Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey Through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate

by Amitava Kumar

"In the summer of 1993, while India and Pakistan were engaged in a war, Amitava Kumar - a Indian Hindu writer living and teaching in the United States - married a Pakistani Muslim woman. That event led to a process of discovery that prompted Kumar to examine the hatreds and intimacies joining Indians and Pakistanis, Hindus and Muslims, fundamentalists and secularists, writers and rioters." In Husband of a Fanatic, Kumar chronicles the entanglements that his new marriage provoked - from ambivalent encounters with family to his disquieting lunch with the amiable bigot who had posted Kumar's name on his Web site blacklist of Hindu traitors. Kumar also travels across the South Asian continent, visiting a classroom in riot-torn Gujarat, a village beside the Ganges, a psychiatric ward in Kashmir. With a poet's eye for detail, Kumar draws a map of violence, moving from the wars and nuclear rivalry dividing two nation-states to the more blurred relationship between two religions and their adherents.

Genres: Nonfiction, Pakistan, India, Travel, Islam, Muslims, Hinduism

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Amitava Kumar is a novelist, poet, journalist, and Professor of English at Vassar College. He was born in Bihar, India; he grew up in the town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty, and delicious mangoes.

He is the author of Nobody Does the Right Thing; A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb; Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate, a New York Times “Editors’ Choice” selection; Bombay—London—New York, a New Statesman (UK) “Book of the Year” selection; and Passport Photos. He is the editor of several books, including Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate, The Humour and the Pity: Essays on V. S. Naipaul, and World Bank Literature. He is also an editor of the online journal Politics and Culture and the screenwriter and narrator of the prize-winning documentary film Pure Chutney.

Kumar’s writing has appeared in The Nation, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, The American Prospect, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hindu, and other publications in North America and India.

Reviews

[Melisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think my problem with this books was that I wanted it to be something else. Given the title I expected it to look at Muslim-Hindu relationships at a very personal level but instead it was a long, repetitive ramble through various communal riots on the subcontinent. Lots of horrific stories from survivors of violence, lots of discomfort on the author's part, but not the in depth look at the relationship between Muslim wife and Hindu husband (and their families) that I'd expected from the title. It wasn't a bad book but I didn't find it terribly engaging and I wasn't sad to be done with it.

[Sheeba Khan]

I don’t know why I picked up this book, ‘Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey through India, Pakistan, Love and Hate, by Amitava Kumar, from the QNL. I initially thought that it would be something personal that the author, Amitava Kumar, has gone through in marrying a person from a different faith and a country than his. Though there has been an account of the same, the book is more about the hate between the two communities in India in particular.

The book records the horror tales and recounts of the people that have experienced riots and communal violence in parts of India like Gujarat and Bhagalpur, it also describes the negligence of duty, and the atrocities committed by the law-and-order enforcement agencies in the states of Jammu & Kashmir and Bihar. Not only this, the book highlights the incidents in South Asia, but it also makes the reader aware of the prejudices that people harbor even if they are thousands of miles away living in the West.

The book’s text does not mention any references, though there is a brief bibliography at the end of the book. Perhaps it’s primarily due to the primary information collected by the author in the form of interviews and discussions that he has had. The book has a lot of gory details, especially in the last chapter, “The Blind Men”, that leaves the reader in an uncomfortable state. It is a well written book that does not end on a positive or a hopeful note. Maybe it’s so since the topic that the author chose is too controversial and the situation the author thinks would not improve in the foreseeable future. I am confused as to what to rate this book to as I was thinking what to write about this book. The book has certainly left a dent in my thought process and now I am out of words, I am speechless!

[Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written by a professor from Penn State University who is Hindu, I expected a better narrative. He began writing this book when he planned to marry a Pakistani woman who was Muslim. Their parents were against it and get parents wanted him to convert. Both refused. The book discusses some very serious problems between Muslim and Hindus and Indians and Pakistanis. Women especially are being raped and murdered in the conflict. The leaders of these two countries have nuclear missiles pointed at them. The author discusses everything in interviews with others in the West and in India/Pakistan. They express very hostile views and I felt the author couldn’t break them out into something cohesive and comprehensible. It’s kind of messed up and a mishmash. I’m interested in the topic and want to help, but isn’t going to help me understand better.

[Manish · Rating 1 out of 5]

Extremely immature writing. Shameful of an Indian who teaches in an US University to pass off such blinkered, one sided, and myopic views as facts. He takes a subject that deserves a lot of attention but makes such a mishmash of the story that it seems like a die hard Hindu appologist appealing to the Muslims of the world - Embrace me. I have conveted and not an infidel anymore.

[Lillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2000, Amitava Kumar's name was placed on a hit list belonging to a right-wing Hindu group because of an article he wrote describing a visit to Pakistan and his marriage to a Muslim. Amitava was living in the United States at the time, as was the man who placed his name on the list. This book was written in response ... as a way of exploring the idea of an enemy. "I wanted to meet face to face a man who thought I was his enemy, to see if I could understand why he hated me so much, and why he hated other people who were different from him." It's also an enlightening/horrifying report on the history of violence in the Indian subcontinent. No easy answers here, but an honest grappling with enmity on a personal as well as societal level. A couple of quotes I want to remember:

Pg. 39 - There was also a report from Calcutta. It mentioned that Mahatma Gandhi, while addressing the crowd gathered for a prayer meeting with him, had said that Hindus should not object to the cry Allah-u-Akbar which was raised by the Muslims. Gandhi "held that it was probably a cry greater than which the world had not produced. It was a soul-stirring religious cry which meant that God only was great. There was nobility in the meaning. Did it become objectionable because it was in Arabic? Hindus should have no hesitation in uttering the cry together with their Muslim friends." ... I found this bewildering ... But I also understood that Gandhi was trying to remove that fear by reading the meaning of the cry literally and reminding everyone of that basic truth. More than that, in that utterly radical appeal to Hindus that they too should participate in saying Alla-u-Akbar, he was underlining the respect one has to have for other religions distinct from one's own. He was laying claim to the belief that he himself, and also everyone else, was bound to God and not to religion, and hence, as he had once famously declared about himself, we were all, each one of us who were Indian, simultaneously Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Sikh.

Pg. 154 - I realized that the Hizb militant from the other side of the border had no such memories of a shared life. He had known only sameness. He has not experienced the force, or the grace, of religious difference as a vital part of his society. What the Kahsmiri poet was lamenting that day was the killing of a syncretic culture ...

[Jaclynn (JackieReadsAlot) · Rating 4 out of 5]

My last book of 2016!
The title is somewhat misleading, as very little of the book has to do with the author (a Hindu from India) and his personal relationship with his wife and her family (Muslims from Pakistan). It's more of a personal journey of discovery for him, and a very interesting and very heartbreaking one. In 2000, Amitava Kumar's name was placed on a hit list belonging to a right-wing Hindu group because of an article he wrote describing a visit to Pakistan and his marriage to a Muslim. This book was written in response ... as a way of exploring the idea of an enemy. This is also an enlightening and extremely horrifying report on the history of violence in the Indian subcontinent since the partition. No easy answers here, but an honest grappling with enmity on a personal as well as societal level.

[priya bhayana · Rating 3 out of 5]

He makes no assumptions about what historical background the reader has - explaining everything in detail that is easy to grasp and conceptualize. Didn't leave me with a sense of conclusion, or of having really learned something that altered my perception of the relations between Muslims & Hindus. At times I think, though he tries to avoid it, he does stereotype and makes his own conclusions that aren't necessarily supported by his experiences. Still, very interesting read.

[Tarun Rattan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is confused about his identity and I got the impression that this book was written for personal exploration. It does not offer anything new to help understand the dynamics of Hindu-Muslim relationship in India and Pakistan.
Analyzing Bhagalpur incident in this book does not make much sense, in fact it makes everything more confusing. The author should have stuck to the core subject. Its another rant by yet another Hindu apologist.

[Catherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really tried to finish this incredibly redundant and plodding book. I made it to page 162 (out of 296) grueling pages. An interesting subject, but the book was far too padded out with miniscule, unimportant details, and (my pet peeve) citing other writers, poets and philosophers in an attempt to complete the book. It just didn't work for me.

[Alia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A life of a marriage between dual religion. Interesting!

[Florence Buchholz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The prevalent mistrust and hatred between Muslims and Hindus was never so apparent to me before reading this.

[Manish Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Book. Evocative. Thought provoking. Well written

[Lily Kurtz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read for class... but I actually really enjoyed it, so yay!