CHAPTER II

SWAMI AND FRIENDS:

A CRITIQUE OF EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

R.K. Narayan made a modest beginning of his career as a novelist with Swami
and Friends published in 1935.The novel affords a brilliant critique of educational
system that was operating under the British rule in India.

Here, it will be explored how the so called liberal bourgeois education

institution acts as a center of power, harassing and repressing the individual.

In fact, education is a social institute and ideological process. The main aim is
to examine how the school education introduced by colonists and so called liberal
bourgeois was used as cultural capital and pedagogic principles were used to
dominate and suppress the innocent students.

Schools must be seen as institutions marked by the some complex network of

contradictory cultures that characterize thesociety. Infact, schools are social sites
constituted by a complex of dominant and subordinate cultures. The various cultures
seek to define cultural constructs and legitimate a specific view of reality. Teacher
and others interested in education must come to understand how the dominant culture
functions at all levels of schooling to disconfirm the cultural experiences of innocent
children.

The body of knowledge transmitted to school children was situated within the
specific power relations that constructed the dominant group. Historically, therefore,
in India, education was geared to the interests of the bourgeois power and never to the
interest of Indian people. Academic institutions in India were more than just sites of
social and cultural reproductions;these were centers where the ideological struggle
between Indian traditional knowledge and dominant European knowledge was
played out.

In the novel, Swami and Friends, Swaminathan, who is born and brought up in
a conservative Hindu family, has to move within the strict orthodox atmosphere at

xxxi
home and it has a large bearing on his raw mind, which is unmistakably seen when he
is alone or in company of his friends. Swami’s family, that is neither indigent nor too
well off is profoundly unified in its assumptions about the ends and means of life.
This naturally leaves a little scope for a boy like Swaminathan to shape his mind as he
desires. His relations with doting granny and his constantly exasperated father,
hisfriendship and quarrels and his dislike for homework, and also the examination in
the school, his running away into wilderness, make up the traits of character which he
shares with, and are common to a school boy.

Swami and Friends is an interesting account of the school boy like of

Swaminathan and his friends. The narration is auto-biographical in nature. We find
Narayan more or less in same set up as Swami is, because Swami is nothing but
projection of his own self which Narayan accepts with characteristic fact. The fact
remains; he begins that process of communicating the life of Malgudi which will
continue with more and more complex effect throughout his oeuvre.

Like Narayan, Swami, the protagonist of the novel, shuddered at the very
thought of the school. The atmosphere of the Albert Mission School and the Board
High School which together with the strict home discipline under the orthodox father,
forced him to leave Malgudi only to return a day or two after, with a remarkable
change of heart.

The mental make-up he has formed at home and the atmosphere right from his
childhood isone which has an imprint of Hindu culture, the instances of which we
come across in the characterization of Swami in novel.Through Swami and Friends,
Narayan clearly demonstrates how in the orthodox society of Malgudi which is
mainly inhabited by middle class people, tradition holds its way over the individual
consciousness through the institutions of education, family and religion.

Apparently the novel is like an adventure story of a boy W.S. Swaminathan

and a group of his friends. Though book seems a slight affair but Narayan invests his
character with a social consciousness that has the ring of an anti-colonial campaigner.
The protagonist’s protest is focused, of course, on one aspect of colonization, that is,
education system.

xxxii
 The inability of the child to cope with the examination system, his inadequate
involvement in the process of learning is shown to be due to unreal and mechanical
system of education. Right in the first paragraphof the novel we find young Swami
shuddering “at the very thought of school; that dismal yellow building; the fire eyed
Vedanayagam, his class teacher; and the Head-master with his thin long cane…”
(Narayan, Swami and Friends 3). Life in the class-room is monotonous. Terribly
bored, “he felt sleepy” (Narayan, Swami and Friends 4). The first few paragraphs
have a vital significance in the scheme of the novel, for Swami’s apathy and non-
involvement in his classroom is shortly going to be channeled by the Gandhian
movement of 1931 in which he and his friends participate.

The petty quarrels of the boys, their rivalries and their skirmishes with their
school-master lack the obvious culture specificity. The use of cricket match as a
unifying site that brings the various narrative elements together provides a more
specific colonial inflection; and looked at more closely; it becomes clear that Swami
is far more politically innocent. Although in one sense Swami accepts the adult world
into which he is being socialized, in this case this involves indoctrination into schools
primarily, but not exclusively; colonial curriculum is a formof alternative ideological
positions in the text from the outset.

In the nineteen chapters, the novel charts the various episodes in the life of
Swaminathan, a young schoolboy, who seeks his identity in the company of his
friends like Mani, Rajamand Sankar. These urchins are daring and enterprising lads
who represent the youth power of Malgudi. They are all endowed with lively
imagination.Readers are impressed with their innocence, energy, simplicity and
spontaneity unruffled by the oppressive influences of orthodoxy. These boyslead a life
of unmixed joy and gaiety. The novel depicts ideals, aspirations and frustrations of
Malgudi youths as their sensitive minds and hearts find themselves pitched against
oppression, injustice and exploitation at different stages. Things that fascinate the
eyes of a young man, enchant children’s souls and cast a spell on their vivid and
expensive imagination. Such inspiring things stir in them a desire to break the bonds
of habitual living and new changes whip up their passion to embrace the life of
complete freedom.

xxxiii
 In this novel, paradox of tradition and unconventionality is skillfully presented
through the description of school life with its seriousness and severity.The novel
highlightsthe parents’ zeal to educate their wards and children’s natural aversion to
learning. As a matter of fact, no father despite the unhappy memories of his own
school days, wants his child to be absent from school. R.K. Narayan very humorously
observes and writes in “No School Today”, Next Sunday:

No adult ever speaks the truth about his school days partly out of
diplomacy. The man does not want his child to take his schooling
casually. But the fact remains that no child with red blood in its veins
could ever think of its school with unqualified enthusiasm. It is no use
asking why it is so.It is so and it is to be accepted as inevitable fact. The
Monday morning feeling is solid reality. No adult experiences it keenly
as a child. (41)

Narayan focuses on a middle class family in the small town of Malgudi and
incorporates numerous features of traditional living.We see that it is a patriarchal
society where father’s influence is most meaningful and pervasive. Swami’s father
wields hegemonic power in his family. The father can hope for safe continuity of
traditions in future only if his son is properly educated. Here we can understand the
hegemonic position of Swami’s father in terms of Raymond Williams. Williams
defines hegemony in Culture andMaterialism as: “It thus contributes a sense of reality
for most people in the society a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond
which it is very difficult for most members of the society, to move, in most areas of
their lives” (38).

Due to the experienced reality, the forebodings of a son’s failure in life always
haunt an over indulgent father. All his efforts are directed to redeem himself of his
sacred parental debt.

Swami’s father, a lawyer by profession and strict disciplinarian by nature, is

an archetype of all father-figures in Narayan’s novels. He has given “definite order
that Swaminathan should stay at home and do school homework” (Narayan,Swami
and Friends23-24) even on holidays. Much to Swaminathan’s displeasure, his father’s
courts close for summer vacation in the second week of May, and father’s stay at

xxxiv
home in the afternoons interferes in his rambling with Rajam and Mani. The father’s
frantic inquiries about studies are resented by Swami. He must read “even the school
closed when there is no examination” (Narayan,Swami and Friends 83).

The over concerned father instructs Swaminathan “to dust his books and clean
his table” (Narayan,Swami and Friends 83), under his supervision. He doesn’t like the
way Swami has kept his English text and arranged his things.Swami, who has been
rebuked by his father for not paying any heed to his studies and for wasting his time
in games and sports, gives vent to his anger as: “If one has got to read even during
holidays, Idon’t see why holidays are given at all” (Narayan,Swami and Friends74).

We see that freedom loving Swami is not happy for his father’s vacations in
the second week of May because:

Much to Swaminathan’s displeasure, his father’s courts closed in the

second week of May, and his father began to spend the afternoons at
home. Swami feared that it might interfere with his afternoon rambles
with Rajam and Mani. And it did. On the very third day of his vacation,
father commended Swaminathan, just as he was stepping out of the
house: ‘Swami, come here’. (Narayan,Swami and Friends82)

But the well-meaning father inescapably meets such frustration when his advice to his
son falls flat on Swami’s ears. It makes clear that parents encourage or put enormous
pressure on their children to do well in school, not simply because of their interest in
their children’s academic achievements but also because of their personal social
security and fear of having a child who does not get good job.

Swami and Friends brings to light a deep-rooted fear in the minds of the
middle class Indian parents. A failure in examination brings disgrace not only to a
child but also to entire family.Marks in exams determine the achievement of a student
in his school Swami’s father is always worried lest his son should fail in examination.
He becomes quite “fussy and difficult” (Narayan,Swami and Friends51) in dealing
with his son. Swami is repeatedly asked not to waste his precious time in chatting
with his granny: “Remember boy, there is an examination. Your granny can wait, not
your examination” and again “you must get up early and study a bit” (Narayan,

xxxv
Swami and Friends 51).This is a difficult period in Swaminathan’s life. One can have
an idea of the importance attached to examination from the dialogue between Swami
and his father:

‘Why are you so nervous about my examination?’

‘Suppose you fail.’
‘I won’t’
‘Of course you won’t if you study hard and answer well…Suppose you
fail and all your classmates go up, leaving you behind? You can start
doing just what you like on the very day your examination closes.
(Narayan, Swami and Friends51)

In order to enjoy an absolute freedom Swaminathan has a natural dislike for school
campus. He considers it as the most unwanted place on earth. Swaminathan shudders
at the very thought of school which is nothing better than a dismal yellow building. In
his opinion the teachers are devoid of all affection for the young and callously load
them with“heap of work” (Narayan, Swami and Friends3).Swaminathan often lived in
his own private world, which did not include the restrictions of school. He would be
forever looking for some plea or other to miss the school. Sometimes it would be
feigned headache and fever. It would win him the sympathy of his granny and mother,
but not of his father, who knew his son’s tricks very well:

Father stood over him and said in a undertone, you are a lucky fellow.
What a lot of champions you have in this house when you don’t want to
go to school!’ Swaminathan felt that this was a sudden and unprovoked
attack from behind. He shut his eyes and turned towards the wall with a
feeble groan. (Narayan, Swami and Friends132)

He prefers the exquisite blessedness of the Sunday-mood to the Monday-mood of the

labour. On Monday-morning he is overtaken by lethargy and lassitude Narayan
writes: “It was Monday morning, Swaminathan was reluctant to open his eyes. He
considered Monday especially unpleasant in the calendar. After the delicious freedom
of Saturday and Sunday, it was difficult to get into the Monday-mood of the work and
discipline” (Narayan, Swami and Friends3).

xxxvi
In fact, the Mission school that Swami attends had a curriculum that includes lessons in
Tamil as well as Christianscriptures. We can observe that like the protagonist, the novel’s
mood draws both Hindu and western discursive codes. When Swami takes his Tamil exam,
he writes his address on the paper’s flap in a passage:
Tamil Tamil
W.S. Swaminathan
Ist form A section
Ablert Mission School
Malgudi
South India
Asia (Narayan, Swami and Friends 62).

It is reminiscent of Joyce’s Stephan Dedalus’ boy-hood positioning of him-self in the

universe. It signifies how a child locates himself in the large world.

Like Swaminathan, R.K. Narayan himself hated his school and wept in fear on
the very first day in the institution. As Swaminathan’s experience in school was
unpleasant, so was Narayan’s own; as he explains in My Days that teachers were all
converts.They displayed a lot ofhatred towards the few non-Christian students like
him. Most of the Christian students also detested them. The scripture classes were
mostly devoted to attacking and lampooning the Hindu Gods and violent abuses were
heaped on idol-worshippers as a prelude to glorify Jesus.Thelampooning of the
Hindus in Narayan’s Lutheran Mission school is described by him in My Days:

The scripture classes were mostly devoted to attacking and lampooning

the Hindu Gods, and violent abuses were heaped on idol-worshippers as
a prelude to glorify Jesus. Among the non-Christians in our class I was
the only Brahmin boy, and received special attention; the whole class
could turn in my direction when the teacher said that Brahmins claiming
to be vegetarian ate fish and meat in secret, in a sneaky way and are
responsible for the soaring price of those commodities. (12)

Freedom loving Swami is inwardly drawn to sports, cricket, friends and political
hooliganism. The very sight of teacher repels him. He develops a special hatred for
fire-eyed Vedanayagam, his arithmetic teacher, who gives a very hard message to his
ears and soft flesh when he fails to solve the sums correctly. Much more abominable

xxxvii
is the behavior of Mr. Ebenezer, the frantic scripture-master. Mr. Ebenezer carries his
prejudices against the Hindu religion in the class-room and uses derogatory terms for
the Hindu-gods:

‘Oh wretched idiots!the teacher said, clinching his fist, ‘Why do you
worship dirty, lifeless, wooden idols and stone images? Can they talk?
No. Can they see? No. Why? Because theyhave no life. What did your
gods do when Mohammed of Gazani smashed them to pieces, trod upon
them, and constructed out the steps for his history? (Narayan,Swami and
Friends5)

Reaction of Swami’s father to the references is quite in keeping with the native
culture of which he has been the product. In his letter to the Headmaster of Albert
School, Swami’s father writes:“I hear that he (Ebenezer) is always most insulting and
provoking in his references to the Hindu religion. It is bound to have bad effect on the
children” (Narayan,Swami and Friends6).

Thus, through Ebenezer, Narayan focuses our attention on the prevalence of

narrow-mindedness, bigotry, intolerance and orthodoxy in the name of religion.So,
there is no such thing as a natural educational process. Education either functions as
an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into
the logic of the present system. So, education helps in bringing about conformity to
system.

Raymond Williams in Culture and Materialism states that “… we can only

understand an affective and dominant culture if we understand the real social process
of incorporation” (38-39).Further,in the same book Raymond Williams stresses upon
the importance of educational institute as means of incorporation: “The modes of
incorporation are of great social significance. The educational institutions are usually
the main agencies of the transmission of an affective dominant culture, and this is
now a major economic as well as a cultural activity; indeed it is both in the same
moment” (39).

So, a teacher in bourgeois educational institute plays the role of an agent for
incorporation of dominant culture. A teacher’s authority in the classroom is one of a

xxxviii
dictator who controls children’s activities. To maintain his power over the children, he
must construct his position in a hegemonic manner and authoritatively deal with them
around many differentboundaries some related with others during different operations.
He has power to decide what type of punishment he should give to the offenders. The
controlling practice becomes one part among many other classroom activities. Thus,
the power of surveillance defines the new interphase of institutional life for the
child.This type of surveillance resembles the one found in military camps. Nothing
can or should escape teacher’s eye. Neither misbehavior nor dishonesty is allowed.
These practices are also found in competitive capitalist economic system.

Within these and many other interphases in classroom, children have to cross
from one boundary to the other without being informed why such draconian discipline
is necessary. The teacher gives no space or reason to make his classroom a site for the
cultural analysis of the class and system of domination. When should children ask
questions and when should they keep quiet etc. is all determined by him and him
alone. Therefore, in a classroom situation where his role should primarily be that of
teaching, his functions involve much more than theoreticalinstructions. As an
ideologue of educational system, he thinks his teaching responsibilities involve
practice and embedding in characters of the children negative attitudes such as fear,
respect for draconian rules of discipline, and respect for the school authorities whether
they deserve it or not.

Being the part of bourgeois system, he must display the qualities of how an
educated person behaves or should behave and at the same time the grasp of the
subject he is transmitting to his pupils. This was a powerful bourgeois discourse
which was centered on becoming civilized and good servant. In short,pedagogy and
methodology reward and punishment system replicated a hierarchical system. This
type of education makes the teacher see himself as the ultimate authority in his
classroom. Unfortunately, the dictatorial method of teaching is still in practice in
school classrooms.

The interaction between him and the pupils is one of giving and receiving,
active and passive, authority and powerlessness.

xxxix
 Theteacher-pupilrelationship is a form of institutionalized dominance and
subordination. The teacher and pupil confront each-other in the school with an
original conflict of desires and, however, much of that conflict may bereduced in
amount, or however much it may be hidden, it still remains. The teacher represents
the adult group that is enemy of the spontaneous life of children. The teacher
represents the formal curriculum, and his interest is in imposing that curriculum upon
the children. The teacher represents the established social order in the school, and his
interest in maintaining that order.

It is clear through Swami’s character that the education system is clearly and
un-ambiguously a socialization process aimed at preserving the culture of dominant
group. Parents and teachers give children some idea or some image of the role which
they are to play. They are given the attitudes necessary to carry out the role assigned
to them. They are taught how they should respond to other, with whom they will
come into contact, what demands they can make on them. Theyare thus taught who
they should respect and how they should show their respect, who is equal to them and
who is below them. In other words, children are taught how to fit into a system or into
roles that have been developed from other societies over the ages, and how to think
and act as an incumbent of the particular role into which they are destined to enter.
The attitude of role assignment to children can be understood in terms of Raymond
Williams in Marxism and Literature:

Any process of socialization of course includes things that all human

beings have to learn, but any specific process ties this necessary learning
to a selected range of meanings, values and practices which, in the very
closeness of their association with necessary learning, constitute the real
foundations of the hegemonic. In a family, children are cared for and
taught to care for themselves, but within this necessary process
fundamental and selective attitude to self, to others, to a social order,
and to the material world are both consciously and unconsciously
taught.Education transmits necessary knowledge and skills, but always
by a particular selection from the whole available range, and with
intrinsic attitudes, both to learning and social relations, which are in
practice virtually inextricable. (117-118)

xl
Children learn various ways in which culture, power and ideology work as apparatus
of domination to shape the society in order to maintain the hierarchal division or
separation between dominant and subordinate group. It is evident that both places-
school as well as home are not meant for Swami to move freely.

We observe in this novel that unlike the orthodox parents and teachers, the
younger generation is deeply affected by new ideas and attitudes that came into wake
of the Indian renaissance. The spirit of arrogance and open defiance to authorities
were the cardinal characteristics of the mass movement for freedom. Swami and his
friends carried away by the patriotic fervor and in a mood of defiance they give up the
customary habit of discipline and obedience on 15 Aug, 1930. The British
government arrests, Gaurishankar, a prominent political worker of Bombay. As a
result, students of Albert Mission school join the procession with thousands of other
citizens of Malgudi they shout slogans like “Gandhi ki jai, Bharat Mata ki jai”
(Narayan, Swami and Friends 97) and indulge in “hooliganism, howling, jeering and
hooting” (Narayan, Swami and Friends 98). The students observe a hartal at the
school gate and openly defy orders from their teacher: “The boys stood firm. The
teachers including D. Pillai tried and failed. After uttering a warning that punishment
to follow would be severe the headmaster withdrew thundering shouts of ‘Bharat
Mata kijai, Gandhiki jai and Gaurishankar ki Jai’ followed him…” (Narayan, Swami
and Friends97).

Narayan gives an interesting description of Swami’s joy on throwing stones at

the college ventilators:

He uttered a sharp cry of joy as he discovered a whole ventilator,

consisting of small square glasses, in the Head Master’s room, intact?
He sent a stone at it and waited with cocked up ears for the splintering
noise as the stone hit the glass, and the final shivering noise, a fraction
of a second later, as the piece crashed on the floor. It was thrilling.
(Narayan, Swami and Friends88)

Swami seems already familiar with Gandhi’s name not only as a Mahatma but also as
a political leader with specific programs of economic and social, cultural and political

xli
significance. Gandhi’s ideas appeal to Swami in a personal way because of his
demoralizing experience in the Scripture classes.

Through such incidents Narayan exposes some of the deplorable aspects of the
existing educational system. The utter disregard for their teachers by the school boys
is largely due to some basic flaws in the Indian system of education. Conceived by the
British and implemented by bourgeois class, it is entirely unsuited to the needs of
Indian society. Indian schools with their inordinate emphases on study of English
language and literature and maintenance of strict discipline have turned out to be
veritable jails where the inmates go in only to take lessons in mental and physical
suffering. There is no doubt that educational language contains power. Through it
teachers are able to judge whether child is able to express himself more clearly,
concretely and intelligently than other child. This process can also be called screening
and sorting mechanism. It begins upon the entering and continues throughout his
school career.

School education suffers many oddities, for most of them being the dread of
corporal punishment, increasing load of text books, bigotry of the Christian teachers,
sadistic devices of admissions and fear of examinations.With a sense of deep anguish in
heart, Narayan observesthatmodern educator naturally has to adopt his ways to modern
circumstances, and put away obsolete weapons. At higher levels of education, admission,
text-books and examinations- are the triple weapons in hand of an educator today.

These unhealthy practices have an adverse effect on the impressionable minds of the
tiny pupils and breed in them a natural aversion to educational institutions. When the
school fails to provide children with adequate facilities for games and sports, they
indulge in rowdysm and hooliganism. In order to ventilate their disgust for school,
they give up their studies, defy orders of their teachers and even throw stones on
window pans. P.S. Sundaram writes:

There is hardly any ragging in our schools and the dreadful tyrants are
not senior boys as in Tom Brown’s School days or Stalky and co: but the
teachers and the Headmaster Ebenezer’s denunciation of Krishna were

xlii
 not uncommon in Missionary School half a century ago, though now-a-
days Christian teachers are likely to be much more tactful. (28)

Swami and Friends also offers an interesting study of the problem of growing
indiscipline and unruly behavior in school campus. Swami and his friends
(Schoolmates) are innocent boys who need constant guidance and patronage. The
crude and unpsychological methods of enforcing discipline through caning, chastising
and flogging cancelling attendance and imposing heavy fines make the matters worse.
The day after students’hartal is observed as a day of trial and punishment.Boys have
to pass through the rigorous of an enquiry and are made to stand on benches. When
they fail to give any convincing explanation for their deliberate absence from the
school on the previous day, they all take recourse of flagrant lies and lame
excuses.Not satisfied with caning and chastising, the callous headmaster punishes
them with suspension from the school. Like others, Swaminathan too is singled out
and vigorously flogged for his violent acts. Swami suffers bothphysically and
mentally. The headmaster emerges as a symbol of teachers’ inhuman cruelty when he
threatens Swami: “I will kill you if you keep on staring without answering any
question” (Narayan,Swami and Friends105). Swami becomes unconsciously defiant
and takes a desperate decision to quit the school forever. Narayan remarks:

Every pore in Swaminathan’s body burnt with the touch of the cane. He
had a sudden flood of courage, the courage that comes of desperation.
He restrains the tears that were threatening to rush out, jumped down,
and gasping his books, rushed out muttering,“I don’t care for your dirty
school.” (Narayan, Swami and Friends106)

His behavior goes beyond the kind of the youthful exuberance that is condoned with
touch oflightness; Narayan renders the school a site of struggle that subtly subverts
the codes of English schoolboy fiction while ostensibly operating within its
conventions.

Subsequently Swami attends Malgudi’s Board as school, where he gets

involved in a similar confrontation with the headmaster, when he seeks to be let out
early to attend cricket practice with his friends, who have formed the M.C.C. the

xliii
Malgudi Cricket Club. We observe that children have their own culture which
develops in the playground.

These incidents of open defiance disprove the soundness of orthodox saying

like- spare the rod and spoil the child or the unbeaten brat will always remain
unlearned- which is still prevalent in Indian schools.

Through Swami and Friends,Narayan strongly underscores the need for

psychological approaches in the education of small children. A teacher must be well
aware of child psychology which emphasizes a human approach to all child problems.
The teacher’s ignorance of child sentiments and their significance in letter’s life only
widens the rift between him and the pupil. Often the confrontation compels the young
ones to shun school at a premature age. Had the AlbertMission School headmaster been a
little more affectionate and amiable, Swami would not have been forced to leave the
school without completing his studies.

The inhumane methods of corporal punishment, callous and indifferent attitude of

teachers in dealing with their students remind one of the barbaric age when people knew
nothing about child emotions and freely resorted to flogging and caning. Such evil
practices are in a great measure, responsible for the loss of respect for the teachers
amongst his students and for decline of student’s faith in teacher. Students like
Swaminathan develop a feeling of alienation and distance from their teachers because
latter never try to come closer to the former mentally and psychologically. A young child
must not be subjected to unquestioning obedience and rigid discipline. It is foremost job
of a teacher to win the heart of the student and keep alive in them a sense of self-reliance
and freedom. A teacher today is no longer Sir Oracle, pumping knowledge at higher
pressure sharing the weal and woes of his juniors. It is because of his cordiality not
cruelty, that D. Pillaiis a favorite teacher of his students. He has “earned a name in the
school for kindness and humor” (Narayan,Swami and Friends4). All the students love
him because he has” never frowned or sworn at the boys at any time” (Narayan,Swami
and Friends 4-5). The mental faculties of a child should be allowed to develop in an
atmosphere of freedom and friendliness.

xliv
 Gramsci states that learning was not something that comes easily for the majority
of the young people because, “The individual consciousness of the overwhelming
majority of children reflects social and cultural relations which are different from and
antagonistic to those which are presented in the school curricula” (Gramsci 35).We see
how school boys are harassed in the name of examination. As the exams draw near all the
students become serious, finding no time for extracurricular activities. Narayan has
vividly described the situation:

At school everybody seemed to be overwhelmed by the thought of the

examination. It was weeks since anybody has seen a smile on Sankar’s
face. Somu had become brisk and business like. The Pea took time to
grasp jokes and seldom gave any. As per the Rajam he comes to school
at the stroke of the first bell, took down everything the teacher said and
left at stroke of last bell hardly uttering a dozen words to anybody. Mani
was beginning to look worried and took every opportunity to take
Sankara side and have his doubts (that arose from time to time as he
plodded through his texts) cleared…. (Narayan, Swami and Friend52)

Mani’s visit to Clerk’s house with a gift of fresh brinjals to gather information about
the question set for the examination is only one of the evils that are associated with
the present system of evaluation.

Children’s world is the adult world in miniature. It is here that Wordsworth’s

concept of the child being the father of man finds the expression in their daily
activities. On the eve of his examination, Swaminathan draws up a list of his needs as
if it were some kind of a heavy monthly or annual budget.’

Unruled while paper -20 sheets

Ruled white paper – 10 sheets
Black Ink – 1bottle
Clips – 12
Pins- 12. (Narayan, Swami and Friends64)
Examinations are very unnerving for Swami and studying for them is an ordeal.
Looking at the crooked map of Europe, he often wonders how people live in it. He has
a mix feeling of exaltation as well as ease when exams are over:

xlv
 With dry lips, parched throat, and ink stained fingers and exhausted on one
side and exaltation on the other, Swaminathan strode out of the examination
hall, on the last day.Standing in the veranda hall, he turned back and looked
into the hall and felt slightly uneasy. He would have felt more comfortable if
all the boys had given their papers as he had done, twenty minutes before time.
(Narayan, Swami and Friends61)

In case of R.K. Narayan, we have more or less same kind of distaste for education in
My Days.

My outlook on education never fitted in with the accepted code at home,

I instinctively rejected both education and examinations, with their
unwarranted seriousness and esoteric suggestions. Since revolt was
unpractical. I went through it all without conviction, enthusiasm or any
sort of distinction. Going to school seemed to me never-ending nuisance
each day to be borne…. (53-54)

The ending of the novel is very dark in many ways. Swami was dismissed from the
Board High School. Now that he had nowhere to go, he remembered his home, a
place which contained his father, a stern, stubborn father, and that tyrant of
headmaster that forced him to leave Malgudi. AsSwami runs away, he misses the
match and the team loses. Cricket and the ethics of participation in team games fail to
resolve the plot’s complication. He felt lonely in the dread of night when his mind
was gripped with fear. He heard strange voices calling him by name. He stopped and
looked about. It appeared to his mind that a monster was catching him with his
immense black legs wide apart and shadowy arms joined over its head. It now swayed
a little. When he was completely exhausted, he collapsed like an empty bag in
wilderness. He did not know what to do. He felt completely lost with no hope to
return to Malgudi, his mind turned to divine help. Swami prayed to all the gods that
he knew, to make him out of that place. He promised offeringof two coconutsevery
Saturday to the elephant faced Ganpati. He fell unconscious and was brought back to
Malgudi with changed heart of submission and regret for what he has committed His
running away from home, though not surprising has unnerved his parent considerably.

xlvi
 Moreover, the novel ends in anticlimax in another respect as Rajam the most
English of Swami’s friends leaves Malgudi and there is no comfortable healing of the
rift that has opened up between the two boys as a result of Swami’s letting the side
down. The novel is aptly titled,Swami and Friendsbecause it is centrally about
friendship but its treatment of the theme alsosuggests the difficulties of finding
common ground and sustaining relationshipnot simply because the boys are at
awkward age, but more specifically because of the conflicting codes to which they are
subjected in their bourgeois/or colonial class situation.

Again Narayan’s conclusion moves in an opposite direction from the

resolutions that characterize the ending of most English school boy fiction. These
involve a reaffirmation not only of the bourgeois social order but also of the colonial
ethics, with which it was twinned.

A make-overwas given toSwami and its creator, to render the novel more
suitable for the British readership, but, although the original manuscript appears not to
have survived it seems likely that representing the ambivalent nature of the South-
Indian colonial situation was an integral part of the novel from the outset. Certainly
this survived in published text. Narayan may not have been consciously responding to
his hybrid situation, but the dilemmas in which Swami finds himself and the parallel
tensions in the narrative mode-make it difficult not to read Swami and Friendsas
subversive response to the colonial ethics and particularly to the educational
curriculum that was one of its lynch.

The school curricula did not reflect a balance between the effective expressive
and intellectual cognitive side of education. Thinking of schools as mechanisms of
cultural distribution is important since as the Marxist Antonio Gramaci noted that a
critical element in enhancing the ideological dominances of certain classes is the
control of the knowledge preserving and producing institution of particular society.
This view of curriculum is carried over to The Bachelor of Arts and The English
Teacher.

Swami, Narayan’s protagonist, despite his deep desire to realize his personal
ambitions cannot afford to live in isolation for long. His disregard of tradition,

xlvii
cultural values and educational institutions is temporary.Having failed in hismission,
he returns to theold way of life with better understanding. After his second clash with
the school authorities, he runs away and has wild vision of being sent to Trichinopally
or Madras to work and earn but finally accepts that, “after all I shall have to go back
to the Board High School…” (Narayan, Swami and Friends70).Later while trying to
recount his mysterious experience to Mani, Swami says, “I don’t know where I was”
(Narayan,Swami and Friends171).

His escape to Mempi hills is an escape into an illusionary world to which

people are often led. His search for new world order, away from the world in which
he lives, leaves him convinced that the only place to live in is the world on this earth,
the world of pain and suffering, of conflicts and tensions, of joys and sorrows-a world
which is immutable and inescapable.

By describing the frustration of Swami’s escapade in quest of personal

freedom, Narayan seems to affirm his faith in the efficacy of traditional institutions
over individualistic tendencies. Fed up with his life in Malgudi, its cruel teachers,
oppressive customs and domineering parents, Swami disappears into the Mempi
forest. But soon he loses his way; his individual search for the right road becomes an
unreal distant dream and his unhappy experience makes him realize that it was a
meaningless, aimless march.

This novel shows that how the teacher is expected to change children’s culture
and impose discipline and learning in a bourgeois educational institution. The teacher
uses the following mechanisms to control children’s activities in the classroom:orders,
punishments management, shows of temper and emotional appeal. Grades and
examinations are also very important weapons in teachers’ hands.The teacher- pupil
conflict locks them in perpetual power struggle.

The question is how one can realistically expect a teacher to interact

differently with his pupils when his own training was mainly based on authoritative
education rather than the transmission of knowledge and skills.Teacher belongs to
heteronymous professional organization in which professional and employees are sub-

xlviii
ordinate to an administrative framework and their amount of autonomy is relatively
small.

Teachers are subjected to great control, to greater governmental intervention,

to dominating tendencies of management.Increasingly, teaching methods, text books,
tests and the like are being taken out of the hands of teachers who must put them in
practice.

But it is also an important issue that as teachers how deep do we understand

children’semotions? How do we understand children’s conflict, their interpretations of
what we teach them, their memories and their ideology?

Anyone who can produce the best blend of the physical and intellectual sides
of education and apply them to the training of character in producing harmony in a far
more important sense. But teachers are not free for doing so. There are certain
attitudes and norms that are directly or indirectly established by the dominant class in
order to control the teacher’s activities. It is for these reasons thatnot only do teachers
lose control over classroom, but they are assessed, judged and compared by criteria
set elsewhere.In the other words children are directly or indirectly taught to be
beneath someone of high social standing.

How often do educators silence students in the name of legitimate knowledge?

How do educators understand the injustice which isdone in the name of his
knowledge? How do they face their own participation in the distribution of oppressive
educational knowledge that appears to dispossess students to all their basic rights?

Lastly, how can teachers and parents empower children to visualize a better
future without fearing that they might not fit in a class society?

In the light of the above discussion we can conclude that schools are merely
bourgeois educational institutes where students are harassed physically, mentally and
psychologically and fail to provide all round development of student’s personality.
This type of distraction from the central aim of such educational institute is
responsible for the type of behavior shown by Swami and his friends.

xlix
 WORKS CITED

Primary Sources

Narayan, R.K. Swami and Friends.Mysore: Indian Thought Publication, 1971. Print.

---. My Days.Mysore: Indian Thought Publication, 1979. Print.

---.My Educational Outlook.Reluctant Guru.Delhi: Hand Pocket Books, 974. Print.

---.No School Today, Next Sunday.New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1976. Print.

Secondary Sources

Gramsci, A. Selection from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart,
1971. Print.

Sundram, P.S.R.K. Narayan. New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1973. Print.

William, Raymond. Culture and Marxism. London: Verso, 1980. Print.

--- .Marxism and Literature.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Print.