The Gospel of Yudas is a moving story that opens up an ethical discourse on issues of evil, good, guilt and redemption.
The Gospel of Yudas is a moving story that opens up an ethical discourse on issues of evil, good, guilt and redemption. Gospel of Judas, an interpretation of the Bible acknowledges Judas Iscariot, not as a villain and betrayer but as a as a divinely appointed instrument of a grand, predetermined purpose.
This interpretation of Judas is appropriated within the Indian context in the backdrop of the Naxalite struggle that continues to raise relevant questions to the understanding of fair and just Indian democracy. The story as acknowledged by the writer is a fictional representation of a Naxalite “…who suffers from the crushing guilt of outing what he knew when the police brutalized him”. Divided into nine chapters, thestory powerfully illustrates the fine line between love, revolution, power, violence and the price one pays for idealism.
Prema, daughter of a former policeman who tortured Naxalites during the Emergency is attracted to Crocodile ‘Croc’Yudas. Croc Yudas was named so because of his vocation; he dived in the waters to recover dead bodies. While handing over the bodies to the police authorities he would shout slogans supporting the Naxalite revolution; an act dismissed by police and villagers as the madness of an intoxicated man.
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Yet, Prema, a victim of her father’s tyranny is fatally attracted to the enigmatic Yudas and the Naxalite ideology. The novel navigates through the violence of the Emergency and versions of fascism that continued post Emergency through Prema’s obsession to win Yudas’ love. Young Prema is enchanted by the Yudas’ defiance and confronts him to love her. Yudas is tormented by his past and disappears when Prema’s father recognizes him as a Naxalite rebel who had succumbed to the police torture, thus Das(Yudas) carries the burden of betraying his comrades.
Prema’s father was a policeman posted at the Kakkayam camp known for its torture chambers that brutally crushed the Naxalite rebellion during emergency. He retired after the camp was shut down post emergency, but continued to torture his family with his oppressive patriarchal ways and by nostalgically indulging in the memories of cruelty (in the torture camps). He idealized his senior officer, Parameswaran(nicknamed Beast by his colleagues) who ruthlessly inflicted violence; the novel graphically paints forms of torture employed to crush dissent and the beastly destructive streak of domination that overpowers a persons capacity to exercise rationality and choice.
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Parameswaran kills people ruthlessly and also religiously reads the Bhagwat Gita; this is a powerful statement on the impact of fascism. Fascism is so dangerous that it enslaves people, kills their consciousness and makes them conformists who lose the capacity to discriminate and mindlessly unleash violence.
Disgusted by this barbarism, Prema finds escape in her love for Yudas, she believes only he can liberate her and is drawn to his activism. While chasing her dream she uncovers layers of Yudas’ past;Yudas’ deep love for Sunanda(the leader of the movement), the guilt of compromising her; consequently her death, and failure of cause.
Thus, Yudas retrieves corpses to redeem himself. Yet the anguish, distress and the pain of being the “Judas” torments him. He is unable to endure Prema’s love or build any meaningful human relationship. Prema later learns from Das’(Yudas) comarades and Sunanda’s sister that his misery is self inflicted, that infact it was not a moment of weakness but in a delirious state of pain that he had cried out for Sunanda’s love. But Das is not able to forgive himself as he repeatedly recounts to Prema how Sunanda was brutally tortured and killed, how her bravery surpassed her pain and that he will never be able to shed this past. In retrieving the dead and speaking for the cavaders; he attempts to atone his past crimes.
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The character of Yudas thus paints a tragic picture, wrapped in the trappings of idealism, power, love and guilt he continues to fight the unstoppable and terrifying power of fascism.
Irked by Das’ inability to accept her love, Prema stalks him to places and is drawn deeper into the past, his relationships as well as the growing movement of dissent led by Sunanda’s niece, Sangeeta. The infactuation that developed at the age of fifteen, grows stronger as she resolves to have Yudas accept her love. Prema’shyper objectification of Yudas; almost makes him a romantic emblem of freedom, liberation and courage. It fails to do justice to the Sispehian spirit of Das(Yudas) that marks his daily existence ridden with pain and guilt.
Their love remains unfulfilled and the novel explains the possibility of its fulfillment only in death. While Yudas and Premaare paintes as tragic figures, it is through that character of Sunanda and Sangeeta that one gets a glimpse of the ideal of emancipation. At the start of the novel, Prema claims that this story belongs to the cadavers; thus stories of Sunanda and Sangeeta are probably meant to be the moments of victory in the plot of the novel.
The novel ends with Prema realizing her role as a revolutionary; Sangeeta’s death brings in the realization of her as a rebel; a survivor of an oppressive system. This is also the evolution of her love for Yudas,as she romanticizes their union in death. While the novel no doubt explains the complexities of inner and outer feelings of love, violence woven with various political ideologies, there is an indication of nihilism in activism and allegiance to ideologies that leaves little room to understand politics and love as positive sites of conflict negotiating with power and power structures.
