RAG Demo

Tag: 1930s

  • Annihilation of Caste

    In 1936 the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal, a Hindu reformist group in Lahore, invited B. R. Ambedkar to deliver the presidential address at its annual conference. When the organisers read his text in advance, they asked him to remove passages attacking Hindu scriptures. He refused, the conference was cancelled, and Ambedkar published the speech himself as Annihilation of Caste.

    The text argues that caste does not simply organise work but ranks the workers themselves by birth, permanently and unequally, which destroys public spirit, charity and any sense of a shared society among Hindus. Ambedkar dismantles the defences of caste, criticises reformers who sought to eliminate untouchability while keeping the varna system, and concludes that real change requires rejecting the religious authority of the shastras themselves.

    Later editions include Gandhi's reply in his journal Harijan and Ambedkar's rejoinder, a sharp exchange between two founders of modern India. Concise, uncompromising and closely argued, the book remains central to anti-caste movements and to debates about religion, equality and democracy, and has been reissued with extensive annotations in recent years.

    Book details

    AuthorB. R. Ambedkar
    First published1936
    Original languageEnglish
    GenrePolitics
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)110

    Themes

    • Caste oppression
    • Religious authority
    • Social reform
    • Equality
    • Ambedkar-Gandhi debate

    Who should read it

    Everyone who wants to understand caste in India from its most rigorous critic, in his own words.

    If you liked this, try

    • Who Were the Shudras?
    • The Argumentative Indian
    • Why I Am Not a Hindu

  • Glimpses of World History

    Between 1930 and 1933, while serving prison sentences for his part in the civil disobedience movement, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote a long series of letters to his daughter Indira, then in her early teens. Collected and published in 1934, they form a history of humanity from ancient civilisations to the rise of fascism and the Great Depression.

    Nehru deliberately avoids a Europe-centred story. He gives substantial attention to China, Persia, the Arab world, Southeast Asia and India alongside Greece, Rome and modern Europe, and he treats empires, revolutions, economic systems and ideas such as nationalism, democracy and socialism. His sympathies are clear: he is anti-imperialist, critical of capitalism's excesses and excited by scientific progress.

    Because the letters are addressed to a child, the tone is conversational and explanatory, though the scope is vast. Some facts and judgements have dated, but the book remains a remarkable feat of memory under confinement and a revealing portrait of a nationalist's worldview. It also offers an intimate picture of a father trying to educate a daughter he could not see.

    Book details

    AuthorJawaharlal Nehru
    First published1934
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)1000
    SettingWritten in British Indian prisons, 1930-1933; covers world history from antiquity to the 1930s

    Themes

    • World civilisations
    • Anti-imperialism
    • Letters to a child
    • Rise and fall of empires
    • Socialism and democracy

    Who should read it

    Curious readers who want a sweeping, non-Eurocentric overview of history in a warm, personal voice.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Discovery of India
    • A Little History of the World
    • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

  • Madhushala

    Madhushala, the house of wine, is a sequence of a little over one hundred and thirty rubai-style quatrains, each ending on the same refrain word. Published in 1935, it was inspired in part by Bachchan's reading of Omar Khayyam through FitzGerald, but it is no imitation. The tavern, the wine, the cup and the server become symbols for life's journey, for divine intoxication and for the search for meaning.

    Across the poem the drinker is a seeker, the tavern a place where caste, creed and status fall away, and the wine an image for passion, poetry and spiritual ecstasy. Some readers in the 1930s were scandalised, taking it as a celebration of drinking, but Bachchan, himself a teetotaller, insisted on its symbolic reading. Death and transience shadow the revelry throughout.

    The poem made Bachchan a star of Hindi literature; he recited it to packed audiences for decades, and his son Amitabh Bachchan has kept those recitations alive. Its rhythm makes it easy to memorise, and it remains among the most widely read Hindi poems. An English verse rendering, The House of Wine, was made by Marjorie Boulton and Ram Swaroop Vyas.

    Book details

    AuthorHarivansh Rai Bachchan
    First published1935
    Original languageHindi
    Translated byMarjorie Boulton and Ram Swaroop Vyas
    GenrePoetry
    TypeNon-fiction

    Themes

    • Life as intoxication
    • Transience
    • Equality beyond religion
    • Longing
    • Mysticism

    Who should read it

    Lovers of Hindi poetry and anyone curious about the most recited verse sequence in modern Hindi.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
    • Gitanjali
    • Madhubala

  • Shyamchi Aai

    Shyamchi Aai, meaning Shyam's mother, was written by Sane Guruji in 1933 while he was imprisoned in Nashik jail for his part in the freedom movement, and published in 1935. The frame is simple: at an ashram, Shyam tells his companions stories from his childhood over forty-two nights, and almost every story centres on his mother.

    The family lives in Palgad in the Konkan and slides from respectability into debt and hardship. Through small episodes, such as caring for a sick neighbour, sharing food, speaking the truth when a lie would be easier, or treating animals and lower-caste people with kindness, the mother teaches Shyam values that shape his whole life. The father's pride and the family's financial ruin give the stories an undertow of sorrow.

    The book is closely based on the author's own life, and its unashamed emotion has made generations of Marathi readers weep. It is read in schools as a lesson in compassion, self-respect and simple living. Acharya Atre's 1953 film of the book won the first President's Gold Medal for best feature film in India.

    Book details

    AuthorSane Guruji
    First published1935
    Original languageMarathi
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    SettingPalgad village, Konkan coast of Maharashtra, early twentieth century

    Themes

    • Motherhood
    • Moral education
    • Poverty and dignity
    • Compassion
    • Childhood memory

    Who should read it

    Parents, teachers and anyone wanting a deeply emotional portrait of a mother's quiet moral strength.

    If you liked this, try

    • Pather Panchali
    • Wings of Fire
    • The Story of My Experiments with Truth

  • Aranyak

    Aranyak, which means of the forest, is narrated by Satyacharan, a jobless graduate from Calcutta who accepts a post as manager of a vast estate in the jungles of Bhagalpur and Purnia in Bihar during the 1920s. His task is to lease the forest out to tenant farmers, which means overseeing its destruction. At first he is lonely and homesick for the city.

    Over six years he comes to love the silent grasslands, moonlit hills and wild flowers, and the people who live on the margins: landless labourers, a destitute schoolteacher, a botanist who plants seeds in the forest, a tribal king descended from a once-proud dynasty, and an old man who hoards grain. Their poverty and dignity are drawn with compassion and without condescension.

    The novel is loosely plotted, almost a sequence of sketches, and its tone is elegiac. Long before ecology became a public cause, it registered the price of turning forest into farmland and the guilt of a man who loves what he helps to erase. Rimli Bhattacharya's English version is subtitled Of the Forest, and the book is often read as an early Indian work of environmental literature.

    Book details

    AuthorBibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
    First published1939
    Original languageBengali
    Translated byRimli Bhattacharya
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)250
    SettingForests of Bhagalpur and Purnia, Bihar, 1920s

    Themes

    • Wilderness
    • Deforestation
    • Tribal and landless communities
    • Solitude
    • Guilt of progress

    Who should read it

    Readers drawn to nature writing and quiet, reflective novels about humanity's relationship with the land.

    If you liked this, try

    • Pather Panchali
    • The Hungry Tide
    • Walden

  • Godan

    Hori Mahto is a peasant farmer in the village of Belari in the United Provinces, struggling to keep his small plot and pay off debts to landlords, moneylenders and priests. His one dream is to own a cow, a symbol of status and religious merit, and the cow he finally acquires sets off a chain of jealousy and misfortune within his own family.

    His wife Dhaniya is outspoken and fearless where Hori is cautious and anxious to keep up appearances, and their son Gobar defies village customs and leaves for Lucknow. A parallel plot follows the city's educated elite, including a philosopher, a doctor and a landowner, contrasting rural hardship with urban debates about reform.

    Published in 1936, the year of Premchand's death, Godan is often considered the greatest Hindi novel, an unsentimental portrait of exploitation in colonial village India. Gordon C. Roadarmel's English translation appeared as The Gift of a Cow. It remains essential reading in Indian schools and universities and is a touchstone for rural fiction.

    Book details

    AuthorMunshi Premchand
    First published1936
    Original languageHindi
    Translated byGordon C. Roadarmel
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    SettingBelari village and Lucknow, United Provinces, 1930s

    Themes

    • Rural poverty
    • Debt and exploitation
    • Caste
    • Dignity
    • City and village

    Who should read it

    Readers who want the essential classic of Hindi literature about peasant life under colonial rule.

    If you liked this, try

    • Nirmala
    • Kanthapura
    • Untouchable

  • Kanthapura

    Kanthapura is a hillside village in the Kara district of South India, close to a British-owned coffee estate. Its story is told by Achakka, an elderly Brahmin widow, in the manner of a sthala-purana, the traditional legend of a place, so village gods, gossip and politics flow together in one breathless voice.

    The change begins when Moorthy, a young Brahmin who has returned from the city as a follower of Gandhi, starts spinning khadi, mixing with Pariahs and urging the villagers to join the non-cooperation movement. Opposition comes from the orthodox priest, the British-backed police and the estate's managers, and the women of the village, led by the widow Rangamma, become central to the resistance.

    Published in 1938, Raja Rao's first novel is famous for its preface, which argued that Indians must write English in a rhythm of their own. Its long, comma-strung sentences imitate oral storytelling, and it remains a key novel of the freedom struggle seen from below.

    Book details

    AuthorRaja Rao
    First published1938
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)240
    SettingKanthapura, a village in Karnataka (Mysore region), early 1930s

    Themes

    • Gandhian movement
    • Caste reform
    • Women's resistance
    • Village life
    • Colonial oppression

    Who should read it

    Readers interested in how the freedom movement transformed rural India, told in a distinctive oral style.

    If you liked this, try

    • Untouchable
    • Godan
    • Train to Pakistan

  • Coolie

    Munoo is fourteen when his uncle takes him from his Kangra hill village to work as a domestic servant for a bank clerk's family in the town of Sham Nagar. Mistreated by the clerk's wife, he runs away, and the novel becomes a picaresque journey through the working life of colonial India.

    He finds kindness and cruelty in turn: a pickle factory in Daulatpur, the docks and textile mills of Bombay, where he lives on the pavement and is caught up in a strike and communal riot, and finally Simla, where he pulls the rickshaw of an Anglo-Indian woman. Each place shows how class and poverty matter as much as caste, and how industrial capitalism uses up the bodies of the poor.

    Published in 1936, a year after Untouchable, Coolie is broader and angrier, shaped by Anand's socialist convictions. It is valued as one of the earliest Indian novels about the urban working class and child labour. Its ending is bleak, and Munoo's innocence makes the cruelty he meets all the more striking for modern readers.

    Book details

    AuthorMulk Raj Anand
    First published1936
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)282
    SettingKangra hills, Sham Nagar, Daulatpur, Bombay and Simla, 1930s

    Themes

    • Child labour
    • Class exploitation
    • Industrialisation
    • Poverty
    • Colonialism

    Who should read it

    Readers interested in social-realist fiction and the lives of India's colonial-era working poor.

    If you liked this, try

    • Untouchable
    • The White Tiger
    • Oliver Twist

  • Swami and Friends

    Swaminathan is a ten-year-old schoolboy at the Albert Mission School in Malgudi, more interested in his friends than his arithmetic. His circle includes Mani, the class bully with a heavy club, and Rajam, the polished son of the police superintendent, whose arrival sets off rivalries and loyalties that matter enormously to the boys.

    Over a school year Swami avoids his father's lectures, listens to his grandmother's stories, gets caught up in a protest against British rule without quite understanding it, and helps found the Malgudi Cricket Club with grand plans to rival the MCC. Small disasters pile up, and adult authority looms in the background like weather.

    Published in 1935 with Graham Greene's help in finding a London publisher, the novel introduced Malgudi to the world. Its humour comes from seeing grown-up concerns through a child's priorities, and it remains one of the most affectionate portraits of boyhood in Indian writing. Its episodes are short enough to read aloud.

    Book details

    AuthorR. K. Narayan
    First published1935
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)184
    SettingMalgudi, a fictional South Indian town, 1930

    Themes

    • Childhood
    • Friendship
    • School life
    • Colonial india

    Who should read it

    Young readers and adults alike who enjoy funny, nostalgic stories about schoolboy friendships.

    If you liked this, try

    • Malgudi Days
    • The Room on the Roof
    • Tom Sawyer

  • Untouchable

    Bakha is a young sweeper who cleans the public latrines of a town in colonial Punjab. He is strong, proud of his work and fascinated by the clothes and manners of the British soldiers in the nearby barracks. The novel follows him through a single day, from waking in his father's mud house in the outcastes' colony to nightfall.

    Over those hours Bakha is slapped for accidentally touching a caste Hindu, sees his sister harassed by a priest, is thrown scraps of food and listens to a Christian missionary's offer of salvation. Late in the day he hears Gandhi speak and encounters a poet who argues that the flush toilet could end the work of scavengers, offering three very different answers to his condition.

    Mulk Raj Anand's first novel, with a preface by E. M. Forster, was rejected by many publishers before appearing in 1935. Short and direct, it was one of the first English novels to give an untouchable protagonist an inner life, and it remains a key text on caste.

    Book details

    AuthorMulk Raj Anand
    First published1935
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)157
    SettingBulashah, a cantonment town in colonial Punjab, 1930s

    Themes

    • Untouchability
    • Caste discrimination
    • Dignity of labour
    • Gandhism
    • Social reform

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a short, powerful introduction to caste through the eyes of those who suffer it.

    If you liked this, try

    • Coolie
    • Kanthapura
    • Godan