Loving the child you didn't expect

When we dream of love and a family, we dream of children like ourselves - bright and happy, who will conquer the world and who will bring joy to our lives. What happens when the child you had dreamed about, comes out very different from your expectations?

This is the premise of Andrew Solomon's wonderful book "Far from the tree: Parents, children and the search for identity" that touches with great empathy on the journeys of a group of "different" children and their parents to reach a surprising conclusion - difficult and unexpected journeys have their own joys.

Introduction

Diversity is an indivisible part of our lives - each of us is unique, even the similar-looking twins. Yet that diversity is within some undefined limits - the seed of each plant, would come up a unique and a different tree, but it would be still like its parent plant - the seed will not fall too "far from the tree." But what happens when the seed does fall too far and the extent of diversity is too big to be ignored?

With about 650 pages of stories exploring this theme of parents and their unexpectedly diverse children (and an equal number of pages with notes and references), Solomon's book did seem a daunting tome when I began reading it. However, soon I was lost in it, often thinking of events and people from my own life and my extended family, in a new way. The book tells mainly American stories, with only a few persons from Britain or Rwanda. Yet, I could feel and share the emotional journeys of the people described in it, because even though there are social and cultural differences from the persons in other countries, the essential human emotions are still the same.

Themes of the book

The book starts and ends with two personal chapters - "Son" and "Father" - these explore the relationships between "diverse" children and their parents with a special reference to Solomon's own life, as a gay person who suffered through depression and his decision to have children while he was writing this book. These two chapters are the emotional anchoring of the book.

In between those two chapters, there are six chapters dealing with disabilities - deaf, dwarfs, down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia and other disabilities. All these chapters are about conditions that the society and the parents usually look at as "negatives". The next, chapter VIII, is about a diversity that most of us would imagine as "positive" - the child prodigies.

Then there are three more areas of "negativity" - children born of rape of their mothers, children who end up in the world of crime and children who feel imprisoned in wrong bodies - the transgender persons.

On each theme, the book tells stories - each story is told from different point of views of the persons involved in it - persons themselves, their parents, their siblings, their friends, etc. In between the stories are scattered some reflections and information about some of the key issues regarding the different dilemmas that those people face.

For example in the chapter on dwarfs, there are stories of "little people" and in between the stories, you can understand about organisations of little people, the different names they prefer to be called, their dilemmas about having children like themselves or "normal" children, how looking at them individually we tend to focus on their shortness while when they are together as a group, we can see them as individuals, the different kinds of dwarfing conditions, the long suffering for getting "elongation operations", etc.

This way of telling stories is like building a story-pyramid, where each stone shows a different facet. In the end you realize that each diversity is made of countless diversities, each is similar to others and yet unique, and that you can't take for granted anything because as human beings, we continue to surprise ourselves and others, not just with prejudice and ignorance, but also with generosity and dedication.

Comments

It was a long time since I had read a book that touched me so deeply and I would like to thank Solomon for that. Diversity surrounded me since childhood and probably that is true of everyone else as well.

Diversity raises barriers around you, I had experienced it as an immigrant in Italy - you are different from others, and in many different and subtle ways, people react differently to you. I had had long discussions about the nature of those barriers with a friend who uses a wheel chair and negotiates different kinds of barriers all the time. As a child, I had grown up with two of my aunts being "diverse" - one because she was born with a few fingers missing in a hand, and another who had small pox as a baby and carried the signs of that infection on her face. Growing up, I had seen how we all behaved differently with the deaf brother of a close friend. A few years later, first one of my school friends and then another aunt, both had had children with Down's syndrome.

I chose to work in the area of disability and community-based rehabilitation. Often I have also interviewed persons with disabilities and their families. Many of the issues about which Solomon has written in the book, were not new to me. Yet, I found the book illuminating because it went much deeper and had a more profound connection with people it talks about. I must have read countless books, articles and journals on the issue of disability, but still Solomon's book gave me new understandings.

So if you work with development issues or in a community programme, even if not specifically in a disability related programme, read this book. If you are a health professional, don't miss it. Even as human beings, I think that everyone should read it. I hope that it will be translated into other languages.

Among all the different kinds of diversities Solomon writes about, for me the most difficult part was reading about the severely autistic persons. Not to be acknowledged, not to receive even a tiny smile or a flicker of recognition in the eyes - I think that I will find that the toughest thing to bear. However, there are different stories in the book that show that when we become familiar with a person and his/her condition, we can deal with it. It is the unknown, the "other" that makes us afraid.

Solomon writes very well, his empathy makes you understand people's feelings, fears and pains, but it is only in the chapter on Prodigy, that I could appreciate the poetic beauty of his words.

For example in the story of Zhenya (Evgeny Kissin) Solomon gives a vivid understanding about his early life in a state-controlled country with his words, "The Kissins lived the life of the Soviet Jewish intelligentsia: physically uncomfortable, constantly frustrating, the pleasures of the mind partially filling in for ordinary discomforts of the flesh and ideology’s constant intrusions on the spirit."

Or, this description of Zhenya that brings him alive so beautifully, "Zhenya is too tall and too thin, with a strangely large head, enormous brown eyes, pale skin, and a mop of crazy brown hair in which you could mislay something. The overall effect is slightly gangly, and his bearing combines the tense and the beatific. Watching Zhenya sit down at the piano is like seeing a lamp plugged in: decorative though it may have seemed, only then does its real use become apparent. You feel less that he is pouring energy into the instrument than that he is receiving energy from it. “I don’t know if I would be able to live if I suddenly became unable to play,” he said. Zhenya plays as though it were a moral act that could redeem the world."

Limits of the book

In terms of the stories that Solomon presents, I think that there is an inherent bias - people who did not want to care for their "problematic" children, for whatever reason, are under-represented in this book. I think that at one level our societies ignore or actively discriminate against "different" families, but at another level, people who feel that they can't take care of their children and give them up to institutions or to foster care, are also seen negatively. We expect people to "look after whatever God has given them, even if it is a difficult task!" And, thus I think that for such people, it is very hard to overcome feelings of being judged and probably feelings of guilt, so they do not share their stories in this book.

In the Indian context (and in other developing countries), often there are no institutions or foster care where you can "give up" such children. I am sure that communities have ways of "dealing" with this issue. Thus in my work, often I did meet persons who have chosen to take care of their "different" children, but there was no way for me to meet those had made other choices. I am saying this without any intention of judging others - for poor families that struggle to survive, there are not many choices and none may be easy.

The book explains that internet has given new opportunities for "diverse" people to find others like them and to create "communities". I wonder if through internet there are groups of parents who had chosen to give away their disabled children and can find solace and understanding with each other. Their stories remain largely unknown.

I also felt not completely convinced about the chapter on the prodigies in this book. I could understand the sense of alienation of these persons and their families and the sense of their diversity, and yet, this chapter is very different from all other chapters in the book. Solomon focuses on musical prodigies and the chapter is almost halfway in the book - it comes as a relief because, for once he is not talking just about pains and difficulties, but also about common joy, success and pleasure.

Conclusions

I think that if there is only one book from 2013 that you can read, then it should be Andrew Solomon's "Far from the tree". Not just because it talks of people who face enormous challenges and find joy in those challenges. But because it makes you appreciate and understand the emotional anchors of your life and how important are the love and affection of people in our lives.

You can read more about this book and get a glimpse of many of its stories on the book's webpage. The two images used for this post are from this same webpage.

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Ancient Indian History in Puranas

Ancient Indians had written tomes on themes like grammar, yoga, medicine and sexuality. Yet, they did not leave any significant text about ancient history. This post is about notions of history in old Sanskrit texts called Puranas (पुराण). It is based on a 1959 book by Rangey Raghav.

The Puranic stories can also be analysed to understand many aspects of ancient Indian life such as the role of women in their society, relationships of dominant groups with other ethnic groups and their caste relationships especially in terms of subjugation of shudra caste groups. However, in this post, my focus is on ancient history of India.

Introduction

Rangey Raghav, originally from Andhra Pradesh, was only 39 years old when he had died in 1962. In his short life he had written about 25 Hindi books including a novel on the Indus valley civilization ("Murdoon ka tila" - or the "Mound of the dead") in 1948.

His book "Pracheen Brahmin Kahaniyan" (Ancient Brahmin Tales) was published by Kitab Mahel publishers in Allahabad in 1959. It was one of my favourite childhood books. Years later, when we were forced to give away the collection of our Hindi books for lack of space, I had kept this book with me.

In this book, based upon Puranas, Rangey Raghav had described the major ancient stories. Recently, I read this book again after decades and it made me reflect on the nature of ancient historical understandings. This post shares some of those reflections.

Puranas

Ancient Indian thoughts, philosophy and understanding of the world, dating back to about 2500-500 BC, was distributed mainly in three kinds of texts - Vedas, Upanishads and Puranas.

According to Wikipedia, there are 19 Puranas and these can be classified into 3 groups depending upon the main deity (Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva) to whom they are dedicated. The oldest Puranas like Linga purana, Kurma purana, Vamana purana and Brahmand purana date back to about 900 to 800 BC.  Before that period, India had oral traditions of transmitting knowledge and thus, these stories probably go back to earlier times.

The Puranas are supposed to provide five kinds of stories - about the creation of the universe, its recreation after destruction, the genealogies of gods and sages, histories of major dynasties of rulers and the Manavantaras (periods of the first human beings).

Stories in "Pracheen Brahmin Kahaniyan"

Raghav's book has 71 stories. They start with the story of creation of the planets and the first human being called Vaivasvat Manu. They touch on some of the well known mythological stories such as Prahlad and Narsimha, the truth-speaking king Harishchandra, Bhagirath and the descent of river Ganges. The last 25 stories of this book relate to Mahabharata.

Some of the stories in this book, hardly have any story and are mainly lists of descendants of illustrious kings or gods.

Sun and Consciousness - Surya and Sanghya story

The story of Surya and his wife Sanghya is one of the most beautiful story in this book. It is about the creation of the universe. I feel that in symbolic terms, this story explains parts of the creation in a way which is surprisingly close to our scientific understanding today.

In this story, Sanghya (Consciousness) is the daughter of Vishwakarma (literally "creator of the world" or Brahma) and is married to Surya (Sun). Sanghya could not look at her husband because his light was very strong so when he came near her, she closed her eyes. Surya was angry with his wife because he thought she did not like him. They had 2 sons (Vaivasvat and Yama) and a daughter, Yamuna. Unable to stay near her husband, one day Sanghya created a body double (Chaya or Shadow) and went back to her father's house.

Surya had two sons and a daughter with Chaya, before he found out that the woman living with him was not his wife but her body double. He went to look for his wife. When he understood why Sanghya had left him, he asked Vishwakarma to help in reducing his light by dividing him in 16 parts. One of the parts was still Surya, while other 15 parts were used to create planets and other godly objects. As his light was reduced, Sanghya could finally live with him.

Sanghya's eldest son, Vaivasvat Manu was the 7th Manu. Her second son, Yama, was the god of death. Her daughter, Yamuna was the river. Her other two sons, Ashwini Kumar, were doctors of the gods.

Chaya's first son Sampurnik, was the 8th Manu. Her second son, Shanichar became the planet Shani (Saturn). Her daughter Tapati gave rise to the Kuru dynasty.

The basic idea of this story that consciousness could not live with the Sun because he had too much light (and heat) and could only live with him, when he lost part of that light by making different planets, I find it fascinating.

Organisation of human societies in Purana stories

The Puranas stories in the book present an organisational structure of gods-and-humans society, though they do not explain their different roles and responsibilities. These structures include -

• Manu - The time was organised in Manavantars (epochs of Manu) and each epoch had its own Manu or the first man - Autam was the 3rd Manu (Manu of the 3rd epoch of Manvantaras); Anand, a Rakshas, was 6th Manu and was also known as Chakshus; Vaivasvat was the 7th Manu; Sampurnik was the 8th Manu; Sanamik, son of Daksha, was the 9th Manu; Brahmasavarini was the 10th Manu; Dharmasavarini son of Dhanura was the 11th Manu; Savarini, son of Rudra, was the 12th Manu; Rochya was the 13th Manu; Bhosya, son of Bhuti muni was the 14th Manu; some other Manus mentioned in the book include Swayambhu manu (son of Brahma), Tamas and Raiwat. All the Manus or the first men, had male names. Different stories mention the names of kings during the period of the Manus, thus, "Manu" did not mean a king. What was their role in the society is not clear.
• Each story about a Manu mentions some of his office-bearers - some Devagana (literally "Persons of gods" or minor gods), an Indra (lord of the gods), and a Sapta-Rishi (literally the "seven sages"). Stories also provide names of the children of each Manu. The title of Manu does not seem to be hereditary. Persons in the roles of Devagana, Indra and Sapta-Rishi seem to be nominations. For example, a person could become Indra because of he was "being good", "being courageous" or because "he did 100 yagnas".
• The stories mention genealogies of kings' families or sometimes sages' families. Usually the genelogies in this book are limited to the names of first sons. Sometimes names of daughters are mentioned if their children play an important role as future kings. For example, the story of the genealogy of Swayambhu Manu starts by saying that Brahma created the gods, mountains, etc. and then created 9 humans - Bhrigu, Pulsatya, Pulah, Kritu, Angira, Marichi, Daksh, Atri and Vashishth. Then Rudra was born from Brahma's anger. Then he made ordinary human beings, both men and women, of different colours and shapes. Finally Swayambhu Manu was born, who was appointed by Brahma to be the protector of people. Manu was married to Shatrupa (literally "a hundred forms") and they had 2 sons (Priyavrat and Uttanpad) and 2 daughters (Akuti and Prasuti).

Considerations about understanding history from Puranas stories

It is difficult to make a chronological or historical sense of events from the Puranas stories. The stories mix actual people, especially kings and warriors, with persons who occupied mythological-sounding positions and with mythical figures.

For example, the word, Sapta-Rishi is used for the seven stars that form Ursa Major. Using this term for a set of persons in Puranas stories can mean that the kings or Manu were suppose to have a group of seven sages to advice them or to oversee the religious rites. Thus, the Sapta-Rishi of these stories were not stars, but persons who received a title.

On the other hand, the stories of Surya, Yama, Yamuna along with children of Vaivasvat Manu, seem to be creation myths and not the history of actual persons.

Ancient Indians used logic and had the capacity to categorize and analyse knowledge. Thus, Panini could work on Sanskrit grammar in a way that is understandable to linguistic experts even today. Or Vatsyayan could work on the theme of sexuality, that can be understood scientifically even today. Even esoteric subjects like meditation, yoga and the nature of human soul, were looked at in logical terms, analysed and discussed. Then, why those ancient Indians, did not use that kind of logic for writing history? Why did they make a mish-mash of actual events with mythological stories?

Perhaps for ancient Indians, the worlds of gods and spirits were as real as their daily physical world, because that was the only way they could make a sense out of the events? Thus their ideas of history were impossible to separate from these fantasy worlds? Perhaps it had something to do with Indian concept of time as being cyclical (and not linear), where worlds were created and destroyed in cycles,and thus history was understood differently?

Could Indian ideas about time have been influenced by the fact that for ordinary persons, there was no concept of short time periods like weeks but rather the time was measured in terms of religious festivals linked to astrology, moon and planets?

Looking at the names of the week-days in Hindi, these seem to be translations from English or Latin, and thus were not indigenous to India. The importance of "week" arose among Jews who had fixed one day of Sabbath (Saturday) for not working and for prayers. Christianity, to distinguish itself from the Jews, selected Sunday as its Sabbath day, while Muslims, who came next, chose Friday as their weekly prayer day.

Did this kind of weekly organisation of time influence the development of human thinking about linear time in the middle east and then in countries following Abrahmic religions? Similar understanding of linear time came later to India with persons coming from Middle-east and thus, we did not develop a linear understanding of time and documenting of history till relatively recently?

I do not know if the writings of later Indian writers like Kalidasa (about 5 century AD) reflect a linear understanding of history. Normally understanding of ancient history is a triangulation of findings from archaeological excavations, paintings/art and ancient texts. Puranas do not seem to be reliable chronicles of history. So, which were the first indigenous Indian texts about history?

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Tulsi Das: Retelling Ramayana

Ramayana (Story of Rama) is an ancient Indian tale about prince Rama. Centuries ago, the tale of Ramayana had spread from India to the neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. In the sixteenth century, Tulsi Das rewrote Ramayana as "Ram Charit Manas" in Avadhi language (close to Hindi language). Till that time, the most well known version of Ramayana in India was in Sanskrit, written by Valmiki. Thus Tulsi Das is credited with making the sacred text accessible to a large number of persons in India, because Awadhi is a language of common people while the knowledge of Sanskrit is limited to a few.

Tulsi Das (1554 - 1644), is credited with different literary works in Awadhi and Brajbhasha variations of Hindi. A contemporary of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), his influence on large parts of India has been enormous, but unlike Shakespeare, Tulsi's historical figure and his literary abilities have largely been ignored by academics in India and internationally. In recent years, Tulsi's figure has been "taken over" by some conservative Hindu groups, who give a selective interpretation of his works that supports specific political and socio-religious ideologies.

This article reviews “Manas ka Hans” a bio-fiction about Tulsi Das, written by Hindi author Amrit Lal Nagar in 1972.

INACCESSIBILITY OF RELIGIOUS TEXTS

A few years ago, while visiting Mongolia I had started thinking about the way different religions use languages across the world, to ensure that sacred texts are not understood by majority of their followers. We were in the Gandam Buddhist monastery in Ulaan Bataar and I had asked the person accompanying me, to tell me about the words written on a giant bell in the temple courtyard.

“I can’t tell you what it says, because the monks use Tibetan language for all their prayers!” he had told me. Buddhism had come to Mongolia through the Tibetan monks and even today in their temples their prayers continue to be in Tibetan.

I had heard something similar in Vietnam, where the temples often have their prayers in Chinese and not in Vietnamese.

In Catholic churches around the world, the mass was celebrated in Latin till some decades ago. It is relatively recently that the Bible has been translated to languages like Malayalam (some years ago I had met Fr Sebastian, who had done this translation).

In India, majority of Hindu prayers for specific religious rites, are in Sanskrit. Thus, Tulsi’s "Ram Charit Manas" played a fundamental role in making Ramayana accessible to common persons. Because of this, many persons consider him as a saint and call him Sant Tulsi Das or Acharya Tulsi Das.

HISTORICAL FIGURE OF TULSI DAS

If you look for information about Tulsi Das on internet, you will mostly find mythical stories - about his being an incarnation of Valmiki, his miracles and his meetings with ghosts and gods such as Hanuman and Ram.

He was born around the time Mughal emperor Hamayun had returned to India in 1554 AD. Tulsi saw the reigns of three more Mughal emperors during his life time - Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. He was a writer and a poet during those reigns. Yet analysis of his historical figure are few.

In recent years, some persons have worked on collecting historical information about Tulsi Das. For example, some years ago Anshu Tandon had presented a play called "Jo chaho Ujiyyar" focusing on Tulsi's struggles as a Hindu reformer. Excerpts of this play (in Hindi) are available on Youtube. Still much more can and should be done to understand the historical figure of Tulsi Das. (Below a scene from"Jo chaho ujjiyar" play)

BIOGRAPHIES OF GOSWAMI TULSI DAS

According to Amrit Lal Nagar in his introduction in the book “Manas ke Hans”, there are five biographies of Tulsi Das written by persons who were his followers - Raghubar Das, Beni Madhav Das, Krishna Dutt Mishra, Avinash Rai and Sant Tulsi saheb. However, Nagar explains that according to expert academics, none of these biographies is accurate,and they differ from each other about significant events in Tulsi Das' life.

For writing "Manas ke hans", Nagar looked at these biographies, as well as, looked at other oral traditions and works of academics on Tulsi Das. He also did a critical reading and analysis of Tulsi Das's own writings. He acknowledges that the information he found was not complete and thus his book is a bio-fiction rather than a biography.

Nagar mentions two additional important sources of information, " Among others, I want to make a loving mention of friend late Rudra Kashikey (Pen name of Shiv Prasad Mishra) who could not complete “Rambola bole”. Rudra ji was a walking encyclopedia of Kashi. Late Dr Rangey Raghav had also expressed his ideas about Tulsi Das through his work “Ratna ki baat".

TULSI DAS'S LIFE HISTORY FROM "MANAS KA HANS"

The book is written in flashbacks from the point of view of an old Tulsi Das telling his story to his followers.

Context: In 1540, Hamayun had to leave India after losing the war to the forces of Sher Shah Suri. Over the next 12 years, Sher Shah was followed on Delhi's throne by Islam Khan and Adil Khan. In 1554 when Tulsi Das was born in Vikrampur, Hamayun was engaged in the war with the Pathan forces of Adil Shah.

Childhood: Tulsi's mother Hulsi died while giving birth to him. His father Pandit Atma Ram prepared his son's horoscope and found that his son had an unfortunate mix of planets in his birth chart and asked the child to be given away.

Muniya, a shudra ("low caste") servant in the home of Atma Ram, took the baby across the river to her mother-in-law Parvati amma, a beggar. Soon after, Mughal forces destroyed Vikrampur and Pandit Atma Ram died childless after some years. Parvati amma named the child Rambola, and he grew up as a singing beggar, who walked the village streets asking for alms and singing prayer songs (bhajans) of poet saints like Surdas, Kabir and Mira. When Rambola was five years old, Parvati amma died and Rambola, tormented by the Brahmins of the area, ran away to Sukar, at the junction of Ghagra and Saryu rivers.

At Sukar, Rambola was taken as a disciple by Swami Narhari, who took him to Ayodhya for his religious initiation and thus Rambola became Tulsi Das.

Young Tulsi: Tulsi studied with Guru Shesh ji Maharaj in Varanasi and received the title of Shastri. During this period, he composed "Hanuman Chalisa" (Prayer to Hanuman) to overcome his fear towards the evil spirits (bhoot-pichash) and became famous for his singing of religious texts and compositions of prayers.

He journeyed as a rich young Brahmin man, to the place where once his birth-village Vikrampur had stood, and there he built his new family home and a temple. His fame as a singer and a poet brought back many other persons who had lived in that area in the past and knew his family. Thus a new village called Rajapur (named after Tulsi's friend Raja Bhagat) came around his house.

Marriage: Raja convinced Tulsi Das to visit Pathak maharaj, an old friend of his late father, pandit Atma Ram. Pathak had no sons, and wanted a learned husband for his daughter Ratnabala, so that he could leave his valuable book collection to his son in law. Pathak asked Tulsi to marry his daughter and finally Tulsidas agreed.

Tulsi fell in love with his wife and together they had a son Tarapati. For earning livelihood, Tulsi Das decided to go to work in Varanasi, while his wife went to stay at her father’s home. After a few months, Tulsi Das went to see his wife. During this visit, Ratna said to him that he did not have self-control and that he could not wait for sex.

Renouncing of marriage: Hurt by his wife’s words, Tulsi Das left home that night and went to Ayodhya. For different months he wandered around as a beggar and did occasional work - including work as an accountant in a math (Abbey of Hindu monks) for some time. In this period, he travelled in different cities of the region between Ayodhya, Varanasi and Chitrakoot. For a period he was responsible for a gaushala (cow home) in Varanasi, and thus earned the title of Goswami or Gosain.

Full of remorse, Ratna went to see her husband to ask him to come home, but Tulsi Das was firm that he had renounced his household duties, he was now a Brahmachari (celibate) and that he would not go back to married life. Their son Tarapati died due to small pox. Thus, Ratna lived alone in their house in Rajapur.

Writer Tulsi Das: Tulsi Das on the other hand, continued his writing of prayer-poems and retelling of "Ram Charit Manas", the story of Ramayana. Other Brahmins of Varanasi felt that making the sacred book accessible to general public was against the scriptures and thus started different campaigns against him. However, with popular support, Tulsi Das managed to thwart their machinations. Called “mahatma” (Great spirit) by general public for his literary works and for his emotional singing of prayers, Tulsi Das died in Varanasi at the age of ninety years.

In the book Tulsi’s faith in the figure of Ram constantly moves between the life and stories of Ram as the God incarnate and Ram as the symbol of a formless infinite God.

VIEWS OF TULSI DAS ABOUT CASTE SYSTEM

It must have been painful for the child Tulsi to understand that his father had preferred to believe in the stars and had abandoned him. Perhaps that was the reason, why as a grown up young man, he went back to his old village and built his home there, as a message to his father that he was not unlucky and that he had managed to accumulate enough wealth to build himself a house?

How much of those early experiences of rejection from his father and his life as a child-beggar  searching for an identity and security, influenced his later decisions to renounce married life and to fight with Brahmins?

I felt that his early years as a child growing up in a "low-caste" shudra home and his difficulties at different periods of life with the Brahmins in Ayodhya and Varanasi, should have given him an understanding and a feeling of solidarity about the oppression and marginalization faced by persons who are seen as inferior in the caste hierarchy.

At the same time, I had read other criticisms about Tulsi Das. For example, a line from Ram Charit Manas "Dhol Ganwar Shudra Pashu Nari, Sakal Tadan ke Adhikari" (Drums, the illiterate, lower caste, animals and women, all need to be beaten to make them work), is often quoted to explain Tulsi Das's views on castes and women.

Thus, while reading "Manas ke Hans" I was curious to read about Tulsi's socio-religious views. Since the book is a bio-fiction, we cannot say that these were really the views of Tulsi Das but these can be considered as the understanding of the writer Amrit Lal Nagar about Tulsi Das. In the introduction to the book, Nagar explains how he wrote it:

"Before writing this novel, I read with particolar care "Kavitavali" and "Vinaypatrika". Vinaypatrika contains different invaluable moments about inner conflicts of Tulsi, and thus I thought it appropriate to build the psychological framework of Tulsi on their basis. Even about the psychological background to his writing of "Ram Charit Manas", I found help in "Patrika". Some details about Tulsi's life can be found especially in Kavitavali and Hanumanvahak and occasionally in "Dohavali" and "Geetavali". From the innumerable oral-stories that are so popular about Gosain ji, I have included those that could fit in with this psychological framework..." 

In the book, Nagar's Tulsi answers these accusations about his being a casteist and being against the women by explaining, "Ram Charit Manas is a story and in the story, different characters have different beliefs. If you take the beliefs of any of those characters and say that this is Tulsi Das' belief, then it is wrong. You can also find some other character in the story who has completely opposite belief." Thus Nagar felt that it was manipulative to quote of a line from Ram Charit Manas as a justification for characterizing the personal views of Tulsi Das.

The book also has an episode where Tulsi helps a hungry chamar (one of the "untouchable" castes) man who is accused of killing a Brahmin and gives him food, going against the Brahmins of the city. In this episode, Tulsi justifies the killing of the Brahmin because "he was cruel and did not behave as a Brahmin." (p. 319-20)

The book also has different references to poet-saints of his time - there is a small episode (p. 179) about young Tulsi's meeting with eighty-five year old Surdas in Mathura and another episode about his meeting with Rahim (p. 364). The book mentions some disagreements between Tulsi and the followers of Kabir, though Tulsi expresses respect for Kabir's ideas (p. 325). As these poet saints were reformists and against the caste oppression, we can see that Nagar's Tulsi Das was more humane and progressive figure.

TULSI DAS, MUSLIMS AND BABRI MOSQUE

Babur had come to India in 1526 and he had died in 1530. Thus building of Babri mosque at the site of Ram Janamabhumi (birth place) had occurred a couple of decades before Tulsi Das' birth. He had lived through the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Though the book was written in 1972, I was also curious to know about how Nagar has depicted Tulsi Das' relations with Muslims and if he had written about the Babri mosque controversy, that had inflamed opinions in India in 1992 when the mosque was demolished by some Hindu groups.

In the book Nagar depicts the UP villages as places where Hindu and Muslim communities have been living together in close relationships. Many episodes of the book located in Tulsi's native village Rajapur, have different Muslim characters, shown as Tulsi Das's close friends and neighbors. For example, in the book, a Muslim neighbor, Bakridi baba, born a couple of days before Tulsi, tells the story of Tulsi's birth and his banishment to Parvati Amma's village. They also come to him for his advice about stars and future foretelling.

There are different episodes in the book where Nagar mentions Babri mosque. Here are some examples:

After a pause Medha Bhagat said, "Recently I was in Ayodhaya. There, where after destroying the holy temple of the birthplace, king Babar has built a holy mosque. Nearby, on a hillock I met a young man [Tulsi Das], lost in Rama's love... from morning till sundown, sitting behind a tree, he kept on gazing at the mosque. Sometimes he laughed, sometimes cried, and sometimes like a yogi he became lost in meditation .." (p. 135)

[A disciple asked to Tulsi] "After leaving the abbey, where did you go?" "I stayed in Ayodhaya, where else could I go? I begged for food and in the night, I slept outside the mosque together with other fakirs .." (p. 283)

One day he went to the Babri mosque that was built at the site of Rama's birth place. A Sufi saint was reading the verses of Mohammed Jayasi to the soldiers and the public. Written in dohe and chaupai (two and four lines verses), that divine love poem was so beautiful that even Tulsi lost himself in its words. (p. 294)

The date of Ramanavami (Rama's birth date) was close. A lot of movement had started in Ayodhaya because of it. Ever since, they had destroyed the birthplace temple and built the mosque in its place, since then followers of Rama could not enter the place to pray to their lord. Everywhere in India, the holy day of Ramanavami brings joy but in Ayodhaya, this day comes on the sharp edge of a sword... the area of Rama birthplace is made wet with the blood of martyrs every year... thus the ruler prohibit any public telling of the Rama's story.. the followers celebrate the day hidden in their homes .. Tulsi felt these things in his heart. In Rama's birthplace, Rama's story cannot be told was an unacceptable injustice for Tulsi. .. Everyday around mid-day he always went towards the Babri mosque. Behind the mosque, a short distance away, there was an old hillock. Tulsi used to sit on that hillock in such a way so that he could see the mosque built on the birthplace. For long time he sat there. He was friends with Muslim fakirs who sat in front of the mosque. (p. 295)

[When Tulsi was not allowed to sit behind the mosque:] "Lord Rama, you are my witness that I have never thought anything bad about this mosque. A place of worship remains worthy of worship even in this form. Even now, it is a place where people pray in front of the infinite formless supreme consciousness. When I had come away from Ramanujiya abbey, I used to come to sleep here. I was friends with these same persons, but then I was also seen as a fakir but now I am seen as a Hindu. Rama, please come back to stop this injustice." (p. 296)

Around mid-day, the drummers announced in different parts of Ayodhaya .. the government of emperor Akbar had sent orders from Delhi that in the courtyard inside the Babri mosque, people can make a platform for the worship of Rama. .. Tulsi was very happy. (p. 298)

[While Tulsi was writing Ram Charit Manas] Ever since the platform for worshiping Rama was built in the mosque and people could visit it, the people of Ayodhaya were happier. The soldiers of the mosque behaved less harshly. The anger between Hindus and Muslims had reduced. Even though some conservative Muslims were against this decision of Akbar, but they did not have any power. Tulsidas, every day, before starting writing, used to visit the Rama's statue on the platform inside the mosque. (p. 301)

Thus, Tulsi's views about Babri mosque in Nagar's book ask for the possibility of praying to Ram but they are also about living in harmony and friendship with Muslims and respecting the mosque. Nagar's Tulsi is happy to worship Rama in the courtyard of the mosque and looks at it as a place of the worship to the "infinite formless God".

CONCLUSIONS

Tulsidas was a historical figure whose name has been familiar, not just to a lot of Hindus, but to most Indians. He had played an important role in simplifying the story of Rama and making it understandable to the common public.

He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare. Like the influence of Shakespeare on the English literature, Tulsi Das' literary works have had an enormous influence in India. However, while Shakespeare's works have been the subjects of an enormous amount of studies and analysis, Tulsi Das did not receive much academic attention. In the recent decades, there has been some attention towards Tulsi Das' work but often it is in mythological terms rather than historical. It also tends to make a manipulative use of his works to justify specific political and religious ideologies that support conservative Hindu worldviews.

However, the biography of Tulsi Das written by Amrit Lal Nagar, presents him as a more humane and progressive thinking, creative and mystic person, who was shaped by his early life experiences of marginalization and exclusion. In the book he comes through as a person of his times. At the same time, he is someone, who was also linked to some of the key progressive figures of those times.

Note: I have translated from Hindi the different passages from the Book quoted in this article. I have tried to remain faithful to the sense of the phrases rather than doing literal translation.

***

About language

I read an article on Chimurenga Chronicle about "Somali invasion of Nairobi" written by a Kenyan writer called Parselelo Kantai, and I was struck by the wonderful way that he describes the "Nairobi English" of a woman:

"For a people for whom ‘negative ethnicity’, the newspaper euphemism for the prevailing ethnic rancour that had shredded the nation into a farcical edifice of a thousand cuts, ‘othering’ the Somalis restored a sense of collective indignation. Hate and rancour were the only things holding us together…

I was surprised at her vehemence. She had always talked in a language that irritated me – the exultant language of the reaspora bubble in leafy-suburb Nairobi. It was a velvety, arriviste Nairobi English, full of possibilities and faux tourist innocence. It was an insider language that walked on water, saw no evil, advertised its privilege with cocktail kisses, intimate nods, bursts of happy laughter. It was used to suggest non-contamination, that one’s head was above the loud sucking sounds of this place, the descent into naked Nairobi calculations, pettiness, desperation. It was not the other thing: that guarded edge in your voice that revealed a loss of independence and optimism, that now your diaspora dollars were running dangerously low and you had recently turned a page in your contact book, and made the call to a powerful uncle for a job, a contract, a deal.

But Kileleshwa, an old mzungu suburb whose civil servant houses were being transformed into apartments for the yuppy beneficiaries of the Kibaki-era economic boom and the returning Western diaspora, exiled for two decades by Moi repression, was now under siege. There was no velvet to couch this new fear..."

Isn't it beautiful?

***

Ancient world history in Indian scriptures - Historical events

This is the third (last) part of an essay on depiction of world and Indian histories in the famous Hindi writer Acharya Chatur Sen’s book Vayam Rakshamah. The first part of this essay introduced the figure of Chatur Sen and his works. The second part of the essay explained the broad context of Chatur Sen’s writings.

All the descriptions given here are from Acharya Sen's work, based upon decades of studies of ancient Hindu sacred books.

Knowledge of the world in ancient India

Ancient people living in different parts of the world had knowledge of different groups of persons living in different parts of the world, and had visits and communications among them, according to Sen. Some of the geographical areas mentioned in the book and their old Indian names in ancient Hindu sacred books are as follows:

Jambu dweep: Mainland Asia
Ang dweep: Sumatra
Java: Yav dweep
Malay dweep: Malaysia
Shankh dweep: Borneo
Kush dweep: Africa mainland
Varaha dweep: Madagascar
Swarn dweep: Sri Lanka
Andhralay: Australia
Kolavarah or Ketumaal dweep: Norway
Aryaviryan: Azerbaijan

Origin of Clans that peopled India

According to Sen, the stories of different clans that later peopled India cover the geographical areas that start from northern India in the east and goes up to Gulf of Persia and the coast of Caspian sea in the west. In fact all the important clans that peopled India and many other countries started somewhere near Caspian sea around 4 to 5 thousand BC. This same area, that is today constituted by Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq and Persia, called Elam or Elavrat in ancient Hindu texts, continued to be important for the forefathers of the future Indians for about 1500-2000 years, that means till about 3000 BC. Even after this period, till today, the memories of those initial millenniums in Elam continue to be central in Hindu mythologies.

Many different clans of people who later grew as very different people, originated from the same groups of persons near the Caspian coast. Thus the three most important bloodlines that peopled India – Dev, Danav and Daitya, originated from the same family. Dev clans contributed to the Suryavanshi line of Aryans and Daitya clans contributed to the Chandravanshi line of Aryans. For the initial thousand or more years, there was constant inter-mixing between these three bloodlines, but later wars separated Dev group of people from the other two, who were jointly called “Asur” group of people.

There were other groups of people such as Garud and Naag near the Caspian coast and Pichash, Gandharav and Kinnar, in the northern part of mountainous India.

Original families near the Caspian coast and the first waves of emigration towards India

The story starts some where around 4 to 5 thousand years BC, at the beginning of Satyug, on the south coast of Caspian sea, the family of Swayambhu Manu. Manu had two sons, Priyavrata and Utanpaad. That land was divided into four areas – Sugd, Maru, Varvadhi and Nisha. Later on Harayu (Heart) and Vakrit (Kabul) also joined the western areas.

About 4000 years BC, Nabhi, grandson of Priyavrata moved east towards the area of Sapt Sandhu. Bharat, grandson of Nabhi, gave the name Bharat Varsh to that land. Descendents of Utanpaad also moved east towards Saptsandhu and later on, became the kings of this area, taking over from the descendents of Priyavrata.

Reverse emigration, back from Sapta Sindhu towards the Caspian sea

In a few generations, the families that had moved east lost contact with the families in the west. In any case, even in the west, families from the same forefathers, were fighting with each other for power and domination. Thus, children of Chakshuk Manu, a descendent of Uttanpaad line of family, with a kingdom in Sapt Sandhu, decided to go to the west and attack the kingdoms there. Five sons of Chakshak Manu - Atyarati, Jananpati, Manyu (Abhimanyu), Ur, Pur and Taporat, took part in the battle expedition to the west. One of the sons of Ur, called Angira, accompanied his father in the war. This expedition had success and they established kingdoms in different parts of the western lands.

Thus elder sons, Atyarati and Janapati settled in the central part. Ancient Persian history speaks of Manu as Manyu, while Greeks called him Maimnen. He built the city of Manyupuri or Susha. Ur dominated parts of Africa, Syria and Babylonia. Pur settled south of Caspian sea and gave his name to Persia. Taporat settled in Taporia region (Manjadiran). Angira went off in Africa.

Alborz mountain in Taporia region was considered as paradise. On the mountain lived Tapsi Vikuntha and his son Vaikuntha, and thus the area was known as Vaikunthadham in ancient Indian texts. The attack of the five brothers wreaked wide-spread destruction and the event is recorded in ancient Persian history as “destruction of paradise” and the five brothers were called Aahirman or Shaitan.

The big floods in the paradise

A few centuries later, about 3,200 BC, the big rivers in ancient Persia had huge floods, probably after the eruption of a volcano in the western coast of Caspian sea, near the city of Baku.

All the western part of Persia, and parts of Babylonia were submerged in water. Palestine, that is 6000 feet above sea level was also submerged. Only the high mountains reaching up to 18,000 feet were not submerged. These floods have been recorded in almost all the different ancient texts.

Accounts of Manu being saved by a Matasya (fish) in the ancient Hindu text Matasya-Puran, probably refer to saving of Dev clan persons by fishermen from the Caspian sea coast area.

Daughters of Daksha and their children

Shortly after the floods, important new clans were born that will have important impact on the whole region, from Africa in the west to India in the east. These clans came from the daughters of Daksha, from the clan of Swayambhu Manu.

Aditi, one the daughters of Daksha gave birth to 12 sons. Varun, the eldest son, established the Sumerian clan in Susha. In the lands laid dead by the floods, he built canals for draining the water and flattened the earth, making it fit for agriculture. All these works gave Varun the name of life giver or Brahma, as well as the lord of water. Varun's children took the name of Dev clan. They gave the name Ksheersagar to the bay to the south of their land (Bay of Persia).

Children of Vivaswan Surya, the youngest son of Aditi, established the Suryavanshi clan of Aryans, who occupied north India. Vivaswan Surya married Renu from the family of Bhrigu, son of his eldest brother Varun. Surya and Renu had five children - Vaivasvat manu, twins Yam and Yami, then, another pair of twins, Nasatya and Dasr (also known as Ashwini Kumars).

Growing up, Yam went to his uncle Varun, who made him king of land called Aavivard or Dozakh or Nark, a land that had been completely destroyed by the floods and thus, known as the "land of dead".

Other children of Aditi, such as Vasu, Maru, Bhanu. Ghosh, Sandhya, etc. gave rise to other clans. Rudra, an important figure in Hindu mythology in this line was born in the family of Vasu.

Another daughter of Daksha, Diti, gave birth to Daitya clan. A third daughter, Danu, gave rise to Danav clan. The society was matrilineal, that means only mothers name was important.

Initially all the clans were inter-marrying. But as time passed, the fights among different clans started, called Devasur wars.

Indra, born at the Caspian coast, slowly became friends with Varun and Dev clan. It was the time when writing of first Ved (Rigved) was starting. Varun's son Vashisht made some of the Richa (poems) for it. Indra asked his friend Narad, step brother of Vashista to make some richa about him. Later on other persons in the clans, when they heard the richa about Indra, asked for some richa in their names.

Chandra from the family of Bhrigu, fell in love with Tara, wife of Brihaspati, a priest of Dev clan and ran away with her. Brihaspati with help of other clans declared war on Dev clan, and Devs lost the war. Tara was sent back to Brihaspati, but she was pregnant with Chandra's son. When the child, Budh was born, Brihaspati refused to keep him and he was sent back to Chandra.

Migration of Aryas to India and attack on Sat Sindhu

Vaisvat Manu (eldest son of Vivaswan Surya) and Chandra, both decided to emigrate to the east, and together constituted the two main Arya clans in north India. Vaisvat Manu settled near Saryu river and started the suryavanshi clan of Aryans, while Chandra settled near the meeting place of the two rivers, Ganga and Yamuna and started the Chandravanshi clan of Aryans.

Some time later, Indra attacked Vritra, the king of Saptsandhu area from the Daitya clan. Though Vritra had good relationships with Dev clan, Dev clans chose not to interfere in Indra's attack. Vritra was killed by Indra, that led to the destruction of the major cities of Sapt Sindhu (the ruins of Harappa and Mohan Jo'daro).

A few centuries later, the main clans ruling in the western part in Elavrat, gradually became less important and were mixed up with other population groups.

Conclusions

This is just a simplified summary of Acharya Chatur Sen's theory of early settlements in ancient world and in ancient India, where waves of people came in from the west, spreading not just in India, but also inhabiting Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia on the east and Africa on the west. According to him, the different population groups such as Daitya, Danav, Naag, Kinoor, etc. all came from the same original families and separated after an initial period of inter-mixing lasting some millenniums.

Sen's history has three key events linked to India's inhabitation.

(1) The first settling of Sapt Sindhu, around 4,000 years BC and then, after some generations, return of some of these people back to west to the Caspian sea.
(2) The second is settling of Aryavrata in north India by Surya and Chandra clans around another 1000 years later.
(3) Some time later, there was the attack of people from the west on the kingdoms of Sapt Sindhu.

In Vayam Rakshamah, Sen also looks at the development of different clans of kings living in India, in Aryavrat and in the south in Dandkaranya and Dakshinaranya, that I have ignored in this article. For people interested in understanding more of Chatur Sen's theory of early settlements of people in what we know as India and middle east, read Vayam Rakshamah. It may not be a very interesting work of fiction, as far as the story of Polsatya Ravaan, but it does make for an interesting, if a little confused study on early Indian history according to the ancient Hindu books.

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End of part 3. The first part of this essay introduced the figure of Chatur Sen and his works. The second part of the essay explained the broad context of Chatur Sen’s writings.

Ancient World history in Indian Scriptures - Context

This is part 2 of an article in three parts, about the ancient world and Indian history in ancient Hindu sacred books, based on the works of eminent Hindi writer, Acharya Chatur Sen. Part one of this article introduced the writings of Sen. This second part examines the context of writings by Sen. The third part presents the events described by Chatur Sen in his book, Vayam Rakshamah.

All writers need to do research, when they are writing about something with which they are not familiar. Thus, for all historical novels, writers need to research that particular historical period. Probably Acharya Chatur Sen started his research when he decided to write about "Vaishali ki Nagarvadhu", or perhaps the research was started for some other book, and then it led to writing of this book.

If there was ten years of research in the ancient Hindu sacred books, you don't really see it in "Vaishali ki Nagarvadhu", because the book is true to its fiction form. The result of the long studies is reflected in the background and characterization, but it is not flaunted.

Six years later, in 1955, when "Vayam Rakshamah" came out, the situation had changed. The book is presented as historical fiction about the life of Raavan, son of an Aryan, Polsatya muni, and a Daitya girl. Yet, after the initial chapters, the book forgets about Raavan and starts with other stories about origins of different clans and their movements in different parts of the world. Entire chapters are devoted to explanations that have nothing to do with Raavan's story. In that sense, the historical research is not just for bringing authenticity to a historical novel, but is an integral part of the narrative, making it a mix of fiction and non-fiction. I can't say if it was because the writer was not able to control himself or it was a deliberate attempt to mix what he perceived as "real history" with the fiction of the story, so that it is read by larger number of persons?

In fact, while reading Vayam Rakshamah, at times I was feeling a little disoriented at the sudden intrusion of long descriptions of different clans and who married whom, etc. Sen tries to explain the history of world, how ancient people spread out from central Asia to Indonesia, Australia, Norway and central America. Another proof of this mixture between historical research and fiction writing is the publication of the companion volume with explanations about the research, something unknown in fiction world of Hindi literature.

Sen did not limit himself to study of ancient Hindu books, but also looked at historical and archaeological publications of his time. In Vayam Rakshamah, he mentions about the findings and theories of eminent archaeologists and historians of his time like Dr D. Tera, Dr. Frankfort, D. Morgan, Dr. Landon, Sir John Marshall. Then he writes:

Now I am daring to contradict the theories of these archaeologists. I want to take the places described by these western experts such as Susha, Elam, Saptasindhu, Pralay and their descriptions of different groups of people living there, together I also want to take more disorderly descriptions in ancient books like Rigved, Brahman, Vishnu-Puran, Matasay-Puran, etc. Then on the basis of these considerations, I want to make some foggy word-pictures of pre-vedic times. I will describe these people who were living in those times, friendly or warring, their names, habitates and Jaati, as given in our Puran but that also find an echo in ancient histories of Persia, Arab, Africa, Misr (Egypt) and central Asia.

He links ancient Indian mythological stories such as that of Narsimha, Hiranyakashyap and Prahalad to the archaeological findings in Assyrians, that also talk of Narsimha, as shown in some images of engraved panels from Assyrian culture in the British Museum of London:

Some clarifications
Before proceeding to the descriptions of Sen's world history, it is necessary to make some clarifications. Acharya Chatur Sen was not a scientist or a historian, and the history he presents in Vayam Rakshamah has its share of contradictions, specially in terms of names of people and the timeline of when the events happened. This may be because the sources of his information are themselves contradictory.

Another problem is caused by persons of same name, who are apparently alive after events that must have taken centuries to unfold. This could be because they are using clan names, where same name continues though it refers to different persons.

Understanding the relationships between people is very difficult and Sen explains this a result of possibility of getting married or having children among different family members, including sons with their mothers or brothers with sisters. For example, Varun, the eldest son of Aditi is both, Surya's elder brother as well as his uncle (father's elder brother). The initial societies are described as matrilineal.

Timeline itself is a problem and Sen recognises it by saying that the times described in Puran are exaggerated hundreds or thousands of times. He has resolved this issue by estimating the time of events described in different Puran during the first six generations of Manvanter (children of Manu, who had some kind of leadership role), and using that as a yardstick for calculating times of all other events. In this way, the period of what ancient Hindu books call "Satyug", is about 1300 years.

Sen has given names of different places that he talks about, asserting that similar names still exist in those regions but through Google map, I was unable to find those places. For example, Atri river in Aryaviryan (Azerbaijan) near Kashyap sea (Caspian sea) described by Sen is supposed to have given the name Atraman to that region, but I couldn't find any such river or place in Azerbaijan. This could be because Sen is taking names from Arabic or Persian sources while the names in English or other local languages of these countries may be different.

In the book Sen presents all the characters as ordinary living beings, though many of them are today known as religious characters or gods in Hindu mythologies such as Varun, Brahma, Vishnu, Indra, Narad, etc. Basing himself on ancient descriptions in the Hindu sacred literature, some of his characters seem to be in contradiction with their present images. For example, Indra and to a lesser degree, Vishnu, are both presented as clever and ruthless persons, who are willing to adopt any means to gain power and wealth. This could have another reason, why Sen was worried that some persons may not like his depiction of Hinduism in this book.

One final point about calling the texts consulted by Acharya Chatur Sen as "ancient Hindu texts". This is because these are part of Puran, Brahman, Upanishad and Ved, etc. the texts safeguarded by Hindu Brahmin traditions, though they actually talk of periods centuries before the establishment of "Hindu" traditions, in much later Aryan and Anaryan people in what came to be called Bharat Varsh.

He locates the origin of different groups of persons living in India to the region south of Kashyap sagar (Caspian sea), where he identifies geographical places that are part of Hindu mythology such as Ksheersagar and Vaikunthdham. He also explains the ruins of Harappa and Mohan Jo'daro as ruins from attacks of Indra on the kingdom of Vritra. The images below showing the seals from Harappa and Mohan Jo'daro are from British Museum in London:

With this background, now we are ready to move into the actual, though grossly simplified, descriptions of the world history and more specifically Indian history in Acharya Chatur Sen’s writings.

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 End of part 2 - Part one of this article introduced the writings of Sen.  The third part presents the events described by Chatur Sen in his book, Vayam Rakshamah.

Ancient world history in Indian scriptures - Introduction

This is first part of an article in 3 parts on ancient World History and Indian history. It looks at the ancient history of world and India, given in Hindu sacred books including Veda, Puran and Brahman stories, based upon the works of an eminent Hindi writer, Acharya Chatur Sen (1891-1960). Part 2 explains the context of writings by Sen, while part 3 presents the main ideas of world history in Sen's work.

Introduction to some works of Acharya Chatur Sen

Acharya Chatur Sen, a trained Ayurvedic doctor, was a prolific Hindi writer and published 186 books including 32 novels, more than 450 short stories, and many non-fiction books on themes as diverse as politics, history and Ayurveda. Apart from a strong interest in ancient Hindu sacred books, he also wrote about history of Islam in India.

I have read two of his works related to ancient India -

(a) Vaishali ki Nagarvadhu (वैशाली की नगरवधु, The courtesan of Vaishali, first published in 1949 by J. S. Sant Singh and Sons Delhi for Hindi Vishwabharati) about a courtesan called Ambapali during the time of Gautama Buddha, a few centuries before Jesus.

(b) Vayam Rakshamah (वयं रक्षामः, We are Raksha, first published in 1955; from the edition published by Rajpal and Sons, Delhi 2009) about Raavan, the mythological king from Ramayana.

Each of these books carries a long list of ancient texts that were consulted by Chatur Sen for writing that book. Vaishali ki Nagarvadhu, the first book in this series, was dedicated to Jawaharlal Nehru and in preface of this book Chatur Sen had explained that though a work of fiction, the book was attempt to remove the "black curtain that has hidden the defeat of religion, literature, royal governance and culture of Aryas, and the win of progressive cultures of mixed races, during thousands of years, that have not been tackled by historians." He had also explained that writing that book had taken "ten years of research in the cultures of Aryas, Boddh, Jain and Hindus".

By the time, "Vayam Rakshamah" came out in 1955, Chatur Sen was 63 years old and not keeping very well. In the dramatic preface of this book, Sen declared that "he had put in all the learnings and knowledge, both emotional from his heart and logical, from his brain, into writing this book and he had no more left to contribute." About his own mental condition he had written, that like horses, bulls and donkeys, who can die while pulling heavy burdens, he might also die because of burden of writing this book."

At that time, he was also worried that his depiction of ancient history of Aryas and other races may not be accepted easily as it touched on areas that can be seen as obscene. At the same time, he felt that he had to speak the truth as he had understood it from the studies of the ancient Hindu books:

In this book, I have presented the forgotten word-pictures of different human clans such as Nar, Naag, Dev, Daitya, Danav, Arya, Anarya, etc. from pre-vedic times, who had been seen through the coloured lenses of religion and mythologised into gods of the heavens. I have the courage to present them as human beings. "Vayam Rakshamah" is certainly a work of fiction, but at the same time it is the result of deep study of Ved, Puran, philosophy and foreign texts ... it the summary of my life's work.

This book was accompanied by an accompanying explanatory book, to justify and reference whatever he had written in the book, with notes from different sources that Sen had studied.

Upinder Singh in "A history of ancient and early medieval India" (Dorling Kindersley India, 2008) had written, "History is not one but many stories, only a few of which have yet been written. ... there are two parallel images of ancient South Asia - one based on literary sources, the other on archeology." About the ancient texts, Singh wrote, "Ancient texts are much older than their surviving scripts, and have a life of their own. They have grown and changed over time, and this process of growth and change - the period of composition - could in some cases have lasted for hundred of years before they were compiled or given a more or less final shape."

The descriptions of ancient Indian and world histories, from analysis of ancient Indian texts, have been attempted many times, by scholars from different disciplines, from India and many other countries. Continuing archaeological excavations as well as new technologies such as satellite mapping imaging, have provided new corroborative evidences to the the different theories.

Still I think that it could be interesting to look at the conclusions about the ancient world events during prehistorical times, at which Acharya Chatur Sen had arrived through his decades long studies. I don't think that people have seriously taken a systematic look at the literary works of Indian authors writing in Hindi or other Indian languages, in terms of analysing their ideas and their implications.

This article is mainly based on the descriptions in Sen's book, "Vayam Rakshamah".

End of part one of a three parts article. Part 2 explains the context of writings by Chatur Sen, while part 3 presents the main ideas of world history in Chatur Sen's work.

Note: Special thanks to Sanjay Bengani and Sameer Lal for the image of Acharya Chatur Sen!

Writing in the time of conflict

Recently I had the opportunity to listen to three writers talk about the conflicts in their countries and how it affects and influences their writing. This seminar was part of a wider event organised by Italian weekly Internazionale. The three writers were Suad Amiry from Palestine, Romesh Gunesekera from Sri Lanka and Abdourahman Waberi from Djibuti and talking to them was Italian journalist Maria Nadotti.

It was a fascinating discussion and for a long time I kept on thinking about it. Here are a few excerpts from this seminar.

Maria: Suad Amiry’s family was originally from Palestine, but they had to leave their countries before her birth and she was born in Damascus. However, she went back to live in Ramallah in Gaza some years ago. Palestine is composed of Gaza and Cis-Jordan, not connected to each other.

Gaza is a narrow strip of land along the coast, 6-14 km wide and about 40 km long. In this area live 1.537.000 persons, that means 472 persons per square km.

Cis Jordan is about 6000 square km area, its borders are not defined exactly, with a population of about 2.5 million Palestinians and about half a million Isrealis.

Suad: Talking about Palestine, it is a country that is shrinking all the time. At the beginning of century (Note: I think that she means the beginning of previous century - nineteen hundred), Palestine was four times as it is today.

In Palestine, space and time do not have significance. What I mean by that is that if I go out of the house to go to Jerusalem, which is only 15 km away from Ramallah. In a place like Ferrara, you can say “15 km means 15 minutes”. But in Palestine, those 15 km between Ramallah and Jersualem can take you 15 minutes, can take you 2 hours, could take you a whole day, may be you never reach Jerusalem, may be you never come back.

Thus the notion of the state of Palestine, in a situation of occupation, is different. Palestine is more or less the size of the island of Alba in Italy, but it has 500 check-points. These check points don’t separate Palestine from Isreal, they really separate Palestine from Palestine.

So if you talk of geography and if you look at the map of Palestine, it looks like a swiss cheese. Maria has asked me to talk about geography of Palestine so you see, it is an Arab country and has Arab culture, but we can never get to any Arab country because of the occupation.

The world media is only interested in bombardments and the suicide bombings, Abu Mazen and Yassef Arafat. No one really cares about three and half million persons under occupation. For me occupation means that space around me keeps on changing. I am an architect and I see that change. I became a writer purely by accident. Because of building of settlements, because of occupation, because of building of wall, we live in a changijng place all the time.

May be you have seen “Cinema Paradiso”, where the whole village goes into estrangement because one cinema, one building is gone. In Palestine, we live thousands of “Cinema Paradiso” because when I go out I am not sure what I am going to find.

Maria: Here we are talking of small countries, that are becoming even smaller. For political erosion, as in Palestine. For geographical erosion and migrations as in Sri Lanka and Djibuti.

My question is that migrations make a country smaller and at the same time, in another way, enlarge it. They multiply it. What would I know about those other countries without the voices of the emigrants? Writing about your countries from outside or from inside? What happens when you write about your countries from far away? Not just far away physically but also far away in memories? What do we know about our countries after thirty years of not living there? How does that differ from writing about it, living there in the middle of daily routines?

Suad who lives there, writes her daily happenings, an on going dialogue. While Romesh and Waberi write much more through evocation.

Romesh: This is complicated. People feel that you have to write about what you know or where you come from. There is a kind of pressure on you to write about certain things. Like some American writers feel that they can write only about the good things in America and not about the trash, even if trash is from where great literature comes.

There is an assumption that where you come from, that might affect your writing. One of my Indian writer friends, when he saw my first book, a very slim book, he said that it is because I come from a small island. He doesn’t write very big books but he believes that being from a large country, he has so much to cover and his canvas is going to be very large. May be there is an element of truth here.

How you write about a country when you are far away from it, is not an issue, because I am a writer of fiction. Unlike the writers of happenings, when you write fiction, in your imagination you are actually there. I am interested in the connection between the real world and the fictional world, but anyone who reads fiction and is excited by it, knows that there is an area of frisson between the real and the imaginary world. You are writing about a place and about people, which is true and also not true. That is why people love to go to the places where fiction is placed. Like, if you like James Joyce, people go to Dublin and they walk on the street where Leopold Bloom walked, they stop where he stopped and they know that he never existed and he never walked on that street. It is all in imagination. I think that connection is what is interesting.

Suad: As Maria said, I became a writer thanks to Sharon and my mother in law. I lived my life as an architect and being an architect is a state of mind. As writers also we are in a state of mind. “Murad Murad” is my fourth book, but I really can’t say that I am a writer. I can tell you what I do, how I live in my writing.

My first book “Sharon and my mother in law” came as a result of curfew for 42 days. My mother in law was ninety one year old and she came to live with me during those days. I tell Isrealis that one day I may forgive you for putting us under a curfew for 42 days but I will not forgive you for making my mother in law live with me. With her, those 42 days seemed like 42 years.

There were Isreali soldiers outside our house and I had my mother in law inside the house. So I had double occupation. Those of you who follow the news, you know that Isreali occupation is enough to drive you crazy but having my mother in law made me a writer. So what happened was that every day I would sit at home and write what ever was happening in our home, between my mother in law and I.

I wrote about going shopping when they lift the curfew for two hours and you can go out and buy everything you need, imagine eighty thousand people trying to shop all together. It was a mad house. I wasn’t thinking of writing. I was writing emails to friends, telling them that please do not share these with anybody, because they were so nasty about my mother in law. Little did I realize that people like nastiness, they liked them because of their frankness. It was reporting that was not intended to become a book.

Actually it could be fictional because living in Palestine is so unreal. Sometimes, I ask when is reality? I don’t say what is reality, I say, when is reality? It is true that I am reporitng from everyday experience. People keep on asking me, is that real, is that true? I write for real, what people think may be fiction.

My second book, “No sex in the city” (Note: I am just translating from the Italian title that she quoted, actual original title may be different) was about Ramallah. That book was instigated and triggered by Hamas winning the elction in Palestine. That was so drammatic in my life, being a woman who was active, like I was active in PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation). I have been involved in it all my life, it is a secular movement. We always felt that we worked for women’s issues and secularism. To be one of the first countries of the world that would elect a religious party was drammatic, it made me loose reality. It made me think about who am I, what country am I living in, what future do I have? I felt that I have spent so many years of life to convey to the world that Palestinians are normal human beings, and then with election of Hamas!

I wanted to say that Palestinians are normal human beings, that Moslems are normal persons and those elections pushed me to write about the life of my women friends. I wanted to call that book “Palestinian Menopause” but the editor was afraid of the “menopause” in the title, and then the title was “No sex in the city” and that was fine because no one is afraid of the word “sex” in Italy.

It is about the life of women friends and about very real stories about how people became Palestinian. It is not about Palestinians. Only when I wrote that book, I realized that my women friends, the menopausal group with whom we go out every day, one is Egyptian, one is Moroccan, one is Armenian, one is American, hardly there is a Palestinian except for me, and I am half Palestinian and half Syrian. What brought us together was because of Palestine, as a cause rather than as a geography.

My last book is again from a harsh reality. The reality of building that wall, that is a concrete wall. But for me that wall is not a physical thing. It is a monster. If you ask Palestinians to tell about three events that marked the history of Palestine, they will say 1948 when 800,000 people were thrown out of historical Palestine that became Isreal and my family happened to be one of them from Jaffa; then they would say the setting up of those 500 check-points inside a small area, that prevents us from moving; and the third would be the wall.

Let me explain how this book “Murad Murad” came about. The wall is such a reality that I always ask – what would have happened if we Palestinians or Arabs around all the Jewish state of Isreal, how would the world treat us? It is beyond me, I don’t know whether it is a reality or fiction, that Isrealis, who everyday talk about need for peace, want to be part of the middle east, built that wall that separates them from their future neighbours.

Murad was like my mother in law in my other book, “Sharon and my mother in law”. My mother in law, who was ninety one year old, for me was a symbol of resistance. For her the curfew didn’t matter, she wanted her milk in the morning at seven o’clock. No matter what happened, she wanted to have lunch at one o’clock. So to me she was a symbol of resitence, of wanting to live a normal life in spite of the curfew imposed by Isrealis. Murad was symbolised same resistance to me.

I contemplated, how would I write about the wall? Then I thought that I want to write about the wall from an animal’s point of view. We human beings are so egocentric. The first things that hurt me about the wall was the one million five hundred thousand olive trees that were uprooted for this wall to be constructed. I was thinking what would a deer or a hare would think of this wall. Then Murad appeared one day in my life. He is a twenty one year old boy, who has been working in Isreal for the last seven years of his life. He woke up one day like the other 200,000 Palestinian workers, who had spent all their lives there and were told by Sharon that “No more illegal Palestinian workers coming to work in Isreal.”

We are all aware of issues of migrations and workers, but it is very difficult for me to think of Palestinian workers being illegal in their homes.

Abdourahman: Coming to the question of reality and fiction, it is very complicated. I often have this discussion with my students and ask them what is reality? If you go to the Piazza Trento and you shoot a video there near a lively place outside a café and then you go ten minutes later and the place is empty, so what is reality? I think that reality is something untrackable, something fluid.

Having written eight-nine books on my small country, I realize that I am not writing just from reality’s point of view or from geopolitical point of view, but I am also writing about something that is depper than reality, something that is country of my imagination that is mixed and overlapping with the country of reality. You have history, geography, mythology, etc. so this geological overlapping is something that you try to pierce or break into pieces by the use of the language or the use of imagination.

My writing has to do with both, with reality and also with mythology and history. That is why I use fables like in this book “In the United States of Africa”. That “In” in the title signals that everything has happened, and the purpose of the book is to say that United States of Africa is a reality. It has been created by imagination. I start by taking it forward from there, that so what would happen? From this point of view, you can create distance and you can also produce criticism, what I call social criticism. You start with imagination and from that imagination, you can create a political action.

You can write like that about Palestine, how it was in 1844 and how it could be in 1984 and thus it can exist in the heads of the readers without polemics or whatever. Why I wrote this book, because I was an African in Europe or an European African, I have been for so long in France that I have been Francised, so what I am asking is who am I and who are we in this world?

I am asking if all Europe wants to emigrate to Africa, what would happen? Then you would see the issue of emigration and work, one of the key issues of today, from a different point of view. That is what I have tried.

Actually I am ready with a new book that is called “Passage of tears” that is looking at Djibuti in recent times. That is looking at two important areas – the Islamic discourse in the public and social space that is often linked to Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, and a new interpretation of Islam for a new political agenda. The country is changing also because of interest of the Persian gulf in Africa. Djibuti had strong exclusive links with France, but it is no longer the case. In Djibuti you have French, because France is an important partner within the global agenda, but you also have the US because it has the biggest military base in Africa in Djibuti. Then you have influence from Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and all those places. And in the book it is framing the situation from social and economic point of view. Having said that I am also trying to build some kind of historical connection between Djibuti of today and the France of the fascist Arab days, that situation of nineteen thirties and fourties in France, at that time Djibuti was a colony. This is a way of making the landscape and making new perspectives. It has to do with geropolitical situation and with history.

Romesh: I can add to that because it struck me that even with fiction, the reader is getting news from some where. It tell you about real things even if it is not reality. My last book, The Match, part of it is set in the Philippines in the nineteen seventies when I grew up there. I was a little worried when I did that, wondering if I new enough about it or if I could do it well. When the book was published, I was very interested in reactions from the people in Philippines.

Philippines is a country of young people and so most people and most people who read the book were not there in the nineteen seventies, so it is a new country in a sense. To read about that for them was to read about a different place. The other feed back that I got was that newspapers etc. you don’t have to be Philippino to understand the country, you just have to be there or you just have to imagine it to redefine the way you think about the place.

That made me think of something that Russian writer Nobokov said about fiction, when you read something and you sense the excitement or a sense of fear of the character, what you sense is actually quite often the real sense of writer behind that who has a sense of excitement or fear about the sentences that he or she is dealing it, it comes out of the words themselves.

Comment: It was a fascinating morning listening to the three writers. I felt the three of them also symblised three different ways of bring a writer. For me Abdourahman's way of talking about his work seemed more intellectual, Romesh's way of articulating seemed more emotional, while Suad seemed more rooted in irony.

I liked all three of them, and I also liked the way Maria probed them, but I was struck very much by Suad's way of narrating her daily dilemmas. There is so much rhetoric all around about human rights, democracy and other such ideals and yet listening to her and what happens in Palestine is a cruel reminder of the distance between reality and rhetoric.

After the meeting I talked some more with Romesh. I asked him if the main protagonist in his new book "The Match" is more autobiographical in the sense that it is about a person who has forgotten his roots and then in the middle age, rediscovers them, and that emigrant writers often touch on this theme of rediscovering their roots, sooner or later in their writings. Romesh said that almost all important writers are emigrants, from Shakespear to Dante, which I found very intriguing.

Altaf Tyrewala

It was January 2008. We were in the north Italian city of Turin for an event organised by an Italian literary foundation, Grinzane. I had asked Altaf Tyrewala for an interview and finally we got around doing it during a bus journey as we were going out for some lunch. Lavanya Shankaran, who was sitting behind us didn’t realise that it was an interview and I was recording it and she also joined in the conversation. I was so happy since the discussion was very stimulating and I was imagining that my recorder is recording her voice as well. Unfortunately that was not the case I can only hear some of her words. I vaguely remember what she said but that is not enough to re-construct her part of dialogue and I regret that immensely.

Here are some excerpts from the transcript of that discussion. The symbols are AT for Altaf Tyrewala, LS for Lavanya Shankaran and SD for me, Sunil Deepak.

AT: I like reading something that has been stripped to the bare essentials. I am almost incapable of enduring descriptions, etc. Anything that assumes that I don’t know ... I read the internet, I try to remain clued in to the world. What I like to read is something that I can not access as an information.

SD: Have you read anything by Agota Kristof like her trilogy of city of K? When I read your book (No God in Sight), after the first chapter I had thought of Agota Kristof. She is Hungerian and lives in Switzerland. She is old now. She writes short books and her chapters are like your’s. Few lines, just bare essential. And yet, she can evoke strong feelings with her few words.

AT: Considering that we are living in a wired world, half of my readings happen on internet so brevity is of extreme importance. Even in my day to day life, when I read books and magazines, I like things to be as concise and as essential as possible. Of course I understand that there is certain advantage in longivity as well, when some thing is dealt with in great depth, I am open to that also.

SD: When we were getting in the bus, you said something about your wife. Did she know you as a writer or as a person before you became ...?

AT: I was a poor graduate student in America when we met. We were studying together. She thinks that I completely misrepresented myself (laughs) because I turned out to be a writer. But because she has seen me before I was a writer, she is an immensely grounding presence in my life. It would have been so easy to float up in this writerly universe ..but she keeps on reminding me that don’t forget ...

LS: That is very wise thing you are saying... sensible, to keep your feet on the ground ..it is important that the spouse is not a writer otherwise ... writers are whackoos (laughs)... very difficult to have another writer in the house...

You can read the full interview on Kalpana by clicking on this link.

Amira Hass, Arundhati Roy & M. J. Akbar

Yesterday M. J. Akbar was in Rome for the release of his new book in Italian "Fratelli di Sangue", or the Blood Brothers. This is how he started his speech:

India is the world’s latest quotation mark. Nepal has become a question mark, Sri Lanka an oversized exclamation mark; and Bangladesh is imprisoned between brackets, the space for leeway decreasing by the day. Pakistan is teetering towards a full stop. China has turned into yesterday’s paragraph: still impressive, but with the contradictions becoming evident through cracks separating sentences.

What a wonderful feeling to be an Indian at that moment in history when the world begins to applaud as India comes within reach of that long-promised tryst with destiny, and shifts imperceptibly towards the centre of the stage.

And last night, I was reading the article by Amira Hass on Arundhati Roy in the Italian magazine, Internazionale. And, I was thinking about the differences in their view points, between the India described by M. J. Akbar and that described by Arundhati Roy. They do not seem to be same countries.

Amira is an Isreali journalist, one who lives in Palestine and talks about the Palestinian human rights. I can imagine that she must be seeing and reporting on things and situations that can't be described as happy and optimistic. Yet, even she seems a little afraid of the sense of darkness and doom in Arundhati Roy's words. Or, may be, it is me, reading between the lines and imagining things that are not there. But it is true, reading Ms. Roy is not easy, especially when we are used to the shining and glowing descriptions of India as exemplified by the words of M. J. Akbar above. Reading Arundhati or listening to her speak, I often feel that she is a very negative person, looking only on negative side of things yet, I also understand that the unpleasant things she says do have grains of truth in them that we often refuse to acknowledge because they are so unpleasant.

Both Arundhati and Amira were in Ferrara (Italy) for a conference in early October. I had already written about Arundhati's speech in that occasion. She had mentioned about the evening spent with Amira and how much she had enjoyed it. Amira's article is about the discussions from that evening. Here are a few examples from Amira's speech (my translation from Italian):

"The cruelty, in some way, is hidden by discourses on Gandhi, about the country where everyone medidates and does yoga. Oh yes, everything is going well, we play cricket, we elect Miss world and Miss Booker prize, we even have dissent, what a beautiful happy family. Instead no. The country is passing through dark and cruel times and you know what I tell you? That if we close our eyes, they will become darker and even more cruel. India does not have scruples of killings." she comments. And makes her list, even if partial: "A million persons, the dalits, the untouchables, still work in direct contact with excretions and what is tragic is that they are willing to fight for their right to work with human excretions, because they don't know what other work they can do. Everyday dalits are lynched but no accusess the persons responsible for this. In all of India killings of Muslims continue. In the last years 137 thousand farmers have committed suicide. Only in Kashmir, 60 to 80 thousand persons ahve been killed ... In the middle of the country, Arundhati Roy continued, there is a proper civil war going on: "Now they have discovered those damned mines of Bauxite in the states of Orissa and Chhattisgarh, that is used
for making Aluminium and the multinationals are doing everything to exploit it. You have to see what they are doing, bringing down whole forests, removing hills, deviating rivers, devastating the earth and forcibly evicting the inhabitants..."

Is Arundhati exagerating or is Akbar talking about illusions? Probably the truth lies some where in between or a little on both sides. While we have many Akbars, persons who see India as progressing and developing, there are not many Arundhatis talking about what is happening to those who can't be heard. Even when there are persons like Arundhati, I guess that it is not so pleasant to listen to them. Like for me. I would rather listen to Akbar any day.

Even Arundhati does not have any illusions about the persons for whom she raises her voice. "If at the end of so many battles, we shall win, the persons whom we are defending, you will see, those same persons will the ones to hang us first on a tree. I am talking about Maoists and islamists of Kashmir: at times we take sides of persons, who do not have place for us in their imaginations."