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discussing it), I think it would be a good idea to
give a brief general outline of the novel.
Its visible protagonist, whose name we are
never told, is a law student in Bombay. In the
most blasphemous way he has renounced the
Islamic faith of his parents, but as the tenth
night of the moon of Muharram wanes he finds
himself at the center of a riot, a street battle
between Muslims and Hindus. It is a night of
tambours and invocations; through the inimical
multitude, the great paper baldachins of the
Muslim procession make their way. A Hindu
brick flies from a rooftop nearby; someone
buries a dagger in a belly; someone—a Muslim?
a Hindu?—dies and is trampled underfoot.
Three thousand men do battle—cane against
revolver, obscenity against imprecation, God
the indivisible against the gods. In a sort of
daze, the free-thinking law student enters the
fray. With desperate hands, he kills (or thinks
he has killed) a Hindu. Thundering, horseborne,
half asleep, the Sirkar police intervene
with impartial lashes of their crops. Virtually
under the hooves of the horses, the student