The Penance

Prayaschita (The Penance) is the last of Fakir Mohan Senapati’s four novels and the third and the last in his ‘trilogy of crime and justice’, to use the epithet coined by the eminent Senapati scholar John Boulton. The first two novels of the trilogy are Chhamana Athaguntha (1902, Six Acres and a Third) and Mamu (1913, The Maternal Uncle). Prayaschita was published in 1915, just three years before the death of the novelist. The novel is of value for the light it casts on Fakir Mohan Senapati’s increasingly dark and tragic vision of life lived under the shadow of colonialism. He wrote it to defend the traditional values of the Hindu way of life which he saw as being gravely threatened by the alien value system of the British that had made huge inroads into the Indian society. In fact, it is a telling assault on the English education that is perforce mounted in the form of a defense of the traditional Indian society.