Violence and cowardice

When examining a novel based on a specific historical context, it is often difficult to separate fiction from fact, truth from artistic license. The outrage that greeted Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss over the presentation of the Nepali diaspora in Darjeeling, for instance, or the angry reactions over the portrayal of Bangladeshis in Monica Ali's Brick Lane are notable cases in point. The same problems arise in Revolution Highway, a novel steeped in recent history.

Dilip Simeon's new fiction work – his first – brings to life the social scenario of the late 1960s and early 1970s in India, tracing the origins and the trajectory of the Maoist uprising. In 1967, in the newly formed Communist Party of India (Marxist)-ruled West Bengal, a struggle for land under the slogan Land to the tiller arose in Naxalbari, near Siliguri. While opposed by the state government and the CPI (M), this struggle inspired radical elements within the party to launch similar struggles in other parts of India. Two years later, the radicals launched a new party, the CPI (Marxist-Leninist), while the broader movement continued to be referred to as the Naxalbari andolan, attracting youths from across the country, including those from among the elite.

By the mid-1970s, in the face of severe repression, raw strategic and tactical formulations (especially the 'annihilation' line, which involved the physical elimination of class enemies) and internal dissension, the movement withered into a mass of splinter groups, each with a small area of influence. Simeon's central narrative ends in December 1971, and the odd references treat the movement as finished. However, the Naxalite movement in fact resurfaced after the Emergency was lifted, when many leaders and activists were freed. Thereafter, the movements led by them spread in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh and, later, into the central Adivasi belt extending into districts in Maharashtra, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

Against this roiling backdrop the author unveils the coming-of-age stories of a group of college students from Delhi, their political and personal involvements. These stories, effective even when unabashedly nostalgic, recall the days of youth and hope, during which innocence leads many to give of themselves far beyond what age and bitter experience would have allowed. They also depict the easy comradeship that is forged in chance encounters among people who have shared concerns that go beyond the self.

The people yes
Simeon's overarching tone is a plea against violence, which clearly springs from his own experience in the left ferment as a student in the late 1960s. His book starts with a gunshot, and the narrative draws to a close with the revelation of all of the events that lead to that gunshot – and the resultant withdrawal from political involvement of two members of the group, Mohan and Pranav. By this time, a third member of the group, Rathin, is already riven by misgivings about the use of violence for political ends, as a consequence of the killing of a comrade and close friend by the police.

In addition, each chapter ends with anecdotes, reports and historical factoids, separated from the narrative: revolutionary extremism in the Indian freedom struggle; the communal conflagration accompanying Partition; Mohandas K Gandhi's assassination; repression in East Pakistan; testimony by the inventor of napalm; and the tale of the custodial death of a young man born of an Anglo-Indian mother in search of his father. The purpose of all these references is to bear testimony to the brutality and futility of violence.

Yet there is a strange disconnect in this construction. Despite the overwhelming evidence he marshals in favour of a non-violent approach, Simeon remains intensely sympathetic to his characters' choices, including their initial decision to take up a path of violent revolution. This tone remains even after the fact, when his now-middle-aged characters organise 'some sad, many uproarious' gatherings of close friends during which they reminisce about the past.

Admittedly, the rhetorical question asked in the book's blurb – 'Can a just society ever emerge from violence?' – is present in the background throughout. But Simeon dodges the more important question: What is the path to a just society? Evading an answer considerably weakens the argument, and calls to mind a comment attributed to Gandhi: 'I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.' Revolutionary Highway rejects violence but does not talk about alternative visions to create a just society; the weakness of the novel is in allowing its characters to opt for cowardice.

The surprising absence in the novel is the people, what the poet Carl Sandburg referred to as 'the mob, the crowd, the mass'. They are present as vignettes, charming even; but they remain mere walk-on parts, which neither interrupt nor add much to the central story of the lives of a few children of India's elite who flirt with revolution and then rush back to their comfortable lives.

The possibilities thus foregone become clear through Simeon's inspiring story of Jehur, a working-class revolutionary whose father, Altaf, was politicised in the working-class movements of the late 1930s. Jehur recalls how he derived inspiration from witnessing, as a child, his father's interactions with communist labour organisers, and how he later joined the revolutionary ranks. This story has a passion that is at odds with the satirical tone applied to the Naxalbari movement through the rest of the novel, for instance: 'In the old days, when meetings took place in the party office, workers sat on the floor and the middle-class comrades sat on chairs … The new leaders still talk about the Party line, but they sit on the floor.' Jehur's death, written up in the book as an accidental death even though it takes place at the hands of a trigger-happy policeman, becomes the termination not only of a tradition of one revolutionary generation following another, but also of Rathin's political involvement and a serious jolt to Mohan's revolutionary commitment.

Simeon includes relatively few references to uncommitted (ie, non-political) individuals from the working class. One is of a peasant who continues to work while Rathin watches him, waiting for a chance to start a conversation through which the peasant could be politicised. Rathin follows him home, eats the meal that is offered, and is then told by the peasant gently but in no uncertain terms to leave. While this episode seeks to highlight the dignity of the peasant in the face of a proselytising revolutionary cadre, it actually betrays the elitism of Rathin rather than the revolutionary tradition that he is sought to represent. Rather than watching the peasant work, if Rathin had helped in his labour he would have stood a far better chance of getting a decent hearing.

In the second such instance, Rathin is getting a cleaning by a kansafiya, an ear cleaner, and he and Mohan engage in a political debate that runs for 12 pages. The kansafiya, silently at work through all this, eventually hesitantly offers his take on their tangled confabulations: 'When you enter a labyrinth, carry a thread. Otherwise you'll forget where you began and won't be able to get out.' The kansafiya is applauded, but in the same way that one would applaud an idiot savant; the two do not actually engage with his words. Finally, there is also the character of a sex worker – the trope of the 'prostitute with a heart of gold'. Because she is important to the narrative, it would be best not to reveal more.

Opportunity lost
Another lacuna in the novel is lack of any mention, leave alone discussion, of caste. All one gets is the bland statement, 'Poor and landless peasants were the main force of the Revolution.' While this could be read as empty sloganeering, nearly all readers will recognise that this sentence seeks to point to the essentially sole point of credibility for the Naxalbari movement. It is no accident that this class contains the overwhelming bulk of India's Adivasis and Dalits – it is Naxalbari that put this class on the political agenda.

At one point, there is a voice of conscience in the form of an elderly left intellectual, Abani Chakrabarty. He talks about the problems of the revolutionary state and the monopoly of power by the communist party in the USSR, and advances this as his reason for leaving the movement: 'I began to suspect anyone's claim to be the sole representative of a class of people.' But as the narrative builds around increasing violence, his voice is reduced to a railing against the violence and nothing else. Tragically, the book offers little as a reasoned critique of the revolutionary ideal.

Revolutionary Highway thus represents an opportunity lost by an activist and former Naxalite to make a case against political violence, which is what Simeon means to do. Over the decades, the revolutionary movement stemming from the Bolshevik and Maoist strands has inspired many young people to join hands with the most exploited, oppressed and deprived sections of society. The leadership of the revolutionary movement needs to be brought to provide an account, an audit, regarding what it has done with that enormous pool of human talent, with the faith that the people have vested in their vision. We need a review of their plans and strategies because they continue to be in power in some areas. Unfortunately, this book does not do it. Revolutionary Highway fails to provide a reasoned critique – perhaps because it does not really engage with the people.

~ Joseph Mathai is a researcher and consultant in Delhi focusing on publishing, social change through education and civil rights.