MISTAKEN IDENTITY by Nayantara Sahgal (New...

MISTAKEN IDENTITY by Nayantara Sahgal (New Directions: $10.95). Saghal offers an off-beat look at the early days of the Indian independence movement in this chatty novel. The disillusioned son of a minor princely family in northern India, Bhushan Singh has no ambitions beyond continuing his amiably empty existence: His father’s campaign to be accorded the title of rajah by the British holds as little interest for him as his mother’s religious devotions. A bizarre series of bureaucratic errors causes this wealthy drone to be arrested and charged with treason in 1929. A portly Scheherezade, Singh entertains the National Congress Party activists and self-proclaimed Marxists who share his cell with stories of his life abroad, his flapper mistress and his all-consuming passion for a Muslim girl, a tale that exposes the festering religious hatred within Indian society. As their bogus conspiracy trial slowly grinds its way through the colonial legal system, Singh learns to care for his impoverished fellow-defendants. Saghal’s tale of one individual’s reluctant politicization offers Western readers an unusual view of the struggle to end the British Raj.