‘The Politician Redux’: Devesh Verma’s novel of Indian politics makes familiar events interesting

In a seminar on Urdu poet and dramatist Zahida Zaidi (1930-2011) in Aligarh, two different papers on her only short novel Inquilaab ka Ek Din, a campus novel set in Aligarh Muslim University, offered two diametrically opposed readings of its characters and themes. Saghir Ibrahim, a senior professor of Urdu who knew Aligarh well, was able to read all those well-known and lesser-known personages of the campus who appeared as thinly disguised characters in Zaidi’s novel. Aysha Munira Rasheed, a young scholar of English literature, neither probably knew most of them nor tried to know them but still offered a perfectly valid and convincing reading of Zaidi’s novel reading it as a novel with all features of the novelistic form. 20th-century formalistic criticism made a fetish of not reading biographical details in the text and instead exhorted critics to see whether a text succeeds as a literary work irrespective of the author’s intention.

The Politician Redux: Odessey of Chance, narrated by Kartik and mediated through the voice of Deena, unmistakably succeeds as a novel. It is interesting, readable and is like no other novel on the subject. At the very beginning of the novel, Kartik is also described as the alter ego of the novelist. However, as the flesh and blood author who files his income tax returns in time and shoos away children playing cricket in his compound is conventionally not very relevant to an analysis of a novel, Kartik can better be considered an implied author (Waye Booth’s term), who, to use Gerald Genette’s insights, internally focalizes the narrative. We see a variety of characters – honest, dishonest, pragmatic, earthy, sophisticated, quarrelsome, sensitive – representing different sections of society in Uttar Pradesh through this focalization.

Other equally important perspectives coming from Marxist, feminist and postcolonial criticism have stressed the nature of discourse – bourgeoise, patriarchal, colonial, nationalist – in texts and how they shape our worldview, affecting us in ways we do not often suspect. A novel also has a discourse and contributes to a discourse, and as Edward Said would say, has its worldly character. Most characters in The Politician Redux are based on real-life politicians, some named clearly, some given names which can be decoded by a politically conscious reader.

A sequel to Verma’s earlier novel The Politician

The Politician Redux: Odessey of Chance is a sequel to Devesh Verma’s debut novel The Politician and continues the story of Ram Mohan, the less than successful UP politician who, after failing to win parliamentary and assembly elections, has to be content with becoming a member of Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission. Many other themes and motifs of The Politician – the role of caste in electoral politics, an impulse against animal slaughter, and criminal-politician nexus – are present in this novel too. It further adds the dimension of racist attitudes of Indians to their caste fixation.

The Politician looked critically at Jawaharlal Nehru’s period and focused on the ambition and struggles of Ram Mohan, The Politician Redux centres on Ram Mohan’s efforts not only to advance his own political ambitions but to also look after his children’s education and careers during Indira Gandhi’s rule. The plot of the novel dwells on an India pejoratively dubbed License Raj or Permit Raj before the liberalisation, evoked through long waits for Fiat cars and Bajaj scooters and the impact of Sholay’s dialogues, especially those of Gabbar Singh, on popular imagination. It deals satirically with “misrule of Indira Gandhi”, student unrest beginning with Gujarat and JP’s agitation against Indira Gandhi, imposition of Emergency, India Gandhi’s mishandling of Punjab situation, Operation Blue Star, her assassination, Congress’s massive electoral victory under the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi, emergence of new political forces like BSP and new political heavyweights like VP Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav.

As the novel deals with the period before the NDA government, there is only one reference to a right-wing political party in the novel and a cursory reference to the “BJP’s upper caste vote bank”, though the present dominant right-wing discourse is mouthed by a number of characters when they talk about the Congress rule and myriad other issues India faced in the 1970s and 1980s.

Trenchant Criticism of Congress, Nehru-Gandhi family

Thus, Sansadji, a character modelled on Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, describes the Congress party as “a family-owned venture, neither more nor less”. Presenting a time when Sanjay Gandhi was alive and Rahul Gandhi was still a child, Sansadji can almost anachronistically say that “Rahul Gandhi can well be viewed as next in line to the PM’s chair after Sanjay. At least for now. Until Sanjay has a child of his own.” An unnamed group of people outside Sansadji’s house speak of Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi in disparaging terms and refer to Maneka Gandhi approvingly. “That he, of all the professions, chose to become a pilot says a lot about his upbringing, about his narrow outlook on life”, said one person.

Two other persons describe Sonia Gandhi as “barely educated” and “illiterate”. Maneka Gandhi, on the other hand, is praised as a “book lover” and “compassionate”. Akbar Ahmad Dumpy, a close associate of Maneka Gandhi, whom Ram Mohan meets after taking some interest in their party Sanjay Vichar Manch, describes Sonia as “acquisitive” with “a passion for shopping.”

Jaan Mohammad, Ram Mohan’s personal assistant and presented as a very wise, intelligent and well-read man, holds Nehru-Gandhi family “exclusively responsible for the wretched state of the country” and doing “great injustice to India’s economic and social potential through their reckless disregard of what needed to be done, through their self-assuring hubris.” A token Muslim character, he also internalises and mouths the right-wing discourse about Muslims in post-independence India: “For Muslims to have so much political leverage in India even after the battle for Pakistan was won, even after the grisly event called Partition! It makes little sense…And that is the cornerstone of non-Muslim resentment.” Another character, a stereotypical Maulvi, fits the stock image of a Muslim clergy seen so often in memes and trolls in the present times.

The novel comes down very hard on the role of the Congress leadership during the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi’s outrageous statement, “When the big tree falls, the earth shakes” to “rationalise the holocaust” fills Deena with disgust for Congress. Kartik names many Congress leaders of the time who were “deputed to inflame anti-Sikh passions and organize murderous mobs for the destruction of Sikhs and their properties.”

Criticism of VP Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav

Many other well-known political figures are presented by Kartik in a very negative light. Arimardan Singh, modelled on VP Singh, is shown to be a shrewd and unscrupulous politician. Ram Mohan says that he has “yet to see a politician foxier and devious” who felt “no twinge of conscience while serving under Indiraji when her administration was unleashing all kinds of monstrosities during the Emergency.” While one hears about some apprehensions about the delimitation of many parliamentary and assembly constituencies presently, in an earlier time Singh is accused of gerrymandering the Fatehpur constituency by the narrator.

More than Arimardan Singh, it is Komal Singh Yadav, an obvious reference to Mulayam Singh Yadav, who gets the choicest abuses from many characters in the novel. Shown to be a cooperative minister in the UP government, like Mulayam Singh Yadav once was, he is described by the narrator as “corruption itself.” Patel, who organises Ram Mohan’s meeting with Kanshi Ram, describes Yadav as “the thug”. Gulab Singh, a henchman of Ram Mohan who boasts about having committed murders to put fear in the minds of people, speaks about Komal Singh Yadav having “made lots of money” as minister of cooperatives. Gulab Singh’s elder son describes Yadav as “a real scumbag and pragmatic to the core.”

A novel about Allahabad and the Hindi heartland

Allahabad has already appeared very prominently in many stories and novels of Neelum Saran Gaur. Her Sikandar Chowk Park (2005), narrates the stories of eleven different lives linked to a bomb blast and reflects her secular vision; Allahabad Area: Stories about Allahabad (2015), consists of eight stories; and Requiem in Raga Janki (2018), based on the life of classical singer Janki Bai Ilahabadi, capture social and literary aspects of Allahabad. The last of these works is especially very important as it documents Allahabad’s contribution to classical music and highlights the Hindu and Muslim traditions in music and the patronage of music given by Mughal emperors.

Although there are references to Allahabad’s famous literary figures like Sumitra Nandan Pant and Mahadevi Varma, Devesh Verma’s Allahabad in The Politician Redux is an Allahabad of power games of big and small politicians, land grabbers and extortionists, student leaders working as mobsters, and a rotten education system, reminiscent in many places of Allahabad represented in Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Haasil. Allahabad’s geography represented by Company Bagh, Mirganj, Georgetown, and Sangam Colony, among other localities, comes alive in the novel as do its badmen, Maula-Bhukkal and Karvaria gangs. Allahabad University’s student politics is no less marked by its criminal leaders who, patronised by state’s politicians, are more feared than respected.

Allahabad University is in a terminal decline in the novel. Its PhD degree in Hindi is shown to be a fraud as do its teachers like Moon Aggarwal who have no compunction in leaking question papers and helping her favourite students. In fact, not only Allahabad University but the whole education system in North India is treated satirically in the novel. Students and teachers steal books from the library with a sense of impunity and teachers in general appear corrupt and dishonest in the novel. Similarly, Kanpur University is a rotten place where anyone can pass examinations with ease. Many examination centres in Fatehpur have turned mass copying into an art form, “a bani banayi vyavastha” as the principal of a school says in the much-celebrated Hindi film 12th Fail (2023). They fear only “the flying squad”, which tries to visit different examination centres to check copying in examinations. Mayank, Ram Mohan’s son, also takes a dig at JNU professors’ tendency to award marks to answers in examinations “which keep to the left” and which reflect “the literary perspective, rather, politics spawned by the Progressive Writers Movement” and the “Marxian point of view.”

The novel also treats the struggle of many young men and women in north India to come to terms with the English language which was a language of mobility in the 1970s and 1980s. A contrast is evident between the readings of English school children and the Hindi medium type. Shilpa’s reading of English novels, especially those of Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl is contrasted with Kartik’s and Deena’s struggle with the language. Their coming-of-age reading of serious fiction and philosophy finally make them fully developed personalities.

Characters and style

There are no perfect characters in the novel. Even Deena, who is the soul of the novel, has a questionable morality, stressed very clearly in an interlude of his extra-marital affair, which may appear an unnecessary insertion to some readers. Though Ram Mohan is the protagonist of the novel, he does not appear to be a favourite of the novelist as there is a certain element of ambivalence in his characterisation. He talks of honesty and principles but becomes part of the corruption in selecting candidates as a member of the Public Service Commission. Examples of corruption in politics and bureaucracy abound in the novel. Argali, who defeated Ram Mohan in the election, gives him a lesson in corruption.

Nishant enjoins Mayank and Kartik to crack the civil services entrance exmination because that will make them “part of a system that gives you access to endless ways of getting rich”, a suggestion with which Ram Mohan does not disagree. Ram Mohan ditches his leaders whenever it suits him. Whereas the device of showing used by the novelist gives ample opportunity to readers to judge his temperament and career choices, his eloquence, told by the narrator so many times in the novel, can only be guessed as there is no evidence of his eloquence in the novel, unlike the learning and erudition of Mahavir Wilson which shines brightly in his literary conversation with Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, who appears in the novel briefly. If filmed, the director will need a very fine actor to show Ram Mohan’s eloquence.

The Politician Redux is written in a realistic mode like The Politician. The description of places, people and times is evoked in vivid prose. Thus, a particular description of the physical description of a bank in a dilapidated condition appears almost Dostoevskian in its details. Rich in humour, there are also many funny sentences, passages and episodes in the novel. Thus, not hindered by any fear of a haunted government house, Ram Mohan moves into the house saying, “I have never heard ghosts harming one of their own.” There is understated humour in Deena’s efforts to learn English from New Light General English, a hugely popular grammar book prescribed in Hindi medium schools and Inter Colleges in Uttar Pradesh which used the now derided grammar-translation method of teaching English. Students learning to master their writing skills can peruse long right-branching sentences at many places in the novel which ensure flow and readability in the text despite their length.

As for the political events described in the story after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, there are hardly any surprises for a reader aware of the twists and turns in Indian politics. However, even the known events become interesting like they usually do in a second watching of a movie or a second reading of even a detective novel. However, the selection and omission of events and political figures becomes very meaningful in a political novel.

Irrespective of the novelist’s intention, the political discourse internally focalised in the novel may suit the present right-wing in India. Just like reading Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel might, if you forget that Tharoor’s novel came out in 1989, and that he also wrote Riot (2001) and some very persuasive non-fiction works critical of the right-wing politics after that. Since Deena’s puzzling suicide, already mentioned in The Politician and Politician Redux but not discussed in any detail, and Ram Mohan’s unfinished tasks leave open the possibility of a third novel to complete a trilogy, it is very likely that the next novel(s) in the series will address the right-wing divisive politics that has become triumphant since the mid-90s.

Mohammad Asim Siddiqui is a professor in the Department of English at Aligarh Muslim University.

The Politician Redux: Odyssey of Chance, Devesh Verma, Penguin India.