Fiction and lies stir Kumar
> BY CHARLIE SMITH
Novelist, poet, and essayist Amitava Kumar has often pondered the differences between a writer and a rioter. The Indian-born Vassar College professor of English is well aware of how demagogues can provoke violence. It’s occurred on several occasions in his home country: in 1984 with a pogrom targeting Sikhs, in 1992 with communal riots following the demolition of a mosque in Ayodhya, and in 2002 with a massacre of Muslims in the western state of Gujarat.
“What sets people’s imagination afoot so that they go crazy and burn down a neighbourhood?” Kumar asked in a recent phone interview with the Georgia Straight. “What is said by the person holding a megaphone inciting a crowd, or what is said by someone who incites a rumour? And what is the difference between that person and me, sitting in my room imagining something, telling a story?”
He cited one particularly deadly rumour that surfaced last year in the Indian state of Jharkhand, which used to be part of his home state of Bihar. The Hindustan Times reported that hundreds of tribal people lynched seven people in two incidents—and at least six escaped with injuries—because of a false message about child abductions being spread over social media on Whatsapp.
Kumar, whose latest work is Immigrant, Montana: A Novel, hopes to explore the issue of fake news in a discussion at this year’s Indian Summer Festival, which takes place from Thursday to next Sunday (July 5 to 15) in Vancouver. (For details about Kumar’s event, see the box to the right.) He pointed out that fake news is on display in America every time Donald Trump opens his mouth and utters a lie.
“Is he a fiction writer? Nooooo,” Kumar said. “What is the difference between the novelist and the liar? At some moments, I have often wondered.”
This out-of-the-box thinking permeates Immigrant, Montana, which is Kumar’s 10th book. It tells the story of a young man who moves in the 1990s from India to America, where he becomes infatuated with women and is mentored by a man who conspires to kidnap Henry Kissinger. Kumar said that his novel embraces “full-bodied cosmopolitanism” in opposition to narrow nationalism.
It’s not the first time he’s examined this dichotomy between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. His collection of essays, Lunch With a Bigot, caused controversy in India, according to Indian Summer Festival artistic director Sirish Rao.
“He got put on a blacklist by a right-wing Hindutva [a militaristic ideology promoting India as a Hindu nation] group that he sat down to lunch with,” Rao revealed in an interview in his Vancouver office.
Kumar sees “a lot of parallels” between Trump and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, whom he accused of using “crass dramatic powers of oratory” to incite crowds.
This oratory, according to Kumar, has encouraged Hindu fanatics to attack and sometimes kill Muslims as hated “beef eaters”—at the same time as Modi is protecting corporate power.
Both Trump and Modi specialize in promoting hatred of journalists as enemies of the nation.
“Philip Roth, who died recently, had a statement about how every day what happens in America is a challenge to the imagination of the novelist,” Kumar noted. “Because no imagination of the writer can compete with how reality—really, every day—presents itself to our baffled, bewildered minds.”