The Great Indian Novel

by Shashi Tharoor

  ‘You must be crazy,’ Kaalam exclaimed. ‘You wish to turn down a place in history for the sake of a mere dog? A creature associated with unclean things, in whose presence no meal is eaten, no ritual performed? How did the noble and upright Yudhishtir form such a peculiar attachment?’

  ‘I have never forsaken any person or creature who has been faithful to me,’ Yudhishtir said. ‘I will not start now. Goodbye.’

  And as he looked down at the little dog, it transformed itself, in my dream, into the resplendent Dharma, god of justice and righteousness. Yudhishtir’s true father.

  ‘You have passed the test, my son,’ Dharma proclaimed. ‘Come with me to claim History’s reward.’

  The three of them boarded Kaalam’s cloudy chariot and floated serenely to History’s court. There Yudhishtir had his first shock: for seated on a golden throne, fanned by nubile attendants, sat his late tormentor, Priya Duryodhani.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he stammered when he had caught his breath. ‘This tyrant, this destroyer of people and institutions, this persecutor of truth and democracy, seated like this on a golden throne? I do not wish to see her face! Take me to where my brothers are, where Draupadi is.’

  ‘History’s judgements are not so easily made, my son,’ Dharma replied. ‘To some, Duryodhani is a revered figure, a saviour of India, a Joan of Arc burned at the democratic stake by the ignorant and the prejudiced. Abandon your old bitterness here, Yudhishtir. There are no enmities at History’s court.’

  ‘Where are my brothers?’ Yudhishtir asked stubbornly. ‘And my pure and long-suffering wife? Why don’t I see them here, where Duryodhani holds court?’

  ‘They are in a separate place, my son,’ said Dharma. ‘If that is where you wish to go, I shall take you.’

  He led Yudhishtir down a rough and pitted pathway, over rubble and broken glass. The pair picked their way through brambles and strings of barbed wire, past rotting vegetation and smouldering pyres. Yudhishtir braved the smoke, the increasing heat, the stench of animal decomposition. Mosquitoes buzzed about his ears. His feet struck rock and sometimes bone. But still, in my dream, he trudged unwaveringly on.

  Dharma stopped suddenly. ‘Here we are,’ he said, though they seemed to have arrived nowhere in particular. The darkness closed in round Yudhishtir like the clammy hands of a cadaver. Despite the intense heat, he shivered.

  And then a wail rose around him from the darkness, a cry joined by another and yet another, until Yudhishtir’s mind and mine seemed nothing but the echo-chamber for a plaintive, continuous lament. As it went on he could make out the voices begging pitifully for his help - Bhim’s, Arjun’s, the twins’, even Draupadi’s . . .

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he burst out. ‘Why are my brothers and my wife here, in this foul blackness, while Duryodhani enjoys the luxuries of posthumous adulation? Have I gone mad, or has the world ceased to mean anything?’

  ‘You are quite sane, my son,’ Dharma said calmly. ‘And you can prove your sanity by leaving this noxious place with me. I only brought you here because you asked for it. You do not belong here, Yudhishtir.’

  ‘But nor do they!’ Yudhishtir expostulated. ‘What wrong have they done that they should suffer like this? Go - I shall stay with them, and share their unmerited suffering.’

  At these words, the darkness lifted, the filth and the stench disappeared. Yudhishtir’s brow was cooled by a gentle breeze and his senses calmed by a fragrant aroma of freshly flowering blossoms, as his eyes opened to a refulgent assembly of personages from our story.

  Yes, Ganapathi, they were all there in my dream: gentle Draupadi and genteel Drewpad, boisterous Bhim and blustery Sir Richard, grim Gandhari and grimacing Shikhandin; the Karnistanis and the Kauravas; the British and the brutish; pale Pandu embracing his wives; blind Dhritarashtra and blond Georgina. And they were smiling, and laughing, and clapping. ‘You have passed your last test, Yudhishtir!’ Dharma proclaimed. ‘It was all an illusion, my son. You will no more be condemned to an eternity of misery than Duryodhani will enjoy perpetual contentment. Everyone must have at least a glimpse of the other world; the fortunate man samples hell first, the better to enjoy the taste of paradise that follows. All those you see around you have passed through these portals before; tomorrow you will stand amongst them to greet a new entrant as he comes in. And the illusions will go on.’

  ‘The tests you put me through,’ Yudhishtir asked, frowning. ‘Has everyone here gone through them?’

  ‘Yes, but very few have passed them as you have,’ Dharma said.

  ‘And what were they meant to prove?’

  ‘Prove?’ Dharma seemed vaguely puzzled. ‘Only the eternal importance of dharma.’

  ‘To what end? If it makes no difference to all these people, who all have their place here . . .’

  ‘Everyone,’ Dharma said, ‘finds his place in history, even those who have failed to observe dharma. But it is essential to recognize virtue and righteousness, and to praise him who, like yourself, has consistently upheld dharma.’

  ‘Why?’ Yudhishtir asked.

  ‘What do you mean,’ Dharma replied irritably, ‘ “why”?’

  ‘I mean why?’ Yudhishtir replied, addressing everyone gathered before him. ‘What purpose has it served? Has my righteousness helped either me, my wife, my family or my country? Does justice prevail in India, or in its history? What has adherence to dharma achieved in our own story?’

  ‘This is sacrilege,’ his preceptor breathed. ‘If there is one great Indian principle that has been handed down through the ages, it is that of the paramount importance of practising dharma at any price. Life itself is worthless without dharma. Only dharma is eternal.’

  ‘India is eternal,’ Yudhishtir said. ‘But the dharma appropriate for it at different stages of its evolution has varied. I am sorry, but if there is one thing that is true today, it is that there are no classical verities valid for all time. I believed differently, and have paid the price of being defeated, humiliated, and reduced to irrelevance. It is too late for me to do anything about it: I have had my turn. But for too many generations now we have allowed ourselves to believe India had all the answers, if only it applied them correctly. Now I realize that we don’t even know all the questions.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Dharma asked, and Yudhishtir saw to his astonishment that the resplendent deva beside him was changing slowly back into a dog.

  ‘No more certitudes,’ he called out desperately to the receding figure. ‘Accept doubt and diversity. Let each man live by his own code of conduct, so long as he has one. Derive your standards from the world around you and not from a heritage whose relevance must be constantly tested. Reject equally the sterility of ideologies and the passionate prescriptions of those who think themselves infallible. Uphold decency, worship humanity, affirm the basic values of our people - those which do not change - and leave the rest alone. Admit that there is more than one Truth, more than one Right, more than one dharma . . .’

  I woke up to the echo of a vain and frantic barking.

  I woke up, Ganapathi, to today’s India. To our land of computers and corruption, of myths and politicians and box-wallahs with moulded plastic briefcases. To an India beset with uncertainties, muddling chaotically through to the twenty-first century.

  Your eyebrows and nose, Ganapathi, twist themselves into an elephantine question-mark. Have I, you seem to be asking, come to the end of my story? How forgetful you are: it was just the other day that I told you stories never end, they just continue somewhere else. In the hills and the plains, the hearths and the hearts, of India.

  But my last dream, Ganapathi, leaves me with a far more severe problem. If it means anything, anything at all, it means that I have told my story so far from a completely mistaken perspective. I have thought about it, Ganapathi, and I realize I have no choice. I must retell it.

  I see the look of dismay on your face. I am sorry, Ganapathi. I shall have a word with my friend Brahm tomorrow. In
the meantime, let us begin again.

  They tell me India is an underdeveloped country . . .

  Afterword

  Many of the characters, incidents and issues in this novel are based on people and events described in the great epic the Mahabharata, a work which remains a perennial source of delight and inspiration to millions in India. I am no Sanskrit scholar and have therefore relied only on a highly subjective reading of a variety of English translations of the epic. I should like to acknowledge, in particular, my debt to the versions of C. Rajagopalachari and P. Lal, respectively the most readable renderings of what scholars call the southern and northern rescensions of the work. The two differ sufficiently in approach, style and narrative content to be complementary, even though they both deal with essential aspects of the same story. I have relied greatly on both of them.

  While some scenes in The Great Indian Novel are recastings of situations described in translations of the Mahabharata, I have taken far too many liberties with the epic to associate any of its translators with my sins. Those readers who wish to delve into the Mahabharata itself in search of the sources of my inspiration need look no further than Lal’s ‘transcreation’, Rajagopalach-ari’s episodic saga or Prof. J. A. B. Van Buitenen’s scholarly, thorough but incomplete translation for the University of Chicago Press. While this novel was with the publishers I also discovered Jean-Claude Carriere’s stage script of the Mahabharata in Peter Brooke’s most readable translation, and recommend it highly. The responsibility for this entirely fictional version is, of course, mine alone.

  A Note on Dharma

  Of the many Indian words and expressions in this book, the meanings of most of which are readily apparent from their context (or from the glossary), the one term it may be necessary to elucidate is ‘dharma’.

  Dharma is perhaps unique in being an untranslatable Sanskrit term that is, none the less, cheerfully defined as a normal, unitalicized entry in an English dictionary. The definition offered in Chambers Twentieth-Century Dictionary is ‘the righteousness that underlies the law; the law’. While this is a definite improvement on the one-word translation offered in many an Indian Sanskrit primer (‘religion’), it still does not convey the full range of meaning implicit in the term. ‘English has no equivalent for dharma,’ writes P. Lal in the Glossary to his ‘transcreation’ of the Mahabharata, in which he defines dharma as ‘code of good conduct, pattern of noble living, religious rules and observance’.

  My friend Ansar Hussain Khan suggests that dharma is most simply defined as ‘that by which we live’. Yes - but ‘that’ embraces a great deal. An idea of the immensity and complexity of the concept of dharma may be conveyed by the fact that, in his superb analytical study of Indian culture and society, The Speaking Tree, Richard Lannoy defines dharma in at least nine different ways depending on the context in which he uses the term. The nine (with page references to the Oxford University Press paperback edition in brackets): Moral Law (xvi), spiritual order (142), sacred law (160), salvation ethic (213), totality of social, ethical and spiritual harmony (217), righteousness (218, 325), universal order (229), magico-religious cycle (233), moral, idealistic, spiritual force (294). Lannoy also quotes Betty Heimann’s excellent version in her 1937 work Indian and Western Philosophy: A Study in Contrasts: ‘Dharma is total cosmic responsibility, including God’s, a universal justice far more inclusive, wider and profounder than any Western equivalent, such as “duty”.’

  The reader of The Great Indian Novel is invited, upon each encounter with dharma in these pages, to assume that the term is used to mean any, or all, of the above.

  Shashi Tharoor

  Glossary

  (All the words defined are from Sanskrit and/or Hindi, except where otherwise indicated)

  aarti

  - Hindu religious rite involving the ceremonial waving of lighted lamps before the object to be worshipped or honoured

  Angrez

  - Briton (colloquial)

  Arthashastra

  - classic political treatise ascribed to Chanakya (Kautilya), a Machiavellian statesman-philosopher of the fourth century B C

  ashram

  - the hermitage of a spiritual figure and a retreat for his disciples

  ayah

  - nanny

  babu

  - low-level functionary, clerk

  Bakr-Id

  - Muslim festival at which goats are sacrificed

  barfi

  - Indian sweet made of milk, often covered with edible silver foil (vark).

  bhai

  - brother

  chakra

  - wheel

  chakravarti

  - universal emperor

  chappals

  - slippers

  chaprassi

  - peon

  chela

  - pupil, acolyte

  dal bhaat

  - rice and lentils (i.e. the basic staple)

  darshan

  - inspiring vision or sight, used to refer to audience granted by king or holy man

  dharma

  - see note opposite

  dharna

  - act of political agitation or demonstration, usually involving the agitators sitting at the door of the authorities concerned until their demands are granted

  dharti

  - earth

  dhobi

  - washerman

  dhoti

  - ankle-length waistcloth, traditional male attire in most parts of India

  doodhwala

  - milkman

  durwan

  - guard, watchman

  gurudwara

  - Sikh temple

  Holi

  - Hindu spring festival marked by the splashing of coloured water

  janmabhoomi

  - motherland

  jawan

  - soldier

  -ji

  - suffix denoting respect

  karanavar

  - a Malayalam word meaning landlord, elder of a joint Kerala family

  karma

  - Hindu cycle of predestined birth and rebirth; destiny

  khadi

  - homespun Indian cotton

  kukri

  - Gurkha knife

  kundalini

  - vital force of cosmic energy embodied in everyone, and pictured as a coiled serpent at the base of the spine

  kurta

  - loose collarless shirt

  lathi

  - bamboo or wooden stave used by Indian policemen

  maidan

  - playing-field

  Mathrubhoomi Azhichapadippu

  - popular weekly journal in Kerala

  meghdoot

  - cloud messenger (from a classic poem by Kalidas in which a cloud is implored to convey tidings of a lost wife)

  MLA

  - Member of the Legislative Assembly (of a state, rather than the national Parliament in Delhi whose members are called MPs)

  mofussil

  - outlying, provincial, rural

  moksha

  - salvation

  mullah

  - Muslim priest

  mundu

  - South Indian dhoti (see above)

  namaskar, namaste

  - traditional Hindu greeting, usually with the palms joined

  Naxalites, Naxals

  - violent Maoist revolutionaries, particularly active in Bengal in 1967-71

  neta

  - leader

  padayatra

  - long journey on foot, usually undertaken for social or political purposes through an area affected by calamity

  panchayat

  - village council

  pandal

  - temporary covered structure for outdoor receptions, ceremonies, etc.

  patideva

  - respectful term for husband

  patwari

  - village official

  puja

  - ritual players

  Puranas

  - ancient collections of popular Hindu myths and
legends of religious and social significance

  razai

  - quilt

  rishi

  - holy man, sage

  sadhu

  - Hindu holy man

  sainik

  - soldier

  sannyasi

  - Hindu holy man, usually an ascetic

  satyagraha

  - literally ‘truth-force’, used by Mahatma Gandhi to define his non-violent agitation satyagrahi - one who undertakes satyagraha

  saunf

  — aniseed

  Shaitaan

  - Satan

  shama

  - songbird of the thrush family

  shamiana

  - large tent

  shastras

  - Hindu holy books, especially those laying down laws and precepts

  sherwani

  - traditional North Indian knee-length jacket

  Shri

  - Mr

  sloka

  - verse

  subedar

  - non-commissioned officer

  Sudra

  - member of the lowest Hindu caste

  swadeshi

  - indigenous, i.e. Indian

  swaraj

  - self-rule

  Swatantra Sena

  - (fictional) Independence Army

  swayamvara

  - ceremony in which a noblewoman chooses a husband from amongst assembled suitors

  tamasha

  - fun, spectacle

  twice-born

  - upper-caste Hindu, one who has undergone a ‘second birth’, i.e. a spiritual one; generally used to refer to Brahmins

  veda

  - one of four principal sacred texts of the Hindus - the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda, and the Artharva Veda - composed circa 15001200 BC and consisting of sacred Sanskrit hymns

  yuddha

  - war

  zamindar

  - landlord

  zenana

  - women’s quarters

  zilla

  - sub-district

  zindabad

  - long live

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful to Prof. P. Lal for permission to quote from his book, The Mahabharata of Vyasa.

  My gratitude also goes to Tony Lacey, David Davidar and Julia Sutherland for their valuable editorial guidance; to my agent, Deborah Rogers, for her dedication and perseverance; to my brother-in-law, Dr Chandra Shekhar Mukherji, for his early and repeated encouragement as the work progressed; to my friends Deepa Menon, Margaret Kooijman, Ansar Hussain Khan and Arvind Subramanian, for volunteering to inflict the draft manuscript on themselves and for reading it with affection and insight; to my sisters, Shobha Srinivasan and Smita Menon, for their love, support and hospitality on two continents; to my wife, Tilottama, for bearing with me throughout the difficult evenings and weekends of my writing, and for trying (with only partial success) to get me to approach her own high critical standards; and to my parents, Chandran and Lily Tharoor, for teaching me to aspire, and for sustaining my faith in this book as they have sustained all my writing for so many years.