By: Sami Ahmad Khan
Abstract:
This paper studies the overt manifestations of Hindu gods in three Indian
science fiction (SF) novels written in English, and the reasons behind such
vivid portrayals. It analyses the specific mechanics of these representations,
whereby Hindu mythology is hybridized and transposed with the quasi-science of
SF to propel the narrative. This paper discusses the appropriation of these
mythological narratives, their subsequent reinterpretation in Indian SF, and
how this reworking constitutes a direct critique of contemporary material
realities. It aims to place the “divine” within the context of the materiality
of a text, and to that effect, borrows Darko Suvin’s “novum” as a theoretical
framework to first locate the tangible heart of a text, and then explains how
and why Hindu gods play an important role in the contouring of this kind of
“mythological SF”.
Keywords: Hindu gods, Indian science fiction, appropriation,
mythology, novum
The Saffron[2]
starship came out of the sun… its overall hue was saffron,
the shade of a bindi dot on a Hindu married woman’s
forehead …
and assumed stable orbit at Sun-Earth LeGrangian Point
L5.
-- Ashok
Banker, Gods of War, 2009a, p. 3-4
“Science” and “God” are not always
locked in a persistent battle of binary opposition—at least not in the context
of Indian Science Fiction (SF). If SF can bring together “science” and
“fiction”, two vastly diverging structures of human knowledge and experience,
then is it not possible that SF, in its myriad forms, can transcend the
binaries of faith and rationalism, the dichotomy between belief and empiricism,
and result in a kind of fiction that—despite being rooted in science—can also
feature divine beings?
The presence of mythological and spiritual themes in global SF is nothing
new. Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light (1967) and Steven
Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third
Kind (1977), to cite just two examples from popular culture, explore these
dimensions of SF. This paper is conscious of the cultural paradigms which Western authors (such
as Roger Zelazny) appropriating Indian (in this case, Hindu/Buddhist) imagery
might have missed (since it is written by an Indian). [3]
Hugo Gernsback once famously wrote,
“The ideal proportion of a scientifiction story [SF] should be 75 percent
literature interwoven with 25 percent science” (as cited in Landon, 2002, p.
51). In the case of these three novels, a significant mythological component
constitutes the “75% literature”, too. In addition to Gernsback, many great
minds have tried to define SF and propounded definitions that attempt to
holistically capture the essence of SF. The question of their success lies
beyond the purview of the paper, but let this suffice—if defining American SF
is hard, the problem of accurately encapsulating the core of Indian SF in words
is all the more difficult, even when one narrows it down further to SF written
by Indians in English. This difficulty results from the diverse responses
exhibited by a heterogeneous, polyphonic and prismatic country like India when
reacting to trends and traditions in “western” SF. [4]
While
SF is generally built on a platform of science or—to be more precise—
pseudo/quasi-science, Indian writers, in accordance with the hybrid literary
genres and ludic forms of representation usually prevalent in the country,
often appropriate “semantic” elements from “western” SF but rearrange them in a
“syntax” that reads as radically different from SF being produced in the United
States (U.S.) (Altman, 1984, p. 10). An example of this Indian science fiction
syntax is Shirish Kunder’s Bollywood film Joker
(2012), where aliens land in an Indian village but only after a villager prays to the gods and
seeks divine intervention towards securing first contact with an
extra-terrestrial species. Moreover, the hallmark of divinity granting that
wish is visible in the simple fact that when an alien spacecraft does land in that quaint Indian village,
the UFO is shaped like a Shiva-Linga,
a manifestation of Shiva—the Destroyer, one of the three major Hindu deities.[5]
The presence of gods in Indian
fiction is nothing new, and Indian classical narratives are full of such
appearances. Historically, India has had a healthy Speculative Fiction
(SpecFic) tradition: these literatures of “what if” include genres such as
Science Fiction, Fantasy (F), Mythology etc., and differ from realist and
mimetic stories. Until the recent past, the tilt has been towards fantasy and
mythology, though now SF is becoming increasingly popular.[6]
The existence of non-mimetic worlds
in Indian Speculative Fiction is quite common. In the context of Indian SpecFic
films, M.H. Srinarahari (2004) writes:
A number of India's films in the nineteen sixties have
shown imaginary worlds with imaginary beings. There is: the paradise, the
pathala (an imaginary world in the centre of the Earth); the fairy worlds such
as Gandharva lok (lok means world) Yaksha lok; Kinnara lok; Mathsya lok (an
underwater world with aquatic beings that have mermen and women: human bodies
in their upper part and the lower part resembles the scales of fishes, but
usually with divine qualities); Chandra lok (the Moon); Naga lok (the world of
snakes) and others. (para. 4)
Interestingly, all
the tropes and narratives of SF, and more importantly, the reactions they
elicited, were successfully evoked by Indian classical texts over time. For
example, what the ‘other’ aliens of western SF elicited in a reader—havoc, wonder,
and possibly even terror—is evoked in Indian Fantasy and Mythology by hostile
beings from other lokas
(planets/worlds): the daityas and rakshasas. Replacing one “other” from
Mythology/Fantasy with another was not that difficult: with the “modernization”
of India, religion and mythology’s “other” gave way to science’s “other” in
fiction as a rational-scientific education (modelled on western systems) became
the norm.
Anil Menon addressed these changes,
writing in the comments section of an article on Indian SF hosted by Jeff
VanderMeer’s website:
Hindu mythology does talk about stuff like flying
vehicles, world-nets and mantra-guided missiles. But I don’t think we really had
a science-fiction tradition till the British arrived. However, we seem to have
had a speculative-fiction tradition that’s remarkably postmodern in
temperament” (2008, para. 1).
Thus, though
elements and phenomena in Indian classics could be interpreted as being flying
vehicles, aliens, and nuclear weapons, making these texts “replete with
examples of Indian storytellers’ fascination with the occult and supernatural
phenomena that, seen through a modernist lens, resemble some of the conventions
of SF”, the fact remains these classical texts are not SF (Khan, 2014, p. 187) but are instead Speculative Fiction.
This is why studying the literary
manifestations of this epistemological shift when gods “chose” to appear in
hard-core SF narratives becomes important. It is with this background in mind
that this article studies three Indian SF novels (in English) and locates the
reason why Hindu gods work well within SF narratives. Moreover, each of these
three novels portrays the gods as slightly different epistemological
categories, though they are always benevolent, helpful and “good”. Mainak
Dhar’s Vimana (2012), for example, builds on the “ancient
astronaut” hypothesis, which posits that aliens visited Earth in the past and
shaped humanity’s evolution. Vimana portrays
Hindu gods as advanced extra-terrestrials chaperoning humanity towards
progress, but they only unveil themselves to the world at large to combat the
forces of global terrorism. Jugal Mody’s tongue-in-cheek Toke (2012) uses the figure of Vishnu—the Preserver—and Shiva—the
Destroyer—to rail against global capitalism and indicts an increasingly
consumerist society that systematically negates individual choices and free
will by viewing people through the prism of productivity and purchasing power
alone. The third text, Ashok Banker’s Gods
of War (2009a), features Ganesha—a
much-worshipped god in the Hindu pantheon—as he leads a motley crew of humans
from parallel universes to prevent the fall of “heaven” to the forces of
darkness, while at the same time critiquing machtpolitik[7]
in the contemporary world order. In this essay, I study these “gods” and link
them with contemporary material realities.
Flying Saucers Battle Al Qaeda: Hindu
Gods as Ancient Astronauts
Vimana is a 2012 SF novel by Mainak
Dhar for young adults that features the Hindu holy trinity of Brahma, Vishnu
and Shiva. To borrow Rick Altman’s terminology again, this novel uses overt
semantic elements usually associated with SF (such as spaceships, high-tech
bases, aerial dogfights, etc.), and arranges them in a syntax that is quite
unconventional: this in-your-face SF novel contains advanced aircraft,
state-of-the-art weapons, and Hindi gods.
Vimana traces the journey of a
college-student, Aaditya, who is an expert at flight-sim games and dreams of
following the footsteps of his father by joining the Indian Air Force after
college. However, Aaditya loses a leg in an accident and his dreams are
shattered. To make things worse, Aaditya’s father, a fighter-pilot, goes
missing in action during a sortie, thereby subjecting Aaditya to simultaneous
personal and professional loss, even as the teen struggles to lead a normal
life. One day, he comes across some individuals attacking a woman in a park.
Concerned, he joins the fight to save the woman, only to realise this is not
just some random gang-related violence, but a trans-human engagement.
Aaditya is unwittingly caught in a fight between two covert, all-powerful
groups. One represents the forces of good – the gods – and the other, evil:
these are the daityas, who are a
mixture of early proto-human
species and created cloned monsters. Strong, ruthless and obedient, but not
very smart. With those demons, they unleashed their reign of terror. They sided
with human dictators, promising them power and helping with these demons and
their technologies, but in reality making them slaves. (Dhar, 2012, pp. 95-96)
Aaditya then
realises that the members of the group to which he has sworn allegiance not
only happen to have names of Hindu deities, but actually are those very gods. Much to his chagrin, they also have
extra-terrestrial origins. These gods tell him that his father might have been
shot down by another group of technologically-advanced people led by Kalki,[8] the
same people who are fighting these extra-terrestrial gods. Kalki intends to conquer
and/or destroy the planet Earth. Aaditya sides with the gods, wins their
confidence by proving his mettle in a fight against the demons, and prepares
for the final assault. He raids the daitya
base on the sunken city Atlantis, frees his father and other prisoners of war,
and then helps secure the defeat of Kalki and his evil minions. The novel ends
with the extra-terrestrial gods finally revealing themselves to humanity.
The fusion of science and spirituality is evident in the novum of Vimana. The novel exemplifies Darko
Suvin’s concept of the “novum”, or that “historical innovation or novelty in a
SF text from which the most important distinctions between the world of the
tale from the world of the reader stem” (Csicsery-Ronay, 2008, pp. 118-119). In
Vimana, Hindu gods are actual
extra-terrestrials and live away from humanity’s gaze in a secret base on Mount
Kailash, the abode of Shiva (a mountain considered holy by all Hindus). These
gods are introduced to the reader thus:
The first to speak was
Narada.
“Aadi, we have met, but let
me introduce myself properly. I am Narada Muni and I handle Intelligence here.”
Next to him was the
ash-covered man, looking none the worse for wear from his drinking bout. “And I
am Shiva. I lead our Special Forces.”
The woman he had met in the
fracas that had started this all was seated next to Shiva. She was wearing a
red-bordered white suit, and she smiled as she introduced herself. “I am Durga,
and I never did thank you for trying to help me.”
Some connections were
forming in Aaditya's mind, when the last three men there introduced themselves.
The tall, muscular man with a beard spoke next. “We have met in the air, Aadi.
I am Indra, the Military commander here.”
Next to him was a man with a
dark complexion, who seemed to be playing with a disc shaped object in his
hand. “And I am Vishnu. I am the administrative head here. Think of me as the
Chief Operating Officer, if that analogy works for you.” (Dhar, 2012, p. 80)
Aaditya first thinks that these are
extra-terrestrials messing with his head, but then Brahma tells him that he
leads a group of pioneering, galactic
travelers, hyper-sentient beings who came to Earth almost 15,000 years ago.
When Aaditya asks if these Vedic gods were aliens, Brahma replies, “So many people say that. What a curious
word. Alien. Considering how long
we've been here, one would have hoped for more hospitality” (Dhar, 2012, p.
91).
Brahma then explains
that his people were part of a galactic alliance that sought out intelligent
life and shepherded them towards a certain level of self-awareness, after which
they were asked to join this galactic community. He tells Aaditya that long
ago, when humanity was still in its crib, some humans chanced upon these benevolent
alien visitors and began to think of them as gods. This is a mirror reflection
of what Erich von Daniken proposed in Chariots
of the Gods?,[9] his 1968 cult-classic:
The gods of the dim past have left countless traces
which we can read and decipher today for the first time because the problem of
space travel, so topical today, was not a problem, but a reality, to the men of
thousands of years ago. For I claim that our forefathers received visits from
the universe in the remote past. Even though I do not yet know who these
extra-terrestrial intelligences were or from which planet they came, I
nevertheless proclaim that these 'strangers' annihilated part of mankind
existing at the time and produced a new, perhaps the first, homo sapiens. (p.
8)
While this theory has been totally
rejected by academics and scientists as pseudo-history, SF still uses the
ancient-astronaut hypothesis with great enthusiasm. The same technique is
employed by Dhar in Vimana. One of
these visitors, upon seeing the nascent stage of humanity’s development, starts
considering himself as superior, and decides to rule as a divine being. As
author Damien Walter (2013) wrote, “If SF is
grounded in hard scientific fact, and science is killing God, then what place
does that leave for divine intervention in the pages of SF literature?” (para.
1). Walter further remarked, “When I tweeted this question, [author and video game designer Dave Morris] gave
Arthur C. Clarke's famous dictum a twist, quipping, ‘Any sufficiently advanced
technocrat will be indistinguishable from God’”(2013, para. 1).
Technological
advanced-ness transforms into organic, physical and intellectual superiority.
The fallen visitor referred to above is Kalki—who, along with his other
supporters, left the visitors to embark on his quest of world domination.
Brahma further says, “We knew him and his crew as Ashwins. Indian mythology
calls them Asuras and we became known as the Devas. The land they hid in is
known to your people as Atlantis” (Dhar, 2012, p. 93). In the novel, the gods
attacked and destroyed Atlantis, and it sank to the bottom of the ocean. The
lost city still remains the epicenter of Kalki’s power and devas must invade it during the novel’s climax. Dhar fuses a
scientific outlook with mythology, religion and fiction, and uses the “extra-terrestrials
have long been involved with earth” belief to further his novel’s plot.
The “ancient astronaut” hypothesis can also be linked with what Stephen
Clark writes in an essay on SF and religion. Clark argues, “But science fiction
is often ‘religious’ in a wider sense, even at its most atheistic. Sometimes
this is no more than euhemerism, the theory that God and the gods are memories
or premonitions of technologically advanced intruders or especially gifted leaders”
(2005, p. 95). Dhar’s Vimana looks
back at a “golden past” from the perspective of a technologically inferior
present and regards the past as the point of origin for all technologically
advanced marvels which redefine the new millennium. In fact, a crater at Lonar
is revealed to be the site of Earth’s first nuclear attack thousands of years
ago, thereby evidencing the Indian belief that time is cyclical and not linear.
The relevance of the
semantics and syntax of such a narrative as Vimana is hard to miss. The novel’s
theme of good versus evil spans across time and space—and highlights global
terrorism. The gods have been fighting the daityas
for time immemorial, and their fight in our times has metamorphosed into the
battle between Al Qaeda and the rest of the world. This fight against Kalki,
Shaitan, Satan, the Devil, and the Anti-Christ is fought not only by Indians,
but also by people from across the world. For example, when Kalki’s base is
breached by Aaditya and the gods, men and women from across the globe cast away
their shackles and raise their voices against his tyrannical oppression by
attacking the base from within. Kalki represents global terrorism literally
too: his daityas supply Al Qaeda with
a nuclear weapon intended to be deployed at a civilian target in the U.S.
Aaditya, however, aided by the gods,
prevents this horrific eventuality from happening.
Vimana might
be a YA narrative that aims at wish-fulfillment (the protagonist emerges as a
“chosen one” and is accorded the honour of fighting alongside the gods) but
there is a deeper meaning at play. Stephen Clark further wrote,
On the one hand, alien or mechanical intelligences
that purport to have the power of gods are routinely shown to be demons or
ordinary creatures of no higher metaphysical or moral standing than ourselves.
On the other hand, human beings themselves may become “like gods”: immortal,
powerful, and creative. (2005, p. 102)
The gods are shown to be
extra-terrestrial but still on the same metaphysical plane as the humans;
Aaditya, on the other hand, emerges as more than just a human. In re-reading
mythology that posits gods as extra-terrestrials, Dhar engages in a
“scientification” of faith and religion. By bringing gods from the realm of the
mythological, the incomprehensible, to the realm of the science-fictional (and
by extension, the scientific), he engages in a massive decentering of the
contemporary fascination for “God”. The interpretations surrounding God have
fragmented societies, people and polities—in both the novel and the world we
live in—as evident from the rise of religious fundamentalism, parochialism, and
fanaticism. By placing God within a structure that may be empirically
validated—in this case, by the “ancient astronaut” hypothesis—Dhar undercuts
the roots of fanaticism built around the conception of a god as the ultimate creator, and instead focuses on
God as a device to bring people together to combat a greater foe—terrorism. In
this respect, the portrayal of gods in Vimana
as ancient astronauts has contemporary political relevance.
Ganesha to the Rescue:
Indian Gods Meet the New New York Police Department
Ashok Banker’s Gods of War is
an anti-war novel that often borrows thematic elements from Philip Pullman’s
science-fantasy His Dark Materials trilogy.
The novel follows five individuals from five different parallel universes “only
a fraction of an instant apart in the ring-around-the-sun parallax continuity”
(Banker, 2009a, p. 50). These five individuals are as different as chalk and
cheese, but travel together with Ganesha to the end of space and time to fight
the ultimate evil. Santosh is a ten-year-old from a Mumbai slum, Salim is a
socialist trader from Birmingham, Ruth is a ship-welder from New Jersey, and
Akechi and Yoshi are Japanese twins.[10] These
five individuals resist assimilation by the Oort, a hyper-intelligent,
pan-dimensional entity that is harvesting worlds across the space-time
continuum. Oort cannot compute how these individuals resisted assimilation, and
addresses this quandary by quarantining their respective worlds outside the
known boundaries of the multiverse.
These five are brought together by Ganesha, one of the most worshipped
gods in the Hindu pantheon, in an effort to fight the forces of darkness. The
group travels with Ganesha to Lokaloka,
the space between worlds, and sees countless beings from across space-time
gathering to witness a cataclysmic event, a sight which amazes, terrifies, and
shocks the travellers. Before they can come to terms with what is happening
around them, Ganesha is assassinated. They run for their lives and suddenly
come across the New New York Police
Department (N2YPD), which polices the entire creation, and the novel ends
before these five join an all-out war for the existence of reality as we know
it.
Gods of War, with
its subject matter and style of narration, manages to instill a “sense of
wonder” in its readers, which may be why the text also resists critical
commentary from the perspective of the reader. According to Istvan Csicsery-Ronay,
Readers of sf expect it to provide an intense
experience of being translated from the mundane to the imaginary worlds and
ideas that exceed the familiar and the habitual. They expect to feel as if they
are witnessing phenomena beyond normal limits of perception and thought that
people have not been able to witness before, or perhaps even to imagine. (2008,
p.146)
This could explain why and how Banker
brings religion into SF; the responses elicited by a phenomena that exceeds the
normal limits of perception among the characters and readers alike is clearly a
mark of wonder. The way Banker describes gods, journeys to other worlds, their
physicality, and inhabitants is meant to evoke not only wonder, a sense of not
only colliding people, worlds, mythologies, and perspectives, but also ruptures
in reality itself.
Interestingly, despite
the overt presence of SF elements, Banker vehemently denies Gods of War being SF. In a 2009
interview, Banker said, “I would debate the classification of Gods of War as science-fiction. It is a
very basic and generic contemporary story, which uses some scientific devices
and concepts. But that does not make it a hard-core science fiction”[11]
(Banker, 2009b, para. 3). Banker’s disdain for tags and classifications is also
evident in a comment he left on the blog post “In Search of Indian Science
Fiction” by Anil Menon and Vandana Singh:
I object to the term “Indian SFF” on the grounds that
it implies an Indian embracing of the western SFF tradition, which I, for
example, don’t attempt to do at all, contrary to opinion. I see myself very
much as trying to go back to the roots of Indian epic storytelling and finding
a new form, a kind of hybrid beast that romps and frolics through Indian
tropes—pushpaks and maya, instead of Ramjets and sorcery, to simplify
briefly—and to follow a pathway that is neither SF, F, Dark Fantasy, Military
SF, Heroic Fantasy, S&S, or any existing category, but a wholly new
category altogether, or perhaps a very old one, the oldest of all, before there
were chain stores and any need for categorization, apartheid, and all these
separatist pigeon-holing […] I would rather stand alone without a genre, than
be filed away in what I see as a non-genre, or an imitative one. (Banker, 2008)
Banker’s
argument does make sense in these times when genres are increasingly being
fused. I, however, read this text as SF due to its novum—extra-terrestrial
intervention from outer space, which, in this case, happens to be something on
the lines of sentient nano-technology (the Oort cloud). The novum of Gods of War features nanotech-esque bugs—reminiscent of Scott Derrickson’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)—that cover this world in a thick blanket of
black clouds and enter every human being, rendering him or her incapable of individual
thought. The entire population goes immobile in a trance—humming. Moreover, this affects not just our
world but everyone on all Earths across
multiple planes and dimensions (except for a select few); all humans gather
together at certain specified places, as if under remote control. In order to
combat this sudden disruption of life, Ganesha comes to Earth and recruits five
civilians from around the globe to win the “War of the Worlds”, the ultimate
battle between the forces of light and the scourge of darkness—that rages on throughout multiple dimensions
and alternate realities.
Studying this text by looking
at its novum becomes all the more important in the light of Banker’s own
assertions enumerating on the linkages between writing and material realities.
In the author’s note to Gods of War,
Banker wrote,
For my part, I believe it’s
no longer possible for any writer to just ‘tell a story’, without regard for
the connections between that story to the writer’s own life, milieu,
socio-cultural and political background and environment, and the myriad
crisscrossing lines that traverse from fiction to fact and back again.” (2009a,
p. xii)
The critique of machtpolitik in
the current world order also finds a direct reference in the text with the N2YPD.
The figure of the U.S. as a global policeman is manifested in how the N2YPD
polices not just the entire city, or the globe, but all of creation itself. N2YPD serves as Banker’s satirical take on
American foreign policy, and illustrates how he is not comfortable with the
interventionist approach adopted by the US. However, the N2YPD is not entirely
American—there are marked differences between this organization and U.S. that are
evident in how these police officers think.
Ogbunabali, chief of the
N2YPD police unit that comes in contact with the five, raises the issue of
secularism versus faith when she declares:
We are proud of our faith
and our gods. We all are. Every last citizen of New New York is a religious
fundamentalist. That is what New New York stands for. The freedom to follow
one’s faith without restrictions. All gods in harmony. We are not […unionists,
secularists, scientists] Americans!”
(Banker, 2009a, p. 232)
One can infer that Americans are different from New New Yorkers, who are
deeply fundamentalist yet somehow respect each other’s religions, unlike those
in a “secular” state. Ogbunabali continues,
We did not kill your god. Or
any god. It’s unthinkable, unspeakable […] It would have been our privilege and
his [Ganesha’s] grace had we experienced such a darshan [meeting the divinity].
We only came here to the interzone in pursuit of crossover criminals [mostly
Americans]. (Banker, 2009a, p. 232)
With nano-beings invading not only earth but all of creation, and a god
(Ganesha) utilizing scientific (or what appears to be magical/scientific)
equipment, coming to earth, and recruiting a motley crew to save the creation, Gods of War blurs the boundaries between
SF and F. Banker, a staunch critic of American foreign policy vis-à-vis
intervention and expansionism, plays with the invasion metaphor. With the Iraq
and Afghanistan fresh in his mind, this novel paint a glum picture of invasion,
and how an innocent populace has to suffer. Only a handful manage to fight back—who, in this
case, happen to be aided by a Hindu god, one who exhorts the five to forget
their differences and see each other as human beings alone, thus raising them
above the paradigms of nationality, religion, colour and orientation. Banker
might be making a point about how faith—and not religion—can play
a role in healing this world. He implies coming together is not difficult for
people with different faiths as long as organised religion does not come
between them.
Maybe, by choosing this novum, Banker draws upon a template through which
he can include the thematic issues and concerns that bother him the most. When
asked by Sonam Jain of The Hindu
about the core concerns behind Gods of
War, Banker replied,
The core concerns that we all have as human beings: War and
how to avoid it, violence and how to stop it, love and how to proliferate it to
name a few. I always write with an agenda. For instance, in Gods of War, you will find an
introduction that talks about violence and why should it be there in the first
place. In which so-called science fiction book do you ever find such an
introduction? (Banker, 2009b, para. 9)
It is this anti-war, syncretic message
radiating from the text that makes Gods
of War a direct response to the times in which it was written. The novel emerges as a critical dystopia,
especially in its attempts to caution a
la a parable if humanity continues on its current path, then earth’s future
is in peril. As Banker mentions
multiple times, he is not very comfortable with superpowers imposing their will
on others and proliferating violence in the name of the war against terror. He
is simultaneously critical of using terrorism as a tool of political change and
emphasizes humanism (at the expense of organized religion) as a solution to the
socio-political ramifications of a unipolar world. Gods of War exhorts people to unite and seek similarities in
differences rather than vice versa.
Stoned Gods versus Brain-dead Zombies
If Vimana uses gods to unite people
so that they can combat the chimera of global terrorism, and Gods of War employs divine beings to
indict current machtpolitik, then
Jugal Mody’s Toke utilizes Hindu
deities to critique the social and personal ramifications of global capitalism
and commodity fetishism. Toke
recounts the story of how three friends—Nikhil, Aman and Danny—save the world from the forces of evil.
Nikhil is the classic representative of an average, angst-ridden, middle-class
Indian youth caught between a corporate desk job he hates and a family unit
with oppressive moral values. He finds solace in zoned-out dreams and by hanging
out with Aman and Danny, his friends who spend their days doping, watching
films and playing videogames. One day, Nikhil is fired from work for sleeping
during work hours and makes his way to Aman and Danny’s flat. There, after the
three friends have had a couple of drags, Vishnu—the Preserver—appears and
tells them of a startling development. The world is about to end and only this
gang of chilled-out dopers can save it from assured destruction when united as
the “Boys of Vishnu”:
“So, er, what do you
want from me?”
“I am here to be your friend, Nikhil.”
“Really?”
“What are you? Stupid? I’m here because Earth is about
to be destroyed in the next few days.”
“What?! And aren’t you going to stop it?”
“Actually, not Earth, but human life as we know it,
which will then lead to the absolution of the universe.” Very calm and taking
slow long puffs.
“AND AREN’T YOU GOING TO STOP IT?”
“I could, but it is too late for me to take another
birth, and if I do take the kalkin birth, then I’d have to demolish the entire
planet single-handedly—like the Judaeo-Christian god—by raining sulphur
probably. I’m in a particularly caustic mood, so I might just use Sodium Hydroxide
instead.” He passes me the joint. (Mody, 2012, p. 32-33)
The gods have
spoken. The world is about to end—and only these three friends can save it. To
do that, they have to fight demon-zombies, and keep their wits by toking
constantly.
The novum of this tongue-in-cheek, satirical zombie-comedy—featuring
Indian gods, doped youths, and mindless zombies—is as mind-bogglingly strange as a novum could (and should) be. Vishnu
explains that the forces of evil, led by demons, have infected the world with special
maggots—which enter the body via
the oral passage, swim directly to the brain, and take control of the subject.
Vishnu commands the three friends to fight on his behalf, and explains the
threat to the trio:
Vishnu takes his trademark deep drag and makes his
elaborate smoke clouds that look just like his throne. “Yep. The maggot slowly
gains control over the brain and starts converting all brain signals into its
own language. The minute the last neuron of your brain hands over power to the
maggot, you are technically dead and your soul is gone. Your weight will go
down by twenty-one grams, but your body will continue all its functions like
normal. After which, as days go by, your body starts preparing itself as the
pod for a demon soul. Meanwhile, you will continue working as usual, following
your everyday routine and, slowly but surely, as the last human turns undead,
free will as we know it will die.” (Mody, 2012, p. 44)
Not only does Vishnu quantify the exact
weight of the human soul (twenty-one grams), but he also enumerates on the
exact procedure as to how these maggots take control. Alarmed by this news, the three friends decide to fight back.
Using a special instrument given to them by Vishnu—which can teleport them to places of their
choice—the trio, joined by two
Japanese twins, then visit a marijuana field in Himachal Pradesh, Nikhil’s
office (where he rescues the girl he likes), and an experimental laboratory.
They then hijack a plane, crash it into a slum full of zombies, evade the state
apparatuses (which have been overtaken by zombies), and battle maggot-infested
zombies to save this world from total annihilation.
Over time, the gang
discovers that the maggots die when exposed to marijuana smoke. They use this
to their advantage, keep toking, and travel around to destroy more zombies.
Eventually, they successfully combat Scott Ludwig, one of the evil brains
behind this apocalypse, and save the world. As the novel ends, the reader sees the frustration of Nikhil stuck in a
dead-end job, one who is bitter at being regarded as inferior to an elder
brother who sells spare automobile parts.
This ending lends even more credence to the interpretation that Toke is a critique of contemporary
society rather than a narrative of mindless blood, gore, and drugs. Set in today’s Mumbai, the apotheosis of toking and
the subsequent counter-culture is a larger commentary on how the middle-class
veneer of respectability, when combined with corporate/government
work-cultures, dehumanizes people. It also emphasizes how the pressure to
succeed professionally makes Indian youth opt for careers that do not really
interest them—often at the cost of
individualism, creativity, and freedom. The Taylorian imposition of order on
chaos has also been critiqued in the way Mody’s beloved Mumbai—a city full of haphazard chaos and disorder,
something that makes it what it really is—becomes very un-Mumbai-like after the zombies have infiltrated all levels
of social, political and economic organisation. Mumbai looks like “the insides
of a massive clock, which is completely made out of humans. Everybody is
constantly ticking” (Mody, 2012, p. 158).
The gods play an important role in this narrative since they not only
give the protagonists the tools to fight against the forces of evil but also
make them realize something is amiss. Nikhil had accepted his fate until Vishnu
came to him and implicitly told him that he must fight the system—he must not
become a zombie, quite literally. Vishnu and the other gods led Nikhil to
realize he must not simply be a conformist or status-quoist; instead, he must
chase his dreams and stand up for what he believes. He should not be what his family
or bosses want him to be—rather,
he should be what he wants to be. A
god taught him to think for himself, have an individual opinion, and follow
one’s heart—not any political,
institutional, or religious leader. Therein lies the indictment of rituals,
institutions, fundamentalism, conformism, organized religion, and parochialism.
Thus, while Toke may feature Hindu
gods, it subverts religion. It condemns imposition of religious rituals.
Nikhil’s family chides him for missing the morning aartis, and he hates his family forcing him to take part in a
religious ceremony that holds no interest for him. If gods undercut religion
and rituals, they reinforce the importance of faith and belief, moving towards
a liberal, spiritual, and more progressive world order. Inspired by Shiva and
Vishnu, Nikhil and his friends develop the strength required to challenge the
status quo.
Toke also critiques a corporate
work-culture that focuses on tangible productivity, on-the-dot punctuality, a
hierarchal chain of command, etc. For example, the protagonist, Nikhil, has a
strained relationship with his boss, Anil George. Later, when Nikhil battles
zombies, he runs into Anil George again, who is now a zombie warrior:
I presume you’ve met one of
our warriors, specially trained with demon strength. Inside each one there is a
demon consciousness that has hatched. The evilest of the evil suits. The best CEOs and vice presidents who
have made their companies billions, who are at the forefront of human
civilization, development and sophistication… (Mody, 2012, p. 192, emphasis
mine)
I have
italicized a few sentences to show what Mody thinks about corporate ethos. He
does not look kindly on the CEOs who have made their companies billions as he
regards these financial successes to be driven by crass consumerism, unbridled
greed, and societal pressure, not enlightened self-interest, genuine interest,
or passion. Toke highlights how
“suits” become mindless zombies serving a demon consciousness of commodity
fetishism, social respectability (at the cost of one’s own preferences), and
the tendency to judge everything on its ability to be monetized. Having divested
people of their basic humanity, free will, and the power to choose, the zombies
pretend the benevolent rakshasas do
so for the betterment of the masses. By depicting the zombies as the epistemological
category of the mindless “other”, Toke
is not merely against capitalism per se; both fascism and communism utilize the
forceful imposition of uniformity to serve a higher purpose. Toke categorically rejects these three
paradigms of social organization and borders on the anarchic. The protagonists
are social misfits, rebels who fight the system with the help of Hindu gods who
tell them to follow their hearts (without becoming fundamentalists). Toke is thus not specifically against
capitalism, communism, religion, or any other -ism, but rather against any ideology
that denies humans their free will and imposes its own diktats on them, making
it all the more relevant to today’s India.
”Mythological SF” in India Today
Indian SF has a unique operating
logic of its own that manifests in the novels Vimana, Gods of War, and Toke. These novels feature a kind of
science which is as connected to society and politics as it is to religion and
faith. Thomas M. Disch wrote in “Mythology and SF”,
As mythmakers, science fiction writers have a double
task, the first aspect of which is to make humanly relevant—literally, to
humanize—the formidable landscapes of the atomic era [...] The second task of
sf writers as mythmakers is simply the custodial work of keeping the inherited
body of myths alive.” (2005, p. 22-23)
The presence of gods
in these three SF novels by Indian writers can be reinterpreted in the light of
Disch’s second task. For example, Dhar’s emphasis on the golden past in Vimana successfully keeps Indian myths
alive. The novel even begins:
“The Pushpaka
vimana that resembles the Sun and belongs to my brother was brought by the
powerful Ravana; that aerial and excellent vimana going everywhere at will […] that
vimana resembling a bright cloud in the sky [...] and the King got in, and the
excellent vimana rose up into the higher atmosphere.”
The earliest written account
of a flying vehicle called a vimana. This is found in the Indian epic the
Ramayana, which was written at least 3000 years before the Wright Brothers made
what we widely believe to be the first manned flight on Earth in 1903. (Dhar,
2012, p. 0)
Vimana tries
to popularize the view that Indian civilisation was at its peak during the
Vedic age, and what we witness today is a product of devolution, not evolution.
On a similar note, though with very diverging politics, Gods of War begins with an invocation to Lord Ganesha, and seeks
his blessings in an almost Milton-esque vein:
Salutations to you, O Ganesha,
O lord with a twisted trunk and
immense body
Radiant with the effulgence of a
million suns
O lord may all our endeavours
Always be accomplished without
obstacles. (Banker, 2009a, p. 0)
Perhaps only an Indian SF text can begin with an
invocation to the gods. Toke also
begins with a god—Krishna. Keeping in line with the rest of the novel’s tone, Toke begins not with an invocation or
prayer, but instead with a dream, which is distinctively more sacrilegious
since it features seductively a god dancing seductively. In the opening scene,
Nikhil dreams tantalisingly about a god (Krishna) gyrating to a James Bond
opening song and waving a golden Desert Eagle in his face. This sets the tone
for the rest of the novel—there are no sacred cows in this text, only toking
gods and mindless zombies.
One can conclude that in these three
novels, faith and belief in divinity are just as important as faith and belief
in SF’s pseudo-science. These novels cater to a framework where science
(or pseudo-science) is not antithetical to divinity and they portray a universe
where science complements, rather than counters, religion. Perhaps Priya Sarukkai Chabria, a noted Indian SF
writer, best rationalized this when she said,
Speculative fiction—at least ours—draws significantly from the esemplastic
imagination and our folktales and epics that explore the fantastic. The thrust
of sub-continental art has been the quest for ‘inner vision’ not only the achingly
real. Speculative fiction—more
than sci-fi—is deeply
contemplative. One looks into the future as one does into the past to seek atmagyana
to live in the aching real and know there is something far vaster than
ourselves and the undoubtedly real.” (Personal communication, 9 May 2011)
Even SF in India redirects the quest for knowledge inwards (apart from
its external projections), and works at the confluence of multiple structures
of knowledge, thought and experience.
This inward-directed
quest for knowledge, apart from a desire to comment on external reality, is
evident in the novels Vimana, Gods of War, and Toke, and how their authors use the influence of western SF to
fortify Indian “mythological” SF is noteworthy point. These novels proudly
contain Hindu gods, faster-than-light spaceships, Islamic angels, teleportation
devices, Al Qaeda terrorists, helpful aliens, baked youth, mind-controlling
slugs, talking birds, parallel universes, rakshasas, and mythological beings.
The fluid, fuzzy boundaries of SF in the Indian context is cause for
celebration, not alarm. In The Cambridge
Companion of Science Fiction, Farah Mendlesohn wrote, “Science fiction is
less a genre—a body of writing from which one can expect certain plot elements
and specific tropes—than an ongoing discussion” (James and Mendlesohn, 2003, p.
1). The word “discussion” describes Indian SF well because Indian SF can be
read as an interaction between the structures of western SF (zombies, for
example), Indian mythological and fantasy narratives (gods and daityas), and techno-science (such as
advanced weapons and nano-clouds).
SF is not a genre but a
mode. Since SF employs the narrative structures and tropes of other genres with
so much panache that the appropriation becomes utterly natural, SF, especially
Indian SF in English, emerges as a mixture of genres borrowing semantic
elements from all of them and arranges these characteristics in a distinct
syntax separate from the assimilated genres. This complex synthesis also
explains why there are multiple definitions and viewpoints to look at SF. The
novels Vimana, Gods of War, and Toke draw
upon western SF traditions and then reinterpret them as per the material
realities of India—and their ensuing psycho-spiritual aspects—and then fuse
this reinterpretation with the structures of Indian Speculative Fiction. The
extent to which Dhar, Banker, and Mody have influenced global SF can only be
ascertained in the future, but a new sub-genre of “mythological SF” has already
successfully evolved and will likely continue to mutate.
References
Alessio, D. (2007). “Nationalism and
Postcolonialism in Indian Science Fiction.” New Cinema:
Journal
of Contemporary Film, vol. 5 (3). 217-229.
Altman, R. (1984). “A
Semantic/Syntactical Approach to Film Genre.” Cinema Journal, vol. 23
(3). 6-18.
Bali, R.R., Jindal, D.,
Khan, F. Kumar, A., Kunder, S., and Tevatia, Y. (Producers) & Kunder, S.
(Director).
(2012). Joker [Motion picture].
India: Three’s Company Films.
Banker, A. (2008, October
8).Web log comment. “In Search of Indian Science Fiction.” The
Southern Reach. Retrieved from http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2008/10/07/in-search-of-indian-science-fiction-a-conversation-with-anil-menon/
Banker, A. (2009a). Gods of War. New Delhi: Penguin Books India.
Banker, A. (2009b). Interview with Sonam Jain. “An
epic storyteller.” The Hindu. Retrieved from
http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/an-epic-storyteller/article28261.ece
Banerjee, S. (2010). Other Tomorrows: Postcoloniality, Science Fiction and India. Unpublished
doctoral thesis, Louisiana State University.,
Retrieved from http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-06012010-164011/
Boardman, P.H., Goodman, G.,
Stoff, E., and Towns, M., Jr. (Producers) & Derrickson, S.
(Director). (2008). The Day the Earth Stood Still [Motion picture]. United States of
America: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
Clark, S.R.L. (2005). “Science Fiction and Religion.” In D. Seed (Ed.), A Companion to Science
Fiction (95-110). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Csicsery-Ronay,
Jr., I. (2008). The Seven Beauties of
Science Fiction.
Middletown: Wesleyan
University Press.
Dhar, M. (2012). Vimana. New Delhi: Penguin Books India.
Disch, T. (2005). “Mythology and Science Fiction.” On SF. University of Michigan Press.
Retrieved
from https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472068968-3.pdf
James, E. and Mendlesohn, F.,
eds. (2003). The Cambridge Companion to
Science Fiction. New
York: Cambridge University
Press.
Hoagland, E. and Sarwal, R., eds. (2010). Science
Fiction, Imperialism and the Third World:
Essays on Postcolonial Literature and Film. Jefferson: McFarland &Company, Inc.
Jameson,
F. (2005). Archaeologies of the Future: The
Desire Called Utopia and Other Science
Fictions. New York:
Verso.
Khan, S. A. (2014).
”Bollywood’s Encounters with the Third Kind.” In Kishore, V., Sarwal, A., and
Patra, P.
(eds.), Bollywood and its Other(s) (186-201).
United Kingdom: Palgrave
Macmillan,
UK.
Landon, B. (2002). Science
Fiction after 1900: From the Steam Man to the Stars. New York:
Routledge.
Menon, A. (2008, October 8).Web log
comment. “In Search of Indian Science Fiction.” The
Southern Reach. Retrieved from http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2008/10/07/in-search-of-indian-science-fiction-a-conversation-with-anil-menon/
Menon, A. and Singh, V. (2008). “In
Search of Indian Science Fiction.” The
Southern Reach.
Retrieved from http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2008/10/07/in-search-of-indian-science-fiction-a-conversation-with-anil-menon/
Mody, J. (2012). Toke. New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India.
Paylow, C.L., Phillips, J.,
and Phillips, M. (Producers), & Spielberg, S. (Director). (1977). Close
Encounters of the Third Kind [Motion picture]. United States of
America: EMI Films.
Sarwal, A., and Geetha, B., eds. (2011). Exploring
Science Fiction: Text and Pedagogy. New
Delhi: SSS Publications.
Seed, D. (2011). Science
Fiction: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Srinarahari, M. H. (2004).
“Koi … Mil Gaya, India’s First Science Fiction Film.” The Science Fact
and Science Fiction
Concatenation. Retrieved
From http://www.concatenation.org/articles/koirevised3.html
Suvin, D. (1979). Metamorphoses
of Science Fiction. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
von
Daniken, E. (1968). Chariots of the
Gods? New York: The Berkley Publishing Group.
Walter, D. (2013). “Does God Have a Place in Science
Fiction?” The Guardian. Retrieved
from
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/07/god-in-science-fiction
Zelazny, R. (2010). Lord of Light. New York: Harper Voyager.
[1] “Vimana” translates to
a “flying vehicle”.
[2] Saffron has a
particular significance to Hindus as it is associated with light, renunciation
and salvation.
[3] No offence is intended to the genius of such
writers, and I salute their path-breaking, genre-bending endeavours.
[4] “Western SF” is an
umbrella term in itself, and I use it to here to refer to SF emerging out of
North America and Europe.
[5] I have written about this aspect of Bollywood SF film
in another paper, “Bollywood’s Encounters with the
Third Kind” (Khan, 2014).
[6] Regional languages in
India such as Marathi, Bengali and Tamil have had a healthy SF tradition too.
[7] Machtpolitik is a term for power politics in which sovereign powers
threaten each other with military, political and economic aggression to protect
their own interests.
[8] Similar to the Second Coming of
Christ for Christians, Kalki is the tenth and final incarnation of Vishnu (in
the current age) for Hindus. Kalki will usher in Satya Yuga by bringing about the end time in Hindu eschatology.
[9] Not only has Daniken’s
hypothesis been rejected, it has also been accused of plagiarising from other
contemporary thinkers and texts. I use Daniken here only since I regard him as
one of the most well-known thinkers to popularize the ancient astronaut theory.
[10] Perhaps it is this coming together of humans and uniting despite
differences of race, religion, gender, orientation, and nationality on which
Banker wants to focus.
[11] This is not the first time an
Indian Speculative Fiction writer has chosen to stay away from the label of SF.
Jugal Mody, for example, prefers Toke
to be called SFF rather than SF.