Rating: (5 out of 5) The Lonely Lady Learns From Lesser Breeds
Reviewer: Samiran Kumar Paul from Muzaffarpur/Bihar/India
NAYANTARA Sahgal is never shrill, even when she handles issues like struggle and violence. She is always restrained, yet she deals with huge problems that beset a nation and their effects on the individuals who inhabit the nation and even those who are not directly involved and are living thousands of miles away. And all this is done with the self-composure and élan that is to be expected from a writer of her background and achievement.

A novelist and political commentator and one of the first Indian writers to make a mark in the international arena, she has won several national and international awards. She won the Commonwealth Prize (Eurasia) in 1986 for her novel Plans of Departure and the Sinclair Fiction Prize in 1985. The Sahitya Akademi Award crowned her list of achievements in 1986. Her understanding of the Indian political situation is impeccable and she is able to write with equal ease about the events at the turn of the last century and about present-day India.

There is just one drawback: Lesser Breeds is marred by a lack of feeling and warmth. One can appreciate the work at an intellectual level but cannot really empathise with Nurullah, a 23-year-old teacher of English employed to teach the ‘first- years’ in the University of Akbarabad.

In Akbarabad, Nurullah, "an impoverished but immensely promising young man", is ‘adopted’ by a family engaged in the freedom struggle. Their ancient domed mansion has become a ‘national monument’. "The place had been every patriot’s Mecca for the last eleven years, ever since the family and a couple of hundred other Akbarabadis had stood their ground when they were cavalry-charged outside the gates for demonstrating against the Prince of Wales’ visit in 1921. A trampled mess the horses’ hooves had made of them as they went down unresisting in obedience to the new creed: if blood must be shed in this battle, let it be yours."

During the ten years from 1932 that Nurullah stays with the family, Akbarabad educates him in many ways, leaving him opposed and resistant to non-violence. At the centre of the movement, is Nurullah’s host, the charismatic Nikhil, or Bhai, as his friends and supporters call him. Nikhil is a man "who would by his honey-tongued gentleness, manage to guide an elephant with a hair" but who spends the major part of his adult life in prison because of his involvement in the non-violent movement.

Sahgal explores the possibility that non-violence was the fantasy of one man which may or may not have worked. "Nor did ahimsa put an end to violence…it even spurred it on, aroused savage instincts bred from time immemorial to expect resistance, savager when deprived of the familiar fighting adversary or fleeing quarry. Good old-fashioned war was waged against ahimsa and ahimsa did not escape war’s legacies and tragedies, war’s prisoners and its wounded and its killed….No lethal weapon- wielder stood back and said this man before me is unarmed so I will not strike." This, according to Nurullah, is the true picture of ahimsa, which he holds up to the view of a western researcher whom he meets in 1980.

Nurullah also propounds the view that non-violence made little difference to the fortunes of the nation. "You must understand the kind of world it was, made up of Europe and the lesser breeds whom Europe had a right to rule. Armed or unarmed revolt made no difference to that right. Only war and its fortunes drove Europe out." The question whether ahimsa was going to change anything and of what use it was, is answered by Nikhil, "What else have unarmed people got?"

Sahgal introduces her readers to a pantheon of characters. Unfortunately, except for a few of them, most don’t make much of an impact on the reader. However, there are evocative descriptions of people. Among these is the description of Lilibet, an Anglo-Indian girl and her family. "She spoke a mincing, stilted English she thought was English She mourned her beautiful black hair and longed for it to be a colour called ash-blond through which she would have worn a narrow black velvet band." Then there is Nikhil, whom one encounters rarely but whose presence pervades the book, Shan, his daughter, the leggy, grumpy little girl who grows into a charming young lady and who chooses the turmoil of her country over the better lifestyle in America, Edgar, the American journalist who believes that the non-violent movement was effective and his sister, the highly-strung Leda. In fact, as the action in the latter half of the book shifts to America, Sahgal makes us aware of the fact that Gandhi’s ideology of non-violence and non-cooperation affected the lives of individuals and communities the world over, in ways that couldn’t have been envisaged.

Nayantara Sahgal has taken off her genteel gloves, and socked us in the solar plexus with a book which, in scope and stature, literally takes our breath away. Combining history and fiction in a contemporary cocktail is a tough act — more so when the novel not only delves into acrimonious issues such as the partition of India, but unveils dissonance in prevailing “sacrosanct” ideologies, such as non-violence, and religious fundamentalism, legacies we grapple with till today. The reader is advised the line of least resistance as Sahgal’s novel grabs you by the eyeballs and hunkers you along through a tumultuous century of pre and post-Independence India, maintaining a steady cadence of finely tuned words.