A modern allegory with
Rama as hero
Ramayana and Modernity by D.M. Sinha. Sterling Publishers, New Delhi. Pp 207. Rs 250.

One Raj, three nations, two models

Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective by Ayesha Jalal. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Pp. 295. Rs. 195.

THE better known author of the somewhat controversial “The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan”, Ayesha Jalal has now proffered another provocative study on contemporary South Asia. The theme, a variation of her earlier preoccupation with the evolution of Pakistan’s polity, is the interplay of domestic politics and authoritarian states in post-colonial South Asia.

Broadly, the author sets herself the task of studying how a shared Raj legacy led to apparently contrasting patterns of political developments — democratic in the case of India and militarily authoritarian as in Pakistan and after 1971 in Bangladesh. Understandably her study, after a brief introduction, analyses the colonial backdrop in terms of the historical context of the partition as well as its administrative legacy, both in terms of the economics of partition and separate defence and the ideological dimensions.

She is strongly persuaded that the birth of India and Pakistan not only “deflected” but “even distorted” the ideological positions of the Indian National Congress and All-India Muslim League. For in the final count, the Mahatma, who had hated the very notion of centralised state authority — inasmuch as it represented the organised annihilation of individual spirituality and freedom — accepted control over his colonial masters’ “satanic” institutions of oppression. The Muslim League, which at the least was “consistently confused ideologically”, attained Pakistan by dividing the very Muslim community whose interests it supposedly wanted to represent and safeguard.

Taking note of the state formation and political processes in the two countries, Jalal chooses 1971 as a watershed of sorts. The military debacle in its eastern wing that year, she argues, was the “cumulative result” of the Pakistani defence establishment’s political rather than military failures. For there is little doubt that the military action in the then East Pakistan followed the “inability” of a manifestly authoritarian regime to preside over the transfer of power in the aftermath of the country’s first general election held on the basis of universal adult franchise.

In India, the success of its “formal democracy” was due largely to the original strength of the Congress and the political skills of its leaders. As also to New Delhi’s inheritance of the Raj’s unitary centre and the forging of the “very different sorts” of international links in the first decade after independence. Later, Indira Gandhi’s “path of populism” helped to widen as well as deepen the “social basis” of support of the Congress Party.

The author refers broadly to the next two decades (1971-1993) as the “populist era” in all the three countries. Here the end of the Congress hegemony in India and the emergence of Bhutto followed by 11 years of Zia-ul-Haq’s military dictatorship in Pakistan was witness to mainly regional parties challenging and aspiring for state power. And implicitly as well as explicitly claiming legitimacy in terms of some variant or other of regionalism or religious majoritarianism.

Meanwhile in Bangladesh, an unpopular military regime (General Ershad’s) was forced to pass the mantle on to a popularly elected government (Begum Zia’s) which touted the unifying principles of Islam so as to mobilise support against growing social conflict and economic crisis.

Halfway through the study, Jalal shifts her emphasis from political to economic developments. In New Delhi’s case, the political economy of development had taken place in a “formally liberal democratic mould” with the result that while the boons of development may not have been “spectacular” — especially in the realm of distribution — they were more widely shared than in the case of Pakistan or Bangladesh.

Here “a growing congruence” of interests between the dominant social classes, swelled by members of the non-elective institutions, has resulted in a particular kind of relative autonomy of the state, whose military-bureaucratic structure has been able to determine “whom to include or exclude” from the developmental process.

As a result, in both cases there is little likelihood of a shift in the foreseeable future from a political economy of defence to a political economy of development.

The chapter on central power and regional dissidence plays down the much-trumpeted “democratic federalism” of India. And it highlights the recent efforts “to manipulate” communal divisions among linguistic minorities emphasising that the “multiple social identities” of the disparate people constituting India, demand more than piecemeal appeasement of specific cultural values.

In Pakistan, the scenario was no less edifying for, despite the “gloss of stability” provided by a military-bureaucratic-industrial axis at the federal centre and a concordat of industrial and landed magnates at the provincial level, regional inequities persist, especially among vast sections of the poor and unempowered in Sind and Baluchistan.

While the combination of structural contrasts is less formidable in India, Jalal is not sure whether its state managers would demonstrate the requisite political will and imagination to accommodate multiple identities and regionally articulated aspirations.

Analysing the evolution of society and ideology in the two neighbouring states, the author underlines that by equating secular and nationalist credentials, the post-colonial Indian state in effect “delegitimised” the expression of minority fears and aspirations in an idiom other than its version of secular nationalism.

In Pakistan’s case the situation was a little more complex for while it describes itself as an Islamic republic, religion “rarely” has been the primary motivating factor in political calculations. More, though federal in form, Pakistan has been “essentially unitary and undemocratic” in spirit.

Expectedly, the author’s conclusions are far from complimentary to the evolving polities of South Asia where, as she heavily underlines, superficial differences do not add up to much. As a matter of fact, the simple “dichotomy” between democracy in India and military authoritarianism in Pakistan and Bangladesh “collapses” as one delves below the surface phenomena of political processes. For, on a closer examination, there are more shadowy areas of difference and similarity than of “flagrant contrast”. More, both post-colonial India and Pakistan “appear to exhibit” alternate forms of authoritarianism. India has a “slight” edge in the containment of the military which proved to be “a critical factor” in the institutionalisation of its “formal democracy”, albeit one resting on the well-worn “authoritarian stumps” of the colonial state.

In the case of Pakistan’s military-bureaucratic state, the extinguishing of a democratically evolved political system and state structure (1958) had so far proved “irreversible”. Nor does the future seem to hold much promise, for the subcontinent’s “historical legacy of layered sovereignties” needs to be fitted into innovative frameworks of decentred democracies. Which should be capable of reflecting not only the multiple identities of its people but also their unfulfilled social and economic aspirations. This, Jalal concedes, is a tall order for the “hollow carcass” that serves as political discourse in South Asia.

One may not go along with all that this slim volume has so persuasively argued, but there is no denying that its analysis has both substance and depth. There is an odd feeling though that Jalal is a little less than fair to India’s democratic experiment and such meagre gains as its polity has registered. For repeated references in the text to India’s “formal democracy”, putting a question mark on its “democratic federalism?” and “formally liberal democratic mould” jar on the ear.

In doing so, Pakistani developments, wittingly or otherwise, come out in a more positive, helpful light. Broadly, while there is no case for tub-thumping New Delhi’s performance over the past half a century or so, it may be conceded that it has, by and large, evolved a framework both at the provincial and local government levels in which there is greater scope for resolving social tensions without any serious damage to the system.

Thus the shock waves which Mandalisation administered in the recent past were harsh and tempestuous, yet somehow the polity withstood its multifaceted convulsions. To say all this is not to unsay that both in India and Pakistan, and certainly in Bangladesh, central political authority is up against serious challenges: of linguistic dissidence, religious sectarian strife and clan and caste conflicts. Sadly, on present showing, the Pakistani as well as Bangladeshi political framework would appear to be a little more fragile. And perhaps less resilient.

A talented Pakistani scholar, now teaching in the USA, Ayesha Jalal has turned in a creditable performance. Apart from her study of Jinnah, noticed earlier, she has co-authored (with Sugata Bose) another work, “Modern South Asia”: History, Culture and Political Economy” (1998), a companion volume of sorts to the one under review. Her reading list is impressive for in place of a nondescript bibliography, often padded, she has appended a useful 18-page essay which offers, chapterwise, a reasonably exhaustive, annotated bibliographic survey of all that is relevant in books as well as periodical literature.

While the lay reader may benefit in a general way, the curious scholar and researcher could find many helpful suggestion for further study.

A sad omission is the two blank pages (68-69) listed in the table of contents as a map on the “political divisions of South Asia, 1972”. The inscription later in the text, “maps not printed”, stares the reader squarely in the face!
— Parshotam Mehra

Buy a human body, part by part

Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan. Kali for Women, New Delhi. Pp.111. Rs 150.

IN the ideology followed by the Inter Planta Service that monitors the transactions between the donor and the receiver, the dream to have replacements for any diseased organs always lying in reserve is allowed to run its full course and turns into a nightmare by being carried to its absurd conclusion. Manjula Padmanabhan, who received the first prize of $ 250,000 for the Onassis International Cultural Competition for her play “Harvest”, shows through a black tragi-comedy that it was a dream concentrating only on material temptations, was narrowly utilitarian, and hence spiritually impoverished and dehumanised.

She is aware of the Organ Transplant Act 1994, which prohibits the sale of human organs. But in spite of this, human kidneys removed in a clandestine manner are being transplanted in rich patients in India and abroad, who are being charged about £ 30,000 by private medical institutions. Professional blood sellers invariably become organ donors in view of the high monetary temptation. Donors of both blood and organs are in the high risk group and invariably transmit Aids, hepatitis and other infections.

Interestingly, in many cases donors detect their missing kidney only when they notice an ugly abdominal scar and get themselves re-examined. As the entire process is conducted by quacks and in a subterranean manner, a majority of the transplants end in fatal failure. Padmanabhan has, through a dystopian satire full of a psycho-economic aberration, challenges the social conscience of the western predator and the indifferent Indian bureaucrat who has as yet shown no interest in intervening.

In a technically advanced Bombay of 2010, a world of the immoral and the criminally and diabolically insane, the author introduces us to a poverty-stricken family in their slum. The eldest son Om is accepted as a donor in return for all amenities necessary for a healthy, civic life. They are the representatives of the Third World who are exploited by the racketeers in human organs and blood trading through the hedonistic, materialistic streak which is bound to destroy consciousness.

We also meet the commando-like guards who remind us of the SS of Nazi Germany, and who work for the rich western receivers, supervising the modern installations in the homes of the donors, as well as taking disciplinary action if they misuse any benefit. These guards closely control the enclosed, impenetrable world of Om, eliminating any gesture of rebellion or disagreement. Once an individual’s identity is destroyed, it becomes easier to dispose him of in any way you like.

“Harvest” presents us with the paradigm of the totalitarian neo-imperial state as an enormous workshop for the transformation of human nature, the creation of a species whose personality has collapsed and the ego eliminated. We also meet Ginni, the receiver, an “epitome of an American-style youth goddess” who stands for the harsh Inner Party depending for its dictatorial power on an unending process of victimisation to assure her own immortality and vitality. “Brave New World” or “Nineteen Eighty-Four” are parallel texts that show the working of such terrors of science and the mechanism of the totalitarian super-state. The whining and insignificant mother of Om, the totally mindless brother Jeetu, a gigolo who secretly is a lover of his sister-in-law Jaya, are all mediocrities overpowered by an absurd world of human exploitation.

The play shows us that the twofold dream of socialism and science is deliberately distorted by those who assume power in its name. Jaya and Jeetu are the only two characters who have nothing but contempt for those western hypocrites who pretend to show a simulated paradise where human beings can be comfortable, but in fact seize power over the poor and needy with no intentions of ever relinquishing it. These are the people who establish a dictatorship and through remote control keep a check on a family whose head needs to be kept healthy so that his organs remain healthy and contribute to creating “a happier and longer-lived world”. As Ginni, the white receiver emphasises: “The most important thing is to keep Auwm (Om) smiling, it means his body’s smiling and if his body’s smiling, it means his organs are smiling. And that’s the kind of organs that’ll survive a transplant best, smiling organs — I mean, God forbid that it should ever come to that, right? But after all, we can’t let ourselves forget what the programme is about! I mean, if I’m going to need a transplant — then by God, let’s make it the best damn transplant that we can manage!”

Jaya is horror-stricken when she learns that her husband has agreed to sell his organs to an American: “How can I hold your hand, touch your face, knowing that at any moment it might be snatched away from me and flung across the globe! (sobs) If you were dead I could shave my head and break my bangles — but this? To be a widow by slow degrees? To mourn you piece by piece? (sobs) Should I shave half my head? Break my bangles one at a time”?

Padmanabhan presents the nightmare implied in the fulfilment of the dream for riches and in the distortion and betrayal of the same.

Jeetu is finally taken away for the transplant as he is mistaken for Om; the machine that works on scientific precision is put on its head. Its Big Lie is that it serves the happiness of the people; ironically, happiness becomes a euphemism for the enslavement of Om’s family by a strategy that induces them to worship the West and paradoxically love their servitude. Jeetu is also hypnotised by the looks of Ginni and finally gives in.

Only Jaya holds out; she does not want to live in a world of apparitions, “electronic shadows, night-visions and virtual touch”. She wants real hands to touch her and feel the real weight on her. She has learnt the new definition of winning; “Winning by losing. I win if you lose” she tells her tormentor Virgil (the simulation of Ginni) who wants to take her away. Her cry in the end is full of heroism: “The only thing I have left which is still mine is death. My death and my pride ..”

She manages to emerge triumphant in the end. A poor helpless woman wins over those “who live only to win”. She gives orders to Virgil to pronounce her name right and he finally does manage. He listens to her in the end: “I want to be left alone — truly alone. I don’t want to hear any sounds, I don’t want any disturbances. I’m going to take my pills, watch TV, have a dozen baths a day, eat for three instead of one. For the first time in my life and maybe the last time of my life, I’m going to enjoy myself, all by myself. I suggest you take a rest.” She is now free and equal.

The ironic logic of totalitarian ideology sees the machine in consistent motion. But its perfection is here questioned. Its aim is to eliminate the notion of historical becoming and its prerequisite is the existence of human beings whose only purpose is to conform. Ginni’s super-ego, like the State, achieves absolute control over the family members, all of whom are forced to regress and stay at the level of eternal childhood obedience. Their house turns into a kind of torture chamber where the intellectual rebel has no place. Behind total domination lies the desire for a consistency which is independent of reality, and which tolerates no spontaneity of mutations or variables. The world of Ginni aims not only at the transformation of Om’s outside world, but, as Hannah Arendt writing on the working of ideology argues, “the transformation of human nature itself.”

But it is not the West only which must be held responsible. The Indian medical professionals have a clandestine link with the racketeers, and need to be exposed. How long will the Medical Council of India remain indifferent to this serious issue which has left a terrible blemish on the country’s medical profession that is party to the cannibalistic practice of the rich feeding on the poor? While Padmanabhan’s concerns are valid, for her readers unfamiliar with India they may also be an eye-opener. She makes her points allusively and evocatively, making her critique of authoritarianism and exploitation powerful with the remarkable capacity to illuminate a social problem by drawing on pictorial evidence.

But how can this evil deeply embedded in human history and collective psyche be eradicated? The moral to be legitimately drawn from the supreme tragedy of transacting in the sale of human organs is that the Health Ministry must wake up to include this serious issue on its agenda and evolve policies that not only deal with the law and order problem within the medical profession but also take ample measures to improve the quality of life. The government must become responsive to any lapses in public morality. Padmanabhan’s heart is in the right place and her timely message demands immediate attention.
— Shelley Walia

A modern allegory with Rama as hero

Ramayana and Modernity by D.M. Sinha. Sterling Publishers, New Delhi. Pp 207. Rs 250.

THE Ramayana is the national epic of India. Ramayana makes us what we are. What other gospels or scriptures tell us such as “love your enemy”, “follow truth unto death”, “do good to all” et al, are noble precepts but never followed. The Ramayana’s greatest uniqueness is that the mode of life and living propounded in it have been followed by countless Indians through trackless centuries as Jawaharlal Nehru says:

“I do not know of any books any where which have exercised so continuous and pervasive an influence on the mass mind as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (and the Ramayana much more than the Mahabharata).”

No book ever exercised such a lasting and continuing influence on the life of a whole nation. Rama goes into exile to honour his father’s promise to Kaikeyi. “One would rather sacrifice his life than break his pledged word.”

This has been an article of faith with people, specially with the Rajputs and Marathas. Even in the present decadent age, there is still respect for parents here, more than anywhere else.

Love of brothers is another characteristic that continues to this day. Rama would leave the kingdom, Bharata absolutely refuses to touch it, he goes to the forest to persuade Rama to return. The kingdom is tossed about like a volleyball. And when under guru’s orders, he is forced to accept the crown, Bharata rules by placing Rama’s wooden sandal on the throne.

Sita is the ideal Indian wife, the image of faithfulness, chastity and self-sacrifice (she like Lakshmana puts herself into voluntary exile). Old time India, and even now to some degree, could boast of the most stable, satisfied and harmonious family life.

Hanuman is the ideal follower or servant. For that virtue, he is worshipped in countless temples all over the land.

The author D.M. Sinha retired from the IAS and took to religious studies and writings to fill the vacuum. As the poet says, “And beads and prayer books are the toys of age”. He claims to be the disciple of one Rehana Tayyabji and learnt through the studies of the Gita, the Quran and the Bible, a cosmopolitan touch perhaps. His Ramayana stories are a 200-page lucid narrative and interesting style. He starts with Valmiki, author of the Ramayana, but bases most of his account on Tulsidasa’s Ramayana. Says Tulsi: “There are a hundred crore versions of the Ramayana.” One can often hear the echoes of Tulsi Dasa’s mighty lines in his story, bringing much credit.

The work contains 31 chapters, each dealing with some chapter or other of the Ramayana.

The Ramayana has a magical attraction, hard to define. Every year at the Navaratras (in October) Ram Lilas (the dramatised version of the Ramayana) are held at dozens of places in each city and town and they are generally over-crowded. Men, women and children sit long past midnight witnessing the show, though it is the same old story year after year and the same incidents, which would normally bore one with endless repetition. But the Ramayana shows are ever green, ever fresh and ever captivating.

As princes, Rama and Lakshmana, handsome and valorous, grow up in the court of Dasharatha. Sage Vishwamitra came to the king to ask him to lend him Rama and Lakshmana to destroy the demons who were daily disturbing his yajna (sacrifice) in the forest. Not the army, but the two boys. They effortlessly killed demons Mareech and Subahu and a female Tadaka. Vishwamitra was happy.

In the neighbourhood there was being staged the swayamvara (self-choice of husband by the girl) of peerless maiden Sita. Her father Janaka’s condition was that any one who broke a Shiva’s bow was eligible to marry Sita. All other princes present there failed to even move the great bow.

Vishwamitra suggested Rama to save the honour of the Kshatriya clan by breaking the bow, which he did. Janak had four daughters and Dashratha four sons. Rama and Lakshmana were present there. Janak sent an invitation to Dashratha to come there with the remaining two sons and a barat.

Remember they had started from home with no idea of marriage. Marriage came to all four by destiny without any personal meetings or choosing.

Rama is “Maryada Purshottam” — a divine character setting a model or an example to the world. In the Valmiki Ramayana, Rama is a beau ideal, a hero, a warrior and a superman. In Tulsidasa’s Ramayana, he is a complete god. The writer gives one example of it. He quotes an example of the crow, kaka-bhushundi. It stole bread from child Rama’s mouth. The child smiled and breathed in and the crow went inside of Rama. In Rama’s stomach he saw an infinite number of universes and countless gods (there was no second Rama though) there; he spent there countless ages. Then the child Rama smiled and breathed out and out came the crow; what appeared to him to be infinity of time was just a few minutes.

This is the high water mark of supernaturalism. Tulsidas sought to emphasise the fact of Rama being almighty, omnipresent God.

The first chapter of the book is titled “Sati’s question”. Sati, the consort of Shiva, saw Rama (in the company of Lakshmana) searching for his lost wife Sita and enquiring about her from trees and creepers. He was distraught, forelorn, with tears in his eyes, like an ignorant rustic. Was this the lord God? God knew all and could crush a thousand Ravanas and Lankas by a mere nod. This doubt baffled her. Shiva suggested to her to go and put Rama to test. She assumed the form of Sita. Rama saw through the deception and asked her where her husband Shiva was and why she was wandering alone in the forest. On return Shiva enquired what test she had applied to Rama. No test at all, she lied. Shiva saw with his divine eye the whole truth.

She (Sati turned Parvati) asked Shiva the why of Rama’s incarnation. Our author gives one episode as the cause of it — Tulsidasa has adduced several alternative stories as the reason.

Narada was doing penance. Kamadeva tried to allure him with his love power. Narada showed wondrous self-control. He stood his ground. Shiva praised Narada’s feat but advised him not to boast of it before Vishnu or other gods. (He had felt a touch of vanity, which Shiva wanted to remove).

Rejecting Shiva’s advice he made a boast of it before God Vishnu. Vishnu sought to teach him a lesson. He created a lovely town of wealth and beauty. The local king’s daughter, a maiden of fairy beauty, was having a “swayamvara”. Narada now lost all control and wanted to marry her at all costs. He invoked Vishnu to give him his own beauteous shape so that the girl puts the wedding garland round his neck. He begged for “hari roop” (the form of a god or a monkey). He became monkey-faced. The girl did not even look at him.

Two attendants of Shiva laughed loudly at him. Narada saw his own reflection in water and knew the truth. Vishnu had deceived him to marry the girl himself.

Vishnu with his new bride was walking a little ahead. Narada hurled curses at him. He cursed him that he would suffer a heartache in the separation of his wife. The monkeys (the shapes he gave to Narada) would be Rama’s saviours. He also cursed the two attendants of Shiva who had made fun of him to be born as demons. They became Ravana and Kumbhakarna.

These rishis and divine sages spent all their time in practising penance. They had no other work. After accumulating great merit and supernatural power, they spent it on granting boons and pronouncing curses.

Vishnu withdrew his deception. There was left no beautiful town nor any beautiful girl for marriage.

Our author has introduced another episode, never heard before. Rama’s bridge over the ocean was being built. They wanted to perform a great “yajna” for victory in the coming war. For that special ceremony, Ravana was the best (priest). He was invited and he did come (to help his foe’s victory against himself?). But the performer (Rama in this case) must be accompanied by his wife. But Sita was in Ravana’s captivity. He brought her also, so as to leave out no ceremony. After the function, he took her back. (Why did Rama not challenge him? Rama was on Indian soil and had armies of monkeys with him; Ravana had none.)

Whatever its authenticity, the story is interesting.

The last chapter describes Sita’s second exile because a washerman expressed doubts about her character since she had passed so many months at Ravana’s house. She was pregnant and Rama knew her to be as pure as virtue itself. She had already passed a fire ordeal at Lanka. It was the height of injustice.

Our author even here refers to the Tulsidasa Ramayana. Yet Tulsidasa has not written a word about it. Its version in the Valmiki Ramayana too is an interpollation (as the difference of Valimiki’s sublime style shows), added later by some male chauvinist.

Our author has tried a new experiment (he calls it modernity) putting symbolic and allegorical interpretations on well-known incidents.
— P. D. Shastri

Punjabi literature
A fiction 30 years too late
by Jaspal Singh

Piara Singh Bhogal, a well-known newspaper columnist, has now found a new pasture to graze on. After a gap of about two years his second novel "Shehar" (The city) has hit the book stores. The first one "Sher di Swari" (Riding a tiger) was duly acclaimed by readers as an important political novel in Punjabi. The second novel has a different perspective, though here too the reader gets a glimpse of the rough and tumble of university politics in the state.

A lower middle class youth Chanchal Singh from a small town joins a small weekly newspaper as editor in a nearby city after his graduation. This paper is brought out by a successful business house mainly interested in its own publicity. Chanchal rents a dingy room and works hard to make a name for himself as a newsman.

When he faces financial difficulty he takes up tuition as well. A girl from a well-to-do family takes lessons from him and in the process they become intimate. But Chanchal backs out when it comes to marriage and she marries somebody else in a distant town.

The owner of the newspaper is an uncouth trader with an inflated ego; the boy does not pull on well with him. Consequently, he resigns his job to join a bigger newspaper as a sub-editor.

Meanwhile he completes his masters in English literature in first class under the guidance of his favourite teacher, Dr Malhotra. During his college days, he is attracted to another girl Sumita from a rich family who eventually marries a young bureaucrat after discontinuing her studies.

Soon after Chanchal finds a job as a lecturer in the same college. He is fond of reading and has a gift of crisp expression. He naturally becomes a very popular teacher in a couple of years. He takes keen interest in extra-curricular activities as well, particularly theatre, which again increases his popularity as a teacher.

During these very days he falls in love with a young lecturer, Kanwal from a neighbouring girls college. After having gone through initial hassles, he marries her and goes on a honeymoon to Jaipur in Rajasthan where they have a great time in a posh hotel.

The honeymoon is followed by routine life which has its own demands. The lower middle class boy makes desperate efforts to join the middle class consumer society, which entails additional financial liabilities. He needs to furnish his house so that he is accepted in the new social circle. For this he has to work very hard and takes up again tuition and translation work, writes textbooks and so on. To be successful in this kind of work he needs the patronage of some publisher and also of some university bigwig, say, a senator or a syndic so that his books are prescribed for different classes.

With this in mind he plans to propose Dr Malhotra, his mentor and senior colleague, as a candidate for the university senate from the registered graduate constituency. This requires a lot of leg work. The candidates have to get the votes registered mostly at their own cost. Dr Malhotra is on the move for a month or so and with the sincere help of a number of dedicated friends and supporters he wins the election.

This, however, is not enough for him to play an effective role in academic politics. He needs the support of a few members of the academic council and the board of studies. Chanchal again comes to his rescue and manages to push in a few candidates as members of these bodies. Again this requires strenuous efforts which Dr Malhotra cannot fully cope with. He suffers a heart attack. Chanchal too is totally exhausted and falls sick. Soon both the guru and the chela come back to near normal condition.

The boy at last realises that real happiness lies in contentment and sensitive human relations, not in overstretching oneself for petty considerations.

Now this plain storyline follows an expected chronology which does not create any storm, tide, not even strong ripples that are the ingredient of a fiction. Every lower middle class youngman longs to break his class barrier and join the middle class.

This was more relevant during the first two decades or so after partition. Most of the creative literature, films and theatre during those days had this as the theme. A vertical economic climb was the ideal to be achieved through hard work, luck and chance.

Present-day corruption, cheating and unscrupulous manipulation had not yet infected the moral fibre of the middle class. Most of the people still had their conscience intact and they had faith in their capabilities. Dreams and ideals which were within one's reach could be realised if one put in adequate labour and had the right kind of links and opportunities.

The problem with this novel is that it is 30 years too late in its birth. What prompted Bhogal to write it at this juncture — when soft social fiction of this kind seems so antiquated — is beyond the comprehension of ordinary readers. Neither the characters are unusually strong that one should think of projecting them in a narrative form nor the events are epoch making for a writer to take note of them.

The problematics of the novel does not merit any elaborate unfolding. In fact the entire presentation follows a linear model with a stock sequence and summing up. In the end the reader is where he was at the beginning. He does not feel enlightened nor aesthetically rewarded, though he does not feel bored either. Till the last page he waits for something unusual to happen. But when nothing happens to satisfy his curiosity, he feels a little let down.

Even if the writer was interested in university politics, he could spin a good yarn on a more ambitious scale showing the intricacies of academic politics of the region. But he presents only a glimpse of this politics and confines himself to the limited social space of his plot.

Another shortcoming of the novel is its fast pace. Bhogal does not allow the situation to incubate fully. He seems to be in undue hurry. The reader rushes through it in one go. Since the plot and its unfolding are simple, the reader is not required to meditate or contemplate.

All in all, the novel remains at an adolescent intellectual level and will make a good read for teenagers only. A mature reader exposed to much complex forms may feel a little frustrated by this fast-food recipe.

At the same time it is hoped that Bhogal could utilise his immense linguistic and intellectual resources to cook up something more ambitious with greater literary value.