Controversy's favourite child is back.
Controversy’s favourite child Shashi Tharoor is back in the news over an extract from his 1989 book The Great Indian Novel in which a fictional character Pandu, based on the father of the Pandavas, is deemed to have made certain uncharitable remarks about the women of the Nair community.
For the uninitiated, The Great Indian Novel was Tharoor’s satire novel in which he takes characters from The Mahabharata and transposes them in the Indian independence movement and the first three decades after 1947. Even during its publication some critics felt the novel had a degree of subversion.
A certain paragraph from the novel appears to have gained traction again with the women’s wing of the Communist Party of India in Kerala and certain Twitter users are claiming that a particular portion is defamatory towards Nair women.
Pandu tells Kunti: “In Kerala, the men of Nair community realise that their wives are free to receive them by seeing if another man's slippers aren't outside her door."
The paragraph is part of a wider chapter in which Pandu and Kunti are discussing fidelity and socially-sanctioned monogamy.
One Q, Mr @ShashiTharoor.
— Chowkidar Shilpa Nair (@shilpamdas) April 3, 2019
U wrote Nair Women had mny lovers & allowed husband into her room only if she wasn’t wth them.
With that 1 paragraph, u painted all Nair ladies wth the brush of promiscuity & sullied their reputation.
The Q is with what face r u asking for our votes? pic.twitter.com/y9BjbKFNY5
This is the poisonous bilge the Chowkidars are spreading in my constituency on @whatsApp, @Facebook & @Twitter: a statement by a fictional character in my 1989 Great Indian Novel describing a historic practice of earlier centuries, twisted to imply my views of today’s Nair women. https://t.co/iUQq1zqJDp
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) April 3, 2019
It shows contempt for the voters to seek to exploit their ignorance of the source & context, which in any case was accurate about the past it describes. Unfortunately many are taken in by these lies. BJP is incapable of being ashamed of itself; but why can’t social media act?
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) April 3, 2019
I call on those who run @whatsApp, @Facebook & @Twitter in India&who claim to be concerned about the misuse of their platforms by political fake-news peddlers to make an example of this specimen, to start with. The echo-chamber repeating her lies is part of an organised campaign.
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) April 3, 2019
1. Tharoor vs Shilpa Nair
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Meanwhile, a Twitter user Shilpa Nair, whose bio states she’s President, People for Dharma and a member of the Kerala BJP State Committee member and NRI Cell also slammed Tharoor for the lines.
Reacting, Tharoor wrote on Twitter: “This is the poisonous bilge the Chowkidars are spreading in my constituency on @whatsApp, @Facebook & @Twitter: a statement by a fictional character in my 1989 Great Indian Novel describing a historic practice of earlier centuries, twisted to imply my views of today’s Nair women.
It shows contempt for the voters to seek to exploit their ignorance of the source & context, which in any case was accurate about the past it describes. Unfortunately many are taken in by these lies. BJP is incapable of being ashamed of itself; but why can’t social media act?
Accurate about past it describes: Tharoor sticks to his guns over criticism about Nair women have more than one lover
Tharoor himself is from the Nair community which has dominance in his constituency.
Whether the words of a fictional patriarch in a novel from 1989 affects, Tharoor’s electoral chances is something we will have to wait and see.
2. What the chapter says
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What she said, she said in a very polite, dignified manner. You actually have taken a perverse delight in ridiculing Hindu Culture with imagination of a twisted, demented mind. She also is 100% right when she says you do not have balls to do 'similar research' on other faiths! pic.twitter.com/PnHN8HSH5T
— Deepak (@DeepakJ2015) April 3, 2019
…it is far more important to have a son, indeed to have a few sons, than to put a chastity belt on his wife.
Kuntil, still shocked - for you know the conservatism of our Indian women, Ganapathi, they are forever clinging to the traditions of the last century and ignoring those of the last millennium - waited for the inevitable exegesis from the Shastras.
It was long in coming. Pandu re-adjusted his lotus position, tucking his feet more comfortably under his haunches, and went on in high-sounding tones. "You know, if you read our scriptures you will realise there was a time when Indian women were free to make love with whomever they wished, without being considered immoral. They were even rules about it: the sages decreed that a married woman must sleep with her husband during the fertile period, but was free to take her pleasure elsewhere the rest of the time. In Kerala, the men of the Nair community only learn that their wives are free to receive them by seeing if another man's slippers aren't outside her door.
Our present concept of morality isn't Hindu at all; it is a legacy both of the Muslim invasion and of the superimposition of Victorian prudery on a people already puritanized by purdah. One man married to one woman, both remaining faithful to each other is a relatively new idea, which does not enjoy the traditional sanction of custom (why is why I myself have no qualms about taking two wives). So I really don't mind you sleeping with another man to give me a son. It may seem funny to you but, but the deeperI steep myself in our traditions, the more liberal I become."
He could see she was not convinced. “Look, I will tell you something that might even shock you, but which, in fact, was in full accordance with our divine scriptures and ancient traditions. It's a closely guarded family secreta that even I learned when I only became a man. Vichitravirya, my mother's husband isn't really my father. Nor Dhritarashtra's, for that matter. Our mothers slept their husband's half-brother, Ved Vyas, when their husband died, to ensure he would be graced with heirs"
Pandu saw that this story, at least, had sunk in. “So you see? You'd just be following a family tradition. You've always done as I asked you to - so go and find yourself a good Brahmin and give me a son.”
Kunti's resistance melted at last: "the truth is, she began, "I don't really know how to tell you this, but I already have a son."
“What? It was Pandu's turn to register offended astonishment. You have a son? By whom? When? And how can you talk so glibly of having been faithful to men?”
"Please don't be angry, my dear husband," Kunti implored. "I only mentioned it because you brought up the subject this way. And I have been faithful to you. My son was born before we even met, before your family asked for my hand for you."
