A Place Within

by M G Vassanji

  Yes, he then says, his family had been Agakhanis, the term Indians sometimes use for Indian Ismailis, for they were followers of the Aga Khans, the first of whom came to India from Iran in the mid-nineteenth century. What they were before the Aga Khans came is obscure and somewhat contentious today, but they were Indians holding a syncretistic belief combining elements of Iranian Ismailism and Indian Vaishnavism, Vishnu worship. The term “Ismaili” itself is a relatively recent import to India. (The Khojas of Gujarat have also adopted this description in modern times.) Anand says his grandfather or great-grandfather was a mukhi, an Ismaili headman; and his mother used to have a photo of the third Aga Khan as well as statues and prints of the regular gods. The family quit this path when the third Aga Khan, Sultan Muhammad, went to Europe and married a French woman, as Anand puts it. He remembers another woman in his family besides his mother who was always a follower of the Aga Khan. The Arya Samajis, a modern Hindu group, proselytized among them in the early twentieth century, and according to his estimate some two-thirds of the copper and silver workers of Amritsar reconverted to Hinduism. He feels negatively about the third Aga Khan for his pro-British and pro-Pakistani positions. He advises me to write a book about the Aga Khans, an exposé of sorts.

  I am, of course, extremely curious to know more about this duality of beliefs in the family; the syncretism, what it was like, and what the family history was before the Aga Khans came from Iran in the 1800s. Nurjehan’s grandmother had at one time been called Durga, and her grandfather Panna Lal, whose first wife had been a Sikh. What to make of this? The family belief is that they were “hidden” (gupti) Ismailis, which sounds to me like a revisionist idea, adopted after the split. But this is the kind of information that gets obscured as people move on to the more rigid identities of modern times. What can this old man tell me?

  But Mulk, my witness, is deaf, and his interest is focused on something else, his own life, about which he goes relentlessly on.

  He recalls that Annie Besant, the famous theosophist, came to Amritsar and recited the creation hymn from the Rig Veda, both in Sanskrit and in English, and he had been rather moved. She had also come to look at Jallianwala Bagh, the place of the massacre. The principal of his college was transferred and there had been riots on campus. Although a career in the army had been planned for him, he did not want that. He went to see the philosopher and poet Muhammad Iqbal in Lahore, and Iqbal advised him to go abroad and wrote letters for him and from what I understand, gave him some money. And so he went to Europe.

  His knowledge about fiction is encyclopedic, though distorted by the occasional time warp. His Coolie and Untouchable have been translated into numerous languages, he reminds me repeatedly, but not into his native Punjabi, and not into many Indian languages. I wonder if it is because his books don’t have the immediacy of caste experience that a native Indian reader might demand. I don’t say this to him, of course; this is not a discussion but a one-way discourse. Recent politics have vindicated these two novels, he says. And he has no complaints about “Mandalism,” the recommendations of the Mandal Commission regarding reservations for the lower or backward classes, which has the middle classes up in arms. The ruling upper classes, he says, consist of 20 per cent of the population and control the media, academia, business.

  At the end, he is unstoppable. Tea is offered me, and he turns on the fan; he introduces me to his wife, the woman who let me in, and calls me progressive; and he goes on. Write a biography of Aly Khan, he says. I tell him one already exists, he doesn’t understand.

  He has used his money to start two charitable foundations, one in Bombay, the other in Delhi, gives me their addresses. I ask him about Rafiq Zakaria, a man who has written on Muhammad Iqbal, and on Muslims in India. It turns out that Zakaria is a neighbour and a friend. Anand calls him up, and I speak to him, set up an appointment for the following day.

  I leave Mulk Raj Anand pottering about his front-room study a lonely old man comforted by his memories of relevance and glory.

  When I call up Rafiq Zakaria the next day, it turns out that there has been a misunderstanding. One of us has got the time of our interview wrong; it has passed. He is extremely annoyed, gives me a talking to, calling me a typical Indian who cannot be punctual. He will not listen to my explanation, sounds very much like one of those Indians who will tell you openly he is not like the others in their slack habits. And so I miss the interview, but with no regrets.

  Mulk Raj Anand comes to see me when I return to Bombay a few years later and give a reading there. He is friendly and introduces a young man whom he wants me to help in Canada. I am rather touched by his having made the effort in his condition, for he needs support moving about. Before he leaves, he presents me a book of his, inscribed, “A small gift to you on your visit home!! Let us keep in touch. Warm regards, Uncle Mulk.”

  When he dies in Bombay in September 2004, at the age of ninety-eight, the obituary in The Guardian calls him a founding father of the Indo English novel.

  Bombay seems refreshingly different from Delhi; it’s coherent, connected; taxis and rickshaws (not just the latter) ply its roads, will take you anywhere; it invites walking, from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, each self-contained in its own way. There is the sea to walk to and walk along. And there is the train, so convenient. It’s an orderly city, it’s been called Western in its organization. I have not come to know it as I know Delhi. But I recall, too, that I had to miss Bombay on my first visit to India because Bombay was burning, as they said, in the grip of vicious riots. From my plane, which had flown low over the city, the streets looked deserted, the billowing smoke visible in some places terrible indication of the violence. These thoughts cross my mind as I make my way by train to the suburb of Santa Cruz. The stench as we pass a slum area is overpowering. A man slips his feet out of his shoes and stands in his socks on the grimy floor for no obvious reason; a little boy sweeps the floor of this first-class compartment—same as second class, as far as I can tell, but for more breathing space—and holds out his hand to the passengers for money, beating his stomach to indicate hunger; a young man responds to his beeper.

  The Santa Cruz station has a bus stand outside it; red single-and double-decker buses depart and arrive. I pass fruit stands, their products resplendently ripe, grocery, hardware, and hair places, dispensary, bank, on my way towards where I have been directed over the phone, the institute of Asghar Ali Engineer.

  Engineer is a prominent Muslim spokesman who heads the Institute of Islamic Studies and the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism. He is known for his comments on the moderate message of Islam and on the communal violence in India. He belongs to the Dawoodi Bohra community, a closely knit Gujarati Shia sect which has its origins in twelfth-century Egypt and Yemen. Due to the persecution of the sect in Yemen, its leadership moved to Gujarat, where they were welcomed by the raja and thrived. The sultans were not always kind to them. In Delhi, in Alauddin’s time, they were accused of incest and some of them sawn into two as punishment. Most of the Dawoodi Bohras of Gujarat are the descendants of converts from Hinduism. Their leader is a supreme lord, the Sayedna, to whom absolute allegiance is due. Engineer, whose father was a priest in the community, is a reformist and progressive Bohra, representing a group that strongly criticizes the leadership for its corruption and retrograde thinking. As a result he has faced ostracism and even physical attacks.

  Engineer’s institute consists of two rooms on the second floor of an apartment building. There are several people about as I enter, behind and between desks, and the impression is one of clutter and computers. I meet Engineer in the inside office. He is somewhat paunchy, bald, with a tuft of hair at the chin, and speaks with a soft voice. I had expected a younger, slicker person. On the wall above his desk is an honorary doctor of letters citation from the University of Calcutta, from 1993.

  He is a believer in the Quran, which he finds completely compatible with modern thinking, especially civil rights and the rights of wom
en. In some detail, he draws an example from the Hadith: how a woman went to the Prophet to ask for a divorce from her husband, who loved her but was not good looking. She got her divorce, and the man wept until his beard was wet. The story illustrates that Islam actually looks out for women even to the disadvantage of men. It is Islamic leadership that is backward and misguided. He comes to the notorious Shah Bano case of the early 1990s, which brought a lot of antagonism towards Muslims. Shah Bano was a sixty-two-year-old divorced Muslim woman with five children and no adequate means of support. The Indian Supreme Court, ruling in her favour, required her former husband to pay her maintenance. This, says Engineer, is perfectly in accordance with the Quran, which requires that a woman be provided with support upon divorce. And yet orthodox Muslim leaders protested that the courts had interfered with Islamic law, upon which the Congress government of Rajiv Gandhi during an election year overturned the court’s decision, giving the appearance of appeasing the Muslims for their votes.

  Engineer says the Partition dealt a blow to India’s Muslims. The wealthy and the educated left, leaving behind for the most part the underclass. He doesn’t deny his Indian heritage. The Bohras used to start their new year with Diwali, like the Hindus. The Khojas, my people, until Partition would keep a photo of the god Ganesh in their shops.

  What of his position in his community? He has been ostracized, he tells me. I recall that in the 1960s the Bohra leader had been denied entry into socialist Tanzania, because of the widespread belief that he collected large sums of money from his followers and took it out of the country. A reform movement had begun in Dar es Salaam among the Bohras, as well as a conservative trend, in which their women began wearing the veil. I recall returning from a party one night in Dar es Salaam in the 1990s. An African friend had given me a ride along with a Bohra woman visiting from the United States. She was wearing jeans and a shirt, was very pretty. When we reached her street, making a sly remark she took out a black veil from a bag and put it on, then said goodbye, opened the car door, and departed.

  Time was, Engineer says, when if he happened to pass through a Bohra neighbourhood, the women in the flats would spit from their balconies and say, There goes Satan. By and large now the orthodox Bohras leave him alone, but the effects of the ostracism are harsh. An ostracized member is denied marriage into the community as well as burial rites and a place in the cemetery. This applies also to those who go against the sanction and associate with the outcast, as well as to their families. Engineer says he can’t meet his mother or sisters, except in secret. This is a tight community, with a centuries-old tradition, and the charismatic hold of their leader on them is immense. Many reformists leave their city before the leader visits, so as not to cause offence.

  For all his liberal beliefs and his courage, Engineer is essentially a fundamentalist—not in the sense of being an extremist, he is far from that, but in the sense that for him the Quran has fundamental authority; he will derive modern, moderate, and tolerant interpretations from it, and he will not impose it on others. But for any personal meaning in life he has to resort to the Book, to seek guidance, to understand, to justify. And so I can only listen to him. There is no common ground.

  After a week of heat and sunshine it is time to return to the retreat in the cool hills. The visit to Mulk Raj Anand has been worthwhile, having given me a thoughtful link to the murky, obfuscated past of my people.

  The Bombay-Delhi trip is uneventful. I arrive in the morning at the New Delhi station, from which I had left. The trip out to Shimla is at night, from the city’s other station, the Old Delhi station. As soon as I reach here, having put up for the day at the university guest house I used previously, I am greeted by a crowd of touts and coolies who inform me with great relish that the Howrah Mail to Kalka has been delayed, due to the monsoons. It is about ten in the night. The locals, those who have ways to find out when the train will arrive, have departed, and it seems I am alone; I and the touts and porters who try desperately, in my own interest they tell me as I sit alone in a dingy waiting room, to go stay in “the hostel.” I have no intention of leaving the station and putting myself at risk. I can also not impose once more on Pabby. I stay put.

  I don’t know how, but some porter finally convinces me—perhaps because he is the least aggressive, perhaps, too, because I need to use a bathroom—that the hostel he has in mind is right here at the station; I can go with him and talk to an official. Which I do, and before I know it I am shown a dormitory somewhere upstairs, with the understanding that I will be called when the train arrives.

  The yellow-painted hall contains about twenty beds in two rows, all occupied by young travellers, who have their luggage chained and padlocked to the legs of their beds. Some sit, some lie down and read, all strangers to each other, all silent. I have no chain and lock for my bag, which could easily be carried off by a passing thief. Or by any of these fellows. Feeling silly, though not earning even a passing stare, I carry my bag with me to the toilet. Soon after, a matron arrives, a broad woman in uniform with the look and manner of a warden, who asks us about our trains and announces that she will lock the door from outside. Suppose my train comes in the middle of the night?—I ask in a panic. You’ll be woken up. You’ll unlock the door? Yes. I can hardly believe this; but the door clangs shut, the key turns in the padlock. As I lie down in bed, my bag for my pillow, I am quite resigned to the possibility that I will miss the Howrah Mail. In the far distance, in the bathroom area from which I have recently emerged, I can now see two rats, as large as cats. One of my roommates turns off the lights, and I fall instantly asleep, for it has been a long day. The next thing I know, there is a loud sound at the door. At the now open door, to my utter disbelief, stands the silhouette of the same matron who locked me in, now jangling her keys. The train has arrived, and off I go to Kalka, from where I take the winding train to Shimla. I know the place well enough that, arriving in the evening, I can walk back to my flat in the Institute and partake of a meal at the dining hall. Daal and sabzi, rice and chappati just off the pan.

  And so, as many times before in my journeys in India, it has all marvellously worked out. Years later, I relate this adventure to my friends in the comforts of the International Centre bar in Delhi. I feel rather proud of myself, having recently made it to Shimla despite another mishap (my Kalka-Shimla ticket was for the previous day, and there was apparently no room on the train) and to Dharamsala during a day of landslides. But to a man and woman, my friends shake their heads and tell me I should have stayed put that night at Old Delhi, not gone off with a coolie to the hostel or anywhere else.

  What could have happened—some Thugs among my roommates might have strangled me with a knotted kerchief?

  Postscript: Shimla Revisited

  I NEXT MEET THE SAHNIS in Delhi a couple of years later, at the India International Centre, where we have tea together. He is sick and breathless, but otherwise at his best; he quotes a sonnet by Chesterton about the evening of life; and two couplets in Urdu, one of which goes, approximately, After a night of tumult, saqi, the dawn draws near, now remember your God. There is a sense of premonition here. And he tells me about a quarrel he’s become entangled in, between two well-known women writers, in which he’s been accused of taking sides. And oh yes, I check this: he did translate Tolstoy into Hindi, some long stories, including The Kreutzer Sonata and Resurrection. Of Premier Khrushchev he remembers a very limp handshake.

  And this I overhear from her, when she doesn’t know I am listening: “He’s such a good Muslim!”

  That pricks. I always thought of her simply as Sheila-ji.

  A few years later I hear that Sheila-ji died. Shortly afterwards, Bhishm-ji died.

  And then I see him resurrected in Toronto, in the excellent film Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, in which he plays an elderly passenger in an intercity bus who meets a brutal end at the hands of ruffians. Typical Bhishm-ji.

  During a more recent visit to Shimla I stay at the Institute Guest House. It’s Aug
ust, monsoon season, pleasantly cool after the crushing summer heat of Delhi. Early mornings are wet, a light drizzle falls; outside the window, across the lawn, the low grey brick building that is the Postmaster Flat squats like a cat, partly veiled in a thick mist. I could shout with joy at this familiar, now beloved, sight. It’s still here! By now I have put the Gujarati narrator of my India novel here, where he writes in seclusion.

  There is evidence of recent renovation. The floors are new, of a pine veneer, and so are the doors; there’s a TV in my room, and I suppose in every other room, and new furniture. The bathroom floors have been tiled, and there is no bathtub now, only a shower; but the ceramic sink is from the viceroys’ time, as are the electric switches on the wall. The mantelpiece is also new, and the fireplace is boarded up.