Tackling communalism

Riot is a novel that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. And it is apparent that the author has been away from India for long. Yet,Tharoor must be given credit for tackling a sensitive issue like communalism, says KESHAV DESIRAJU.

IT was not easy to agree to review this book. After all, as readers of The Hindu are duly informed in "The Shashi Tharoor Column" on Sundays, he is well on his way to sainthood; true, this self-professed claim is broadly subscribed to only in the immediate vicinity of Khan Market, Delhi, but even so, a reviewer had better watch it. Secondly, and more importantly, Tharoor has written at least one hugely funny and entertaining novel. The Great Indian Novel is well worth reading once, if only once, and entitles the author to the attention of the reading public, and the patience of the reviewer. (It does, however, reveal something about the author that the novel under review has a reference to The Great Indian Novel that can only be described as twee.)

Riot is the story of a killing, a stupid killing, against the background of more senseless killings. The inevitable comparision is with the Bibighar of Paul Scott's quartet, the story of a rape and its hideous consequences. There too, in a small North Indian town, at a time of upheaval and violent change, an earnest white woman falls disastrously in love with a stylishly attractive Indian, and dies. Tharoor does not quite have Scott's gift of telling a story, or of developing characters and a plot, but then he is trying to tell his tale in one book, not four.

Like Paul Scott again, Tharoor puts his story through bits and pieces coming together; but where Scott tells the same story from different points of view at different times, Tharoor writes in several hands through newspaper cuttings, diary entries, transcripts of interviews and police investigations, letters and records of conversations. This method suits Tharoor because he writes easily in different styles and though the technique itself is unoriginal it enables him to pack in a lot of general information, on the Coke wars of the 1970s for instance, or the background to Ayodhya, or to Punjab and Bhindranwale. Real life characters jostle with creatures within the author's imagination. Sometimes this works, as in the reports. The professor from Delhi University, for instance, puts across a neat account of the ethics of trying to redress perceived historical wrongs. Often it doesn't, as in the conversations. Shashi Tharoor does not quite know how to write conversation. On the whole he does the Americans much better than the others, though I cannot believe there are young, semi-educated American journalists who use words like "segue" in ordinary conversation. His other characters would be hellishly dull if one was to meet them in real life, and if they spoke as they do in his book. I have, fortunately, never yet met a District Magistrate who quotes Wilde as recklessly as Tharoor's hero. Quite clearly he has lived away from India too long, if he believes that the civil services are still manned by the lesser members of of the St. Stephen's debating society. And the monologues of Mr. Das; I wonder if we are really speaking like that only?

Priscilla Hart, and Lakshman, her Tam-brahm Stephanian District Magistrate are the unlikely protagonists of Riot. She is vulnerable, and has experienced betrayal; he is playing the part that Family and Duty and Society have chosen for him. Neither is where they can help themselves. The inevitable result is tragedy, and even if Priscilla were not to be killed, the tragedy is complete. Tharoor captures the personality of the District Magistrate well, and his keenness, willingness to slog, and desire to do good. He also captures the other side of the man. Lakshman is a personal and moral coward, and his denial of Priscilla to her mother would be breathtaking if one did not actually know characters like this.

Riot is not a particularly good novel, but it is an exceedingly important one. Communal violence is mindless and wasteful, and the forces that guide acts of violence are self-obsessed and evil. Experience has repeatedly shown that wherever it has occurred, communal violence has nothing to do with belief, and everything to do with small-mindedness, greed, utter lack of scruple, complete confidence in the infallibility of one's one views and a vast capacity to manipulate public ignorance. Shashi Tharoor jumps right into this, and for this he must be given credit. The growth of rabidly communal views in the 1990s amongst normally right minded people is familiar and well documented. The communalisation of the bureaucracy, and of the uniformed forces is also well known. Indeed, it must be said of the unfortunate Lakshman that for all his inability to face truth, he is unusual amongst his tribe for not willingly succumbing to the trend. Public life in India is full of contradictions and hopelessness; in taking this as his theme, Shashi Tharoor shows something of what he might yet be capable of writing.

Riot, Shashi Tharoor, Viking 2001, Rs. 295.

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