Priyanka Paul
M.A in English, The Sanskrit College and University
Abstract
Fiction always includes an empty page with it, on which readers can freely draw any creation of their own. Categorizing any novel into a genre determines our thoughts and imaginations. But the rejection of genre and breaking the boundary is an amazing pursuit. The famous journalist Prayaag Akbar very tactfully entitled his first dystopian fiction Leila in which the eponymous character Leila is a mixed breed of a Hindu mother and a Muslim father. If we pronounce it as „Leela‟, she will be subjugated by the Hindu community and if we pronounce it as „Laila‟, she will be subjugated by the Muslim community. Therefore, Prayaag Akbar is breaking the boundary of community. This paper examines on how the novel is throwing some open ended questions for us to answer and rejecting the idea of categorization by stressing on Marxist Theory and Antonio Gramsci‟s idea of Hegemony. The novel has portrayed a digitized totalitarian regime through the searching of a mother for her only daughter. In this ultra modern society, children are shown comics, created by the government, to make them as their blind followers and criminals are brought into “purity camp” for making a false consciousness in them. Through this paper I will also highlight the role of the state in changing the ideology of people. Though the novel is presenting the situation of Indian society after hundred years of Independence, most probably 2047, the writer is very intensely revealing not the future but the hyper-reality of the devastating impact of certain things which are going around us. Even the novel disowned the stereotypical ending of dystopian fiction which is doomed to total destruction, Leila ends at an uncertain point which keeps the reader in optimism.
Keywords: Categorization, Hegemony, Totalitarian Regime, False Consciousness, Optimism.
Categorizing anything into genre determines our power of imagination and limits our curiosity to go beyond the boundary. We have been trained from the beginning to live in a boundary, not to eat the forbidden fruit. Being in ambit is quite safe, so that when a writer writes any fiction, everyone endeavors to put it into a genre. But the rejection of genre and breaking the boundary is an amazing pursuit. Prayaag Akbar’s debut novel Leila, which explores the interaction of totalitarianism with the developing technology. Dystopian in nature Leila is a camouflage of the critical reality of some terrifying action in present. Prayaag Akbar’s words, “Many of the ideas that entered the book I first touched upon in my journalism. I am trying to show how we already live. Yes, I have exaggerated certain aspects of our urban lives but almost everything in the novel goes around us already.” Akbar is the son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother. His own life enabled him to write a novel about sixteen years of searching for her mixed breed daughter Leila, the eponymous character. The writer very tactfully entitled his first dystopian fiction Leila. If we pronounce it as ‘Laila’, she will be subjugated by the Muslim community and if we pronounce as Leela, she will be subjugated by the Hindu community. Leila presents an imagined city which is the reflection of today’s claustrophobic Mumbai. The advance technology like ‘skydome’, ‘multiplexed shoppingmall’ and ‘flyroads’ enriched the novel with a new interest.
The famous academician Pramod K. Nayar while talking about the function of Ideology opines, “False Consciousness or Ideology is a mode of misrecognizing the true nature of our material lives and social roles when we consume a cultural artifact. It is a system of ideas, values, beliefs, that we live by, through which we perceive the world” (Nayar 130). Ideology is related to power, which legitimizes the domination of bureaucrats upon proletariats by inserting a false consciousness among them. Ideology helps to naturalize the exploitation and inequality in our society. Marxist Literary Theory empowers readers to locate the implicit use of Ideology in a text. The theory emanated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is amply appertainted to Prayaag Akbar’s Leila in which writer explores how the inhuman treatment of high political sector culminates a false consciousness among the lawbreakers in the guile of purifying them, “At Camp they taught us how to look at things. To understand that everything has an order” (Akbar, ch. 11). In Leila, the novelist shows how authority changes the outlook of the people by making their domination permissible. The common people unconsciously accept that all power is engulfed in the sixty feet tall parapet, is considered as ‘Purity wall’ where “people come here to pray and plead” (Akbar, ch. 1). This domination and reinforcement of power not by threat but by taking their consent, is termed as Hegemony, popularized by Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci.
Like George Orwell’s application of the theory of ‘Panopticism’ in his dystopian social science fiction novel Nineteen Eighty-four (1949); ” Big Brother is watching you” (Orwell 65), Prayaag Akbar very tactfully dispensed the theory in his science fiction novel Leila. ” The gaze is alert everywhere: A considerable body of militia, commanded by good officers and men of substance, guards at the gates, at the town hall and in every quarter to ensure the prompt obedience of the people…” (Foucault 2). Michel Foucault’s theory of Panopticism interprets inducing a state of consciousness by keeping the masses always under the surveillance by the authority mirrors the supervision imposed upon every segmented city in Leila by the council. These sectors are segregated according their race, caste and religion, like ” Tamil Brahmin Sector, Leuva Patel Residency, Bohra Muslim Zone, Catholic Commons, Kanyakubj Quarters, Sharif Muslimeen Precinct, Maithali Acres, Chitpavan Heights, Syrian Christian Co-op, Kodava Martials” by magnificent walls. The authority attributes their disciplines upon them and observes them from a hundred feet tall ‘Purity Pyramid’ which is in the middle of all sectors. This system of administration in Leila is akin to the Panopticon model, proposed by Jeremy Bentham in describing the structure of 18th century prisons where prisoners are separated from each other and their every action was observed by the authority from a high tower, all the power resides there.
We can also illustrate Akbar’s Leila, which is written through the mental projection of the protagonist Shalini, from a feminist point of view. Feminist Literary Theory mainly examines on the discrimination in gender, sexual objectification, patriarchy and oppression of women. In the depicted city women are brought into a reformatory center for regeneration through changing their social ideology by inhuman treatment both mentally and physically. Leila reflects the oppression of women, belonging from various class and community, which pictures a dismal side of Indian society, they were brought into the camp for example, Prarthana for her lesbian relationship, Sonam because of her love for a boy from same ‘gotra’, a Thevar girl Vasanthi for her relation with a Dalit boy, a Muslim girl’s elopement with a Yadav boy, Sana’s instigation for a campaign against the prejudices in her community. In ‘Purity camp’ Mr. Vijay, one of the councilors took sexual advantage from Shalini by promising her registration in the Ministry of Settlement. Shalini realized every woman in the ‘Purity camp’ has an overwhelming past, their individual sufferings, everyone is in difficult situation; “All those women were tough, tougher than me. Iyre was right” (Akbar, ch. 6). Shalini’s narration of the whole story explores the cognitive thought processing in her mind. Leila portrayed not only Shalini’s quest for her daughter but also her sixteen years struggle for freedom and justice, quest for her self-identity.
The concept of Hyperreality, expounds the distortion of the reality, is a term propagated by French Post-modernist critic Jean Baudrillard. Hyperreality is about the inability to express the exact truth, a condition when we get confused to discriminate what is truth and what is fiction. In the depicted city of Leila, the Council always promises to create a utopian society by producing them safety, purity and luxury. Once the spokesperson of the authority Joshijee shouted, “I will take us to the pure city…Each must protect our walls, our women.” Their commitment to produce a protected uncontaminated luxurious life is merely to seize their liberty, “Yeh azaadi jhooti hain”. The authority has partitioned each sector from others to sustain the purity but they are actually emerging discrimination in the mind of people: “Whyyyy share-the-air?”. The landfill conflagration in the slum area is the consequence of new technological invention; such as ‘Skydome’ which disperses outside corrupted particles and poisonous gases. In the Purity Camp, the lawbreaker women are treated for regeneration by accepting their guilt but actually the authority harassed them both mentally and physically. Indeed, the actual truth about the state is being distorted by the authority’s new policy, their commitment for giving a peaceful society.
In the novel, the council has produced new sets of laws in order to protect peace, decontamination and safety by applying twenty-four hours of surveillance with the motto, “Purity For All”. The city is forcefully divided by high ‘Purity walls’ into many sectors according to the community, the check-posts are guarded by ‘repeaters’ and restricted from any kind of interaction with other community. The dwellers are not identified by their name but by the community they belong from. The inequalities of caste, race and religion is so much visible in this city that the privileged classes live in the sectors surrounded by high walls and protected from impurity, in contrast, lower caste people live outside the walls, surrounded by landfill fires and garbage mountain. All prestigious good schools are associated with individual sectors because they tried to sustain their purity by restricting their child to forge any friendship with the children from other community. This is so much relevant to our modern India where some schools are reserved for individual community or some are reserved for moneyed class. Children from labor class are rearing up in the public schools where the backbone of education system is severely fractured.
The terrifying future Leila presents before us is the current situation of this catastrophic world which is standing at the verge of collapsing administration and environmental erosion. We have already planted the seed of this horrific present. Leila portrays the ‘high sectors’ segregated by unscalable walls, are so much leafy and clasped by greenery, with its wide avenues which are “encircled by hillocked lawns”. The Government’s new launched technology ‘skydome’ is about to cover these community sectors, inside which the air will be purified by emitting polluted gases and corrupted particulates which inflames the landfill outside. The novelist has borrowed this idea from the effects of Air Conditioner which releases harmful greenhouse gases that lead to global warming. Beyond these high walls, the desolate filthy areas, full of noisome meld of human waste, are habituated by scavengers. Industrial effluents, high society’s trash and rotting vegetables made these slum areas so much unhygienic that the air is too thick to breath. These pictures remind us not the impending days but in present Mumbai and Kolkata where opulent classes are inhabiting in splendid edifices and the swarm of penniless people are dwelling in slum areas like Dharabhi in Mumbai and Belgachia in Kolkata.
We also find many other resembles which are related to modern days India. We can trace some facts from which Prayaag Akbar perhaps got inspiration to write his masterpiece. In Leila, the protagonist Shalini Pathak, belonging from the Hindu community married a Muslim Guy Rizwan Chowdhury by going against the rules of their city. After marriage Shalini and Riz went to the East End to avoid the norms of that regime and there they were blessed with a daughter. But on the day of Leila’s third birthday, the Repeaters, Government’s vigilante, attacked them and murdered Riz. Shalini was brought in the ‘Purity camp’; a reformatory center where the lawbreakers are kept for their mental purification. Lynching for inter-faith marriage is an undeniable truth of Indian History. In Meerut 2017, Bajrang Dal, youth wing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, disrupts interfaith couple’s marriage. We can relate Shalini Pathak and Rizwan Chowdhury’s story with the real incident of Krishna and Saddam who were caught by Bajrang Dal and Saddam was beaten to death. The Repeaters in this novel brings in our mind the thought of many toxic social bands who keep every human activity under their surveillance. The Bajrang Dal in Maharashtra had a slogan ‘Seva, Suraksha, Sanskar or Service, Safety and Culture’ echoed the motto of the council in this fiction; “He put two fingers of his right hand on his heart. ‘Purity For All,’ he said.”
In Leila Shalini depicts a homosexual relationship of Prarthna, a lawbreaker in purity camp, and her lover, with whom she eloped from her house and bribed a judge for their registry. They lived as roommates in a rented flat in their own sector. But when Prarthna’s community came to know, her father warned about the prowling of the repeaters, “So many times he came and each time I said no. We had our own problems, I told him. Still he kept coming. Once he even warned me. He’s heard that the elders in our sector aware of our situation. That the repeaters were prowling” (Akbar, ch. 6). The Repeaters brought her in the ‘Purity camp’ where she has been brutally tortured and sexually abused by the authority. It reminds us an incident of Lesbian Love Attacked in Kanpur, where two women were harassed by Police with the instigation of their families, though they had court’s permission. On 2018 September 6, the honorable Supreme Court of India made a landmark judgement by decriminalizing the Article 377. Despite of that we recently heard an incident of Murshidabad where two women were cruelly beaten and molested by their relatives for their lesbian relationship.
Leila pictures how the role of the of the power in shaping the identity of the masses. Shalini appointed Sapna for looking after her daughter, belonging from East slum. In spite of being a rational man, Shalini never came out from the prejudices which community inculcated in her mind. “Look, look’, she said. ‘She is kissing her. Look at that. Nose, cheeks, forehead. How can you allow that?” (Akbar, ch. 10) Shalini prohibits Sapna for kissing Leila again, “I came to realise, was the thought of her saliva on my daughter. I imagined faint, near-invisible lines of spit, slowly soaking into my daughter’s skin, becoming part of her. That night I told Sapna she wasn’t allowed to kiss my daughter anymore” (Akbar, ch. 10). Sapna got humiliation and delineated suppression of the marginal class by the elite class. She was only allowed to sit on the floor, “Such strict rules you had about the furniture in your house. Sit there, don’t sit there” (Akbar, ch. 11). Once Shalini and Sapna confronted a public blockade for water problem in East Slum of which Shalini didn’t have any idea. Skeptically she asks, “Three years? You haven’t had waster for three years” (Akbar, ch. 5) as the elite has never been interested to know about the sufferings of the marginal. Shalini understands the truth that power is the only factor which can transform anyone from inferior to superior. Sapna, her maid and Ashish, once Man Friday of Joshijee, become the members of high political sector, “From the first bend you see the mansion, beyond a broad ledge of lawn, a fountain and ice-blue pool and neat rows of potted palms…How did Sapna become this? My chest begins to hurt once more” (Akbar, ch. 11).
Shalini’s enquiry for Sapna in the Ministry of Settlement according to the computer records, where she becomes confronted with a harsh reality outside of the wall. Sapna lives in Haranagar landfill which is the largest garbage mountain. Shalini comes to know that the landfill fire is actually curse of modern technology. It is occurring for the Skydome that provides upper-class people a luxurious life, “You put huge air conditioner, pumping cold air into each of the domes. Don’t you know what happens behind an air conditioner, what comes out of its ass? That’s where the hot air is. Hotter than the sun” (Akbar, ch. 9). But the council always stigmatizes scavengers for set the landfill into fire, which is the source of their livelihood. The authority arrests them and takes compensation, “Fifteen’ twenty thousand, for each person’s release. Where will we get that money? I make a hundred a day. Hundred and fifty if I find metal, some unspoilt plastic. Are we crazy? Sffffllllt. Why would we burn it down?” (Akbar, ch. 9). Shalini realizes the miserable condition of Sapna, Ashish and their whole group had. Being born in a lower caste family in this city is an anathema, “Our crime is being born, we don’t get anything, we don’t deserve it” (Akbar, ch. 9). Abusing the poor classes without any reason is common in our society. In our country, the situation of the migrant workers at the time of Covid 19, was quite similar with the condition of scavengers in Leila. Many political parties and upper-class people unjustly accused them for spreading Corona virus in India but it was the affluent class who returned from abroad, performed a key role in spreading virus in our country. We can recall another incident at the time of Marichjhapi Massacre of January 1979, the government unwarrantedly blamed and forcibly evacuated the refugees for destroying the environment.
Famous director Deepa Mehta and scriptwriter Urmi Juvekar Akbar’s Leila adopted in 2019 for an Indian Hindu-language drama web series with the same title. The character of Shalini has been acted by Huma Qureshi. Though the web series is claiming the world it presents is about our future; hundred years after Independence. But there are so many events that are instigated from our ultra modern society. The imagined city is named Aryavarta where children watch comics of ‘Bal Joshi’ which is produced by the council to make them their blind followers. There, schools played an important role in shaping the students’ identity by changing their ideology. It reminds us, in 2018, many schools in Madhya Pradesh were ordered by the Government to enable the rule of saying ‘JAI HIND’ during the time of roll calls. In the web series “Leila”, rolling on the leftover food of rulers and marriage with dog is forcefully done as the treatments of Purity Camp by lawbreaker women. In Karnataka temple devotees roll on the leftover food of priest as a traditional ritual of Bhagwa Dhotis. We often read in newspaper that tribal woman is forced to marry with animal to ward off evil spirit from their luck. By assembling these resemblances with real occurrences, we can easily deny that the dramatized version of Leila is dystopian. Though the web series slightly deviates from what Akbar depicts in his book, but it minutely portrays the present situation of our country.
Getting inspiration from the protagonist of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Akbar choose to writes his story from the perspective of an indomitable woman. He used stream of consciousness technique and kind of schizophrenia to make his story prominent. The quest of Shalini for her daughter, rather for her own identity in this digitised totalitarian regime, never ceased. Open ended fiction always delivers multiple prospects, left the reader to draw a subjective conclusion by using his/her own intellect, own imagination. It allows us to amalgamate our own opinion. Leila presents an uncertain ending, according to Akbar, “You have only an empty page, a blinking cursor in front of you. It’s like a field in which you can run anywhere. Why would you impose limits on yourself?” It is not clear whether Leila recognizes her mother or not, whether Shalini unites with her daughter, whether she gets salvation from this panoptical city or she is thrown back again in the tragical life of Purity Camp. We can conclude that Shalini will be succeed in her mission because no political power inhibits the love of a mother for a child. The council will never get success in changing the ideology of Shalini. Every dystopian novel reflects dilapidation at the end; such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) we have observed how the authority demolished the thinking power of Winston and Julia. Through this novel, the famous journalist Prayaag Akbar has broken the boundary of dystopian fiction by associating it with present. Ending of Leila left us with a clue that our society will be changed into a utilitarian regime because changing is inevitable. In Jeremy Bentham’s words:
“Is it possible for a man to move the earth? Yes; but he must first find out another earth to stand.” (Bentham 16)
Works Cited:
Akbar, Prayaag. Leila. Kindle ed., Simon & Schuster, 2017.
Nayar, Pramod K. Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: From Structuralism to Ecocriticism. Pearson, 2010.
Foucault, Michel. “Panopticism from Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison.” Project Muse, vol.2, no.1, 2018, pp. 1-12.
Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Batoche Books, 2000.
Trehan, Madhu. “NL Interviews: A Woman Search for her Child in Dystopia – Prayaag Akbar’s Leila.” YouTube, Newslaundry, 2017, http://www.newslaundry.com/.
Leila. Directed by Deepa Mehta, Shanker Raman and Pawan Kumar. Open Air Films. 2019. Netflix. www.netflix.com/title/80222951?s=a&trkid=13747225&t=wha.
Priyanka Paul is a postgraduate in English from The Sanskrit College and University. She graduated from The West Bengal State University. She qualified UGC NET in English Literature. Her research interest areas are Marxist theory, Feminism, Post-modernism, Dalit Studies, Theatre of the Absurd, British Romantic Poetry, British Victorian Poetry, British Modernist Poetry and Post-modern theatre.
[Volume 5, Number 1, 2023]
