His aversion to arrogance is well-known. But author Amitava Kumar's enthusiasm for using Indian languages — Urdu and Hindi — comes as a comforting surprise. A bit disturbed due to the illness of his children, he honestly says, “ Hamaare bachchon ki beemaree ki wajah se kuch delay ho gaya ”. He uses the same level of candour and transparency, be it in writing his latest book, “Evidence of Suspicion”, brought out by Picador, India, or answering questions about a work that, despite the serious nature of the subject, is a racy read. Excerpts from an interview:
How did “Evidence of Suspicion” come about? Even the title is intriguing.
I had been teaching a new course called ‘Literature of 9/11' at Vassar. The aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the wars abroad and inside the U.S. had been on my mind. One day, I heard the voice of an Indian man on the radio. This was Hemant Lakhani. He had been convicted of selling a missile to an FBI informant who had pretended to be an Islamist terrorist. I decided to interview him in prison. The story grew out of that encounter. The title came from my editor. But I like it because it tells us that the nature of what we often regard as evidence is nothing but our prejudice. Much of what we regard as truth in the war on terror is actually rather suspect.
You started taking notes and photographs, including of posters issued by the local police to help identify terrorists for this book on terrorists soon after wrapping up “The Husband of a Fanatic”. How did you develop this eye for detail? And an ability to look for something in what is ostensibly mundane?
Long ago, when I was in higher secondary school in Delhi, I read an essay by George Orwell in which he said there was a voice in his head that put into words everything he was seeing. I realised I did that too, or maybe I started doing it in imitation. I would be passing a street in Daryaganj, for example, and I'd note in my mind the shape and colour of the objects hanging from a vendor's cart and the expression in his eyes.
You travelled across India and the U.S. for the book. How different was your interaction with the guilty and the innocent?
In India, I experienced more deeply the pain and rage of the victims. Perhaps I identified with them more. It was different in the U.S. because the people I met who had been entrapped were at least a bit complicit with the system that put them in prison. It was more difficult for me to sympathise. However, I saw that the State agencies had an arrogance about them, a degree of righteousness, that was shared by their counterparts in India.
May I add one more thing? In the U.S., the FBI or the people I met from the Department of Justice might be ignorant about Islam or about the East more generally, but I felt they were less willing to make blanket judgments about Muslims. This caution was less evident with some of the authorities I met in India.
You talk of an Indian Muslim said to possess a missile which isn't one. Did you in the course of your research find this kind of easy branding is more the norm than an exception, post 9/11?
Yes. But this happens even at a very mundane level. And it is not simply about branding you as a terrorist. It is more about fixing your identity and saying you are this and not that. In the days after the 9/11 attacks, I was in India, interviewing Kargil widows. The guard at Subroto Park asked me for my ID and when he saw I lived in the U.S. he asked whether it snowed a lot there. I used an Urdu word while responding and he asked for my ID again. He said, “ Tumhara naam Hindu hai, tum Musalmanon ki tarah kyon baat karte ho ?” Talk about evidence of suspicion!
The book starts off as a human interest story with a good portion devoted to Geelani's travails. Then it takes on the colours of a political controversy. How challenging was it to bring the two under the same cover?
The real challenge was to tell a story that was global, a story that took place both in the U.S. and in India. I also didn't want to make the state or the terrorist the real actor. For me, that role belonged to someone else. And this was the artists and writers responding to the war on terror, as well as the vast public that acts as witness, and for which the writer can be the stand-in.
I read somewhere that the biggest challenge for you is the task of putting words to page! Isn't that surprising for somebody whose level of engagement with his craft is worthy of emulation?
You are very kind, but I have to say: it is very difficult to find and then put down words in the right order. Not just the words that describe the people coming out of a train at a crowded station, but the struggle of the self that attempts to place its own ambitions among them. The struggle for the right words is also, then, in a serious sense, the search for an attitude.
Finally, I know you are often asked this but cannot resist the temptation: is there a Bihar Renaissance on the literary firmament?
If there is, it might be like the news of the miracle growth shown by Bihar this year. It is good news, but can we believe it?
