Literary Criticism: Marxism Approach

Literary Criticism: Marxism Approach

• Karma by Khushwant Singh

Marxism as we all know is about social stratification within a society, and this approach is often and visibly seen in every literary genre. Society has always made its way to influence, and literature is not excluded in society’s radical power.

Karma was written by Khuswant Singh a Hindu, and lives in India. India is known not just for their peculiar religious rituals, but also for giving birth of “caste system”- a social stratification of classifying where a particular group of people belongs. And in the story karma this system is very visible; though it has already been wiped-out during the time the story was written, but still living in people’s minds including the author’s.

The story starts with the scornful statement of Lal about his country India, saying it in-front of a mirror while travelling in a first-class compartment of a train; while his wife Lachmi is happily eating in an interclass zenana of the train. Lal had lived in Great Britain and studied in the prestigious Oxford University for five years. During his time there he became enchanted and fascinated with the “beauty” of Britain has, and compared British society over Indian society.  Lal dislikes Lachmi’s illiterate relatives and often locked himself-up every time her relatives come-over in their house; he is very proud of his education, and of course of his Oxford-ian accent. But, one particular incident has let Sir Mohan Lal touch the ground of the earth, two Englishmen came in the train and look for a compartment where they would stay, and upon seeing this Lal became excited to boast his knowledge about Britain; but it didn’t turned out the way Lal wanted it to be, the two Englishmen forcefully open the door and flung Lal out of the train, as they say Karma came.

The story circles on the colonial mentality embraces by one of the characters- Sir Mohan Lal, for English culture; and the stereotype personality, of Hindu women , of Sir Mohan Lal’s wife Lady Lachmi. In this we can already classify the two characters into two classes of society; Sir Mohan Lal represents the upper class’ and Lady Lachmi, though she is Lal’s wife, represents the masses or the lower class.