Azadi - Arundhati Roy

Anandamath , his novel, first published in the 1880s. It is a novel that is, and always has been, greatly favored by
Hindu nationalists because it created a template for the ideal Hindu warrior, the fantasy Hindu warrior, who rises in
rebellion against his degenerate Muslim oppressors. Anandamath is a wonderful example of how, in the process of
its telling of the past, literature can also mold the future. In the poem, the motherland is conflated with the Hindu
goddess Durga. However, the first two stanzas came to be the unofficial anthem of the National Movement because
they only mention “the mother,” which lent itself to being interpreted by both Hindus and Muslims as a reference to
Mother India. Although it was a much-loved song during the struggle against British colonialism, in today’s
atmosphere of a very different kind of nationalism, a bullying, coercive nationalism, people, Muslims in particular,
many of whom are not unaware of the provenance of the poem “Vande Mataram,” are often forced to chant it in full
as a form of ritual humiliation. Ironically, a modern version of the poem was hugely popularized in a 1990s
recording by the Sufi singer A. R. Rahman. Sadly, a once loved slogan has become controversial.
It is not unusual to have a Bengali slogan being chanted in non-Bengali-speaking states. Slogans in the
subcontinent—whether they are being chanted by lynch mobs or protesters, by the right wing or the left, by people
in territories under military occupation or protestors against big dams—are a performance directed outward , for the
rest of the country and the rest of the world to hear, and therefore, quite often, are not in the local people’s mother
tongues. In Kashmir’s massive protests, you will hear chanting in Urdu and in English, rarely in Kashmiri. The
chant of Azadi! Azadi! (“Freedom! Freedom!”) is Urdu—originally, Persian—and has probably traveled east from
the Iranian Revolution to become the signature slogan of the Kashmiri freedom struggle, as well as, irony of ironies,
the women’s movement in India. At the opposite end of the country, down south in Kerala, I grew up to the
resounding roar of Inquilab Zindabad! (Long Live the Revolution!) in Urdu, a language that local people neither
speak nor understand. The other Communist Party slogan was Swadandriyam, Janadhipathyam, Socialism,
Zindabad! (Freedom, Democracy, Socialism, Long Live!). That’s Sanskrit, Malayalam, English, and Urdu in a
single slogan.
I’ll end with the journey of a mantra through The Ministry of Utmost Happiness .
Two months after Anjum and Zakir Mian go missing, and the murdering in Gujarat has begun to tail off, Zakir
Mian’s son, Mansoor, goes to Ahmedabad to look for his father. As a precaution, he shaves off his beard, hoping to
pass as Hindu. He does not find his father, but finds a terrified Anjum, who has been enrolled in the men’s section of
a refugee camp, dressed in men’s clothes, her hair cut short, and brings her back to the Khwabgah. She refuses to tell
anybody what happened to her, but—haunted by memories of “how the men were folded and the women
unfolded”—she takes a wailing young Zainab, her adopted daughter, to a barber, has her hair cut off, and dresses her
in boy’s clothes, “in case Gujarat comes to Delhi.” The other precaution she takes is to teach Zainab to chant the
Sanskrit Gayatri Mantra that she says she learned while she was in the camp in Gujarat. She says that many of the
other refugees had learned it because they believed that, in mob situations, they could recite it to try to pass as
Hindu. Neither Anjum nor Zainab has any idea what it means, but Zainab takes to it happily, chanting as she dresses
for school and feeds her pet goat.
Om bhur bhuvah svaha
Tat savitur varenyam
Bhargo devasya dhimahi
Dhiyo yo nah pracodayat
O God, thou art the giver of life,
Remover of pain and sorrow,
Bestower of happiness,
O Creator of the Universe,
May we receive thy supreme sin-destroying light,
May thou guide our intellect in the right direction. 22
The Gayatri Mantra appears three times in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness . The first time as a talisman
against mob violence. The second time as promotional material in a British Airways commercial to attract customers
from India’s new and exponentially expanding middle class. And the third time in a fast food restaurant in a
shopping mall. Zainab has grown up now, and is betrothed to a man named Saddam Hussain. Saddam tells them the
story of how, years ago, his father was beaten to death by a mob outside a police station. The mall they were in,
Saddam says, was exactly where that police station used to be. Zainab says she knows a Hindu prayer, and recites
the Gayatri Mantra as a gesture of love for her future (as well as late) father-in-law.
Such are the ways in which Sanskrit has been finally been indigenized.
A few months after Anjum returns from Gujarat, ravaged and broken, unable to continue living her old life, she
moves into the old graveyard, where she sets up home. Over the years, as she gradually recovers, she builds the
Jannat (Paradise) Guest House. When Saddam Hussain joins her, they expand their business to include funeral