THE HALF SMILEcenter of power, follows none of these imperatives. He appears in
Chachnama only in this episode, and he is a prisoner of his desires, an
egotistical ruler. This corruption at the center is juxtaposed with Qa-
sim's obedience to the chain of command. As the daughter poihts out,
Qasim foolishly followed the order and gave up his life when he could
have easily delayed the implementation and be alive as a result. The
daughter marks these failures at both the center and the periphery, in
both the ruler and the commander.
Critically, Chachnama makes their resistance to the regime a key
ethics for these two women. From their perspective, the lie was an act
of vengeance against a foreign usurper, and Chachnama does not den-
igrate that act. Their ethics remains wholly congruent to the political
theory of Chachnama-it is the same as the resistance offered by the
Buddhist priest to Chach, or by Dahar's nobles and ministers to Qasim,
or by the people of Brahmanabad or Aror to the Muslims. All of whom,
Chachnama demonstrates, are ultimately folded back into the new
regime. Yet again, this calls to attention the corruption of Baghdad's
caliph who mercilessly has the women immured for exercising their
right to resistance.
Why does Chachnama end with the self-sacrifice of its Muslim pro-
tagonisH There are a number of places where the noblewomen who
resist.Muslim forces contemplate self-immolation rather than capture.
Yet even there, the emphasis is on individual acts of resistance against
the political order. Qasim, the ideal commander of the Muslim army,
is modeled after the ideal ruler Chach, but his deference to Hajjaj and
to the political hierarchy of the capital is repeatedly shown to be his
singular weakness. The end of Qasim is a demonstration of the very
ethics described by the daughter of Dahar at the end: the need for in-
dependent thought as well as the necessity to act according to one's
own intuition and understanding.
Qasim's death is the logical coda for a political theory that focuses
on the righteous, learned protagonist Chach. Chachnama valorizes his
faith, his dedication to his family, his capacity to be pure of desire,
his,partnership with Sohnan Devi, his reliance on his minister's ad-
vice, and his articulation of a limited polity that does not impugn on
other states. Chach learns and grows into a just ruler, and he does so
under the political tutelage of Sohnan Devi. Qasim learns and grows