Author: NS Rajaram
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: December 16, 2007
SL Bhyrappa's latest Kannada novel, Aavarana,
is making waves beyond the usual literary circles. In less than a month four
print runs have been sold out and the book is now in its fifth printing. What
is interesting is that though a historical novel, its impact seems to be no
less socio-political than literary. In this regard, it is a literary phenomenon
like Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses and Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.
In reading Aavarana, Dan Brown's novel, Da
Vinci Code, springs to mind. Both have as their subject the suppression of
true history and the propagation of a myth by powerful interests. In Da Vinci
Code, the villain is the Catholic Church and its modern secret and sinister
arm the Opus Dei. In Bhyrappa's novel, the villain is the collective of politically
correct historians and 'intellectuals' who out of a combination of greed and
fear have suppressed the truth about Islam and its record in India. While
these intellectuals -- called dhimmis by the Egypt-born scholar Bat Ye'or
-- can boast of no Vatican or Opus Dei, they do form a powerful clique enjoying
the support of successive Governments. They find it politically expedient
to appease Islam and conceal the truth about its record and teachings.
The word aavarana is the antonym of anaavarana,
which means to reveal or to open. Aavarana, thus, means to conceal and suppress
the truth by covering it with a layer of false myths.
In his preface, Bhyrappa states: "This
is my second historical novel. My earlier work, Saartha, was an attempt to
portray in novel form the transitional period (from the old to the medieval)
that took place in the eighth century AD. In Aavarna, I have made a similar
attempt for the long period after Saartha to the present. This period of Indian
history, though rich in records, is in the grip of aavarana (concealment and
suppression) forces... As things stand today, forces of aavarana hold both
the historian and history in their grip. How can historical truth flourish
when the historian stands as the main barrier to its discovery?"
Bhyrappa is a serious thinker who has studied
the subject, often going to the primary sources and major research works.
His bibliography is quite extensive for a novel and artfully introduced as
part of the narrative. A surprising omission, however, is the eight-volume
magnum opus, History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, which was compiled
by Eliot and Dowson.
It is to Bhyrappa's credit that he has gone
beyond superficialities by tracing the horrors of Islamic rule and jihad to
the sources themselves -- the Quran and the Hadith. He has consulted several
Islamic scholars and lived with Muslim friends to learn how Indian Muslims
today practice their faith and relate to their history. As a result, Aavarana
is more than a novel about Muslim India; it is also a primer on the beliefs
and practices that condition the life and thought of Indian Muslims.
Aavarana narrates the story of a Rajput prince
and his wife captured in the siege of Deoghar and turned into slaves in Muslim
courts during the time of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who ruled between 1659
and 1707. He later accompanies a Mughal officer and witnesses the destruction
of the great Vishwanath Temple in Banares. He also witnesses the horrors inflicted
by Mughals on Hindus and leaves a record of it.
To bring out how these horrors are whitewashed
and even concealed by modern negationists, Bhyrappa introduces a contemporary
character, Lakshmi-Razia -- a Muslim convert who returns to Hinduism after
being shocked to learn the truth about India's Islamic past. She receives
her first jolt when she visits the famous ruins of Vijayanagar (destroyed
in 1565), now a World Heritage Site, as a scriptwriter for a documentary.
Soon her father, whom she had not seen since her conversion to Islam, dies
and she inherits his papers. She finds that in her absence, her father had
made a detailed study of Islam and its record in India. Using his notes, she
writes and publishes the novel about the captured Rajput prince in Mughal
service noted earlier.
This lands Lakshmi-Razia in trouble, beginning
with her former colleagues and friends, especially her mentor, one Prof Shastry.
Her novel has blown their cover and they use their influence to have the novel
banned and she is forced to go into hiding. In this, Bhyrappa has given a
hint of what may befall his own novel for the same crime: He has exposed the
horrors to a wide audience and also punctured the scholarly pretensions of
jihad apologists masquerading as intellectuals.
With this novel, Bhyrappa has produced a major
literary work distinguished by exceptional skill, scholarship and courage.
One hopes it will soon be translated into other languages and made available
to a wide audience. Of one thing we may be sure: Aavarana will be "cussed
and discussed" for a long time to come, to borrow a phrase from Abraham
Lincoln.
Aavarana, SL Bhyrappa, Sahitya Bhandara, Rs
175
-- The reviewer, a scientist and historian,
has recently written, along with David Frawley, Hidden Horizons: 10,000 Years
of Indian Civilisation