J.D. Salinger in Bihar
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In an extremely insightful book, Vijay Nambisan has returned laughter to the Republic, says SHIV VISHVANATHAN

Bihar in the Eyes of the Beholder
Vijay Nambisan
Viking, Price: Rs 395

Vijay Nambisan’s Bihar is a wonderful lark of a book, easy, irreverent, empathic, down to earth, the kind of book you can happily read on the Patna Express, chuckling away even when the “natives” have taken away two-thirds of your rightfully reserved seat. When a cousin who read the first chapter complained there were no insights, Nambisan wickedly disclaims any such burden. Nambisan also disclaims any facticity, insisting that the book was not journalistic but impressionistic. He deftly notes that anyway the facts would be out of date, before the book was in print. “Dumbisan”, as his luggage label once proclaimed, provides lovely readable stuff. I won’t tell you the jokes in it but do what may please the author after a drink or two — take it seriously.

Books on Bihar tend to be heavy sociological tracts bemoaning its violence, corruption, lethargy. All of them are constructed around the idea of lack, of something missing or something pathological, that explains Bihar’s backwardness. There is little laughter in these works. They tend to be depressing — the style of the work mimicking the subject. The paradigm for such exercises would be the late Arvind Das’s The Republic of Bihar. Nambisan performs a trickster’s act by returning laughter to the Republic and by claiming Bihar rather than being backward and populist, or precisely because of it, is one possible future for Indian democracy. Bihar as the future of India makes one sit up. It adds to a sense of tragedy and awakening.

Nambisan disclaims being political but he rescues politics from the trap of development studies, or election analysis, and locates it in the politics of everydayness. His map is simple. It is three concentric circles. The world of the hospital where his wife was a doctor; the world of Laloo; the social everydayness of Bihar captured in train rides, conversion, violence, womanhood, all riotously done.
One starts with the Rabelesian figure of Laloo and his reinvention of democracy.

Laloo’s democracy is a different invention from the cyberspace of Naidu. It is more populist, realistic, inventive. It tells you what democracy is about even in its crudest, most populist form. As Nambisan in one of his eloquent moments puts it, “Democracy at its rawest does not require vision, it does not insist on the betterment of the human condition, it does not need the rule of order, it does not distinguish between the law abiding and the criminal. It does not ask for transformation. All democracy implies is that a large fraction of the populace has a right to choose themselves. To do what? Only to wield power.”

Laloo has invented populism as a spectacle. It has nothing to do with governance or development. It is a drama of dignity, masculinity and violence where a new entrant has smashed his way in. It is a celebration of politics as politics. Just that. The beautiful tautology is breathtaking. Laloo by being Laloo has transformed Indian politics. The politics of rhetoric creates through repetition the drama of substance. Who cares for sociological tracts or World Bank reports. Laloo makes them irrelevant and boring.

Around Laloo and the hospital where he serves as resident historian, Nambisan weaves a brilliant series of portraits of Christianity, rail travel, violence, women, the happy errors of The Times of India (Patna). Each is a treatment of the light and shade called Bihar.

Starkly relevant is his unsentimental look at Christian missionaries in Bihar. Nambisan provides the best critique and understanding of the missionaries going beyond the tripe of the VHP, Dara Singh or the Christian apologists. He portrays their commitment, the economic mobility the church provides to the poor, the inner polarisation between Keralite dominance and local Dalit anger. It is hardheaded and his final observation that Dara Singh is an icon of a man “both Hindus and Christians can do without” is apt. Nambisan is a bit wary about his Catch-22 portrait of the sisters but I think such honesty is more welcome that the stuffed shirt correctness emanating out of Delhi. Laughter and honesty give the book a strength that is appealing.

The other section which is a great read is about the coercive commons called the Railways in Bihar. The encounters, the violence, the inability of people to respect reservations, the only kind that Bihar refuses to recognise, is beautifully captured.
Nambisan is a bit like J.D. Salinger unleashed in Bihar, an adolescent celebration of a future unfolding. His defence of Rabri and Sonia is gutsy and easy and does more for them than a dozen feminist tracts. Yet he captures the dangers of Laloo and Rabri by being open to their uniqueness. Nambisan does not impose his sociology. He drinks Bihar in, feels its fizz and ferment, celebrates it and warns of what too much of Bihar can do to the dreams of India.

A last note. Arvind Das, author of the Republic of Bihar, died last week. All I can invite you to do is to read both the books. There is a happy complementarity which lets one celebrate both books and Bihar together.

The writer is a senior fellow
at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.

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