The Hindu Business Line : Nine faces of the India story

His quest was to seek out the sacred in modern India and the idea of the book Nine Lives (Bloomsbury) was conceived on a clear Himalayan morning 16 years ago as William Dalrymple trekked up to the Kedarnath temple. He encountered many sadhus, struck up conversation with an ash-smeared naked one, and was astonished to find that Ajay Kumar Jha was an MBA graduate and a sales manager before he decided to stop selling fans and refrigerators, and make his way to Benaras to become a sanyasi.

The author, who has lived in India at different spells and watched it “change at a rate that was impossible to imagine when I first moved there in the late eighties”, now lives near Gurgaon, where a plethora of shopping malls, apartment blocks, call centres have sprung up. But the same India has “many worlds strangely colliding”; where one individual embraces “armed resistance as a sacred calling, and another practises ahimsa; “where one man thinks that he can create a god while another thinks that god can inhabit him”.

Dalrymple’s remarkable book gives us Indians an intriguing package of our own country, seen through the eyes of a westerner who has made an earnest attempt to understand the mystique, asceticism, religious frenzy and philosophy of a few incredible people. And, the historian and researcher in him have meticulously etched these vivid portraits, placing their lives in the right perspective, in the backdrop of relevant information.

Theyyam dancers

Nine Lives In Search of the Sacred in Modern India By William Dalrymple Publishers: Bloomsbury

The story of Hari Das, a Dalit well builder and part-time prison warden in Kannur, Kerala, who turns into a theyyam dancer and incarnation of the deity during the December-February season each year, is fascinating. As he puts on his costume and make-up to transform into Vishnu, the author outlines for us the irony of the gods choosing not the “sacred” Brahmins, but the “shunned and insulted” Dalits for incarnation.

As Hari Das and other Dalits do their theyyam dances and the rich and the powerful, the Brahmins and other upper castes bow before them and seek their blessings, “the social norms of everyday life are inverted and for a short period of the year, position and power are almost miraculously transferred to the insignificant and powerless.”

Hari Das says theyyam dances have altered the power structure in the region and inspired self-confidence in Dalits, encouraging youngsters to get educated and change their lives. On a lighter note, Dalrymple records Hari Das’ discomfiture at his theyyam role making him a hot favourite with the village women. “I don’t like it; things can get very complicated. It is difficult to lead a happy domestic life and have admirers. In this job it is important to have a good reputation — one scandal can destroy you. So I keep these women at arm’s length.”

Sufism vs. orthodox Islam

In the background of the pounding of Pakistan by the Taliban, the story of Lal Peri, titled ‘The Red Fairy’ assumes significance, more for the sparkling clarity with which the author captures the striking difference between the tolerant and all-embracing Sufi Islam and orthodox Islam followed by the Wahabis, Deobandhis and Tablighis.

Lal Peri, a devotee of Lal Shahbaz in rural Sindh, Pakistan, is a triple refugee; “first as a Muslim driven out of India into East Pakistan after Hindu-Muslim riots in the late 1960s; then as a Bihari driven out of East Pakistan in 1971; and finally as a single woman taking refuge in the shrines of Sindh while struggling to live the life of a Sufi in the male-dominated and increasingly Talibanised society of Pakistan”.

As Lal Peri’s life in the Shewan Sharif shrine, where Muslim and Hindu devotees throng, unfolds, the author discovers the “complex relationship of Hinduism with the different forms of South Asian Islam, swerving between hatred and terrible violence, on one hand, and love and extraordinary syncretism on the other.” For once he saw religion bringing people together and not dividing them. “Sufism here was not just something mystical and ethereal, but a force that demonstrably acted as a balm on South Asia’s festering religious wounds.”

But over the years, as Saudi money and influence came into various parts of Pakistan and Wahabi madrasas were opened, the inevitable clash with Sufi shrines began. The shrines of Sufi saints like Rahman Baba were destroyed by the Pakistan Taliban. Behind the violence lay the “theological conflict that has divided the Islamic world for centuries”; the conflict centring around the Sufis using music and poetry in their rituals and opening the doors of their shrines to women, all of which was found highly objectionable by the Wahabis and the Deobandhis.

Visiting a newly opened madrasa in rural Sindh, the author meets its young and well educated Maulana Saleemulla. “There was no masking the puritanical severity of some of his views”. Coming down harshly on dargahs, particularly of Lal Shahbaz, he denounces tomb worship and says: “We must not pray to dead men and ask things from them, even the saints. In Islam we believe there is no power but God. I invite people who come here to return to the true path of the Quran. Lal Shahbaz is dead, I tell them. Do not pray to a corpse. Go to the mosque, not to a grave.”

Enraged that his madrasa with a capacity of 400 had drawn only children from 10 poor families “because we feed them”, he denounces Sufism as non-Islamic; “it is jadoo, magic tricks only. It has nothing to do with real Islam. It is just superstition, ignorance, perversion, illiteracy and stupidity. This town is full of fools… and the fakirs in the shrines are illiterate. What do they know of the Quran? And yet people go to them and seek their opinion as if they were scholars.”

Later Dalrymple meets Sain Fakir, an 80-year-old pir, who says grandly: “In this world, everyone commits sin. The Sufis have always understood this. They understand human weakness. They offer forgiveness, and people will always love those who forgive.” He describes the violent conflict between the mullahs and the Sufi saints as a struggle for power. “The Sufis are a threat to the mullahs because we command the love, loyalty and faith of the ordinary people. No one is excluded. You can be an outcaste, a fallen woman, and you can come and pray in the shrine and the Sufi will forgive and embrace you.”

Yellamma’s children

‘The Daughters of Yellamma’ is a poignant tale of the Devadasi tradition, related with a rare sensitivity and empathy. Rani Bai and her friend Kaveri open out their hearts and lives to the author. Says Rani: “We have a song. Everyone sleeps with us, but no one marries us. Many embrace us, but no one protects.” Adds Kaveri: “If I were to sit under a tree and tell you the sadness we have to suffer, the leaves of that tree would fall like tears.”

Dalrymple’s characters are vibrant, compelling and with a rare inner strength. And he evokes them in lucid prose. Rani is in her late 30s, “undeniably tall, long-limbed and lovely. She had a big, painted mouth, full lips, a firm brown body and attractively bawdy and lively manner. She did not keep her gaze down, as Hindu women are supposed to in the villages; instead, she spoke with a loud voice and her hands were constantly dancing about as she talked.”

But an outing with her to the local chai shop, at his suggestion, is a disaster. The farmers seated there eye Rani greedily, undressing her with their eyes and loudly speculate on her relationship with the “firangi, her cost, what she would and would not do, the pros and cons of her figure, where she worked and whether she gave discounts.” As they flee the chai shop the full impact of Kaveri’s words hit you.

Incredible weave

The other stories include that of Passang, a hermit in Tibet, who is forced to give up his monastic vows and take up arms to kill Chinese soldiers trying to destroy Buddhism. Later he comes to Dharamsala, to spend his last years atoning for the violence he had committed. Here he makes wooden blocks and prints prayer flags and finally takes up monastic vows and robes 30 years after renouncing them.

Rekha from Raipur becomes a Jain sadhvi, Prasannamati Mataji; Srikanda Stapathy is an idol maker from Swamimalai in Tamil Nadu; Mohan is an epic singer from Rajasthan — each has a remarkable story to tell.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Dalrymples’s mosaic of these nine lives is that his protagonists talk about their faith, spirituality and vocation with a disarming simplicity. Except in ‘The Nun’s Tale’, where parts of the recitation sound like discourses from Hindi religious channels — his Mataji tells us how “death is full of excitement” — his other characters talk about their lives without any hyperbole, sense of self-importance or great sacrifice.

They are simply good storytellers and the author documents their tales vividly, faithfully and, by and large, without intrusion. When he does intervene, it is to give us perspective and history.

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