GORA

Rabindranath Tagore GORA Tagore’s Gora was the best Bengali novel ever written. Maybe one cannot accept that as undeniable. There are other great novelists who have written major and unforgettable works but that does not take away from the fact that Gora is a very great novel, which one can read over and over again. Of course Gora has a plot, in fact two or three interconnected plots, it has very remarkable characters starting with. Anandamoyee, then Gora himself, the son of an Irish military officer who died in the Mutiny. His wife, who had taken shelter in Anandamoyee’s home, died in giving birth to Gora. Gora was never told of this and believed himself to be Anandamoyee’s son and she loved him, if that were possible, more than any son of her own. Then there were other remarkable characters — Sucharita whom Gora eventually married, her father Pareshbabu, a beautiful character, Lolita, her sister who falls in love with Gora’s dearest friend Benoy. But the real charm of the book, which never fades in a hundred readings is that through the plot are discussed the problems of India at that time, early 19th century. The dangers of fanaticism, the relationship between the British rulers and Indians, educated and uneducated, the importance of elevating the status of women, the concept of India as a great country into which may religions and civilisation had flowed, child marriage, caste conflict (at that time) between Sanatan Hinduism and Brahmoism, which was the reformist but which could, on occasion, dogmatic and rigid nevertheless. Reading or rather, re-reading Gora one is struck how the eternal truths about religion, patriotism, love and friendship have not changed. Nor has the message of restraint.

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