Aavarana by S L Bhyrappa

Excellent story and Narration. Must read for everybody. It try to reveal history which was hidden. It makes you realize how our own history was distorted.Author doesn't try to be politically correct and hide facts. At the same time he doesn't make any false accusations. Though there was so many opposing to this book, truth of what had happened those days will never fade. S L B is one of the best modern novelist which have his own style of narration which takes you all his books to real world , where you encounter the character day to day basis. Book is an eye opener! The literature is amazing - novel within a novel concept. The story written by the protagonist is very brutal though.Aavarana was a fantastic read for me who is a product or a victim of the history distorted by marxists. As a novel, it works at so many levels and Bhyrappa creates a time machine through which we learn about history and the present.

There are many historical facts that are intentionally suppressed and distorted in our history textbooks. Chief among them are the atrocities committed by the Muslim rulers of India during the Mughal rule (with the exception of Akbar) - systematic destruction of Hindu temples (around 30,000 of them in India), destruction of universities and Hindu schools of thought, high taxes and pilgrimage tax for the Hindus, renaming of several Indian towns and cities by Muslim names etc. The intention of suppressing these facts is to discourage "retaliation" or "revenge", or clashing with the Muslims. But S. L. Bhyrappa informs us that suppressing the truth is not the answer. The society should accept the truth, analyze the facts, and learn the lessons from the past lest undesirable social outcomes should occur again. Only then can the society be called progressive and scientific.Aavarana is a historical novel that captures these elements through the characters of a screenplay writer Razia (Lakshmi, a Hindu convert), Amir (her husband and a film director), Dr. Narayana Shastry (a Marxist historian), and their family members. Razia and Amir fall in love when they're studying film making in Pune. Razia converts herself to a Muslim so that she can marry Amir despite her father's dire opposition to her conversion and her marriage to a Muslim. She gets encouragement from Dr. Sastry as being a revolutionary who congratulates the couple on taking a bold path. Both consider themselves progressive in their religious views, and Amir convinces her that her conversion is just a strategy to get by the rigid social norms. Her father disowns her, and being a fellow Gandhian himself who used to preach Gandhian ideals to fellow villagers, is distraught that his own moral position is lost. Razia slowly learns about Amir's bias to his religion and the rigid customs of her husband's orthodox Muslim family. Unable to live with them, she convinces him to live together in an apartment in Malleshwaram, Bangalore. The job of making a documentary film for the government on Hampi necessitates both of them to dig into Hampi's history. While she learns the fact of the Narashima temple being destroyed by the Muslim invaders, her husband Amir maintains that such a narrative would encourage Hindu-Muslim hatred. This core issue of supressing truth for a political agenda is brought out in the differences in the opinions of Razia and Amir in their outlook towards history. Unable to bear Razia's persistence on facts, Amir comes to conclude that she hates Islam and begins distancing himself from her. At the same time, her father dies in his village, learning which Razia discovers that he has been researching on Islam and Muslim rule in India for the past thirty years in his private room, by studying scores of source texts, and consulting more such sources in libraries in Bangalore. Inspired by her father's work, she leaves all her engagements and immerses herself in the study of the books for the next five years. Her resulting novel is then blacklisted and an arrest warrant is issued in her name. The story ends there with Amir rejoining her after several years of separation, and helping her escape from her village home as soon as he learns of the arrest warrant.The book is a powerful narrative that will change the reader's any previously wrongly held opinions on secular thought. Truth, in the end, must prevail no matter what. Heavily researched and extensively referenced throughout for all the claims made, the book gives the reader a feel of life under the Mughal rule in India. It is a book that must be read by anyone seeking accurate and truthful presentation of historical facts. While doing so, the reader also learns of certain inherent features in Islam that make it incompatible with a modern 21st century democracy. A brilliant novel by S. L. Bhyrappa for which it certainly deserves five stars.