Book Review: Raag Darbari by Shrilal Shukla
(Translated by Gillian Wright)

Raag Darbari is perhaps the most celebrated novel of Shrilal Shukla. It is a no-punches-pulled description of village politics and working of government machinery in post-colonial India in the Raebareli district of Uttar Pradesh. The author himself described his approach as the antithesis of contemporary Hindi writing on rural life, which ‘either emphasized misery and exploitation or presented an idyllic rustic picture’. It is for this reason and its satirical and ironic quality that it managed to bind my interest right till the end.

Politics and government are the two main themes of the novel. Having lived a majority of his life in Uttar Pradesh and being a cog in the wheel of government, an Indian Administrative Services officer, Shrilal Shukla describes the politics and the bureaucracy at the very rudimentary level in a satirical manner. He exposes how politicians, businessmen, criminals and policemen collude to exploit society for selfish reasons. The title itself alludes to the political emphasis of the plot. Raag Darbari is one of the most majestic melodic modes used in Indian classical music. It literally means the melody of the court. In the novel it refers to the melody sung by the courtiers of a contemporary raja, viz. a village politician, Vaidyaji. His sitting room (baithak) is the ‘darbar’ of his camp-followers.

The story is set in Shivpalganj, a fictional village typical of the Raebareli district, near Lucknow. The action takes place over a period of six months during which Rangnath, a young research student in history, comes to stay with his uncle, Vaidyaji, to recover after an illness. It is narrated in third person from the point of view of Rangnath. Much of the action revolves around the extended family with which Rangnath lives in Shivpalganj and its struggle for power. The patriarch is Rangnath’s maternal uncle Vaidyaji, a Machiavellian leader who controls the grain co-operative and the intermediate college, and is the apex of the village’s feudal structure.

There are hardly any women in the novel apart from one Bela, who too is mostly off-stage. The society in ‘Raag darbari’ is a male-dominated one. In the author’s opinion ‘… male characters are much more attractive if your aim is to satirize distorted values in political life’. The novel is devoid of a main plotline and merely comprises several sub-plots. There is no hero, or an anti-hero for that matter. Rangnath is merely an observer who finds himself in moral dilemma on several occasions. At the end of the novel he intends to escape the bizarre reality that is constantly ‘chasing’ him and this too is mocked upon. ‘Run, run, run! You’re being pursued by reality’. The novel depicts the immutability of human behaviour in the daily struggle for survival – ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’.

Some critics feel that the novel is being ‘contemptuous of rural life’ while others described it as a ‘bunch of humorous episodes’. However, the novel is a lot more than that – it is one of the first instances that the romanticized perception of the rural milieu as a quiet and innocuous place got problematized in such a comprehensive way. It is a sharp and honest criticism of the Indian political class. Shrilal Shukla, in ‘Raag Darbari’, through a satirical backbone, effectively manages to juxtapose the regional theme with a universal appeal making it a wonderful read.