It is a skillful reconstruction of the lost legacy of the fifth century atheist thinker, Ajita.
Quotidian language. Laboured dialogue. Wooden characters. A personal preface from the author on the Oulipo movement and the ouroborus that serves to confuse rather than illumine.
Yet this fiction on Ajita, the forerunner of the Charvaka school of thought, forges forth with an inexorable, passionate force, drawing the reader inwards to the centrifuge of its arguments and counter-arguments, and then climaxes in a tremendous emotional payoff.
It is a skillful reconstruction of the lost legacy of the fifth century atheist thinker, Ajita.
Anyone curious about atheism and its roots and traditions in Indian culture will end up reading this book. Bonus? They will meet Ajivika philosophers Makkhali Goshala, Purana Kassapa and Pakuda Kacchayana, the agnostic Sanjaya Belatthiputta, the 24th Tirthankara Mahavira and Gautama Buddha as characters in the story!
The protagonist, though, is Ajita, himself, and to a lesser extent, the writer's own narrative voice who here is named Moksh Malhar.
Ajita Kesakambali, of the blanket of black locks of hair, is fascinated by the communal life of ants. How they behave as a single organism just as a city does, and how the nature of a city or a colony rubs off on each and every individual. Ajita is a trained Mimamsaka who, disillusioned with the self-serving, ritualistic face and practice of brahminical Hinduism that also enforces blind belief, is pointlessly cruel to underclasses and discourages people from thinking for themselves, abandons his career in priesthood. At the instance of his independent-minded mother who belongs to a hill tribe, he then acquires a double diploma in medicine and sets up as a vaid in Vaishali city. He develops his own materialist theory.
Meanwhile, Moksh Malhar, a contemporary academic, whose father has been a steadfast communist party worker, is inspired by his dalit Buddhist mentor, another female character, to explore Buddhism in order to reconcile his idea of her faith with his own rationalism. In the process, he discovers some ancient texts in the Tibetan Buddhist library at Dharamshala and decides to research the lost history of Ajita. But the material available, as the reader may also be aware, is patchy as to be obscurantist even, so lacking it is in context and superstructure.
Through his studies in meditation, Moksh has, however, discovered that emotions can be a guide to the psyche, and to human thought and behaviour, and so he uses his own as a tool to resurrect the philosopher.
An interesting passage in the book involves Ajita's debate with the Buddha on the merits and demerits of destiny versus karma. While Ajita argues in favour of the grand theory of everything, Buddha highlights the importance of promoting belief in free will even if it hardly has any absolute power. To the author's credit, he well avoids the temptation to overinterpret the contribution of each philosopher in the light of modern knowledge and is thus able to present each doctrine accurately, as is, with all their distinctive quirks and quiddities. It is also interesting to contemplate how people from southern India, such as Srinivas Reddy as well as K. Sridhar, the writer of this narrative and a nuclear physicist, are doing invaluable work in bringing to light the forgotten philosophical heritage of the northern part of the nation. We’re grateful.
Ajita
By K. Sridhar
Westland
pp. 328; Rs 499
