Somnath Batabyal grew up in a troubled Assam during the Bongal Kheda movement. Having experienced the strife-torn region as a child, the London-based professor of the School of Oriental and African Studies, revisits his childhood once more with his third book Red River.
The novel, which took Batabyal 13 years to complete, tries to understand violence and how it is normalised besides understanding the concept of nation-state from the perspective of three different families living in Assam.
“Primarily I wanted to understand how we survive in times of violence. It was a very violent time in Assam during the ’80s and ’90s and still, when I look back at my childhood it was fun. There’s so much violence and trauma all around but we would ignore a warning for a bomb under the seat of a bus or a call for a curfew would mean no school and cricket on the street,” said Batabyal, who calls himself an economic migrant... one who had moved to Calcutta in 1942 before heading to Delhi and eventually to the UK.
He said: “I also wanted to consider the nation-state itself through three different points of view. One is a refugee family, who has moved from Bangladesh, and does not belong but wants to belong; the other is the Army family who strongly believes in the concept of nation-state and lastly, there is the separatist family from ULFA, who want to separate from the nation-state. So I wanted to understand the concept of nation-state and who wants to belong, who doesn’t want to belong and who is allowed to belong.”
The book that traces the conflict of two generations of the three families is divided into sections — Our Parents’ Stories, Our Stories, Samar’s Story and The Return — and is biographical in bits. Talking about the process of juxtaposing all three stories in the narrative, Batabyal, who still feels a sense of strong belonging with Assam over the UK, said: “All the three stories came to me in different ways. It’s not a critique of one nation but the nation-state as an institution and what it does to lives. There’s so much of hyper-nationalism everywhere. I am a UK citizen and have been living there for the last 20 years but look at this entire anti-migrant movement, a very angry rhetoric towards people who are not from your nation. It’s a mean world that we live in.”
The professor of sociology is a deep thinker and with a sense of contentment in his voice, he informed that he asked the right question while researching and writing the book. “I am content that I did not take any shortcuts till I felt it’s the best possible book I could write at this point in time. Do I have all these answers? No. When you start interrogating, more questions come out. I wasn’t looking for solutions but asking the right questions. That itself is movement, a progression. I problematise things rather than find solutions. As a sociologist, I think about things very deeply,” said Batabyal for whom writing the character of Samar Dutta, referenced on the author, was the hardest as he didn’t want him to be like him in the world of fiction.
Batabyal, who has lived with his characters — Samar, Rizu and Rana — for 13 years, feels a sense of emptiness now that the book is out. He said: “They are all alive in me. They still talk to each other in my head and there’s a strange feeling of loneliness now that the book is out. Every night I would let them have a conversation and in the morning I would write. You get so deeply involved in their lives and then suddenly they are gone.” What is he filling that void now with? “I am very tired with book launches at the moment and I want to take some time out before I get on to my next book. I know what I want to write about but will start letting the characters in soon,” he said.