A royal saga

Kamala Markandaya’s ‘The Golden Honeycomb’ delves into Indian royalty and the beginnings of the national movement. With her charming prose, the author makes this a compelling read, writes Prema Nandakumar

Kamala Markandaya. Our own Pearl Buck. Her Nectar in a Sieve (1954) was a revelation. So the contours and accents of Indian countryside can be reflected in the English language! After this first novel, Kamala never looked back. Why should she?

She had university education, had settled down in United Kingdom, and had been gifted with a mastery of English usage suitable for conveying the Indian scenes and scents. Of these again, she had plenty: rural life, guruhood, colonial and post-colonial scenarios involving Britishers and Indians, industrialisation, the obsession to go abroad to achieve. So the novels came from her, not too fast, but with enviable regularity, presenting the various facets of India. We welcomed them as good reading material, occasionally thought-provoking and never a disappointment.

The Coffer Dams (1969), for instance, speaks of the inroads made by technology into traditional values. For those of us who have lived in places like Ranchi, Bhilai and Rourkela in the 1960s, the focused work of the engineers (foreign and local) and technicians, the labour force, and the dislocation of the tribals were all quite familiar. And the creative artiste in Kamala had come out with the right mix to project the rebellion brewing in a million hearts.

Less than a decade later, Kamala took up a few pages of history. The Golden Honeycomb (1977) begins  somewhere in late 19th century and closes with the post First World War period. The Indian princes have attracted even Mulk Raj Anand to immortalise them, and Kamala too does her bit with Devapur’s Bawajiraj II and III. The latter’s son rejects his heritage and becomes the people’s leader. Sounds quite Bollywoodish, but actually a well-told tale with high seriousness of intent.

Three women come into his life: Janaki from the servant’s quarters, the British Sophie and Usha, the Dewan’s daughter. Fact and fiction clamour for Kamala’s attention.

Rendered powerless by the British, yet with the trappings of power that makes the principality look like a golden honeycomb, royalty naturally indulges in a million peccadilloes, durbars, conspicuous consumption and the rest. Bawajiraj I is deposed by the British who suspect his loyalty. Is he in league with patriotic Indians?

The British agent and the local Dewan choose a young man of 18 to be his successor, who dies in an accident leaving behind a son. Coming of age, the son ascends the Devapur gaddi as Bawajiraj III. A benevolent ruler who loves his pleasures like hunting and polo. A brave, battle-hero who could render German tank commanders speechless. Also the lover of the commoner Mohini. The two have a son, Rabindranath.

Rabi can kow-tow to the British and become the Raja. He prefers not to, though he succumbs to his father’s pressures for a while, however unwillingly. Soon he is on his own track of independent thinking, as he is able to recognise the divide-and-rule policy of the British to keep the India-Jewel in the British crown. Hence, Kamala’s novel is not about the decline and fall of the Indian princes but the rise of a new Kshatriya power to free Mother India. Also the rise of woman-power in the likes of Vimala and Usha that would make the Gandhian movement unbendingly powerful. As Usha tells her tradition-bound mother:

“In your day it was different. This is a revolution. Who ever heard of a revolution for men only? No, it’s everyone. Men and women. They do belong to the same species.”
So the crowds of men and women now come to the Durbar with enthusiasm. Not for the royal paraphernalia but for Rabi. The crowds are prepared for strikes and lock-outs. Salt Tax is the incubus drying them up and the Maharajah is not prepared to call it off. The day comes when the palace and the residency are surrounded. There is no violence from the crowd led by Rabi. A revelation for the Maharaja put with typical Markandayan “sufficiency and suggestiveness”:

“He had not realised he had quite so many subjects, subversive at that. The hinterland where all this breeding had taken place had chosen to shed some of its mystery. Those durbars and Dasaras, he began to perceive, had revealed nothing at all of the capacity and purpose of his kingdom.”

All is well that ends well for Devapur. Accession to independent India comes not long after. Beginning with the installation of Maharaja Bawajiraj II, The Golden Honeycomb treads delicately with the storyline, truth often appearing stranger than fiction and fiction materialising with verve as historical truth. Markandaya’s exquisite sagacity of taste never falters, making this purposive novel still relevant, proving the adage, old is indeed gold.