Gods in flesh and blood

This article has been written as a submission for the course ‘Management of Self’ in IIMC and is based on the novel ‘Immortals of Meluha’ by Amish Tripathi . If you are looking for an unbiased review of the book, you are at the wrong place. This is more on how the book conforms to my personal convictions, than what the author might have meant!

I was introduced to the habit of reading, by my father. He had collected a lot of story books, classics as well as the epics even as I was a baby, so that I can start reading them as soon as I learn to. I had read Ramayana and Mahabharata at an early age itself, along with many other related Puranas. I was always amazed by the story of Mahabharata, with its profound and subtle meanings, perfect characters and variety of side stories and used to believe that it is the best literary work ever by man. I couldn’t help wondering how a single person like VedVyas could write such an article all by himself. I used to feel proud to have a heritage where such characters existed in flesh and blood.

As I grew up and having read many other books, I started doubting if the epics were just stories and not reality and were these really the work of single persons after all, or of a generation of authors. I wondered why such heroes and armors don’t exist anymore – the warriors who had divine talents, saints who could shuttle between earth and heaven, Gods showing up every now and then to bless the kings. I was slowly coming out of some contradiction that India faces – the lack of distinction that people have between History and Mythology.

I remember something which influenced me in my school days - “Dwaparam”- a Malayalam book, presenting the story of Krishna and Radha, but without the air of divinity or exaggeration. The book was presented from the angle of Radha, who sacrificed her love for the sake of humanity, but still got pushed to a back stage in other scriptures by the aura of the legend, Krishna. In the book, Krishna is portrayed as a village boy who came up in life through hard work and determination and became the savior of his tribe, by killing the evil king Kamsa. It didn’t have even a tinge of super human acts or divine interventions. The book gave a strong alternate perspective to me. I started to see the characters as human beings who might or might not have existed, but have been exaggerated over time.

During my college days, I got caught up with the Hindutva wave, due to the influence of a few friends. I used to believe that Hinduism is the best religion in the world, seeing Christianity as evangelistic and Islam as extremist. It was more of a result of constant interaction with those friends which kept my bias rather than an informed choice. As I researched more on the historic facts, I realized that Hinduism had its own share of vices – Caste System, Untouchability, Sati, Sambhandham practice in Kerala, Child marriage etc. I was realizing that the religion that I considered to be the symbol of ‘Universal Acceptance’ and ‘Tolerance’ wasn’t really so at any point of time, but it was rather an image given to it by scholars like Swami Vivekananda who revived Hinduism and made it presentable to the world.

Coming to the book “Immortals of Meluha”, I find a lot of ideas being presented, which aligns with my above said convictions. I feel Amish Tripathi has been able to present his strong views in a subtle manner throughout this book, careful not to offend anyone and not to raise any conflict, but still driving his view effectively.

He begins the book by saying that he is bowing to ‘Lord’ Siva, even as the book is about Siva being seen as a human with less or no divinity. The story proceeds as we see Siva, the leader of the Guna tribe in Tibet, coming to the land called Meluha ruled by the Suryavamsi kings (which according to the author covers the modern day Pakistan and North-West India). He is considered as the savior by the people of Meluha, according to an old legend. There he meets his love Sati. The story proceeds as we see Shiva pursuing his love and his supposed mission. The reader is a given a vivid picture of the emotional journey that Shiva undergoes. The story ends abruptly, to be continued over the two sequels.

The book, according to me has a storyline which is extremely gripping, presented with lot of twists and turns, the second half being a real suspense thriller. I must admit that it has a lot of situations which are anachronic- like the sophisticated infrastructure of Meluhans or the Somras which prevents death, as well as a number of flawed logics- like the Maika system where the parents give all children to the school who are later allotted randomly after education. Keeping apart these minor deficiencies, I really enjoyed reading the book and hope that the sequels are as thrilling and interesting as this is.

I would like to analyze the story on a few dimensions which I feel as important.

1.       Confusion between Mythology and History

As I already said, this is one aspect which characterizes India according to me. This is a country which was predominantly Buddhist for over 1000 years, but that history being conveniently excluded from the mainline scriptures, to present the view of India as a Hindu one. This has been catalyzed by a series of stories which binds together the faith across cultures and which partly relate to certain historic events.

Hinduism has taken lot of stories from across the country and combined it as one big logical story. This becomes evident as we dive a bit deeper. . I had written a blog earlier on the alternate perspective of Ayyappa as Buddha. Maveli, a legendary king in the folk stories of Kerala, seems to have been later identified with the king Bali, whom Vamana, the 5^th Avatar of Vishnu supposedly sent to the Hell. Murugan, a Dravidian God who has been worshipped for a long time has been later identified with Karthikeyan, Parvathy’s second son. It becomes more evident as we notice that Karthikeyan is not worshipped as a God anywhere in North India. Most of the places where the stories supposed to have taken place do exist even today, with remnants of temples and forts constructed some time in recorded history - thus Dwaraka, Lanka, Rameshwaram, Hastinapur etc becomes part of mythology as well as history.

I completely appreciate the effort towards blending mythology to form a coherent story, which matches with geography as well as a few historic facts, but the problem with this is that it confuses people. They are left to believe that the ‘Gods’ once walked in flesh and blood at these places. It is then that they feel like pulling down a Mosque at a place where they believe a mythological figure was actually born, or people get offended when a Muslim artist draws naked pictures of another mythological figure.

‘Immortals of Meluha’ tries to see the legendary character Shiva as a mortal who becomes a leader. The protagonist is more of a charismatic leader who has normal human emotions with no divinity attached to him. Amish explains how he is being worshipped by the followers against his wish. This gives the reader a taste of how normal mortals get deified over time, appended by exaggerated stories.

On a lighter note, I feel that this book would have become a major controversy, had it been written by a Non-Hindu author!

2.      Ideal state as against Free state

Meluha is initially presented as an ideal land with high scientific advancements – pipes, drainage systems, people living in quarters etc. Everything in Meluha is guided by rules created by visionary kings. Shiva is amazed by how efficiently the system works. Everyone knows their duty and sticks to it strictly, which makes Meluha, the land of abundance and perfection. But this is achieved at the cost of freedom and dignity of a section of the population. Swadweep, the land of Chandravamsis is described as an imperfect system with a larger population, haphazard organization of the city, damaged roads and slums. But it is also the place of “Passion, Beauty and Freedom”, where houses were different from each other, according to individuals taste and beauty existing side by side with ugliness.

There is one instance which beautifully narrates this. Shiva sees a beggar at the Ram temple in Swadweep sitting with some unclean food. Shiva wondered how the empire can let people be in a wretched state like that, something which will not happen in Meluha. It was then that the beggar offered him the little food that he had. Shiva was amazed and he politely declined. The beggar says “This food is good, otherwise I wouldn’t have offered this to you”, his eyes reflecting the hurt he felt. Realizing that he has insulted the old man’s pride, Shiva sits with him and has the food, when the old man beams generously. Shiva was touched by this incident when a person whom he felt as wretched and on the verge of starvation, offered the little food that he had. He realizes what Chandravamsis gave their people and what Suryavamsis do not, -Freedom, Freedom for even the wretched to have dignity!

This I believe is a representation of the pre-colonial and post colonial India. India accounted for 32.9% of Worlds GDP in 1^st century AD, 28.9% in 1000AD and 24.4% of Worlds GDP in 1700. The system of division worked perfectly to take the country to economic growth, but it was at the cost of a vast majority being denied of dignity and respect! 

3.      Caste System – A Social malevolence

Amish draws an excellent picture of how the caste system came into place and how it got deformed over time. The intention behind it was to have an ideal society, where every person performs his duty and the society as a whole benefits, the inheritance of caste being to follow a process of competitive selection. Even as it was designed with an ideal society in mind, I feel that the pioneers should have foreseen a future when parental selfishness would make the elite castes to shun the ‘acquiring caste by karma’ concept and create an easy route for their offspring.

Caste system, according to me, is the largest crime that Hinduism has committed to mankind. Caste plays with the sub conscious mind of people, injecting a superiority or inferiority complex in the mind of children right from their birth, which gets reinforced over time by the societal interactions. It is equally appalling and amazing to note that something as nonexistent and intangible as caste could propagate over several centuries and get accepted equally by the benefactors as well as the oppressed. As I said earlier, the country progressed economically those days, but at the cost of a section of the society confined to the abhorred jobs, not given a chance to study or excel. They never even realized that they were being treated unfairly – because they were made to believe that they were born of the feet of Lord Brahma and has to follow their ‘birth-karma’ religiously to wash away the sins of ‘previous lives’!

The evil is far from being over in the age of artificial intelligence. Still discrimination exists including heinous practices like Untouchability, along with it taking a new manifestation of Caste politics. I was really disheartened to know that Indian Government lobbied strongly against the move by United Nations to classify Caste System as a Human Right violation. It is sad to notice that the Government of a secular and democratic country bends its back to accommodate the biases of communal elements.

4.      Imperfect characters

Another peculiar aspect I notice in the novel is that the characters are imperfect. Shiva is shown as a normal human being with his own limitations. He lives with the guilt of leaving a girl who pleaded for help in his childhood. He smokes marijuana, desperately tries to impress his love, naively believes the Suryavamsis and later repents it as he realizes his mistake. He is anything but divine, apart from the fact that he is considered divine by his followers. Sati lives accepting her inferior status in the society despite her talent, though craving for respect and recognition.

I think this is a change in attitude that the human kind as such needs to have – to accept leaders as human beings who are imperfect in their own ways, but charismatic and able to lead them. But we need them to be completely perfect. We take offense when someone raises the question as to whether Gandhiji had shared a bed with his grandniece, something which he himself had publicly admitted, or if someone from West says that Nehru had a relationship with Edwina Mountbatten. We find it hard to accept the fact that a leader can have a weaker side, especially when he is a God-like figure. It is for the same reason that Church warned the followers not to read Da Vinci code, as they fear that having human emotions might make Christ a mortal before the followers.

I see people who are either hard core fans of Gandhiji, blatantly denying any such weak emotions that he had or completely opposing his methods, calling him a pervert and accusing him of pampering Muslims. Hardly anyone is willing to accept the fact that he was normal imperfect human being who did the humongous job of uniting the nation and challenging the largest empire with his non violent methods.

To conclude, “Immortals of Meluha” was a book which stirred up strong emotions in me, as I felt it aligned with my personal convictions over multiple dimensions. As I said at the onset, I am not really sure if the author actually holds the same view, but I think it is the character of a good book, that it invites multiple interpretations from the readers.

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