The Great Indian Novel

by Shashi Tharoor

  Karna’s burnished skin paled during this lengthy explanation, and then a voice sounded outside: ‘Let me in, I say. My son will see me. I must . . .’ And then the door was flung open, and a dishevelled figure appeared in a sweat- stained white uniform, peaked driver’s cap in hand, anxiety distorting his face.

  ‘Karna,’ he cried in anguish. ‘It is your mother . . .’

  The young man was on his feet. ‘I shall come at once, Abbajan,’ he said, his face a yellow pallor.

  ‘I see,’ said Dhritarashtra mildly before Karna had even reached the door. ‘A driver’s son has been lecturing us on the unsuitability of the masses.’

  ‘Such ingratitude,’ murmured an obliging sycophant.

  ‘Are we to let ourselves be swayed by the prejudices of someone who thinks he is too good for his parents?’ asked Dhritarashtra. Karna shot him a look of pure hatred, which spent itself harmlessly on the dark glasses of its target. A hum of approval from around the table was cut short by the slamming of the door. Karna was gone, defeated - like so many of his compatriots - by his origins.

  That is how things often work in our country, Ganapathi. If a man cannot be overcome on merit, you can always expose him by uprooting his family tree. Family trees are versatile plants, Ganapathi; in our country incompetence and mediocrity also flourish under the shade of their leafy branches.

  So Karna strode out, and I followed him, muttering that I would be back. I still don’t know what animated my impulse. Kunti had told me she would come by the building where we were meeting in order to wait for her husband, and I was seized with the urge to escape the stifling air of our petty quarrels. It would, I thought, do me good to spend a few minutes in more congenial company.

  It was just as well. I reached Pandu’s wife on the landing just in time to catch her as she swooned into my arms.

  I eased her on to a sofa and wondered, with all the incompetence of the lifetime bachelor, whether it would be appropriate to splash water on to that still exquisitely made-up face. I had not come to a decision when Kunti stirred, and opened eyes whose redness owed nothing to any cosmetic.

  ‘It’s him!’ she gasped.

  ‘What’s who?’ I asked, taken aback.

  ‘The young man . . . who just walked out’

  ‘Mohammed Ali Karna?’

  ‘Is that who it was? I’ve heard them speak of him, but never seen him before.’ She began to sit up now, the colour slowly pulsing back to her cheek. ‘What do you know about him, VVji?’

  I wished I knew more than I did. After all, information was my speciality; with my sources, I knew everything about everybody. But Karna had proved an exception. ‘Nobody knows very much about him, Kunti. He’s a successful Bombay lawyer, London-trained, a little arrogant. And today we have just learned he is the son of a driver.’

  There was a little intake of breath. ‘A driver?’

  ‘You know, a chauffeur. Karna left with him. His mother is apparently very ill.’

  Kunti straightened herself on the sofa and pushed a strand of elegantly greying hair absently back from her eyes. ‘His mother,’ she said faintly, ‘is feeling much better now, thank you.’

  It was my turn to swallow air. Her words woke me like the first shafts of sunlight through half-open eyes. Of course: the mystery of Karna’s origin was resolved at last.

  The error of Kunti’s adolescence, the result of the plausible temptations of a passing foreigner, the offspring of a travelling man of the world, who had travelled out of his mother’s world in a small reed basket, had not perished. He had survived after all; he had been found; and he had grown to become Mohammed Ali Karna.

  ‘Kunti,’ I breathed.

  ‘Oh, VVji, he’s alive,’ she said, her eyes glistening. ‘I’m so happy.’

  I tend to become the stern sage at the wrong moments. ‘You must never acknowledge him, Kunti,’ I cautioned her.

  ‘Do you think I don’t realize that?’ The retort was sharp, but I shall never forget the pathos in her voice. ‘Oh, VVji, won’t you find out more about him for me? Who this driver is? What exactly happened?’

  ‘Of course,’ I reassured her. With that basic clue, I knew that I, Ved Vyas, savant of other people’s secrets, would have no difficulty.

  Indeed: a few discreet inquiries confirmed that Kunti’s instinctive faith in her first, lost son’s survival had been entirely justified. The basket had floated gently down the river and become enmeshed in some undergrowth on the right bank. As Fate would have it - for such things, as you well know, Ganapathi, are willed from above - a childless couple was picnicking on the riverside. The husband was a humble modern successor to the noble profession of charioteering, in other words a chauffeur, and he had profited from his employer’s absence to drive his wife to the river for a rare outing. Of such coincidences, Ganapathi, is history made.

  The couple found the child and raised their hands heavenwards in praise of Allah, for they were Muslims. And thus it was that the child they adopted, the natural son of Kunti, acquired the basic qualification for membership of the party he would lead so decisively one day: the Muslim Group.

  The other elements of his curriculum vitae then fell implausibly into place. Implausibly, for few who saw the Inner Temple barrister would have easily guessed the prosaic facts I discovered or inferred: a slum boyhood; scholarships to secondary school and college; a wealthy patron, his father’s employer - the opulent Indra Deva - to finance a stay in London. Karna was not born to affluence, as everyone thought; and yet, in a curious way, Ganapathi, he was.

  But the more I probed, the more the story of Mohammed Ali Karna dissolved again into myth and speculation. Even when the incident of the chauffeur’s arrival at the Kaurava Party meeting became widely known, and the gossips and the rumour-mongers circulated fanciful and malicious versions of it to all who would listen, the golden youth remained untarnished. Instead, though the identity of those he called his parents could not be concealed, there were odd stories, awed stories, circulating about his extraordinary qualities, almost as if to make up for the apparent ordinariness of his ancestry.

  These stories stressed not just his brilliance, but the determination and self- control which would one day win him a country. A typical tale, quite probably apocryphal, Ganapathi, told of how he came by his unusual name.

  His father, devout Muslim though he was, had been reluctant, the story went, to risk the slightest harm to his golden foundling, and had left the boy uncircumcised. One day the young Mohammed Ali, bathing in the river with his father, asked him why he was different in that crucial respect.

  ‘Because you are not really my son, the grey-haired chauffeur replied; God allowed me to find you, but that did not give me the right to change the way He had made you.’

  ‘But I am your son,’ the boy declared. ‘I do not care what I was before you found me; my past abandoned me. I will be like you.’

  Whereupon he seized a knife and circumcised himself.

  Hearing of the boy’s deed the chauffeur’s master, Indra Deva, expressed his admiration of the lad. ‘You shall be known, in the glorious tradition of our national epic, as Karna,’ he announced. ‘Karna, the Hacker-Off.’

  And thus it was that Mohammed Ali, adopted son of a rich man’s driver, became Mohammed Ali Karna, destined to be Star of the Inner Temple and Defender of the Mosque.

  You don’t seem particularly convinced, Ganapathi. Well, neither was I. It is only a story. But you learn something about a man from the kind of stories people make up about him.

  38

  Of course one must be wary of history by anecdote.

  It would be too facile to suggest that the incident at the meeting alone led to Karna’s resignation from the Kaurava Party. There undoubtedly were a hundred complex reasons that drove Karna out of the party, and that might have led him to leave it at another stage of its development. It was clear, for one thing, that his position was undermined by the demonstrable effectiveness of Gangaji’s methods; he could at b
est have slowed the capture of the party by the Hastinapuris, but he could not have prevented it. There was, for another, his own ego, which could not have abided the subordinate or at least co-equal role that Dhritarashtra and Pandu, let alone Gangaji himself, would have imposed upon him. Karna was one of those who would rather be king of an island than courtier, or even minister, in a great empire.

  And then there was the altogether more complicated matter of religion. Don’t get me wrong - Mohammed Ali, for all that he had earned his ‘Karna’, bore no resemblance to the robed-and-bearded ayatollahs of current Islamic iconography. He disdained the mullahs and disregarded their prohibitions. Where Dhritarashtra learned to brew his own tea in England, Karna acquired a taste for Scotch and cocktail sausages. Far from praying five times a day, he prided himself on his scientific, and therefore agnostic, cast of mind. His outlook was that of an Englishman of his age and profession: ‘modern’ (to use an adjective that has outlived more changes of connotation than any other in the language), formalist, rational, secular. It was not Islam that separated him from Gangaji, but Hinduism.

  I see from the look of astonishment on your face that I shall have to explain myself. It is really very simple, Ganapathi. Karna was not much of a Muslim but he found Gangaji too much of a Hindu. The Mahaguru’s traditional attire, his spiritualism, his spouting of the ancient texts, his ashram, his constant harking back to an idealized pre-British past that Karna did not believe in (and was impatient with) - all this made the young man mistrustful of the Great Teacher. The very title in which Gangaji had acquiesced made Karna uncomfortable: in his world there were no Mahagurus, only Great Learners. And Gangaji’s mass politics were, to Karna, based on an appeal to the wrong instincts; they embodied an atavism that in his view would never take the country forward. A Kaurava Party of prayer-meetings and unselective eclecticism was not a party he would have cared to lead, let alone to remain a member of.

  In other words, Karna found the Kauravas under Gangaji insufficiently secular, and this made him, paradoxically, more consciously Muslim. Gangaji’s efforts to transcend his Hindu image by stressing the liberalism of his interpretation of it only made matters worse. When the Mahaguru, in one of his more celebrated pronouncements, declared his faith in all religions with the words, ‘I am a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Zoroastrian, a Jew,’ Karna responded darkly: ‘Only a Hindu could say that.’

  This doesn’t mean, Ganapathi, that Karna slammed the door on the Kauravas and went off straight away to join the Gaga’s discredited Group.

  When, in his absence, the Kauravas passed the policy resolution that committed the party firmly to Gangaji’s line, Karna, humiliated and bitter, felt he could no longer return to the cause. Yet he still believed, like almost everyone else, that the Kauravas were the nationalists’ only hope. If they were going to persist in error, Karna decided, then he had no party left. He did not simply return to his law practice; he packed his bags and set sail for England.

  Karna was never a man for half-measures. Once he had decided to make a break it was always a clean break, and a complete one. It was a characteristic that would have a profound and lasting impact upon the nation.

  39

  For it was obvious to anyone who had followed his career that Karna could not be kept out of Indian politics for ever. He was in London when the Mahaguru and his motley crew of Round Tablers conferred so fruitlessly, and he found himself unable to hold back in public the contempt he felt for the state of the nationalist organizations. ‘As an Indian,’ he said to an inquiring reporter, ‘I am ashamed and disgusted to see my fate and that of my country being discussed and resolved by such a collection of has-beens, never-wases and never-will-bees.’

  ‘If you feel so strongly,’ asked the journalist, ‘why do you not return to Indian politics yourself?’

  Karna’s unblinking gaze directed the questioner to his notebook. ‘I am waiting,’ he said, ‘for the right invitation.’

  The right invitation. There was the tragedy of divide et impera. If the British had not sought to split up our people along sectarian lines, the invitation Karna was so openly soliciting might have come from, say, a Conservative Nationalist Party, one differing from the Kauravas on issues of political principle rather than religion. Instead the call came from the Gaga Shah, head of the Muslim Group: a gilt-edged card requesting the pleasure of Karna’s company for tea at the Savoy.

  40

  ‘So glad you could come, old chap,’ the Gaga said, half-rising, with great effort, from his capacious chair. Karna took his hand unsmilingly. ‘Sit down, won’t you, there’s a good fellow. Tea?’

  Steaming cups were poured, not by a Savoy waiter, but by a menial in a cummerbund who bowed as he handed the refreshment to his master. Karna declined with a curt shake of the head the offer of a silver tray laden with pastries. The Gaga looked astonished. ‘Really?’ he asked, as he stuffed a glazed pink object into his mouth and, almost in the same gesture, helped himself to a cream puff. ‘Don’t know what you’re missing, old chap.’

  Karna remained pointedly silent.

  ‘Must eat, you know,’ the Gaga went on bonhomously. ‘All in the cause of duty for me, of course. My followers weigh me against gold and diamonds every birthday, and it wouldn’t do to let them down by placing a sylph-like figure on the scales. Ruins the spectacle, don’t you know. And doesn’t make for much of a birthday present, either.’ He guffawed into his tea. Karna seemed incapable even of a polite smile. The Gaga decided to try again. ‘One of my wives, can’t remember which one - put pearls around their neck and they’re all alike, ha-ha - used to go on and on at me about my eating. Don’t take this, put that down, not another helping, you know the sort of thing. Till I told her that each bite of foie gras meant another sapphire for her collection. Quite literally. And then I couldn’t stop her shovelling the stuff on to my plate.’ He chuckled at the memory, then noticed Karna sitting, stiff and unmoved, his cup untouched on the table by his side.

  The attempt at banter past, the Gaga took an elaborate sip of tea, one pudgy and bejewelled little finger held delicately in the air. ‘S’pose you’re wondering why I asked you here,’ he said at last.

  ‘The question had occurred to me,’ Karna said drily.

  The cup rattled in the Gaga’s hand. This was not a tone of voice he was accustomed to hearing. ‘Quite,’ he exhaled sharply. ‘Quite.’ He reached for a chocolate éclair and munched it reflectively. ‘Fact is, we’d like you back in India.’

  ‘We?’ Karna sat still, one eyebrow raised in interrogation.

  ‘The Muslim Group,’ the Gaga explained. ‘Our party needs men like you.’

  ‘Oh?’ Karna seemed to want him to go on. How much easier it was, the Gaga thought, to deal with men of the turf. They were content with a pat and a nod, and the occasional packet of cash. This cold, aloof lawyer with the arrogant eyes was another sort of customer altogether. And yet - he was just the sort of jockey needed to spur an overweight, complacent thoroughbred into purposeful motion. The Gaga sighed.

  ‘You are aware of the current political position in India,’ he began.

  ‘I have been following events, yes,’ Karna confirmed.

  The Gaga sensed an opportunity to let the other do the talking. ‘Good,’ he breathed his relief. ‘And how do you assess the situation?’

  ‘I believe it is quite deplorable,’ the lawyer replied. ‘Ganga Datta and his Kaurava Party are the only actors of any consequence on the stage, and they stand for all that is retrogressive and populist in Indian politics. If they are to triumph we shall witness neither democracy nor progress but mobocracy and anarchy in India.’

  ‘Hindu mobocracy,’ the Gaga added.

  ‘Perhaps. Though rioters have no religion, as we have seen during this wretched mango business. It galls me to see the leadership of India fall into hands stained by mango juice.’

  ‘Well put,’ the Gaga said, thinking enviously of the mangoes wasted on the agitators. They were his favourite fr
uit, and he had made an annual practice of sending a basket of choicest Alphonso to every Englishman of distinction he sought to cultivate. The unusual gift, accompanied by a crested card bearing the calligraphed compliments of the Gaga Shah, had opened the doors of many a stately home for him in the past. This year, thanks to Gangaji’s bad taste, they had had a disastrous effect. Few new invitations had been prompted by what some saw as a symbol of sedition, and in two cases his baskets had been sent back to him, their contents intact. Next year, the Gaga sighed, he would have to think of something more appropriate to give.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t believe any of the other parties have covered themselves with glory either,’ Karna added. ‘The Muslim Group . . .’

  ‘. . . is moribund,’ the Gaga completed the sentence for him. ‘Quite. But then what can you expect from a gathering of nawabs and zamindars? We have wealth, we have status, we have positions of influence. But I will be candid with you, my dear Karna, we lack energy.’ He helped himself to a madeleine. ‘That is why I have asked you here today, old chap. The Muslim Group needs you.’

  Karna looked at him in silence for a long moment. ‘What exactly are you proposing?’ he asked at last.

  The Gaga looked nonplussed. ‘Why, that you should come back, of course. And join the Group, dear fellow. Give us the benefit-of your perception. Your advice.’

  ‘Advice.’ Karna looked hard at his host, and the Gaga noticed how the half- moon glowed at him, like a third eye.

  ‘Yes And . . . and . . . counsel.’

  Karna rose to his feet. ‘In that case, we have nothing to discuss, Your Highness,’ he said curtly. ‘Your proposal is of no interest to me. Good day.’