'Understanding the enemy'

This week, India Diary brings to you a fascinating new book by Amitava Kumar, Husband Of A Fanatic, which forces you to question your identities.

The blurb on the book back is sure to grab your attention. It chooses to highlight what the writer Amitava Kumar, born in Ara, Bihar, now professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, says provided him a "situation" like in a Bollywood film, to explore another country (Pakistan) and various kinds of people. But it was the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat which really crystallised his response and led him to explore the idea of the enemy.

HT Image

The book is called Husband of a Fanatic. The blurb I mentioned says: "In the summer of 1999, while the Kargil War was being fought, Amitava Kumar married a Pakistani Muslim. The event led to a process of discovery that made Kumar examine the relationship not only between India and Pakistan but also between Hindus and Muslims inside India. The result is this fiercely personal essay on the idea of the enemy.

The Independent says of Amitava Kumar: "His prose is always elegant, his ideas pulsate with energy and his humanity shines through every page."

We say that this is a book which should be read by every thinking and to use Amitava Kumar's word "unthinking" person, because there is an urgent need to question ourselves, our identities, our set beliefs and attitudes.

As important as it is to create an artistic text, it is equally important to take it to the viewer. Other wise the project is still-born, feels Amitava Kumar

Amitava tells

HindustanTimes.com

: "What I find is a clarity on the question of identity. 'I am a Hindu. He is a Muslim.' Far too many people know they are Hindus or Muslims. Far too many people know they are not Muslims."

That is what he finds very disturbing. It would be heartening if there was a confusion rather than this clarity, he says.

Who is a terrorist and who is not? What is the identity of a rioter? How different are those of the RSS who manufacture riots from those who do the same in Jammu and Kashmir and are labelled as terrorists? They are the same, says Kumar. Mirror images of each other, he calls them.

He recounts an incident in the book of how an RSS man would write hate-filled pamphlets against Hindus and put it on public places and make it appear as if were written by a Muslim. He recalls that scene from that memorable film by Govind Nihalani, Tamas, which shows how Hindus kill a pig and throw it in front of a temple but make it appear as if Muslims have done it, too create a Hindu-Muslim divide.

"Violence is manufactured. Conflict is created," he says. We have before us the US invasion of Iraq as a mammoth example of how reasons like the WMDs were created to justify the US' invasion of Iraq. The search for those WMDs is still on.