{"id":61000,"date":"2025-10-29T10:00:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?p=61000"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:10:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:10:05","slug":"the-past-as-a-site-of-radical-otherness-in-nishant-batshas-a-bomb-placed-close-to-the-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/the-past-as-a-site-of-radical-otherness-in-nishant-batshas-a-bomb-placed-close-to-the-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"The Past as a Site of Radical Otherness in Nishant Batsha\u2019s \u201cA Bomb Placed Close to the Heart\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like his first novel, Mother Ocean Father Nation<\/em>, Nishant Batsha\u2019s second, A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart<\/em>, also leverages the past as a site of \u201cradical otherness\u201d to complicate our understanding of the present. What makes this novel different is that it is a multifaceted American narrative about identity, loyalty, and cosmopolitanism with a diverse ensemble cast of characters\u2014some of whom are recognizable historical figures, while some are fascinating composites. Set in 1917, the story focuses on an unlikely couple based on the real-life Evelyn Trent and M. N. Roy: Cora Trent, a white American graduate student and suffragist, and Indra Mukherjee, an Indian revolutionary. As Indra tries to secure arms from the Germans for India\u2019s independence, their developing love story unfolds against the backdrop of America\u2019s entry into World War I, which leads to increased surveillance and arrests of Indian nationalists as part of a perceived \u201cHindu\u2013German conspiracy.\u201d Cora and Indra face personal betrayals\u2014including Indra\u2019s initial deception and Cora\u2019s secret abortion\u2014and their journey from California to New York and ultimately to Mexico becomes a symbol of their changing identities. Cora becomes a published writer and activist, while Indra shifts from a rigid revolutionary to someone who embraces vulnerability and seeks \u201cnew beliefs\u201d beyond violence.<\/p>\n

However, their evolutions are marked with many moments of profound discomfort and disillusionment linked to narrow identity definitions and their reactions to \u201ctypecasting.\u201d Indra, for example, moves from a \u201cgunslinger against the British\u201d to a man struggling with mundane tasks like dishwashing and battling self-loathing and humiliation due to perceived failures, while also aspiring to be \u201ccosmopolitan.\u201d He grapples with being reduced to a \u201cforeigner\u201d or a \u201ctraitor\u201d by those who cannot comprehend his broader vision, leading to a sense of feeling \u201cimpaired\u201d or \u201cuseless.\u201d Cora is dismissed as \u201cjust a woman\u201d or made to feel \u201cugly\u201d when her complex self is simplified or constrained by others\u2019 perceptions. She evolves from feeling like a \u201cmewling calf\u201d and being perceived as an \u201ceasy rider\u201d to an ambitious writer challenging societal norms and asserting her agency. In the end, their efforts to transcend or resist narrow definitions imposed by society or even by each other significantly contribute to the novel\u2019s central themes of freedom and self-discovery.<\/p>\n

In this conversation, we discuss Batsha\u2019s approach for developing such complex characters as \u201chistorical cognates,\u201d rather than as strictly historical. We consider how their challenges with conflicting loyalties and an evolving understanding of cosmopolitanism have powerful parallels with contemporary conversations about immigration, racial identity, and the fluid nature of \u201cAmericanness.\u201d And, finally, we reflect on what makes this novel \u201cAmerican.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Jenny Bhatt (JB)<\/strong>: The novel portrays early 20th-century movements such as anticolonialism, women\u2019s suffrage, socialism, and racial equality. There are clear parallels between the historical suppression of dissent\u2014such as the \u201cHindu\u2013German conspiracy,\u201d arrests and restrictions on socialist papers\u2014and current free speech challenges. The story also highlights prejudice against nonwhite characters, including fears of \u201cthe Asian menace,\u201d caste issues, and distrust of \u201cforeign matter.\u201d How do you hope modern readers might connect with these historical echoes amid ongoing debates on immigration, racial identity, and \u201cAmericanness\u201d?<\/p>\n

Nishant Batsha (NB)<\/strong>: One of the strangest parts about writing a book is that it takes years to write, so you can never anticipate how it will connect with the moment that exists at the time of its publication.<\/p>\n

That being said, I think you could write a history of America whereby every few generations there exists this intense hatred of immigrants, an extreme mistrust of the other, and then politics reforms itself around that idea.<\/p>\n

Characters in this book are constantly remarking that they cannot be arrested because if they\u2019re arrested, they\u2019ll be deported, and deportation can only mean death because they\u2019ll be punished for their political activism on the other side of the deportation. I couldn\u2019t have predicted that ICE would be rounding up folks and deporting them to Central American superprisons or South Sudan. That idea, that deportation can mean death, is a thread that you could see throughout American history. One of the side effects of being trained as a historian is that when I write, readers are able to see the terrible echoes of the past, the way our basest instincts continue to have salience over time.<\/p>\n

JB<\/strong>: Through the lives of both Indra and Cora (and, indeed, a few other characters, too), the novel explores the complex fluidity of \u201cloyalty\u201d\u2014to a nation, an ideology, a cause, and an individual. Did the protagonists\u2019 journeys, particularly Indra\u2019s evolving understanding of \u201cfreedom\u201d and Cora\u2019s commitment to \u201ctruth to power,\u201d alter your perspectives on how we might navigate such ever-increasing competing loyalties in our contemporary world, especially now?<\/p>\n

NB<\/strong>: I was really interested in how change over time looks and feels for these characters. Both Indra and Cora come into this book with preconceived notions of what it means to be loyal to a cause or a group of people, but that sense of loyalty is challenged at almost every turn.<\/p>\n

In many ways, this book is about ambition and failure as much as it is about success and achieving one\u2019s dreams as initially conceived. As a result, there\u2019s a lot of fluidity to one\u2019s loyalties, a sense of being open to change. I think that\u2019s quite important. When Indra or Cora fails to achieve what they wanted, that in itself becomes a moment of possibility inside the narrative. Directionality ceases, and in that space, there\u2019s a series of choices and chances that are opened. From there, they can explore alternate futures for themselves that they hadn\u2019t initially envisioned.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the sort of growth that interests me because it is organic and, frankly, truer to life than the straight line of success. I think if the reader wants to create a parallel to his or her own life, it\u2019s that if one is an ambitious person, failure is going to come more often. There seems to be much more dynamic growth resulting from that failure.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Interviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n The Poetics of Democracy: A Conversation with Devika Rege<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"Merve <\/a>\n \n Merve Emre <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

JB<\/strong>: The novel explores the idea of \u201ccosmopolitanism\u201d through the evolving experiences of multiple characters, not just Indra and Cora. What aspects of the early 20th-century period interested you in engaging with a re-examination of this concept? I imagine this may also have offered some new insights or challenges to your own understanding or appreciation of cosmopolitanism today.<\/p>\n

NB<\/strong>: Martha Nussbaum had a fantastic reading of Tagore\u2019s The Home and the World<\/em>, where she defines a cosmopolitan as a person \u201cwhose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world.\u201d I owe a lot to that essay. I was also, of course, drawn to Kant\u2019s Perpetual Peace<\/em> and the ideal of a universal community.<\/p>\n

In both of my novels, if there is an antagonist, it\u2019s often the nation itself. I\u2019m really interested in how the fractures of the nation make their way into domestic spaces, be it family life or marriage. And if the nation exists as an antagonist, then this idea of transcending the nation, or in this case, cosmopolitanism, becomes the shadow of the antagonist. There\u2019s a current of seeking to move beyond the narrow and repressive confines of the nation-state to find some sort of universal brotherhood.<\/p>\n

People were working toward that in the early 20th century. From the Russian Revolution came thinking and action around international solidarity and allegiances. Beyond that, one can think of anticolonial or national liberation as projects internal to individual colonies, but there were always connections to be made. There are Irish Indian connections, for example. At one point, a character remarks that the Easter Rebellion is as important for India as it is for Ireland. There are numerous ways in which characters often try to move beyond delimited spaces to seek that universal spirit.<\/p>\n

JB<\/strong>: The epigraph from Marx and Engels describes love as teaching \u201ca man to believe in the objective world outside himself, which not only makes man into an object but even the object into a man \u2026 love lives not only in the brain immured,\u201d and suggests a profound connection between personal relationships and broader societal understanding. How did this idea guide your portrayal of Indra and Cora\u2019s relationship, especially given the political and social upheavals they were challenged with?<\/p>\n

NB<\/strong>: I first came across that quote in Erich Fromm\u2019s 1961 book Marx\u2019s Concept of Man<\/em>, which I think was actually quite popular at the time. In it, Fromm reads Marx to find that love creates a connection to the objective world, to the world outside oneself. Human self-realization and love are intimately connected.<\/p>\n

What I found so fascinating about this idea is that the book is very much about political awakening. It\u2019s a socialist coming-of-age story. For Cora and Indra, it\u2019s through their love for each other that they can find ways to connect to the world beyond themselves. That\u2019s why I like to think of this book as the interiority of an intellectual history.<\/p>\n

JB<\/strong>: Speaking of interiority, the internal monologues and perspectives of Indra and Cora reveal deep emotional and psychological complexity. Cora\u2019s journey involves seeking self-actualization amid conflicts between independence, love, and professional ambitions in a male-dominated world. Indra faces identity struggles, transitioning from Indian revolutionary leader to American \u201csojourner,\u201d confronting loneliness, and reevaluating strength and vulnerability. Their relationship reveals a mix of connection and friction stemming from miscommunication and differing realities. What strategies did you use to develop these emotional dynamics? How did you handle instances where their personal desires or beliefs diverged from your views or historical facts?<\/p>\n

NB<\/strong>: Much of this book draws inspiration from the early modernists. I was reading through a lot of Katherine Mansfield\u2019s early short stories as well as Woolf\u2019s early novel, The Voyage Out.<\/em> Simultaneously, I was reading modern Bengali fiction as well, writers like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Rabindranath Tagore, and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.<\/p>\n

These books and writers are deeply interested in self-fashioning and selfhood. Because this book is so intertextual with modernist literature, both in the West and in India, I think I felt a great ease in exploring the internal life of these characters. Modernist literature is devoted to that internality.<\/p>\n

But you also mentioned a divergence between contemporary sensibilities and the historical record. I think a great example in A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart<\/em> is the multiple conversations around eugenics. One of the minor characters in the book is based on the first president of Stanford University, who was an anti-imperial activist while also being a rampant eugenicist. The characters have these earnest conversations about the necessity of racial purity in the fight for national liberation. I wanted to highlight that these ideas had currency in places you wouldn\u2019t expect. But being a novelist from the perspective of the present allowed me to trouble history a bit. I could focus on the interracial relationship between Cora and Indra, and how that love complicates their own understanding of eugenics\u2014whether such a belief in purity could even be possible given their own love for each other.
\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n

It was a monumental undertaking to make this an American book. To be an American book means, to me, to think about the vastness of social experience from wildly different groups of people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n

JB<\/strong>: Yes, characters like Dawson, the university president, and Scullion, the theosophist, while historically grounded, sometimes embody contradictory ideologies (eugenics alongside anti-imperialism, theosophy alongside Irish nationalism). There\u2019s also the playwright Rachel Crothers, anarchists and suffragists such as Emma Goldman and Alice Paul, spiritual leaders like Vivekananda and Annie Besant, and political figures like General Salvador Alvarado and the Kaiser. I can imagine the extensive research needed to integrate these historical figures and their ideas into the novel\u2019s world, ensuring they serve the narrative and are more than mere footnotes. You\u2019ve avoided oversimplification or excusing their less acceptable beliefs, turning them into intellectual and moral guides (or counterguides) for the protagonists, offering new ideas and challenging perceptions. Can you discuss their role in shaping the protagonists\u2019 growth?<\/p>\n

NB<\/strong>: I\u2019m really glad that you mentioned Rachel Crothers because I\u2019ve done quite a few of these interviews and no one has mentioned her yet!<\/p>\n

It was quite an undertaking to engage with Crothers\u2019s work. I took it upon myself to read a large portion of her corpus and then integrate that work as an intellectual foil for the character of Cora. She is a graduate student researching the plays of Rachel Crothers as a way to explore the feminist movement in American culture.<\/p>\n

I think all this returns to the fact that I see this book as the interiority of an intellectual history. To do that, you have to engage with intellectual history. As such, there are quite a few characters in this book who would figure in any intellectual history of the time, whether that be if you\u2019re looking at feminism or radicalism or nationalism, or just interesting people in Palo Alto or New York City.<\/p>\n

When I tried to think about what it meant for Cora and Indra to grow politically or culturally, I had to engage with the intellectual currents of the time. I took great pains to make that clear and evident in the book.<\/p>\n

JB<\/strong>: Beyond the historically verifiable characters mentioned earlier, the novel also includes a diverse cast of minor characters\u2014landladies, train conductors, and others\u2014who add richness to the story\u2019s texture and themes. There are vivid depictions of marginalized communities\u2019 lives, from miners in Cora\u2019s childhood to lascars and factory workers Indra meets in New York, to women in the Tombs jail. While I understand how their stories support the novel\u2019s larger themes of systemic injustice and the fight for dignity, what was your process for portraying the experiences and struggles of these groups and individuals so they truly enhance the broader historical and social context of the story?<\/p>\n

NB<\/strong>: Throughout the book, Indra and Cora are thinking about what freedom means or what liberation means. Some of this is a purely intellectual exercise for them. But much of it is interacting with people from wildly different backgrounds and hearing what they have to say. Cora is a different person after hearing all the stories in the Tombs jail, for example. I wanted to ensure that these histories from below were not only showcased to add texture to the novel but also played a fundamental role in the characters\u2019 maturation process.<\/p>\n

One of the true pleasures of this project was that every single character, from the most major to those with the briefest of appearances, has an actual historical cognate whom I researched by reading quite widely in primary and secondary sources. Yet, none of them is a one-for-one facsimile of a person from the past. I\u2019m always trying to play around with biography and character to serve the narrative or the scene best. I think that\u2019s what\u2019s important: the book has to stand on its own as a book. As a result, I don\u2019t have a fidelity to the archive. I\u2019m much more interested in fabulation to find the story that needs to be told.<\/p>\n

JB<\/strong>: Speaking of research, you\u2019re a history scholar turned novelist. I imagine you must feel a certain tension navigating between historical accuracy and narrative exigency (particularly when crafting the emotional and psychological landscapes of various characters). Could you share an example where you made a deliberate choice to fictionalize or interpret events to achieve a deeper empathetic resonance, and what ethical considerations informed that decision?<\/p>\n

NB<\/strong>: I think you can make a distinction between historical fiction versus fiction that engages with the past. I am much more of the latter. I don\u2019t see my works of fiction as having a pedagogical impulse to educate the reader about the past. Instead, I\u2019m interested in the past as a site of radical otherness. When I think of the past, I see it as familiar inasmuch as there are fellow human beings that occupy it, but so much of thinking through history is recognizing that those humans were operating under a set of circumstances and considerations that were quite different from our own. I suppose that\u2019s why I write about the past and not the present: I enjoy this act of empathy as a thinker and as a writer.<\/p>\n

That being said, I am a novelist first and a historian second. That\u2019s how the tension you mention resolves itself: I know I\u2019m trying to tell a story. I\u2019m reminded of Tim O\u2019Brien. In \u201cGood Form\u201d in\u00a0The Things They Carried<\/em>, he wrote, \u201cI want you to know why a story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.\u201d I think that distills it quite nicely.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned earlier, every character in A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart<\/em> has a historical cognate, rather than being historical as such. I think a great example of this is the character of Cora. From what I gathered about the real-life Evelyn Trent, she had a mostly pleasant childhood with eight siblings, moving around mining towns. In my novel, Cora is a motherless only child growing up in the harsh and desolate landscape of the American West. With her, I was interested in how the starkness of an outer landscape could create a character. I\u2019m not writing a monograph about Trent and Roy. I was willing to fabulate for the sake of narrative.<\/p>\n

JB<\/strong>: It\u2019s clear how your extensive historical research underpins or inspires your fabulation. However, the archive on South Asians involved in clandestine political movements in the US\u2014and even for American women of that era involved in sociopolitical movements\u2014is still so sketchy and difficult to access. What were the significant challenges (or serendipities) in piecing together the lives of Trent and Roy?<\/p>\n

NB<\/strong>: Indra and Cora are based, in part, on M. N. Roy and Evelyn Trent\u2014a great love that\u2019s been glossed over by history.<\/p>\n

I always begin a project by reading very widely in secondary source material. And this book was no exception. That scholarly introduction gives me a rough understanding of time, place, setting, and intellectual currents. I think this inclination to read widely in secondary material is a holdover from being a more scholarly historian, where a project begins with a literature survey.<\/p>\n

That triangulation has the benefit of priming the imagination. Take M.N. Roy\u2019s memoirs, for example. While the early sections of those memoirs were very helpful in understanding his trajectory through the United States, it\u2019s always interesting to remember that a memoir is written retrospectively and with an editorial inclination. In Roy\u2019s case, he completely excised the real-life figure of Evelyn Trent, upon whom the character of Cora is based. That primary text is thus exercising an erasure of the past. I suppose all memoirs are erasing and rewriting the past to create a text that is serving some sort of purpose\u2014they\u2019re not a point-by-point recounting of the past, but instead are always marked by great elisions.<\/p>\n

And then, of course, Evelyn Trent had no primary source material\u2014she was more or less written out of history.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Booker Prize, Paul Harding mentioned that when he was writing This Other Eden<\/em>, he was not writing a factual history of the island at the center of that book. He was more interested in an imagined version of the characters in the events that take place. I think it\u2019s important to remember that historical fiction doesn\u2019t necessarily need to be documentary truth. Piecing together an intimate life is always going to be a project of fiction. These details are not going to be found through historical methodologies. It\u2019s my task as a writer to take the barest hints of a story and go on from there.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Reviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Sex and Socialism<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"\" <\/a>\n \n Elizabeth Carolyn Miller <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

JB<\/strong>: Let\u2019s close on that thought about your \u201ctask as a writer.\u201d Works by writers like us, who straddle multiple cultures, are often reduced to simple labels like \u201cAsian American\u201d or \u201cSouth Asian\u201d literature. This novel intricately weaves together diverse historical and cultural threads, including Indian nationalism, American women\u2019s suffrage, socialism, World War I, and the Irish independence movement. Your deep research and deliberate craft of connecting these movements, while including such a diverse cast of characters, broaden the narrative\u2019s scope and challenge both literary and cultural categorization. Still, I know you\u2019ve had to, much like your protagonists, work hard to transcend or resist narrow definitions of your own identity as a novelist. Talk a bit about that, please.<\/p>\n

NB<\/strong>: I think there can be an inclination to see a book that is by an Asian American author, for example, and if that book features an Asian or Asian American character, then that book is immediately consigned to just being part of the Asian American experience.<\/p>\n

It was a monumental undertaking to make this an American<\/em> book. To be an American book means, to me, to think about the vastness of social experience from wildly different groups of people, and furthermore to closely examine and interpret the intersections between those experiences that make up both day-to-day life as well as a much greater picture.<\/p>\n

Personally, it\u2019s been difficult sometimes to see this book (or my work as a whole) consigned to a narrow definition of identity, even though I\u2019m trying to write within the context of a larger American project. Perhaps some of that is the result of the ways in which we think about books as objects to be bought and sold in a marketplace, and therefore have to have highly segmented notions of audience. In his now-viral LARB essay, Federico Perelmuter commented that \u201ccareerism is the dominant literary style in the United States.\u201d Careerism and capitalist notions of marketing go hand in hand.<\/p>\n

I do hope this book is seen as an American<\/em> piece of literature, or perhaps even transnational, as many parts of the world are finding a home in Palo Alto, New York City, and then onward toward further destinations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI am a novelist first and a historian second. That\u2019s how the tension you mention resolves itself: I know I\u2019m trying to tell a story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":61002,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1193],"tags":[373,206,863],"pbpartner":[],"section":[1132],"pbseries":[],"class_list":["post-61000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-historical-fiction","tag-interview","tag-literary-fiction","section-literary-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Past as a Site of Radical Otherness in Nishant Batsha\u2019s \u201cA Bomb Placed Close to the Heart\u201d - Public Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cI am a novelist first and a historian second. 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