Book review — Revenge : Bio-terrorism unleased, Partridge India (Associate Penguin USA) 2013; Author : Navin Vibhakar

Ullug is a brilliant scientist who leaves his homeland in Uzbekistan for further studies in Moscow. There he meets Dr Khoshev who takes him under his wings, and together they go to a remote reserve at the border of Congo and Tanzania to research on chimpanzees. They find some of the monkeys are infected with a terrible disease that leaves them dead after just three days. They collect blood samples, and leave quickly and furtively, without telling anyone, not even an English researcher who was also working on the same primates. Thus begins a journey of secrecy and mystery that the author, Navin Bhai Vibhakar plots adeptly with the pen of a veteran novelist. Trained as a doctor, Navin Bhai Vibhakar is able to clearly explain the medical procedures in a story in which the transmission, preservation and effect of the Ebola virus plays a central role.

Navin Bhai is a well-known Gujarati writer with 40 published books to his name and many short stories that have appeared in magazines such as Akhand Anand and Kumar. Born in East Africa, he holds the covetous Parishad Award from Gujarat’s most respected Sahitya Academy. Revenge: Bio-terrorism unleased, is the English translation of Navin Bhai’s award winning book that was first released in Gujarati bearing the title Virus. In 2012 the novel claimed 2nd prize from Sahitya Academy from among literally thousands of competitive writers of Gujarat. This state in India has a vibrant reading culture. To win a literary award in a society that cherishes its rich literary heritage is no small achievement for a writer. Hundreds of new novelists and books appear each year in Gujarat with a population of forty million and a high literacy rate of nearly 80%. There are tens of Gujarati laureates who have been honoured by such famed academies as Gujarat Vidhya Sabha, Gujarat Sahitya Sabha and Gujarati Sahitya Parishad.  Libraries abound in every small town, a tradition that the Gujaratis carried to East Africa. Today, wherever they settle, Gujaratis have a library set up within the temple, the derasar and the jamat khana premises.

The history of Gujarati written literature is grouped in three periods or yoogs. The ancient yoog starts from around AD 1000 while the Medieval Yoog is counted as four centuries from 1450 to 1850. The Modern Yoog, within which Virus (Revenge) falls, is from 1850 to the present.  Each yoog is then sub-grouped or has minor yoogs that reflect on the spiritual, intellectual or political character of the time. For example, the Medieval Yoog (1450-1850) is characterized by the poetry, songs and stories of spiritual awakening in three sub-yoogs: Bhakti, Sagun and Nirgun. The most recent sub-category of the Modern Yoog is from 1985 and is also known as Anu-Adunik Yoog.  This sub-category includes literature relating to social themes such women’s issues in Gujarat, some written from feminist perspectives, and the lot and struggles of the Dalit undercaste Gujaratis. Virus has already made a name as a book of literary merit of our time. The novel may add Terrorism to the growing body of Anu-Adunik Yoog – a contribution that Dr Navin Vibhakar brings to Gujarati writing of the Modern Age. But Virus also belongs to the new and growing group of Gujarati Diaspora Literature. In fact, Gujarati Diaspora Literature is the largest of all the other Indian languages outside of India. This is according to Dr Balvant Jani, a prominent scholar of Gujarati literature at the University of Saurashtra. http://www.generallyaboutbooks.com/2011/05/gujarati-diaspora-literature.html  It’s so large that Dr Jani compiled an anthology of Gujarati Diaspora Literature that led to the establishment of Gardi Research Institute for Diaspora Studies or GRIDS as it is called. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v  It remains to be seen how the Diaspora literature will be named in the Yoogs. Will it merge into the Modern Yoog as a sub-group or will it be called literature of the Diaspora Yoog in a separate category in its own right? With thousands of Gujaratis in the 21^st Century living as third and fourth generations on almost all the continents on the planet, this may justify a separate category of the Diaspora Yoog.

The story of Revenge moves as seamlessly in the Diaspora as does terrorism. It affirms what one sees on TV channels and reads in newspapers. Revenge reminded me of the Reluctant Fundamentalist, a novel by the Pakistani writer, Mohsin Hamid (2007). 

While the Reluctant Fundamentalist  moves between two countries, that is the USA and Pakistan, and there is a ‘manageable’ number of characters, Revenge journeys across many. Some of the countries traversed in Revenge are Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Russia, the Congo, USA, England and the Caribbean. Then there are as many characters set in family, work and love lives as there are the countries they live in. Truly that’s the global range of terrorism today that is not confined to any one country, social group, ethnicity or profession. One may think this would make a complicated reading but it’s not so because Navin Bhai Vibhakhar writes flawlessly through the geographies and the lives of the characters whose names like Zeba Khalid and Mulla Maqsood bear witness to their ethnic background and beliefs. While both the names sound Muslim, Zeba is an America FBI agent and Mulla Maqsood is a committed terrorist. Hence the message: One cannot judge a person by her/his religion or name. The two characters in the book are as different in their outlooks as they can get. One is a loyal American citizen and the other sees his loyalty to his religion as being above all.

The book in fact begins with a prologue on jihad – what is said in the Quran and how it is misinterpreted. The story then traverses landscapes and networks of terrorists plying through lives of families and friends on the Diasporic stage as it is in the real world.  But the question that underlies the book is why a young man, a brilliant and honest scientist, a devoted son and a loving husband like Ullug, the protagonist, should turn into a terrorist? While Navin Bhai Vivhakar is not sympathetic to violence that he depicts in gruesome deaths of innocent folk who get infested with the Ebola virus at a village feast in Kazakhstan, he also shows the need for understanding how circumstances can change human beings. Revenge is about how a young Muslim man falls victim to terrorism when embroiled by emotions of loss and humiliation that humans are prone to due to changes in life. The protagonist in the Reluctant Fundamentalist  changed from being a CEO in the USA to a terrorist in Pakistan. The novel in fact has been made into a fine movie by Mira Nair who also made Mississippi Masala that’s about how a Uganda Asian refugee girl’s racial and caste attitudes altered in the USA. Both the movies are about how people act differently when their surroundings change.

Ullug’s loss and humiliation turn to hate and hate to revenge in a country occupied by America. Such a story is not unreal. The Guardian recently reported (May 28^th, 2015) that a US-trained commander, Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov who led the Tajikistan’s special-purpose police force, defected to ISIS. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/28/tajikistan-police-chief-defects-to-isis The Guardian report shows how close to reality is the story in Revenge: Bio-terrorism unleased, which is a work of fiction.

Sultan Somjee is the author of Bead Bai ( http://thebeadbai.blogspot.com/) and curator of the Asian African Heritage Exhibition, National Museums of Kenya 2000 -2005. He was born in Kenya and trained as an ethnographer. He now writes from Vancouver, Canada and teaches how to write from memories.

I have always admired Asian African writers who write in their mother tongues -Gujarati, Urdu, Hindustani, Punjabi, Konkani and Swahili. Long before the independences of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika in the 1960s, the latter language had become a mother tongue to some such as the Bhadalas who were among the earliest sailors and settlers from India. To others especially the Khojas living at the coast, and on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, Swahili was a second mother tongue. I know of Asian families who not only spoke in Swahili at home but also wrote letters in Swahili using the Indian script.

Since the days of building of the railroad in East Africa (1896 – 1902), Asian Africans have been creating poetry, music, drama and telling stories. The arts were first performed in small groups. Later creative writing appeared in local newspapers such as the Indian Voice in Kenya and plays in vernacular were enacted on makeshift stage in community settings especially during festivities. These arts anchored the diverse immigrant communities to their cultures, religions and history. Community based literature in mother tongue entertained, and it provoked conversations on the social and political concerns of the day. At first the working classes of builders like the bricklayers, stone masons, railroad and road workers were the producers and consumers of folk art. Later the growing professional and commercial classes were passionate about the arts and began societies such as the Oriental Arts Circle in Kenya. Non English speaking middle class Indian women, wives and mothers, who were the homemakers, were often the ardent readers of publications in mother tongue while the second generation menfolk could also read books, magazines and newspapers in English. Literature in ethnic languages was central to sustenance of values, dignity and creativity in the Indian communities living in Africa.  Most importantly, it kept the native languages and linguistic aesthetics of the subjects of the Empire alive and vibrant as Gandhi would have wished for the Indians.

One category of literature that is seldom credited to creating public opinion to change oppressive regimes or state endorsed societal beliefs made conventional, is prose and poetry that’s regarded as protest writing. Often it’s the underground literature read by the affected.  The anti-colonial and pro-freedom clandestine literature by activists such as Shamdass Vidyarthi in Kenya was written in the vernacular and widely read especially by the Indian workers. I was told by one of his sons that when no printing press was available, his father Shamdass Vidyarthi, used to sit by the candle light in his home in Nairobi and write or copy prohibited papers such as the publications of Ghadar Party from overseas, over layers of carbon papers. Writers in mother tongues like him, helped to produce literature that addressed, united and brought the Indians together in the hope for freedom and dignity. The first Indian freedom activist, Bishen Singh executed in Kenya in 1917, was a member of the Ghadar Party that produced and circulated literature to the wider Indian Diaspora during the raj.  Such a writer as Shamdass Vidyarthi in British East Africa not only raised political consciousness of Indians but also connected them with the freedom movements in India and other colonies. Shamdass was a scholar and a linguist who used his writing life in Indian languages to start the first independent Swahili newspaper called Habari za Dunia meaning News of the World in 1935. Hereby, he invited Africans to join Indians writing in languages other than English, hence providing alternative views in an African language to a multiplicity of ethnicities across East Africa.

Though I have no direct evidence, it may have been through Asian written languages that the South African Indians and East African Indians were linked. There are, for example, similarities between their protest stories against the pass or kipande as it was called in Kenya. The effect of this connection was wider like the Ghadar newspaper that was produced on the Pacific Coast of America but had an impact on Indians across the Empire. In 1922 the anti-pass or kipande protest march in Nairobi led to a massacre of African workers. In his autobiography, Harry Thuku the leader of the demonstration, acknowledges the help of the Indians in his greater anti-colonial movement. When Shamdass Vidyarthi owned his own press, he printed material in indigenous languages that were often initiated by political organizers. He was imprisoned three times but that did not break his spirit. He continued to fight for freedom of expression in people’s own languages.

Writing in the vernacular was itself an act of pride.  It was also defiance against domination of a foreign language and implicitly the colonial culture. Even a preliminary survey of literature and the arts created by Indian slaves, coolies or indentured labourers, and migrants in the Caribbean, Fiji, Mauritius, South America, East and South Africa during the days of the Empire and post-Empire, would be impressive. Among the migrants were the poets, writers, singers, dancers and revolutionaries. They were the spirit of the society seeking dignity.

Since the year 2000 Asian African literature in English is finally drawing attention, and finding a spot in world literature. This is explained by Gaurav Desai in his well-researched and detailed paper Asian African Literatures: Genealogies in the Making http://cup.columbia.edu/book/commerce-with-the-universe/9780231164542. Included in this paper is a compendium of poetry, drama and stories in mother tongues of Asian Africans from early days of settlements in East and South Africa.

Especially noteworthy is the vernacular writers’ role during the heyday of African nationalism that inclined towards diminishing the Asian African history and character collectively as the unwanted race in new Africa. Plays such as Aashiana staged in Nairobi and Ameena on the Hindustani radio service of the Voice of Kenya brought hushed talk of discrimination, inter-racial relations and politics of African nationalism to the fore. There has always been the voice of the searching Asian African poet in pulsating Urdu and Punjabi poets’ societies.  At least one dancer who I know, who worked on Indian and African musical traditions and movements during the anti-Asian excesses in Kenya.

Translations of literature from one vernacular to another were also important. One academic who has interpreted a piece of Indian literature into Swahili is Farouk Topan. His rendition of the Gujarati poem, Andheri Nagari, Gandu Raja by Nanalal Dalpatram Kavi (1877-1946) into a Swahili play Mfalme Juha became very popular, particularly in Zanzibar. Also of note is writing in vernacular other than one’s own. Shamdass, a Punjabi, also wrote in Gujarati. There is a well-known work in Swahili by an Asian African. Tafkira: Majaribio ya Ushairi  (Reflections – Experiments in Poetry) is an acclaimed piece of creative writing by Abdul Aziz Lodhi.

Also of importance is how writers in Indian languages kept India informed about the rapidly changing continent, its new leaders, its geography, its cultures, politics and stories from where they had made a home. One writer of note who has been writing in his vernacular Gujarati for almost half a century is Navin Bhai Vibhakar. Navin Bhai was born in Mwanza, Tanzania, in 1936. His father was a textile merchant and a passionate reader of Gujarati.  Navin Bhai, who practiced medicine, wrote from his home in Moshi and now after 1992, he writes from Florida in the USA.  He continues to send his manuscripts to his publishers in Mumbai and Ahmedabad. He has published 40 books and has received accolade from Gujarat’s Sahitya Academy with its most prestigious award, the Parishad Award. His short stories are published in magazines that include Akhand Anand and Kumar.

(Acknowledgements Prof Adul Aziz Lodhi, Sudir Vidyarthi and Neera Kapur-Dromson for the inputs).

In this interview I ask Navin Bhai Vibhakar about the books he wrote about Africa for readers in Gujarat.

When did you start to write stories?

NV : I started writing short stories during my student days in India. I left India in 1964 and my first novel was published in 1967. I wrote stories from Tanzania getting them published in India. That continued till 1980. My writing decreased later because I was busy establishing my private medical practice. My first short story collection was published in 1980. I am writing more now after I migrated to U.S.A in 1992. To date, I have written 40 books in Gujarati. These comprise fictions, short stories, biographies and travel books. I have also translated memoirs and some famous English stories.

Say something about the books you have written that are about Africa. Like how many and the stories they tell.

NV : I have written six books on Africa. Some are published and some to be published in coming years.

Bhagya Vidhata which means Destiny Maker was published in 2005. This is on the history of achievements and failures of Julius Nyerere, the first President of Tanzania. It’s about his childhood, growing up under the British rule and his impressions on interacting with fellow Africans, Indians and the British. He was frustrated after independence for many reasons. He started socialism. Later he developed leukaemia and died in England where he had gone for treatment. I wanted my bigger Gujarati community to know about this remarkable man. Very little was known about Tanzania in Gujarat especially among speakers and readers of just Gujarati.

My second book is about Nelson Mandela. It’s called Sapna ni Pele Par which means Beyond Dreams. The book is well read and it’s in libraries in Gujarat. The book was published in 2009, and the second edition came out in 2011.

The first edition of Sarmukhatyar which means The Dictator was published in 2009 and two years later the second edition was printed in 2011. This book is on Idi Amin of Uganda. The story depicts his rise and fall. I wrote this book as a novel and not as a biography. I am from Tanzania but I did my housemanship at Mulago Hospital which is part of Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. During my three years in Uganda, I came to know President Obote, and his army general called Idi Amin. My relatives lived in Uganda until the expulsion order came for them to leave Uganda. So I knew stories from within the Asian community and from the outside.

Next one is Pratishodh which means Revenge. This book is a fiction about a slave girl from Zanzibar. In 1964 Zanzibar was united with Tanganyika and became a part of Tanzania. In 1600-1700 slave trade prevailed on the East Coast of Africa. In history it is mentioned that sultans of Zanzibar were in this slave trade in cohort with a legendary trader named TippuTibbs. In 2014 Pratishodth was serialized in Gujarat Times in both New York and Ahmedabad.

I have also written a short story about friendship of an Indian boy with an African boy which was considered a taboo at that time. Both grow up and go for further studies. The Indian boy gets afflicted by a clot in one leg and gets amputated. After many years while reading a medical journal he comes to know about his African friend who is in a London hospital. He goes to London to meet him but finds him on his death bed. Milan is the title of my short story collection.

Another book of mine is called Vikhuti Padeli Preet in which I narrate world famous safaris and national parks of Tanzania. This book is in a story form.

What prompted you to write books in Gujarati on African leaders like Nyerere and Nelson Mandela?

NV : I was fascinated by the story of President Julius Nyerere. Here was an African youth who plunged himself in politics, forming a political party. His struggle for independence, knowing the worth of Indian community for economic growth of the country and believing in Gandhian philosophy. In his later age he supported the African cause and South Africa's independence struggle. He worked for refugees of Rwanda's genocide. Our president Julius Nyerere also encouraged us to support independence struggle of South Africa against the apartheid regime of Dutch/British rule. I followed his speeches with deep interest. Then I read a biography of Mandela called Long Walk to Freedom. I was so impressed by it that I wanted to present Nelson Mandela to my Guajarati readers, and I did it.  It became so popular in India that the publisher had to print 2nd edition in just two years. Not many would want to say that Mandela was fascinated by Gandhi’s non-violent movement that he would follow after prison. I was happy to present him to Gujarat in Guajarati.

What has been the response to your books on Africa in India?

NV : My books on Africa really became popular in India as two of my books went into 2nd editions in just two years. Now my books are in many libraries. I don’t know how many books of mine are borrowed from and read in libraries in India.

Do you have plans for translating your books in English or Swahili?

NV : One of my books is published in English. It’s called Revenge: Bioterrorism Unleashed. It’s about the Ebola virus. At present Pratishodh is being translated into English and there is a plan for other books to be done in English now that I’m in America. Immediately, I have no plan for Swahili translations. Once my books are in English it will be easier then to translate them into Swahili. That is if I get a good translator. I will go for that. For further information, three of my books are being translated in Hindi and three are already published in braille for the blind readers of Gujarati.

Do you have plans to have your books in braille for Tanzanians?

NV : I am doing that now. Not just for Tanzania but I would like that for the whole of East Africa and the Swahili speaking world of the blind. I am hoping to work with my Guajarati braille book publisher, which is a private charitable organization, and other NGOs on how to accomplish this. It will take some time because of translations and looking for resources. But it’s my intention, an on-going task. I am also looking for assistance from knowledgeable persons or organizations that can help me.

Who are your favourite African writers?

NV : Chinua Achebe from Nigeria and Shaban Roberts of Tanzania.

What schools did you go to and where did you practice medicine?

NV : I studied for my primary and secondary education in the Indian Public School in Mwanza in Tanzania where I was born. I went to India in 1956 after completing my Senior Cambridge that was 12th standard. I joined a medical college in Mumbai, and returned to Mwanza for a brief period of one month after obtaining my medical degree in 1965. And then I went to Kampala, Uganda, for my housemanship in Mulago Hospital. That was in Feb., 1965. After finishing my housemanship, and a short term job as medical officer, I went back to Tanzania. I worked at Aga Khan Dispensary for 7 years in Moshi at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro before I started my private clinic from 1974 till I migrated to U.S.A.

Say something about how working as a doctor in Tanzania has influenced your writing.

NV : Practicing as a doctor, I came across people from all walks of life. Also different tribes, castes and nationalities, including the Maasai. Close contact with them provided me with the opportunity to learn about their traditions, and the culture of diversity in Tanzania. I developed feelings for their lives, sufferings and how they survived. That helped me to build characterizations, and the plots in my stories.

Who has been most influential on formation of your personality?

NV : My mother. My mother was a very pious lady with admirable virtues like endurance, forgiveness. Very soft spoken, mild and compromising. She taught all her children these qualities of life including spirituality. Because of her that I’m with Theosophical Society and my children have inherited my mother’s qualities through me. Unfortunately, my mother passed away while delivering my younger brother. She passed away at a very young age. I was only 6 years old but still I remember her kind face which swells my eyes with tears. God bless her, and us also.

My father too had great influence on my life. He was an ardent reader of Gujarati literature and encouraged me to visit Ladha Meghji Library in Mwanza. For four years when I was in the secondary school, I read books and magazines in the library. That, I believe helped to cultivate both my love and command of Gujarati. I need them both to be a writer. My teachers too improved my language skills in Gujarati, Hindi, English and Swahili. One who comes to mind immediately is Mr. Chandrani.

Thank you Dr Navin Bhai Vibhakar.

Sultan Somjee is the author of Bead Bai  http://thebeadbai.blogspot.com/

Curator, the Asian African Heritage Exhibition, National Museums of Kenya 2000 -2005. Kenya-born Sultan Somjee is a Canada-based ethnographer and writer. He studied product design but soon his interest shifted from designing products to what stories were told in products – about people’s lives and how they reflected on the individuals, their families, ethnic and faith groups and in general on the human society. He pursued his interests through his MA and PhD,  studying art and material culture.