Summary Of 'Anandmath :' Shall I Ever Attain My Heart's Desire?

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The novel Anandmath begins with a prologue that has a very primitive setting of a dark dense forest, this setting puts in motion, the context for a human cry which focuses on the question of desire: “Shall I ever attain my heart’s desire?” After this question has been thrice repeated by the same voice, another human/inhuman voice counter-questions the former and this encounter takes the form of a question-answer session:
“What can you sacrifice to win your heart’s desire”?
“My life itself”, was the reply. “Life is so insignificant that it is the simplest thing for anyone to sacrifice!” “What more have I? What else can I offer?” And the answer came: “Devotion! My friend, devotion!”
The word that has been used for devotion in the novel is bhakti, a word that is rich with connotations of both the sanskritic and post-sanskritic traditions.
The novel is centered on the question of human life and its sacrifice for the nation. The prologue brings forth the intersecting elements of death, dedication and desire, which are important for the totality of the …show more content…

The children seem to be weak and invaded under the nurturing mother in this time of British tyranny and famine- the fact that our country has been brutally treated is stressed in the novel time and again. But this very state of the nation is given transformative power through the hymn that seeks to overturn famine into abundance and fertility—“bearer of the tenfold power”. The same transformative moment can be found in the novel again where the Mother in the present (as she is now) makes the plunge into the Mother in the future (as she will be) through dedication of the revolutionaries. This devotion of the revolutionaries work as the very force for the nation to motivate and free it from present destruction and

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