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A review by shakespeareandspice
Ahimsa by Supriya Kelkar
5.0
Review originally posted on A Skeptical Reader.
Ahimsa is about a ten-year-old Anjali who’s mother has just quit her job working under the British Raj for undisclosed reasons and a rising Independence movement is about to take her entire life by storm. It opens up with a black Q painted on the side of her mother’s ex-boss’s wall and it takes one into the journey of ahimsa—a practice of nonviolence towards all living things.
Anjali is a remarkable character, a child with flawed perceptions of the world who learns to emerge from her prejudices and disposition to make a difference. Children’s fiction offers adults a very unique opportunity to settle into the mindset of a youth struggling to grasp the adult world and through Anjali’s eyes, we see the struggles not only of a child but also of her country.
India is an incredibly dense region of mixed behaviors and cultures. It’s land that’s gone through hundreds of years of turmoil, integrating people from all walks of life. I cannot emphasize how beautifully Supriya Kelkar has managed to sketch all the nuances of Indian cultures into a children’s book. There are several groups of caste, race, and religion that clash amongst each other and Kelkar explores them perfectly for readers of several ages to grasp.
Whilst reading it, I was having a conversation with a friend about caste and how hard it is to explain the caste system in India to any immigrant but coincidentally, right after that conversation, Kelkar presents a scene where Anjali is asked to examine her sisterly attachment to a Muslim boy, Irfan, when she refuses to even touch a member of her own religion, an Untouchable. Surprisingly, the author even paints Gandhi more realistically, illustrating the hypocrisy and racism of the Father of India himself. To do all of this in an adult novel would be an amazing feat but Kelkar manages to pull it off in a small children’s book, assimilating Anjali’s own limitations with it.
I wouldn’t necessarily say this book is easily accessible to all children. There are words, terms, and subtleties that I think some readers in the West might have difficulty understanding. There is a note in the back of the book where Kelkar has laid out the context to a lot of the major events that occur in the novel so I’d definitely recommend reading that afterwards.
As for the writing, while I don’t think it stands out in an extraordinary way, it does make for a very fast and absorbing read. My attention never once faltered so it’s easily readable in one sitting. And even with the deeply political nature of the novel, Anjali remains a lively character I’ve come to cherish.
Lastly, I would like to thank the author for writing a novel like this. It made me cry but it also just made me incredibly happy and excited for the future generations because Ahimsa exists. It exists and it makes all the difference in the world.
Ahimsa is about a ten-year-old Anjali who’s mother has just quit her job working under the British Raj for undisclosed reasons and a rising Independence movement is about to take her entire life by storm. It opens up with a black Q painted on the side of her mother’s ex-boss’s wall and it takes one into the journey of ahimsa—a practice of nonviolence towards all living things.
Anjali is a remarkable character, a child with flawed perceptions of the world who learns to emerge from her prejudices and disposition to make a difference. Children’s fiction offers adults a very unique opportunity to settle into the mindset of a youth struggling to grasp the adult world and through Anjali’s eyes, we see the struggles not only of a child but also of her country.
India is an incredibly dense region of mixed behaviors and cultures. It’s land that’s gone through hundreds of years of turmoil, integrating people from all walks of life. I cannot emphasize how beautifully Supriya Kelkar has managed to sketch all the nuances of Indian cultures into a children’s book. There are several groups of caste, race, and religion that clash amongst each other and Kelkar explores them perfectly for readers of several ages to grasp.
Whilst reading it, I was having a conversation with a friend about caste and how hard it is to explain the caste system in India to any immigrant but coincidentally, right after that conversation, Kelkar presents a scene where Anjali is asked to examine her sisterly attachment to a Muslim boy, Irfan, when she refuses to even touch a member of her own religion, an Untouchable. Surprisingly, the author even paints Gandhi more realistically, illustrating the hypocrisy and racism of the Father of India himself. To do all of this in an adult novel would be an amazing feat but Kelkar manages to pull it off in a small children’s book, assimilating Anjali’s own limitations with it.
I wouldn’t necessarily say this book is easily accessible to all children. There are words, terms, and subtleties that I think some readers in the West might have difficulty understanding. There is a note in the back of the book where Kelkar has laid out the context to a lot of the major events that occur in the novel so I’d definitely recommend reading that afterwards.
As for the writing, while I don’t think it stands out in an extraordinary way, it does make for a very fast and absorbing read. My attention never once faltered so it’s easily readable in one sitting. And even with the deeply political nature of the novel, Anjali remains a lively character I’ve come to cherish.
Lastly, I would like to thank the author for writing a novel like this. It made me cry but it also just made me incredibly happy and excited for the future generations because Ahimsa exists. It exists and it makes all the difference in the world.