Modern Classics – Travel literature book review – The Age of Kali , William Dalrymple, 1998.
William Dalrymple’s first book, In Xanadu, assumed classic status in the world of travel literature when it was published in 1990. It was the tale of his swashbuckling and erudite journey across the Middle East, Asia and China, accompanied by two other fresh-faced Cambridge graduates.
He then settled in Delhi for several years, from where he wrote and published an engaging portrait of the place, City of Dijanns. Dalrymple then collected a series of reflections, largely on India, some on Pakistan, which he made the basis for his book, The Age of Kali – Kali is a Hindu god of destruction, which sets the path for much of what follows in his book.
These collections though are not the leftovers from his other works. Deeply troubling and much more than the scholarly works of a former student explorer, they represent a very courageous collection of stories. For these, he has travelled far and wide to talk to those who have challenged the status quo across the Subcontinent’s villages and cities, often getting caught up in a world of violence and corruption.
1. Hoodlum or Robin Hood? Dalrymple starts off with the rise and rise of Laloo, State Minister for the impoverished, by Indian standards, region of Bihar – a State, over half of whose MPs are now drawn from untouchable and lower caste backgrounds –Laloo whose henchmen have presided over a series of massacres against higher caste communities, and who are involved in managing corrupt schemes that bring extra money into the State, and into the pockets of his inner circle. The State for example leads South Asia in the lucrative production of counterfeit pharmaceuticals – salt tablets disguised as aspirin; sugar tablets disguised as antibiotics.
In a State where criminal activity and jail are often a prerequisite for getting elected to office, Lahloo is well qualified. Dalrymple finally tracks his man down for an interview.
2. Dalrymple visits the town of Vrindavan, to immerse himself in a twenty thousand strong community of widows who are living on subsistence levels in an ashram. Their role in life is now to chant mantas and live on the streets until their dying day. They know no caste divide and new women arrive daily from across India. Some of them have slipped out of their homes and left their families, now feeling an incumbent to them; others have fled vindictive sons and daughter in laws, most have simply been thrown out of their homes, for in traditional Hindu society, a women loses all of her status the moment her husband dies.
Dalrymple gets under the skin of the plights of these women. He talks to Kanaklatha, a widow who fled to Vrindavan forty years ago. She also has a relation in the ashram – her ninety-five-year-old mother who arrived decades before her daughter. Mother and daughter eak out their existence amongst the widows of Vrindavan.
3. In Gwalior, Dalrymple has an audience with seventy-nine-year-old Viyrayraje Scindia, Vice President of the World Hindu Council and doyenne of Hindu militant fundamentalists, with their strong fascist anti-Muslim bigotry. In contrast to Lahoo, State Minister for Bihar, she dresses like royalty and lives in palatial surrounds. “Mad woman or saint? Dangerous reactionary or national saviour; stubborn and self-righteous old lunatic or brave and resilient visionary”, Dalrymple wonders after his meeting with her.
On leaving her residence, he concludes that he was charmed and amazed by her. It seemed impossible to reconcile the, “slightly batty woman I had met, with the fire-breathing fascist depicted by the detractors in the Indian press………Her eccentricities seemed weird but endearing. There was absolutely nothing sinister about her.”
However, a year later Dalrymple is forced to revisit his judgement. A crowd of two hundred thousand militants descend on an annual rally led by Viyrayraje Scindia, at the site of Ayodhya’s ancient mosque, which had reputedly been built over a traditional Hindu site. Matters this time got seriously out of hand, as the crowd proceeded to demolish the mosque, brick by brick, until all that remained of it was rubble. Its destruction was a catalyst for much blood shed across India.
During the tearing down of Ayodhya’s mosque, Viyrayraje could be seen, on national media, with a micro-phone in her hand whipping the militants up into a frenzy.
4. Sati, the centuries dated practice of widows immolating themselves on their dead husband’s funeral pyre, ceased to be after the British banned it in 1829. However, there have been known cases of this continuing in remote parts of Rajasthan. The most recent, when The Age of Kali was published, was believed to be in 1987. Ten years on, after a decade long trial, thirty-two men were acquitted of the murder of eighteen-year-old Roop Kanwar.
But did she really go or was she pushed? Was she executed or did she quite happily step onto the pyre, thus assuming near-sainthood in her village, and beyond?
Dalrymple goes in search of the village. On his way, he passes by monuments commemorating long forgotten satis. He uncovers the different perspectives on this primeval practice and talks to women’s activists and other people who were close to the case, both from the village and a state prosecutor viewpoint.
5. Dalrymple also travels beyond the Indian borders, into Pakistan, where for example, in Peshawar on the edge of the northwest frontier, he interviews those close to the city’s dominant industries of weapon manufacture and opium production.
These summaries though are just a sample of the wide-ranging issues explored in The Age of Kali. I first read the book in the months leading up to my journey to India, at the end of the second millennium and it filled me with trepidation. It remains disturbing reading, over twenty-years after publication, not least because much of that underbelly is still likely to remain, no matter how well it is tucked away off the beaten track – It is an Indian travel book with a big difference.
Damian Rainford
(Header image: Pixels Free Photos)
Alternative book review
http://in-between.org.uk/books/the-age-of-kali
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