During swelling fascist tides, queer love subverts hegemonic power, creating new hierarchies of value altogether. Aruni Kashyap’s How to Date a Fanatic follows Rohit as he seeks love while Hindu nationalism is on the rise in Narendra Modi’s India.
While this novel faces hatred and oppression head on, its most moving moments come in the day-to-day of Rohit’s friends, a group of queer people in Delhi. Rohit’s childhood best friend, Sarfaraz, is a washed-up model. He is disillusioned, elegant and wry, pushing Rohit to be more frivolous. Their mutual friend Minti is an academic; when her long-term relationship begins to crumble, she’s sent grasping for meaning. Dhruv, meanwhile, is Rohit’s primary romantic interest, and though he rejects Rohit at the start of the book, confusingly, and alluringly, he continues to text Rohit and reappear in his life. Kashyap’s portrait of this group of friends is brilliantly detailed and deeply felt. They go on dates, go to each other’s houses to gossip about who’s dating whom, go to parties, get drunk, apply for grants and write academic articles—it’s mundane and magical. But, just as in the United States in the 2010s, extremism increasingly puts pressure on this community.
While on a date early in the story, Rohit and a potential lover are confronted by a group of young Hindu nationalist men who harass a family and destroy their car. Rohit and his date feign sharing their fanatical ideology to escape the violence, even as a takeout container of beef, verboten to Hindus, sits in the back seat of their own car. Their complicity is stirring, and the whole novel hinges on these complex negotiations of survival and surrender. Volatile Dhruv joins the tempestuous student-led protests, attempting to organize and harness the chaos of the initial sparks of resistance. Rohit and his friends become entangled in the ensuing conflicts, changing their trajectories. As their leftist convictions are put to the test, they find that may not be up to snuff when put into practice.
How to Date a Fanatic critiques both the hatred at the heart of religious nationalism and the hypocrisy of educated, liberal people like Rohit. But more than critiquing, Kashyap uses the lives of these characters to open new avenues of thinking and feeling. Rohit is torn between love and belief, and the crises he faces, both internal and external, show how politics is more than laws and rhetoric. Readers will find this struggle reflected in their own lives, no matter the government they live under.
