Amitav Kumar's "Husband Of A Fanatic" is well written but I came away feeling pity for the author's lack of spine. Marrying a Pakistani Muslim, he feels he hasn't converted to Islam but has no guts to stand up to his convictions when being forced to change his name to a Muslim one. Despite acknowledging the Official ban on Hindu-Muslim marriage in Pakistan and unbroken legacy of forced conversions, he has the gall to spend 99% of the book criticizing India's openness and secularism (however flawed) & Hinduism in general hiding behind the excesses of RSS, Shiv Sena and BJP. What is sickening is that he feels very little compunction to apply the same standards to a much more closed and brutal society and religion in Pakistan.

So here is one more spineless Hindu intellectual essentially apologising to his "superior" Muslim Masters and in the mean time collecting a few more browny points with the appeasing Liberal Intellectuals in the West. Very depressing indeed.

Amitava Kumar is an Indian Hindu literature professor teaching in a college in the East coast of America, in his early forties, and married to a Canadian-Pakistani writer of Muslim heritage. And this brief bio matters as the subtitle of his book makes clear - A personal journey through India, Pakistan, Love and Hate.
Kumar revels in sharing his reading and travelling experience organised around the theme of the Hindu-Muslim border. But this isn't the physical border that divides India and Pakistan. Instead these are the invisible lines of control that regulate, constrain and deform relations between peoples of similar cultures.
Much of Kumar's book occupies itself with exposing the shallow, unexamined and compensatory machismo of the Hindutva ideologues who dominated Indian political life in the 1990s. Kumar tracks down their representatives in the US, and even provides some frightening examples of how American Hindutva ideologues have squared the American dream with the Hindu meme.
Kumar makes a virtue of the technique of testimony, and an extended section of his book is dedicated to reproducing letters between young Indians and Pakistanis on the state of bilateral relations (Kumar actually ferried the letters).
Kumar provides important reminders of the fusion between Muslim and non-Muslim culture in India before and even after Partition. For example, it is forgotten that before the Partition, Muslims made up many of the shabad singers in Sikh Gurdwaras. And even today, Pakistanis and Indians revere the same local South Asian saints. Kumar visits one of these shrines on the Indian-Pakistani border, and his description of his visit, what he sees and hears, stands out in this travelogue.
Kumar's choppy transitions are one of the major weaknesses. Others have criticised his cut and paste approach, but that a flaw and not a fatal sin. He makes up for it with his inclusive humanism, his wonder at what he calls the "enchanted civil society" and his welcome highlighting of the inter-confessional cooperation of Indians in the South African anti-apartheid struggle.
Also welcome is Kumar's habit of mentioning key sentences and phrases in Hindi (with translation) which allows Hindi-speaking readers a deeper register of meaning.
But perhaps the shallowest part of the book is Kumar's highlighting of his wedding and his 'half-conversion'. The way it is described smacks of hucksterism, but that is less a criticism than a comment. Perhaps he had his reasons, and honestly, in the clamour of reportage on the rising elephant called India, you have to ride the wind.