Asian Literature

In the novel, In an Antique Land History in the Guise of a Travelers Tale by Amitav Ghosh, the author presents a brilliant and hybrid fiction based on biographical and historical events. The author depicts two stories first, the story of  Abraham Ben Yiju, the twelfth-century 12th century orthodox Tunisian Jew who is strongly aware of his distinctive religious identity. Secondly, the novel tells the story of Ghosh who stumbled upon Ben Yiju through the margins of letters that are written by his slave, Bomma.

    Combining historiography, ethnography and memoir, the author reveals that both Ben Yiju and Bomma lived in the antique lands as foreigners to their culture and surrounded by diversified groups of people. Using historical antidotes and fragments of letters encrypted in an Egyptian synagogue,  Ghosh reconstructed the lives of  Bomma, a name implying a sudden and unexpected turn and leads away from the Brahma of classical Hindu mythology and Ben Yiju, Bommas master whose membership to synagogue was probably more a matter of birth than personal preference. 

    The contrasting religious attributes of Jews and Egyptians give the book its tension.  Ben Yiju lived in a time where Egyptians were not just questioning religious cult and foreign cultural practices but also challenging them.  As viewed by the historical antidotes presented by the author, there is a great deal of contrast and contradiction between the principles of Jews and with the ideologies of Egypt, a nation who has historically struggled for the so-called Westernization and progress.

    Egypts people lived amid the historic structures and the blind belief that their nations culture has progressed. The tension between the surging Jewish fundamentalism and the rising secular intellectualism deeply influenced Ben Yiju to embrace  Egypts culture in which trade overpowers religion. The book describes the fellaheen or Egypt peasants or farmers as having no interest in religion or anything important.

    As Ben Yiju tries to  inculcate some of the practices of Egyptians and Indians who have different faiths, it is implied that the Jewish world is more affirmative of tolerant liberal secularism, admittedly one that does not disrespect the others beliefs and practices.  The author is able to portray the world of Jewish Ben Yiju as more open and hospitable towards differing cultures and is not encouraging the gesture meant for Jewish principles to be absorbed and assimilated with other cultures.  Ghoshs discourse on religion says that religions and cultures are intertwined in a network of differences and continues to be relevant to re-imagining Hindu-Muslim divisions within the nation-state and the partitioned subcontinent at large.

    The author of the novel is persuasive of the intertwine of all religions through several kinds of movements that aim to modify or restructure some parts of their faiths. With the conjoined discussion of the Hindu-Muslim divisions, the author is suggestive of the radical fundamental structure of both religions and conjures with the notion of Jewish faith as an officially tolerated religious minority. 

    In the aspect of the Islamic faith, radicalism is pointed towards a politico-cultural movement that postulates a qualitative contradiction between Western civilization and the religion of Islam. The radical movement of both religions is in contrast with the tolerance movement of the Jews.

    The religious tolerance of the Jews is defined as the willingness to abide the other, whether the otherness is physical, cultural, ethnic, or religious, is probably best thought of as essentially a personal and individual trait.  In the novel, Ben Yiju is a man of many accomplishments, a distinguished calligrapher, scholar and poet... having amasses great wealth in India Given this description, the religious tolerance of Ben Yiju is evident as he is completely absorbed by the secular trends and beliefs in trade of people with other faith.

    Coming from India that embraces the fundamentals of Hinduism and living with Egyptians who uphold the fundamentals of Islamic faith, it can be said that the Jewish world of Ben Yiju has embedded in his spirit the practices of other faiths which contribute greatly in his trade and business. Unlike the world of Indians and Egyptians who strongly recognize the differences in the fundamental principles of their religions, the practice of tolerance by Ben Yujis world considers the sameness of all religions above all else.