ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates Raja Rao’s culture-bound perceptions of landscape/nature and argues that they are not only determined by traditional and handed-down memes or cultural symbols but also by our evolutionary-evolved adaptations to our surroundings when selecting our habitat. This provides us with feelings of both safety and beauty. Such an understanding of landscape/nature will assist us in questioning—if not overcoming—a reading of Rao’s work as being predominantly ‘orientalist’ or ‘authentically Indian’. A comparison of the depiction of nature in Rao’s oeuvre from Kanthapura (1938) to On the Ganga Ghat (1989) explores whether the author’s understanding and literary representation of habitat has changed.
