SOURCE: “Herman Hesse. Siddhartha: Between the Rebellion and the Regeneration,” in The Literary Criterion, Vol. 16, 1981, pp. 50–66.

In the following essay, Narasimhaiah discusses several shortcomings in Siddhartha, writing that Hesse's novel is hopelessly deficient in enactment, frequently confusing, and that the novelist becomes a perpetual commentator instead of letting the characters define themselves.

Herman Hesse first came to Indian attention with his Siddhartha, not as novel but in its film version. It was one of those films which drew to the cinema house even those normally indifferent to films, largely because of the title. From the starchy public school snob to the credulous film goer, almost everyone, however, thought the film had not done justice to the novel. One suspects it was a stock response in vogue to any great novel when it appeared on the screen, for it is very likely that not even a small fraction of...