Book review

Straddling Identities

By

Bhawani Cheerath Rajagopalan

Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands by Aatish Taseer, Picador India, Rs 495

First person accounts of experiencing the Indian subcontinent have been received with both hands by readers. Authors have dwelt on this area and the early writings of this genre can be traced to the likes of Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai,  Qurrat-ul-Ain Haider, our very own Khushwant Singh and the tomes that were published to mark fifty years of India’s Independence, or as some would call it ‘Fifty years after the Partition of India.’  These books were a mix of nostalgia, angst, despair and introspection of an era gone by. Therefore, the content – political as well as personal.

Taseer’s account needs to be read and understood against the background of the subcontinent’s history. The history now has add-ons by way of ‘religious identity’ which transcends national identity. The political and religious beliefs of the author  become all the more significant  when you know that Aatish Taseer is a true product of the diaspora – his mother, the reputed Indian journalist Tavleen Singh, a Sikh, and his father Salman Taseer, a staunch loyalist of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party. Both parents very sure of their national identity, one an Indian, the other a Pakistani. Where does that leave the offspring of such a union, when he has lived with his mother’s family but never embraced the label of ‘Sikh’ nor, that of  the Pakistani Muslim identity?

The words “As a child all Aatish Taseer had of his father was his photograph in a browning silver frame….his Pakistani father remained a distant figure, almost a figment of his imagination…” in the blurb give you a cue to the contents. But then, the best thing about the book is that it is not a sentimental journey in search of a father. The excursion becomes one of discovering the font of faith, the politics of Islam, the varied hues of Islam and how the faithful view themselves vis-à-vis the neighbouring county and its brethren in other lands. In Taseer’s own words, “The younger generation was adrift: neither British nor Pakistani, removed from their parents’ economic motives and charged with extra-national Islamic identity, which came with a sense of grievance.” This is what he absorbs from a visit of Leeds.

A feel of Ataturk’s Turkey marks the beginning of the young author’s search to find a cohesive answer to the civilisation of faith, the collective Muslim history. Turkey’s break with the past, he tells us, is a parallel existence, one of the ghettoised quarter and the other that still carries the markers of its eclectic westward looking people. The young author discerns the fear of the West that is harboured by a large section of the people, a ‘your world versus mine’ syndrome. And what does it translate into for the ordinary Muslim?

The answer as we rightly guess is an “Islamic code of existence” to cope with the impact that embracing Western knowledge syst

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