A dying State 2

Shiva Naipaul In the creation of Hindu culture, Bihar ri,neettPies a pre-eminent place. On its rich ar'd Plains north and south of the Ganges tribal %ate of the earliest kingdoms and republics of Northern India. In a 4 i republic in the foothills of what s w4 Nepal, the future Buddha was born. It Dr4 the towns of Bihar that first heard his p eacbing; whose princes offered theirge :trona__ . w4 Nepal, the future Buddha was born. It Dr4 the towns of Bihar that first heard his p eacbing; whose princes offered theirge :trona__ .

It was on its soil his Enlighten-

lj Nearly contemporary with Thu' Mahavira, the founder of Jainism. ch:tnircl century BC saw the ascendancy of back 111ciragupta Maurya who helped to drive bt the armies of Alexander the Great thYoad the Indus. Chandragupta created pe first Indian empire with its capital at hiatallPutra — present-day Patna. One of aus Ministers, Kautilya, is credited with the coth°rshiP of the Arthasastra, the most ,MPrehensive Hindu treatise on statecraft. ve"handragupta's grandson, Asoka, a con- berct t° Buddhism and non-violence, was to ehn°,111e the most famous of India's hCravartins — universal rulers. During spr,re,ign missionaries were sent out to ihr-au the Buddhist gospel not only

°,1Ighout his Indian dominions but to

prT°n, Nepal, Burma and Central Asia. pji Indians, he remains the ideal of the sbc.,TsoPher-king. From the fourth to the held centuries AD, the Gupta emperors

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by swaY, presiding over a period regarded iionanY as the classic age of Hindu civilisa- tini" They helped endow the famous ca-versitY at Nalanda to which scholars thrn,e, from all over Asia. Nor was Nalanda `11;,"1-11Y well-known seat of higher learning.

one of its more distinguished native (\kalendra Prasad, former President of cha'n) has written with justifiable to -nnivtinism, 'radiated for centuries not only Parts of India but also to distant Ils of Asia, religion, philosophy, arts that stands for culture and civilised was no exaggeration to say, he con- 441-"eicl, that the history of India was, for • r'Y a millennium, the history of Bihar rIrt, large.

thanthe glories he celebrates ended more had a thousand years ago. Maybe enough tea; been done; maybe no more could lnably be expected of any people. With tloeu:Lecline of the Guptas, the region we red 1.,"now as Bihar (the name was confer- the "Y Muslim invaders who were struck by nunther of monasteries — viharas — 41saw) faded, politically, intellectually lroPiritually, into a dark age: a darkness eve': which it has never emerged. Neglected 414" bY the chroniclers, it became a

the 1 i

141 land, a supine tract of territory n to ""adow of Bengal to the east and Delhi 'e north-west, criss-cr9ssed by ravenous

armies, squabbled over by petty feudatories who wielded ephemeral power over the downtrodden 'human herds' chained to the cultivation of rice, locked into the eternal struggle with flood and drought, famine and pestilence.

Severe injuries were inflicted by the suc- cessive waves of Muslim Invaders whose in- cursions became endemic during the course of the eleventh century. Hinu temples and Buddhist monasteries were destroyed. Scholars and monks . were subjected to wholesale slaughter. Libraries were burnt. The great centres of learning, including Nalanda, were extinguished. No culture can withstand such assault. Bihar must have gone into a state of shock. No other major religion — with the .possible exception of Persian Zoroastrianism — has been so ravaged by Islam as has Hinduism. The ef- fect on the Hindu character has been pro- found, long-lasting and damaging. The Hindu heartland became a catacomb. If Bihar had shouldered a disproportionate share of the creative burden of Indian civilisation for a thousand years, it was now its fate to shoulder a disproportionate share of the sterile burden of Hindu defeat for another thousand.

rr he Muslim invasions swept away the last 1 traces of Buddhism. With its denial of the fundamental importance of caste, it had, to a certain degree, functioned as a protes- tant movement within the Hindu fold. With this check removed, Bihar began to succumb to the grip of an ever-tightening Brahminical doctrinairism, one of the symptoms of the cultural exhaustion that had set in. Un- challenged, the Brahminical interpreters of Hinduism would seek to bind and fetter their religion and its adherents. The centre of this 'reaction' was a territory north of the Ganges (anciently known as Mithila) which had somehow managed to maintain a

semblance of autonomy at any rate, it did so until Moghul times. Significantly enough, it was an area that had traditional- ly prided itself on its 'purity', a prejudice dating back to its relatively early penetra- tion by the Aryans. So pure did the Maithalis consider themselves that a crossing to the southern bank of the Ganges was regarded as a defilement and required the performance of cleansing rites. This was the severe, neurotic atmosphere that would determine the tenor of Bihari Hinduism in the dawning age of defeat and ossification. Mithila's Brahmins had nothing new to say. That was not their ambition. Their energies would be expend- ed on composing endless commentaries on the sacred texts, elaborating rites, describ- ing duties, prescribing expiations. They shackled the ancient religion, anchoring men ever more securely in the airless cells of caste and karmic fate. Under their tutelage, caste endogamy was more strictly enforced. So was the hereditary aspect of the profes- sions. Every act was hedged in by regula- tions and taboos. The fear of defilement became universal. Castes and sub-castes multiplied like cancerous cells. In Bihar, Hinduism made for itself a maximum security jail.

The havoc caste can wreak has been nowhere better demonstrated than in the relentless degradation imposed over the centuries on the millions of untouchables. No other tyranny has ever surpassed it in cruelty. To the Pariah, the temples were forbidden; instruction of any kind was for- bidden; the free use of the public highways was forbidden. He was not allowed to have in his possession 2"- or to recite — the sacred scriptures. He had to live apart from other men and draw his water from separate wells. He was condemned to the most squalid tasks. His mere shadow was polluting and its heedless deployment could lead to his murder. Those more fortunate could sleep with a clear conscience because to suffer thus was his karma, his punish- ment for wrongs committed during the whirl of many lifetimes. The untouchable was a felon preordained by fate and the ex- • tremity of his condition was an ethical necessity. At the other end of the scale, crowning the sublunar Hindu chain of be- ing, was the Brahmin, the earthly god. Such was the nature of the system that came to full flower in Bihar.

Hindu education in Bihar — a monopo- ly, needless to say, of the Brahmins — was mainly religious and ritualistic and im- parted only to the chosen few. The picture that emerges is one of a people increasingly mired in superstition of the grossest kind, in proliferating caste taboos, in all the neuroses connected with defilement remorselessly channelled through their Brahminical preceptors. The traveller, Tavernier, visited Patna in 1666. His stay coincided with an eclipse of the sun. ... it was a prodigious thing to see,' he wrote, 'the multitudes of people, men, women and children rushing to the Ganges to wash themselves... ' This lemming-like stampede was, of course, prompted by the ever- present fear of pollution, of a karmic short- circuiting. At the beginning of the 19th cen- tury, the Abbe Dubois gloomily observed: 'I do not believe that the Brahmins of modern times are in any degree more learn- ed than their ancestors of the time of Lycurgus and Pythagoras. During this long space of time many barbarous races have emerged from the darkness of ignorance, have attained the summit of civilisation, and have extended their intellectual resear- ches...yet all this time the Hindus have been perfectly stationary... '

Bihar did not simply remain stationary. The level of culture, of civilisation, had been regressing for centuries. In southern India, anti-Brahminical sentiment could take shape as a kind of racial self-assertion — Dravidian against 'Aryan'. This was not possible in Bihar. With cultural decline there went a growing economic wret- chedness as — especially after the middle of the last century — population began to in- crease. Land, mirroring caste, was ceaselessly divided and sub-divided, resulting in miserable patrimonies barely sufficient for subsistence. (Bihar, primor- dial land of the agricultural instinct, had to wait until 1953 for its first Agricultural Col- lege.) The numbers of landless rose steadily. What little industry there was was decayed. The mills of Lancashire ruined the cottage trade in textiles. German advances in syn- thetics laid waste the indigo plantations. Hundreds of thousands were forced out of the region, compelled to seek what work they could find in the jute mills of Bengal and the tea plantations of Assam. Many would ship themselves overseas as inden- tured labourers, ending up in remote places like Trinidad — the island of my birth.

Speaking of this period, a Bihari historian adds this revealing lament: 'Moreover,' he says, 'it forced many high- caste Hindus and the descendants of respec- table Muslims to accept menial service in the households of middle-class people for paltry remuneration.' Bihar limped into the 20th century under-educated, over-popu- lated, poorly fed, intellectually and spiritually denuded; enfeebled in almost every way. Caste remains a basic reality to the Bihari, as fundamental to his sense of himself as are his arms and legs. It deter- mines everything he does. His perceptions, his feelings, his loyalties, his treasons, his tortures, his massacres, his nightmares, are all moulded by caste. Deprived of it, he flounders. After generations of condition- ing, it is his only lifeline; the only compass he has. Thus it is that students, politicians, police, banditry and peasantry organise and kill on caste lines. There is nothing else they can do because they know no other way of conducting themselves. Each and every one is a victim of a tragedy that started a thou- sand years ago; of a series of assaults com- ing at first from the outside and then brought to fruition from within.

Patna . . . a town without the faintest traces of charm, a sprawling caravan- serai of dusty roads and fenny lanes; a junk-heap of peeling, crumbling buildings, of squatter colonies earthed in tracts of mossy mud; a swarming hive of pan- chewing, meagre-limbed men. Stagnant, black-watered gutters reek. Inches away from these sewers people squat, arms limply hanging, oblivious of the stench, staring as vacantly as the wandering holy cows. I watch the interminable procession of cycle rickshaws. Where are they all rolling to and for what purpose? A cacophony of drums and trumpets unsettles the moist, motion- less air. Another pageant of piety; yet another shimmering divinity escorted by its chanting devotees.

At dusk, there is a thunderstorm. The sky is cracked open by shafts of orange light- ning. Big drops of warm rain fall, distur- bing the dust which exudes its rich store of miasmic vapours. Late at night packs of starved, hairless mongrels roam restlessly, rootling and snarling round the embers of cooking fires. Along every roadside bodies lie sprawled in sleep. The disorder, the dirt, the ugliness is overwhelming. How do men manage to live in a place like this? How is it that they do not all .go mad?

With a friend I drive out to a far suburb of Patna — he wants to take me to an Untouchable village recently scarred by a massacre of its menfolk. A light rain begins to fall. I stare at the glistening lines of buf- faloes trundling along the verges, at the shaggy crowns of the palm trees, black against the sky of light grey. The rain stops, the sun comes out in its full force, the earth steams. A rainbow appears and disappears. The car can go no farther. To get to the village we must walk. The suburban lanes through which we pass are quagmires. We pick our way through slimy, ankle-deep mud, skirt mossy pools. On the more treacherous stretches we have to climb up on to the tiny stoeps of houses and shops or leap from one strategically placed stone to another. This fetid swamp is a main thoroughfare. We give up, deciding to walk along the railway embankment instead. At the foot of the embankment lies the dhoti- clad corpse of a man, a pool of his dried blood staining the earth. He has probably been hit by a train; The body lies in the sun, abandoned like any animal's, unregar-.0 by the passers-by. Soon, in this heat, 0'1 begin to smell. Leaving the railway, we follow a rietw,5s or14 of rutted, shadeless tracks snaking aet",4 the paddy fields. Here and there portions up track are flooded and we have to wade.; to our knees in slippery ooze. Men, WOd and children, bent under loads of grass '11, firewood, lope under the merciless les heading for villages that could he ss away. They have been loping like this aer°0 fields like these forever. We discover 0, cannot reach our destination: it is ma°, fie ed by flood water. We find a tree arw,cr. down in its shade. Rice. Nothing but riaii The acres of luminous green stretch corners of the horizon. I sit in the shade 'wry watch kingfishers swoop. In the watfeect fields, egrets contemplate their own Per ed reflections. A young boy wearing a raggild loin cloth and carrying a staff comes uP„,,aws stares at us. Behind him, a buffalo svall'es, in a mud pool. Flies buzz about our fae,,f The warm wind brings with it an odotirove excrement. In the far distance I can see ,„ tiled roofs of the village of massacre. 11,71e glad I don't have to go there after all. shepherd boy, one stick-like leg proProd against the other, leans on his staff a; os stares. rkeua

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jr and serompfanion talks of revolutio IA 651

t was through the Governor's kin.11-,A1

met Sharma. Sharma considered hirrl'of and was considered by others somethirik, a scholar: he had shared in the authors",.'rf of several booklets devoted to the histot/beu Bihar. I was not sure that I wanted t°.01, 'guided' but refusal would have seemed lai polite. When I met Sharma, doubt turn'te

into anxiety. He wore his Brahminie eas,d

like a badge. Powdered discs of orange 'd, yellow adorned the middle of his foreheal,. the lobes of his ears, the base of his °cad His light-brown eyes oozed a remote a mysterious self-absorption. A Y°11 'Shiva!' he exclaimed. 'Where di „ne get such a name, sir? That is name 01 s'iaj our our Hindu gods.' He was proprietor about the matter and regarded me wiritiisille faint air of amusement and a more de'—he one of condescension and scorn. 'Is that t full name, sir? It is most irregular.' .,0

Reluctantly, I supplied the fuller versiu of my name.

He began to laugh. 'It makes no seri- all. No sense at all.' I had made Sharillao, day; fired his Hindu wit. 'Yours is not islirou per Hindu name. It is all mixed uP. a should be able to tell everything fr01/105 man's name — his village, tell caste... everything. From yours one caa•

nothing.' like I understood then that someone myself could never be entirely real to d.

one like him. I was beyond his frie'l„, ship, beyond his enmity, beyond — eve°

his scorn.

'Mr Sharma is very high caste Bra,'—o. one of his colleagues put in. `Tip-top c111

ty Brahmin.' Those discs of orange and red tattooing

litiS forehead, his ears and his neck seemed glmsl a little more brightly each time I 'baught sight of them. Sharma was pleased r„Y, this Public affirmation of his status. He eseLite,aled somewhat. 'I will work out ex- ' d. ent sight-seeing programme for you,' he sai an-regether we visited the Patna Museum, ttanukempt, fusty mausoleum stocked with elfine specimens of Hindu and Bud- rhist art. These treasures had not been ar- clanged with an eye to either instruction or 1:lit_ght. They were, for the most part, mere- et" turown together, stony relics of distant r eation, bleakly lined up in rows in dusty f0a(,),Ins, Ragged guards dozed under ceiling ot.us. Occasionally, we encountered groups hail,leasants standing silently before some itti"-rnutilated divinity. On what strange „Pulse had they wandered into this place? "PPed before a Buddha.

8,:rhe English do not understand about 4Sharma said.

di:'I Ow do You mean, Mr Sharma?' t,,nnean,' he said fingering the smooth, vitsi,'„_t°rso, 'they believe all history starts Del„-,Ineln. But that is not so. For English c2le there is no history before Julius h;nar. That is fact. For us, on the other tti'lu, history has been going on for uo°,111sarids and thousands of years. We it07.!rsrand BC very well.' He smiled '`ucallY at me, his sour breath playing on 3' face. at.„We entered a room lined with glass cases 14.0.4ed with often superb terracotta and tio„114 figurines. Sharma drew my atten- 6;.' ro a female figure with a bouffant 'Aistyie and clad in a short, skirtlike gar- observe how modern she is,' he veotpd Ml people in the West think you in- abo all these styles. But India knew a10, the mini-skirt three thousand years the Westerners always think themselves lation,riginators of everything. We Hindus 416'1: Sharma smiled his ironic smile; 1 in-

IS rancid breath.

()tie moist afternoon we drove out to the outskirts of the town, to a small park retnn.se centrepiece was an archaeological pat.‘tuiscence of the ancient capital of oarliPutra. Sharma led me along mossy roari 's winding through groves of palms and wirh8°, trees. We came to a pond covered pro lotus. A solitary, truncated column the trucled above the surface of the water Des rettlains of a hall of the Mauryan the43,c1- Two peasant girls wandered about rushs'oPes of the pond, cutting bundles of th es' The park, except for us and for ern, was deserted. sh'ksoka himself might have walked here,' 4,,rina said. His voice was startlingly loud cLuestillness

'In: . temporary Bihar was a replica of that h

the -e living who surrounded me were Of allt but drowned and truncated remnants sahclead civilisation. dis,,,,arrria took me to a pavilion. In it was sici."Yed a rescued pillar. It lay there on its like an embalmed corpse.

'Feel how smooth,' Sharma said.

I ran my hand over the stone. It was in- deed extremely smooth.

'How long was Rome capital of the world?' Sharma asked. I shrugged.

'Only for a few hundred years,' he answered dreamily. 'But Patiliputra was imperial capital for much, much longer than that. It was imperial capital for thousands of years. Yet you people in the West call Rome the Eternal City. We Hin- dus laugh.'

Once again Sharma smiled his ironic smile; once again his rancid breath, the breath of dead ages, played over my face.

Sometimes we Hindus have to weep.

© Shiva Naipaul 1982