Interlude: A Review of Amitava Kumar's latest book, Evidence of Suspicion

Taking a break from filing a Jaipur diary today. Have typed too much in the past week so I think I'm taking it easy today. In the meanwhile, here's my review of Amitava Kumar's Evidence of Suspicion which appeared in today's Business Standard.


Amitava Kumar’s latest book truly lives up to its title. And I don’t mean this in a negative way. On the contrary, it is remarkable that a work of non-fiction on a subject like terrorism — one which evokes extreme reactions, views, opinions and images — can be written in a manner where the writer has ensured that these elements do not impinge on the narrative. Indeed, Kumar performs a riveting yet erudite examination of a very complex phenomenon using a very methodical approach.


Essentially, Evidence of Suspicion examines the social and moral consequences of the war on terror through the prisms of literature, art and journalistic reportage. Kumar’s approach is a slightly dangerous one because — such is the nature of these prisms — he could easily have been lured into using just one angle. Instead, his methodical approach is what saves him, and what ultimately emerges is an even, structured narrative.


The book starts with Kumar meeting Iqbal Haspatel, a retired working-class man who was falsely arrested in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case and brutally tortured by the police. Kumar’s narration of the journey to Haspatel’s house, the story of his arrest and torture and his subsequent release is an example of journalistic writing of a quality rarely seen these days.


Using the example of Hemant Lakhani, an FBI informant standing trial for selling fake missiles, Kumar presents a powerful argument on how US authorities used a person’s habits, personality traits and behavioural patterns to build a case against him. This is one striking feature of this book. There are two more: Kumar’s interaction with numerous American artists who examine terrorism through their works, and his analysis of the “literature of 9/11”, which is a module Kumar taught at Vassar College in New York state.


The artists suggest that, since they are not bound by an “argumentative logic”, they can therefore express themselves more freely than, say, journalists, who are bound by editorial conventions. In fact, one of the artists, Donna Golden, created a documentary which mixed radio voices and TV images to tell a story that was devoid of editorial commentary. Nevertheless, it seems that some of that argumentative logic has found its way into literature on and about the 9/11 attacks — an area in which Kumar’s own academic interests feed into this book.


This bespectacled professor of English analyses contemporary literature, detainee logs, newspaper reports and the US 9/11 commission report, among other things, to give a 360-degree perspective on the war on terror. At the risk of blasphemy, Kumar says he considers Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist better than John Updike’s Terrorist. Reason? The absence of a dialogue with the “Other”, as Kumar puts it.


About the 9/11 commission report, he exposes its duplicitous nature by questioning America’s silence about its role in supporting Afghan jihadis even as it held up Al Qaeda as the prime accused. Kumar’s analysis is best exemplified by an Arundhati Roy quote: “Bin Laden has the distinction of being created by the CIA and wanted by the FBI.” Only towards the end of Evidence of Suspicion does Kumar bring in an element of poignancy. Nowhere is this reflected better than in his account of his travels in Kashmir and Punjab — where he is reminded of Srinagar while reading Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul and meeting with Tabassum Guru, wife of the main accused in the 2001 Parliament attack case. For a book which is self-professedly a “report”,  such poignancy might seem out of place, but perhaps it is Kumar’s background as a literature professor which ensures that such literary touches blend in with the reportage.


Overall, Evidence of Suspicion is an important book, and not just because it deals with a subject like terrorism. The book is important because it proves that no matter how passionately one may feel about terrorism, it is entirely possible to distance oneself from one’s own emotions while writing about it. Kumar is able to combine painstaking research, taut pacing and thought-provoking analysis to produce an outstanding work of non-fiction.


Postscript: The only, slight cause for disappointment is that, at the Delhi launch of the book, Kumar was in conversation with Lawrence Wright, author of an acclaimed book on Al Qaeda and the lead-up to 9/11, The Looming Tower. The attendee should be forgiven for having expected a discussion on terrorism. Instead, what transpired was a discussion and reading of the contents of Kumar’s book, much of which this reviewer had already read.