Book: A Bend in the Ganges
Author: Manohar Malgonkar
Pages: 418
Publisher: Harper Collins
Read On: Paperback Edition
How Long it Took Me To Read: 4 days
Plot Summary: India, 1939. Gian, a Gandhian pacifist, commits a murder; Debi-dayal, an ardent revolutionary, is caught while setting fire to a British plane. Both men are sent to the Andamans penal colony. In the beehive life of the prison, they work in opposite camps-pro-British and anti-British. During World War II, when the Japanese take over the islands, all the convicts suddenly find themselves free. Gian and Debi manage to return to India only to get sucked into the violence of Partition.
An epic saga of a nation in transition, A Bend in the Ganges, now available in a stunning new edition, depicts the cataclysmic events leading up to Partition and the conflict that arises between ideologies of violence and non-violence.
Things I Liked:
1. I loved reading books set in India right at the cusp of freedom. The 1940s and everything that happened in the country and what the climate was like and how it affected the people and lives that were changed forever. This book starts off in the end of the 1930s and ends in 1947. So we see India going through it's most significant point in history and I will always want to read about this time period. This book shows us the larger picture and what was happening with the Freedom Struggle and the politics of the time and it also shows us the life of regular people, something I liked very, very much.
2. The two boys at the heart of this novel- Gian and Debi-dayal - are very interesting, layered characters. They are not black or white. They are heroic but flawed. They are driven by more than patriotism and they make decisions that show their youth and inexperience. So, it was nice to read about 'real' characters- not some heroic freedom fighters, who only made the right decisions or did the right things!
Also, the family backgrounds of both boys, their ideologies and the trajectory their lives take are so interesting to read about.
3. Whilst the book does not cover a huge swathe of Indian history, but it does cover a very hectic, eventful period. The years from 1939 to 1947 were when the independence movement was at its peak and the impact of World War II was being felt in India in a very real way- from our men being sent all over the world to fight in a war they'd got nothing to do with to Japan almost reaching our shores with the lofty idea of freeing India from the British. Thank God they didn't get to do that! Japan of the 1940s was brutal and barbaric and its treatment of Prisoners of War was no less brutal than that of the Germans, maybe even more so! So, anyway, the events of those tumultuous years and their impact upon "regular" families has been shown quite well in the book.
4. There were always "pro-British" and "anti-British" camps in pre-Independence India. There were people from all walks of life, who felt that the British were better administrators because they were "fair and just", whereas Indian government officials were corrupt and, often, brutal. Lots of "ordinary" men and women couldn't imagine what India would look like minus the British administration. So, even at the Cellular Jail in the Andamans, there were prisoners, who wanted to play nice with the British jail authorities- they did small office jobs (the educated ones) for which they got paid and some even did some minor spying for the Brits. It is easy to sit here in 2022 and judge the men, who played nice in India's most brutal jail, but imagine going there and having a chance to have a quiet existence without being beaten or flogged by the Brits, wouldn't anyone be tempted to just quietly do some office work for them? The book does a great job of raising this question- who is a hero and who is an anti-hero?
5. This is a very well written book and quite a page turner as well. Never a dull moment. It has multiple sub-plots, so many different supporting characters and just so much happening in it that makes for very engrossing reading.
Rating: 4.5/5
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