DISSENT IN RECENT INDIAN FICTION IN ENGLISH

Dr. (Mrs.) Subha Tiwari

This is boon time for Indian fiction in English. Everybody is coming out with his/her own story. It is a great telling time. Family secrets, exploitation, and idiosyncrasies of the old and whims of the young – everything is out in the form of the great Indian novel. And the world is recognizing the worth of Indian fiction in English. A Jhumpa winning a Pulitzer, an Arundhati getting Booker and of course, the Naipaul receiving the Nobel. The recognition and response is tremendous. This literature, this corpus of words woven and created by people of Indian origin is the saga of a people whose voice had been choked for ages. This subcontinent and its people wanted to say so many things for so long. Now they have found a medium: a medium that is modern, flexible and acceptable. The raw material for this literature is basically India. Indian life in all colours is painted here. The integrated family life of Vidarbha region, the long ancestral trees of South India, the mysteries of Varanasi, the hustle bustle of Delhi and Mumbai-everything finds expression here. The beauty of it is sung but the ugliness of it has not been curtained or ignored. The dark side has not been sent to darkness. These novelists are the real chroniclers of our times. Let politicians pass bills in legislature and fake history but it is these people who will tell the coming generations about how Indian life actually was at the end of 20th century and at the beginning of 21st century. They will explain to our great – great grand children about the knots that we carry in our minds, about our prejudices and favouritism, our hysprocrisy and corruption.

Sometimes I wonder whether the negative side of India is more vividly painted than her positive side or is it that India herself has more negative points than positive ones. I will not go into this but one thing is certain that there is a furious urge in this fiction to expose the faults of past and to break away from tradition.

The wrong doers – the wife beating husbands, incestuous uncles, jealous parents selfish politicians, the revengeful wives, the uncaring children, the apathetic teachers – are all being unearthed. No one is exempted. I perceive a very strong note of dissent in this fiction. Religious beliefs have been shaken in a big way. Everyone knows what Salman Rushdie did to the image of Prophet Mohammad in Satanic Verses. Other novelists also are trying to either root out or mould religious tenets. Shiv K. Kumar has given a mischievous name to one of his novels, To Nun with Love where he says that while talking ‘nun’ can be taken for ‘none’ also. But more seriously, I do not see this trend as a mere marketing strategy to attract the masses and sell the books. It is a reality that we are on shaky grounds as far as religious confidence is concerned. If two people profess undying faith in rituals, astrology, baths in Ganga and fasts in the month of Magh, two if not more stand up to question the wisdom and relevance of these practices. Erosion of the religious ground is a reality of our times and this is expressed in this fiction. The finer examples can be seen, for example, in Shashi Deshpande’s A Matter of Time. The novelist has tried to rewrite and reinterpret religious myths and icons throughout the novel. In Mahabharata Draupadi once disguises herself as Sairandhri, the queen’s maid. Deshpande comments on this conversion, “Don’t you think this was something she (Draupadi) had often wanted, to be by herself, to sleep alone, to be free, for a while, of her five husbands?” (85-86)

Arjuna had acted as an eunuch Brihannala in the epic. Deshpande has justification for this too – “Arjuna, tired of the male world of war and violence, of relating to women only as lord and conqueror, became Brihannala, the eunuch, so that he could enter the gentle world of women, of music and dancing and become an insider in this world” (86)

Arjuna wanted to be free of the masculinity burden and Draupadi her own master! Even Shurpanaka is given a new meaning by Deshpande in this novel. She was a woman who was not shy of her bodily desires and Rama and Laxman were scared of her sexual rage. Not knowing what to do about her fearless seduction, they resorted to violence, just to shut her up (191). The examples are numerous. Throughout this journey of Indian fiction of recent years, we find a persistent ridiculing of religious traditions, established myths and idols.

A subtle note in this voice of rebellion is about the mental burden of parents’ desires to be carried on by their children. Indian parents are apart from being depicted as very loving, caring and supportive are often called a corrupting force as well. They colour the vision of their children in such a manner that any fresh thinking is not possible for their offspring. For example, Bhaskar, in Arun Joshi’s The Last Labyrinth cannot get rid of his mother’s obsession with Krishna even though he does not want to follow that path. After his mother’s death, he goes to a temple situated on top of a high mountain. The route is tedious. On the way he meets a boy whose grandmother has told him that on that mountain he will find a crystal pebble with a star. “The thought depressed me that a child so young should have been contaminated in such a manner. This, too was corruption, although of a different sort. For all one knew, he would spend the rest of the days searching for a crystal pebble with a star and become a nut in the process (186). The sentiment ‘I wanted to become a great writer, or musician or doctor or engineer and failed to become that and so I coax my kids to fulfill dreams that I once saw for myself’ – is bared. This influence of parents can actually mar the possibilities of finding fulfillment for their children. His father sends Noshir to America just because the Patels had also done the same because it was Noshir’s father wanted his son to become all that he himself could never become. Boman Desai’s Asylum USA is a pathetic tale of a growing boy who marries a lesbian to get the green card and undergoes horrible emotional upheaval and humiliation simply because his father wants the label ‘son in America.’ “Let me be fair to my father…. I don’t blame the old man. It’s a common story. He was too frustrated in his own life to expect less than the most from his son. You fill in the detail”(21).

The dominance of the political structure over the social spectrum has distorted Dalit (the underprivileged) aspirations to a great extent. Dalit sensibility is not confined to reservation in Pre Professional Courses, Tests and Government services; it demands complete osmosis with the privileged section of the society. That is what Ammu does in God of Small Things and that is exactly what Willie Chandran’s father does in Half a Life by Naipal. He marries a low caste girl only to defy his Brahiminical past. “I was fascinated and repelled by her. She would have been of the very low. It would have been unbearable to consider her family and clan and their occupations. When people like that went to the temple they would have been kept out of the sanctum, the inner cell with the image of the deity. The officiating priest would never have wanted to touch those people. He would have thrown the sacred ash at them, the way food is thrown to a dog. All kinds of ideas like that came to me when I contemplated the scholarship girl (she came to college with the help of a scholarship given to the backward by the Maharajah), who felt people’s eyes on her and never returned their gaze. She was trying to keep her end up, it would have taken so little to crush her and gradually with my fascination, there came a little sympathy, a wish to look at the world through her eyes”(12).

David Davidar in The House of Blue Mangoes also hits at caste structure in his own way. Here a brahmin, trying to unite the villages against the British, pokes fun at his own community. “Which is the most dangerous caste among us, more dangerous than the cobra, more destructive than the cyclone? Neelkantha Brahmachari asked fifty villagers who gathered under a pipal tree.

There was no response, so the speaker began to work the audience. Could it be the brahmin? I’m a brahmin and you know how deadly we can be! The crowd laughed at this and Aaron thought that it was marvelous that a member of a community that had been accused of oppression and discrimination for centuries could poke fun at his own”(149).

Politicians are often referred to cynically in this fiction. Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel brings out the allegory between the great epic Mahabharata and Indian political scene of 1970s. Jawaharlal Nehru is boldly referred to as Dhritrahtra and Mrs. Indira Gandhi as Duryodhini. But the buck does not stop there. In a recent interview Naipaul has gone to the extent of commenting upon the hush up exercises on Tehelka expose, “I am very perturbed by what seems to be sinister attempt to frustrate legitimate inquiry into the practices of government. It should concern all of us who value India’s democratic process” (The Times of India, 19-02-2002). The final tone is that of distrust regarding politicians, their words and plans – “Not one of the street lights worked and they wouldn’t work everyone knew until the next election. Then there would be flurry of excitement with five – and ten – points plan…to send Shahkot and its residents bounding into the twenty-first century” (16).

A major note of anger related to the failure of the politicians is regarding history. Why was India partitioned? What was the logic? The border is still burning. Why did our so called great leaders accept it? These are burning questions with no adequate answer. One of the many things I deeply like about the Shadow Lines of Amitabh Ghosh is his subtle questioning of man-made artificial borders. You walk some feet and draw a line and say that it is another nation . Why? Nature has her own borders-hills, rivers, chasms, oceans. Natural Borders have some logic. “I don’t believe in this India-Shindia. It’s all very well, you’re going away now, but suppose when you get there they decide to draw another line somewhere? What will you do then?” (215) Borders are shadow lines; not real. Chaman Nahal’s Azadi or Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan are definitely more vocal on this point.

The most distinct note of dissent is regarding the treatment meted out to female folk in India. Numerous novels pour out the anguish of “slave of slaves,” to use Toni Morrison’s phrase. Indian men have been slaves for centuries and women have been their slaves all the while. Silence becomes a living presence in the novels by women. Indian womanhood crushed for centuries shrieks at her highest, loudest note in these novels. Sometimes it becomes an overdose for me and the mind wants to seek something light and fresh air but you cannot ignore it. It is there very much coming in different manifestations.

Recently I watched Meera Nair’s award winning film Monsoon Wedding. It subtly points out to the problem of child abuse in our country. Often the abuser is within the family. In the movie, the abuser fondles the child in an undesirable manner in the guise of love and care. Watching the movie I was reminded of The God of Small Things and the Abhilash Talkies scene where Estha is used and abused in an obnoxious manner. The experience scars the child’s psyche permanently. It is exactly these hidden and embarrassing facts that are graphically described in this literature. Hypocrisy, the paramount Indian trait, is never excused or bypassed. A Bengali story by Jagadish Gupta, although not of recent past, describes a brahmin household. The lady of the house, Shubhangi shouts at the maid about the superiority of brahmins and all that. She says that people of Radha’s caste are not even worthy of drinking the water in which, a Brahmin washes feet. Radha patiently listens to the humiliating talk. No one retorts; not even the master of the house, Shubhangi’s husband, Budhar. Shubhangi’s reign is unquestioned. In the last scene of the story the clean and serene house of Radha is described where Shubhangi’s docile husband is caressing Radha’s feet!”… Budhar gently lifted Radha’s left foot and placed it with much affection on his lap,….He then asked her: Now tell me where exactly is it hurting” (16). The spirit of this literature, particularly by women writers, is to bare all the disturbing realities of Indian life. The so-called norms of standard behaviour that are supposed to maintain the social fabric and equilibrium are given a boot. These writers powerfully voice the sexual abuse within marriage, desertion by male spouse, power equation being heavily tilted in favour of men, the treatment meted out to the girl child, the price a bold lady has to pay for her courage and so on and on. This literature has a purging effect on the reader. You really grow after reading these vehement books. All the mental chains, the supposed superiority of particular castes and clans that most Indians unfortunately still believe in, are washed out.

Novelists like Anita Desai have given a very fine, and subtle psychological dimension to the voice of women. The plight of her women is never crudely displayed nor is she dealing with wife-beating condition of the poor women etc. Her domain is the erroneous behaviour of parents, its impact on children, abnormal behavioural patterns, and so on. Even promiscuity has been garbed in such fine folds. Who can say that Nanada Kaul is a wronged lady? She is the wife of an Ex Vice-Chancellor. She has property. She is well off in every sense of the word. Where is the problem? The problem is that her husband never loved Nanda Kaul. She lived a life of hypocrisy. Her earlier existence with her spouse had been a sham, a totally fallacy. She had to bear everything ‘gracefully’ maintaining the decorum of her position. In one of her memories she remembers her husband playing badminton passionately with a lady teacher of the university. She had to feign innocence, and witness the betrayal silently. In the novels written by Indian women, wronged wives taking revenge in their own way is a regular topic, sometimes even on the verge of being clichés.

Overall, this rebellious note against the past as well as present set up of India is a welcome phenomenon. Thinking souls are questioning the present that has come out of the womb of past. Blunders of past are being underlined. Probably this is the only way through which we can think of moulding things in the right direction. Objectivity of literature and its sharpness are symptoms that there is still hope for this land. There is a chance of improvement. A society where the measure and scale of justice are personally tilted, the dissenting voice of the writer is indeed welcome. A society where every one seems to say, ‘It suits me for the present, therefore it is true and just’, these shrieking, disturbing, dissenting notes are like music to the ears of a sensitive reader.

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