Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey Through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate

This is one of my favorite books. Though I have looked far and wide, this is the only book that I have found that begins to explore the complexity of the causes of the ethnic violence that plagues nearly every corner of the modern world. It offers no answers or definitive explanations because, so far, no one has found any. Instead, it presents an impressive array of examples and evidence of Hindu and Muslim views of one another.

Amitava Kumar is an Indian Hindu literature professor teaching in a college in the East coast of America, in his early forties, and married to a Canadian-Pakistani writer of Muslim heritage. And this brief bio matters as the subtitle of his book makes clear - A personal journey through India, Pakistan, Love and Hate. Kumar revels in sharing his reading and travelling experience organised around the theme of the Hindu-Muslim border. But this isn't the physical border that divides India and Pakistan. Instead these are the invisible lines of control that regulate, constrain and deform relations between peoples of similar cultures. Much of Kumar's book occupies itself with exposing the shallow, unexamined and compensatory machismo of the Hindutva ideologues who dominated Indian political life in the 1990s. Kumar tracks down their representatives in the US, and even provides some frightening examples of how American Hindutva ideologues have squared the American dream with the Hindu meme. Kumar makes a virtue of the technique of testimony, and an extended section of his book is dedicated to reproducing letters between young Indians and Pakistanis on the state of bilateral relations (Kumar actually ferried the letters). Kumar provides important reminders of the fusion between Muslim and non-Muslim culture in India before and even after Partition. For example, it is forgotten that before the Partition, Muslims made up many of the shabad singers in Sikh Gurdwaras. And even today, Pakistanis and Indians revere the same local South Asian saints. Kumar visits one of these shrines on the Indian-Pakistani border, and his description of his visit, what he sees and hears, stands out in this travelogue. Kumar's choppy transitions are one of the major weaknesses. Others have criticised his cut and paste approach, but that a flaw and not a fatal sin. He makes up for it with his inclusive humanism, his wonder at what he calls the "enchanted civil society" and his welcome highlighting of the inter-confessional cooperation of Indians in the South African anti-apartheid struggle. Also welcome is Kumar's habit of mentioning key sentences and phrases in Hindi (with translation) which allows Hindi-speaking readers a deeper register of meaning. But perhaps the shallowest part of the book is Kumar's highlighting of his wedding and his 'half-conversion'. The way it is described smacks of hucksterism, but that is less a criticism than a comment. Perhaps he had his reasons, and honestly, in the clamour of reportage on the rising elephant called India, you have to ride the wind.