31 pages • 1 hour read
Bhisham SahniTamas
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1972A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Tamas
The title of the novel is a Hindu word meaning one of three qualities that comprise all elements of being. “Tamas” is completely negative, however. A person whose tamas is inordinately strong will be full of rage, despair, hatred, laziness, apathy, and likely to live in a constant state of chaos at worst, and stagnation at best. Given the events of the novel, it is not hard to imagine that the worst of the characters—and even some of the best, morally speaking—are not suffering from an imbalance of tamas in their lives. In order for peace to be a reality, tamas must be reduced. And yet, its existence is built into all systems of organized religion that require the loathing of another faith as a core tenet.
Racism
India has known few times of peace. Since the time of the British colonists, the Indian people have been forced to rely on the scant protection and barely concealed disdain of imperial overseers. The British believed that the problems of colored people—and the disadvantages they see as inherent in being a person of color—can only be solved by whites. However, racism is not simply a problem between the whites and the Indians; the most intolerant of the Hindus and Muslims view people of other faiths as barely human. Even though Liza requires constant lessons in how to tell a Muslim from a Hindu, and a Hindu from a Sikh, many of the Indians treat the members of other faiths far more viciously than she ever does. The insidious problem of racism, and the ignorance that leads to it, is one of the author’s primary concern in Tamas.
Faith
Ironically, although most of the characters in Tamas turn to their faith for solace, it is religious difference that guarantees the outbreak of violence in the novel. When one person appeals to God to assist in defeating another—who is also asking their own God to intercede and grant them victory—faith becomes far more complicated than usual. If the Muslims defeat the Hindus, does it mean that the Muslim God helped them to win, or does it mean that the Hindu God abandoned the Hindus? Faith in Tamas is a classic example of the dangers of assuming the conclusion—in this case, the veracity of one’s faith—in advance. Once a person has decided that their view cannot possibly be wrong, everything must be filtered through that conclusion, despite the increasing irrationality of such a method. In Tamas, faith is not a matter of personal belief but of communal conflict.
