimes he thinks that the entire cause of suffering
he faces is because of certain individuals in the society.
Kalo's fight is not with an individual but with life that make such
people. He is avenging himself by forcing perdition for all who are nurtured
in that life, perdition from which there can never be any escape. He also
presents the theme of trial and error and ultimate realizatio~,.
Kalo starts the drama at the temple purely with the motive of revenge,
acting the part of the Brahmin, Mangal Adhikari, out of necessity. In due
course of time, he experiences a moral and spiritual conflict between love of
ease, power and prestige on one side and desire to be true to himself on the
other. He is finally able to kill the tiger of deceit and make believe when he
acquires the moral strength to be himself.
Often we get the feeling that the entire tragic predicament in the novel
is due to society and its inherent foibles and beliefs.
Belief, in this country, could be likened to its
rivers, he said. The swollen water burst the banks
and flooded the country side, destroyed lives,
eroded the soil and went to waste, while great
areas of dry cornland thirsted and crops failed;
harnessed, put to proper use, the rivers could
irrigate, produce power, add to the country's
riches. In the same way, the people's belief was
a great force which could be guided in good
ways, made creative. When this great force has
ceased to go to waste, it would no longer be a
curse. blighting lives. It would be the country's
truest a ~ s e t . ~ '
sometimes we come across in He Who Rides a Tiger, not a mere
passive suffering. A protest and rebellion also we witness. Even thc simple
and innocent Lekha approves of the idea of rebellion against certain social
atrocities. Though they meekly accept that they undergo suffering. it is their
tragic predicament. When they think that they can overcome the predicament,
they get emotionally excited and want to rebel against the society, that made
them suffer thus. Superstitious people, rigid rituals and orthodoxy have made
the people. The development of Kalo as a rebel is described in such a way
as to suggest that the rebellion in him is a product of pernicious system
which has to be challenged.
A small rebel was born when he sold his tools
and set off for the big city. The rebel grew eyes
and ears in court and prison, with the help of
B-10, gave it a mouth and a protest. Out of the
protest he had ached mutinously, challenging man
and god.24
2"e Who Rides a Tiger (Jaico), p.173
He Who Rides a Tiger (New Delhi : Hind Pocket Books. 1973), p.117.
~ a l o has the courage to face threatening ordeals which confront him
in every sphere of his activity and forces him to ground. According to
Syamala Rao:
Kalo has the courage to dismount the tiger and i t
is this dismounting that is the core of the novel.
Caste is only the scaffolding and famine is
subsidiary. The main things are riding and
dismounting .'5
Inspite of the ordeals and tension, Kalo gets transformed to be better
and humane towards the end of the novel. The transformation in Kalo is the
result of his daughter Lekha's constant endeavour to bring her father from
the ethical void to luminous road wherein he can find a new vigour in life
and purpose in living.
She knows that she cannot imbibe the spirit of the masquerade and so
comes out of its clutches and is prepared to incur the displeasure and hostile
reaction of her father, instead of being a fish out of water in the strange
world. In a way Lekha is a liberating force to Kalo and she opens up his
eyes to see the truth. The supreme sense of belonging overwhelms her. The
daughter effects a sea change towards the end in the life of her father.
25 Syamala Rao, p.78.
REcO~.tiw?~g 101
He Who Rides a Tiger can be studied on various levels of
understanding. It is an ordered and artistic structure of individual experience
in multiple facets of life. It is also the individual's reaction in specificed
circumstances; as a legend or a moral fable of freedom trom k a r , {lf hunger
for power and glory. According to Premananda Kumar. the theme of the
novel is "public and individual morality".
The novel is also a saga of naturalistic prqjecrion
of natural consciousness in the specified era
where the whole psyche of the nation had
suffered. Besides this, it is a novel set in
romantic tone and the growth and development of
individual conscio~sness.~"
The success of the novel is due not only to its theme but also for its
interesting and well sustained portrayal of the characters and situations. He
demonstrates fine control over the delineation of the characters comprising
of two elements - namely moral aspect - that is, the way a person reacts to
Prema Nandakumar's article on "English in Indian Literature since Independence", Ed. by K.R.S. Iyenger (New Delhi : Sahitya
a situation and translates his reaction into action, and the mental process
which is nothing but the way a person thinks about himself and the relevant
situation. These are all well manipulated by Bhattacharya deftly throughout
the novel.
Bhattacharya believed that creative literature should be constructive to
humanity. He believes that there should be a fusion of the ethical values in literature. These values must be presented in such a way that the creative art
expressing them does not become purely didactic. He thinks that if a work
of creative art with a plea for moral values is dubbed as a propoganda, the
writer need not take it too seriously, he can as well ignore it. He observes:
Art must teach unobtrusively, by its vivid
interpretation of life. Art must preach, but only
by virtue of its being a vehicle of truth. If that is
propaganda, there is no need to eschew the
world.27
Bhattacharya maintains throughout the novel the tempo of life as
witnessed in the most populations of Indian cities - the complex of urban
vices and the thin veer of urban sophistication, the presence of mass
" "Literature and Social Reality", The Aryan Path (Bombay), XXVI, IX, September 1955, p.395.
rnovernents, mass hysteria, all found full expression in He Who Rides a
Tiger. Besides this, the novel depicts the rebellious temper of the people of
India who, enraged by famine and inhuman atrocities perpetuated on the
innocents and have-nots. The novelist here is compelled by his crea!ive urge
to bring to focus the innocents caught in the social onslaught and their tragic
pedicament. As Bhattacharya himself observes:
It has been agreed that a novelist should not draw
his material from contemporary reality, since he
is too close to it to be able to read its meaning
and assess its inward nature. This is absurd. The
creative writer has a well developed sensitivity,
though this does not mean that he understands or
shares all emotions. The things he witnesses, the
things he experiences are likely to move him
more intensely than what may be called
recollection at second hand.
Even the historical novel relies as much on the writerms personal
experience as an imaginative evocation. Tolstoy's War and Peace is a good
example. A second point is that a true novelist writes because he must:
If the events of the day have mo~ed him so
deeply that he must have a creative outlet for his
feelings, why should he put those feelings in cold
storage, as it were., and leave them there until the
present time has slipped into the vistas of dion
yesterdays .I"
Being a creative artist, Bhattacharya works spontaneously, covering
the naked realities as he had seen with an artistic touch. In the hands of the
deft writer, the tragic predicament becomes a lucid narration without any
illogical sequences in the novel.
" "Literature and Social Reality". p.395 - 396.