‘August 17’ by S Hareesh: Few novels inhabit India’s unrealised future with such conviction

S Hareesh’s latest novel, August 17, translated into English by Jayasree Kalathil, poses a layered question: How does one write, translate, and read a novel that embodies a complex counterfactual: what if a small state at the southernmost part of India had remained independent in 1947?

A complex process for each, one can assume.

First, even within the country, many are unaware of what actually happened in Thiruvithamkoor: the decisive moments that might have altered the course of this once-independent state and, perhaps, the history of the subcontinent itself. Real and imagined stories, remembered and forgotten histories come together in August 17, creating an ambitious world for the reader to step into.

Once one of the larger princely states under British rule, Thiruvithamkoor (Travancore) stretched across what is now southern Kerala and parts of Tamil Nadu. It was not just a kingdom awaiting its integration into independent India but a polity with its own rulers, institutions, social hierarchies, reform movements and competing, struggling visions of the future. The land of Sree Narayana Guru and Mahatma Ayyankali, of powerful caste structures and equally powerful movements against them. It was a state with substantial Hindu, Christian and Muslim populations and a political culture that often charted its own course. By the 1940s,...

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