A River Sutra

The novel highlights Indian society’s religious and cultural diversity. It shows that many religions coexist just on the banks of the Narmada, and varied lifestyles, degrees of wealth, and vocations intermix across the novel, even within single religions. The rest house itself symbolizes this religious and cultural diversity: It is located at a nexus of different faiths, with Tariq Mia’s mosque representing Islam, the Jain caves for Jainism, Mahadeo for mainstream Hinduism, and the Vano tribe representing pre-Aryan, tribal beliefs. Further, while the rest house’s main purpose is to provide shelter to Hindu pilgrims, it is constructed predominantly in the Islamic Mughal architecture style and bears some Victorian stylistic conventions left over from the British Raj; the Vano tribe members work as security guards here. In this way, the rest house is portrayed as a microcosm for the country, where a large number of religions and cultures mix harmoniously. Then, in the stories of the novel, Hinduism is shown to have different beliefs and practices even within it—the musicians, the Naga Baba, and the old woman and her daughter from Shahbag practice different forms of this same religion. Other religions such as Jainism, Islam, and tribal beliefs are seen in the stories about Ashok, Imrat, and Nitin Bose.

The novel shows that while religious differences exist in India and cause political divisions, these differences rarely affect interpersonal relationships. Hinduism is the dominant religion in India, with over 70% of Indian people identifying as Hindu. Islam is the next most common religion, even after the division of India into India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, which was designed to separate people based on religious belief to avoid having a Hindu majority controlling a Muslim minority. Nitin Bose’s story mentions the partition of India into India and Pakistan and the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan; his description of Calcutta’s poverty also includes the political violence of the past, holding it responsible for the city’s squalor. However, the novel shows that conflict between these religions is not commonly interpersonal and characters are largely tolerant of religious differences. For instance, when Imrat’s sister asks Master Mohan to look after him, she notes that he must also see to it that Imrat “follows the practices of Islam” (62). Master Mohan accepts this directive, despite being a Hindu himself; he even teaches Imrat both Hindu hymns and Islamic Sufi music. The old woman from Shahbag describes similar religious harmony in that city, commenting that though the Nawab, the ruler of the city, “was a Muslim […] he honored the river’s holiness” (155). As a Muslim leader, he still accepts and supports his Hindu subjects’ beliefs in the Narmada’s holiness.

The novel also advocates human connection over religious differences. Two characters in the novel who express a secular view of Indian religious diversity are Dr. Mitra and Professor Shankar, and they are spokespersons for the human triumphing over the religious. Dr. Mitra presents the Aryan conquest of India as “pitting Aryan reason against the primal beliefs of the tribals” (143), reframing conflict from between religions to between secularism and religion. Professor Shankar further reduces this conflict, noting the importance of human experience more broadly. Though many of the legends and myths of the novel originate in the ancient stories that are thousands of years old, the individual characters and their experiences expose a camaraderie that transcends distinct faiths and practices, even in the narrator’s lasting friendship with Tariq Mia. The novel reveals how religions and secularism are not at war with each other or within each other, providing instead a diverse array of human experiences that can coexist and support one another.

The intersection of materialism and enlightenment in A River Sutra exposes the difficulties associated with pursuing contentment and peace while living in the world. One of the dominant issues in the novel is that of materialism—or wealth and poverty—as hindering enlightenment. Characters like Ashok, Nitin Bose, and the narrator resent wealth as a distraction or an unsatisfying pleasure, while characters like the old woman from Shahbag and the sweepers of the Naga Baba’s story identify the industrialism and wealth disparity of modern India as a similar obstacle. However, characters who renounce wealth do not gain satisfaction or enlightenment—for example, Nitin Bose’s rejection of his life of urban decadence does not give him happiness; similarly, the Naga Baba reenters the world, having found that his life as an ascetic was likewise unfulfilling for enlightenment. The conclusion of the novel frames enlightenment as a lived experience—something that must be attained internally, rather than one that is affected by external factors or circumstances.

Several characters in the novel discover that the pleasures of materialism are short-lived and hollow. In Ashok’s story, he explains that Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, also experienced this; Ashok says that while Mahavira was “A great prince […], [he was] still only a man who found all his wealth, power, beauty gave him no more than transitory pleasure and who yearned for pleasure that could be sustained” (18). The “pleasure that could be sustained” is enlightenment, as the comforts of wealth are said to pale before this permanent happiness (18). Importantly, Mahavira is identified as “only a man” (18), highlighting that enlightenment is a human experience, not a divine or elevated state. The narrator and Nitin Bose follow the same path as Ashok and Mahavira, with the narrator retreating to the Narmada after a successful career as a bureaucrat, and Nitin taking a position at the tea estate to escape the excesses of urban life. Though these characters have material wealth that provides endless comfort and pleasure, they feel hollow and unhappy internally, and they are on a quest to achieve the experience of enlightenment.

In contrast to these characters, the novel also shows that poverty and powerlessness can hinder enlightenment. The old woman presents the modern state of Shahbag, saying that where “there used to be gardens now [there are] factories,” and the forests have been removed “for the shanty-towns of labor colonies” (159). The town is a microcosm of industrialism and poverty that appears in Calcutta and in the sweeper village that the Naga Baba visits. Such poverty, too, is an impediment to enlightenment, such as Uma’s experience of being sold by her family into a brothel as a child, the rejection of the Dalits (people of the lowest caste) from temples, and the struggles of men like Rahul Singh, who turn to crime to survive. The Naga Baba, “sitting in the cremation ground without food or water for nine days” (227), provides the most extreme example of poverty, though his poverty is self-imposed; he rejects wealth and comfort and expects that his asceticism and poverty would lead to enlightenment. However, the Naga Baba leaves his ascetic lifestyle to become an archeologist, through which he studies the human experiences of the Narmada. The conclusion is that enlightenment is not dependent on circumstances. Both wealth and poverty serve as distractions from the real experience of enlightenment, which is rooted in humanity and lived experience.