What Hinduism was years ago
By Khushwant Singh

NOT a day goes by without news of some violence perpetrated by some members of the Sangh Parivar, mainly the Shiv Sena and the Bajrang Dal. They are systematically sullying the fair name of Hinduism, once lauded for being more tolerant than the other faiths. I reproduce below an extract from a book India and Its Native Princes written by a Frenchman, Louis Rousselet, in 1864. An Indian edition was published in 1875 by the B.R. Publishing Corporation. Judge for yourself what Hinduism was 135 years ago.

"Is there a people in the world more tolerant than this good and gentle Hindoo people, who have been so often described to us as cunning, cruel and even bloodthirsty? Compare them for an instant with the Mussulmans, or even with ourselves, in spite of our reputation for civilisation and tolerance. Only let a Chinese or an Indian come and walk in our streets during a religious festival or ceremony, and will not the crowd exhibit the most hostile feelings towards him if his bearing should not be in conformity with the customs of the country? Will his ignorance excuse him? I doubt it. And in what country could such a spectacle be witnessed as that which met my eyes that day in the square of Benares? There, at ten paces from all that the Hindoo holds to be most sacred in his religion, between the source of wisdom and the idol of Siva, a protestant missionary had taken his stand beneath a tree. Mounted on a chair, he was preaching, in the Hindostani tongue, on the Christian religion and the errors of paganism. I heard his shrill voice, issuing from the depths of a formidable shirt-collar, eject these words at the crowd, which respectfully and attentively surrounded him —

"These reproaches called forth no murmur! the missionary was listened to immovably: but his dissertation was attended to, for every now and then one of the audience would put a question, to which a brave apostle replied as well as he could. Perhaps we should be disposed to admire the missionary’s courage if the well-known tolerance of the Hindoos did not defraud him of the greater part of his merit: but it is true that this very tolerance is what most disheartens the missionaries, one of whom once said to me, "Our labours are in vain; you can never convert a man who has sufficient conviction in his own faith to listen, without moving a muscle, to all the attacks you can make against it."

Pulitzer winner

I am getting less and less impressed with awards given by the Nobel, Booker, Commonwealth, Jnanpith and the Sahitya Akademi. I’ve read many Nobel Laureates and was disappointed. Others like V.S. Naipaul, who I rate much higher than many of the Nobel Laureates, have so far been overlooked. So have Rushdie and Vikram Seth by the Booker panel of judges. They were right in picking up Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things. It will remain a minor classic. So I hope will Jaishree Misra’s Ancient Promises. Pulitzers have never impressed me: there are far too many and mostly second rate. When I read of Jhumpa Lahiri, the first Indian to win it, I was happy but had no intention of reading her. But a friend who has assumed the role of my literary mentor gave me a copy of her Interpreter of Maladies: stories about "Bengal, Boston and Beyond" to read during my three-day sojourn to Goa. I could not resist opening it on my flight and finished it the next day. That speaks well of its readability.

It is a collection of short stories. Without striving to impress readers, without any witty turn of phrase or affected lyricism or prose, Jhumpa manages to hold the reader’s interest. She reminded me of Somerset Maugham who I regard the best story-teller of recent times. Her style is very much that of the short stories published in New Yorker where many of her stories have appeared. They have simple and straightforward narration, a dose of sex here and there, lots of details of furniture, decor, apparel and appearance but also an element of surprise which keeps one guessing till the end. What I found most charming was to discover the strong ties of language and style of living that brings Bengalis (of India and Bangladesh) together in different corners of the world. All the stories are of expatriate Bengalis. Even though born and bred in America, and after sowing their wild oats in that country, they are amenable to their parents’ wishes to marry Bengalis. A boy studying in Boston will open correspondence with a girl studying in California, agree to a blind date and marry and live happily ever afterwards. It is the pull of language, Rabindra Sangeet, Maacher jhole and the freedom to eat it with fingers instead of forks or spoons.

Though every story in Jhumpa’s collection is highly readable, some stay in the reader’s mind for a long time. Perhaps the best is the last one entitled The Third and Final Continent. It is about a crotchety old woman of 103 living by herself in a large house visited infrequently by her middle-aged daughter. She takes an occasional boarder provided he is from Harvard or MIT. She takes in a Bengali student on the strict condition that he pay the weekly rent every Friday. "Locks, fastens the chain and firmly presses the button on the knob of the entrance." She continues: "You are punctual! I expect you should be so with the rent. Also no woman visitors." She frequently goes off at a tangent and asserts "there is an American flag on the moon: A flag on the moon, boy I heard it on the radio! Isn’t that splendid:" When the Bengali agrees it is, she makes him repeat "Say splendid." He does so and is taken in. When his wife through an arranged marriage joins him, the lady puts her through the same kind of interrogation and pronounces her ‘a perfect lady’. They set up their own home; read of the old lady’s death in the local paper. The young man grieves over it as if he had lost his own mother.