Towards the end of the 19th century, and at the turn of the 20th century, many novelists in different regions of India took up the theme of child marriage. These writers were trying to bring about social reform. Was Harimohan Jha trying to achieve the same purpose? He may well have been an advocate of reform, but what he does in his novel is paint a complex picture of the Maithil community
The Bride by Harimohan Jha; translated from Maithili by Lalit Kumar (Harper Collins)
Review by Dr Shefali Jha
Harimohan Jha wrote Kanyadan in Maithili in 1933. The novella began as a first chapter serialized in Mithila, a Maithili magazine, in 1930; this small section proved so popular that the author was pressured to make it the basis of a whole novel. Harimohan Jha (1908-1984) was a renowned professor of philosophy at Patna University, who published his academic works in English and Hindi but wrote all his fiction in Maithili.
Kanyadan remained his most famous novel; hence, almost a hundred years later, it was translated into English as The Bride by Lalit Kumar. In the foreword to the translation, Harish Trivedi compares Kanyadan to Samskara, another novel that takes as its target, the practices of the Brahmin community in India. Trivedi refers to an insider-outsider perspective used by the two writers, Harimohan Jha and U.R. Ananthamurthy, to criticize Brahmanical customs and practices.
Kanyadan is set in colonial India, with scattered references to this colonial context in the form of, for example, an argument between advocates of swadeshi and vilayati, or a description of how the village women are afraid of the man outside their house since they imagine him as a British soldier, and of course, the backdrop of English education, as the prospective groom, one of the main characters of the novel, is a BA in English literature from the Hindu University in Benaras. The novel’s main focus, however, is the Brahmin custom of marrying off their barely teen, young daughters. instead of educating them.
It’s a simple story of a family trying to arrange a match for their daughter, 13. The action takes place over just a few days, with the novel beginning with the women of the house wondering whether the men will be successful in finding a good groom. Good grooms are expensive – will the family be able to afford one, they ask each other. The action then shifts to the men and their negotiations at different places. A groom is found, brought to the village, and a marriage ceremony occurs. What is woven through this story is a description of many typical activities of the Maithil Brahmin community through an ironic gaze.
The critique of these practices is carried out through humor. Unlike Samskara, which is a much darker novel as it begins with a death, the tone in Kanyadan is light, although critical. Many passages make the reader laugh. The description of the marriage mela at Sabhagachhi is amusing with the contrast between khankhanoua, tantanoua, and thanthanoua marriages. The mela is there to provide comic relief – it is perhaps not as important for the search for the bridegroom as it is the prospective bride’s uncle and cousin who are sent to the mela, while her father and brother go elsewhere to negotiate with C C Mishra, who is eventually married to the girl in question. However, many Maithil Brahmins will even today talk about how their father’s or uncle’s marriages were fixed at this mela. There are other passages where we see the writer poking gentle fun at, for example, a portly Maithil man struggling with his dhoti, which loosens from his waist as he hurries to catch the steamer at Mahendru Ghat. The tone is humorous, but infused with intimacy and familiarity at the same time.
The tension in the novel is built up through a succession of contrasts: the contrast between the sequestered world of women in the home, and the outside world of men who travel to the mela and other places; within the world of women, the contrast between the educated, older daughter-in-law, and the uneducated child bride; the contrast between a situation of several family connections, with parents, children, siblings, uncles and aunts, and a situation of a lack of family connections in the form of a person with no parents and hardly any other family as well; and the contrast between the rural setting of a village and the urban milieu of a university town. When all these contrasts come to a head in the marriage of the rural, uneducated child bride with the urban, western-educated, older groom, there is no meeting ground at all, and the stage is set for the denouement.
What is the significance of these contrasts for the writer? Are we to feel sorry for this young man, 22, without his parents, or are we to see him as a figure of fun? When he protests that a wife is not just meant for performing domestic labour, which anyway a maid can perform for just a few rupees, are we to seriously consider this issue of the slippage between the figure of the maid and that of the wife, or are we meant to laugh away the yearnings of the young man as mere wishful thinking?
What was Harimohan Jha’s intention in writing this novel in this vein? What was he trying to convey? Almost a hundred years later, with sexual politics exploding on an everyday basis around us, how do contemporary readers receive this novel? If Jha was a writer with an insider-outsider perspective, what about readers who are insiders-outsiders of a different kind, married into the community but not belonging to it? What meanings can they find in it?
What intrigues me in the novel, is the writer’s purpose in introducing the character of the educated daughter-in-law. Usually, the contrast is between how daughters are treated one way, whereas daughters-in-law have to follow different rules. In this case, the daughter-in-law is portrayed as ‘the queen of bookworms’, ‘lost in her books from dawn to dusk’, with no time for housework, and she is older at 18, unlike her sister-in-law, who is already late for marriage at 13. How does this daughter-in-law manage to escape the strictures that the community applies to its women? She is clever and she is used to fool the prospective groom into marrying the child bride even while he is dreaming of a companionate marriage with a wife who will discuss politics and philosophy with him as well as play tennis with him. No doubt, C C Mishra is a figure of fun, and he is made fun of, and called ‘Small Bottle Misar’ by the village women, and all our sympathy is with the bride who is left behind and will probably be blamed for everything.
Literary writing has its own political meanings. Trivedi argues that towards the end of the 19th century, and at the turn of the 20th century, many novelists in different regions of India took up the theme of child marriage, focusing specifically on the custom of marrying girl children. Through their novels, these writers were trying to bring about social reform. Was Harimohan Jha trying to achieve this same purpose? The novel contains a tongue-in-cheek reference to Mithila Sudharini, a monthly magazine about reform, the pages of which are used as scrap paper by Tunni Jha, the ‘master matchmaker’ at the marriage mela. Harimohan Jha may well have been an advocate of reform, but what he does in his novel is paint a complex picture of the Maithil community, with well-etched descriptions of the world of women in their spaces and with their anxieties, as well as the world of the men, both young and old, with their differing expectations.
It is a boon that the novel has become accessible to English readers through this translation. The translation has been done well with some Maithili words like amaut, patua saag, and adauri being retained to give us a flavour of the language. Then, there are the sweet-sounding names like Dhunmun Kaki and Buchkun Chaudhary. Anyone who has heard Maithili being spoken can vouch for it being a language with mellifluous sounds and the translator has got the tone of the conversations taking place between the members of a typical Brahmin-dominated village in Mithila just right. In the form of this translation, what the novel does is to open up a different world for us, peopled by characters who have been fleshed out in such a way that they elicit our sympathy, as well as leave us pondering about the flashpoints of conflict in this world.
The Bride: Explore Harimohan Jha’s Maithili Classic Kanyadan
HARIMOHAN JHA
When it was first published in 1930, Harimohan Jha’s Kanyadan blazed through the Maithili reading world and became the inspiration for numerous Indian novels and films. Translated into English (by Lalit Kumar) for the first time, this delectable story about Indian matchmaking will charm readers with its cast of imperfect but unforgettable characters.
Thirteen-year-old Buchia is quick-witted and pleasant-looking, but in the competitive marriage mart of Bihar, her family needs to be resourceful and wily to find the right groom to uphold their pride. When a match is made with C.C. Mishra, English educated and recently graduated from Banaras Hindu University, everyone believes that a happy ending is near. But unbeknown to them, the groom dreams of a partner who writes poetry and plays tennis; is more-or-less a carbon copy of the film star Devika Rani. So, when he discovers that his new wife cannot even recognise the letters of the alphabet, their future begins to look less rosy.
Excerpts from The Bride (Kanyadan)
Sabhagachhi had sprung to life with people bustling everywhere. The whole place had the look of a fairground. The old and experienced men of the region believed that once the number of Brahmins assembled there swelled to one lakh, the pakad tree would wither. And the tree did wither. As far as one’s eyes could see there was nothing but paags on the heads of Maithil Brahmins. Suddenly, it started drizzling, and they each unfurled black umbrellas over their white paags. It appeared as if a flock of swans had suddenly transformed into crows.
Dear reader, can you spot Ghutar in this crowd? There he stands—some distance away from the master matchmaker, Tunni Jha. With the mark of vermillion and sandalwood paste on his brow and a rosary of basil beads around the neck, Tunni looks the part of a renowned scholar who has cleared the prestigious dhaut-pariksha with distinction, conducted by no less a personage than the Maharaja of Darbhanga himself. But to tell you the truth, he will stand exposed when you ask him a simple question. You might even find the poor thing looking away, trying to avoid your gaze. Well, let him. Why should we embarrass him?
Ghutar threaded his way through the crowd to meet the matchmaker. After exchanging pleasantries, he snorted a pinch of snuff and enquired humbly, ‘Tunni Babu, tell me about the lineage and ancestral village of the boy.’
‘Why do you worry about his origins? Of course, he belongs to a noble family,’ Tunni explained, rolling his eyes and raising an eyebrow. ‘But how does it matter? Do you think getting a Brahmin boy of such superior descent is easy these days? If this marriage goes through, consider it the icing on the cake.’
‘How much land does he own?’ Ghutar further enquired.
‘He owns no less than seven bighas of land. Also, one of his villagers has mortgaged a mango orchard spread over one and a quarter bighas to him. Last year, his farms yielded sixteen quintals of millet,’ Tunni tried to assuage his anxieties.
‘It’s fine, then. What about his education?’
‘Never mind, he can read the alphabet effortlessly. Isn’t that something? Besides, he has memorized a large number of Sanskrit shlokas needed for offering prayers. Don’t you realize our ancestors didn’t even know how to draw a line? In comparison with them, he is highly learned.’
‘Is his father alive?’
‘Oh, does it really matter? We are there to take care of him. Isn’t it enough that his mother is alive? You should be happy he has no siblings; that makes him the sole heir.’
‘What all do they expect of the bride’s family?’ Ghutar asked sheepishly.
‘They will pay you, let’s say, one hundred and twenty-five rupees right away. Will that be enough? There is no harm done if you don’t get sweets and clothes. You can ask a genealogist to examine the Panji of the boy and the girl on Monday to ensure they are not blood-related. After the formal settlement of marriage, you may take the boy along to your house. Next day, give him a pair of dhotis and a befitting send-off,’ explained Tunni.
Shortly after finishing this conversation, Ghutar drew his nephew aside to discuss the matter. The maternal uncle seemed to have developed some liking for the boy but the nephew had made up his mind to reject him. ‘Uncle, you are naive,’ he registered his protest tenderly. ‘Tunni is trying to trick us into this marriage, but trust me the boy is no match for Buchia. If we return with him, the women of our family will definitely curse us and Buchia will make a fuss throughout her life.’
Both of them walked up to Tunni again and said, ‘Our family considers it improper to take money from the groom. We want a slightly more suitable boy. We can’t spend a fortune, but we won’t hesitate to part with, let’s say, ten rupees.’
Tunni’s jaw dropped in amazement and his mouth opened as wide as a crack in the parched earth during a severe drought.
‘O exalted one, why didn’t you tell me this beforehand?’ he asked, salivating. ‘Here at Sabhagachhi, we receive all sorts of marriage proposals. The first is called a khankhanoua wedding where the coins pour out from the hands of the groom’s father, producing a khankhan sound. Simply put, the bride’s family gets plenty of cash. The second is known as a tantanoua wedding where the groom’s father feels tantan or ecstatic about receiving one thousand rupees from the bride’s side. And the third is a thanthanoua wedding where both the parties are thanthan or paupers; they get nothing from each other. Well, you see, I assumed that you would go for the first. A large number of men come here wearing a dirty paag like yours and give girls in return for money. How could I have known that you are here to pay the groom! But now that I see you belong to a well-to-do family, rest assured I’ll find you a suitable match. Count yourself fortunate because as it happens, one such proposal is up for grabs in Sabhagachhi today. If this alliance is fixed, consider the girl lucky.’
Excerpted with permission from ‘The Bride’ translated by Lalit Kumar; and published by Harper Collins India.
LIST OF BOOKS BY NOVELIST HARIMOHAN JHA Important Works
- Kanyadan (1933)
- Dviragaman (1943)
- Pranamya Devta (1945)
- Khattar Kakak Tarang (1948)
- Rangshala (1949)
- Teerthayatra (1953)
- Charchari (1960)
- Jeevan Yatra (1984)
(Lalit Kumar is currently a Fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. He teaches English at Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College, University of Delhi. Recently, he won the Kalinga Literary Festival Book Award for his English translation of Kanyadan.)
(The reviewer is a professor at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She did her PhD from University of California, Los Angeles in Political Science and is the author of Western Political Thought: From the Ancient Greeks to Modern Times (Pearson). She specializes in Political Theory, Feminist Theory, Philosophy of Social Sciences, Constituent Assembly Debates of India, and Migration on which she has published research papers.)
