S L Bhyrappa’s Avarana

“Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its history is but the history of successive intruders, who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society.”   Karl Marx 
 

S.L. Bhrappa’s latest novel ‘Avarana’ has become a bestseller. I came to know about this novel about a month ago from a Kannada website and picked a copy from the Oxford Bookshop. This book is racy reading and I could finish reading  the book in two days. I had been to the Bangalore Book Fair yesterday and I could see that Bhyrappa’s book is selling like hot cakes in the Kannada book stalls. Since its first publication in February of this year, this book has already undergone twelve reprints . This has registered record sales in the history of Kannada literature. I think the criticisms from U. R. Ananthamurthy, G.K. Govind Rao, Girish Karnad and other leftists have added to the popularity of the book. U.R. Ananthamurthy even went to the extent of proclaiming that Bhyrappa is not a novelist but just a debator. Other writer groups wanted to ban this novel on the grounds that this novel would disturb communal harmony. Vehement criticisms and personal attacks are always counter-productive to the original intent of the critic. Rushdie’s book became popular beyond all expectation after Ayatollah Kohmeni proclaimed the most famous mother of all fatwas on Satanic Verses. Rushdie himself became popular and from a fringe writer he became a mainstream one. But Bhyrappa was the most popular writer in Kannada even prior to ‘Avarana’. His novels like ‘Dhatu’, ‘Parva’, ‘Nayi Neralu’ have made a mark with the reading public. With this new novel Bhyrappa has reached the heights of popularity which no  Kannada writer has enjoyed till date.

I do feel Bhyrappa has done his homework very well on Muslim and Mughal history albiet largely from Hindutva sources and he allows some of his characters to explicitly speak against Islam. Avarna essentially means ‘Mask’ or ‘Covering’ and Bhyrappa employs this title to depict the strategy of eminent Marxist historians and intellectuals who downplay the achievement and virtues of Hindus and up the ante of Muslim achievements and egalitarianism. Bhyrappa’s reference authors are a who’s who list of Hindutva and anti Islamic writers like Sita Ram Goel, Arun Shourie, Anwar Sheik, Ibn Warraq, David Frawley and Naipaul. There are references to non-hindutva authors like Alberuni, Will Durant and a long laundry list of books by  scholars and historians of Islamic culture.

In one of his interviews Bhyrappa explained the reason for the title of this book, he had a choice between two popular ideas frequently referred in Vedanta / Buddhism, ‘Avarana’ and “Vikshepa’. ‘Avarana’ means the mask and ‘Vikshepa’ means distortion of reality like confusing a rope for a snake. Vikshepa probably would have been a better title for the novel.

I also feel that Bhryrappa has to a little extent copied the plot and strategy for the novel from the ‘Da Vinci Code’. There are many similarities in the framework of these two novels but many more differences as well. Basically there is a reinterpretation of popular history but unlike the ‘Da Vinci Code’ the reinterpretation is not so drastic. Aurangzeb is well known as a tyrant in most of the history books we study and also the razing down of temples by Muslim invaders is also well known from many sources. So Avarana is more fact than fiction as compared to the ‘Da Vinci Code’.Bhyrappa wants to attack a certain segment of left historians who try to falsify the claims that Muslims were involved in any major scale temple destruction. He also tries to destroy other sterotypes of intolerance of the Hindhu community created by the leftist, dalit, muslim and missionary scholars.

The storyline of the novel is about an inter-religious love marriage between Lakshmi and Amir. Lakshmi and Amir are students in a film institute in Pune and they align themselves with leftist / marxist ideology with a fine dressing of Hindu bashing as is common in these groups. In this school Hinduism is all about caste and superstitious practices and there is no merit to Indian history prior to the mughal rule. The marriage between lakshmi and amir is encouraged by Professor Shastri who convinces Lakshmi to marry Amir to show the world that archaic values in traditional marriages do not hold good. He also convinces her that Islam is an egalatarian religion and is more progressive than her own Hindu faith. Lakshmi comes from the Gowda caste and her father does not approve of her marriage and he ends his relationship with her. Lakshmi gets married by converting to Islam and with her new name Razia she is introduced into the actual family life of the muslims as a convert.

The stranglehold of the Muslim community leaders on Amir’s family is depicted by Bhyrappa in a true to life form. I have witnessed so many such events in many of my Muslim Friend’s families and I even know an exact incident as depicted in Avarana on how the community leaders forced the sharia on the newly married-converted hindu woman in a muslim household. It is not so easy to be a liberal Muslim and it is almost an oxymoron.

Lakshmi and her Husband meanwhile shift to another house and the couple get on with their work of directing movies on the leftist and so called progressive themes. They become well known  through the media and Lakshmi becomes a stereotyped role model  of the intellectual feminist who loses no time in abusing Hinduism, its customs and social evils. During this time she visits the ruins of Hampi and gets too see first hand the large scale destruction of idols in the Hampi ruins. She and her husband are  commisioned to direct a Movie about Hampi which tries to portray that the Temple destruction was due to the infighting among the hindus between the Shaivaites and Vaishnavaites and not due to the invasion by the Muslim Bahamani rulers.

During this period, after about twenty eight years of her marriage Lakshmi comes to know that her long estranged father is no more. She goes back to her ancestral home in the village and finds that her Father has been researching on Islam for the last few decades ever since her marriage. Her father, who was a staunch Gandhian earlier and who believed in the equality of all religions, had changed his mind towards the end of his life as a result of his research. Her father’s single-minded devotion in this study leaves a deep impression on Lakshmi. Upon reading the notes prepared by her father and his book collection, she decides to write a story on the mughal rule during the time of Aurangzeb.  Lakshmi’s story also forms a ’story within a story’ in the novel. The chapters in the novel alternates between the actual story of Lakshmi and her life and her novel on the mughal rule in Aurangzeb’s reign.

Lakshmi’s  story is about a young Hindu prince who is captured by Aurngzeb’s army during the invasion on a small Hindu kingdom by the mighty Mughal army. All the Hindu kingdom’s men of  the royal family and the army generals die fighting, The women commit ‘Jouhar’, a practice where the women jump into the blazing fire to avoid the humiliation and rape that would follow them after capture. The captured people are converted to Islam and sold as slaves and the young Hindu prince is also one of the persons who gets captured before he can commit suicide. The seventeen year old prince resigns to his fate and starts his life as a slave in Delhi for the noblemen of Aurganzeb’s court. Since the prince is good looking he is sexually abused by his owners and treated as a homosexual slave. 

After a couple of years of this humiliation he is sold to a new owner who castrates him and turns him into a  eunuch. As a eunuch he is sold to one of the Harems where he serves the wives of Moghul ministers and he finally graduates to serving Aurngzeb’s own personal Harem. Here it is noteworthy that Bhyrappa has done  substantial research in depicting the lives of eunuchs in the Mughal Harems. After many years the prince turned slave turned castrated eunuch discovers that his wife, the young princess is still alive and is living in a harem as a slave of a Mughal officer. Apparently she had escaped from the Jouhar and subsequently captured by the moghul rulers and sold as a slave in the markets in Delhi. Apart from the child she had with the prince she also has a couple of other children from her slavemaster. After the accidental meeting with his wife, the eunuch slave prince who now is a muslim and who adheres to the islamic practices by doing the Salah five times per day begins to retrospect on his life.

In order to strenghten his faith in Islam (the converts desire to prove he is more loyal than the king) the Hindu Prince turned eunuch goes all the way to Banaras to witness the destruction of the Vishwanath temple by Aurangzeb’s army. During this visit he  encounters a sanyasi  on the banks of the Ganga river with whom he talks about the theology of both the religions and he is quite surprised to know some eminent aspects of the Hindu relegion and culture. All these impressions leave a mark in his mind and he decides to escape from the Moghul kingdom and join the ranks of the Maratha ruler Shivaji, also called ‘the mountain rat’ by the Moghuls. Shivaji’s story is also depicted in the novel, especially his confrontation with Aurangzeb and his generals and his dramatic escape from the prison of Aurangzeb. Shivaji provides hope to the enslaved Hindus who are entrapped with the might of Islamic rules and strictures like the ‘Jezzia Tax’. The story of the Hindu prince ends here.

Lakshmi spends about five years researching her father’s book collection and writing this novel. Also her son who is now working in Saudi Arabia as an engineer visits her home and she is shocked to discover that he is converted into radical Islam of the Wahabbi school. The progressive views of his mother has no impression on him. He has contempt for the leftist progressive ideology his parents subscribe to and much more contempt towards the pagan Hindu religion from his matriarchial side. However he is also disturbed by the fact that during the time when his mother was writing the book in the village his father Amir has remarried a twenty five year old woman, a woman much younger in age than his own son.

In this novel Lakshmi’s father and her community come out as more liberal and open to change and they are more accepting of modern values as compared to her muslim husband Amir’s household. 

Towards the last part of the novel. Lakshmi is invited to a seminar on inter religious dialogue and history in Delhi.  After being away from the social scene for five years she attends this Seminar which is chaired by Professor Shastri. As usual the seminar starts with the doublespeak of the marxist intellectuals. At some point in the seminar Lakshmi becomes enraged and starts her debate on indian history much to the discomfort of the handpicked invitees of this seminar. Her points of view are completely ignored in the seminar media broadcasts and Lakshmi returns to her village. Later there  is a decision taken by the government to ban her Novel and also arrest her on the grounds of disturbing communal harmony. Her husband, who has now started admiring her confidence and conviction  comes to her rescue. Amir helps lakshmi to escape from the clutches of the police warrant and he takes her back to Bangalore where she decides to write the list of the reference authors who have formed the basis for her Novel. This is the laundry list of authors on Islam which Bhyrappa lists in the novel. And Lakshmi makes it clear that if they have to ban this Novel, then they would have to ban all the reference novels she has used in her novel. Bhyrappa has devised a clever ploy within the novel to deflate any attempts to ban his own novel.

The depiction of professor Shastri, the socialist professor has stirred quite a controversy. Some say Shastri resembles U.R. Ananthamurthy and that was the reason why URA came out so strongly against this novel.  Shastri is the Oxford educated indian intellectual with his typical marxist attire and beard. He is born a brahmin and rejects his culture and is very vocal about this. He is highly intellectual, informed and is also very manipulative. He uses his influence to get  awards from the government and get his continous stream of foreign lecture tours sanctioned. He is married to a British catholic woman and he is not able to influence his catholic wife to his marxist secular ideology. He is also not able to influence his daughter who is close to her mother and who like her mother subscribes to the  roman catholic beleifs of sin and eternal damnation.  Professor Shastri’s son also owns  an international software firm in bangalore and lives with his punjabi wife.  His son secures many favours from the government through his father’s influence and wants to build the next Infosys. His punjabi wife is a devout hindu who celebrates the hindu rituals and festivals like Karwa Chaut, Diwali and she visits the tirupathi temple quite often. Shastri’s ideology of atheism does not have any influence even on his own family.

There have been innumerable novels and movies maligning the bad practices of Hindus. Mainly brahmins, others are all considered progressive by virtue of their birth. We have had samskaras, phaniyamma and many many more such novels and movies which have become so sedate and boring now.  The whole genre of kannada literature called ‘Bandaya Sahitya’ targetted the Hindu community in general and Brahmin’s in particular.  But when the same artistic license is employed against the Muslim community all hell breaks loose. If we just analyze the community of Hindus and Muslims now, how many brahmin widows shave their head. Where are those arcane practices of Brahmins which are so stereotyed upon the community. Where is the practice of Untouchability in urban settings. Hinduism has had several reform movements from basavanna, bhakti movements, Raja Ram mohan roy and many others wheras reformist movements are very hard to find in religions like Islam which have all their rules cannonized forever. In a way ‘Avarana’ brings about that much needed balance. Overall I feel that Avarana has come at an appropriate time and apart from the issues it has addressed it has primarily increased the readership of Kannada books.  So hats off to S.L.Bhrappa.