The Gujaratis: A Portrait of a Community
By Salil Tripathi
Aleph Books, 744 pages, Rs 1,499

“As the language of Gandhi, Gujarati has a claim to our interest,” writes George Cardona, a world renowned linguist and a Panini expert, in his 1965 reference grammar of this language. It has been the fate of this language to get introduced as the mother tongue of some or the other influential figure. In the previous century, it was usually Mahatma Gandhi and also Sardar Patel. In this century, it has been Narendra Modi and Amit Shah as well as Ambani and Adani. That’s a token of the range of the speakers of this language who are the subject of this long-awaited book.

Salil Tripathi, a former journalist, columnist, and social-media gadfly, has done justice to the vastness of the topic with his extensive research, and still made it highly readable. Having been brought up in Mumbai, and living abroad for decades now, he confesses that he has the curious viewpoint of an outsider looking in and an insider looking out. That actually makes him an ideal writer to take up this project.

In 12 parts with a total of 85 chapters, the book covers history, popular culture, literature (or what goes under that name these days), diaspora community, religious practices and much more, breaking many stereotypes and unmasking fondly held myths along the way.

At the national level, particularly in the capital, the movers and shakers who are not Gujarati have been of late rediscovering their supposed connections with that land. This book will be a good primer for them and can save them from confusing, say, khaman for dhokla.

For Gujaratis of a certain generation, on the other hand, this book will be a nostalgic return to the days when Ahmedabad elected Purushottam Ganesh Mavalankar, a renowned political scientist who once studied under Harold Laski and an independent candidate without deep pockets or connections, to the Lok Sabha, while Umashankar Joshi, a sagely poet-scholar from the city, sat in the upper house (albeit as a nominated member).
   
‘The Gujaratis’ calls for comparison with ‘The Shaping of Modern Gujarat: Plurality, Hindutva and Beyond’ (2005) by noted public intellectual Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth. The older work, however, was the product of two scholars, whereas in this work, Tripathi often lets other scholars and commentators throw light on various issues, expanding the range of voices – not to mention themes. He turns the material into a lively fireside chat – what in Gujarati would be called ‘otla parishad’ – reminiscing about the previous times or joining cultural dots and bringing our connections.

This somewhat informal, conversational mode serves well to talk about a host of things that have remained barely known outside Gujarat – especially in literature, theatre and music. Suresh Joshi brought about a revolution in Gujarati letters; Madhu Rye, Sitanshu Yashashchandra and Labhshankar Thakar, among others, crafted extraordinary prose and poetry. But they have been rarely translated into English and most readers outside would not have heard of them. Unlike Bangla or Tamil, the translation activity from Gujarati has remained limited. Thanks to an overview of recent trends in Gujarati literature in this book, more non-Gujaratis have an opportunity to at least learn about these gems.

For a Gujarati reader, it is a pleasure to know that others too can now read about ‘savaya Gujaratis’ (“one-plus-quarter Gujaratis”), Kakasaheb Kalelkar and Father Valles among others, for whom this language was not the mother tongue and yet they went on to raise the standards of Gujarati prose.

While much of the Gujarati literature may not compare with the best of Indian literature, there are two genres in which it can claim to be the very best. In humour, Jyotindra Dave and Vinod Bhatt in particular have hardly any parallels in other Indian languages. In mysteries and thrillers, Harkisan Mehta and Ashwini Bhatt created an exciting new template of epic-length tales not found elsewhere. But the best of Gujarat will always remain a well-guarded secret: ‘Bhadramabhadra’, Ramanbhai Neelkanth’s Quixote-inspired satire on conservatism, if translated, will need footnotes longer than the main text to explain the word play (somewhat like Satinath Bhaduri’s Bangla classic ‘Dhorai Charit Manas’). Swami Anand’s essays and profiles including ‘Monji Rudar’ – possibly the most enthralling depiction of progressive social change – plays with the language in so many ways that they remain the best possible tributes to the possibilities of Gujarati – and hence cannot be rendered in another language without losing half the fun.

Dhruva Bhatt, in a series of novels with utterly fresh and compelling prose, had started doing a curious mix of what much later became fashionable in the west as eco-fiction and auto-fiction. Again, a couple of them have been translated, but without widespread notice.

There are extraordinary personalities and works from the wonderful world of Mumbai-based Gujarati theatre and the ‘sugam sangeet’. (The one-of-a-kind raconteur Shahabuddin Rathod, among the hidden treasures of Gujarat, finds a mention here.) The world of Gujarati journalism is equally interesting, even if for wrong reasons. The couple of leading dailies and barely one weekly have held sway over not only how Gujaratis look at regional and national events but also at themselves. A notable exception was ‘Samakaleen’ from the Indian Express group, with its maverick editor Hasmukh Gandhi, whose contribution to expanding the potential of the language (not to mention the raising of standards of journalism) is unparalleled.

‘The Gujaratis’ is not conceived as an exhaustive reference work, and it would not be charitable to point out what’s missed out. Indeed, the whole package is akin to that thing non-Gujaratis discovered in the 1990s: called simply ‘Thaali’, it’s a platter of a couple of dozens of food items, all sorts of sweet and savoury (regular or “Jain”, with or without coriander), delighting all kinds of taste buds. You start sampling them, and you are full before you complete tasting each of them. No point, hence, is listing what was not served.

* * *

When Gandhi went to South Africa, Tripathi tells us, he took some Gujarati books with him. One of them was G. P. Taylor’s ‘The Student’s Gujarati Grammar’ (one of the two grammars Cardona had before him before writing his). “I liked it very much. … Taylor asks in it, ‘Who said that Gujarati was inadequate?’ Gujarati, the accomplished daughter of Sanskrit, how could it be inadequate?” said Gandhi, addressing the Gujarati Sahitya Parishad as its president in 1936.

If Gujarati is known as Gandhi’s language, it is also true that he preferred to write in Gujarati. His major works including the autobiography were first written in Gujarati, even if the message was intended for a national or international audience, necessitating a translation soon. To a fellow Gujarati, he obviously wished to speak only in the common tongue – even if Muhammad Ali Jinnah didn’t.

Tripathi, who writes with equal ease in Gujarati among other languages, has delivered an unbeatable introduction to this amazing community for readers in India and abroad, where it has been highly influential. But its majority has created a self-image that has no resemblance to the reality. A Gujarati edition of this book, even if in a different shape and size, can hasten the staunchly avoided self-introspection, especially for a generation who doesn’t know if ‘Dhebar’ was the first name or the family name of the chief minister of Saurashtra.