The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin has essays about the making of a nation that came to be called India. It seeks to formulate truths, debunk myths and hypothesize situations.
As Brian Dillon advises in his book Essayism, essays can be of various types. An essay can state a theory and detail out points to support or reach that theory, it can seek to destroy a theory by way of details (the method of destruction), or it can build on a hypothesis. In doing this, an essayist might use elements such as lists, stories, chronological sequence of events, comparisons, aphorism, metaphors and more.
In his essay, The Man Behind Modern Hindi, Manu talks about the rise of Hindi. This is a chronological essay about truths regarding the popularization of the language over time. The essay begins in 1757 with Omichund, as the English called Amir Chand, and his disgraceful hand in the Battle of Plassey. To this man were born two sons, and the great-grandson Harishchandra, who founded Kavivachansudha (1868) and Harishchandrachandrika (1873).
Featuring Dadabhai Naoroji’s drain theory as well as news from the local Dharma Sabha, it was through these publications that Harishchandra, as the scholar Vasudha Dalmia notes, ‘veritably created literary Hindi’…
Manu S. Pillai then touches upon the roles of Urdu and Hindi among Muslims, Hindus, and the various classes. He then mentions the origins of these languages and how they came to become rivals. Detailing the reasons, he says:
Much of the poetry in Hindi was in the Brajbhasha and Awadhi dialects, traditionally considered prestigious but thought to be encumbered by an excess of devotion and piety. Khariboli, the dialect spoken around Delhi and present-day Uttar Pradesh, on the other hand, was an open vessel for literary innovation.
Khariboli was swiftly invested with pride and disseminated widely through Harishchandra’s energy and enthusiasm. Only he could have pulled it off—wealthy, flamboyant, and with personal networks…
The last part of the essay is again a chronological layout of the progress of the language then on. Manu concludes the essay with a comment on Harishchandra earning back the honour that Omichund had lost.
In his essay, The Woman With No Breasts, Manu. S. Pillai debunks a myth and reveals the underlying truth with facts. This essay highlights the truth behind the breast tax in Kerala. Manu begins with the story as it is often told.
When the tax collectors came one morning to tax Nangeli’s breasts, she offered it as tax on a plantain leaf.
Women of low casts, couldn’t cover their bodies if they didn’t pay the breast tax.
The right to dignity came with a price.
In this essay, Manu then goes ahead to reveal the truth from the story by stating facts about the culture of Kerala back in the days.
This was a land where women enjoyed physical and sexual autonomy where widowhood was no calamity and one husband could always be replaced with another.
Virtue, as we recognise it today in its patriarchal definition, was not a concept that existed in Kerala.
Manu goes on to explain that the breast tax was a nomenclature and had nothing to do with morality. While the lower caste men paid a tax named after facial hair, the tax paid by lower caste women was termed the breast tax. With references to historians and their studies Manu clarifies that Nangeli’s heroic act was a call against the caste system and not for her desire to cover up.
Manu also includes examples of other similar stories. For instance, Umayamma of Attingal, the topless queen has been projected as a helpless mother in a poem by S. Parameswara Iyer, while she had no children, thereby drawing these out to be stories.
Manu concludes the essay with regret, calling out the story we often hear for the fallacy it is.
In the essay, What If Vijayanagar had Survived? Manu hypothesis the non-existence of one nation, rather the existence of two centers of power: one with Akbar in the north and Vijayanagar in the south.
Manu begins by stating the fact that exists today. Then he builds his hypothesis with decision boxes at various stages. Did Vijaynagar lose, in the first decision box and a branch leading out to Yes and its consequences, then a branch leading out to No and its consequences. In deciphering the consequences, Manu provides arguments or facts about the political alliances, strengths and weaknesses of the emperors of the time, until he moves to the next decision box and the branch keeps bifurcating forward.
This was interesting, because the facts make the hypothesis sound plausible. And yet, Manu cracks the hypothesis just a little at each stage with a fact that did happen in the contrary. Here’s a passage from the essay where we can see the form:
What would this have meant for the Mughals? The picture is a fascinating one: to think of Akbar presiding over an ambitious, swelling empire from Agra, while the south remained the sphere of influence of Vijayanagar’s Rayas. The Deccan’s sultans might have formed buffer states between these two great empires—one moment seeking friendship in Vijayanagar, the next trying to persuade the Mughals to help unshackle themselves from the southern yoke. They were close, too, to the Shah in Persia: would he have played politics through his Deccani allies to balance Vijayanagar and the Mughals?
This is followed by the next decision box. Manu then concludes the essay with facts that break the hypothesis and bring us back to what is.
The book ends with An Essay For Our Times, in which Manu S. Pillai concludes with the following lines.
The historical lesson is clear—there was a reason why in 1947 India prevented nationalism from distorting into a rigid political beast and envisioned it as a more malleable reflection of the land’s multiple realities. To re-engineer this mature, long-standing policy in black and white today will only prove calamitous, showing that far from making India great again, what one will end up doing is breaking India.
Each essay in this book is a conclusive whole with no argument jarring or standing out without facts to support it. When I read essays or opinion pieces online, I often pick up on a bias that is trying hard to camouflage. Manu does no such thing, he states his upfront.
The writing in the book is conversational, light and fun with ample doses of humour and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed learning from it.
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