Amish at Idea Exchange: History is a child saying my truth is the truth. Myth is adult saying, who can be sure of truth?

India respects multiple truths… artists themselves create controversy, it’s a marketing strategy. I never do that. I actually worship the gods I write about. I’d rather not sell than sell through controversy

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Aakash Joshi: In the Ram Chandra Series, the first three books have three different perspectives — of Ram, Sita, and Ravana. You treat all of them with empathy. How challenging was that?

In some ways, challenging, in some ways, more exciting. I haven’t seen this structure in books, but I’ve seen it in a few movies. Akira Kurosawa’s classic Rashomon was the first movie that one saw this. Essentially, the same story from different perspectives.

So, from Lord Ram’s birth to the kidnapping of Goddess Sita — that’s Scion of Ikshvaku; Sita, Warrior of Mithila was from her birth to the kidnapping; Raavana, Enemy of Aryavarta, from his birth to the kidnapping. You get a perspective on all three. And then under that, you’re better able to understand War of Lanka… I know, it’s a little complicated, but I think my readers like complex, as well.

Devyani Onial: How have you managed to stay away from controversy, which is kind of unusual for anybody writing on religion?

Sadly, artists themselves create controversy, it’s a marketing strategy. I myself never do that. I actually worship the gods I write about. I’d much rather not sell than sell through controversy.

Second, I genuinely believe India is a land which respects multiple truths. Let me give you an example. If you went to a Bollywood film producer and said: Shoot a scene where a main character breaks the base of a shivling, and then carries it on his shoulder, and places it under a waterfall, the producer will say, are you crazy? Right? But in the hands of someone like Rajamouli ji, it is one of the most iconic scenes of Baahubali. Why is that? When you interact with him, you will realise he himself is actually a very devout person, he actually worships the gods that he makes movies on. You can sense it in the scene.

“India respects multiple truths… artists themselves create controversy, it’s a marketing strategy. I never do that. I actually worship the gods I write about. I’d rather not sell than sell through controversy”

Kaushik Das Gupta: Why is it that, at times, there is hostility to certain kinds of imaginations and interpretations… for example, there was opposition to a Buddhist interpretation of the Ramayana in an exhibition. So, why is it?

One can’t say for sure without knowing which specific case, but you know, the reasons could be either. As I was saying, sometimes controversies are created… The illusion in this is that at times, what could be called liberal interpretations are not respected. My interpretations are very liberal. I speak on women’s rights, against caste. Some of my historical fiction books have gay characters in there. I haven’t attracted any controversy at all. And I don’t parody the characters, as it regrettably happens in some Indian movies.

History is like a child claiming ‘my truth is the truth’. Myth is like the adult saying, ‘who can be sure what the truth is?’ All of us have our own interpretations, so which history is right… depends on our observer bias

Amrith Lal: Some years ago, there was a controversy around AK Ramanujan’s famous essay, 300 Ramayanas. It had to be withdrawn from the Delhi University syllabus. The crucial thing here is politics. Should we not accept or acknowledge that?

So firstly, on that specific case, I’m not aware of what happened with the (essay on) 300 Ramayanas, but I myself have actually referred to different versions of the Ramayana.

Does politics have an impact? Yes, of course. That’s the nature of democracy. One is living in Europe and in many ways, politics has become so toxic. It’s almost like a civil war situation, which worries me because I also believe that India, rather the world, is at a stage where there is a longish struggle. Perhaps, the long peace that we’ve enjoyed for the last 70-75 years is coming to an end.

There is a certain authoritarian power that democracies must try to organise for. Someone has a freedom to disagree with what I’ve written, as long as the agreements or disagreements are done without resorting to any violence. Words must be answered with words, which has always been the Indian way.

“History is like a child claiming ‘my truth is the truth’. Myth is like the adult saying, ‘who can be sure what the truth is?’ All of us have our own interpretations, so which history is right… depends on our observer bias”

Amrith Lal: What explains this shift from the traditional Indian way of responding to criticism with words — now we ban, and physically attack people.

We’ve been banning things for a long time actually. I’d written an article on this a few years back, that freedom of expression is very core to the Indian way of life. I wrote how the First Amendment of the Constitution was actually done before the first Indian election… It’s ironic that the First Amendment gives Americans freedom of expression, but in India, it’s the First Amendment which actually restricted freedom of expression, besides the right to property and various other things.

Dialogue is possible if one person is willing to concede that there is something worth listening to on the other side. If any side comes with judgmentalism, then dialogue becomes difficult

Shiny Varghese: Across the world, there is this rise of the right wing. What is your role as a writer and how do you position yourself?

An author is not a brand. Artists should not be thinking of positioning. You should be who you are. Some will like it, some will not.

As for the left wing-right wing thing, Fareed Zakaria had said that the world is not left wing-right wing anymore, it is about the globalists and the nationalists. Among the nationalists, every country has its own approach. Indian nationalists are very different from American nationalists, who are very different from British nationalists… The only thing that unites them is a dislike for globalists.

Paromita Chakrabarti: How important do you think it is for a society to distinguish between myth and history?

The debate is pointless. History is like a child claiming ‘my truth is the truth.’ Myth is like the adult saying, ‘who can be sure what the truth is?’ All of us have our own interpretations… Let me explain this through an example in history. The same set of facts that would make the British see Winston Churchill as a hero, makes us Indians see him as a monster. Frankly, a monster worse than Hitler, who didn’t kill any Indians. Churchill killed between three to four million Indians during the war, and the famine of 1942, so we should hate him. So, which history is right? It depends on our observer bias.

Pooja Pillai: You said you worship the figures that you actually write about. The way they’re used in the public space, in politics today, does it make you uncomfortable at all?

In the dharmic way, you’re not supposed to unquestioningly accept anything. Even in the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna tells Arjun, in the 18th chapter, that ‘I’ve given you knowledge most profound, now your task is to think about it and then do what you think is right’. If you think that this is the truth, there is nothing to question, then we’re not really growing intellectually. There should always be things that you can question.

Rinku Ghosh: Why did you choose the Ramayana and not the Mahabharata, which could have had a more contemporary resonance?

An incident happened at a lit fest, which troubled me and I decided to write on the Ramayana. Someone spoke very rudely about Lord Ram which made me take this decision. It makes me sound uncool that I’m not thinking and planning what I should write. But an artist should let emotion drive what they want to write. You should be pragmatic at the marketing stage, but while writing, you should follow your heart.

Aakash Joshi: Do news and contemporary happenings influence your writing or is it a more planned reference?

The horrific Delhi rape case was among the issues that I wanted to explore. Ideally, law and justice should work in consonance. But at times, they’re don’t. I have this debate through an incident in the book Ram: Scion of Ikshvaku, where Ram’s approach is that no matter what, you have to follow the law, because if you want to break the law for what your definition of justice is, you have vigilantism and chaos. Whereas, Lord Bharat’s approach is that the law is supposed to serve the cause of justice and if the law is not serving the cause of justice, then break the law. I don’t know what the correct answer is, but I explore this issue.

Aakash Joshi: You are a cultural diplomat and today, we get two kinds of stories about India abroad. One is that we’re being seen as a less-free society. And the other, is the opposite. What is your sense, how are we being seen abroad?

This may be an uncomfortable truth. It’s not so much whether we are seen positively or negatively, the honest truth is, how little we are seen. You cannot have a positive or negative image if you have no image. For a country, which has the second-largest population, soon to be the largest population, the fifth-largest economy in the world, we actually have a very low profile. We have to build our profile a lot more. It has improved, but as we get more economic heft, it will change.

Shubhajit Roy: There’s a Ram Temple coming up in Ayodhya. The arc to the temple has been fraught with contests and divisions. What does this temple mean to India, and to you as an artist?

When Hagia Sophia was converted back to a mosque, it was discussed quite a lot in the UK. Even the Pope made a statement because it was a church, which, when the Ottoman Turks conquered it, was converted into a mosque, and then when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became the President (of Turkey), he converted it into a museum and now it’s a mosque. But many don’t know that Hagia Sophia was originally a temple to the goddess and then it became a church. But all the

pagans in Europe are largely dead. So, there is no one to really feel the pain of that. If you see from the perspective of the global pagans, idol worshippers, nature worshippers and goddess worshippers, it is a very significant moment.

Kaushik Das Gupta: You said that history talks of an absolute truth while myth has a lot of fluidity to it. Do you see any possibility of a dialogue between them or are they completely distinct realms?

Firstly, this concept of history being absolutist is relatively recent. If you see the history texts that are used as source material today, often the approach was to understand the ‘why’ of something, whereas, what emerged post the colonial empire was essentially a set of facts. But dialogue is always possible if one person is willing to concede that there is something worth listening to on the other side. If any side comes with judgmentalism, then dialogue becomes difficult. One of the concepts in the Indian debating tradition, for a good debate, was purvapaksha. It means you listen to the other person completely without actually thinking. Normally, we’re not actually listening. We’re somewhere else, thinking about what our response should be to humiliate the guy or something like that. We’re not actually listening. Purvapaksha is that you listen to the other person, then say what your understanding of the other person’s viewpoint is and the other person must agree. And only then can you move to uttarpaksha, which is the response. I have to first listen to you. The entire concept is aano bhadra — let all noble thoughts come to me from all directions.

Aakash Joshi: But in saying all interpretations are equal, we ended up, perhaps, saying all facts are equal.

Many of our history books are drawn from our own texts. Ashoka’s story came from Ashokavadana, which was essentially just a listing of facts. History, the way the modern thing is, is the story, which brings together those facts into some narrative. The British will string together some facts to say they created India. Whereas those who disagree will look at other sets of facts to say no, our ancestors created it. Look at the Chola bronzes, for example. Many of our ancient emperors were obsessive record keepers. The British told us that we were an oral culture and we didn’t write. It is utter nonsense. Our ancestors wrote a lot. According to the National Mission for Manuscripts, there are over three million handwritten Sanskrit manuscripts that survive today. That’s more than the rest of the ancient world combined.

Suanshu Khurana: Are you at all uncomfortable that significant topics, that should be studied by children, are removed from textbooks?

I like reading all interpretations. One of the things that is spoken about not just in India, but even in the ancient Mediterranean schools, is that if you want to come to the truth, listen to all points of view, and then your mind will triangulate what truth will be… The West has been the most successful culture of the last 400 years. There are things that we must learn from them. The Industrial Revolution is primary among them. That is what actually gave them the great leap forward, not the Chinese Great Leap Forward, but a great leap forward against most other civilisations in the world. But is there a real-world impact of our education system not teaching us what our country, culture and reality are?

…The answer to that is there in what our ancestors say: ati sarvatra varjayet — extremism of any kind should be avoided… Our education system is designed to turn the kid into an Englishman… But if someone says we travelled to Mars 3,000 years ago, I myself say there’s no proof of that. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t acknowledge the good things that did happen.

Rinku Ghosh: Hindu revivalism today excludes the minority viewpoint from it. How do you see it playing out in society?

The recent Pew Centre’s survey of religion across India delighted me. I instinctively feel that the common people are actually way ahead of our elite on this… I engage largely with the youth. A vast majority of Hindus are very comfortable praying at worship places of other religions, while many Muslims, close to 90 per cent, unlike any other country in the world, believe in karma and dharma than Buddhists do, correct me if I’m wrong… Our elite groups, because they become more westernised, get into this adversarial mindset a lot more quickly than our common people.

Aakash Joshi: When can we see the screen adaptation of your work?

My partners and I are working together to convert Suheldev & the Battle of Bahraich into a movie. Viacom is the studio partner. That should come out soon. Work is also on for the Shiva trilogy and Ram series. Hopefully we’ll see something soon.

Why Amish

Amish leaped into the literary world in 2010 with The Immortals of Meluha, the beginning of his Shiva trilogy. Now with his fourth book of the Ramayana series, War of Lanka, he ties up the traditional story of the death of Ravana and the return of Ram to Ayodhya. As Director, Nehru Centre London, since 2019, he has been attempting to make it a cultural outpost and take the Indian narrative abroad. Amish has also been scripting documentaries such as Legends of the Ramayana, and dramatising the history of Suheldev, bringing a contemporary connect to a 11th-century king, who fought the Turkic armies of Mahmud of Ghazni