TEN INCARNATIONS OF REBELLION

Reviewed by Steven H Silver

Vaishnavi Patel offers a vision of India still subjugated by the British in the 1960s in Ten Incarnations of Rebellion. Her focus is on Kalki Divikar, an Indian girl who lives in Kingston, an Indian town that supports the British community in Old Bombay. The daughter of a disappeared revolution she calls Baba, the novels opens with Kalki living with her mother, who she calls Aai. A school girl, her promise has her attending a British school with the possibility of a scholarship to a British-run college, which can lead to a civil service career. Kalki, however, was raised by her father and has his revolutionary spirit. She sees how the British keep their foot on Indian progress and imagines what a free and independent India could look like.

All too often, revolutions in novels succeed in an unbelievable short time span. Patel makes it clear that not only have the locals been attempting to out their British overlords for more than fifty years, but she also describes generation of minor successes and major failures. historic and fictional revolts are describes, with outcomes both historic and altered long before Kalki and her companions begin their rebellion. Kalki's rebellion against India's British overlords is also a long-term, campaign that grows slowly, with each chapter (incarnation of rebellion) set a year apart, providing a decade of activity before its ultimate conclusion. The chapters each end with a short tale based in Indian history or folklore, which provides a cultural touchpoint for the characters, their activities, and the growing revolution.

Although Kalki and the Kingston Indian Liberation Movement are relatively isolated from revolts in other parts of India, it is clear that the British find themselves dealing with wars and rebellions not only throughout India, but also in colonies in Africa and elsewhere in Asia. Kalki's independence movements is just one part of a broader trend.

Patel handles the tension well. Her characters must skirt around law enforcement, curfews, the potential to be discovered by the authorities or their bosses, and, as the rebellion grows, the possibility of traitors in their midst. Help comes from obvious sources, such as Mr. Kapadia, who fought alongside Kalki's Baba, but also less obvious ones, like the enigmatic "Mr. O'Brien," who provides the ILM with warnings of government intelligence (while making the reader thing of Orwell's 1984). Having already lost her husband to rebellion, Kalki's Aai, is leery of any subversive activity and tries to steer Kalki away from the cause to which her husband and daughter have devoted their lives.

One of the aspects of the novel that Patel handles well is the question of information, not necessarily misinformation or propaganda, but access. Kalki has not only learned Indian history through the British run schools, but also through the oral history her Baba taught her before he was arrested. Once she becomes an active revolutionary, she learns more from Adi, a rebel from outside Kingston who can occasionally reach out to her, but she realizes everything she has learned, in school, from her Baba, and from Adi, is suspect as far as interpretation. It is only after she manages to gain access to the secret records the British keep that she is able to fully understand what has happened.

Patel successfully creates a world which seems much larger than her story yet manages to make the story she tells feel important on both the micro and macro levels. Kalki's failure or success directly impacts her, her family, and her friends, as well as the Hindus, Muslims, and British working in and around Kingston and Bombay. At the same time, Patel allows the reader to see what their failure will look like on an national scale because she has shown what past failure looks like with the previous Indian independence movements.

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