Abdication

by Edmund Candler

Book by Candler, Edmund

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1993

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 1922 novel by Edmund Candler was a lucky-dip for me: a choice from one of those plastic bins of rejects for disposal at a famous London bookshop, its yellow £1 sticker already suggesting a further, more recent reduction from a higher price! The odd cover convinced me to rescue the waif like a good Christian!
I recently picked it out from one of my book-towers of unread purchases, intrigued by its ambiguous title & back-cover blurb...'Lost for over half a century'.
This is a 1993 republishing by U.S.imprint Turtle Point Press, & proved to be a veritable revelation, both in subject matter & authorial voice...India...told by a Kiplingesque hero...a man of some discernment in the judgement of others.
Edmund Candler was as fully-immersed in the Indian sub-continent & its northerly, neighbouring areas as Kipling ever was - one of those 'chaps' who tried to understand exactly how it all pieces together...the complex mosaic of the myriad reigious beliefs & modern political forces that made the old empire such a challenge to rule justly without resorting to repressive measures or tyrannical energies. India is in Candler's soul whether he likes it or not.
The novel, set in the years immediately following the upheavals of the Great War, tells the story of Riley, an English journalist & former army officer from the theatre of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, and a young & naive Indian, Banarsi Das, a tragi-comic character caught in the spinning wheels of an India in a state of rebellious but hopelessly-fragmented discontent in their deep desire for political control of their own version of their homeland, & the imminent demise of the teetering British Raj.
The novel is dense with local colour & language, full of insights on the 'infighting' between diverse groups in 500 million natives & between the despised, pale-skinned imperialists who struggle to make sense of it all, bewildered by its imponderables, complexities & elusive spirits.
Candler uses Mahatma Gandhi as a literary lubicant for those spinning wheels & grinding engines of change: on the one hand, the ascetic holy man; on the other, the skilful 'agent provocateur' of change through peaceful & productive demonstrations & persuasive lobbying of the British sense of 'fair play' & justice. The author writing in 1922, could have had no idea how the future developments he was juggling with so entertainingly in a mere novel, would prove to be surprisingly perceptive & prescient: or that Gandhi would be such a decisive force in the 20th century history of India, long-after the semi-fictional events that Candler uses as a back-drop to a Riley's personal journey to a new perspective on India, the wider world & his own humanity.
I loved this book, even if I know it would never be published in the chilly atmosphere of publishing in the 21st century...where opinions are a dangerous character fault.

[Kathy Kattenburg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edmund Candler wrote Abdication in 1922. The book was reissued in 1993, after both it and the author had been forgotten, and the book had fallen out of print. The blurb on the back cover calls it a novel, but also notes that it's a hybrid of fiction, history, and journalism. It's an absorbing and well-written account of the early years of India's struggle for independence, and of Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent popular Nationalist movement. Although as a novel there isn't much of a plot, Candler has created richly imagined fictional characters who give the reader a good sense of how motives, personalities, political orientations, and economic and social differences of class and caste, on both the English and the Indian sides, drove the conflict.