Book Review

A Spoke in the Wheel by Amita Kanekar

Publisher: Harper Collins India

Originally published in 2005

Pages: 447, Prize: Rs 395

ISBN: 81-7223-574-7

The Buddha is a tragically misunderstood figure like most religious teachers.  He never spoke about god and the life after death.  Yet he became a god and and his representatives claimed to be his or his representatives' reincarnations. Most of his teachings came to be altered.  Amita Kanekar's novel, A Spoke in the Wheel, takes a scholarly look at the life of this great religious teacher and the history of his times.  The novel also shows how the Buddha's teachings came to be altered.

The novel is a brilliant work by a person who has studied the history, myths and legends of the Buddha's and Ashoka's period.

The story is set in two different historical periods: the Buddha's and Ashoka's.  The chapters in the novel alternate between these two periods.  Upali tells the story of the Buddha and the novelist tells the story of Upali in the alternate chapters.

Upali is a Buddhist monk living in Emperor Ashoka's time.  He is writing a book on the Buddha because he wants to show the real Buddha to the world.  The Buddha was in the danger of becoming a myth; he was being deified by his followers.  "The Buddha and his mother were ordinary people, like you and me!" (p 26)Upali admonishes his companion Ananda who is also a monk.  Later Upali tells Xantes, a Greek visitor: "The Buddha was a very wise man, but a man." (p 95) The whole purpose of Upali's writing is to show that the Buddha was a man, not a god.  No one knows about gods, not even whether they exist.  It's not our duty to bother ourselves with gods and life after death.  Our duty is to live this life well. 

"So what if people do think he (the Buddha) was a god?"  asks Ananda.  Upali's answer is the essence of the novel.

"... I think," says Upali, "it destroys the very core of the Buddha's teaching.  Some people say that core is non-violence, others say compassion, others freedom from rebirth.  I think it is humanity. Man as the measure of the world.  The realization that there are no gods, no supernatural forces taking responsibility for everything, no magical formulae.  We have to deal with the world ourselves, and we have to do it standing straight, not prostrate in front of an altar." (p 246-7)

Upali's attempts to bring back the Buddha's real message to his contemporary followers is destined to be defeated.  Emperor Ashoka himself takes interest in Upali's writing.  But Ashoka cannot raise himself above his megalomania.  He calls himself "the Beloved of the Gods" and imagines himself as the master of the universe.  At least his universe, the Magadhe empire.  He keeps the monks under his control by giving them all the donations they need.  The monks are no more required to go begging from door to door, as the Buddha had asked them to do, for their food and other basic necessities such as clothes.  Ashoka played a great role in killing the real Buddha even as he spread Buddhism in all the parts of the world that he could send the monks to!  And Ashoka suppressed Upali's writings too.

The novel presents the gory world that existed in the time of the Buddha.  The wars that exterminated whole tribes.  Upali himself is a survivor of the Kalinga war. Hence he has a dislike towards Ashoka.  But he does not allow that dislike to colour his narrative of the Buddha.  It's not Upali but another character, a monk named Deepak, who speaks the following lines about Ashoka: "He has selected teachings... though the Buddha himself only enumerated the Eightfold Path.  He's giving us a uniform, when the Buddha wore rags from rubbish heaps!  The Buddha said that four or five monks were free to formulate their own rules of living, but now it is to be set by Pataliputra!" (p 288-9) The Pataliputra monastery was Ashoka's own creation.

Ashoka is said to have undergone a transformation after the Kalinga War.  But the transformation did not melt the dictator in him.  A viceroy in the novel blames Ashoka saying that he created a "half-baked bastard culture" and accuses him of being a dictator.  The novel shows that even Ashoka did not understand the real Buddha.  Perhaps he did not want to understand.  Like today's advocates of Islamic fundamentalism or Hindutva. 

The Buddha did not impose any rule on anyone.  He was not even vegetarian as is commonly understood.  He ate whatever was given to him in his begging bowl.  He was against violence of any type, which included, of course, killing of animals.  But he made no rules for that or anything else.  "In fact," says Upali, "the suttas say that the Buddha's last meal was a dish of pork, offered by the woodcutter Chunda." (p 242)

"His (the Buddha's) way did not espouse ritual, magic, idolatry, altars, hymns or any meditational exercise that promised the Ultimate.  Forget eternalities, live in the real world and try to understand it.  It did insist on physical and mental discipline, but not for any mystic powers.  Simply to function better, to be more intelligent, aware and efficient.  It did not deny the existence of any god or Absolute or Infinite, nor did it affirm them, but it did express doubts as to their importance."  (p 278-9)

"There is no heaven, no final liberation, nor any soul in another world.  Spells, incantations, rituals, even the duties of the four varnas - all these are nonsense, invented for the livelihood of those destitute of knowledge and manliness." (P 181)

It was a falsehood that Krishna perpetrated on Arjuna and the subsequent generations of believers that the varna-dharma was more important than one's blood-dharma.  The Buddha sought to correct that falsehood.  (P 111)

The novel questions many of man's popular beliefs and traditions.  It questions even the validity of history. 

It's an eminently readable novel that ought to be read by every Indian, especially those who are bitten by the religious bug.