History, Myth and Anecdotes in Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel

Pratyasha Roy

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Abstract: In The Great Indian Novel , Shashi Tharoor offers an alternate revisionist reading of the history of India from its independence struggle to the late 1980s by casting historical figures into mythological characters from The Mahabharata. This paper seeks to analyse his dealing of Indian national history by dividing it into 3 segments: i) Postcolonial Historiography ii) History and Myth and iii) History and Anecdotes.

1. Postcolonial Historiography

Dipesh Chakrabarty wrote in his 2000 book, Provincializing Europe, that “insofar as the academic discourse of history—that is, “history” as a discourse produced at the institutional site of the university—is concerned, “Europe” remains the sovereign, theoretical subject of all histories, including the ones we call “Indian,” “Chinese,” “Kenyan,” and so on. There is a peculiar way in which all these other histories tend to become variations on a master narrative that could be called “the history of Europe.” In this sense, “Indian” history itself is in a position of subalternity; one can only articulate subaltern subject positions in the name of this history.”¹ Tharoor in his rewriting of history subverts the European hegemony over the narrative of history by presenting to us the history of India from the perspective of Indians. He challenges the colonial/imperial/official narrative of history while trying to provide an alternate history rooted in the several indigenous historical versions of reality. He openly calls out the convenient mode of history writing adopted by Europe that showcases India as a land completely devoid of development while appropriating the history of India:

“They tell me India is an underdeveloped country. They attend seminars, appear on television, even come to see me, creasing their eight-hundred-rupee suits and clutching their moulded plastic briefcases, to announce in tones of infinite understanding that India has yet to develop. Stuff and nonsense, of course…I tell them they have no knowledge of history and even less of their own heritage. I tell them that if they would only read the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, study the Golden Ages of the Mauryas and the Guptas and even of those Muslim chaps the Mughals, they would realize that India is not an underdeveloped country but a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.”²

In colonial historical writings, the colonizers were credited for bringing to the subcontinent political unity, modern education, modern industries, modern technology, modern judiciary and so on and so forth. The word “modern” has essentially become a Western prerogative where “modern” is no more an adjective but a perpetual condition, a substantive. “Modern” has almost become synonymous to the term “European” and it is the task of the postcolonial thinker to begin to think about modernity not as a universal concept but as a provincial term. Tharoor subverts this narrative by pointing out that regressive social distinctions were never a part of Indian culture. It was introduced by the so-called “modern” Europeans to create differences by Othering one religion from another to materialise their policy of Divide et impera:

 “..we had never taken our social differences into the political arena. Maharajas and sultans had engaged their ministers and generals with scant regard for religion, creed or, for that matter, national origin. Aurangzeb, the most Islamic of the Mughals, relied on his Rajput military commanders to put down rival Muslim satraps; the Maratha Peshwas, the original Hindu chauvinists, employed Turkish captains of artillery. No, Ganapathi, religion had never had much to do with our national politics. It was the British civil serpent who made our people collectively bite the apple of discord.”

History is constantly in a state of flux. Therefore, the European version of Indian history is not a sacrosanct text. It is only history seen from a particular point of view, at a particular time, under particular circumstances and to suit particular needs. Tharoor’s assertion that history is not something permanent and that there cannot be a definitive, unchanging, sacrosanct and authoritative version of history questions the teleological and conclusive notions of history in the West. This Tharoor does by providing us with an alternative, indigenous definition of History as a part of an eternal present. He states:

“History, Ganapathi – indeed the world, the universe, all human life, and so, too, every institution under which we live- is in a constant state of evolution. The world and everything in it is being created and re-created even as I speak, each hour, each day, each week, going through unending process of birth and rebirth has made us all. India has been born and reborn scores of times, and it will be reborn again.”

This interpretation of history is very similar to the terms in which Ashish Nandy, following Gandhi, defines history: “If for the West the present was a special case of an unfolding history, for Gandhi as representative of traditional India, history was a special case of an all embracing permanent present, waiting to be interpreted and reinterpreted.”³

Tharoor finally problematises the process of imposing an “order” to history. History is not a single narrative but several parallel narratives that lead to a cumulative result. In an attempt to “order” the history of Indian independence, insurgent movements that were limited to a particular area were seen as localized movements that the state regarded to be separatist movements. Leela Gandhi writes in her book Postcolonial Theory that “while Benedict Anderson famously argues that ‘nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our times’ (Anderson 1991, p. 3), at the same time, and paradoxically, competing or ‘separatist’ appeals for nationhood are generally regarded as symptoms of political illegitimacy.”⁴ Thus, ordering history is nothing but a process in which a single overarching narrative overshadows all the parallel narratives and illegitimises them. Tharoor writes:

“We tend, Ganapathi, to look back on history as if it were a stage play, with scene building upon scene, our hero moving from one action to the next in his remorseless stride to the climax. Yet life is never like that. If life were a play the noises offstage, and for that matter the sounds of the audience, would drown out the lines of the principal actors. That, of course, would make for a rather poor tale; and so the recounting of history is only the order we artificially impose upon life to permit its lessons to be more clearly understood.”

Tharoor’s counter narrative of colonial historiography, nonetheless, is completely devoid of the voices of the subaltern classes. His history, as is told from a privileged vantage point, remains “traditional” in the sense that it fails to bring out the forever suppressed histories of the subaltern classes, the histories of the silenced voices. His postcolonial project of re-telling India’s history from the point of view of Indians thus remains a history from the point of view of the privileged, elite and bourgeoisie nationalists that completely negates the voice of the oppressed classes. Tharoor has thus furthered the political appropriation of the subaltern classes by proving that indeed, as
Partha Chatterjee states, the “unique achievement of Gandhism [was] the political appropriation of the subaltern classes by a bourgeoisie aspiring for hegemony in a new nation.”⁵

1. History and Myth

In the West, as Peter Heehs argues, “myth and history are often considered antithetical modes of explanation. […] Since the Greeks, logos (word as demonstrable truth) has been opposed to mythos (word as authoritative pronouncement). […] The general trend of post-Enlightenment historiography has been the eradication of myth from the record of “what really happened.””⁶ In contrast, Tharoor blends history and myth together and poses a challenge for the reader in a manner that leaves a very thin line between the two by recasting the history of India into The Mahabharata, the great epic of Hindu Mythology. From the very beginning of the novel, it operates on two different time zones: the mythical time and the historical time, and often it becomes difficult to differentiate between the two. For example, it is not plausible that V.V.’s children are grown up men in the 1920s if he “was born with the century”. In fact, he derives the name of his novel from The Mahabharata (“Maha”-Great, “Bharata”-India). The novel is divided into eighteen episodes or chapters, alluding to the eighteen parvas of The Mahabharata. Tharoor introduces the characters in his novel chronologically just as they were in the great Indian epic. Written about 2000 years ago, the politics for the throne of Hastinapur of The Mahabharata is relevant still today as politicians deploy similar political tactics in their quest for the throne of power. Thus, Tharoor challenges the positivist historiography that makes a clear distinction between history and myth, in the Indian context. Partha Chatterjee, in his book of essays Empire and Nation: Selected Essays points out the undistinguishable nature of history and myth in the following words:

“Myth, history, and the contemporary – all become part of the same chronological sequence; one is not distinguished from another; the passage from one to another, consequently, is entirely unproblematical”⁷

The subjectivity of history writing is pointed out as it depends on a number of things ranging from the historian’s political inclination to what he asks of the archived data and what he considers important. “The facts” on which the depiction and interpretation of many of the incidents and events in The Great Indian Novel are based are rumours, hearsay, second-hand information, guesses and eavesdropping. V.V. (Ved Vyas, the narrator) openly admits the subjectivity of his account and at the same time implies that all accounts of history are subjective:

 “It is my truth, Ganapathi, just as the crusade to drive out the British reflected Gangaji’s truth, and the fight to be rid of both the British and the Hindu was Karna’s truth. Which philosopher would dare to establish a hierarchy among such verities? Question, Ganapathi. Is it permissible to modify truth with a possessive pronoun? Questions Two and Three. How much may one select, interpret and arrange facts of the living past before truth is jeopardized by inaccuracy?”

The Mahabharata, as it has been passed down to us, has been interpreted, reinterpreted, told and retold from several different perspectives throughout South and Southeast Asia. For example, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions narrates the story of the Mahabharata through Draupadi, or Panchali’s perspective and Kavita Kane’s Karna’s Wife: The Outcast’s Queen narrates the same story from Uruvi, Karna’s wife’s perspective. Tharoor’s history is also only from his own perspective and does not represent the objective truth. Tharoor further writes about the subjectivity of his narrative:

 “For every tale I have told you, every perception I have conveyed, there are a hundred equally valid alternatives I have omitted and of which you are unaware. I make no apologies for this. This is my story of the India I know, with its biases, selections, omissions, distortions, all mine. But you cannot derive your cosmogony from a single birth, Ganapathi. Every Indian must for ever carry with him, in his head and heart, his own history of India.”

There is no one, authoritarian truth. There are a number of truths from a number of different perspectives. The truth is not a coherent and consistent theological system at all. It calls into question the idea that history is a repository of facts and the truth. History is seen animated by a desire to represent truth but no independent autonomous truth exists at. David Lloyd writes in his 2008 book, Irish times: Temporalities of Modernity :

  “As against Western historicism, with its determinate and singular unfolding of time as progress, myth allows for a continual recurrence of and to a past that is conceived as a repertoire of redeemable possibilities.”⁸

Thus, V.V.’s claiming that there are a “hundred equally valid alternatives” to history makes his history very similar to what Lloyd defines as myth thus further narrowing the gap between history and myth.

1. History and Anecdotes

The word “anecdote” comes from the Greek word “anekdota” which means “that which has not been made public”. Therefore, it is knowledge that is not to be shared in the public domain. When information is aurally stored it is often stored in the form of a narrative (anecdote). The Oxford English Dictionary defines the anecdote as the “narrative of a detached incident, or of a single event, told as being in itself interesting and striking” but there is no consensus among scholars about the importance of anecdotes and if they can be considered a particular form or genre in itself. In the Post Renaissance historical practice, the anecdote was not considered to be something that historical practice should be based on, unlike official records. But, modern historians are much less convinced about the distinctions between what is official and what is not. There is no real difference between literary anecdotes and historical stories. Anecdotes usually have a didactic intent. Its is something that needs to be told, believed in and passed on. It is done with a certain sense of expectation that attaches itself to other aspects of the field which are well known. Anecdotes exist is a realm of expectation and satisfaction. This is very similar to the purpose of ordering history according to Tharoor: “…the recounting of history is only the order we artificially impose upon life to permit its lessons to be more clearly understood.” According to this definition, ordered history performs the task of teaching lessons and thus has a didactic intent similar to that of an anecdote.

“Of course one must be wary of history by anecdote.”, Tharoor points out in The Great Indian Novel. Even though Tharoor warns us against history passed on to us in the form of anecdotes, he himself indulges in anecdotes to aid him in his task of narrating the history of Indian independence and the subsequent history till the 1980s. He explicitly claims that anecdotes in the narration of an epic are nothing but digressions:

“In the olden days our epic narrators thought nothing of leaving a
legendary hero stranded in mid-conquest while digressing into sub-plots, with stories, fables and anecdotes within each. But these, Ganapathi, are more demanding times.”

Even while saying so, Tharoor presents to us several anecdotes within his novel to aid him in his narration. This is probably what Gossman talks about when he says, “Not surprisingly, the friends of power, those concerned with maintaining public images and decorum, have generally been fearful of anecdotes and have lost no opportunity to denigrate them, while at the same time enjoying them in private and, when necessary, using them against their own enemies. “L’anecdote,” the Goncourt brothers assert, “c’est la boutique á un sou de l’Histoire (“The anecdote is the dime store of History”). But they themselves made abundant use of anecdotes in their Histoire de la socijtj frangaise pendant la Revolution, the aim of which, in their own words, was “not to relate once again” the grand political history of the Revolution, but to “portray France, manners, states of mind, the national physiognomy, the color of things, life, and humanity from 1788 to1800””⁹. This is similar to the task that Tharoor undertakes in his novel: to narrate an alternate version of history from the Indian struggle for independence till the 1980s which differs from the official/European version of it. Tharoor too is found “digressing” into anecdotes quite frequently but he is cautious enough to question the legitimacy of the anecdote several times while narrating it:

“But there is one story I ought to mention, just so that you have it, even though I don’t believe it myself for a moment.
It is said, around the smoky fires where villagers in what used to be Hastinapur warm their hands on a winter night, that as Gangaji lay dead, wrapped as in life in his white sheet, a tall figure with a half-moon glowing on his forehead stepped in and sat by his bed. Yes, Ganapathi, Karna. And Karna spoke – for that is how they sing it in the desert huts of western Rajasthan in the wailing chants of the Langas and the Manghaniyars, how they hear it in the arrack shops below the palmfronds that fringe Kerala’s highways, as men gather to drink and talk politics – he spoke in a low insistent voice, seeking the Mahaguru’s forgiveness and his blessings. Yes, blessings, for did not the Mahaguru realize that he, Karna, was only doing what he had to in fulfilment of his own karma?
Could a man be blamed for performing too well the script of destiny?
Then – and this is where I really part company with the popular version – as the unacknowledged son of Kunti rose to leave, the story goes, a hand slipped out from under the shroud and grazed his shoulder.
Gangaji disagreed with no man more profoundly, yet he would not deny Mohammed Ali Karna his blessing when he asked for it.
That, at least, is the story as it is told; make of it what you will.”

It is not uncommon to find the use of anecdotes in history but they are generally not done with an intention to subvert the Western distinctions between history and anecdotes but to confirm and establish general rules and trends of behaviour. For example, anecdotes about heroic historical figures have been used in historical narratives to reinforce their heroic characters like bravery, or, as in the quoted anecdote used by Tharoor, the larger-than-life character of Gangaji (Gandhiji). Thus, it is used to emphasize the importance of historical events or personalities that have already been established. The anecdote, therefore, has remained a secondary or subordinate form of narration to the general “factual” narration of history.

Thus Myth, Anecdotes and History constantly borrow from each other and creep into each other as they lack clearly defined boundaries. Early historians like Herodotus wrote their histories based on enquiries that they made among the public which were often filled with local myths and anecdotes. Not just that, myths and anecdotes have been used in the narration of history to make an otherwise dry text more interesting in order to appeal to the public. In more general terms, myth and anecdotes may be defined as any set of unexamined assumptions with no factual basis. Modern historians have become aware that much of the so-called factual history is interfused with such assumptions. Thus, in the words of Peter Heehs, “mythistory” is a more appropriate name that may be given to what we call “history”. Nonetheless, a clear distinction between myth, history and anecdotes were sought to be made from the very early days of Hecataeus itself. Tharoor, in his writing, incorporates all of these forms while also offering us an alternate history of India.

WORKS CITED:

1. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
2. Tharoor, Shashi. The Great Indian Novel. Haryana, India: Penguin Books, 2014.
3. Nandy, Ashis. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983.
4. Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
5. Guha, Ranajit. Subaltern Studies. Writings on South Asian History and Society. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994.
6. Heehs, Peter. “Myth, History, and Theory.” History and Theory 33, no. 1 (1994): 1-19. doi:10.2307/2505649.
7. Chatterjee, Partha. Empire and Nation: Essential Writings, 1985-2005. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010.
8. Lloyd, David. Irish times Temporalities of Modernity. Dublin: Published by Field Day Publications in Association with the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, 2008.
9. Gossman, Lionel. “Anecdote and History.” History and Theory 42, no. 2 (2003): 143-68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3590879.