Nåde: Bjørnstad's Buddhist Novel on Bangladesh

Nåde, the Norwegian equivalent for the Buddhist notion karuna, is a gripping tale that takes the reader on a trip from a quiet backwood village to a bustling metropolis, from one continent to another, from Bangladesh to Bangkok to Norway and back. Reminiscent of Odysseus' nostos in the Homeric epic, Mithu Borua's journey in Bjørnstad's novel, is both physical and metaphysical, real and archetypal, circular and symbolic.
Unlike the triumphant hero of Greek mythology, Mithu Borua, the lead character in our novel, is a softhearted, humble, homely figure who grows up to live so extraordinary a life that neither he nor the reader has anticipated. Mithu and his sister Anamika are born in a simple Buddhist family in Chittagong. Early on, he develops a great sense of pride in being Bengali as he immerses himself, with the caring aid of his compassionate father, into the radiant poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. After a raging flood sweeps through the village, washing away their home and possessions, the Gopals move to Chittagong and then to Dhaka. Upon their arrival in the capital city, Saem gives Gopal Borua, Mithu's father, a job at the Dhaka airport. The Gopals rent a flat in the city and things go well for a while. Then, the unlucky Gopals happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time one day. While at the airport, Gopal happens upon Saem who looks suspicious, doing something that also seems suspicious. Even though Gopal Borua tells the enraged Saem that he has seen nothing, it is too risky for the smuggler to believe it. Saem's men, a band of criminals and smugglers, wait until the nightfall to attack the family. They roust them up, pull Gopal Borua down to the floor, and slaughter the harmless man like a sheep in front of his wife and children. Shortly afterwards, the family is forced out of the flat and the police, as it turns out, kidnaps Anamika and then sells her to a human trafficking cartel located in Bangkok. Later, due to an unfortunate event (there are more events like this as the story unfolds), Mithu and his mother are separated from each other as she crosses over the Myanmar border into Bangkok. Eventually, Mithu meets a group of Norwegian missionaries in the Hill Tracts of Chittagong who treat him well and he quickly learns their language. Stunned by Mithu's talent and good character, Mrs Estella arranges for him to visit Norway. In Norway, Mithu's goal is to make money, and do so quickly, so that he can use it to find his mother and sister in Bangkok. This is just the beginning of this riveting, complex novel, couched in luminous, moving prose, matched by equally superb translation by Anis Pervez.

Ketil Bjørnstad

One must warn the reader, however, that although Bjørnstad's Nåde has a dramatic plot, it is far from being a tale of adventure. A key theme in the novel is Mithu Borua's search for identity. It is worth pondering why Bjørnstad has chosen to make an ordinary Buddhist, a minority figure in our society, the central character of his novel on Bangladesh. A Bengali by heart, Mithu Borua leaves Norway after a short stay, and returns to the country of his birth and destiny even though his beloved country has disowned him. His father is killed by a group of known criminals. His sister is abducted by the police and is sold to prostitution. None of the perpetrators is ever brought to justice and, we know, they never will be. If this line sounds sentimental, I urge you to think about what we have done to Buddhist temples and homes in September 2102, fourteen years after the publication of this prophetic novel. Nåde is a novel, a work of fiction, of course, but Bjørnstad's penetrating observation and his brilliant ethnographic insights into our culture, society, and political ideology are not fictional. Gracefully composed, unsettling, and quietly provocative, Nåde is a profound indictment of our acquiescence to the status quo, our growing appetite for boorish tribalism disguised as progressive nationalist politics, and our appalling indifference to the plight of minorities, a reality plainly apparent to a foreign novelist like Bjørnstad but is quite invisible to the dominant majority and stakeholders of our society. Mithu travels to Europe twice, first as a bona-fide exchange alien and then as a defendant in court seeking mercy and compassion. On his first visit, Mithu quickly discovers that he is irredeemably Bengali and does not belong to rich Norway. On the second, he realises that he is doomed to be a Buddhist (“suckled on a creed outworn,” Wordsworth would say). Despite his (nominal) conversion to the new creed, Mithu Borua harbours no illusions about ever being integrated into the Christian communion. Neither before his trip to Europe nor after, has our little Odysseus been able to change, in the words of Ivanhoe's (1819) Jewish Rebecca, “the faith of [his] fathers like a garment unsuited to the climate in which [he seeks] to dwell.”  Mithu knows that he is not a Christian, and that he will never be a European, however proficient in the foreign language he may have been. The realisation that he is at once a Bengali and a Buddhist, not one or the other, completes Mithu Borua's search for identity and his yearning for authenticity in Bjørnstad's narrative. Consisted of two components simultaneously, Mithu's identity makes him more Bengali not less, transcending the one-dimensional extremism that prevails in our political landscape today.

The writer is a faculty member in the Department of Criminal Justice, Philosophy, and Political Science at Chicago State University. He is the author of several books, including Adhunikata o Uttoradhunika (1994) and Sanskritir Jiggasha (1999). email: msalahud@csu.edu