Ghazala Wahab's new book looks at the 'sick' heart of the Hindi belt

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Lalu Prasad Yadav’s tenure as Chief Minister of Bihar was actually a time of unprecedented low levels of common and caste-related violence. (Getty Images) Summary Ghazala Wahab’s ‘The Hindi Heartland’ captures the past and the current realities of the region with nuance and attention to detail What is wrong with the ‘Hindi Heartland’? Like many Bihari professional people living in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, I often asked variants of this question. A colleague once used the term “bimaru” (“sick” in Hindi; Bimaru is the derogatory acronym used to describe Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) while asking me why Biharis always voted next to the cupboards. The episode once again reminded me of the extent to which my home state was characterized in public imagination, a fate that shares it with Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, sometimes referred to as ‘the Hindi belt’ for clarity. I would recommend Ghazala Wahab’s new non-fiction book, The Hindi Heartland, to such people. Over the 500 pleasant well-researched, abundant said pages, she has captured the past and the current realities of these regions with the kind of nuance and attention to detail that serious readers deserve. The book is divided into five sections, which move chronologically from the medieval past to today’s moment. The first two sections are ominous demonstrations of Wahab’s methodology. Each begins with a condensed history that discusses the specific context (the first section is divided into chapters such as ‘society’, ‘economy’, ‘culture’, and so on). Wahab is more frequent than not with her choice of history books. While discussing the Harappan period, she refers extensively to the early Indians of Tony Joseph. In a segment on the influence of the Rashtriya Swayamse subject Sangh (RSS), we get Ag Noorani (the Muslims of India) and Christophe Jaffrelot on the page. GN Devy is cited when we are introduced to the linguistic diversity of the region, and Nandini Sundar as we talk about the influence of the Naxalite movement in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Urvashi Butalia is questioned about her book The Other Side of Silence in the segment that analyzes the impact of distribution on the Hindi belt. These research-heavy, historiographical summaries are discussed by maintenance segments at the beginning and then more in-depth conversations that fulfill double purposes. In the first place, the interviews serve as a tonal counterweight for the ‘Book smart’ parts of the text. Two, the interviews often give readers a counter-intuitive, contemporary turn on the research findings, and remind them that sociopolitical powers keep the Hindi belt in a protese condition, always on the cold, always develop. The gender relationship chapter is a good example of how and why this twin strategy works. Wahab is zealous and methodical when presenting the condensed history of phenomena such as Sati in North India, which underlines cases like Roop Kanwar, the teenager Rajput widow whose death forced the central government to set up the SATI (prevention) later that year. But Sati is an evil in the rear -view mirror, so to speak, and Wahab knows it. She therefore conducts the interviews just after this history-led segment, so that the reader understands that the current state of gender relations in the Hindi belt did not arise in a vacuum. This series of wide conversations with Hindu and Muslim women makes this chapter informative. Look at the full image The Hindi Heartland by Ghazala Wahab, Aleph Book Company, 528 pages, £ 999 The historian Rana Safvi appears here with a lovely little riff on wedding, such as hiding the groom’s shoes and the application of turmeric sandalwood paste. Thanks to popular culture, we have become accustomed to these activities as Hindu or Muslim rituals (depending on our education), but as SAFVI points out, it is an important North Indian practices that have nothing to do with any religious rationale. Safvi, who grew up to think of these phenomena as Islamic practices, only realized it after living in Saudi Arabia and then in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for several years. Similarly, author and columnist Natasha Badhwar opens her Hindu father and Muslim-clean father, especially in terms of their very similar attitudes towards women in the formal workforce. I especially enjoyed how this section ended, with the story of Badhwar bringing the patriarchs to her point of view, after “years of gentle persuasion by her, open support by her husband and a secret encouragement by her mother -in -law”. It is a powerful reminder of how eliminating individualism can seem to trump insurmountable social influence. Of course, not every sociopolitical power can be weakened by individual interventions, as the chapter on cabinets reminds us. The basis for this section lies in the fact that Wahab correctly detects a key difference between the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in this context. While UP gained a successful era of land redistribution after the country, which led to dignity and upward mobility for scheduled cabinets (SC), the upper players in Bihar did not allow such a redistribution. As a result, Cast hierarchy and class have now correlated in Bihar, even in the 21st century. Historically, poor communities have mostly remained poor. As Wahab quickly notices, it explains both the election success of socialist/communist parties in Bihar, and the extra judicial attraction of Maoists/Naxalites. Lalu Prasad Yadav’s term of office as chief minister of Bihar-many in popular culture and mainstream journalism was actually a time of unprecedented low levels of common and caste-related violence. In the handful of places where the book falls, it is because the maintenance segments are insufficiently backed by quotes. For example, in a place, journalist Sankarshan Thakur says hoods in Bihar (usually the ‘untouchable’ tackle of the caste leather) got the ‘thakur’ surname so that they could safely touch the faces of their customers of the higher cupboards. It is an entertaining story, and a Bihari person would accept it without further explanation or quote (it is not uncommon to hear how Bihari hijackers repeat this story), but it would have been nice to hear an academic speech. Similarly, Chapter 15 contains the Dance of Democracy, the author and journalist Rasheed Kidwai who tells a story about how Bhopal became the capital of Madhya Pradesh. According to Kidwai’s narrative, Jabalpur was locked up as the capital-to-be, which led to the veteran congressman Seth Govind Das boughting up a lot of property in the city, pending future profits. Jawaharlal Nehru, who is annoyed by even the proposal of insider profit, decided to move the capital to Bhopal. Again, cool story, but I couldn’t find a history book that supports it with proof. In general, however, I really enjoyed reading the Hindi -Hartland, not least because the ambitions were not limited to historiography and journalism. If it wishes, the book also unlocks a deep literary mode without diluting the focus. It is a work of non-fiction where Syncretism is demonstrated via an Amir Khusrau poem with both Braj Bhasha and Persian pieces, where poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s worldview expertly connects with the Median Bihari-pack, and where the Berserk language cooms of the Hindi belt are shown by a novel (Rahi masoms ‘s top shukla). I can visualize that this book becomes a staple at educational institutions and libraries in the country. The few errors can be ironed out in future expenses. Aditya Mani Jha is a writer in Delhi. Catch all the business news, market news, news reports and latest news updates on Live Mint. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates. More Topics #Books Read Next Story