Mythistory of India in the Tharoorian Style : THE GREAT INDIAN NOVEL

The Mahabharata is arguably the most popular literary work to come out of India. Almost every Indian has been exposed to it in one form or another; through television shows, movies, books, modern day adaptations and analyses. Penned by Ved Vyasa, this epic delineates the tale of two sets of cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas and their struggle for the throne of Hastinapur. With the complexity of its storylines rivalling Game of Thrones, the Mahabharata covers nearly every aspect integral to the Indian culture; socio-political, economical, spiritual - physical and metaphysical and emphasizes on the interplay of ‘dharma’ and ‘karma’ in everyday life. Today, 2000 years after its conception, the epic still sings true of India.

The Great Indian Novel is Shashi Tharoor’s rendition of the popular saga. He tells the familiar tale in the equally familiar setting of pre and post-Independence India. It is a pitch perfect parity that draws you in from the very beginning. The idea is satisfyingly well executed and the characters and storylines of the Mahabharata merge seamlessly with the political figures and events of Indian infancy. Gandhi is the resolute and obdurate Bhisma, undeterred from his oath and principles, compelled by a moral desire to lead an ascetic life. Nehru is Dhritirashtra, the ‘blind idealist’ with a great vision, but a lack of foresight that twice doomed the fate of the nation. The autocratic Indira Gandhi serves as the villain of the story, Priya Duryodhani (Criticism of members of the Gandhi family seems to be a trend in this novel, which is ironic considering that Tharoor is now a member of the Congress Party). Comparisons are drawn in both literal and metaphorical ways. For instance, Draupadi and her five husbands represent democracy and its pillars; the judiciary, the army, the press, civil services and foreign relations. The symbolic disrobing of Draupadi coincides with the onset of the Emergency. Tharoor provides a delectable spread of superior puns for the wit-perceiving mind. The narrator, a cantankerous old man called V.V., employs an amanuensis with an elephantine appearance, who carries a trunk along with him. Goa becomes Comea; Kashmir, Manimir; Chinese, Chakkars (the Hindi synonym for sugar) and Bengalis, Gebalins (A clever strategy to avoid offending any ethnical group). This book does not take itself too seriously; conversations between characters are oddly casual (dialogue in any sort of historical fiction is expected to be word heavy) and often bordering on absurd. Armed with his razor-sharp wit, Tharoor is able to praise and criticise important entities of the Indian Independence Movement, in the same note. He is unabashed in poking fun at revered individuals and serious turns of events in the course of history. Being a staunch critic of the Raj, he leaves no opportunity to mock the futility of colonialism. (Clive’s twentieth century successors, who had taken the Hindustani word loot into their dictionaries instead of their habits, preferred to achieve the same results in bureaucratic ways.) The eight books that comprise the novel are named after various literary works about India; The Bungle Book (after The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling), A Raj Quartet (by Paul Scott), Midnight’s Parents (an allusion to Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie). The Jallianwallah Bagh is replaced with Bibigarh Gardens (a fictional place which was also featured in Paul Scott’s A Jewel in the Crown.). In doing so, Tharoor arraigns the skewed representations of Indian culture by British authors. The use of Bibigarh Gardens allows him to juxtapose fiction with reality and emphasize the inconceivability of the brutal massacre.

Our generation did not have the privilege of knowing most of the historical figures alluded to. We have read and heard about them throughout our life, but cannot deny the amount of lore and romanticism attached to their life and death. We might never know them for what they truly were, nor can we pretend to understand the events that conspired in the past, as well as those who lived through them. Reading our country’s past in a mythological context reinforces to us that there is a proportion of myth in history.

Shashi Tharoor set out to produce a ‘Great Indian Novel’ and it was undeniably and quintessentially so.