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At the present time, Gujarat is up in flames again over the destruction of a dargah that blocked the middle of a busy road. The courts prescribed its removal and the result, for the citizen of Vadodara was a brief return to Godhra days, which left 21 people, both Hindu and Muslim dead. Perhaps it’s a good time to look back at the days when the divisions between religions were not so strong and to how the hatred that seems such an integral part of life in India and the world began. Blood Brothers is a unique mix of fiction and history that tries to explain the strange tangle of religion that India became after Independence. And MJ Akbar chooses to tell it by tracing the origins of his family. At the root of it is a Brahmin named Prayaag, a significant name because apart from being the name given to Allahabad where the sacred rivers Ganga and Jamuna join, Prayaag’s life illustrates the joining of two religions. ‘My grandfather lost his parents to a famine that started around 1870 and emptied his village within five years.’ And famine recognizes no caste or creed. After the death of his father, the young Brahmin journeys to Bengal in search of the fabled wealth, that the jute mills there hold and finds himself taken up by a Muslim family who own a tea stall in Telinipara.

Gradually his life and that of Wali Mohammed and his wife become intertwined. After his benefactor dies, he converts to Islam at the request of Diljan Bibi who wants a child to call her own. And so, Prayaag abandons his proud Brahmin roots to become Rahmatullah, a man with a business and a wife. His tea stall expands to include new and delectable Bengali mishti and his family grows as his son is born.

Blood Brothers follows the tale of generations – the British depart and India is divided. Peaceful Telinipara falls prey to internal schisms fostered by untouchables who claim the right to wear the sacred thread since they are cowherds and who seek to establish their identity in a place where they do not really belong. Most of this is known, as every child who learns history pores over the death of Gandhi and the Hindu Muslim riots. Akbar gives this history a new freshness through his retelling of the complexities involved. A Muslim who was originally a Brahmin confronts an Untouchable who wears the sacred thread of a Brahmin against all laws of caste reason. ‘I learnt Gandhi wanted to include Muslims in his Ram Rajya. This puzzled me. What did Muslims have to do with Ram?’

And yet in the middle of all this are people who believe that the land is what holds people together along with the ties of friendship and belonging. People, who find themselves fighting against at times insurmountable odds, echoing the cross currents in Gandhi’s own struggle for freedom that led ultimately to his assassination. Through this account Akbar tries to establish a truth that modern India has forgotten. That has an older tradition on its side than the relatively new one of Partition and Independence. And, in the telling to try to enable the reader to make sense of a puzzle that assumes frightening proportions in a post 9/11 world.

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