A candid retelling

Hari Mohan Jha (1908-1984) had seen only 22 summers when he started Kanyadaan as a serial in the Mithila magazine, where it became an instant success and took Maithili literature by storm when it was published as a novella in 1935. However, sandwiched as it was, between two dominant languages – Bengali and Hindi – it lost to both the colonial and nationalist discourse, for they looked upon language as a marker of identity and for the classificatory purposes of the state (James C Scott: Seeing like a State). Although the protagonists of Maithili, and even impartial observers like the administrator-linguist Grierson, tried very hard to convince the ‘powers-that-be’ of its unique script, grammar and idiom, it took another three decades for it to get official recognition from Sahitya Academy (1965). The inclusion in the eighth schedule happened two decades earlier, in the year 2023.

Very briefly, this novel about Indian matrimonial matchmaking offers an intimate portrayal of Mithila society in the late 19th/early 20th century. The narrative is multilingual, with a mix of conversations in a number of languages – proverbs and songs in Maithili, dialogues in Hindi and English, shlokas in Sanskrit, and embellishments in Urdu. Jha’s prose captures the essence and the feel of ‘desh-kaal’ (place and time specific to Mithila) when he compares ‘the setting sun to a sulking son in law’ and a group of porters jumping onto a vessel’s deck as ‘Sugreev’s army of monkeys and bears’.

Right at the very beginning, the reader is introduced to a typical Maithili household with its peculiar domestic squabbles. We learn of the role gender plays in the domestic space. When an elderly male enters the premises, the younger women of the house retreat into their corners. Their lives are limited to the inner courtyard of the house, as is custom in dominant-caste households. In contrast to our protagonist ‘Buchia, the bride’, her sister-in-law is immersed in the world of books and enjoys a good rapport with her husband who seems to appreciate his smart and educated wife. But her reading and intellect is a source of constant friction between her and her mother-in-law.

The story begins with 13-year-old Buchia’s family looking for a suitable groom for her. The match-making takes place in a marriage market: Sabhagacchi – a centre of learning in pre-colonial times, now reduced to an auction centre where women were ‘commodities’ being exchanged for money or for caste mobility. When Buchia is matched with CC Mishra, an English educated graduate of the Banaras Hindu University, the family is on cloud nine. However, CC Mishra is completely cut off from the cultural and social norms of rural India, for his reality has been shaped by reading English books and watching Hindi movies; he dreams of a partner who is a good orator, poet, singer, writer, tennis player, and glamorous like the film star Devika Rani. When Mishra is tricked into marrying the innocent Buchia, he is shocked beyond his wits to discover that she is clueless ‘even about the alphabet’. He expects ‘a steam engine’ but realises that she is ‘the wheel of a bullock cart’. He decides to leave, which naturally leaves the bride heartbroken, confused and absolutely shattered. But he does so with the resolve to work all his life in the movement against the exploitation of girls in an iniquitous and unjust society.

By the time it was published as a book in 1933, it had become a ritual to gift a copy of the book to a new bride (and the groom) in the hope of stimulating a conversation between bucolic girls who had just about touched their puberty and their husbands, many of whom had access to the wider world of the university and the mofussil towns. It went on to influence many novels and films on a similar theme including the Mohan Sehgal classic by the same name, starring Asha Parekh and Shashi Kapoor.

Nine decades later, this Maithili classic has been translated into English by Lalit Kumar under the title ‘The Bride’, and much like the original, it has taken the world of the English-speaking middle class in India by storm. As the translator explains: when the book was first published, some praised it profusely whereas others criticized it severely. Irrespective of the widespread criticism, it was apparent that the novel became instantly famous. Those who were opposed to it became even more restless to know what would follow next. At that point (culturally speaking) Mithila was in deep sleep and had become the land of stagnation. It was an opportune moment, therefore, for the publication of Kanyadaan. It became so popular that the publisher got innumerable letters from the readers. In the conflict between tradition and modernity, Harimohan Jha treads a middle path. The model of the ideal woman that the novel projects is not borrowed from the model of European women. It is someone who is deeply ingrained in tradition with some basic knowledge of modern subjects, which made even its trenchant critics appreciate the blend of tradition and modernity and request the author to write its sequel. He did so a decade later when he wrote Dviragaman (1943 in which both the bride and the groom show signs of repair, reconciliation with the possibilities of domestic peace, if not bliss. In the penultimate scene of the sequel, both the bride and the groom are transformed: Buchia into Bucchi Dai and CC Mishra into Chandicharan who is now the closest thing to a ‘A Suitable Boy in Maithili.’

The writer, a former Director of LBS National Academy of Administration, is currently a historian, policy analyst and columnist, and serves as the Festival Director of Valley of Words — a festival of arts and literature.