The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Other end of the smoking pipe.

A provocative title; the writer calls himself Mohsin Hamid; and September 11 as background. What else would you ask for to complete your Metro ride(s)? . Ever wondered what is being like carrying the burden of a certain name in an aggressively volatile situation? That’s Hamid for us. In his semi-autobiographical novel, experimenting with the narrative: a monologue laced with heavy irony, his narrator-protagonist treads the path of a presumed fundamentalist, expression invented by the Vilayati press to categorize all those people not “fully co-operating” in its war against evil. Well, all this is déjà-vu. The novel is about a Pakistani student, having studied at Princeton and worked in the USA finds himself in a state of schizophrenia after America’s handling of Afghanistan and India’s posturing at the Pakistan borders after a militant attack on its parliament. “…America was maintaining a strict neutrality between the two potential combatants, a position that favored, of course, the larger and – at that moment in history-the more belligerent of them.” These few lines are enough to fill many of our Indian readers’ hearts with a brazen notion of pride and jingoism. Hard to skip the irony though, at the time when peace was mainly required, these two nations chose not be very forthcoming with it.

This novel deals with the concept of Identity crisis; the protagonist doesn’t have any problem per se with his Islamic identity and name, typical “Changez”: he manages with an outstanding performance at Princeton, rated continuously as the top employee at the quarterly review of his company, and is successful with the fairer sex too. As the hero puts it decently “I was a perfect breast, if you will- tan, succulent, seemingly defiant of gravity- and I was confident of getting any job I wanted”.

The novel is not about weakness, not even meekness, no surrenders, only priorities shifted, worries inherited, sense of culpability induced. In brief; a South-Asian male context, parphrasing Adiga from his last Man in Tower: an India (rather South-Asian) male doesn’t live for himself; he is condemned to live with many other responsibilities. Moreover, this boy Changez has opted himself for both the versions of his life: the American and Pakistani. As a matter of fact, he is the narrator, narrating from Pakistan, the story of his life to an alleged American interrogator, presumably there to interrogate him on his activities. This part also symbolizes the American intrusion deep inside the Pakistani territory; another obligation to survive. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is not only a title; it’s also a posturing against India and the USA. It’s a confirmation that belligerence is not only the prerogative of the almighty America and some tin-pot terrorists. It’s a universal malady, not confined to rich countries.

The modesty of this article is not at all a reflection of the book; it’s just the inability of yours sincerely in expressing his sentiments regarding a novel that ridicules the whole idea of Westernization in the aftermath of a reactionary reaction by the same West that was supposed to be faith keeper of the free world (sic). This notion was/is also applied to our great India (sic). Although I am not in a habit of quoting passages from books on a blog site, don’t know what could be the infringement of someone’s copyright, yet, there are certain passages, very humanist in nature, difficult to avoid.

I was struck by how traditional your empire (US of A) appeared. Armed sentries manned the check post at which I sought entry; being of a suspect race I was quarantined and subjected to additional inspection; once admitted I hired a charioteer who belonged to a serf class lacking the requisite permissions to abide legally and forced therefore to accept work at lower pay; I myself was a form of indentured servant whose right to remain was dependent upon the continued benevolence of my employer.

Calling America traditional tantamounts to pushing that country notionally into anachronism. In other words, the basis of modernity are not KFC’s and Wo

rld Trade Center, they are the ideas of equality, riddance from slavery and individual liberty. America failed at all these levels in the aftermath of 09/11 tragedy, it ceased to exist politically for those who did not belong to it. Hamid and his ilk were not some illegal immigrants filling up the American pastoral, but educated guys have sensitivities that surpass the day-to-day efforts to earn the bread and butter, in other words, a large chunk of immigrants.

And then, as if not to make things better, Changez gets into nostalgia, contrasting it with the American primitiveness:

In fact, they (comparisons) did more than trouble me: they made me resentful. Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians. Now our cities were largely unplanned, unsanitary affairs, and America had universities with individual endowments greater than our national budget for education. To be reminded of this vast disparity was, for me, to be ashamed.”

Lost South-Asian civilization, or lost a lost civilization to live with for ages to come, something to feel nostalgic about; the age long remedy for many evils that our societies have collectively, undergone, and they keep us feeding with the superiority complex, with which we could have indeed lived had we been that superior. It’s an American dream shattered along with a mixture of culpability on the part of the narrator, the guilt of living in a country far away from his; the terror inflicted upon his country by America in the name of terror inflicted by his community on the ‘free world’.