Revolution Highway - Book by Dilip Simeon

First fictionalized account in English of the Naxalite movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

‘… Tell me something. Are we answerable to anyone or do we just happen to know what’s best for humanity? We kill someone in secret and leave the people to deal with the consequences. How do we know the action was acceptable to them?’

The world seems to be on the brink of change in the late 1960s—a peasant uprising in Naxalbari, West Bengal, has set off a bloody rebellion, the Vietnam War is drawing the world into a cauldron, and French workers and students have just brought their country to a standstill. Inspired by the spirit of the times, a group of friends at Delhi’s elite Mission College grapple not only with the dilemmas of their coming-of-age, but also with indignation at the injustice and poverty around them. Unaware of the implications of their actions, the friends—Mohan, Pranav, Rathin, Sin Taw and Divya—are drawn to the logic of Revolution and begin to prepare for the violent overthrow of the System.

But as they travel to filthy urban bustees, far flung towns and impoverished villages across the north Indian plains mobilising the masses for Revolution, they meet people far removed from their fantasies: Hardip, the truck driver, Jehur, the enlightened worker and Lata, the prostitute. Soon, the Bangladesh war looms over the horizon.


No longer sure of their mission, they are forced to confront the question, can a just society ever emerge from violence?

Intensely sympathetic to the choices of its characters, Dilip Simeon’s first novel, Revolution Highway, is a passionate and intelligent account of a time so turbulent that its echoes still haunt us.

Published by : Penguin Books India
Published : 06-Sep-2010
ISBN : 9780143414698
Edition : Paperback
Format : B
Extent : 344p
Rights : Indian Subcontinent and Singapore only
Cover Price : Rs 299

The Revolutionary Road - Review by Subodh Verma

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

It was 1951 when these famous lines were penned by Langston Hughes, a Black writer and poet who shot to fame in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He was, of course, thinking about the American Blacks' struggle for dignity and justice. Dilip Simeon's novel on the Naxalite movement in the late sixties comes close to giving answers – if rhetorical questions like these need answers.

Naxalbari dramatically came into the public consciousness in 1967 and, for the next few years, a violent peasant revolution was on the agenda – or so it seemed. Simeon sketches out the ingredients of what went into making those heady, intoxicating days. There was a worldwide upsurge against the brutal US war against Vietnam, with dozens of US university campuses turning into battlefields. In France, a student rebellion broke out backed, for some time, by a general industrial strike. The Chinese Communist Party emerged as an active supporter of all kinds of uprisings in the third world, propelled by its extreme Cultural Revolution ideology. Within China, intellectuals and party leaders were thrown aside as students quit their studies and left for the countryside to continue the revolution.

Inspired by this ferment, and angered by extreme poverty and injustice in India, many middle class intellectuals and students joined the Naxalite struggle. Among these were a group of students from Delhi's St. Stephen's college. Simeon narrates their story, referring to the college by its other, less well known name, Mission College. Although his sympathy lies with the students, Simeon spares nothing in describing their doctrinaire understanding, their Chaplinesque attempts to incite the leaden peasant to revolutionary acts, their pathetic attempts to understand their failures. Simeon's knowledge of those years and events is authentic, right down to the hideouts in north Delhi's poor colonies and the strains of Hendrix and Joplin. The depressing inevitability of what is to come – complete and total rout – fills the whole book. Mercilessly ground down by the police, the movement descends into squabbling, bloodthirsty packs fighting a bitter battle for survival on the streets of Calcutta.

It is a vast, epic theme – the crushing of dreams – and Simeon succeeds in showing that it was foretold – because of false premises and erroneous means. The text is deconstructed, flitting between times and places. The prose is laconic, often unattractively so, although Simeon's penchant for Hindi swear words is in full play.

Yet, the novel leaves one tortured – is there no hope? Is all action futile? Is injustice infinite? Simeon is unable to hint at anything because this work is an attempt to show that all violence is doomed to fail. In that ahistorical straitjacket, answers are not easy. One is reminded of lines from a Pink Floyd song, ca.1979 – "The child is grown, the dream is gone. I have become comfortably numb.

Source :The Revolutionary Road - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-toi/special-report/The-Revolutionary-Road/articleshow/6761555.cms#ixzz12boI25k6