As the introduction to the Writers’ Workshop translation of Nagarjun’s novel Jamaniya ka Daba puts it, the author is one of the stalwarts of the Progressive movement in Indian literature, a movement committed to Marxism and to the depiction of social realism, Nagarjun usually handles social situations familiar in India, and in this novel it is the ‘god-men’s exploitation of the average Indian’s blind belief which is exposed. It is admitted by the translators that the subtlety of language which is the hallmark of Nagarjun’s writing does not lend itself to easy translation. It goes to the credit of the translators, however, that they have managed to show that in Nagarjun’s writing prose is not just poetry’s plain sister but a rich, precise form of human expression, presupposing delicate self-consciousness and control.
The core of The Holy-man from Jamanaya is not a developing emotional situation involving the intense experience of certain number of characters, though the novel unfolds through the points of view of the various central characters. Perhaps the opening chapter of the book which presents the theme through the ‘Holy’ Baba himself is the most powerful.