Revolution Twenty20

Hello everyone,

This blog task is a response to the task assigned by professor Dilip Barad sir as part of thinking activity. As we are Literature students, we have studied American Literature, African Literature, Canadian Literature and Indian Literature too. In our fourth semester we have One paper of Contemporary Literature in which we have a novel named- Revolution Twenty20 by Chetan Bhagat.

Who is Chetan Bhagat?

Chetan Bhagat is an Indian author, columnist and YouTuber. He was included in Time magazine's list of World's 100 Most Influential People in 2010. Five of his novels have been adapted into films.

Chetan Bhagat is the author of seven novels and two nonfiction books. The New York Times called him the “the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history” and Time magazine named him among the “100 most influential people in the world.” Chetan also writes about youth and national development issues in India.

Introduction of Novel:-

The Revolution 2020 is a novel about three characters named Gopal, Raghav and Aarti. Also about corruption in the Indian education system and coaching classes for competitive exams in India. The novel is set during the first decade of the twenty-first century. In it, Bhagat focuses on the trend of coaching classes to get selected into India's top colleges. Title itself is significant,the way it is written on the title page of the book. Love- love is a triangle like it is changed with the time first Aarti- Gopal, then Aarti - Raghav and at the end Aarti and Raghav get married. Corruption suggests that how Some of the characters involved in the politics and corruption through Chetan Bhagat tried to criticise Indian politics. Ambition stands for the goal of three characters who want to be something and the way they are struggling, it leads the Novel towards the end.

1)Social realism in the novel:-

Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption. Ambition is a story of success and failure of three youngsters - Gopal Mishra, Raghav Kashyap and Aarti Pradhan who live in a small and traditional town called Varanasi. The subtitle of the novel runs as Love, Corruption, Ambition and each word in the subtitle sticks to the particular character. Aarti is a sensitive girl and very much cares about her love. Gopal who happens to be her childhood friend, Gopal Mishra indulges in corruption as he joins his hands with MLA Shuklaji. Though he fails to be an engineer, he becomes the owner of an engineering institute. Raghav Kashyap is a brilliant boy who succeeds in entrance examination and secures a degree in engineering. However, he leaves the job and starts to work as a journalist to eradicate corruption in the society.

If we observe the setting of the novel is Varanasi which is quite a pure and religious place for the Indians. But if we see then it is the place where wrong things happened a lot. In the novel varanasi became a kind of character as many events connected with it. Novel talked about the Youth and the struggle of the Youth during and after the education. Another setting of the novel is Kota which is a symbol of education where getting admission is a tough thing. But in this novel we can see that kota is became business centre where privatisation happened a lot and education became way of earning. Corruption and bribe show that how terrible situation of education in India. Where degree is more important than education. In which people treat teachers as salesman and students as customer.

Through that Chetan Bhagat tried to show the reality of India where education is business, in contemporary time we can see how privatisation take place in the society where if you have money you can get any kind of degree, society works on degree rather than knowledge. In the novel we have a character named Gopal who wasn't able to crack JEE exam but he has some land and decides to open a school where he became Director of the school and teachers who had more knowledge than him ,they have to work under him. In the reality also people like Gopal through corruption do any such wrong things. Education became a kind of way for investing money and hiding their evil side. Through the support of education people do whatever wrong things they wanted to do, and people like Shukla -ji became supporters.

The novel begins with the author's visit to Ganga Tech College in Varanasi. Story is in flashback where Gopal is telling everything about his love and success to Chetan Bhagat who took him to hospital. Starting of the his story he ask one question to him that,

Do you think I am a good person, Chetan-ji?"

With the question Gopal started his story of love and how he became Director of the school. In the novel Aarti became successful as first Aarti likes Gopal but as he failed to get admission in kota, She started to fall in love with Raghav. Raghav Kashyap is one more important character in the novel and he indulges himself in the heroic deed of eradicating corruption from the society. He graduated as an engineer from Banaras Hindu University. He left the job and started to work as a journalist. He was the man whose article on the Ganga scam compelled Shuklaji to resign. Being overambitious, Raghav neglected his girlfriend Aarti and that made her go to Gopal. Aarti is the only female character who aspired to be an air hostess. She failed to be an air hostess and preferred to work as customer service manager in the big hotel. In short the novels represent the youth who have come from every part of social stratification. Gopal belongs to the middle class family in which parent's ambitions are dominant. His father is a teacher who couldn't afford the fees of private tuition and therefore, sells his land and sends his son to Kota to clear the IIT entrance examination. Raghav and Aarti come from rich and well to do families. Raghav's father is an engineer and he supports his son very strongly for his career. Aarti's grandfather was a politician and her father is an IAS officer. There is a love triangle in the novel and beneath this love story; there is a story of eradicating corruption from Indian society. In short, the plot of the novel revolves around the three youngsters- one wants to be a rich man irrespective of moral, ethical values. Another wants to be a champion of the social revolution and the third loses moral values for physical satisfaction.

2)Significance of the title 'Revolution Twenty20'

Title itself is significant the way it is written on the title page of the book.

The word revolution comes from the Latin word revolvere. It means a change in the way a country is governed, usually by a different political system and often using violence and war. Revolution-2020 happens in three stages in Chetan Bhagat's novel and is listed as love, ambition and corruption in the novel of Revolution-2020. All these three stages are played by Gopal, Aarti and Raghav -characters in the novel. Their journey starts from the city of Varanasi. Here the ambition of Gopal's father is to make his son an engineer but Gopal's passion is different. He meets a politician and opens a technical institute, initiating corruption. Raghav is from a middle-class family and cracks the IIT entrance test but his passion is to be a press reporter writing against corruption and how it has polluted the whole education system from top to bottom. Finally, the girlfriend of his, right from school days, aspiring to become an air hostess, the daughter of the District Magistrate collector of Varanasi loves Raghav but goes for outing with Gopal, which puzzles Gopal most of the time as to whom she loves.

One can also say that Title was inspired by the The title of the novel is inspired by IPL - Cricket league which is played in Twenty20 format.

3)Do you think that an opportunity of a good novel is wasted because the story is told from Gopal's perspective? Can it be better if narrated from Raghav or Aarti's perspective? How would it be better if it was narrated from Raghav or Aarti's perspective?

Yes, As we know title of the novel is Revolution which bring by Raghav, who is enough good to do so, but narrator of the story is Gopal who is corrupt or loser who is not able to get admission in Kota, who lose Aarti- his love. But in his life he became successful - rich director of the Ganga tech institute through corruption. Somehow nobody can consider him as hero or protagonist because he didn't have any quality of protagonist.

Chetan Bhagat wants to show the condition of Youth and India but he uses love as a way of showing this and co modifies the theme of revolution. Revolution is the main theme and title of the novel but in doing so Love became an important aspect and concern for the character. As Gopal told his story to Chetan Bhagat, Gopal is himself a wrong doer. Who didn't have any concern with revolution who was only concerned about love and corruption but he told the story of revolution.

If the story is told from the perspective of Raghav then it would be better as Raghav who has passed JEE exam and got admission in kota, he is able to get the best job though he chose journalism - why because he wants to bring change in society. Raghav who didn't run behind the certificate of being good as Gopal did. When novel start and Gopal started to tell his story to Chatan Bhagat he asked one question to him,

Do you think I am a good person, Chetan-ji?"

And at the end of his conversation also he asked the same question so we can understand that he wants to be like Raghav who got the trust of poor people by helping them. So one can see who is bringing change and winning love also but ultimately he has not become the protagonist and the audience also feel pity for Gopal as Chetan Bhagat gave him the certificate of good person.

If we see then Indian literature is mostly men oriented where women are taken for granted. The idea of being IAS and JOB are always men centric rather than women. Other hand we can say that the novel is more patriarchal as there is from the starting writer only talking about the men's tension of being something where Aarti doesn't have such a plan of cracking exams or earrings and all. But she had one plan to be air hostess but as a reader we see that Aarti could dream of being an IAS as her father is an IAS officer, but she didn't. We always categorise the career by gender. In Chetan Bhagat's another novel one night at a call centre, there also we find the same things like female characters are more concerned about their in-laws problem instead of their career as they are working in the same company though Chetan Bhagat makes male characters more career oriented rather than females. In the novel Revolution Twenty20 Aarti was used as a trophy for both the male characters.

But, A realistic ending would have been Gopal winning Aarti, and abandoning his corrupt ways due to her influence over him, or Gopal winning Aarti and continuing with his corrupt ways.

Word Count -1923