Guest Post by Eric .M. Gurevitch

A few years ago I had the pleasure of sitting in on a seminar Wendy Doniger taught on Hindu Mythology. On the final day of the class, Professor Doniger was addressing the continuing questions of students. A young man raised his hand and was called upon. “Professor Doniger,” he said somewhat sheepishly, “why do Indians keep retelling the same stories over and over again?” The rest of the students looked on somewhat aghast—clearly this student hadn’t understood the point of the class at all. But Doniger just chuckled. “Well,” she said, a sly grin creeping across her face, “because they can never get them quite right.” Her point is a simple but powerful one. As she went on to explain to the class (and in her book The Implied Spider), the stories we tell reflect the world around us. And as soon as we write a story down, the world we were trying to capture has changed. We cannot help but retell the stories that we value—after all, they are never quite right for us—in our time. And even if we manage to get them quite right, they are only right for us—other people living around us will have different reasons for telling similar stories, for appealing to the same stock of authoritative figures for different purposes. The importance of analyzing the implications of retelling of Indian stories takes on new meaning in a modern India where Wendy Dongier’s controversial book The Hindus, an Alternative History is no longer sold in stores.

In the long line of stories centered around Shiva, the newest batch has been cooked up by banker-cum-author Amish Tripathi. The first book in the Shiva Trilogy was an immediate sensation when it was released, and reception only heated up as the second and third installments came out. The books shattered previous sales records in India on many counts, and have by now been translated into many Indian languages, but the real measure of its success lies in the individuals it captivates. I teach English at a school in South India and as soon as my students found out I had the books I became the most popular teacher at the school. Students (mostly 8th to 12th Standard boys) lined up to borrow them from me. Occasionally I would get the book back quickly, but more often than not the book would pass between three or four students before finding its way back to me—always a little more worn, the spine a little more flexible.

Primarily the books are exciting. Amish reveals the mysteries of the plot at the perfect pace, keeping the reader always desiring more information without growing bored. But the excitement of the plot masks deeper problems hidden at the center of the series. At the onset, the Shiva Trilogy claims to be an interpretation of “the rich mythological heritage of ancient India, blending fiction with historical fact.” This is a bold agenda to embark on, and if done correctly should be quite fruitful, yielding an enlightening account that is both informative, instructive, and interesting. But, while it is a mixture of classical mythology, fantasy fiction, popular science, self-help philosophy, and history, the Shiva Trilogy makes a mess out of each and every one of these categories. The odd blend of fantasy, reality, and speculative history creates an awkward comic tone that can be captured in a single sentence from the first book: “The drone of Brahmin scientists reciting Sanskrit shlokas at the base of the mountain floated up to create an ethereal atmosphere of pathos.” The powerful Puranic stories of Shiva and the great wealth of scholarship and archeology of ancient India are reduced to names, vague references and symbols, while the poetic abilities of the author are hampered by religious sentiments. These three major strands—myth, history, fiction—combine in the most awkward of all possible manners; with possible dangerous consequences.

The vision of the past Amish presents is little more than a projection of modern India into the early Iron Age world. (Although the author puts the discovery of iron much earlier than he should.) There is no interesting critical engagement with the differences of the past, and the text is smattered with anachronisms. Some are intentional and used in a comic manner (the invocation of cosmetic surgery and the constant reference to Brahmin scientists come to mind), while others are more dangerous and can easily slip by unnoticed. After dancing around the term in the first book, Amish uses the term “India” to describe a “nation” that encompasses the entire “subcontinent” liberally in the second and third installments. He creates a continuity of Indian nationalism and Indian tradition that never existed. While it is easy for the reader to see beyond the obvious anachronisms, this general attitude permeates the aesthetic of the entire series more subtly.

The characters in the Shiva Trilogy speak English mixed with a smattering of phrases in Hindi and occasionally even Kashmiri and Kotdwaar. Sanskrit is referred to as “old Sanskrit” and is spoken with a Hindi accent. The central religious and philosophical text is the Bhagavad Gita, and Shiva claims “all Indians visit temples regularly.” There are “true Hindus” who worship Rama and Sita. Of course, there is no evidence for any of these things in the India of 1850 BC when the story is set. The past is presented as more familiar than strange, and any deviations from current India are presented as abnormalities. In fact, the only major aspect of modern India that seems to be missing is cricket.

But then there is another obvious thing missing—Muslims, Buddhists and Europeans. Of course, there were no Muslims, Buddhists or Europeans in India (or anywhere) in 1850 BC, but Amish presents a picture of ancient India that is replete with chilies (historically brought by the Portuguese from South America) and firangi swords (an Arabic word for a mostly European sword used in India starting in the 16th century). He presents a picture of an Indian past that has the sights, smells, and sounds of a modern India that was heavily influenced by and which was formed in reaction to Europeans, Buddhists and Muslims—but  without the groups themselves.

The question of what if anything in the books was found in Ancient Indian lingers throughout the trilogy. The empire of Meluha claims to be built on the laws of Manu, but it is closer in design to Plato’s imagined republic. The proverbs given are a mixture of Gita-esque maxims and pop-psychology that are more often than not made up. (Shiva says as much when he quotes Lord Ram and then admits that Ram didn’t actually say it, “but he could have said it.”) Amish briefly presents the idea that ancient India was influenced by Iran (or was it the other way around? he asks), but the connections are too obscure, and the people presented as being-almost-pseudo-Iranians are too mysterious and without their own identity to be instructive. In the end, we are presented a view of a glorious India of the past that has all the aesthetic qualities of the present while excluding many people who have influenced Indian life and who currently live as minorities within India.

Amish is a champion of liberalism. He is not a right wing nationalist. He presents Shiva as a pot smoking Tibetan. He mostly explains away religions miracles with science. And he claims to desire a pluralist society, beginning the final novel with the invocation, “Har Har Mahadev. All of us are Mahadevs, All of us are Gods. For His most magnificent temple, finest mosque and greatest church exist within our souls.”He presents all religions as being a path to the same ultimate truth. This has the affect of rendering all differences insignificant. But the interesting and valuable part of different religions is that they are in fact different.

The fact that he is emphatically in favor of a seemingly pluralistic society that accepts Muslims and Christians and Zoroastrians (and just about anybody else) gives Amish the air of plausible deniability. How can one who accepts all religions neglect them in favor of a single hegemonic faith? But like much in the Shiva Trilogy, this deniability is in the end implausible. Shiva describes the events that have happened to him as “an unfolding series of implausible coincidences,”and this is a good description of the way Amish handles otherness.

The trilogy opens with the highly organized kingdom of Meluha, constantly under fear of “terrorist” attacks. (This being one of the obvious and more comic anachronisms in the books.) At first the suspicion is that these attacks are carried out by the neighboring nation of Swadeep. Swadeep and Meluha were once united, but they were divided and now the bitter Swadeep state sponsors terror attacks on the innocent civilians of Meluha. The resonance with Pakistan would be obvious even if the symbol of Swadeep weren’t a crescent moon. Eventually it is revealed that Swadeep is not behind the terror attacks, and that these separated brothers really can get along and be reunited.

The focus of the story now turns to the elusive Nagas, terrifying warriors who look different, live in seclusion, and seem to be the ones carrying out the terror attacks. Of course there are currently people who call themselves Nagas and who look different and who sometimes carry out terror attacks in an attempt to assert their independence from India, but Amish can easily deny that he had these people in mind. In the trilogy, Nagas are the excess creation of an unjust system. Once the system accepts them they are successfully integrated into mainstream society, once again leaving all differences behind. In the end, all differences are reconcilable and can be assimilated. Everyone is the same, which means that everyone is boring.

The wonderful gods of India also become boring, as they are forced into strict Victorian moral paradigms. (Except of course for the pot smoking.) Shiva is fawning and servile until the very last minute, and is presented as the type of person who is “embarrassed as always with compliments.”

His powerful sexual energy from the Puranas and the corpus of Sanskrit Kavya and regional Bhakti traditions is sublimated for obsequious devotion to his wife Sati. Shiva is more of an idea than either a god or a person. The depictions of Shiva smoking marijuana are the only times we see him as an actual character. Still, these are full of awkward language, as when “Brahaspati stared sharply at Shiva, wondering what terrible past could have prompted his friend to get addicted to the weed.”

The main thrust of the trilogy is that India is a divided state, run by corrupt leaders who have deviated from the laws of the past and who are dragging the nation down. This is a narrative that should resonate with anyone with a cursory interest in modern Indian politics. The solution provided by Amish is Shiva. Initially Shiva protests, saying, “a new system is needed. I am hardly a god to perform miracles.” But eventually he takes on the role he was born for and destroys the old system, altering both society, politics and religion. The change that Shiva brings is a dramatic change of a massive social order, but it is a change enacted by a single savior-figure leader and his close group of followers. Most of the people it affects do not participate in the change. The hope for a savior leader who will drastically save society by replacing the current corrupt leaders (but of course, Shiva’s new order is still run by the elites of the previous order) is the hope that many Indians are looking for this upcoming election season. The meteoric rise of AAP and the intense following forming around Narendra Modi are part of the same political ideology the Shiva Trilogy was written in. (In the trilogy, Shiva’s battle-cry is Har Har Mahadev, which was controversially shouted at recent rallies for Modi in Varanasi.)

I will continue to lend out the books when students come to ask for it. Despite its many flaws, these are books that can get teenage boys interested in turning pages. Amish certainly has a gift as a storyteller, and if he can get people on the path of reading, all the better. Still, when a student brings the book back I invariably question him and try to get him or her to think about the implications of what he or she just enjoyed.

Eric M Gurevitch is translator, teacher, and writer currently living in Mysore. Gurevitch’s translations, reviews, and thoughts have recently appeared in The Hypocrite Reader, Asymptote Journal, The Hindu Business Line, and Muse India. He blogs for Asymptote Journal about translation issues relating to India.