He looks at Shiv severely; Shiv cannot believe he has thought of the Head as a diffident man all these years. As pompous but timid, perhaps pompous because he is timid. The man, having said goodbye to timidity, continues his harangue.
“One: Backward looking. Two: Contradictory accounts of Basava’s life, conflicting narratives. Three: Birth legends fabricated. Four: Called a bigoted revolutionary by temple priests. Also called a dangerous man, a threat to structure, stability and religion. Five: The comfort of faith was not enough for Basava. Six: There were rumors that Basava used money from the royal treasury to look after his followers. Seven: The lines of social division in the great city of Kalyana were sharply drawn. Caste was a dominating factor. Eight: There was tension between the brahmanical religious orthodoxy and the popular religious reformers and saint-poets. Nine: Basava met and could have been influenced by the “mad men from Persia,” the dancing, drinking Sufis. Ten: Bijjala, the king of Kalyana, was pressured by brahmin leaders to commit atrocities on low-caste devotees. Basava told the king a series of tales in which devotees, especially untouchable devotees, were shown to be superior to brahmins.”
The Head stops to take a breath. The Dean, who has been listening with face bent over his tabletop, looks up.
“But all this is part of history, drawn from a variety of sources,” Shiv says. “Part of the challenge of getting to know Basava’s life and times is reconstructing it out of literary texts, legends, inscriptions and other records. The bibliography for the lesson includes all the major sources that have been used for quite some time now by medieval historians.”
“Well,” says the Dean. “We understand, Professor Murthy, and we are all agreed that this is most unfortunate. Professor Sharma, can we go through the demands of this Itihas Suraksha Manch?”
The Head probably has another sheet of what he likes to call ambiguous statements, as if the word ambiguous contains magic that automatically turns fact to falsehood. With an effort he tears himself away from the remainder of his list, and pulls out another sheet.
“The Manch has three demands. The first is an apology for hurting their sentiments. They want separate apologies from Dr. Murthy and from the Department, by extension the University. Second, the lesson should be retracted and the material recalled from all students registered in the course, and from study centers and libraries. Third, the rewritten lesson should be submitted to the Manch before it is sent to our printing unit.”
The Dean frowns. “We can’t submit material to them for approval. That’s outrageous and they know it. My hunch is that they are testing the waters to see how far they can go.”
The Head’s silence seems to indicate agreement, but Shiv is no longer sure of this man. In times where paranoia lives in the same air everyone must breathe, it is difficult to say who is “going soft” and who is simply a man who dislikes trouble. And the Head is sixty-one, just a year short of retirement. If he is anxious to get an extension as a consultant, he will want his last year as Head unsullied by controversy.
“I will not apologize,” Shiv suddenly says. “I do not say anything about the other two demands, partly because they do not involve just me.”
The Head looks at Shiv as if he is a pesky fly that needs swatting. Shiv can feel his resolve hardening. Maybe he will regret it later, but he is damned if he will let the Head think he can be brought into line so easily. Shiv clears his throat and says again, clearly, “The lesson does not distort history by any stretch of the imagination. And I will not apologize or explain myself to a group outside the university, a group of people we do not recognize as historians.”
The Head snaps at Shiv, “I didn’t know you hankered to be a hero, Dr. Murthy. We are middle-aged professors, not stuntmen.” The Head would never have guessed that Shiv had exactly this thought just the night before. Now more than ever the Head prefers the world in clear black and white. But he also sees the Dean’s eyebrows rise; the Head swiftly changes tracks.
“We are here,” he says, “to standardize knowledge. This does not contradict our commitment to historical authenticity.” Then the Head gets off the soapbox and gets to the point. “And besides, who has this lesson been written for? The readers are only B.A. students.”
He does not say “only correspondence students” though the thought must cross his mind.
He says instead, “As for the historical facts, what are the facts pertinent to the lesson? One: Kalyana was a glorious Hindu kingdom, a little peak, if you like, of the Hindu past and heritage. Two: Basava taught people the importance of uplifting the untouchables, but he was the founder of a religion, not some radical screaming for revolution. Why not stick to these facts? Our students need to know dates, the achievements of great saints and kings. Why get into debates and controversies—however fascinating, however historically permissible—if the students don’t need these or appreciate them? Our university simply cannot afford self-indulgence. When we have students from across India and from so many different backgrounds, we have to guard against irresponsible controversies.”
“But Dr. Sharma,” Shiv says, nettled by this talk of self-indulgence, “We can hardly pretend that the chaos in Kalyana was not the result of a movement for social change. We can hardly pretend there was no fundamental division between the interests of the ruling brahmins and the growing number of low-caste veerashaiva devotees. Or that Basava was not a man of his times, shaped by its limitations and moved by the need to overcome its oppressors. I realize you are concerned about damage control, and I share this concern, but I don’t believe the problem is historical method.”
The Dean does not disagree with either of them. All his face says is that he would not have chosen the Head’s way of putting it, or Shiv’s for that matter. Now he says to them like a reluctant umpire, “Professor Murthy has told us in no uncertain terms that he is against a personal apology. I don’t think we can be hasty about this. Professor Murthy, though time is of the essence if we are to scotch this effectively, I don’t want you to feel pressurized. Why don’t you think it over for a few days?”
As Shiv stands up, the Dean too rises. They shake hands formally as if Shiv is setting out on a long journey. Shiv leaves the room before the Head and walks back to his car, frustrated and dissatisfied. Amita is right, thinks Shiv. There is such a thing as post-meeting blues—because most meetings never get beyond monologues to discussion. Yet what would they have discussed at the Dean’s office? How to write history? Or, as Meena and her friends would have it, how to fight the obscurantists?
…
Once in the car, Shiv decides he will not go home. Instead he drives to the next parking lot, adjacent to the building housing the Department. Though he did not plan to go there today, now it seems right that he should go to his room, sit in his chair, check his mail, assert territorial rights.
The first person he sees while fumbling with the lock on his door is the Head’s secretary. Mrs. Khan smiles at him, sunny and warm as ever. “Checking your mail, Dr. Murthy?” she asks.
But though they greet each other and exchange pleasantries for the usual three minutes, no more, no less, Shiv senses that they are playing at normalcy. Or is this a figment of his imagination, these infinitesimal islands of wariness that have floated to the surface of her eyes and his, two different islands with the same tainted flora?
Whether it is fact or fiction, Shiv watches her receding back with some relief. There is an invisible little badge, a mark, something akin to shame that draws two victims together. Yet each finds the mirror image of the stain repulsive in the other.
Shiv shuts the door, sits down at his desk and looks around him. At the familiar bookshelves with their weight of colorful spines, the shelves sagging in the middle with their decade-long burden. The glass-fronted cupboard, the filing cabinet. KGU-DOH-SS29, KGU-DOH-SS30. The walls, painted a blue that made him seasick till it faded with the assistance of time, dust and dirt. High up on the wall before him, close to the ceiling, the two damp patches t
hat make a large reclining figure of eight. So persistent are these peeling patches that they have been in this room as long as Shiv. He has, over the years, seen different pictures in them, as if the patches make up a private version of the Rorschach test. Their shape has helped him imagine great big breasts; lungs; a pair of wings.
Shiv’s eyes turn to the adjacent wall with two windows. He can hear cooing at the windowsill that the pigeons share with his cooler. He has been at war with these pigeons forever. But they continue to exercise tenancy rights, nesting by the cooler and using its top as a runway to take off into the skies.
A wistful sigh escapes Shiv’s lips. This is where he belongs. This is where he wants to be. The thought comes in a flash of surprised recognition. This must be how a man feels when he has leapt out of an open window. The last image he sees before his picture-making machine hits the pavement and breaks, is a message flashed in telegraphic language: I know I complained, but I didn’t mean it, or not as much as I thought I did; I belong in that room up there after all.
Shiv hears a knock on the door and before he can react, Amita Sen opens the door; he can see Menon just behind her. Mrs. Khan has been quick to spread the word.
“Shiv,” says Amita, her voice plaintive as if she is crying for help. “How are you—I am so glad to see you.”
“How did the meeting go? What are we going to do?” asks Menon. The two of them come in, sit down. Amita immediately pulls a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of her kurta pocket.
Sympathy, curiosity, excitement. Amita’s chronic boredom has vanished. Menon, enigmatic Menon who can spend a whole meeting staring at the ceiling in a trance, is actually agitated. Shiv stops himself: why is he dissecting their sympathy to make sure it is unadulterated? These are his colleagues, his friends. If he shrinks from them, from their probing questions and solemn condoling looks, who is left? Where is he to find sustenance for an encounter he is unprepared for?
Shiv tells them briefly what was said. In the recounting, he sees once again how meager the contents of the meeting were. If he is to learn generosity, a different kind of generosity that will allow him to share his troubles with friends, make himself vulnerable, he will have to do better than this. He will have to consult Amita and Menon on his plan of action.
Plan of action. The phrase brings to mind, with sharp clarity, a smooth face framed by thick long waves. Shiv’s tongue moves to the floor of his mouth. It searches for something tart and juicy, like the tamarind pods he used to bite into as a child. The taste brings to mind a bare brown leg. A cast. Meena. Shiv sneaks a look at Amita who is blowing perfect circles of smoke into the air between them. For an instant memory summons up another taste, the taste of Amita’s nicotine-laced tongue. Then he feels a twinge of disloyalty, though he is not sure whom he feels disloyal to.
“I’ll be in touch with the two of you,” he says, picking up his keys. Menon, like the Dean, shakes Shiv’s hand; then, unlike the Dean, he pats Shiv’s shoulder.
There is an awkwardness to their goodbyes, as if Menon and Amita are visiting him on Death Row. A part of Shiv wants to laugh. It’s just some lunatic fringe flexing their muscles in the wrong arena. Why is everyone taking it so seriously, acting as if battle is imminent? Are they not empowering the loonies by paying attention to them? After all, Shiv and his friends have laughed at so many imaginative samples of chauvinism in the recent past: The United States was originally a nation of Hindus. Jesus preached his Sermon on the Mount in Kashmir. St. Paul’s Cathedral was actually a temple built by Sant Pal. Not so long ago, Amita would ask Arya with a wicked grin, “Why do you have a calculator, Dr. Arya? I thought you could do it all in your head with Vedic math?”
It is when Shiv is driving back home that he remembers Arya. It is only now that he notices that neither Menon nor Amita mentioned him; nor did the Head for that matter; or, obviously, Mrs. Khan. Arya seems to have dissolved into thin air. Dissolved into a thousand molecules hanging patiently, cunningly, in the air that surrounds them.
At home, Meena, hobbling on her crutches, opens the door for Shiv.
“Where’s Kamla?” he asks her. “Or Babli?”
But Meena is too excited to notice his concern that she has been left alone. “They’re around somewhere—I don’t know. But look at what you’ve got. Both delivered by hand. Babli took them, so unfortunately I didn’t see the messenger.”
Shiv helps Meena to a chair, then takes the two envelopes from her. Both have been opened.
“I knew you wouldn’t mind,” says Meena, “I couldn’t bear to wait till you came home. But read them. Read the longer one first.”
The longer one is the first page of Current, and the article on the bottom end of the page has been marked heavily with a red felt-tip pen.
Who will teach the teacher?
Protests against Prof’s Distortion of History
New Delhi, September 6: A senior professor of history at the Kasturba Gandhi Central University (KGU) in New Delhi has been charged with distorting facts and introducing an ideological bias into a lesson in the University’s medieval Indian history course.
The Itihas Suraksha Manch, an independent social and cultural organization, issued a statement on Wednesday in the capital calling for “an end to tampering with our precious and glorious Indian history.” The statement, signed by one of the organization leaders, Mr. Anant Tripathi, said, “We will not allow our history to be polluted like this. Fifty years after independence, we cannot have Indian historians brainwashed by foreign theories and methods depriving us of our pride in Hindu temples and priests. How are these historians different from the Muslims who invaded our land? Every school child knows the story of the Mohammeds, from Ghazni to Ghori. Muslim invaders have always tried to destroy Hindu pride and civilization. In the same way, these modern invaders pretending to be historians are attacking our system of traditions and our way of life that have stood the test of time. But this time we will not allow ourselves to be conquered and subjected. We will make sure our history remains a way to show the world examples of our great Hindu past.”
The Manch also quoted several historians, including retired Professor Shri A. A. Atre, to support their claim that “Basava was not against brahmins as such.” All he wanted, like any saint, was that everyone should live in order and harmony. The venerable professor told reporters in Pune, “To say that the saint Basava may have died ‘in broken, disillusioned exile’ is as much a mischievous distortion of history as to say that he may have learnt anything from the Muslim sufis of Persia. Sad to say, there seem to be scholars with vested interests who think the treasures of our past can be taken away from us.”
The KGU historian, Professor Shiv Murthy, has gone on leave since the protests began. He refused to confirm whether the University had asked him to go on leave or whether he will resign from the Department. He also claimed to be unaware of the furor caused by his text. On the question of the historian’s responsibility to society, his response was a terse “No comment.” Professor A. A. Atre has condemned this reaction as “sheer arrogance.”
“It’s completely insane, isn’t it? This Atre must be some senile stooge they have pulled out of hibernation,” says Meena, peering into Shiv’s face for a suitably enraged reaction. The muscles on his face refuse to oblige. He can feel his left eye twitch.
“Read the other one,” Meena urges him. “It’s the first of the hate mail.”
Shiv reads obediently. The letter, unstamped, is typed on a yellow postcard. (It’s been so long since he saw one of these postcards that he has a bizarre sense of having gone back in time.) The sender’s name is missing.
Dear Respected Murthyji, (it begins.)
It is a tragedy that an educated person like you should indulge in ignorant and unpatriotic acts. This is the least I can say after giving you benefit of the doubt about your sincerity as a teacher.
If you want to rewrite Indian history with our Hindu saints as cowards and failures in exile, why not go to Pakistan
and do it? They will welcome you and give you all attention and praise you are desperate for.
After seeing your disrespect for our glorious temples and their priests, and your attempt to reduce our saints to mere men, I can only conclude that you are trying to undermine Hinduism. What are you trying to say? That the Muslims are great? In which case I have three questions to ask you, Respected Professorji. Do you have a wife and daughter? How would you feel if they became a Muslim’s playthings? Will you still write the same history?
Shiv puts both these gems back in the brown envelopes they came in. He notices the envelopes have his name and residential address neatly typed on them. Yellow journalism and anonymous poison mail, all in one day. And is this just the beginning? Is there worse to come? He hates the thought of some stranger, some nameless hoodlum warped by heartburn, in possession of his address. Suddenly his address holds in its three innocuous lines all the intimate details of his life to date. There is a sour taste in his mouth; it occurs to him that he has not eaten or drunk anything since that sip of cold tea in the Dean’s office. He feels a mad desire for a tall cold glass of juice; something orangey, something that will cleanse his tongue. Then sleep, lots of it.
But first he has to report, for the second time today, on the meeting in the Dean’s office. Meena, too young to hold back her news, has welcomed him home with the newspaper clipping and the postcard. But it is what the Dean is prepared to do, and what the university decides, that matter most. Shiv reminds himself of this lest he begin to believe it is him versus all the out-of-work fundamentalists and crazies in the world.
Meena hears him out, but she has already made up her mind about how the meeting went. “Your Head is typical,” she says to Shiv. “These liberal fence-sitters! One whiff of danger and they fall off the fence, over to the wrong side.”
But with just two little previews of what is possibly to come, the anger Shiv felt earlier this morning has lost its edge. Though the Head can be a tiresome pompous ass, Shiv thinks, he can’t be condemned so easily. But what can Shiv say to defend the Head at the moment? And what is the point playing at fairness and objectivity when all the world knows only crude divisions, black and white, friend and enemy?
In Times of Siege Page 7