¹ All translations in the article are my own. In most cases I have incorporated the English text translated from Gujarati, Hindi, and Sanskrit in to the main body of the text to facilitate the reader. In the case of critical translations that need attention, I have provided an explanation in footnotes. I have retained in the original form some Gujarati, Hindi, and Sanskrit terms such as ‘dharma’ that are likely to be familiar to the reader and have provided footnotes with English translations.

² Although the term in the original text, ‘desh’, has often been translated as ‘nation’, I translate it as ‘country’ to capture the sense of attachment to the land that precedes and exceeds the term ‘nation’. Desh also variously implies town, village, or region. Nation has more effectively been translated into another term of more recent origin: rashtra.

³ Tripathi, G., Saraswatichandra (Vol. 1), N. M. Tripathi Publications, Bombay, 2001, p. 2Google Scholar.

⁴ Henceforth, I follow Govardhanram and other scholars in translating navalkatha as ‘novel’. There are two dangers to doing so and a word of caution is necessary. The first is a more general disadvantage; the term navalkatha, composed of two words, naval (new) and katha (story), does not actually connote or refer to the novel form. It does draw a parallel with the word ‘novel’ in terms of the relationship each concept bears to pre-existing literary forms: the navalkatha was seen as a naval or new form in the South Asian literary world, and the novel had a similar reception in Europe. The critical difference, however, is that the literary contexts within which the novel and the navalkatha emerged were entirely different. Though the etymology of both terms is similar, they refer to different types of text.

The second danger is specific to Saraswatichandra. Saraswatichandra exhibits the influence of several different forms of writing, and of different cultures and languages. While the influence of the Western novel on Saraswatichandra is undeniable, simply calling it a novel denies or heavily underplays the influence of other kinds of writing. More particularly, Saraswatichandra, as I have argued very briefly later in this article, demonstrates several features characteristic of forms such as that of the Ramayana and the various ‘tellings’ of the ramkatha. See Ramanujan, A. K., ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation’, in Richman, P. (ed.), Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991, pp. 22–49Google Scholar. The influence of the Panchatantra and folk fables is also evident. It must be mentioned that in Saraswatichandra, Govardhanram quotes almost as much from Western novels as he does from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, and the Bhagvad Gita. Much deliberation has ensued over the aakaar (form) of Saraswatichandra. Sitanshu Yashaschandra has summarized some of these positions in his essay. See Yashaschandra, S., ‘Saraswatichandra: Vivechanni Bhumikanu Ek Vishleshan’, in Joshi, R. (ed.), Govardhanpratibha, Loklahari Prakashan, Nadiad, 1983, pp. 148–58Google Scholar. Further discussion on the text as novel is taken up in the section entitled ‘Novel as forum’.

⁵ Tripathi, Saraswatichandra (Vol. 1).

⁶ The four volumes of Saraswatichandra were originally published in 1887, 1892, 1898, and 1901 respectively.

⁷ Jhaveri, M., History of Gujarati Literature, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1978, p. 95Google Scholar.

⁸ Govardhanram himself characterizes this shift in different terms. He writes in the preface to the third volume, ‘With the third volume, this narrative enters upon a different phase of its career. It still continues to be a mosaic or even blending of the actual and the ideal aspects of our life in these days, but the latter, henceforth, begins to acquire a distinct predominance over the former.’ Tripathi, G., Saraswatichandra (Vol. 3), N. M. Tripathi Publishers, Bombay, 2001Google Scholar.

⁹ It is with the greatest hesitation, and for want of a better word, that I speak of the people engaging with Saraswatichandra as ‘readers’. Not all of them had read the novel, but they had all heard it being read out, narrated, or discussed.

¹⁰ See, for example, Tripathi, G., Saraswatichandra: Gujarati bhasha ka shreshtha upanyasa, P. S. ‘Kamlesh’ (trans.), Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1994Google Scholar; Tripathi, G., Saraswatichandra (abridged by Upendra Pandya), V. Meghani (trans.), Pandya, U. (ed.), Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 2007Google Scholar. Govardhanram also mentions a Marathi translation of the first volume in his Scrap Book. See Pandya, K. C., Bakshi, R. P., and Pandya, S. J. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi's Scrap Book 1894–1904 Manuscript Volumes IV—Part (2), V and VI, N. M. Tripathi Publishers, Bombay, 1959, p. 103Google Scholar. This translation has however not been found by scholars. I am grateful to Jayant Meghani for confirming this for me.

¹¹ Saraiya, G., Saraswatichandra, Sarvodaya Pictures, Mumbai, 1969Google Scholar.

¹² See, for example, published plays such as Cinu Modi's Bhuddhidhan, a play based on the first volume of Saraswatichandra, and Champakbhai Modi's play Saraswatichandra. Modi, C., Buddhidhan: Govardhanaram Tripathina ‘Sarasvaticandra Bhag: 1’ ne Adhare Natyarupantara, Divaina Pablikesansa, Amadavada, 2008Google Scholar; Modi, C., Saraswatichandra Natyarupantar, Pankaj, Nadiad, 1982Google Scholar. The theatre performances of Saraswatichandra are too numerous to list; one may mention noteworthy performances by Jayshankar Sundari and a production directed by Raghunath Brahmbhatt.

¹³ S. Tripathi, ‘Saraswatichandra: Not a love story’, Live Mint. Retrieved from http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/JLEYRaHV7KJgbDyUTWarKJ/Saraswatichandra-Not-a-love-story.html, [accessed 30 March 2013].

¹⁴ This success is recognized by Govardhanram: ‘The purpose of the writer is to enable the reader to rise to a stage higher than where he was . . . Saraswatichandra, thus undertaken at this point, works without doubt, and people feel the book. This is a mere literary work and will work on society.’ Pandya, K. C., Bakshi, R. P., and Pandya, S. J. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi’s Scrap Book 1888–1894 Manuscript Volumes I, II, III, IV—Part (1), N. M. Tripathi Publishers, Bombay, 1959, p. 31Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Seth, S., Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India, Duke University Press, Durham, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ It needs to be acknowledged that ‘Western education’ is not a monolith. Within the realm of Western, ‘modern’, colonial, or English education, there are several different kinds of knowledge practices. There exist violent disagreements among clearly distinguished traditions about what constitutes knowledge practices and their dissemination. It is, however, possible to identify certain assumptions that these various practices and schools share as a result of their historical trajectory, which allow them to recognize non-Western practices as different, inferior, incorrect, or incomplete.

¹⁷ This resistance is similar to that which is described by Dipesh Chakrabarty in Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference in the course of his discussion of two different types of histories. Chakrabarty, D., Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Suhrud, T., Writing Life: Three Gujarati Thinkers, Orient Blackswan, New Delhi, 2009, p. 185Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 185.

²⁰ Most names in the text have either allegorical or symbolic connotations. The name ‘Saraswatichandra’ is composed of two parts: Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge or ‘knowledge’ itself, and chandra, which literally means ‘the moon’, but is also used as an honorific.

²¹ ‘Kumud’ refers to a white lily. ‘Sundari’ means ‘beauty’. The word sundari is often added as a suffix to the names of women.

²² ‘Navinchandra’ is composed of two parts: navin, or ‘new’, and chandra, used as an honorific, as in the case of Saraswatichandra.

²³ Suvarna refers to ‘gold’ or ‘golden’. The name ‘Survarnapur’ points to the opulence of the area.

²⁴ The name ‘Buddhidhan’ is made up of the words buddhi, which can be translated as ‘intelligence’, ‘wit’, or ‘wisdom’, and dhan, or ‘wealth’.

²⁵ ‘Shathrai’ refers to a ‘rogue’ or a ‘deceitful person’.

²⁶ Pramad means ‘idle’ or ‘lazy’, and dhan, as in the case of Buddhidhan, means ‘wealth’.

²⁷ ‘Gunsundari’ is composed of the words gun and sundari. The word gun is best translated as ‘desirable qualities’, though it is often mistranslated as ‘virtue’. Gun refers to any properties that are attractive or good and not merely those that bear a moral value. For example, certain foods are said to have gun. The word durgun, on the other hand, refers to ‘undesirable qualities’.

²⁸ Vidya means ‘knowledge’, whereas chatur refers to one who has wit, skill, or adeptness.

²⁹ Kusum may be translated as ‘flower’ or ‘blossom’, while the suffix ‘Sundari’ means ‘beauty’.

³⁰ Laxmi is the name of the goddess of wealth. Nandan means ‘child’ or ‘progeny’.

³¹ ‘Chandralaxmi’ can be broken up into the words chandra, or ‘moon’, and Laxmi, or the ‘goddess of wealth’.

³² I have unsatisfactorily translated shloka as verse. A shloka is a verse, phrase, proverb, or song of praise, usually in a specified meter. It comes from the verb shloka, which means ‘to compose’. Most often, it is a verse of two lines, each of 16 syllables. Shloka is the primary verse form of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

³³ The narrator tells us that, even though Kumud has memorized the verse, she pulls out the piece of paper each time, and reads the words to herself. The verse is a viraaha shloka (shloka of separation). The shloka may be translated as follows: ‘When the moon sets, dear delightful night / Lest you dim by the pain of separation / Blossom into the auspicious day / Holding on to your favorite rays of the sun’. The term ‘subhaga’ that I have translated as ‘auspicious’ is commonly used to refer to a married woman, one who has had the good fortune of being and remaining blissfully wed.

³⁴ Dharma can refer to ‘ethics’, ‘ethical duty’, ‘religion’, ‘community’, or ‘sect’. In this case, it would refer to ‘ethical duty’.

³⁵ Sundar means ‘beautiful’, and giri refers to a forest.

³⁶ Ratna means ‘gem’, and nagari refers to a city.

³⁷ Saadhvis, or female ascetics, were a predominant feature of prose in modern Indian languages in this period. Much has been written about the nationalist resolution of the ‘women's question’, in which the saadhvi is presented as a solution: a woman who transgresses the boundaries of the house can either be desexualized or rejected as not a ‘normal’ Indian woman. See Chatterjee, P., ‘The nationalist resolution of the women's question’, in Castle, G. (ed.), Postcolonial Discourses: An Anthology, Wiley, Oxford, 2001, pp. 151–66Google Scholar. In Saraswatichandra, however, this trope seems to have been subverted: here the ashram itself becomes a site for the expression of erotic love between Kumud and Saraswatichandra, and the ascetics are the ones who encourage them to marry or be united in love.

³⁸ Puranahuti or Purana aahuti is the final offering in a sacrificial ritual (homa, or havana), after which no more offerings can be made to the fire (agni). I owe this explanation to Ananth Rao.

³⁹ I present an extended discussion of Govardhanram's distinction between the ‘ordinary Indian mind’ and the ‘educated natives’ later in the article.

⁴⁰ It is no surprise, however, that the volume has received a lot of attention from academics.

⁴¹ Pandya et al. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi’s Scrap Book 1888–1894 Manuscript Volumes I, II, III, IV–Part (1); Pandya et al. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi’s Scrap Book 1894–1904 Manuscript Volumes IV–Part (2), V and VI; Pandya, K. C., Bakshi, R. P., and Pandya, S. J. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi's Scrap Book 1904–1906 Manuscript Volume VII, N. M. Tripathi Publishers, Bombay, 1957Google Scholar.

⁴² Sudhir Chandra describes the Scrap Book as a ‘multivolume “private” journal in which Tripathi subjected himself, until a couple of months before his death, to ruthless introspection’. He further points to ‘the use of the third person singular for analysing [the author] himself in the Scrap Book’.

⁴³ Chandra, S., Continuing Dilemma: Understanding Social Consciousness, Tulika, New Delhi, 2002Google Scholar; Chandra, S., ‘Literature and the Colonial Consicouness’, Social Scientist 11:6, June 1983, pp. 3–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chandra, S., ‘Women's Place in the Nation: An Early Twentieth Century Indian Debate about the Right to Maidenhood’, in Pandey, G. and Geschiere, P. (eds), The Forging of Nationhood, Manohar, New Delhi, 2003Google Scholar; Chandra, S., A Nineteenth Century View of the Hindu Joint Family: Notes from Govardhanram Tripathi's Scrapbook, Occasional Papers, Centre for Social Studies, Surat, 1989Google Scholar; Shukla, S., ‘Govardhanram's Women’, Economic and Political Weekly 22:44, 1987Google Scholar; Suhrud, Writing Life.

⁴⁴ Suhrud, Writing Life, pp. 215–19.

⁴⁵ Tripathi, Saraswatichandra (Vol. 1), p. i.

⁴⁶ Ibid., p. 7. Emphasis added.

⁴⁷ I will refrain from the use of scare quotes for these two terms from here onwards, but it should be clear that they continue to refer to Govardhanram's distinction and not mine.

⁴⁸ Uddhat means ‘crass’, ‘rough’, or ‘insolent’. Lal is an honorific.

⁴⁹ Vira means ‘brave’, while rao is an honorific. Vira is, however, not a gender-neutral term but has a marked masculine quality to it. A feminized version would be virangana (vir + anga literally corresponds to brave + part), referring to ‘she who embodies veerta (bravery)’.

⁵⁰ Tripathi, G., Saraswatichandra (Vol. 4), N. M. Tripathi Publishers, Bombay, 2001, pp. 7–8Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Ibid., p. 7.

⁵² Bayly, C. A., Recovering Liberties : Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2012, p. 1Google Scholar.

⁵³ Ibid., p. 6.

⁵⁴ Ibid.

⁵⁵ Mayhew, A., The Education of India, Faber & Gwyer, London, 1926, p. 4Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ General Report on Public Instruction in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for 1844–1845, Cone, S. a. Ed., Calcutta, 1845, p. ccviii.

⁵⁷ Though Western modes of education were introduced to the Indian subcontinent much earlier, 1857 was a singular moment due to the setting up of the three main universities of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras.

⁵⁸ The voices that represented the Orientalists and Anglicists were not always starkly demarcated from each other by differences in the value they placed on either ancient Indian or modern Westerns texts. The demarcation was made possible most clearly by the kind of policies they sought to introduce to India. The Anglicists, even when they acknowledged some value in ‘Indian texts’, were in favour of ‘modernizing’ India through the introduction of Western scientific, philosophical, and literary knowledges, made possible by English-language education; whereas the Orientalists advocated the retention and revival of ancient Indian texts as subjects of education in schools and universities, even if they did not dispute the value of the Western texts.

⁵⁹ Zastoupil, L. and Moir, M., The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843, Curzon, Richmond, 1999, pp. 161–73Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ ‘John Clive exemplifies the common assumption that, despite the opposition of Mill and the Orientalists . . . the Anglicist victory was secure. . . . But a closer look at the educational policy actually pursued in the aftermath of the controversy suggests that the Orientalists’ struggle to preserve at least key parts of their program was more successful than Clive and most others have recognised.’ Ibid., p. x.

⁶¹ Besides pointing to Raja Rammohan Roy's impassioned letter demanding a deployment of ‘European gentlemen of talents and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy and other useful sciences . . .’, Zastoupil and Moir also note that in the Bombay Presidency, the ‘tentative measures in support of Western education evolved from Elphinstone's consultation with wealthy members of the Indian community in Bombay, who . . . were taking to the study of English and Western learning’. Ibid., pp. 11–12.

⁶² For a thorough discussion of this complaint, see Seth, Subject Lessons, Chapter 1.

⁶³ Ibid., p. 34.

⁶⁴ Seth contends that the changes brought about by Western education were not simply a transposition of one kind of knowledge by another. Rather, the subjectivity presupposed by Western education was being challenged in the Indian practice of Western knowledge by the presence of an indigenous subjectivity. Ibid.

⁶⁵ Here I use the term to mean ‘performative’, and not ‘sudden’ or ‘impressive’.

⁶⁶ Pandya et al. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi's Scrap Book 1888–1894 Manuscript Volumes I, II, III, IV– Part (1), pp. 18–19. Emphasis added.

⁶⁷ Jhaveri, M., History of Gujarati Literature, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1978, p. 95Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Pandya et al. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi’s Scrap Book 1888–1894 Manuscript Volumes I, II, III, IV—Part (1).

⁶⁹ An anecdote might provide an illustration of this. When I had newly immersed myself in the world of Saraswatichandra, Kamalaben, my neighbour, greeted me with more than usual glee one morning. ‘I hear you are studying Saraswatichandra,’ she asked. When I told her I was, she began telling me about her favourite parts of the text. I was surprised and felt embarrassed that I had mistakenly assumed Kamalaben was not a proficient reader. Further conversation revealed that, though Kamalaben was barely literate, she knew the text thoroughly and would joyfully recite sentences from it.

⁷⁰ Cited in Jhaveri, M., History of Gujarati Literature, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1978Google Scholar.

⁷¹ A description of my own personal experience would illustrate best a common reception of the text. My grandmother, who would relate fragments of the story of Saraswatichandra to her grandchildren, would often add her own ‘lessons’ to the stories. Most of them were drawn from her own life and the lives of those around her. They either validated or refuted the story that she was telling; but, in either case, the story remained a ‘good example’. In one such storytelling session, while recounting the story of Gunsundari, she explained how she had always identified with Gunsundari. ‘No more, however,’ she said, ‘because I realize now that Gunsundari's self-sacrificing ways cannot be a lesson for any of us. I would even go so far as to say you should not even try to be like Kumud Sundari, but like the free and independent Kusum.’ Despite insolent utterances from me—along the lines of, ‘I would rather just be myself’—she continued to explain to all why some seemingly ideal characters and their good actions were not so desirable anymore.

⁷² Jhaveri, History of Gujarati Literature, p. 98.

⁷³ For example, Karamali Rahim Nanjiani, prominent reformer and litterateur, in a piece entitled Nanand ke Bahen?, criticized the resolution of Saraswatichandra and laid bare its consequences for the two sisters. Govardhanram mentions in another correspondence that he is not only aware of Nanjiani's criticism but has ‘had pleasant correspondence with him upon his own initiation’. Mehta, H. (ed.), Govardhanram Gadya Sanchay: Sanshodhit Sampadan, N. M. Tripathi Publishers, Mumbai, 2009, p. 25Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 61.

⁷⁵ Pandya et al. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi’s Scrap Book 1888–1894 Manuscript Volumes I, II, III, IV—Part (1), p. 93. On another occasion, after his early retirement, he writes in frustration: ‘Even the giving up of a profession does not secure full time, so long as a man has to live in the world with a family . . . The only salvation of such a man lies in the Utopian evolution of a Saraswatichandra, to locate him in a Kalayanagram and of a Kusum to assist him in his work.’ Pandya et al. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi's Scrap Book 1904–1906 Manuscript Volume VII, p. 65. Govardhanram often quoted phrases from his characters (‘Gajjar is silent—probably because he has family troubles—the pest of Hindu life as my Uddhatlal calls it’, in Pandya et al. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi’s Scrap Book 1894–1904 Manuscript Volumes IV–Part (2), V and VI, p. 301).

⁷⁶ Evidence of the novel's ‘working’ was provided by the many demands to publish sequels and responses, especially in response to the initial volumes. Having moved away from the mode of the instruction manual to a representational mode, however, Govardhanram was not happy. In his Scrap Book he notes: ‘A clique of three men, two of them Banyas [from the merchant class], including an LLB . . . have been advertising their intention to publish a sequel to my novel, written by a pauper—the third man—whom I had refused to accord my permission to publish it on the grounds that my work had had its “puranahauti”.’ Pandya et al. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi’s Scrap Book 1894–1904 Manuscript Volumes IV–Part (2), V and VI, p. 305.

⁷⁷ Further, the worlds that are rendered in Saraswatichandra exceed the secular, lokik worlds. While the text does not present gods or demons, it contains talking monkeys and parrots. Also, as mentioned earlier, the entire fourth volume is conceptualized as the ‘dreamland of Saraswatichandra’. Saraswatichandra, though usually spoken of as a navalkatha, cannot be simply understood as a novel.

⁷⁸ Minute on Education recorded by Macaulay, 1835, reprinted in Zastoupil and Moir, The Great Indian Education Debate.

⁷⁹ See Shukla, ‘Govardhanram's Women’.

⁸⁰ Curzon, G. N., Lord Curzon in India, Being a Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy and Governer General of India, 1898–1905, Macmillan, London, 1906. Emphasis addedGoogle Scholar.

⁸¹ Pandya et al. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi's Scrap Book 1888–1894 Manuscript Volumes I, II, III, IV—Part (1).

⁸² Ibid., p. 24.

⁸³ Pandya et al. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi’s Scrap Book 1894–1904 Manuscript Volumes IV–Part (2), V and VI, p. 178.

⁸⁴ Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe.

⁸⁵ Svati Joshi is of the opinion that the novel represents Kumud Sundari as a ‘new woman’, who is articulate. See Joshi, S., ‘Dalpatram and the Nature of Literary Shifts in Nineteenth-century Ahmedabad’, in Blackburn, S. and Dalmia, V. (eds), India's Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century, Permanent Black, Delhi, 2004Google Scholar. Though Kumud does engage in long conversations and dialogues, and often also monologues, she is rarely ever able to explain her position. Saraswatichandra's constant paraphrasing of her utterances and actions is evidence of her inability to represent her own actions.

⁸⁶ I have translated vasana simply as ‘desire’. The original term implies traces of the memory of experiences that create a desire for, and expectation of, the reliving of those experiences. For this explanation I am grateful to Narahari Rao.

⁸⁷ , Tripathi, Saraswatichandra (Vol. 4), p. 468Google Scholar. Translated from Gujarati.

⁸⁸ Ibid., p. 248. Translated from Gujarati.

⁸⁹ Ibid., p. 559.

⁹⁰ Ibid.

⁹¹ Here the dichotomy between tradition and modernity appears to have broken down; Kumud, who is seen as the representative of tradition, also gets categorized as the ‘new woman’.

⁹² Pandya et al. (eds), Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi’s Scrap Book 1894–1904 Manuscript Volumes IV–Part (2), V and VI, p. 36. Emphasis added.

⁹³ Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe.

⁹⁴ Nietzsche seems to have captured the essence of this pattern in his declaration that the Greeks were superficial out of profundity. See Nietzsche, F., The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, J. Nauckhoff (trans.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁵ Such an endeavour is likely to illuminate the problems involved in the use of abstract universal categories to codify a number of domains of social life in India. In particular, it would help us make sense of the polysemy that attends it. For a discussion of this polysemy in discussions of Indian politics, see Ashar, M., ‘ Taking a Step Back: Revisiting Studies of Indian Democracy’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 32:3, December 2009, pp. 533–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.