Rusdie's Akbar isn't so great

Rushdie's Akbar isn't so great
In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold. A traveller coming this way at sunset -- this traveller, coming this way, now, along the lakeshore road-might believe himself to be approaching the throne of a monarch so fabulously wealthy that he could allow a portion of his treasure to be poured into a giant hollow in the earth to dazzle and awe his guests. And as big as the lake of gold was, it must only be a drop drawn from the sea of the larger fortune..."
Thus begins Salman Rushdie's tenth novel, The Enchantress of Florence (Random House), with the arrival of Mogor dell'Amore (Mughal of Love) at Fatehpur Sikri, the red sandstone capital city of Emperor Akbar. Mogor dell'Amore is carrying with him a secret so startling that, once told to the emperor, it will force another secret to come tumbling out of the royal family's musty cupboards stuffed with nasty tales of gore and lofty stories of Mughal glory, forcing Akbar to order the redrawing of his genealogical tree by the palace artist, a brooding man given to dark thoughts.
Rushdie has tried to recreate life in two cities separated by land and sea. There's Fatehpur Sikri, where Akbar agonised over faith, fidelity and filial loyalty -- when and how would Salim, remarkably cruel as a young boy, turn on him? -- while unbridled hedonism prevailed in the bed chambers of princes, princesses and others less privileged. Then there's Niccolo Machiavelli's Florence where seductive mistresses cast magical spells -- tulips painted on underclothes -- and authority is exercised through appalling torture even as humanist philosophy sprouts from its violence scorched soil. What is common to both places is the brutality of power.
Mogor dell'Amore, with his distinctive European features and yellow hair, gets to tell his secret to Akbar after demonstrating his 'magical powers': He is the son of a Mughal princess, the forgotten youngest half-sister (the Mughal court, let's not forget, till it lasted, was teeming with half-siblings, each conspiring against the other) of Babar, the grandfather of Akbar. How Qara Koz (Lady Black Eyes) becomes the mistress of Argalia, a Florentine soldier of fortune, and the rest of the tale is told in the manner of The Thousand and One Nights. But Rushdie, for all his efforts to create magic through words -- "His hair was long and black as evil and his lips were full and red as blood"; "It was as if every man in the city had turned werewolf and was howling at the moon"; "So it was that Shah Ismail of Persia drowned in the 17-year-old princess's black eyes"; "She unleashed the beauty she had kept veiled and he was lost" -- fails to take his readers (or at least this reader) on a magical mystery tour. His first historical novel, woven around romance and fantasy, heavily researched (as the detailed bibliography shows) and strenuously crafted, does not quite add weight to his admirable repertoire of fiction. Rushdie began to slip with The Moor's Last Sigh, and hasn't quite stopped sliding down the hill since then. His ethereal Jodha Bai, who satiated the mortal Akbar's desire by scratching him -- "she was adept at the seven types of unguiculation, which is to say the art of using the nails to enhance the act of love" -- is a pathetic parody of history. Was there ever a Jodha Bai in Akbar's palace? "She existed," writes Rushdie, "She was immortal, because she had been created by love."
To his credit, though, Rushdie stops short of venerating Akbar, and mocks at those who refer to him as 'Akbar the Great', for that would be tautology and utterly silly. And when Akbar would say, "Allah-o-Akbar", as he did before chopping off the "unnecessary head" of a "pompous little twerp", the Rana of Cooch Naheen (that's what Hindu rulers, including in brave Rajputana where tales of valour outnumber the grains of the desert's sand, had allowed themselves to be reduced to under Mughal tutelage) did he mean "God is Great" or "God is Akbar"? That's a question nobody would dare ask, for secular myth-making has placed a glowing halo around the head of Akbar, who in real life was as great and merciful as his god but of which little is mentioned in our history books.
In an interview to Reuters, Rushdie said writing The Enchantress of Florence "saved him from the wreckage of his divorce last year from fourth wife Padma Lakshmi". By spinning a yarn from palace intrigue and bedroom politics, by taking refuge in magical realism, he managed to escape the real world which, at that moment, had turned cold to him. "It was a good place to go at a time when my private life was in a state of wreckage, and yes it was, I suppose, a bit of a refuge," Rushdie told Reuters. "I think in the end what got me through it was the long familiarity of the necessary discipline of writing a novel. I found that in the end a lifetime's habit of just going to my desk and doing a day's work and not allowing myself not to do it is what got me back on track. I was derailed for a while. I was in bad shape and it brought me back to myself," the writer explained.
While that cathartic experience may have helped him survive a personal crisis, it has not really produced a book that's worth comparing to his early novels. But then, it does provide a glimpse of what life may have been like within the walls of Akbar's city where charlatans and philanderers, flatterers and chatterers, connived and plotted as a Mughal megalomaniac, not quite sure of his faith as also that of others -- "In the melancholy after battle, as evening fell upon the empty dead, below the broken fortress melting into blood, within earshot of a little waterfall's nightingale song... the emperor in his brocade tent sipped watered wine and lamented his gory genealogy... He was not only a barbarian philosopher and a crybaby killer, but an egotist addicted to obsequuiousness and sycophancy... He felt burdened by the names of the marauders past, the names from which his name descended in cascades of human blood", presided over the destiny of Hindustan. As for life in Florence, we will leave that for another day.

Coffee Break / Sunday Pioneer / April 27, 2008.

Banning books doesn't work

Banning books doesn't work
A book, an essay and a film have run into trouble in recent days. The Bundelas, to use a cliché, are up in arms against London-based author Jaishree Misra and want the Union Government to impose a ban on her novel, Rani, a fictional account of the life and times of Rani Lakshmibai published by Penguin. The book has already been banned in Uttar Pradesh where politicians not known for either rectitude or probity have feigned outrage over Jaishree Misra's audacious suggestion that Rani Lakshmibai, immortalised in folklore as the chaste and brave Jhansi ki Rani, had an affair with Robert Ellis, the British political agent. Meanwhile, the Bundelas are incensed that the author should have claimed Raja Gangadhar Rao was impotent. MM Kaye was wise not to identify the dissolute raja in her bestseller (later made into a popular television serial) The Far Pavilions, as was JR Ackerley, who displayed exemplary inventiveness while fudging the identity of the degenerate ruler in his Hindoo Holiday - An Indian Journal.
The demand to ban Rani, however, has been largely peaceful, unlike the agitation against the inclusion of 'Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation', an essay by AK Ramanujam, in the recommended reading material for students of history in Delhi University. It appears that a committee of teachers compiled the reading material two years ago; it is only now that Ramanujam's essay has raised the hackles of the ABVP whose members ransacked the university's Arts Faculty on February 25. The ABVP insists Ramanujam, an acclaimed scholar of the Ramayan tradition, has 'defamed' Ram. "It goes against everything we have been taught as children. What is the point of applying logic to religion? It is a matter of faith," says Manil Mayank Mishra, an activist of the ABVP. In their belligerent mood, Mishra and his fellow activists are missing out on two points. First, Ramanujam has referred to the various Ramayan traditions that exist; rubbishing him and trashing his essay would mean repudiating the existence of these traditions. Second, it is not a theological text that lays down the line for the faithful; it is an academic exploration that has nothing to do with either religion or logic.
Often our response to that which we perceive to be offensive is no more than knee-jerk reaction. A case in point is the hostility with which the Rajput Sabha has greeted Ashutosh Gowarikar's film, Jodhaa Akbar. The film is clearly an attempt to cash in on an alleged episode of history, which by all accounts and available records of the period, never really happened. It is a frivolous film that seeks to dazzle viewers rather than recreate Akbar's foray into Rajputana; to do that, it would require more than a pea-brained Bollywood director. Does that mean Ashutosh Gowarikar's jaundiced version of history should go unchallenged? Not really. After all, it is in conflict with what history texts tell us and what children learn in school, and later in colleges and universities. It does serve to perpetuate the myth about Akbar's impeccable secular credentials, but Bollywood need not worry itself silly about such political concerns. Sensing trouble, the film's distributors have steered clear of Rajasthan, thus sparing Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje the trouble of calming riotous mobs. What they had not anticipated was Rajputs in Madhya Pradesh taking to the streets, forcing the State Government to impose what was clearly an ill-advised ban that has since been set aside by the High Court. So, how do we deal with truly disgraceful films like Jodhaa Akbar? Not by banning them or by threatening violence. If our pride as a nation -- the history of Rajputana is integral to the history of India -- is hurt by such wilful distortion of history by a callous film-maker -- or a writer, for that matter -- then we should just boycott it. No multiplex will screen a film, nor will a bookshop stock a book, if there are no profits to be reaped.
In this context, it is amusing to note how some champions of 'freedom of expression', 'tolerance' and 'liberalism' have sought to put down the anger generated by Ashutosh Gowarikar's disregard for facts as "hooliganism" and "fascism". Such strong words were not heard when Rajiv Gandhi ordered the ban on Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses or when the Congress encouraged its State Governments to ban the screening of Ron Howard's film, The Da Vinci Code, based on Dan Brown's eponymous book, alleging it hurt the sentiments of Christians. Before that, another Congress Government at the Centre had banned Martin Scorsese's cinematic version of The Last Temptation of Christ, written by celebrated Greek author Nicos Kazantzakis, citing similar reasons. In sharp contrast, the Censor Board had no compunctions about giving a 'U' certificate to Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ whose gory scenes cannot but scar young minds and whose portrayal of Biblical history is not entirely free of anti-Semitism. Nobody insisted that the film's distributors should insert a parental advisory or a disclaimer about its historical accuracy.
Yet, a Government that bans, to public acclaim, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom because of its latent racism, also proscribes Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, unmindful of the lurid versions of Vatsayana's treatise -- the coffee table editions are clearly meant to shock and awe -- that are on sale in bookshops, at kiosks and on pavements. The urge to save the masses from the corrupting influence of 'obscenity' does not, however, extend to prohibiting the sale of Playboy and Penthouse DVDs that are now openly displayed in music and movie stores under the category of 'Health & Physical Fitness'. Curiously though, both Playboy and Penthouse are listed as contraband items in the little black book that Customs officials carry. Which only goes to show how meaningless it is to ban a book or a film, especially in this day and age when anything and everything is only a click of the mouse away. It was as meaningless before the information superhighway made a mockery of official restrictions. Let's not forget that despite Chief Justice M Hidayatullah ruling in favour of the ban on DH Lawrence's novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, in 1964, the book continued -- and continues -- to be available.
So, the next time we ask for a ban on a book, an essay or a film to assuage our hurt feelings, let us also bear in mind that it shall serve no purpose other than allowing desecrators of another shade to seize the moral high ground. We are seeing this happen in Delhi University where Left-wing activists, who are no paragons of 'tolerance', are out denouncing the ABVP as a "communal fascist force".