The Spatial Problematic of the Agrahara and the Body- Forest-Townscape in Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man
https://doi.org /10.5281/zen od o.14974018
Author(s): Aakriti Singh
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14974018
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The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 16, Issue-I, February 2025 ISSN: 0976-8165
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030
The Spatial Problematic of the Agrahara and the Body-Forest-Townscape
in Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man
Aakriti Singh
Postgraduate Student,
Panjab University,
Chandigarh.
Article History: Submitted‐31/01/2025, Revised‐06/02/2025, Accepted‐21/02/2025, Published‐28/02/2025.
Abstract:
Michel Foucault’s 1967 lecture Des Espaces Autres (translated as Of Other Spaces in
1986) critiqued the paradoxes of social spatiality against the historico-materialist norms of
interpretations. His peculiar forms of counter-spaces which he termed as heterotopias and
utopias preceded the spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja and exposed the
reasons behind the creation of spaces in society. Building upon spatial theories of these
scholars, the paper examines two significant material spaces—the physical and the corporeal—
in U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man (1976). In the first part, Edward
Soja’s and Henri Lefebvre’s concepts of ‘thirdspace’ are intertwined with Foucault’s notion of
heterotopias to critique the agrahara, an exclusive orthodox colony depicted in the novel. The
second part presents the body as space, site, and agent of disruption by establishing a body-
forest-town triad, highlighting the multiplicity contained within this triad. This triad undergoes
a critical ‘thirding’ by moving beyond the dualities of physical categorizations. Overall, the
analysis critiques four spaces—the agrahara, the forest, the town, and the ‘body as space’
(three of which are narrative locations in the novel)—through a spatial lens.
Keywords: agrahara, body, forest, heterotopia, threshold, townscape.
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Introduction
When no heed is paid to the relations that inhere in social facts, knowledge misses its
target; our understanding is reduced to a confirmation of the undefined and indefinable
multiplicity of things, and gets lost in classifications, descriptions and segmentations.
(Lefebvre 81)
With their postulations extending to any form of space one wishes to study, Henri
Lefebvre, Edward Soja, and Michel Foucault played a crucial role in bringing the ‘spatial’ to
the forefront of the modern, urban, and capitalist world we inhabit today. Lefebvre originally
published La Production de l’Espace in French in 1974, and it was later translated into English
by Donald Nicholson-Smith as The Production of Space in 1991. In this work, his quest to
understand the ‘why’ behind the production of space originated in a Marxist-urbanist
philosophy. He argued that a socially inhabited space was defined not only by its geometrical
and phenomenological construction but also by its materiality and epistemological nature,
which shaped it into an “organizational tool to interfere with and even determine human action”
(Chakraborty 87). He introduced a conceptual triad of (1) spatial practices, (2) representations
of spaces, and (3) spaces of representation, which governed modern capitalist society (Lefebvre
33). Through this tripartite ordering, a significant category of space emerged, called ‘social
space,’ which assigned appropriate places to two pivotal relations in society: (1) the social
relations of reproduction and (2) the relations of production (Lefebvre 32). It was within this
social space that lived experiences, interactions, and functions of society—whether of the old-
world order (i.e. the rural/the colonized) or the newly established order (i.e. the global
cosmopolitan/capitalist society)—took place and influenced every function of society,
emerging as the most dominant form of space of the spatial discourse.
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Lefebvre’s Marxist claims echoed Michel Foucault’s theories on space, first theorized
by Foucault in his 1967 lecture Des Espaces Autres, later translated as Of Other Spaces in 1986
(Chakraborty 85). Foucault’s interest centred on specific spaces “that have the curious property
of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invert
the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect” (24). He termed these
peculiar spaces utopias and heterotopias, encompassing any space, place, or even Lefebvre’s
concept of social space, which masked power under the guise of liberty (136). Foucault
illustrated how those in power used space to exert hegemonic control over its inhabitants
through various examples, including retirement homes, old-age hospice care facilities,
boarding schools, vacation homes, and even early Puritan settlements (24–7). These examples
were among the first to reveal the underlying purpose behind creating such designated spaces.
Although he linked the emergence of every significant space and place to the implicit
expression of power, he also emphasized that these spaces were not without “possibilities of
resistance, disobedience, and oppositional groupings” (135). He consistently upheld the view
that space could invert, suspect, and neutralize any social relation, whether of reproduction or
production—echoing a perspective that advocates of spatial theory continue to uphold
vigorously. Thus, the Foucauldian stance, along with his theories on discourse, discipline,
power, and gaze, laid the foundation for critical spatial theory.
Apart from Lefebvre’s and Foucault’s revelations, which gave way to a spatial
discourse, Edward Soja also made significant contributions. Soja extended Foucault’s and
Lefebvre’s social theories to the literary scene as part of the developing movement of the
postmodern critical human geography of the 1980s, when critical human geography in the
1960s was consumed by History, Time, or both (Soja 114). He blended Foucauldian concepts
of hegemony, power, and gaze with Lefebvre’s Marxist-urbanist philosophy in Thirdspace:
Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, published in 1996. Soja further
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argued that the theories of Lefebvre and Foucault originated in Hegel and Marx, breaking away
from the “confining dualism” of firstspace and secondspace of the past (Soja 267–8). He drew
their concepts into a thirdspace, which he described as “a radically different way of looking at,
interpreting, and acting to change the embracing spatiality of human life” through “a critical
thirding-as-Othering” (Soja 267). This perspective suggested that every work of art, including
literature (fiction, prose, and poetry), should be viewed as thirdspace, with fiction serving as a
‘site’ that not only emphasized the relationship between a fictional setting and its historical
location but also facilitated an interaction between the author, text, and reader through “the
author’s own spatial history” (Hones 36). As a result, all fiction, particularly the novel, became
a “geographical phenomenon in itself” (Hones 32). Thus, thirdspace introduced an “assertive
thirding as an ontological trialectic of spatiality-sociality-historicality” (Soja 262).
Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man
This paper intertwines the theories of Soja, Lefebvre, and the Foucauldian heterotopias
to establish a spatial critique of U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man,
published in Kannada in 1965 and later translated into English by the acclaimed Indian-English
poet A.K. Ramanujan in 1976. Ananthamurthy stated that a mythological tale about a revered
sage falling for a mortal woman inspired the allegorical story of Samskara: “[t]he only thing in
my head as a subtext was Parashara meeting Matsyagandhi” (Ananthamurthy 138). However,
beyond being an allegory, critics like A.K. Ramanujan have asserted that Samskara: A Rite for
a Dead Man is a realist tale (124). The details of the novel—such as names of some villages,
the popular daily Tayinadu, the mention of coins (annas), and the political rise of the Congress
party—point to its realist setting in 1930s and 40s India, with the eponymous town Shivamogge
also featuring in the novel (Ramanujan 124). Until now, interpretations of Samskara: A Rite
for a Dead Man through allegorical abstractions or realist readings have confined its criticism
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to illusions of transparency and realism, thus depriving the text a critical-thirding (Lefebvre
27). However, the spatial analysis through this paper aims to enrich existing scholarship by
offering a critical perspective without negating its allegorical and/or realist impact.
The town of Shivamogge, where Ananthamurthy was born in Karnataka (formerly
Mysore), appears in Samskara, embedding the author’s spatial history within the novel. In the
narrative, Shivamogge is where Naranappa contracts the plague, leading to his death just before
the novel begins. Thus, Shivamogge functions as a thirdspace—an imagined space based on a
real town that is neither entirely real, as it exists within fiction, nor fully imagined, as it is
rooted in an actual place. It occupies an interstitial position within what Soja terms the ‘both-
and-also’ of Lefebvre, undergoing a thirdspace-critical-Othering as defined by Soja (268).
However, just as Shivamogge embodies multiplicity, the novel’s other spaces similarly take on
plural roles, meanings, and functions, which will form the basis of this paper’s critical analysis.
The paper will analyze three narrative locations/spaces (out of the total four)—the
agrahara, the forest, and the town of Melige—not as static backgrounds to the events in the
novel but as dynamic spaces that shape and, in turn, transform through the novel’s events. In
addition to these narrative locations, the paper will explore the body as a spatial site of agency,
merging the space of the ‘corporeal’ into the critique. Lefebvre and Soja limited the physical
space to firstspace as a simple and literal embodiment of spatial practices, but here, the body
transcends its role as a firstspace. The body becomes a site of transformation, agency, and
resistance, playing a pivotal role in the novel’s spatial discourse, where it symbolizes the
dynamic nature of body-as-space and its tremendous power to disrupt the narrative. Thus, in
the first section of the essay, Soja’s and Lefebvre’s ideations of thirdspace will be intertwined
with Foucault’s notion of heterotopias to spatially critique the agrahara, the exclusive orthodox
colony in Samskara. The second section will examine the body as space, site, and agent of
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disruption by establishing a body-forest-town triad, showcasing the multiplicity contained
within this triad. This triad undergoes a critical ‘thirding’ by moving beyond the dualities of
physical categorizations. Overall, the paper will critique four spaces—the agrahara, the forest,
the town, and the body as space—through a spatial lens, three of which serve as primary
narrative locations in the novel.
The Foucauldianscape
U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man presents the austere life of
Brahmins in colonial India within a realist-inspired setting of a village, typical of colonial
Karnataka. The primary focus is on the Madhva agrahara—an “exclusive orthodox colony”
that is a part of a town dedicated to Brahmins for sustenance through bhiksha (begging for
alms) in the form of a grant (Ramanujan 119). This context establishes both the temporal and
spatial setting of the novel. Brahminical clans maintain the sanctity and purity of the agrahara
by occupying this designated space, particularly the Madhvas of the Brahmin varna, the most
prestigious of Hinduism’s castes. Agraharas remained a part of the Indian culture for many
decades reflecting, and perpetuating caste-based power dynamics prevalent in Indian society.
The production of this agraharian social space aligns with Lefebvre’s postulations on space
and politics; however, unlike capitalist societies, the agrahara is purely an economy of alms.
Nevertheless, the hegemony of a single class or individual within the microcosm of
society, with its hierarchical roles, makes the agraharas the focal point of our attention. Such
locales in the geography of colonial India emerged from the power dynamics that both Lefebvre
and Foucault highlight. These locales subtly magnify discipline, power, punishment, gaze,
surveillance, and hegemony by elevating them to the status of the sacrosanct. This section of
the paper argues for the desanctification of the sacred and sanct agraharas of Samskara: A Rite
for a Dead Man under Foucauldian claims. The need to desanctify space aligns with Foucault’s
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observation: “[n]ow, despite all the techniques for appropriating space, despite the whole
network of knowledge that enables us to delimit or to formalize it, contemporary space is
perhaps still not entirely desanctified” (Foucault 23).
By exclusively occupying space, Brahmins establish the agraharas as Foucauldian
heterotopias, maintaining their sanctity and purity. Foucault defines heterotopias as real places
that “exist probably in every culture, in every civilization…places that do exist and that are
formed in the very founding of society—which are something like counter-sites, a kind of
effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within
the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted” (24). Therefore,
heterotopias in “some way or the other, represent, contest, or invert the prevailing “gaze” of
authority within certain mechanisms” and compete with the utopic aspirations but fail ever to
fulfil them (Chakraborty 57). In Samskara, the agraharas do all this under the gaze and
authority of a Brahminical lifestyle governed by daily rituals and practices. They do so by
embodying the two heterotopian principles (out of the total six) delineated by Foucault. The
first principle, i.e., the principle of function, emulates representation and competition, while
the second, i.e., the principle of crisis, enacts inversion and disruption.
The first heterotopian principle—the principle of function—states that space always
serves a specific purpose: either “to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all
the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory… Or else, on the
contrary, their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous,
as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled” (Foucault 26). That is, spaces
serve either (a) the function of illusion or (b) the function of compensation (Foucault 26–27).
The agraharas in Samskara align with the latter. As compensatory heterotopias, alternate
realities are meticulously structured to counteract the perceived disorder of the external
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world—the Other. This structure is evident in everything—from the strict regulations
governing daily life—such as waking up at daybreak to the sound of conches—to the
symmetrical arrangement of homes. The Acharya governs the agrahara, but he, in turn,
operates under the gaze of an absent yet omniscient divine authority. This belief in an unseen
yet all-knowing higher power sustains the hierarchical structure of this microcosmic
heterotopia. In Samskara, Foucault’s concepts of discipline and punishment infiltrate human
existence in the agrahara’s rigid social space and connect to this divine gaze. However, the
illusion of a perfect life begins to crumble with the death of Naranappa, the rogue Brahmin,
leaving the colony on the brink of inversion, and Praneshacharya bringing about this inversion
through his bodily and sexual awakening.
Furthermore, the second heterotopian principle, the principle of crisis, is also evident
in the agrahara. This principle posits that heterotopia is a real place (as opposed to an imagined
utopia), yet a privileged, sacred, or forbidden space reserved for those in a state of crisis,
leading to the creation of spaces specifically designed to manage such crises—such as old-age
homes, boarding schools, and retirement homes (Foucault 24). The inhabitants of agrahara
exist in a state of crisis marked by their separation from broader society as a means of control
through segregation, surveillance, and discipline. Naranappa, whose death catalyzes the novel’s
events, is also in a state of crisis—though the crisis in the life of Naranappa is not old age or
adolescent rebellion that called for his continual residence at the heterotopia of crisis, i.e. the
agrahara, but his desire to live a free, and precarious life. His disillusionment leads him to
embrace a reckless lifestyle of drinking, meat-eating, sleeping with Chandri, a low-caste
woman, and to a Muslim-loving attitude. However, the destabilization of the agrahara is not
solely attributable to Naranappa. Other Brahmins—Garuda, Laksmanacharya, and Mahabala—
also contribute to its unravelling, revealing that the perfect colony was never so, and only an
illusion of perfection was perpetuated. In Samskara, the very concept of freedom becomes a
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state of crisis for its inhabitants, as it is predetermined by their birth into a particular sect of the
Brahmin varna. Naranappa’s rejection of the agrahara’s way of life marks him as an outcast,
yet his actions symbolize both resistance and liberation. However, the grand subversion of
omniscient authority’s gaze occurs through the transformation of Praneshacharya, leaving the
once perfect agrahara wholly inverted.
The Body-Forest-Town Triad
As the initial narrative of Samskara revolves around the funeral rites and disposal of
Naranappa’s corpse, the rebel Brahmin, every event in the novel spins around the body as both
a space and a site for tumultuous change. The novel explores this through the space a dead
body occupies within the sacred topology of the agrahara, the union of Chandri and
Praneshacharya’s bodies, and the chaotic paradoxes arising from bodily interactions. The first
visceral encounter with Naranappa’s decaying rotten body introduces the narrative’s first
instance of bodily problematic. The body as space in the novel becomes the first element of the
body-forest-townscape triad, which this section will explore.
What ignites the conversation of the body in the first place is not the living but the dead.
Naranappa’s body and corpse extend beyond the positivist modality of heteronormativity in
both its material and symbolic dimensions, i.e. how his personhood and corpse impacted the
lives of every single character in the novel (Butler xi–xii). His body supersedes the function of
the living and influences people’s lives in its unalive state. Naranappa’s corpse exerted an effect
on the body of Praneshacharya that went beyond the understanding of conventional gender
roles. It was the body of a man influencing the body of another man in its dead and alive state
because of the social ties between them (Butler). Ananthamurthy in Samskara thus stirs up
body politics between a) Praneshacharya and Chandri (high-caste, low-caste), and b)
Praneshacharya and Naranappa (astute Brahmin, rogue Brahmin), echoing a part of the spatial-
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body discourse of Lefebvre where “[t]he body serves both as point of departure and as
destination” (194).
After the novel’s focus on the body of the dead, the novel shifts its attention to marking
a transition from the social space (the agrahara) to the space of the body (the corporeal).
Praneshacharya, a celibate who never consummated his marriage to his invalid wife,
Bhagirathi, experiences a burning desire for Naranappa’s concubine, Chandri—signalling the
beginning of his mutation. His body becomes the catalyst for his unravelling, leading him to
question and explore everything he had previously dismissed as futile. His metaphorical rebirth
intertwines with the corporeal presence of the Other, Chandri. Praneshacharya admits that
“[t]he answer is not that my body accepted it, but in the darkness my hands fumbled urgently,
searched for Chandri’s thighs and buttocks as I had never searched any dharma”
(Ananthamurthy 85). The Acharya’s “sexual experience with the forbidden Chandri becomes
an unorthodox ‘rite of initiation’…with the rightness of paradox he is initiated through an illicit
deed, a misdeed, totally counter to his part” (Ramanujan 120).
While the materiality of Praneshacharya’s body turns into a philosophical rhetoric
engaging with life’s paradoxes and dualities, Chandri’s body represents a rupture from the
normative standards of the agrahara’s socially acceptable life. Her body also shatters the
discriminating wall that the Brahminical lifestyle wanted to build around her. She lives in the
agrahara premises and shares a household with a Brahmin, Naranappa. Along with Naranappa,
Chandri confounds the normative social order of their time. While every person in the agrahara
is taut over the disposal of Naranappa’s body, it is the outcaste Chandri who takes the final
action by burning the corpse with the help of a Muslim. Chandri embodies the exclusion of
Othered bodies, existing as a “liminal creature,” like Belli and Padmavati— the novel’s other
marginalized women (Mukherjee 175). Their liminal existence grants them greater freedom as
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“apparently this freedom adds to the uninhibited naturalness of the lower-caste women” in
contrast to those constructed by overtly traditional and moralistic expectations, such as the
invalid Bhagirathi (Mukherjee 172).
Beyond the body as space, other spaces in the novel also contribute to the novel’s
narrative tension and resolution. The first is the forest—the second element in the body-forest-
town triad. The forest serves as a geographical and metaphorical space of disruption and
transformation. It becomes the site of Praneshacharya’s unravelling, where he succumbs to his
desires for Chandri, exposing the duality he had long ignored. The forest expands the novel’s
spatial dynamics, taking on an active role in shaping events. It functions as a paradoxical
space—dark yet liberating, ascetic yet erotic—culminating in Praneshacharya’s release of
repressed desire (Ramanujan 123). As Ramanujan observes, “[h]aving exiled kama in his house
and family, he had to find it outside his customary space, in the forest” (125). Traditionally a
place of solitude and ascetic retreat, the forest instead becomes a site of desire and
transformation, reinforcing the novel’s paradoxical themes (Ramanujan 122–3).
In addition to facilitating Praneshacharya’s transformation, the forest functions as a
threshold space. The forest serves as both a mental and physical threshold that Praneshacharya
must cross to reach a new stage in his transformation, embodying Soja’s concept of
thirdspace—the space of ‘both and also’ (268). For instance, after deciding to leave the
agrahara without knowing where to go, the Acharya finds himself in the forest again. He
wanders deep into it, directionless to the point of getting lost, where he must make sense of his
actions by gradually rediscovering himself and his path. The symbolic walk into and out of the
forest brings about a shift in his person. After leading himself out, he decides to find Chandri
and take her as his concubine. Thus, thresholds in the novel act as the rites of passage and/or
as crossroads that mark every small change in the narrative in Samskara (Lal 6–12). Thus,
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crossing the forest as a threshold helps Praneshacharya overcome his turmoil while propelling
him into the next stage of his transformation—the town of Melige.
He heads toward the town of Melige, with its fairs, festivals, and performances,
reflecting the India of the 1930s–40s, the novel’s backdrop (Ramanujan 124). The town’s
inhabitants are embodiments of an India that is changing, unfixed, and in motion. Although
Putta is beside him, Praneshacharya struggles to cross this threshold of another ‘place’ type,
for the Acharya possesses no power over this space as a singular authority as he had held over
the agrahara. So much so that, for him, witnessing a cockfight was the “most traumatic
experience of this world” (Mukherjee 182). Amidst the demoniac pandemonium, the
townscape of Melige—where caste, class, modernity, and urbanity intersect—stands in contrast
to the agrahara as a contested space, owned by no one yet belonging to all (Lal 4). As Massey
notes, the town embodies “a sphere of meeting of multiple trajectories, the sphere where they
co-exist, affect each other, maybe come into conflict” (283). Here, individuals assert their
existence in a lived space—a space of representation where interaction occurs in dynamic
simultaneity (Soja 264–5).
Finally, Praneshacharya’s fear of the town turns into a procrastinated departure from it.
It represents his repetitive indecision over further actions even though he had decided to meet
Chandri in Kundapura. Mukherjee observes, “[h]e may have rejected the brahmanical world of
austerities and penance, but he will not be able to embrace this demoniac world of cruelty
either. He wavers, realizing the dual aspect of the newly discovered world” (Mukherjee 182).
His indecision about leaving lingers until the novel’s end, where the events that follow remain
uncertain, leaving the narrative itself suspended at a threshold—caught in a state of in-
betweenness and ambiguity (Ramanujan 122). The closing lines reinforce this uncertainty:
“[h]e will travel, for another four or five hours. Then, after that, what? Praneshacharya waited,
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anxious, expectant” (Ananthamurthy 118). So, the town is the final threshold in the mutation
of Praneshacharya, but whether he overcomes it remains unknown.
In the end, the physical problem of the body’s last rites turns inconsequential and
unceremonious as compared to the other bodies that get involved in the narrative of Samskara.
The spaces in the novel symbolize their power over the narrative which opens the reading
process to a plurality of meanings and possibilities. Praneshacharya’s journey unfolds across
various spaces and sites, all originating from his own being. The politics of space in the novel
never remain restricted to the question of the body but extend to the nature of the body as a site
for disruption, agency, and resistance. The novel’s political spaces extend beyond Foucauldian
agraharas, shifting toward a hybrid thirdspace in the form of thresholds, as well as the body-
forest-townscape triad, while enriching its literary geography and spatial critique.
Conclusion
In sum, Praneshacharya’s journey is deeply entwined with spatial analysis, shaping the
literary geography that unfolds around him. One wonders whether he will ever meet Chandri
or what awaits the agrahara if he does not return. Would the Madhva agrahara persist or
perish? Would someone like Praneshacharya emerge to save its inhabitants? Would Chandri
give birth to the child she longed for from her communion with the holy Praneshacharya, or
would destiny keep her barren? All these questions confirm that Samskara: A Rite for a Dead
Man emerges as a nuanced narrative that seamlessly blends caste hierarchies via the spatial
problem of the agrahara, forest, town, and body through the burning questions posed in the
novel.
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Works Cited:
Ananthamurthy, U. R. Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man. Translated by A. K. Ramanujan,
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