Book of Destruction

by P Sachidanandan

  ‘My dear friend, I have not read your works. So I shall make no comment on them. But one thing I can say. A hashishin like me, who sees poetry in killing, has no trouble seeing that a person can be a fiction writer, a researcher and so many other things at the same time. Such a compliment coming from this unwelcome corner might be making you uneasy. But be assured, I do not say this to flatter you. I merely point out that an uncultured thug such as Ameer Ali is not always capable of digesting anthropological knowledge.’

  The jolt that ran through me was no less electrifying than the one I had got when Seshadri had confessed to me that he was a thug. And, like Seshadri, this man too was drawing me into an argument that I was not equipped to handle. I felt like I was caught in a tug of war between thugs and professors, and businessmen and assassins. And, curiously, a philosophical argument seemed to be unfolding before me between two sects of killers in the name of their cultural greatness or perhaps mere bickering. One claiming to be a historian and the other fashioning himself as an anthropologist! It didn’t give me any consolation that I was being turned into a pawn in this battle; a battle between two names, two unreal real characters.

  ‘Though he said many things, Ameer Ali left out one story,’ Hasan continued. ‘And the omission is an important one. There is an event described in Medows Taylor’s novel, where Ameer Ali and his father Ismail’s band of thugs finish off a rich Rajput merchant and his servant. You can read it on page 73 of the 1883 edition of the book. A strangler called Badrinath was allotted the merchant while Ameer Ali was to deal with the stouter servant. Ameer Ali did not find it easy to handle the servant but he managed it in the end. The gravediggers had dug the graves inside a tent, well hidden from prying eyes. Ali was all praise for the gravediggers. The holes were filled and beaten down and plastered over with mud in such a way that no one could have told the earth had been disturbed by human hands. The sleeping rugs of the father and the son were then laid over and that night they slept over the graves. Only thugs would do such a thing! We hashishins would never sleep over the graves of our victims—we would sleep in the graves along with them or, shall I say, under the debris of our actions? Obviously, our philosophy of killing is quite different, rather, far advanced.

  ‘Yes, both of us look at the killing as a privilege for the victims. But the important difference between us is that their victims are merely offerings to the goddess, while we bestow upon our victims the honour of being martyrs for a higher purpose. As an act of good faith and as our endorsement of their fate, we join them in their ultimate sacrifice. We have gone far ahead of the thugs on the path of destruction; we are nothing at all like them. It is beyond me how anyone can say that the thugs were our descendants. True, we lived in the eleventh century and they in the eighteenth. The chronology should not make a difference to anyone sensible enough to understand the theory of evolution! And, may I remind you that Sleeman and Darwin were contemporaries and published their papers in the same decade?

  ‘As Darwin pointed out so well, Homo sapiens was not evolved from the apes, nor from the Neanderthals. The process of evolution is like the growth of a tree. A branch sprouts out from the trunk, grows, blossoms and bears fruit—the apes. The trunk continues and another branch sprouts to become the Neanderthals. Yet another, the Homo erectus. And another, the Homo sapiens. Each branch gives off more branches and the trunk continues to grow further and further from its roots. Evolution is not restricted to living beings. It applies to ideas as well, and ideologies. Within the evolution of life lies hidden another kind of evolution, that of destruction. Destruction is also an ideology, continuously growing and evolving. One branch of it blossomed and resulted in us. Yet another became the thugs. Though they branched out after us, their development was arrested a few steps behind ours, mainly in the manner of the sacrifice of the victims. Ours went one step further and arrived at the concept of self-sacrifice. After the sacrifice of the victim came the sacrifice of the sacrificer himself. What will come next? Who knows. Who are we to predict the path of evolution? We can only wait and watch.

  ‘Speaking of evolution, the Franks who chanced to meet us during the crusades thought that we were an altogether new species, different from humans. But they still took us along with them on their crusades. Ironically, that meant that we were really fighting on both sides of the war between Islam and Christianity. For, our interests lay not in religion, but in destruction. It fell to the Mongols, who were running a much larger campaign of destruction, to finally suppress us. People of Sleeman’s race, who suppressed the thugs so efficiently, were also far ahead of their colonial victims in the art of destruction. Sleeman himself suspected that the thugs were biologically different from other humans. If you look at the chronological order, you will find that Sleeman’s campaigns occurred between the discoveries of Malthus and Darwin!

  ‘Sleeman had the heads of seven thugs cut off after they had been hanged and sent them to the Phrenological Society of Scotland so they could investigate if the shape of the skulls hinted at any biological differences from the normal humans. Modern anatomy schools were all the rage in Edinburgh in those days. Dr Henry Spry, who was doing comparative anatomical science there, and conducted the studies, wrote about it in his book Modern India published in 1837. He classified the thugs into the same category in which he placed the crews of slave ships and also the more desperate among soldiers. He defined them as men who individually were not quite so prone to cruelty, but who, when the circumstances presented themselves, felt little or no compunction in inflicting unimaginable cruelty. In other words, they fell into the same category as the white men of Europe. Martine van Woerkens, a French historian, in a recent work goes a step further to say that the experiments and observations of Sleeman, Spry and the Edinburgh Phrenological Society were the precursors of the Nazi ideology of the twentieth century. A Nazi theoretician apparently compared Jews to the thugs and praised Sleeman for his efficiency in exterminating the thugs. It was his considered opinion that any Jew who had not yet committed a crime was most probably going to commit one in future. Ironically, the label that belonged on his own skull was mistakenly stamped on his victims!

  ‘There is yet another fascinating story about the schools of anatomy in Edinburgh. During the time the Spry investigations were going on in the Phrenological Society, anatomy schools were facing a great scarcity of dead bodies for dissection. (Isn’t that true even today?) There is a book titled Death, Dissection and the Destitute set in this background, by a research scholar named Ruth Richardson. Richardson became interested in Britain’s Anatomy Act of 1832 quite by accident. She was working on a study of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and discovered that during their courtship Mary and Percy Shelley would secretly meet in the St Pancras churchyard, a well-known haunt of bodysnatchers and grave-robbers of London, where Mary’s mother was buried. Perhaps Mary Shelley got the idea for her mad scientist, Dr Frankenstein, who creates a monster from pieces of dead human bodies, there. Ruth Richardson, also inspired by the graveyard, embarked on a research on grave robberies during that period and uncovered some interesting facts such as the gruesome Burke and Hare murders which shook the conscience of the public in those days. Burke and Hare ran a cheap lodging house and when an aging lodger died, owing them money, they sold his corpse to an anatomist named Dr Robert Knox. They got seven pounds for it. This seeded the idea for a brilliant business venture. They would offer free lodging and boarding to beggars and the destitute, give them food and whisky and then smother them in their sleep and sell the corpses at a profit to the anatomists, who were ever-hungry for fresh corpses. Edinburgh, which then ranked at the top in medical education and research, thus got corpses not only of thugs from faraway lands but also of the victims of white thugs such as Burke and Hare. When the story came out Burke was tried by the courts and hanged and then publicly dissected. We don’t know if any phrenological studies were conducted on his skull! Hare escaped the same fate by turning King’s witness. Knox was not charged, but an
incensed crowd burned his effigy on the streets.

  ‘You are probably wondering why I am taking you on these seemingly aimless meanderings. It will all become clear, be patient. It is time for breakfast and the bearer has just brought it in. Why don’t you enjoy your meal for now?’

  Obediently, I did. And it was lavish, with fruits and coffee to round it off. Passengers were happy and expressed their satisfaction to each other. I was far from happy, and in spite of the near-certain possibility of becoming more unhappy, I returned to the letter.

  ‘Nothing like a hearty breakfast to revive one’s spirits! Now let us move on,’ Hasan continued. ‘Frankly, my knowledge is not trivial. When it comes to acquiring knowledge, assassins are not far behind lovers of humanity. One may even say that that is the point of convergence of these two streams. Both of us aid our prey in becoming the bloody flowers on the altars of our objects of worship, be they gods, causes or aesthetic ecstasy. As there is love inside us, there is cruelty inside the lovers of humanity. Stevenson, Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker are examples of your lovers of humanity. But inside them lay hidden Hyde, Frankenstein and Dracula. Homer, Valmiki and Vyasa are no different. Not just in cinema, literature or art, even in pop music we see plenty of evidence that it is fear and horror that brings guaranteed thrill and pleasure to the minds of the audience.

  ‘Like anyone among you, we hashishins too conduct business, provide for our families, bargain for vegetables and clothes at the market, nod our heads to the beat of music … And need I point out that people who are not hashishins but do exactly these same things also enjoy stories of violence in novels, cinema and newspapers? God is for all, to believe, to worship, to obey or to deny, as the occasion may be. While some carry the cross, others carry their dagger or pickaxe. Have you ever asked yourself why the cross, the dagger and the pickaxe have the same shape? They all bear the shape of the human body.

  ‘The cross was an instrument of torture. Ironically, Christians have adopted the image not of their God, but rather of the instrument of his pain and suffering as a divine symbol and made it an object of worship. They cast it in gold and embellish it with floral designs. Do what they will, can they cover its cruel impress? Unhesitatingly, they wear it around their necks, a symbol of service, with the power even to drive away evil spirits. Ameer Ali wrote about the hashishins being hunted by the people of Damascus in the city streets. The fedayeen of our day who carry out destruction on a much larger and grander scale than the Batinis are not hunted like that. People who become their prey look up to them with wonder and awe. Their sacrifice is recognized, albeit silently. That is evolution for you.

  ‘Sacrifice is sacrifice whether of saints, ascetics, bhikshoos or fedayeen. While the sacrifice of the fedayeen is expressed in a single dramatic and bloody act, that of the former three lies dissolved in their everyday lives, expressed in a benign manner, one might say. Thus the orbits of the saints and the fedayeen do meet, although tangentially, at a common point called sacrifice. Sacrifice is ecstasy. The saints enjoy it in isolation while we share it with our victims. For we are materialists, not spiritualists.

  ‘There is yet another tangential convergence for the fedayeen. With artists and writers. Every work of literature or art is in reality a suicide, a death for the artist. He drowns in his creation. In fact, every creative work of man, be it philosophy or ideology or even love, is suicidal in nature. It is when this realization dawns on them that writers begin subsuming tragedy into their works. The author kills himself at the end of the work. The end of a novel is like the collapse of a skyscraper … My thoughts, my dear friend, but I know you, a novelist, will agree. Haven’t we met several times in trains, if I may say so, tangentially?

  ‘Just a few clarifications; I know you are all but drowning in the questions. Though you must have noticed a couple of facts by now. One, I did not die in the July seventh blast. Two, I, Hasan Ibn al Sabbah, am a hashishin.

  ‘I was present in Welcome Hotel on that fateful day. Moments before the explosion a man called me out of the bar to tell me something. As we were talking, the building exploded and then collapsed around us.

  ‘I personally did not know Zainul, also a hashishin. Each of us is a small link in the chain. We are connected by other links. The person who called me out was one such link. In fact everyone is a link, including you. Some know it and some don’t. Those who know are the actors and those who do not, the victims. Destruction is the act which brings everyone together—gods, devotees and victims. Seshadri told you that a victim turns into a devotee in the ultimate sense. A devotee turns into God when his own altar demands him as sacrifice. It is in sacrifice, in all senses of the word, that all the three freely move into each other’s roles. Who designs the costume and decides what is to be worn by whom and at what point of time? Who is that tailor? God? No, in the ultimate sense, there is no God separate from the devotee and the victim. What remains is tailoring, the art of cutting and stitching and making garments, outfitting each to play his role. Thus, destruction becomes an art, do you see now? Tailoring is, for that matter, an exceptional art, and it is a pity that no one has written a history of it. Why don’t you try your hand?

  ‘This does not mean that whatever I told you about the hotels was false. The disappearance of the old hotel from my memory, the transplantation of my things in another room, the package with your address that appeared in the new room, all that was true. Grand designs. Tailor-made, you might say! If I was destined to escape, why was my room hijacked? If the hotel was destined to collapse, why was the packet meant for you planted in it? Was the packet even meant for you? All these questions are irrelevant. All questions, in fact. There is a reason that stitches together all the apparent irrationalities, that reason is destruction. The seventh day of the seventh month was a big day for Zainul. For the newspapers, it was just a box among their columns.

  ‘I mentioned earlier the letter Ameer Ali wrote to me about you. It is the writer’s job to uphold moral issues and point out injustice. And it is the professor’s job to study it all. Though a historian devoid of literary knowledge, he had to carry out the duties entrusted to him. He was a Reader at the university for a long time. Imagine the situation when a character turns into a reader. Fate assigns different tasks to each of us. For Ameer Ali, writing the article. For me, this letter. One link opens only to the next link. The grand design includes a chain of information as well as secrets. But once the plan has been executed, the rules demand public acknowledgement. To the extent of naming the organization involved and the person who carried it out. You have to admit, we are open.

  ‘“Honest! Vandals, that’s what you are,” I can almost hear you scoffing. But you refuse to see the vandalism perpetrated by those around you, those you think are on your side. Philosophical vandalism. Morality, compassion, empathy, none of these has any rational support, said Bertrand Russell. There is no argument in science or philosophy that can explain why the enjoyment of cruelty is wrong. Wittgenstein says that in the eyes of rationality one man stealing the wallet of another is merely the movement of an object from one place to another. Logical positivists, linguistic analysts, postmodernists, deconstructionists, all those who came after him, have only helped in the further leakage of reason and logic from the mind of man. But we collected it from their porous hands, especially the concept of one reason, which holds together all kinds of irrationalities—destruction. Our flock grew. Hashishins, thugs, the old criminal tribes, the new ethnicists, revolutionaries, political parties, the underworld, religious extremists, the new class of thinkers—our flock encircles you from all sides. Did you know, my dear friend, that the number of scientists engaged in oiling the machinery of destruction today is four times the number employed in finding ways to keep you alive? Knowing fully well that when that machine is operated they themselves will have to turn fedayeen.

  ‘I saw you among the audience at the Performing Arts Auditorium during the National Music Festival last month. I was sitting in the row just
behind yours, two seats to your right. I remember you looked back twice. You did not recognize me. Since I was on duty I did not attempt to speak to you. Huge auditorium, milling multitude, me a human bomb counting down seconds. At the last second I had to shut the timer off on the instructions of the grandmaster.

  ‘Don’t panic. I am not on your train today. I have to be somewhere else, on this twelfth day of the twelfth month.

  ‘I could not deliver the book to you. The gigantic earth movers of Zainul Abidin’s company carried it away to the landfill, among the debris of Welcome Hotel. Books are like that. Their destruction is as profound and poetic as their creation. Ptolemy’s library was more famous for its catalogue prepared by Apollonius than for the collection itself. The catalogue too vanished eventually. Under the weight of the stones of the Alamut Fort razed to the ground by Hulegu lay crushed and confined the catalogue-less documents of the hashishins. The book of thugs, Thuganama, does not exist any more; only a reference remains, in Bhavya’s Tarkajwala. Tarkajwala itself remains only in the form of a Tibetan translation, now made inaccessible by the tanks of Mao. This, in the words of a Tibetan lama who now lives in Delhi’s Majnu Ka Tila. He had heard of it from his grandfather.