(Review of An unfinished Autobiography by Indira Goswami, published The Hindu Literary Review on May 5, 2002.)
AT a critical point in Goswami’s life as a young widow, there are two options before her. She can go to London, “that land of ancient Western tradition and culture” (p.99), or she can go to Vrindaban, “the centre of ancient Hindu tradition and culture” (p.99), to do research on the Ramayana. Two different directions, and contradictory impulses. The choice that she makes, Vrindaban, does not exactly resolve that conflict. Instead, the choice and the resultant trajectory of her life highlight the contours of a kind of Hindu modernity that strikes at best an uneasy balance between the claims of a rational and humanist modernity and that of a traditional, hierarchical and gendered value system that is often indifferent to human pain and suffering. The biography is unfinished in more ways than intended.
The conflict itself and the resultant loss of moorings are very real for Goswami though she seems innocent of any self-consciousness regarding the impulses driving her life in contradictory directions. As a young girl she grows up in her ancestral Sattra, religious monasteries typical to Assam, established by her forefathers. Life in the Sattra has essentially remained unchanged for centuries though under the British it has successively lost certain privileges. It is in a state of decline but the young Goswami takes life as she finds it in the Sattra with its astrologers, religious rituals, strict social and gender codes.
The problems begin when her family shifts to Shillong and she is admitted to a public school run by the British. There couldn’t have been a more different world with its Scripture classes, English literature, Hollywood films and individuals whose lives are organised by different values. The transition couldn’t have been anything but traumatic, and leaves her with a vague disquiet of the mind: “A sort of vague fear and anguish somehow seemed to have settled down on my heart… “ (p.3). This disquiet persists throughout her life and the story of her autobiography is the story of her struggle with it. The root of the disquiet is never consciously identified though it is often romanticised. But she vaguely links it to Shillong: “They (the Europeans) came in my life, as it were, to initiate me into the terrible affliction of separation from loved ones” (p.9).
So when she, a young widow, goes to Vrindaban, the city of God and the destination of young widows, she seems to have made a choice of getting back to her roots. Yet, she doesn’t quite go there as a pilgrim or as a Hindu widow. The perceived wholeness of what was is elusive. She goes there as a researcher and the tools of a rational humanism go with her. The dirt and the filthiness of the city and its open drains nauseate her. She is revolted by the preying guides and the way in which the inhuman system exploits the widows. While in Guwahati she reads anything she can get hold of about Vrindaban, once she is actually there she feels “little curiosity”. While the devotees surrender themselves to a mythical Krishna, she is occupied by questions regarding the historical Krishna. And while she is moved in many ways by Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas, she can’t quite accept his attitude to women.
Yet, she keeps hoping for a miraculous supernatural cure to the disquiet of her mind and keeps consulting sanyasis and sadhus of different hues. A modernity marked by an acceptance of the given at some points and by a multitude of mutinies otherwise. And backgrounding the formation of this not-quite-religious and not-quite-secular modernity is the image of the intolerant and barbaric Muslim invader destroying temples and persecuting Hindus. Everywhere she turns in Vrindaban she finds remnants left behind by a Gazni or an Aurangzeb. Talking of Sikander Lodi, she writes: “He had all the temples of Mathura razed to the ground and butcher shops established in their place. The broken pieces of the sacred idols were used as weighing measures. What a sacrilege! Yet, it was a part of history” (p.105). The kind of history that is getting into textbooks these days and the kind of newly, historically-aware modernity that is running rampant in Gujarat. True, she appreciates Akbar for his moderation. He is even accepted as an “Indian” emperor.
The narrative has an uneven quality to it, reflecting the fact that the various parts were written at various times. And as one wades through it, one has to negotiate a lot of rather narcissistic undergrowth. The translation by P. Kotoky has a bookish stiffness to it and the book can really do without errors like material uncles, elephants having tasks and dieties.
An Unfinished Autobiography, Indira Goswami, translated by P. Kotoky with a foreword by Amrita Pritam, Sterling, 2002, p.220, Rs. 195.
Tales I tell myself 