Detachment, Rebel And Search For Self Identity A True Buddhist Journey In Arun Joshi's The Strange Case For Billy Biswas

Journal of Research and Development A Multidisciplinary International Level Referred and Double Blind Peer Reviewed, Open Access ISSN : 2230-9578 | Website: https://jrdrvb.org Volume-17, Issue-9(V)| September 2025 44 Detachment, Rebel And Search For Self Identity A True Buddhist Journey In Arun Joshi’s The Strange Case For Billy Biswas Dr. Raut Suhas Maruti Tuljaram Chaturchand College of Arts, Science And Commerce, Baramati Maharashtra Email: suha[email protected]m Manuscript ID: JRD -2025-170911 ISSN: 2230-9578 Volume 17 Issue 9 (V) Pp. 44-47 Sept. 2025 Submitted:15 Aug. 2025 Revised: 25 Aug. 2025 Accepted: 10 Sept. 2025 Published: 30 Sept. 2025 Abstract The Strange Case of Billy Biswas by Arun Joshi is a story about the hero’s conflicts of mechanical codes of conducts in urban civilization and a search for peaceful life and self-identity. It is an aesthetic presentation of the sterility of contemporary mechanical urban world as opposite to the peaceful Bhil tribal world. Born and brought up in an upper middle-class, the protagonist has a disgust and unwilling attitude to live in an artificially toned culture. He has strong desire and attraction for the world of tribal beauty and their culture. It is his shift from the mechanical realities to the natural and meaningful reality. The protagonist depicts a true Buddhist journey from the in-depth realization of the sources of suffering to the meaningful search of the self-identity in the company of true nature. It is his journey from the endless sufferings to the intended self-search. It is the journey from protagonist’s realization, detachment, rebel to the self-search, a drift from restless to tranquillity. Modernity and tradition are starkly visible as two different worlds in this novel. Keywords: Buddhism, Rebel, Detachment, Suffering, Absurdity, Existentialism, Conflicts, Power, Peace, Ambition, Renunciation. Introduction: The Strange Case of Billy Biswas is a compelling novel that focuses on different concepts in Buddhism such as realization of true meaning of life, sources of sufferings, detachment, rebel and search for the true self-identity. Billy is in search of the quest for answers about his existence and true meaning of life with peace. The novel and the protagonist, Billy can be seen through the perspective of life of Siddhartha, who abandons the material approach and leaves everything and everyone near and dear to him from the urban civilization in search of the ‘self’. Arun Joshi makes the intellectual exploration into the existential questions through the protagonist Billy. Billy, as the son of a judge from the upper middle-class family, especially Hindu family, is fed up with the modern world around him including the social norms and conditions. He detests the so called ‘civilization’ where he feels as a prisoner of artificial codes and conducts. His definition of happiness is different from that of the ‘conditioned civilized society’. He is a free spirit and in search of the self-identity. He is interested in a quiet place like the primitive worlds from his childhood. The present novel explores his journey from ‘detachment to the search of the self’. It was written at the time when India was looking forward to become ‘modern’ after emerging century’s crises. Protagonist’s Realization of the Human Existence and Detachment from the Modern Civilization: In India, before 2500 years ago, there was a prince named Siddhartha. He was provided with everything material including material and sensual pleasures. He was also the part of political power along with his father Shuddhodhana. Still, he gave up everything when he realized the meaninglessness of the life outside until the search of the self. Quick Response Code: Website: https://jrdrvb.org/ DOI: Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work noncommercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations ae licensed under the idential terms. Address for correspondence: Dr. Raut Suhas Maruti, Tuljaram Chaturchand College of Arts, Science And Commerce, Baramati Maharashtra How to cite this article: Raut Suhas Maruti (2025). Detachment, Rebel And Search For Self Identity A True Buddhist Journey In Arun Joshi’s The Strange Case For Billy Biswas. Journal of Research & Development, 17(9), 44-47 Original Article Journal of Research and Development A Multidisciplinary International Level Referred and Double Blind Peer Reviewed, Open Access ISSN : 2230-9578 | Website: https://jrdrvb.org Volume-17, Issue-9(V)| September 2025 45 Siddhartha, when achieved ‘Enlightenment’ said to the world that ‘samsara’ is not the ultimate goal of every human being. Instead, every human is borne alone and he or she has to find out the meaning of being on this earth i.e the self. In this search of the ‘self’ he abandoned all the materialistic pleasures around him. The selected novel for paper The Strange Case of Billy Biswas stands metaphorically equal to the life of Siddhartha’s life. Billy (Bimal) Biswas, the son of a Supreme Court Judge is send to school in England and further to America to study engineering. While living in New York, Billy observes the mechanical and artificial culture with readymade norms and ethics. He has everything around him. He thinks about many questions about the self and the society. But still from within he feels empty in a ‘white civilization’. That is why he decides to stay away from the civilized norms and in the outskirts of American society. He seems unmatched to the prevailing educational system. His inner trodes towards the question like ‘who i am? Billy is much interested in the past than the present. While studying Anthropology, he believes that the past was much good than the present. This is the reason he leaves his engineering incomplete and prefers Doctoral degree in Anthropology, the study of ancient civilization. He is constantly in conflict with the modern technocratic worldview. According to him, modern society propagated a single and diverse worldviews, whereas the primitive tribal life had plural and diverse worldviews. Billy hates the civilization and detaches for the rush of reaching their goals and ambitions. To quote, What kept us happy were the same things that have kept all the primitives happy through the ages; the earth, the forest, the rainbow, the liquor from the ‘mahua’ an occasional feast, a lot of dancing and love making, and more than anything else no ambition, none at all (p.107) It is certain that Billy uses the word ‘ambition’ to differentiate between the modern society and tribal society. It is ambition and the urge to perform that drives the civilized society. On the contrary, the tribal society is free from every ambition. It lives in tandem with Nature. Billy says, every child born into a system with expectations of which often the child is not even aware of it. To quote, What made me unhappy, I suppose, was the awareness that all that i wanted most was just there, across the little patch of jungle, screaming to be taken, and I could do nothing but sit there in that stupid chair all tied up in a knot by a stifling system of expectations which i did not yet understand but in which, I knew, I had the misfortunes to be born (p.92) Billy is ‘strange’ because he thinks that prevailing norms of civilized society do not fit him. Having everything enough such as money, friends, wealth and materials he still feels alienated. It is in New York that Romi first meets Billy. Romi is surprised that Billy is living in Harlem, a slum area where Black people live. Billy says that ‘White America’ is too civilized for him. Billy’s alienation is not a result of sudden leap in his personality. But his ‘strangeness’ is depicted in his quest from his very childhood. Being a child in past he seems to extend his maturity through the quest of his visits to the age old places like Bhubaneshwar and Konark. Similarly, his visit to the tribal people has always been the subject of his quest. Being extremely sensitive, he sees and likes the tribal life including the tribe, their dance, singing, and making love naturally. The tribal life appeals him much as he feels closer to the natural life. Somewhere he compares the urban norms and the mechanical living of the urban people. This is the reason of his restlessness. It leads him to detach from sophisticated world. The upper class society seems to him different from that kennel full of dogs. He is fed up with his wife’s artificial living, the greed, avarice and riches. He abandons his wife Meena and his child and decides to live with the Bhil tribe. Of course the person who is not stable in a ‘conditioned framework’ of society always tries to break that framework, either individually or with the majority for his unending questions to the reality. That is the reason that he decides to change his stream of education and search of life among the tribals. While doing his anthropological expeditions he finds himself deep down in Satpura Hills to understand the meaning of life and human relationships. Being married to a well educated Meena Billy does not find in her a good partner. He makes a comparison of his married life with the tribal peoples natural freedom and genuine independency. Meena is a product of the money machine culture. She is much interested in glamour i.e. the outer world. He says, “Communication between us was reduced to Zero” (p.186) Billy hates her mechanical approach. Instead, he feels natural with Bilasia, a tribal woman as she enhances his soul. In short, not only materially but even sensually Billy is frustrated in his marriage life. Consequently, he becomes socially isolated to find out the answers of life and the meaning of his existence. Hence Hari Prasad remarks, Crisis of self and a quest for fulfilment, the fin mot of The Foreigner, continues to be the central experience of Arun Joshi’s next novel The Strange Case of Billy Biswas. The deeper significance of the work can properly be discerned if it is explicated both as an indictment of the phony, hot-shot, sordid modern culture and as an embodiment of Purush-Prakriti unification, particularly in the context of Sankhya philosophy. (Arun Joshi, 87) In short, the first part of the novel gives a context to understand the distracted and fractured psychology that tortured Billy and his non judgemental identity. He felt himself to be a rebel in the so-called civilised society. He becomes involved in exploring inwardness of life. It is Romi who rightly concludes in the opening “If life’s meaning lies not in the glossy surfaces of our pretensions....then i don’t know of any man who sought it more doggedly and...Abandoned himself so recklessly to its call” (p.08) Journal of Research and Development A Multidisciplinary International Level Referred and Double Blind Peer Reviewed, Open Access ISSN : 2230-9578 | Website: https://jrdrvb.org Volume-17, Issue-9(V)| September 2025 46 Billy Biswas as a Rebel: A rebel is a spiritual phenomenon. It is an individual approach. It is an individual approach. According to the rebellious person if we want to change the society, we have to change the individual. Society in itself does not exist; it is only a word like crowd. Whenever you encounter someone you encounter the individual. Society is only a collective name, not a reality-with no any substance. The individual has a soul and a possibility of evolution, of change, of transformation. The rebel brings a change of consciousness. Rebellion is a discontinuity. It is not reform, it is not revolution; it is simply disconnecting yourself from all that is old. The old religions, the old ideologies; even the rebel disconnects himself/herself from the prevailing truth. Simply, a birth of a rebel is the death of the old. From the above point of view, Arun Joshi presents the extraordinary skill of how Billy gets alienated from the material world. He is not ready to accept the common standards. Billy rejects the Hindu culture. He accepts, on the contrary, the tribal life, their myths and legends, their worshiping gods and goddesses and the tribal belief in the super power as he feels fulfilled when he becomes the part of tribal life. For him, it is the ‘collective conscious’ which shapes the life of an individual. The Bhil tribe looks uncivilized but in truth it has deeply rooted codes of individuals which are not seen by Billy in the white culture. The white culture is uplifted by the material standards but has failed in human standards. That is why Billy decides to accept the life of tribal, an authentic natural life of joy and peace. That was his childhood dream. Billy marries Bilasia, a beautiful tribal woman. It is his rebellion against the civilized marriage system where the emotional bonding did not take place. He believes in natural affinity and sees it in Bilasia. To quote, “Billy comes to live among the tribes identifying himself totally with them and their way of life and marries Bilasia who symbolizes for him the elemental in nature and who understands his need for ‘being left alone’. Their union exemplifies that of anima and animas in the Jungian connection or that of ‘Prakriti’ (Bilasia) and ‘Purusha’” (Naik 60) Billy Biswas often ‘listens’ to his inner voice much to the surprise of people around him. In the discussion about a government clerk murdering a boy, Billy and his father discuss the happenings and case in details. Billy argues that there might be a case of ‘temporary insanity’ but his father does not accept a concept of ‘temporary insanity’. Billy says that there are worlds that the material world may not be aware of. He has already studied about tribal life and has seen free societies since his childhood. At the unconscious level it is his urge to accept that way of life. Indirectly, he says it to his father but his father could not understand his inner psyche. To quote, All I am saying that there are worlds at the periphery of this one, above it and below it, and around it, of which we know nothing until we are in them (p. 40) Billy’s rebellion is seen when he decides to study anthropology than the engineering. He likes a person living in harmony with nature and follows his heart. When Romi asks him about weather Billy’s family know about Billy studying anthropology instead of engineering. To quote, My parents do. My father is mad with rage. “Anthropology!” he screamed in amazement when i told him. “Anthropology! Of all things you had to go and do anthropology.” He thinks the man is governed by only engineering and law and nothing else, rather a disgraceful point of view for a Justice, don’t think? (p.25) In Search of Self-Identity: Billy’s quest for anthropology is his belief that the peaceful life exists somewhere in the past. It is not possible to find it in the present prevailing society. This is the reason that his inborn quest makes him aloof from the prevailing standards in the three cultures. Meenakshi Mukharjee has remarked that “Renunciation or alienation has always been Indian ideal life” Billy’s self is not a social production of his ‘I’. It is the universal creation or natural appeal towards joy, peace, aloneness, love, compassion and help. It is his ‘should be identity’ for everyone. He believes in the society where naturalness in understanding, natural belief and value system existed; where every single person is accepted as a unique individual; where everyone’s individual opinions are taken to be considered. Billy’s life in a white culture was alienated because his belief system comes from the natural spontaneity. Opposite to this, his life in civilized societies was no less than hell. Instead, a tribal life is the life of newness, communal acceptance, respect and understanding. Billy’s arrival into tribal society is marked with festivities as they treat him as the human-god and reincarnation of the tribal king. He knows that he is no god and the beliefs of the tribes are only assumptions. But he realized the real life is not in the grown up materialised culture but among these tribal people. This is the reason he felt connected to the Tribal life. Billy’s quest for ‘self’ is seen when he does not give his manly concern and care to his wife and his child. It shows his disinterestedness in a ‘conditioned’ mentality. He does not find a fulfilment in ‘being happy’. His frustration leads him to the library where he spends his much of the time in reading the books on anthropology. Billy’s ‘strangeness’ signifies his search for his existence. Existence does not mean by the physical aliveness only. Instead, it is stored in every moment where true richness and fullness of life is possible. That is the quest of Billy that he finds it in the tribal life. To quote, “All I want to do in life is to visit the places they describe, meet the people who live there, find out about the aboriginals of the world” The tribal life is a ray of his dreamy hope. Nature brings Billy closer to the utmost life and infinite vision. He loves and lives the primitive way; the dance, the folk song, the drum beats, the affinity towards everyone and care and freedom in sexual life. It is his way of ‘self’. He could not find these all in the uplifting world. The modern civilization is a deprived of all the human qualities of head and heart. It is the centre of agonies of life. Journal of Research and Development A Multidisciplinary International Level Referred and Double Blind Peer Reviewed, Open Access ISSN : 2230-9578 | Website: https://jrdrvb.org Volume-17, Issue-9(V)| September 2025 47 References 1. Joshi, Arun The Strange Case of Billy Biswas. New Delhi: Hindi Pocket Books, 1971 2. Naik, M.K. Aspects of Indian Writing in English, New Delhi: Macmillan India Lte. 1999 3. Meenakshi, Mukherjee, The Twice Born Fiction, New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1971 4. Prasad Hari Mohan Arun Joshi Arnold Heinemann, 1985 5. Osho, The Rebel Jaico Publishing House, 1987