Satire reveals the truth

We don’t like when the drawbacks of our personalities and the dark sides of our hearts are being revealed.  We can’t tolerate criticism and prefer living our lives without knowing who we really are.  It is much easier to deceive ourselves in thinking that we are not like all those cruel people on TV or those unintelligent characters in the book. We are better…

When a great Russian playwright and satirist of the 19 th century Nikolai Gogol published his satirical comedy “The Government Inspector” in 1836 it created a tremendous outcry among the critics and only with the personal interference of Tsar Nikolas 1 this play was allowed to be staged.  Gogol’s brilliant comedy caused so much public objection because it was a direct attack on the society of that time that revealed human greed, stupidity and the deep corruption of powers in Russia under Tsarist rule. People didn’t like to hear the truth about themselves which Gogol so masterly portrayed in his comedy; they didn’t want to face the fact that the actors on stage resembled their personalities precisely.

While Gogol ridiculed the drawbacks of the society of his present-day generation in the 19^th century, Salman Rushdie, a famous contemporary satirist, continues his tradition in modern day literature. Like Gogol he uses satire as a means to reveal the shortcomings and sins of the modern society and make people reflect on their morals and principles in life. Rushdie has written many satirical short stories and is famous for depicting important controversial issues in the society through humor and irony. A short story “The Prophet’s Hair” that belongs to his “East, West” series is a bright example of Rushdie’s satirical illustrations of corrupt human nature and contemporary beliefs of society.

In “The Prophet’s Hair” Rushdie tells the story of a family living in the Kashmir valley in India who are shattered by the supernatural effects of a religious relic that has been brought into their household. The relic is a strand of the Prophet Muhammad's hair enclosed in a glass vial. This sacred hair literally turns Hashim’s family peaceful existence upside down. Under the spell of the holy hair Hashim undergoes a religious awakening which changes his behavior drastically: he starts to “pray five times daily” and forces his wife and children to do the same, orders them to read passages from Qur’an at least two hours per day, beats his wife and abuses his children when they try to rationalize his behavior and treats his debtors savagely (46). When the burglar, who was hired by Hashim’s daughter, comes to steal the holy hair, Hashim is woken up by his wife’s cry who just witnessed the mysterious death of her son, kills his daughter thinking it was a thief and then kills himself upon discovering that he murdered his own daughter.  The Deputy Commissioner afterwards exterminates the thief and sends the sacred hair back to its shrine. In the end, the thief’s four crippled sons mysteriously got cured and his blind wife regained her sight.    

There are several significant themes and ideas in the story that the author is trying to mock through the satire. The question of religion and religious relics is certainly the main object of Rushdie’s attack. The sacred relic that Hashim finds – a strand of the prophet Muhammad’s hair- is so precious because it is supposed to protect people from all the evils and misfortune and bring them happiness and spiritual awakening. Conversely, all it brings to Hashim’s family is hatred and violence, corrupts his heart with greed for money and power and even leads to the death of his children and Hashim himself. By these religious overtones the author tries to employ the idea of religion as a root of evil and corruption in this world; instead of uniting people in the modern society religion causes numerous wars, disputes and violence, divides people according to their religious beliefs and basically defeats the whole concept of faith and religious teachings. Another important issue that the author raises in this story is the idea of relics or talismans which people worship as a special symbol of luck or good fortune. The author criticizes the idea of worshipping the object such as a strand of hair instead of God or Allah. Sometimes people get so obsessed with material objects which they keep as talismans that they forget their initial purpose. Rushdie ridicules Hashim’s obsession with the strand of hair, who actually is more infatuated with the beautiful vial in which it was placed.  Hashim, who convinces his son that he performs a “finer service” by not returning the relic to the shrine as “the Prophet would have disapproved mightily of this relic-worship”, ends up disobeying the Prophet’s will and becomes obsessed with a treasured relic – keeps it in a safe during the day and under his pillow during the night (44).

Besides religion and religious relics Rushdie also emphasizes the idea of human’s greed and corruption with money and power. From the very beginning we see that the main character of the story Hashim is a wealthy respected moneylender who charges "an interest rate of over seventy per cent", even though Qur’an strictly forbids usury (41). Sheikh Sin, the Thief of Thieves, whom Hashim’s daughter hired to steal the hair from her father is motivated by getting a lot of money as a result of his theft  as “in the extraordinary commission he had accepted from the moneylender's daughter he saw his opportunity of amassing enough wealth at a stroke to leave the valley forever" (52). Money corrupted his heart so much that he even sacrifices the health of his own children by “crippling them at birth…, so that they earned excellent money in the begging business” (53). This story is also a vivid example of what happens when you remove a sacred relic from its authentic home and reshape it in new combinations. Rushdie portrays the horrific consequences of placing the sacred object in secular surroundings and being treated as a secular object  – “I don’t want it for its religious value”, says Hashim, “I see it purely as a secular object of great rarity and blinding beauty” (44).

“The Prophet’s Hair” ridicules a lot of significant issues that are common in our society and our hearts. Rushdie’s brilliant satire reveals the dark side of human nature and raises important questions about the role of religion in modern world. All the shortcomings and sins of the society become exposed in this story and while reading this amusing tale with a serious moral you involuntarily begin to question and contemplate on your own morals and beliefs in life.