Leftist fantasy – How creepy was Gandhi?

When I wrote about Mithu Sanyal’s debut “Identitti” in this newspaper three and a half years ago, the first line was: “The story is quickly told.” There can be no question of that anymore. What is “Antichristie,” your recently published second novel, about? God, where do you start?

Maybe at the end. There is an afterword by the author known as the end credits, woven into the text of the novel, which is then suddenly continued and adds to the furious ending. This is how it goes for 550 pages: things are always going one step further.

“Antichristie” begins as a darkly humorous family story – Durga’s German mother is dead, the ceremony for scattering her ashes doesn’t go quite according to plan. Durga, whose father is Indian and whose job is a screenwriter, then sets off for London, where she is supposed to develop a non-racist Agatha Christie film adaptation together with other authors in a writers’ room. Of course, protests have long since formed against this (“Agatha Christie victim of cancel culture”), and then the old queen dies too. In the Writers’ Room, questions about identity, colonialism and racism are debated, which is briefly reminiscent of “Identitti”.

But then! Let’s just get started: Durga makes an unexpected journey through time under mysterious circumstances and ends up in London in 1906. Although, strictly speaking, this only applies to her mind: she finds herself slimmed down and decades younger in the body of a man, Sanjeev calls her him or himself, again.

The understandably disoriented Durga/Sanjeev quickly ends up in India House, a shared apartment for wealthy young Indian men in the middle of London. As it soon turns out, these men are revolutionaries working to overthrow the Empire’s colonial rule in South Asia, not only by keeping themselves fit for rebellion through tennis, but also, and above all, with weapons. Guns are smuggled and bombs are made in India House. Wait a minute: armed liberation struggle and India?

Durga/Sanjeev, who believes she knows the history of the Indian freedom movement – the present and the future in 1906 – is proven wrong in India House. Or as the author, whose own astonishment speaks here through the protagonist, writes in the credits: For her it was always a relief that “we Indians” offered the “real, non-violent resistance”. But that, as Mithu Sanyal learned, and as we learn in “Antichrist,” is only half the truth.

And Gandhi perhaps not a saint at all? The boss of the non-violent path, who in 1906 does not have the honorary title Mahatma because he has not yet become the Gandhi that Durga/Sanjeev knows as a historical hero, also appears in India House – and turns out to be a “creepy” type. Unlike Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, to whom Durga/Sanjeev is immediately attracted and with whom she/he develops an intimate relationship. Which is no less shocking than the scary Gandhi, because Durga/Sanjeev also knows from Savarkar what he will later become: the spiritual father of Hindu nationalism, on whom – even in the real world – India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP base their anti-Muslim, ideologically embed the fascist course. Durga/Sanjeev knows Savarkar as a “Hindu Hitler” – but in 1906 he is not yet that: “The people behind their theory are always so much more contradictory, tragic, wonderful and yes, also, terrible.”

Through the discussions about the right strategy that Durga/Sanjeev attends in India House, we readers learn a lot, really: a lot, about colonial history; we meet the who’s who of the Indian independence movement – people that some of us don’t even know about a German-language Wikipedia entry exists – and we begin to look at history from a different side than the one we usually deal with in this country. For example, when Durga/Sanjeev, through her/his newly acquired knowledge, feels regret for the first time in her life that Germany lost the First World War. From the point of view of India’s desire for independence, it would probably have been fulfilled much earlier than in 1947 if Great Britain had been defeated.

It is surprising that a novel that delves so deeply into South Asian history – or more precisely: Indian-European interconnectedness – can make it onto the longlist for the German Book Prize. If this text had been a debut, would it have even found a major publisher? Perhaps the success of “Identitti” made it possible. Either way, it’s a great blessing. Because while Mithu Sanyal worked through an original idea in a fairly orderly manner in her first novel, her writing in “Antichristie” is liberated.

And how – anyone who believed that the transformation from family comedy to time travel adventure to historical revolutionary romance had already happened is hugely mistaken. Because as I said: people always go one better. “Antichristie” ultimately turns out to be a crime thriller in the style of British classics: Durga’s presence in the Writers’ Room, which incidentally continues in parallel, is connected to the events in India House, where a murder has to be solved. With the support of none other than Sherlock Holmes. Sounds crazy? Oh, yes!

Mithu Sanyal: Antichrist. Hanser, 544 p., hardcover, €25.

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