‘It is a book about myself in India’

M. G. Vassanji talks to Pankaj K. Singh about A Place Within and himself 

THE author of six acclaimed novels and two collections of short stories, M.G. Vassanji, the Toronto-based novelist of Indian descent, was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. He went to university in the United States, at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania. Professionally trained as a nuclear physicist, he took to writing full time after his first novel The Gunny Sack that won him a Commonwealth Prize. His novel The Book of Secrets won him the prestigious Giller Award in its inaugural year for the best Canadian fiction of 1994. He received the Giller a second time in 2003 for The In-Between World of Vikram Lal. His latest novel The Assassin’s Song was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award. M.G. Vassanji was recently in India for the launch of his deeply personal and evocative non-fictional work A Place Within: Rediscovering India.. The following are excerpts from an interview:

I see it as how I have changed to becoming more familiar with it and accepting it as part of not only my heritage but as a part of me, the same way as East Africa is, but a bit different. In East Africa, there is a sense of nostalgia of place, sounds and memories of childhood. In India, despite the trouble and violence (post-Ayodhya), I felt a certain sense of ease and familiarity, which I did not quite expect right in the first visit. I have often wondered if I was romanticising, but over several visits, I could not but conclude that it was there. The ease and affection have remained all along. This was helped by the fact that I spoke the language and the temperament of the people was familiar. The amazing thing is that if you go to a smaller place like my ancestral Junagarh or even Shimla for that matter, where I have stayed for a longer period ; the older, slower, more traditional India is still there.

Not only electronic media but even otherwise we are getting more tolerant as there is talk of women’s rights, gay rights, eradication of poverty etc. The rigidity you find largely in terms of religious identity. I was brought up in a tradition where we had both Islamic and what are commonly called Hindu concepts. I never thought there was a sense in asserting oneself as a Hindu or as a Muslim, basically putting a barrier between people, between Indians. These barriers have become more rigid and people characterising each other and me in a way which I find offensive and hurtful.

The Assassin’s Song is your first book set in India, but why did you choose a title with explicit violence in it?

There is a historical and intellectual angle to it. The pirs whom we follow are linked to a famous heretical sect of Iran called the "Ismailies" who were called "Assassins" in those times, that is 11th or 12th century. The exact link of the community is vague but there is a historical, mythological and folkloric link. The person who came to India in the 12th century in the book is discovered by the narrator-protagonist to have come from there. There are other Indian communities, including the tantriks, who have similar links to the sect. The "Ismailies" are ethnically Indians; their roots are in Gujarat. One person may have come from there but the community sprung up from the Bhakti influence and they were Gujaratis, Punjabis and others. We cannot even think of them as converts.

It has some Gujarat history. It so happens that the time the narrator is describing, violence happened. So, it is there in the narrative. In fact, when I first came to India in January 1993, I wanted to look away from the violence taking place here because there was so much more to India. I tried ignoring it but realised that it was covered in all the newspapers, every day for a few weeks. It would have been dishonest and cowardly to look away.

Yes, the book is philosophical, but it also deals with the burden of the past, of ancestry and the relationship between a father and a son in this context. As for myth, that was the only history we had and, therefore, it was our link to Indian history and mythology.

It is not about roots nor was meant to be about roots. As for rediscovering India, it was always there within me. I began the book after my first visit in 1993 but didn’t know how to write it because I realised India was so much a part of me. So, it is not a book about India as much as it is a book about myself in India. We remained culturally rooted in our upbringing but this process of rediscovering it was to acknowledge it and perhaps find one’s place in it.

Of course, I visited many temples, especially Mother Goddess’s temples on hilltops. I found the whole journey uphill fascinating, although I am not a religious person in the ordinary sense. The question of why people worship and what they seek I find wonderful, it fascinates me. Also, there is a lot of history and myth connected to these places.

Was it also to bring forth the spirituality and cultural diversity of India?

As I said earlier, a happy combination of mystical and devotional Hinduism and Islam inevitably defined my relationship with India. The existence of such inclusive systems of belief was proof of an essential historical quality of India, that of tolerance and flexibility, a certain laissez faire in matters of spirit, at least at the local level, far away from the watchful eyes of orthodoxy. Therefore, I find the labels ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ too exacting and excluding; I resist them.

What kind of change do you find in yourself after writing the book?

I feel this is the first account of not only my family but of my community in East Africa, connecting it to India. For me, it is an important personal book in a sense of completing myself and discovering myself.

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