Rangamma Character Analysis

A widow in Kanthapura who becomes the Gandhian movement’s secondary leader, after her close confidant Moorthy. She comes from a wealthy city family and becomes Waterfall Venkamma’s sister-in-law, living in her husband’s large house after his death. This house becomes the center of the village’s Congress and its protest movement. Although she initially worries about the erosion of the caste system, she is one of the first villagers to join Moorthy’s movement and soon becomes its second-in-command; she also leads the group of women “Volunteers” that the book’s narrator, Achakka, eventually joins. Owing to her upbringing in a city, Rangamma is well-read and knowledgeable about events beyond the village, and she begins to publish a newspaper that quickly spreads news of the national Gandhian movement around Kanthapura. After the police arrest Moorthy, Rangamma stays with Advocate Sankar in Karwar city and learns about the Congress of All India. Upon her return, she becomes the leader of Kanthapura’s protests and takes over Moorthy’s role of leading bhajans and giving discourses about Hinduism and Gandhi. She gets arrested the night before the final conflict in Kanthapura and the villagers are still waiting for her release at the end of the book. Rangamma’s prominence in the protest movement demonstrates how Gandhism overturns traditional gender roles, offering a prominent political role to women (and particularly widows, who are generally ostracized under the caste system). But her roots in the city also demonstrate how, while to a certain extent Gandhism was a bottom-up movement led by oppressed Indians, the knowledge and resources of powerful people were also instrumental to its success.