An Indian Odyssey

Title: An Indian Odyssey

Author: Martin Buckley

Publisher: Hutchinson, 2008 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-091-79525-2

Pages: 355

Another book on India based on travels in the country by an Englishman and carefully crafted so as not to ruffle any preconceptions about the country in Europe. It encapsulates the author’s travels in India and Sri Lanka in 1982, and a quarter century later, in 2007 and unified through the subtle trend of Ramayana, India’s great epic. Buckley visits the sites mentioned in Ramayana and weaves his storyline through the lives of contemporary people. The author also tries his hand at a secular translation of the Ramayana which is a good attempt, but may offend some hardliners. Martin Buckley is a journalist and works for television. He had stayed and worked in India for many years. In his dabbles with spirituality, Buckley stays in ashrams and narrates realistically about mystic experiences.

             

Buckley’s narrative never transcends the predictable trajectory familiar to the readers of travelogues penned by Europeans. Abject poverty, lack of hygiene, insufficient water supply, pot holed roads crisscrossed by dangerous over speeding vehicles, venal priests and cut-throat traders, bedbug-infested hotel rooms with peeling plaster, overcrowding in all social functions – the list is endless. It seems that whenever the author ventures out at night, there will be a power cut. On no less than three occasions the occurrence of a power cut is mentioned. The book is a catalogue of the ills of Indian society. Of course, Buckley begins with a caveat that his deposition is bound to ruffle some sensitive feathers, but the readers have to wade through twenty paragraphs of the author’s terrible experiences in order to get at a single paragraph about the object under consideration. Absence of a well-charted itinerary reduces the content to the level of spontaneous rambling rather than a scholarly attempt at deciphering the meaning of it all – as displayed in so elegant and endearing a style as William Dalrymple’s. Even Mark Tully, a colleague of the author touches the skin of India’s soul in his book ‘No Full Stops in India’, reviewed earlier in this blog. This book pales in comparison to those works because of its lack of structure, absence of cohesion in ideas and lack of empathy on the author’s part. You need to think in the same wavelength as your subject in order to bring out a clear analysis of his character. This the author has done only for his spiritual colleagues.

The book essentially being a travelogue of the author’s journeys in India and Sri Lanka, the thread of Ramayana seems to be a clever choice to provide a unifying thread of the seemingly unrelated legs of the journey. Buckley travels the length and breadth of Lanka in search of places and monuments even remotely connected to the epic’s storyline. This rush takes him to LTTE and Sri Lankan army – controlled territories, with attendant problems of securing entry. As the island nation was reeling under a civil war, the marks of destruction and pillage he observes on the way provides a moot reminder of the senselessness of it all. As he rightly observes, the Sinhalese resented Tamil dominance of the bureaucracy and academia, owing to the head start accorded to Tamils in the north of the country, which was famed for its Jaffna University and many illustrious colleges and schools. Tamils were subjected to discrimination and assault. They retaliated, banding together in groups, the LTTE under Prabhakaran the most notorious of them. Civil war raged ahead in full steam and the LTTE was crushed. In the end, the Tamils suffered a double whammy. Not only they were decimated militarily, but those institutions which ensured their primacy in a competitive world, the universities and colleges, were also smashed up and reduced to ruins. Tamils seem to have gone back to the time when their illiterate ancestors were brought to the island, by the British to toil on the newly established tea estates which Sinhalese shunned. They have to start from the scratch again.

A characteristic observation Buckley makes is the venality of Brahmin priests who lord over Hindu temples. All their acts of piety could be bought – for a few rupees. Irrespective of the magnificence and heritage of the temples they officiate upon, a carefully planted cash offering opened all doors. In some places like Varanasi, they actually shamelessly ask the devotees to pay a fixed amount of money, while in others like Rameshwarem, they invariably expect something in return for the favors. Buckley was ordered out of the Rameshwarem temple on account of the fact that he was a non-Hindu one evening, but the very next morning, he manages to make a guided tour of the entire temple, in the company of a paid Brahmin guide. The crass avarice of the Hindu priestly class is displayed in the same vigour by their brothers in Sri Lankan temples too.

Whatever may be the allegations about the book, it faithfully reproduces the profound impact India’s ancient religions with its fallible godheads exerts on its modern adherents. Buckley observes a real, living religion that has thoroughly disseminated its belief system so as to make it accessible to even the lowliest person in the social hierarchy. In fact, when the elites were prevented by compulsion or doubt in pursuing their part of the burden, it was the common people who continued to keep the banner aloft. The sheer faith and fatalism of the devotees amuse and strikes the author with wonder. The assimilating spirit of Hinduism is observed and commended upon.

The content and lay out of the volume is impressive, but it lacks any mention of the author. Perhaps the publishers need to look into this. The book is eminently readable, as any book on India invariably is. That is the mystery and charm of our mother India.

The condescending tone while comparing religious violence in India with Europe is misplaced and not born out on fact. The demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya in 1992 is fancifully compared to the probable destruction of a Macedonian mosque in modern Greece to make way for a temple of Odysseus and the author wonders whether such a thing is imaginable in modern Europe. Unfortunately, not only is it imaginable, but has repeated in gory details many times over the past century. Greece itself witnessed the brutal destruction of several mosques and killing of several hundreds of Muslims in the aftermath of its war against Turkey in the 1920s. Then there is Hitler who killed millions in the name of a flawed political philosophy. And just a few years back, in fact, after the author had returned from his first visit to India, Serbia witnessed genocide and ethnic cleansing not witnessed in the scale of its brutality. Aren’t they countries in modern Europe? Many of Buckley’s descriptions are in bad taste. His disclosure of the sexual escapades with his fellow tourists and workers don’t illuminate or make the text any more interesting. The narration just sticks out like a sore thumb.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star