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Book Name:Lesser Breeds Author:Nayantara Sahgal Publisher: Harper Collins India Price: Rs. 395/

THE SAVAGE WARS OF PEACE

The title phrase, "savage wars of peace" is borrowed from an 1899 poem by Rudyard Kipling--the same work that gave the world the immortal saying, "white man's burden." The burden, as Kipling saw it, was for the white race to keep watch over, "New-caught sullen peoples/Half devil and half child." Eventually, of course, the natives learned to fight back; the story of the last century was de-colonisation. And that is the story of Lesser Breeds - another title borrowed from Kipling.

One of India's leading post Independence novelists and political journalists, Nayantara Sahgal has written nine books on subjects like sex, race, and gender, all equally provocative. And now, after eight years, comes a tenth, Lesser Breeds, a work on non-violence and politics, on the discrimination that spearates the ruled from the rulers, women from men and Hindus from Muslims. "Lesser breeds," she says, " is a quotation from a Kipling poem, 'in the days of empire which had a right to rule the lesser breeds, the world which consisted of the rulers on one side and the ruled on the other' so we were among the lesser breeds."

When you take into account the fact that she comes from a family with such a strong background in national and international politics, it surprises you to hear her say, "I've always kept my distance from politics. I never chose to take part in any political activity, perhaps because I had too much of it as I child." However, her imagination is deeply influenced by history and politics and her work stays close to that of her family, the First family of Indian politics. . She says, "As that was my background, growing up in a family that was deeply and actively involved in the national struggle for freedom, and that atmosphere serves as a background to my fiction. The stories are created out of things that happened to me at that time or were happening around me." What’s more, her career as a political journalist and commentator allowed her the liberty of incorporating her life-long interest in politics into her work.

Lesser Breeds tells the story of Nurullah, a 23 year old English teacher who comes to the city of Akbarabad. Here he encounters a non-violent resistant movement against British rule spearheaded by his gentle academic hosts and he finds himself unwillingly drawn into the vortex. The story of British rule in Akbarabad is told smoothly, with swift punches of unexpected violence. Running parallel to it is the story of Nurullah’s birth and the tragic history of his child mother.

Halfway through the novel leaves India for America and the lives of Edgar and Leda, an American diplomat and his sister who are engaged with issues of non violence and how those issues apply to their own lives in America. They are linked by India, where Edgar was posted and by Shan, Nurullah’s student, who goes to America to study and finds herself exploring another world where the colour of her skin implies that she is there either to be exploited or lauded as

The novel ends in 1968 with Nurullah looking back his life and coming to terms with it. This soul searching is triggered by the visit of an American scholar who comes to India looking for answers to the question of whether non-violence is still relevant.

The fabric of Lesser Breeds is silken smooth and subtle – so subtle that the ideas underlying the book do not intrude on you. As Nayantara Sahgal has said about the inspiration for her work, "I never said to myself that I am a writer now and I have to sit down and produce work. When an idea took me, or an atmosphere or a character or a trigger of some kind I just began to write." The canvas of the book is vast – sweeping from Akbarabad to Bombay to an island called America. From jails and violence to diplomatic banquets and New York nightclubs.

Sahgal has had this to say about her writing: "I had no plans to become a writer, I happened to write my recollection of my childhood during the freedom movement, called Prison and Chocolate cake. That was not planned, but I felt that this atmosphere was in the past. It was history and I wanted to preserve the actual feeling of that time. I didn't even think in terms of publishing it, but it was shown to an agent and immediately accepted." Nothing in Lesser Breeds appears planned – it just is and that is possibly its greatest strength.

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