PHILIP MARCHAND

‘How far can belief remain relevant in a country described by one Indian as a “snake basket of a land”?’

The Year of the Runaways Sunjeev Sahota Knopf Canada 494 pp; $34

The titular runaways in Sunjeev Sahota’s novel are on the run from many things, but they can be summarized by one word: India. In the novel, this is a realm of grinding poverty, violence and the cruelest discrimination. “These mussulmans,” says a disgruntled Indian cricket player. “cheating is in their nature.” As bigotry goes, that’s very mild. To see prejudice in all its horror, one need only read Sahota’s account of the life of Tochi, a labourer who is a chamaar, lowest of India’s castes, and an object of fear and loathing to those born into more fortunate stations.

In a benign mood, an upper caste woman who has just been given a ride in Tochi’s makeshift taxi takes pity on her driver. “I’m not a horrible person, you know,” she sighs. “I do feel sorry for you people.” This same person would exercise the utmost vigilance lest someone like Tochi managed to disguise his identity and marry into her family — a more awful social fate could hardly be imagined. In fact, Tochi, at one point, with no intentions whatsoever of marriage, is accused of this very offence by a woman who had been completely at ease with him — until she discovered his caste. Then she screams at him, “you people stink the whole world up.”

A brutal attack on chamaars by Hindu rioters leaves Tochi with profound physical and emotional scars, as well as the loss of his family. before the attack, he had been determined not to cower in the face of this nationalist threat. It was not pride, this determination — it was “a desire to be allowed a say in his life,” Sahota writes. After the attack, Tochi, who barely survives, is still determined that “these things needn’t go on as they are forever.”

Tochi, an illegal immigrant, eventually makes his way to a work crew building a hotel in Sheffield, england. Others in this all-India crew are two middle-class youths, randeep and Avtar, desperate for money to keep their families back in India financially afloat. Like all the rest they view Tochi with deep suspicion — for one thing, he says nothing about his people or his village.

Their ill will is aggravated by woes of their own. Avtar is badly in debt to an Indian loan shark, who will stop at nothing to collect his money. randeep is helpless in the face of demands on his resourcefulness that he cannot meet. He is married to a “visa wife,” a young woman, named Narinder, who agrees to a pretend marriage so that her “husband” can eventually acquire that most coveted possession among illegal workers, a british passport.

underlying every conflict is the overwhelming imperative to find a job. without work, these illegal immigrants have no hope of earning and saving money — no hope thereby of not only surviving in their adopted country, but saving their families back home from beggary and ruin. when Avtar accuses Tochi of stealing his job, he is accusing him of stealing the blood that runs in his veins. At the same time, the jobs they do get are among the most degraded occupations imaginable. It is no surprise that a fellow illegal worker, Gurpreet, who has been going from job to job for 11 years, is bitter. “Forget any ideas about going home,” he tells Avtar. “you’ll still be here, still doing this, in 11 years’ time. ... you’re me in 11 years.”

The cruelest reality is that their most cutthroat competitors are their fellow Indians. As one confides in Narinder, “Our own people are the worst at bleeding us dry.”

Perhaps the most poignant story belongs to Narinder, who volunteers to live in england as a visa wife out of the goodness of her heart. She is a devout Sikh, determined to help others, including the most wretched. This gets her, as might be imagined, into all sorts of trouble.

In a world that measures all things by money — “everything’s about money,” Tochi insists — the role of religion is always a ticklish subject. How far can belief remain relevant in a country described by one Indian as a “snake basket of a land” and by another as “a cesspit full of snakes”? It is true that, in this novel, the Sikh worship of God in temples and gurdwaras provides a much needed counterpoint to the grosser aspects of life in India and Sheffield. Sikhs in the gurdwaras bring succour to the poor, including food and shelter. Their worship is fervent and sincere. “God will guide us,” Narinder tells randeep. yet these worshippers are human and reflect a certain snobbery and awareness of social niceties. Instead of God guiding them, they “go where the money is,” as one Indian puts it. even the women at the local gurdwara turn on Narinder when she expresses a desire for paid labour, as opposed to the volunteer kind.

Sahota displays a deft touch with this portrayal of religion versus worldliness, and of Narinder’s journey from faith to increasing doubt. with the same deft touch he shows his protagonists doing beastly things while constantly reminding us that these young men are also under constant pressure, in a situation where there is little margin for error. A comparatively slight misfortune or miscalculation can have disastrous consequences.

Tochi and Narinder evoke the most pity, as individuals whose harsh fate is the most undeserved. but Sahota is ultimately more interested in the worlds they inhabit than in their individual psychology. In this respect he is a novelist not unlike the 19th-century French naturalist writer Émile Zola, fascinated by the doom his main characters bring upon themselves, and intrigued by the oppressiveness of the society they inhabit. The penalties these characters suffer are always disproportionate to the mistakes they have made.

The prose in which he narrates their story is not always elegant and reader irritation is sometimes increased by the insertion of foreign terms. The result is phrases such as “passing women retightened cardigans over their kameez, salwaar-bottoms puffed out into the wind like legs of mutton.” but these are minor concerns compared to the richness of the tapestry Sahota has woven for us.

He is accusing him of stealing the blood that runs in his veins