7 - Caste, Class and Gender

Summary

Many people would think that Narayan is too ‘pure’ a writer to be sullied with concerns like caste, class and gender, but the fact is that Narayan did engage with these issues. Malgudi is divided on class lines, with the elite living in Lawley Extension and the lowly living elsewhere, in or off Ellaman Street. In Waiting for the Mahatma Gandhi goes to the home of the poorest of the poor avoiding the Municipal Board Chairman's hospitality. So the Dalit does exist in Malgudi's Brahminical world. Swami and his friends go to the poorer quarters to fight with the coachman's son. Undeniably Narayan's world is primarily of the Tamil Brahmin, but there are non-Brahmin characters present all the time. In a short story like “Fellow Feeling”, Narayan foregrounds caste. He does so in The Guide in his depiction of Raju's liaison with the devadasi dancer Rosie. Mali's relation with the foreigner Grace in The Vendor of Sweets and Raman's relation with the iconoclast modernist Daisy in The Painter of Signs are also instances of relationships which bring out caste differences. In The Dark Room Narayan writes his boldest novel on the issue of Woman though this sympathy for the cause of Woman is not absent from a great deal of his other writings like Grandmother's Tale. This section will, therefore, attempt an exploration of Narayan's treatment of the themes of caste, class and gender, in order to demonstrate his location and relevance in a contemporary discourse.