Balachandra Rajan

"This novel of modern India centers around national and personal conflicts in its story of V. S. Krishnan, a Brahmin, who, returned after ten years of schooling in England, finds that his country's strife over partition and the English evacuation is reflected in his own struggle to find a meaning and a definition of his life. His career arranged, his marriage predetermined, he escapes disgrace in a civil demonstration and settles into his government service post. Although Kamala is the perfect Hindu wife, personifying non-violence in which resignation can be translated into resistance, when Cynthia Bainbridge turns up their friendship, begun in England, becomes a passionate affair but it is ended when Krishna realizes that his religion is no longer open to him. Joining Kamala in riot-torn Shantihpur, he is confronted by the vicious hatred of the Moulems and the threat of cholera and is the witness of Kamala's murder when she attempts to protect a Moslem girl. After the traditional rites of her burial, he returns to Delhi and Government Service knowing that Kamala's final profession of faith has effected a change in him even if it has gone for nothing in larger terms. The parallel struggles of individual and state for freedom, the symbols, fundamentals, rituals and practices of different Indian groups, are overlaid with heavy textured prose that is exhaustive in its exploration of contemporary Indian thinking."--Kirkus.

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