In search of a revolution and a commode

A shot rings out in the red light district of Sonagachi in Calcutta. A bullet, carrying “its own convoluted history”, undertakes a “swift journey from hibernation to obliteration”. A truck driver bolts, fearing for his life and limb. He curses his khalasi, cleaner. This khalasi is a revolutionary of extreme Left persuasion, a Naxal. As the novel rewinds from here, we are introduced to the protagonists of the tale, a bunch of students at Delhi’s elite Mission College. The time is the late 1960s and early ’70s, and fires of revolution are burning practically all over the world, from France to Vietnam to India. China is the cynosure of all eyes, and Mao is proclaimed “our Chairman” by Naxals in India. Yet there is something wrong. Revolution, for the Left extremists, means “individual annihilation” of the class enemy — who are, in most cases, ordinary traffic constables, lower-level functionaries of the state, the odd landlord, or anyone opposed to the Naxals. A single spark was supposed, in theory, to light a prairie fire. In reality, several hundreds of assassinations later, the oppressed peasants and workers showed no sign of rising up en mass in revolt. Dilip Simeon’s debut novel, Revolution Highway, brings to life with consummate skill the atmosphere of the late 1960s and early ’70s. The protagonists are mostly children of middle-class families. A couple of them are radicalised when they visit some of India’s poorest villages in Chhota Nagpur. Some join to keep up with peers. Some remain on the periphery, as “sympathisers”. Some, like Sin Taw, “the Original Ahomiya Lunatic”, remain wildly irreverent —“capitalism is the oppression of man by man, and socialism its opposite”. Then there are the plebeians — Hardip the truck driver, Lata the prostitute, Tulsi Ram the tailor who has two pie-dogs named Nixon and Kennedy, and others. Charu Majumdar too makes a fleeting entry. For those who become revolutionaries and go “UG” (underground), the experience is not always heroic. A lot of time is spent waiting, trying to establish contact with others, doing mundane chores, travelling in harsh conditions, taking part in arcane debates on world revolution. A pistol is acquired in a hilarious operation by duping a hippie, but has to be then hidden, and then delivered. Not easy tasks. Forget about covering yourself in revolutionary glory — you could end up being responsible for grave harm to comrades. Women comrades find themselves marginalised, and sometimes being made indecent proposals to — all under the garb of revolutionary theory, of course. Then there are those senior comrades who order working class comrades to cook lavish feasts for them. Our young idealists discover, pretty soon, that revolution isn’t a tea party. Simeon has acerbic wit. When the United Front government comes to power in West Bengal with Jyoti Basu as deputy chief minister, his party, the CPM, organises a felicitation in Delhi. But the CPM, according to our revolutionaries, is a “revisionist” party, and they land up in force to disrupt the proceedings. They shout slogans, call Basu a jackal, and demand the release of Kanu Sanyal. Basu reminds them that his government has already released Sanyal. The revolutionaries, hardly deterred by such minor factual discrepancies, carry on protesting. When Lenin wrote What is to be Done , he was concerned with questions of strategy and tactics. But Lenin wrote nothing about what was to be done when faced with the prospect of defecating in the open, an essential part of going UG: “Between historic tasks such as World Revolution and mundane ones such as the evacuation of one’s bowels, there is, of course, an obvious difference... Even Professor Oroon da’s stern warnings about the harshness of ground reality did not prepare him for the assault on his senses that took place whenever he went to relieve himself. Ground reality indeed! ...Along with the Theory of the United Front, the Problems of Revolutionary Art and the Question of the Worker-Peasant Alliance, he thought the Communist movement ought to theorise the Question of Shit”. Simeon manages that fine balance — admiration for the revolutionaries’ passion and commitment combined with sharp critique of the Naxal ideology, especially their glorification of violence. He also maintains another difficult balance — his book is in equal measure a history lesson, a celebration of the spirit of rebellion, a travelogue of sociological accuracy, a critique of a theory gone awry, a philosophical reflection on violence, and a study of fascinating characters. A better novel on the Naxal movement will take a long time coming.