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Raja Rao[rA´ju rou] Pronunciation Key, 1909–, Indian novelist. Rao was educated in India and France and for many years has divided his time among India, Europe, and the United States. From 1965 to 1983 he was professor of philosophy at the Univ. of Texas at Austin. His novels are considered to be among the finest Indian works written in English. The first, Kanthapura (1938), describes the daily life of Indian villages during a revolt against an overbearing plantation owner. Rao's commitment to Gandhian non-violence is clearly revealed in his description of the peasants' conversion to the principle of civil disobedience. The Serpent and the Rope (1960) is a semiautobiographical account of a marriage between intellectuals that is destroyed by philosophical discord. His metaphysical novel The Cat and Shakespeare (1965) is a tale of individual destiny. And in Comrade Kirillov (1976) he examines the political complexities of Indian liberalism. All four works are profoundly serious, reflecting Rao's abiding concern with the potential clashes between pragmatism and ideals. He has also published two collections of short stories, The Cow of the Barricades and Other Stories (1947) and The Policeman and the Rose (1978).
See studies by M. K. Naik (1972) and K. K. Sharma (1980).
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