O. Chandu Menon, Indulekha

July 2026

Let me begin by specifying that Indulekha was originally written in Malayalam, and i read a translation by W. Demergue, undertaken in 1889, soon after the writing and publication of the novel. This is significant, in that, the coordinates of translating a text from one language to another were quite different, one hundred and thirty-seven years ago, moreover, the politics of a coloniser translating the work of a colonised subject — however complicit in the process of colonisation they may be — into the language of the coloniser has a certain political dimension to it. In this particular case, at least one of these political dimensions is the education of colonial administrators in Malayalam, as Demergue puts it in his translator's introduction,

So far as Europeans are concerned, the value of a book like 'Indulekha' can hardly be overestimated. Few amongst us have opportunities of learning the coloquial and idiomatic language of the country, which, so far as I am competent to express an opinion, is far more important for the ends of administration than all the monuments of archaic ingenuity which we read and mark and leave undigested under the present "Rules for the encouragement of the study of Oriental Languages." In this respect, therefore, a novel supplies a distinct want, and I would respectfully commend this point to the consideration of the powers who regulate such matters.

Another dimension, as underlined in over and over again in Early Novels in India, was the place of the native novel as support for the colonial project, i.e. the native novel functioned as witness to the figures of uncivilised natives, aiding and abetting the white man's burden. Indulekha fulfils both these premises, laying its intentions bare in the eighteenth chapter as three of the principle characters debate the place of the Indian National Congress in colonial India,

The idea, which you seem to have formed, that the Congress was founded with a view to discuss and remedy evils which originated with the British occupation of India is, I assure you, entirely a mistake. The fact is that the establishment of the British Empire has been productive of indescribable benefits to this country, and the Congress is a society constituted solely for the purpose of bringing those benefits to maturity and perfection. In no other nation do we find intellectual capacity so fully developed as it is in the English, and the statesmanship they display is one proof of this fact. Another proof lies in their impartiality, a third in their benevolence, a fourth in their valour, a fifth in their energy, and a sixth in their endurance. It is through the preponderance of these six qualities that the English have succeeded in bringing so many countries of the world under their dominion and protection, and the subjection of India by a people endowed with such vast natural ability is the greatest good fortune that could have befallen us. With the beginning of their administration began not only the diffusion of knowledge and education among the natives of India, but also a desire to participate in the privileges to which knowledge affords us a title. In as much then as we have every reason to believe that the English Government will in justice grant us the fulfilment of this desire, if we ask for it, the Congress has been established in order to prefer our request by all lawful and reasonable means.

The English have always adhered staunchly to the principle of universal liberty, and have on countless occasions upheld that principle greatly to the benefit of mankind. At the present time, no man in England is considered the slave of another, and, except in the commission of crime, every man has freedom of action to the full extent of his power and his wishes, without fear of another. This is the glory of the English constitution, moulded into its present form by illustrious men, and if it cannot be attained in its fullness all at once, still the ambition of the Congress is to attain it on behalf of India by degrees slow and sure, and what harm is there in this? Putting India out of the question, I think that, if it were possible, it would be right to introduce even among the Kaffir tribes of Africa a system of government modelled on these lines. Some misguided individuals say that because knowledge and education have not yet reached the masses of the Indian people, therefore the time for this form of Government has not yet arrived.

Now, this quote is only a very small part of a very long winded conversation that takes place on the rooftop of a Bengali millionaire's home in Bombay. The conversation meanders through considerations on the existence of god, and how Indians should respond to the sweeping changes brought on by the encounter between the subcontinental peoples and their European colonisers, presenting a number of views on these matters before arriving on the disquisition quoted above. My point, however, is that it is all quite exhausting to read, frankly, the entire novel is an exhausting read.

Perhaps it's because i have a hundred and thirty-seven years of historical hindsight, and i am currently living through a genocide of Muslims in India, but i did find the characterisation of the only significant Muslim man in the novel as a confidence trickster to be in bad taste. It was also Islamophobic and in bad taste in 1889, in the wake of the revolt of 1857, widely considered a plot by Muslim elites, while disgruntled Savarnas fell over themselves to dogpile on the Muslim scapegoats in order to acquire slightly cushier jobs in the imperial administration, but the conditions of my distaste are specific. It's disheartening to learn how little has changed, how much has gotten worse.

And then, there's the meat of the novel, the intricacies of marital relations between the Nabudiris and the Nairs, a fictional anthropological study par excellence, replete with personal details and the most boring characters imaginable. It goes like this, Madhavan and Indulekha have been close since they were children — cousins of similar age that dwell in the same household tend to be — and in the advent of adulthood, this closeness has blossomed into love; wedding bells have begun to ring. Unfortunately, Madhavan angers Panchu Menon, the family patriarch, Indulekha's grandfather, his own great uncle, and in response, Panchu Menon vows to stand in the way of Madhavan and Indulekha's marriage.

So, while Madhavan is away in Madras, getting ready to take up a position in the colonial civil service (he's a good little colonised subject!) Panchu Menon attempts to organise a union between Indulekha, a young woman who is educated in Sanskrit, Malayalam, and (gasp!) English, and a wealthy Nambudiripad. Now, the Nambudiripad is forty-five, Indulekha, eighteen, and the two have never met, but that is not why they are poorly matched, they are poorly matched because the Nambudiripad is vain, improperly educated, unable to recite sanskrit verse from memory, and rather plain looking (Brahmins can, of course, never be ugly, because they have light skin). To avoid this union, Indulekha applies the great autonomy Nair women of the time excercised over their conjugal alliances, and sacrifices her thirteen year old cousin's hand in marriage to the Nambudiripad. Here, the author solemnly chastises women for lacking autonomy by being poorly educated and thirteen years old, for you see, it was Kailliani Kutty's own fault that she was married off to a forty-five year old man.

Despite Indulekha's steadfastness to her true love, Madhavan is deceived through the grapevine, and believing Indulekha has married another man, he runs away to Calcutta, where he inexplicably kills a runaway panther at the Alipore zoo with a pistol, and makes friends with some Bengali millionaires for doing so. It is on his lovelorn sojourn to northern India where he makes the acquaintance of a Muslim man on a train, who proceeds to rob Madhavan blind, forcing him to return to Bombay, where he is intercepted by two members of his family, who have been looking for him frantically, as Indulekha grows sicker and sicker at Chembhazhiyot, for lack of her lover. Following this, the lovers are reunited and the novel is resolved.

The entire plot of the novel is composed of a series of coincidences that are barely believable, but this really does not bother me one bit, what bothers me is that when the novel is stripped down to its barest bones, its moral, for it is meant to be a didactical work for native readers, is to marry within your own caste, i.e. to maintain caste purity. To this end, the sibling incest at the end of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, written in English, ninety-eight years hence, is no longer surprising; the superposition of endogamy on exogamy¹ implies a certain prevalence of incest, and Roy's novel repeats the central motif of Indulekha, even though it is committed by a pair of Syrian Christians. Caste seems to seep in to all who settle in the subcontinent.

Now, i concede that my conception of this novel is skewed, i did not read it in the original Malayalam, thereby foregoing the intricacy of late 19th century incarnation of the language, its Sanskrit borrowings, and the true sense of the verses littered through the prose. Furthermore, until i read Anitha Devasai's translation of Indulekha, i will not have witnessed this novel correctly, or at least, more accurately, Englished. And yes, Englishing is a very important and semantically laden verb in my vocabulary, thank you for asking.

Well, there's my thoroughly disappointing read for July, it's launched me headlong into a reading slump.

1. B.R. Ambedkar, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis, and Development