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Love in a time of bigotry

Jackie Kabir dwells on the heart and its death
SHASHI Tharoor's Riot begins with the death of a young American social worker who just "happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time."
The writer takes up some excerpts from newspapers at the beginning of the novel and goes on to explain the event from different people's perspectives. It is a very interesting read because there are many different voices describing the event, in the form of letters, statements, passages from notebooks, scrapbooks. The author very aptly narrates the incident of Priscilla Hart's murder which takes place in humdrum of the communal riots in the fictitious city ofZalilgarh. The history of communal riots in the subcontinent dates back to the British period. Shashi Tharoor also portrays a congenial world where Hindus and Muslims worshipped the same saint or warrior before the partition of the subcontinent. He quotes Swami Vivekananda:
'As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water into the sea, so, O lord, the different oaths which men take., all lead to thee." Or the saying:
The truth is one but the sages give it various names.'
The story of a young American girl who grew up in India, having a traumatised childhood after discovering her father's illicit relationship, catches the reader's attention from the very first page. The writer's aim to write a novel that will be like an encyclopaedia, where anyone could read from any chapter he wishes is successful as each of the chapters is from different narrator: Katherine Hart, Priscilla's mother, Randy Diggs, the journalist from The New York journal, Rudyard Hart, Priscilla's father, Ram Charan Gupta from the Ram Shila Puja program and many more. The different perspectives of the same incident reiterates the fact that truth is not straightforward, but that there are many facades of truth.
Similarly, Tharoor shows many facades of the history of India in his novel. He also depicts the ironies that lie beneath the simple love affair of Priscilla and Lucky Laksman, the District Magistrate ofZalilgarh. Even though Priscilla has come to work as an extension worker of the organization Help-LIS, helping Indian women to get control of their own bodies, she cannot help the one woman whose husband she is having an affair with. At the same time, she hates her father for doing exactly what she is doing with Lucky Laksman. In a way history repeats itself.
Prof Mohammad Sarwar of Delhi University points out in his discussion with Laksman, Hindu militants claim that the 16th century mosque built by Emperor Babur is actually the birthplace of Rama, a reincarnation of Lord Vishnu. When the Muslim invaders came they replaced all the temples with mosques in the region. It was in 1947 when the question for a separate homeland for Muslims arose, the seeds of which were sown by Lord Mountbatten and the British raj. Masses of Hindus migrated to newly independent India and Muslims to Pakistan. Maulana Azad, the president of the national Congress, is dead against the idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims:
'Every fiber of my being revolted against the thought of dividing India on communal lines. I could not conceive it for a Musalman to tolerate this unless he has
rooted out the spirit of Islam from every corner of his being.'
His rival Mohammed Ali Jinnah, "the leader of the Muslim League, an Oxbridge educated Lincoln's Inn lawyer who wore Savile Raw suits, enjoyed his scotch and cigars, ate pork, barely spoke Urdu and married a non Muslim", on the other hand spoke for the Indian Muslims to assert their claims for a separate homeland for themselves. Maulana Azad was proud to be an Indian Muslim and was the " part of the indivisible unity that is Indian nationality." He felt that Muslims were part of Indian heritage and without them the "splendid structure of India" would be incomplete. The Maulana was dismissed by Jinnah as the Muslim show boy of the Congress.
A movement for the demolition of the Bab ri mosque was launched in 1984. This is where our novelist finds Priscilla, a 24 year-old blue-eyed, blond American woman working to sensitize Indian women about health and birth control. She is a doctoral student doing field work for her thesis.
Since there is hardly any company for Priscilla in Zalilgarh, she takes refuge in a relationship with Laksman, who is married, dark and overweight but well versed and knowledgeable in world literature, among other things. He belongs to the upper strata of Indian society and given to quoting Oscar Wilde frequently. Laksman barely manages to have a working relationship with his wife Geetha, a devoted worshipper of God but devoid of any feelings for the one human being she is married to. Laksman finds it easy to pour out his emotions to Priscilla and she being unable to understand the complexities of a Hindu marriage thinks it is obvious Laksman will get out of the 'loveless' marriage and start sharing his life with her at some point. She allows herself to be completely taken over by her emotions. They meet on Thursdays and Saturdays in an abandoned kotli, a secluded, abandoned villa, which is the last place where she is seen alive.
Tharoor's genius lies in the fact that while narrating the story of the love affair between Priscilla and Laksman he notes the preparations for the demolition of nearly four hundred year-old Babri Mosque.
Laksman's letter to Priscilla demonstrates how he feels about the uproar:
"If Muslims of the 1520s acted out of ignorance and fanaticism, should Hindus act the same way in the 1980s? By doing what you propose to do, you will hurt the feelings of the Muslims of today who did not perpetrate the injustices of the past and who are in no position to inflict injustice upon you today; you will provoke violence and injustice against your own kind; you will tarnish the name of the Hindu people across the world; and you will irreparably damage your own cause. Is it worth it?"
Even though the dates given in the book do not have any similarity with the actual dates of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, the name Zalilgarh does not exist anywhere on the map of India or Pakistan. But the reader can easily make out the historical significance of the events described in the book. Riot once again shows that religiosity, which is supposed to be a personal aspect of the life of an individual, sometimes becomes a destructive tool in the handsofa zealot or a politician.
JACKIE KABIR, WRIT ER CRITIC, IS A MEMBER OF THE READING CIRCLE