Priyanka Singh

Research Scholar Deptt. of English & Modern European Languages, University of Allahabad, Allahabad. M.G. Vassanji's The Assassin's Song: The In-Between World Of Karsan Dargawalla

A diaspora1 writer today faces demanding affiliations of languages, class race, gender and sexuality which are manifested at emotional, cultural, ethnic, linguistic or political levels. A condition of reality or a state of mind for him- which is always in a flux - is often compounded by the exigencies of exile, migration, and double migration. As a result his affiliations are always faced with a varied degree of ambivalences. Thus the identity of a diaspora writer is challenged and ruptured by a multiplicity of ambivalent affiliations that avail or impose themselves. He is always confronted with a destabilizing polemical situation of "in-betweenness". Moyez Gulam Hussein Vassanji is one of the most important Indo-Canadian diasporic writers, whose novels constantly articulates and grapples with this polemics of "inbetweenness" and the latest example is The Assassins Song which shall be the focus of this article. I M.G. Vassanji, whose forefathers were migrated from India under indenture system 2 in colonial rule, was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950. His family left for Dar es Salaam in Tanzania at the end of the Mau Mau period.3 The United Republic of Tanzania came into being in 1964. Those were the times of economical setback and political unrest of the entire African continent. The indigenous Africans had a very hostile attitude towards Indians whose situation was like a "colonial sandwich", with the European at the top and Africans at the bottom. Amid increasing resentment of the Africans many Indians fled to England, Europe and North America to avoid racial and

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political discriminations. Vassanji, at the age of 19, left the University of Nairobi on a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After earning a doctorate in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania and working as a writer- in-residence at the University of Iowa in the International Writing Program, he migrated to Canada and worked at the Chalk River Power Station for some time. Finally he came to Toronto in 1980 and accepted Canadian Citizenship in 1983. In 1989 his first novel The Gunny Sack was published. That year he, with his wife Nurjehan Aziz founded and edited the first issue of The Toranto South Asian Review (TSAR). Apart from The Gunny Sack Vassanji has penned five more novels; No New Land (1991), The Book of Secrets (1994) (which won the very first Scotiabank Giller Prize) , Amriika (1999) , In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003)(which also received the Scotiabank Giller Prize) and The Assassins Song (2007). Vassanjis works, except the latest one, deal with diasporic Indians living in East Africa and their further migration to other places. Vassanji is concerned with how these migrations affect the life and identity of such dislocated lives. As a secondary theme, members of his community of Indian Muslims of the esoteric Shamsi sect (like himself) later undergo a second migration to Europe, Canada, or the United States. Vassanji explores the impact of these migrations on these characters who are installed as a buffer zone between the indigenous Africans and colonial administration. Caught in-between an ambivalent situation the presence of the mythical homeland India looms large. Not only for the characters but also for the writer himself India is a spiritual issue. This issue becomes more apparent in his latest work.

II Vassanji's The Assassin's Song

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explores the conflict between ancient

loyalties and Modern desires, between legacy and discovery, between filial obligations and personal yearnings. This novel portrays the complexities of an individual conscience torn between responsibilities to uphold

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tradition and desire to pursue ambition. It is a shining study of one man's painful struggle to hold the earthly desires and spirituality in balance. The Assassin's Song conspicuously depicts the horrific real-life communal killing in 2002 Gujarat riot, which destroys the lives of a thousand human beings. The Assassin's Song is the story of Karsan Dargawalla, a Khoja (a community which is a minority within a minority) and the heir of Pirbaag shrine worshipped by both Hindus and Muslims. Pirbaag traces roots to an ancient Sufi Nur Fazal whose teachings are concerned with both the mystical branches of Islaam and Hinduism. Karsan has just returned from North America to his homeland which he has left thirty years ago in order to choose a career in foreign Land. Here he finds that 2002 Gujrat riots killed over a thousand of people and also destroyed Pirbaag. Karsan recalls his childhood in 1960's India and the sequence of events ultimately led him to value intellect over faith. Karsan is the next in line after his father (Bapuji) to assume lordship of the shrine. He is unwilling to be "gaddi varas" because he longs to be just ordinary; to play cricket and be a part of the ordinary world. When his father prohibits him from joining a cricket coaching by a former cricketer R.D. Patel, he is deeply affected by the biblical story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son Issac to the Almighty. He compares himself with Issac and Bapuji with Abraham and cries in pain, The Saheb My Father? Was I a sacrifice? 5 He thinks that his father wants to scarify him for his traditional and spiritual obligations. Raja Singh, a truck driver always brings him news from the outer world. Mr David, his Christian teacher has a great impact on him during his younger days. Karsan becomes an agent of National Patriotic Youth Party on the consent of his father.

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Karsan eventually lands a scholarship to Harvard University. He could not resist the opportunity to go finally the country of his aspirations. Despite his father's attempt to keep him close to the traditional ways, the excitement to establish his new existence in America proves more compelling. Karsan leaves his homeland and departs for Harvard University. But before his departure his father inherits him the holy words or bol of his forefathers. Karsan's time at Harvard proves delightful when he is surrounded by unlimited knowledge. He becomes so affected with new aspirations and knowledge that unwillingly he starts losing faith in traditionality and spirituality of Pirbaag shrine. For three decades Karsan lives freely without any filial and spiritual obligation. He becomes a professor in British Columbia, Marries with Marge Thompson and fathers a son and even changes his name I changed my name to Krishna Fazal, and I became the father of a boy, whom we named Julian. My Happiness was complete.6

Later we find that Karsans true happiness lies in fulfilling his spiritual calling when he decides to spread the fragrance of his shrine throughout the world by telling the story of Pirbaag. Unfortunately a tragedy strikes in his life when his only child Julian died in a road accident and his wife go away to leave him alone. One day, while reading his father's letters, he realizes that he has forged his identity and his heart craves for his native place. Eventually when he returns, Pirbaag is no longer standing, everything is destroyed and his brother converts himself into a rigid form of Islaam. Seeing this brutal violence Karsan is reminded of his role

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I . . . must pick up the pieces of my trust and tell its story the duty of destroyers.7

At the insertion of knowledge and faith, Karsan learns acceptance and he keeps his tradition and ambition in balance. The story of The Assassin's Song, in a great historical sweep, takes the reader from a fictitious thirteen century village, Haripur in Gujrat to Harvard yard of the late 1960's, the British Columbia in 1980's and then back again to Gujrat communal riots. He shows how the riots have changed the lives of many; how the long tradition of communal harmony of the shrine has come to a halt. At individual level The Assassian's Song conspicuously depicts the in-betweenness of the protagonist Karsan Dargawalla. Karsan's inbetweenness underlies his entire life as he is pulled between tradition of faith and his own intellectual curiosity and adventurous spirit. He wants to lead a common mans life but his father keeps him reminding his position: No Karsan, think of who you are?
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Karsan is caught between two

identities one is worldly; a cricket player who wants to pursue his career in cricket; an agent of National Patriotic youth party; an aspirant who goes to Harvard for higher education; a professor in a foreign land and a man with a changed name to forge his identity. Another identity is spiritual as he is a gaddi varas. But finally both the identities prove to be chimera for him as the communal riots have changed every thing. Even of the riots would not have taken place Karsan could not have chosen any stable identity. He is a typical product of postcolonial world though something of his family culture is deeply ingrained in his mind. Whereas his brother chooses to be a rigid Muslim, because of the impression of the Gujarat riots, it is impossible for Karsan to be purely one thing. He stands in a complex

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relationship with history. He corroborates what Edward Said declares at the end of Culture and Imperialism (1994) No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are purely starting-points, which if followed into actual experience are quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival is, in fact, about the connections between things; in [T.S.] Eliot's phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the "other echoes [that] inhabit the garden."9

Karsan finally comes to undertake the reality that he can not dash the other echoes. He realizes that the attempts to resolve the mysteries of past is futile since past is never cut and dried and the in-betweenness is not just a product of the present but of history. His existence affirms the vital need for coexistence and understanding between individuals and peoples, in a world where to define oneself exclusively as "one thing" may lead to a disaster. Though

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Karsan carries all the obligations from which he fled, he remembers the bol, picks up the thread of life which he has rejected three decades ago and does everything what his father once expected from him but he finds no redemption yet he arrives at a possible solution But here I stop to begin anew. For the call has come for me, again, and as Bapu-ji would say, this time I must bow.10

In this fictitious story, inspired by the Muslim mystics of medieval India, Vassanji explores a great tradition of communal harmony. He unravels a complex tradition of various beliefs and multiple affiliations; a tradition of great flux. Fundamentalism of any kind only damages such a great tradition. Karsan could have followed the same path which his brother has chosen. But his global experience, despite all the ambivalences, has inscribed a permanent impression of pluralism and tolerance on his mind which aspire him towards a greater form of humanity and spiritualism. Notes: 1. Robin Cohen tentatively describes diasporas as communities of people living together in one country who "acknowledge that "the old country" a notion often buried deep in language, religion, customer folklore-always has some claim on their loyalty and emotions". Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction, 1997 (London: Routledge, 2001), p. IX. 2. Indenture was the "contract by which the emigrant agreed to work for a given employer for five years, the emigrant was free

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to re-indenture or to work elsewhere in colony; at the end of ten years he was entitled to a subsidized return passage". R.K. Jain, "Introduction: Overseas Emigration in the Nineteenth 1993), p. 4. The Indian indenture system started from the end of the African slavery in 1834 and continued until 1920. By then thousands of Indians were transported to various colonies of Europe to provide labour for sugar plantations. 3. The Mau Mau Uprising of 1952 to 1960 was an insurgency by Kenyan peasants against the British colonialist rule. The core of the resistance was formed by members of the Kikuyu ethnic group, along with smaller numbers of Embu and Meru. The uprising failed militarily, though it hastened Kenyan independence and motivated Africans in other countries to fight against colonial rule. It created a rift between the white colonial community in Kenya and the Home Office in London that set the stage for Kenyan independence in 1963. It is sometimes called the Mau Mau Rebellion or the Mau Mau Revolt, and, in official documents, the Kenya Emergency. The name Mau Mau for the rebel movement was not coined by the movement itself- they called themselves Muingi ("The Movement"), Muigwithania ("The Understanding"), Muma wa Uiguano ("The Oath of Unity") or simply "The KCA", after the Kikuyu Central Association that created the impetus for the insurgency. Veterans of the independence movement referred to themselves as the "Land and Freedom Army" in English. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising 4. Quotations from The Assassin's Song are from Indian edition (New Delhi: Penguin, 2007). Century", Indian Communities Abroad: Themes and Literature (New Delhi: Manohar Publication's,

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5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Ibid., p. 103. Ibid., p. 281. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 118. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism 1993 (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 407. The T.S. Eliot quotation is from "Burnt Norton", the first poem in Four Quartets.

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The Assassin's Song, p. 368

References: 1. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction, 1997

(London: Routledge, 2001). 2. Jain, R.K. "Introduction: Overseas Emigration in the Nineteenth Century", Indian Communities Abroad: Themes and Literature (New Delhi: Manohar Publication's, 1993). 3. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism1993 (London: Vintage, 1994) 4. Vassanji, M.G. The Gunny Sack (Canada: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1989) No New Land (Canada: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1991) The Book of Secrets Ltd.,1994) (Canada: McClelland and Stewart

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Amriika (Canada: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1999) The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (Canada:

McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 2003) The Assassin's Song (New Delhi: Penguin, 2007)