Anant-A Dogri Novel that makes you think

Suman K Sharma

A word of caution first: if you are looking for some timepass, please don’t go anywhere near Ved Rahi’s latest Dogri novel, ‘Anant’. The 272-page work is a story mainly of ideas. Casual reading, as we all know, does not gel well with that sort. The author’s brief note gives an inkling of what is coming. ‘I wanted to write the story of Kuldeep Kumar,’ he says, ‘Then it struck me that I should rather write the story of his fervour….It is the values, the dreams, the resolves and the duties of the characters that carry the real story forward.’
The novel’s protagonist is Anant. A fortyish man with hypertension, father of two and a jeweller by profession who does not care overly for his calling, Anant does not seem to be the stuff that heroes are made of. He is a Good Samaritan, though. He donates blood to the sick and injured, doles out money even to an alcoholic so that the poor fellow may satisfy his craving for a nip and he carries on his back a frail old woman’s baggage – and eventually herself – on the steep incline to Shri Amarnath Shrine.
Anant is also a stickler to his ideas of the wrong and right. When his father-in-law is forced by the circumstances to sell off his property to a local in Srinagar at dirt cheap rates, he steadfastly refuses to put his signatures on the sale-deed saying that he would have nothing to do with the transaction. Neither the arguments of the advocates hired by the parties nor the pleas from his wife Prerna prove enough to make him change his mind.
For all her admiration for Anant, Prerna has a nagging fear for her husband’s otherworldly ways. ‘God is with him,’ she tells her father. ‘He behaves in a manner like no one else does in today’s world (p.25).’ Indeed, Anant is on a quest for something he cannot name. At the lake Sheshnaag on his pilgrimage to the Amarnath shrine, he has a mystical experience –
‘Anant was conscious of nothing at the moment. Before him was only a lake, a deep blue lake spreading out far into the distance. The entire world, the whole creation had disappeared into its depths. He began to advance slowly towards it involuntarily. He felt as if something from the very depths of the lake was pulling him towards itself. It was an attraction he had never known before. Spellbound, he was moving forward towards the lake. Suddenly, he stumbled on a stone and could save himself from falling with much difficulty. Then he regained consciousness…(p. 58).’
He goes to Professor Sahib, who he considers his guru, to seek answers to the questions that pester him. The wise man tells him, ‘Strange is the creature called man. He does not know what a secret world lies inside him (p.134).’ Professor Sahib says that we all are subservient to a power that abides within us and moves the whole universe. This is the power that makes us carry out, in spite of our free will, its supervening will (p.135). From this point on, Anant plunges wholeheartedly into the furtherance of the cause dear to his heart and ends up giving away his life in his self-appointed mission.
The novel is based on the real story of Kuldeep Kumar Verma. On 23 July 2008, Verma committed suicide in Jammu with the declared intent to spur the public to carry on with the Amarnath Yatra movement till its objective was met. It is said that the police took away the body, with brutal force, to the deceased’s hometown Bishnah; and contrary to the Hindu customs, burnt it there at 2:30 AM ‘in the dead of night’.
What was the movement about? The state government had given to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) a stretch of 800 Kanals of forest land in Baltal in the Kashmir Valley to provide facilities such as shelter, arrangements for food, water and toilets and so forth to the Hindu pilgrims. The decision led to heavy protests in the Valley. The protesters contended that the transfer of land would not only cause ‘ecological imbalance’ but ‘change the demography’ of the region as well.
Apparently bowing to the pressure, the government withdrew its order, without even taking the members of SASB on board. The same day an agitation began in Jammu province for the restoration of the land to SASB under the aegis of Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti (AYSS) – a non-political setup of the citizens that claimed even the support of some Muslim bodies as well. Kuldeep Verma’s publicised suicide came at a time when the public enthusiasm towards the movement appeared to be sagging.
The administration’s ham-handed dealing with the situation only went on to intensify it. AYSS finally agreed to end its two-month long agitation when the government gave in. SASB got back the land ‘for the duration of the Yatra (including the period of making the required arrangements and winding up of the same) for the purpose of user by various service providers according to its needs and priorities….’
The novel dwells at length on the root cause of the historic mass agitation. Was it a communal fight? No, it was not, though vested interests made it appear so. The protagonist Anant has this to say about the misplaced rivalry between the Kashmiris of the Valley and the denizens of Jammu, ‘We (that is the Jammu-ites) say that Kashmiris rule us. But the fact is that no commoner in Kashmir holds sway over Dogras, it is the Kashmiri leaders who commit excesses over us and deny us our rights. An ordinary Kashmiri is still a victim of poverty, sickness and unemployment (p.90).’
Then what is the fight about? Prerna asks him. ‘It’s their misfortune,’ Anant explains. ‘Muslims get easily incited in the name of Islam. Pakistan is always eager to take advantage of this tendency of theirs. Our neighbour wants to grab the Valley. It has already won half the battle by getting Kashmiri Pandits expelled from there. To win a full-scale war against India is beyond its reach….So, it is ever ready to find an excuse to foment trouble. In regard to the land allotted to the Amarnath Shrine Board, Muslim fundamentalists assert that (it) is a ploy (of the Indian government) to keep a firm hold on Kashmir (ibid).’
Sixty pages later, Anant explains to Bashir, a Kashmiri Muslim migrant who has been forced out of his ancestral property in the Valley and now lives with Kashmiri Pandits at the Purkhu camp near Jammu. ‘Our fight is not against the Muslims, but it is against the anti-national elements,’ he tells his harassed compatriot. ‘We fight against the government that is bent, for the sake of Muslims votes, to meet even their unjustified demands and punishes the true patriots with batons and bullets (p.150).’
Ved Rahi has a compelling story to tell and he employs every means to tell it. There are peripheral characters, such as Professor Sahib, Dhundu-the-drunkard and Anant’s own children Manoj and Siddhi, which add to the impact of the narrative as a whole. The protagonist’s suicide – must have presented a problem to the author. Anant dies to achieve full fruition of the objective he has set before himself, something which would come much later. Then how could the narrative be carried forward until the end? Rahi goes for an easy solution. Anant passes away at page 184 and for the remaining 88 pages we view the goings-on of the terra firma through the eyes of his disembodied spirit.
Also noteworthy is Rahi use of creative ambiguity. In the first section of the novel itself, Anant is insistent on not being a party to the lop-sided sale-deed of a hereditary house belonging to his father-in-law. Advocate Habibullah tells Abdul Qadir, the over-cautious buyer who wants to have Anant’s signatures on the sale-deed to forestall any legal hassles, ‘…I think you have created a fuss over nothing. It is a fine deal. Anant Sahib’s wife has signed it. It does not matter if Anant Sahib signs it himself or not….(p.21). Then, Anant is a deeply religious fellow and yet he treasures Bhagat Singh’s essay, ‘Why I am an Atheist’. He loves his wife dearly but cares little for her opinion.
The novel raises bigger questions. Is suicide the right way to fight for one’s ideals? Bhagat Singh, the great martyr and Anant’s idol, did not commit suicide. The Amarnath Yatra movement was a protest against the state government hasty reaction to a violent agitation in the Valley. The moment itself led to another protest of the fruit-growers of the Valley who threatened to export their produce to the rest of India through Pak-occupied Muzzaffrabad. Literature often raises more questions than it answers, as Rahi would like to say.
Its literary merits apart, ‘Anant’ has been lovingly produced. Be it the quality of paper, the printing or the get-up, no effort or costs have been spared to make the book a prized possession. Do read it if only to see what great heights the Dogri fiction has achieved!

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