Use of Symbols:
(a) Mountains:
Mountains are an inseparable part of the life in Kanthapura. The Mahatma as the ‘Sahyadri Mountains’ is a mini - Gandhi. It is the grandeur of the mountain (the Mahatma) that draws thirty thousand men and women and children who wait on the roadside for his darshan, while he is on the way to the Dandi Beach. But the Blue Mountains are ominous.
(b) Rocks:
Rocks are used on the one hand, to indicate cohesion as among the coolies in the Skeffington Coffee Estate who rise up like one rock before the Sahib and will jointly hit Bade Khan later, and, on the other hand, to present them as reliable sources of succor during floods ......... same pointed and dry rocks give hold for slippery feet.
(c) Water:
The water of the oceans and sin go together. The British have come from across the seas to exploit, to plunder and to trample on wisdom. The Indian kings plan to throw the red - men into the sea. Bhatta, the priest, is more temporal than religious, more material than spiritual.
“Gold has stuck in his stomach
And he will take the road to Kashi.”
If the British undertake the voyage to reach India, Bhatta set out for a pilgrimage to Kashi. “The sinner may go to the ocean but the water will only touch his knees.” The sea (The Dandi Beach) with the waters of welcome to Gandhi becomes emblematic of his victory in the land of waters (England in the Round Table Conference). The water of the Himavathy symbolizes continuity and indiscriminate patronage. Rangamma purifies Moorthy with the water of the Ganges after his return from the Pariahs.
(d) Bull and Yoke:
Drudgery and slavery are communicated through the symbols of yoke and bull. The yoke is used to show the idea of unity also. India is shown under the yoke of the British and her people (bulls) treated as cattle who , under the guidance of Moorthy ( himself a holy bull ) fret to deliver themselves from the foreign yoke . Seetharamu is abused, beaten and despite high fever, driven to the yoke like a bull. Coolies of the Estate, whose plight is worse than that of animals, throng the Toddy booth as clogged bulls. The red - men arrive and India comes under their yoke as Subba Chetty's 350 rupees bulls get under the yoke of carts loaded with merchandise. The shopkeepers ply their trade in fairs through carts. They rest and allow their bulls to rest only to come under the yoke again.
(e) Cow:
Mother India is looked upon as a cow. Moorthy is a noble cow. Rangamma is as tame as a cow in contrast to Venkamma, a buffalo. Bhatta pretends to be a well - wisher of cows and man. The Pariah looks at the teeth of a dead cow. The British strike Moorthy and force the Hindus to cat cow's flesh: “When you strike a cow you will fall into the hell of hells and suffer a million and eight tortures and be born an ass.”
(f) A Brahmin:
A Brahmin stands as a symbol of wisdom and purity of mind. Being simple, pious and innocent, Moorthy is compared with a cow, who, as the tradition goes is treated by the Hindus as a mother and is held in high esteem.
(g) Temple:
A temple is a symbol of ancient culture, but even in modern times of discord and dissensions, they are places where man discards rational thinking in preference to emotional acceptance and forgets his differences and irons out his discords. The people of Kanthapura have been going to the temple of Kenchamma for centuries to ask for her love, guidance and charity. Now when they hear the call of Satyagraha of Mahatma Gandhi they collect in the same temple to devise ways and means to use the power of love to defend national interests. The temple becomes a secret meeting - place where the ignorant people received knowledge about the history of their times and the part they could play in making the hands of Mahatma Gandhi strong.
(h) Symbols of Kumkum, Bangles and Sari:
These symbols belong to the traditional India and references to them are found throughout the novel. Habits of women and their symbolic significance are scattered all over. A shaven head with Kumkum (crimson mark on the forehead of a lady) is an inauspicious sign, as the lady who has it, is a widow. The marital status of a woman comes to be suggested by the coloured sari and white one, though these symbols are woven in the texture of the novel.
(i) Historical Figures as an Ideal:
Historical figures assume symbolical significance and serve as stimulus to the volunteers who remain immersed with their blowpipe, broomstick and milking of cows. Rani Laxmi Bai emerges as an indomitable fighter who sacrificed herself for her Mother land. The Rajput women (spurning slavery and humiliation) serve as an ideal. The heroic sacrifices of Kamla Devi, Sarojini Naidu and Annie Besant are enviable examples.
(j) The Skeffington Coffee Estate:
The Skeffington Coffee Estate is a picture of the British with their atrocities over the Coolies from the ghats in the inclement surroundings of nature. It is a spectacle of inhuman Sahibs, of grim poverty, of helplessness and of suffering. The Estate is a land of storm and incessant rains ( bringing disease and death ), of superstition of snakes, of predatory animals preying upon the innocent, of whispering cries against howling, mourning against roaring, of helplessness against power . The ‘well - like silence’ of the valley is disturbed by the cries of jackals and the grunt of cheetah or a tiger. The Estate is an ominous place. Nobody who sets foot on the Blue Mountains ever leaves it. That is her law.
(k) Kashi symbol of Miniature Traditional Conservative India:
Kashi represents two things in the novel. It stands for a miniature, traditional conservative India. It also symbolises a place where a Brahmin received a rupee for every hymn and hiccup. Bhatta lost his business, in Kanthapura during the non co - operation movement but Kashi was still a place where he could go to make his living as an orthodox Brahmin. When one hears the rhythmic chant of the Sanskrit Slokas on the ghats of the river Ganges at Kashi, one wears a serious look and begins to meditate on the cycle of birth and death. At such a time reckoning of the personal is gone and its place is taken by the impersonal and universal. The individual anguish merges into the cosmic anguish. It was here that when he was performing the last rites of his dead father he was suddenly involved in a chain of philosophisings which raised him from the personal to impersonal.
(l) Local Rituals:
The narrator refers how bulls were yoked to the plough under Rohini star or how “blue gods and quiet gods and bright - eyed gods” could be seen at the beginning of Kartik or how goddess Kenchamma appeared in different forms if some disease or problem plagued the locality .
Symbolical End of the Novel:
The end of Kanthapura has more than a surface meaning. It is not a despairing end. In the desertion and devastation of the village (neither men nor mosquito in Kanthapura) life continues. The ever - flowing Himavathy is running its course , the men from Bombay have replaced the Kanthapura and built houses on the Bebbur Mound and concubine Chinna is entertaining her clients . Kenchamma and the Siva of Kanthapurishwari are there to receive allegiance from Range Gowda who implores them to protect the people. His heart beats likes a drum, pointing to something in the womb of future. The tiger of yesteryears is now chastened and weighed down with age and anxiety.
