The Assassin’s Song
M.G. Vassanji
Knopf, 314 pages, $25
In February 2002, a group of Hindu demonstrators converged on the town of Ayodhya, India, to demand that a temple be built on the site of the Babri Masjid, a 16th Century mosque that had been destroyed a decade earlier. On their way back from the rally, their train stopped in the city of Godhra, in Gujarat state, where a group of Muslims standing on the platform allegedly heckled them. Part of the train carrying the Hindu demonstrators caught fire, and nearly 60 people were killed.
The deaths — which new evidence suggests may have been caused by a cooking stove inside the train car — led to months-long attacks on the state’s entire Muslim minority. As many as 2,000 people were murdered. Muslim women were raped and burned alive, and their babies were torn from their wombs. Using voter lists, mobs targeted and looted Muslim businesses. By the time the killings stopped, 150,000 Muslims had been displaced.
The sheer viciousness and depressing regularity of communal riots in Gujarat make it an unlikely setting for a novel about a mystical saint who transcends religious identity, yet that is where M.G. Vassanji places the action in his new novel, “The Assassin’s Song.” Alternating chapters tell the stories of Karsan Dargawalla, an Indian college professor who returns home to Gujarat after having spent long years abroad, and Nur Fazal, a 13th Century Sufi Muslim who arrives in Gujarat seeking refuge with the Hindu king, Vishal Dev. Karsan is Nur’s descendant, his successor — and his avatar.
When Nur Fazal arrives in Gujarat, he finds a community strongly attached to — and divided by — its religious beliefs. He begins to preach a different way: a communality of belief. ” ‘There is but one Truth, one Universal Soul, of which we all are manifestations and whose mystery can be approached in diverse ways,’ ” he tells the king.
Though Sufism is a mystical tradition in Islam, Nur Fazal’s creed shuns simple identification with religious systems. His message appeals to a number of followers, and he sets up a shrine called Pirbaag in the fictional village of Haripir. This place of worship is for anyone — Hindu or Muslim, Sikh or Jew — who wants the help, advice, or intercession of the Sufi saint who founded it. Nur Fazal’s successors, also known as Sahebs, dutifully maintain the shrine for more than 800 years, and, despite a few small incidents, the village remains united even in the face of the violence and mass migrations that accompany India’s independence in 1947.
Karsan, the first-born son of the shrine’s last Saheb, is told of his heritage and his responsibility at a young age. As the successor of Nur Fazal and his avatar, he is closest to the Universal Soul. The path Karsan’s father sets for him is clear: He will become the caretaker of the shrine, comfort the downtrodden, advise the lost, bless those who want children.
But Karsan longs to escape “the realm of the mystical that was my inheritance.” At 17 he leaves India, having landed a full scholarship at Harvard University. Once there he creates a new identity for himself. He is no longer a god but simply a college student like any other, “an absent-minded, soft-spoken son of a guru with a delightful accent copyrighted recently by Peter Sellers and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.” He studies poetry, falls in love and refuses to return to the shrine when called upon to take it over. Instead he marries a fellow student, moves to Canada and becomes a professor. At long last, he is free “from the iron bonds of history.”
But the past has a way of catching up with everyone, and Karsan eventually returns to Pirbaag. There he discovers how the religious orthodoxy of the modern age has taken over Nur Fazal’s village and destroyed his message of peace and unity. Karsan’s brother Mansoor has chosen to identify as Muslim, and in the wake of the 2002 riots he demands that retribution be brought upon the state’s Hindus. Frightened, Karsan exclaims, ” ‘The world does not divide so neatly into “we” and “them,” Mansoor, there was no such thing when we were growing up!’ ” Mansoor’s retort is immediate: “There is, now.”
Vassanji is the author of five previous novels, including the Giller Prize-winning “The Book of Secrets” and “The In-Between World of Vikram Lall,” as well as a collection of short stories. He was born in Kenya, raised in Tanzania, educated in the U.S. and now lives in Canada. Understandably, the theme of emigration and belonging recurs in his work, but in “The Assassin’s Song” he explores the idea of belonging through the lens of religious identification, placing his characters in situations that force them to choose a faith and a place even when they refuse to adhere to the us-versus-them mentality. The result is a deeply affecting story, full of contemplation and mystery.
“The Assassin’s Song” suffers from some uneven writing. The chapters set in the 13th Century are rich in historical detail, and the prose is at once lush and precise, but in the last few sections of the novel the writing grows impatient, even repetitive.
Still, the novel succeeds as an exploration of the difficulties and consequences of religious identification. M.G. Vassanji has given us an exceedingly relevant novel that should be required reading in our divided times.
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Laila Lalami is the author of “Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits.”
