Bihar is India’s Future
In this week’s Tehelka an interview about my forthcoming book and about the place where the book is set, Bihar:
There is a stereotype in India that Bihar, despite its history, is currently at the nadir of civilisation. How, if at all, will this book change perceptions of Bihar?
Well, in some respects, Bihar really is the nadir of civilisation. And therefore it is the future that awaits the rest of India. This is not a future of only lawlessness and chaos. Rather, it is an already existing present where even inside the worst, you see a possibility of the best. And vice versa. The problem with stereotypes is not that they are false, but that they are static. And that is why Bihar is interesting. It defeats expectations. I hope my book promotes that view of Bihar.
It seems we are in the midst of a Bihar Renaissance with Siddharth Chowdhury, Tabish Khair and yourself. There are even several websites that aim to show Biharis as achievers.
I like Siddharth’s writing because it is daringly original. And Tabish is the better kind of scholar-writer that India somehow seems very good at producing. But I doubt they would identify with the Biharis who run the kind of website you’re referring to. I certainly don’t. I don’t write to furnish a better image of a place or a person. Writing for me is a way of finding out what is hidden from the world. All declarations of superiority are also symptoms of real inferiority. I know what is inferior in myself. I want to be honest about it.
You’ve mentioned the middle class writer’s impulse to speak in an underclass voice.There’s an easy appeal to pathos made by writers writing about people who in real life they meet only as servants. I can’t do it. The novel I’ve written is about the middle-class in its middleness, unable to resolve what it means to succeed.
(Hat-tip, Zafar at Dreamink, with links to other Tehelka interviews with Kiran Desai and David Godwin)
