Hinduism might be true

Sometimes my readers ask me, “Should I read the Mahabharata?” (by which they mean the unabridged translation that I’m currently reading). And it’s hard for me to give them an answer, because on the one hand the Mahabharata is quite long, difficult, and boring, but on the other hand I personally have found reading the Mahabharata to be a transformative, life-altering experience.

There’s no easy way to say this, but increasingly I’ve come to believe that there is a lot of truth to the cosmology and theology that underpins the Mahabharata. Essentially, the Mahabharata lays out the triad of dharma, karma, and rebirth.¹ Dharma is your duty that you have in life. Karma is the merit you accrue from doing your duty. And rebirth is where you reap the benefits (or punishments) due to your soul because of karma.

Personally, I think a lot of this makes sense, on a cosmological level. Certainly much more sense than any Christian afterlife ever made, and, at least to me, it makes much more sense than atheism does.

I’ve never been totally convinced that reading The Great Books shouldn’t be a religious experience—it seems to me these books are largely about the various myths mankind has been able to live by. Relatively few of them are about art-for-arts-sake or self-actualization or any of those uniquely 20th-century myths. Most of them are about duty, in some form.

But…I highly doubt that most of my readers, if they picked up the Mahabharata, would have the same experience with it that I myself have had.

I do not think that even six months ago I would’ve had a religious experience while reading the Mahabharata. That’s because the core of the religion in this book is dharma: your duty. And your duty is really your social role—the thing society expects of you. And for the last twenty years, I’ve tried to convince myself that my purpose in life was to write fiction.

But, obviously, it’s very hard to actually believe that your cosmic purpose is to write fiction, because it doesn’t really make sense. Like…in what specific sense is your fiction cosmically necessary? Does God or the universe or the higher power—do they actually need your fiction to exist?

Reading the Mahabharata came at a good time in my life, because I was already questioning whether the world really needed my fiction. Over the past three months, as I’ve read the Mahabharata, I’ve gained an increasing sense that this blog, this Substack, serves a much more valuable function in the world than my fiction ever did. At least for now, my personal dharma is bound up, I think, with protecting the Great Books and with preserving classic literature.

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But…do I really think non-Indian people will have the same experience of reading this text as I did? Ummm…I don’t know. I do think they’ll really enjoy reading the first four volumes, which are much more narrative in nature. I can definitely recommend that. But after those volumes, the Mahabharata becomes much slower and quite markedly different—it really starts to seem like a place to stash something so that later on a seeker of wisdom might come across it.

For instance, where I’m at, in the 8th volume, Yudhisthira is quite distraught over the human cost of war, and he has a strong desire to run off into the forest and become a mendicant—to abandon the kingship for which he fought so hard. And now basically all the important sages in existence (as well as all his remaining relatives) come together to convince him that he really needs to be King.

There’s some great stuff here. For instance, we get this quote from Bhima, the middle brother, where he tells Yudisthira you’ve got to shape up! We are kshatriya, we are warriors. Our job is not to become sannyasa (renunciants); our job is to act.

If one could obtain success only through sannyasa, then mountains and trees would have swiftly obtained success. They are always seen not to cause injury towards others and are based on sannyasa. They have no possessions and always live on their own. If success can be obtained through one's own fortune and not that of others, one should undertake action. There can be no success without action. Aquatic creatures have no one but themselves to sustain. If that is the criterion, they would obtain success. Notice that everyone in this universe is preoccupied with his own tasks. Therefore, one should act. There can be no success without action.

If the 8th volume of the Mahabharata was just stuff like Bhima literally comparing his brother to a jellyfish, I’d say people should keep reading. But…it’s mostly not this.

For instance, just afterward there’s an extended sequence where Krishna viciously castigates Yudhisthira by naming all the people better than him—people who have also died.

Actually, in classic Mahabharata fashion, Krishna doesn't narrate this directly to Yudhisthira, instead he narrates a story about a sage, Narada, berating another King, Srinjaya, who's sad about the death of his son:

O Srinjaya! We have heard about Bharata, the son of Duhshanta and Shakuntala. He died. He was a great archer and possessed abundant riches and energy. Along the banks of the Yamuna, he tied thirty horses for the gods, twenty along the Sarasvati and fourteen along the banks of the Ganga...He was four times as fortunate as you and more meritorious than your son. When he died, why are you grieving about your son?

This sage, Narada, tells about twenty of these stories, about twenty different mythic Kings who were all better than Srinjaya, and all of them died—then of course he brings Srinjaya's son back to life, because that's what you do. Seems like he could've spared him the speech, but I suppose a lecture is a pretty small price to pay for having your son resurrected.

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Now…I personally am very amused to know that this section of the Mahabharata exists. It is a section that probably none of my friends or relatives know about. Later on in my life, maybe I’ll discover that this section has some unusual religious significance, and I’ll be happy that I read it.

But…is this something that white people should read?

I dunno…seems doubtful, honestly. Like…if a white person wants to read it, that’s great, but…if we’re being totally honest, the vast majority of educated Indian people also have no desire to read the section of the Mahabharata where Narada lists twenty different mythological kings who had it better than Srinjaya.

In reading the unabridged Mahabharata, I have personally stepped way beyond the edge of what even a cultivated Indian (much less Indian-American) person typically does.

But…obviously, it was an extremely good thing to do. For me, personally! I had a religious experience! If I could guarantee that to my non-Indian readers, they would happily read the Mahabharata. They would drop everything to read it, and they’d be profoundly grateful that they took the time.

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The experience I’ve gotten from reading the Mahabharata is so far beyond what I’ve gotten from reading contemporary American literature that I honestly wonder…what is the point of the latter? Yes, the Mahabharata is long and difficult, but it contains authentic wisdom. In contrast, many highly-touted contemporary American books are equally difficult to read, but do not contain nearly as much wisdom.

Now that the pandemic’s over I’ve been getting out more, and I've been meeting a lot of younger writers. And many of these younger writers are excited about, you know, contemporary novels and poetry and memoirs. They're excited by...writers, literary life. They still have ambition. They hope on some level that the world will hail them as great talents. They'd like to compete for the chairs that were once held by, say, Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy.

When I read these latest books by Garth Greenwell and Rachel Kushner, they seem like a clear, self-conscious bid at being labeled as geniuses. These authors have gotten major corporations to buy into that vision of themselves. And that's fair enough—Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy themselves succeeded precisely because they found publishers who were able to market them as major talents. That's also what happened to, say, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen and a dozen other writers we can name. Publishing companies with a lot of money picked their books, pushed them hard, and their reputations were made.

My writer friends still believe in our star-making system. Most literary people basically believe that our system rewards merit, just like at the end of the day most people in my social class tend to believe that the people who got into Harvard are smarter than the people who didn't.

Personally, I’ve noticed that it’s extremely uncommon for me to meet a literary critic who’s as cynical about contemporary American literature as I am. My viewpoints are ones that I can defend, but I think there’s a limit to how many contemporary literature takedowns I can write without ever saying anything good. After awhile it’d be impossible to dodge accusations of bad faith: you go into these much-hyped books expecting to hate them, and you inevitably do.

Ultimately, for reasons of credibility, you do need to eventually praise some of these books!² You do need to be, like, oh okay All Fours or James or Intermezzo is actually good.³

So…where does that leave me?

I honestly cannot imagine investing deeply in the contemporary American literary scene. All these new books that come out every year—contemporary writers and critics tend to read them for careerist reasons. We just want to keep current. We want to know what’s breaking out. I don’t think any of us genuinely believe these are the books that people ought to spend their free time reading!⁴

Personally, I just want to keep reading classic Indian books.

Many of those books will, I hope, be much more accessible than the unabridged Mahbaharata. I have high hopes that the unabridged Ramayana (which I plan to read after I complete the Mahabharata) will be a better entry-point for non-Indian readers who want to seriously engage with one of the Sanskrit epics.

But…even if that’s not the case, I no longer think of this blog has having just an American audience. At least mentally, I've expanded my audience to include the population of 250 million or so English-speaking Indians who could potentially be interested in reading our own classics.

The death of Bibek Debroy made me realize that there is a dearth of literary voices taking classical Indian literature seriously. I talk about whether non-Indians would be interested in these books, but the truth is…even most Indians are not particularly interested in reading this text. Virtually every Indian I’ve spoken to about reading the unabridged Mahabharata is absolutely baffled by the idea.

I do think the case could be made! I can definitely see a time when this ten-volume Debroy Mahabharata becomes ubiquitous in the homes of middle-class Indians. But…that time is not quite now. More work remains to be done.

I’d like to do that work in some form, but…I am American. I was raised in America. I am trans. There’s a Hindu nationalist government in India right now that I hate—and in practice 98 percent of the energy surrounding classic Indian literature is going to be with people who have different views than I do on caste and on the role of religion in contemporary life. So…who knows? But I would definitely like to read and write about these works for a while longer. My own interest in Indian classical literature remains very much engaged.

Finally, on the broadest possible level, I would like to thank everyone who reads this newsletter. This readership means a lot to me, and I know it’s really not a result of my own talents as a writer, but because people have respect for the Great Books. My critiques of contemporary literature only have meaning because people respect the Great Books.

It’s not lost on me that whenever I spoke on behalf of myself—my own vision and my own creativity—nobody particularly cared. But when I spoke on behalf of the Great Books, suddenly there was much more interest. Personally, I hope that I’ve repaid that interest well. Thank you so much for your time and continued readership.

1. This is also the understanding of Hinduism that I got from my grandmother when she’s tried to explain it to me, but obviously things are more convincing when you hear them from a 2,000 year old text versus from your grandmother.

2. You could say, “Why don’t you just praise small press books or overlooked books?” And yes I could do that, but our literary scene is fundamentally in the business of publishing and talking about and evaluating these huge hype-machine books. The main reason you, as a literary critic, write about small-press books (which are usually excellent) is so you have the ability to publish about contemporary literature without sounding like you hate all of it! The fact is, if we were reading just for our own pleasure, we probably wouldn’t read the latest New Directions paperback either! Like, say what you want about Rachel Kushner, but I read her because she was picked by my book club. She did come into my life organically. There is no pathway to that for the latest New Directions release.

3. I’ve read none of these books, I’m just naming them as examples of books that could be good.

4. So what’s good for people to read? I mean…at the end of the day…people should read Middlemarch! Like, girl, don’t yourself to read it, obviously, but…maybe force yourself a little bit! I mean, force yourself to like Middlemarch to at least the same degree that we force ourselves to try and like Rachel Kushner.