Mr. Khushwant Singh in bracketing Mrs. R. Prawer Jhabvala with Mr. R. K. Narayan as the leading Indian novelists now writing in English has suggested that she writes in the main about the "Babbitts" of Delhi. It would be a gross generalization to speak of "Babbittry" as Jhabvala's preoccupation although at least two of her six novels (Get Ready for Battle and The Nature of Passion) explore in depth the lives of the rich and corrupt bourgeoisie of present-day India, while several others have rich bourgeois characters in less central positions. The original Babbitt of Sinclair Lewis was a satirical exposure of American bourgeois society, told not without some ultimate sympathy for the hero caught in the trap of social climbing and conformism, a sympathy which Jhabvala sometimes imitates towards her Babbitts. As a novelist Jhabvala is highly delicate and ambiguous in tone and her satire is only an element (though an important one) in her work. An examination of her Babbitts in fact shows how the Indian tradition and context and related cultural differences have complicated the picture. In this essay therefore the word "Babbitt" will be used to cover a range of Indian bourgeois types, some of which have only a tenuous connection with the Sinclair Lewis prototype. Jhabvala is more essentially a novelist of manners rather than a novelist of ideas; and notions of class and economic conflict are subordinated to her study of family life, marriage and expatriation. Nevertheless I intend to show how the notions of heroic virtue and religious non-attachment in the Hindu context are embodied in key characters in her novels in such a way as to suggest the futility and self-defeat of the Babbitt's pursuit of wealth and power as ends.
The rich bourgeois head-of-family appears centrally in two novels: her second one in order of publication, The Nature of Passion [1956] …, and her fifth, Get Ready for Battle [1962]…. Lal Narayan Dass Verma (Lalaji, as he is called) is a striking and powerful figure, head of a large and turbulent family whose activities provide the story of The Nature of Passion. In some ways he is the crudest kind of Babbitt. He and his eldest son Om are rich, greedy and corrupt; neither, however, aspires to any culture or sophistication. Both are conformist to the Indian tradition without showing any marked piety or awareness of their duties to any principles beyond money and family. Sometimes, as in this novel, money and family loyalties may conflict. Their business ethics are of the most dubious, and at the beginning of the novel Lalaji is in imminent danger of being exposed, prosecuted and ruined for offering bribes in exchange for government contracts for his firm. But Lalaji is first displayed as a family man, the emperor-like head of an "undivided family."… The opening scene of the novel shows the hilarity, excitement and chaos which results when Lalaji, Om and the women of the family pay a visit to Om's wife after the birth of her baby. Jhabvala stresses the tenderness and infectious boyish pleasure with which the old capitalist greets this latest arrival to the clan. Lalaji's role as father of a large and growing family colours the whole of the novel and does much to cancel out the bad impression of his ruthlessness in business. Nevertheless the Babbittry of Lalaji and Om are egregiously displayed in their narrowness and lack of culture…. The conflict between [Lalaji's] indulgent love as a father and his self-interest as a capitalist and old-fashioned family-man provides most of the interest.
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