Worn – A People’s History of Clothing

Title: Worn – A People’s History of Clothing
Author: Sofi Thanhauser
Publisher: Allen Lane, 2022 (First)
ISBN: 9780241389539
Pages: 375

Clothes not only differentiates man from other animals, it also demarcates mankind into various categories according to rank, function or utility. The language uses many words, phrases and idioms derived from clothes and how they are worn. Making clothes was an important household activity in every civilized society till a few centuries ago. In the pre-industrial world, people devoted as much labour hours to making cloth as they devoted to producing food. Now, this work disappeared from everyday life and moved into the factory. But this has its own implications. The fabric industry produces a fifth of global waste water and emits one-tenth of global carbon emissions. Plant and animal fibres, namely linen, cotton, silk and wool, formed the basis of human clothing until the advent of rayon and then petro-fabrics in the twentieth century. This book talks about the historical development of each of the five types of fibres and examines the current issues in fabric production such as outsourcing to developing countries, exploitation of labour, rampant pollution in production centres which are not acknowledged nor owned by western companies. The book also touches upon the latest fad in the US and UK to return to hand-weaving using local resources and connoisseurs. This book blends reportage with historical research. The impulse for writing this is claimed to be to answer the craving to know where things – quite ordinary things – come from. Sofi Thanhauser is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in numerous publications. She lives in the US and teaches in the writing department at Pratt Institute.

Thanhauser presents brief historical sketches of the five fibres and stresses on the tales of exploitation of labour and natural resources in the case of each. Humans began clothing themselves in hides and pelts about 170,000 years ago. Shortly after this, people learned to weave plant fibres into textiles. The advent of clothes made the rapid expansion of habitation zones possible. The first intact cloth in the archaeological record is of linen. Imperialism and slavery built the cotton trade in the modern period. Mono-cropping cotton quickly exhausted the land. Planters then moved on to virgin lands with their slaves. This need to find fertile land helped drive expansion of the newly formed United States. Indigenous occupants were brutally evicted from new territories which the Whites conquered. Cotton was also exchanged for slaves in Africa. Meanwhile it proved to be the instrument of colonial expansion in India. Mechanization raised productivity in the eighteenth century and labour costs in England dropped below India’s. Massive imports – also assisted by tariffs – broke the backbone of India’s cotton industry. Industrial Revolution was a fabric revolution. The new textile machinery allowed huge productivity increase and the capital thus generated was also employed in other sectors to increase the prosperity.

The book includes some interesting historical facts about how the British imposed their cotton fabrics on India and how the crop itself was a symbol of rank exploitation. As noted earlier, when cheap fabrics were imported from England, cotton weavers in India lost their markets and were forced to turn to cotton farming for sending out as raw material for English mills. This additional manpower pulled down wages in agriculture. Colonialism thus devastated the Indian cotton industry. Genetic diversity of cotton in India was also reduced in this period as the American cotton was widely cultivated at the expense of local varieties. Traditional Indian varieties did not require much irrigation but were unsuited to textile machinery imported from Europe which was designed for the American variety. The East India Company replaced all Indian types with American in the 1840s. Cotton is a very thirsty crop – incredibly thirsty, for that matter. To produce one kg of cotton, it needs 8500 litres of water whereas rice requires 3000 litres, maize 1350 litres and wheat just 900. The author appears to harbour all the colonial prejudices against India. Visiting a well-run cotton factory in Tamil Nadu, she hints at child labour and also at many poor women submitting to polygamy. This has no relevance to the topic under discussion. As is usual with white supremacists, she can’t help notice a power failure while she was in the factory, suggesting that long and frequent power outages are common in India. Also, she compares the Noyyal river in Coimbatore to rivers which ran through American and British cities in the 1840s and the food produced from this water is alleged to be laden with toxic chemicals. This is another clear accusation that Indian industry still lags behind their western counterparts by about two centuries.

Some chapters give an overview of how fashion developed and transformed in the face of tectonic political events and pressing societal requirements. The flourishing of fashion in Paris during the Bourbon rule is described along with its collapse after the French Revolution when luxury was shunned in the wake of regicide. At the same time in America, most people wore clothing made at home while those who could afford it dressed in clothes made by a tailor or seamstress. During the course of the nineteenth century, clothing became mass-produced. Before the Civil War, readymade outer garments were made only for sailors and slaves. The chemical pollution generated during the production of artificial fibres such as rayon and nylon are examined in this book which exhibits a distinct leftist outlook. The American Standards Association (ASA) recommended safe exposure to cadmium sulphide (which is a material involved in rayon production) at 20 ppm. The author then proudly remarks in a foot note that this limit in the USSR was 3.2 ppm, less than a fifth of the American limit (p.173). We know that the erstwhile USSR was not very famous for any environmental or safety concerns. The story of rayon and nylon synthetics is saturated with dangerous chemicals eating away at the lives of workers. She accuses the US of fostering the language of anti-communism which boosted the garment and textile industries in Asia on outsourcing contracts without any accountability to American industries.

The dwindling away of textile production in the developed economies, especially in the US, in the aftermath of globalization is a persistent theme in the book as if a very essential aspect of western societies was alienated for making profits for business tycoons. As late as 1997, over 40 per cent of all apparel purchased in the US had been produced domestically. In 2012, that figure was less than 3 per cent. The author remarks about the pollution and exploitation of labour in the countries to which the garments are outsourced for production. This book also talks about a conscious drive to return to the sustainable production of fabric, especially wool. Handcraft societies are returning to the US to serve niche markets. These efforts are claimed to produce less emission and carbon dioxide, but the author incongruously flies in a plane to reach these sites, oblivious to the conservatory effort expected on her behalf since she is so complaining about the carbon emissions engendered by others! A trace of transgender activism is also visible in the text. In a tradition-reviving society of Navajo Indians, the author finds a transgender person in control of things and speculates that the transgenders keep traditions alive. She uses the pronoun ‘they’ to denote this person.

This book is counterintuitive in every sense and is a product of the woke culture predominating among the elite society in the US. It is focussed on American issues, themes, icons and society. It rails against chemical fertilizers, pesticides, industrial scale production of food and clothing fibres, large scale transportation of commodities, outsourcing production to developing countries and instead advises the Gandhian way to spin one’s own thread and get it woven in a local cooperative. This sounds utopian and that’s the one thing which clearly stands out in the entire narrative. This is not a people’s history but a leftist and woke commentary on the unfinished business of organized labour obtaining a controlling stake in the enterprises they work in, according to Marxian economic speculations. It also exhibits feminism in a high dose.

The book is not recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

Nehru’s India

Title: Nehru’s India – A History in Seven Myths
Author: Taylor C. Sherman
Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2022 (First)
ISBN: 9780691245775
Pages: 284

When India became independent in 1947, her economy was in shambles brought on by a world war and two centuries of colonial loot. The new nation needed to show the direction in which to move forward, especially for its economy and international relations. Jawaharlal Nehru, being the first prime minister and a well-read man, sought to guide India during the first seventeen years of post-colonial India till his death in 1964. Even though the paths he trod were reversed later because of the great economic pitfalls along the way, it was critical for the new republic to stay united under a strong man. Although panegyrics of Nehru praising him as the architect of modern India and a visionary emanated from certain quarters – mostly patronized by his own party – the grave flaws in his socio-economic and political perspectives were starting to come into public scrutiny. Nehru’s premiership is associated with a set of ideas, policies and institutions related to non-alignment, secularism, socialism, the strong state, democracy and high modernism. This book argues that these supposed tenets of the Nehruvian period are nothing more than myths. Taylor C. Sherman teaches in the department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has authored other books on India and its secularism.

Sherman claims that Nehru fulfilled the role of an educator, patron, mediator and symbol to the Indian people. He is often lauded as the architect of modern India on the basis of his image as the titan of post-colonial India. The author points out that this image was created by the Congress party to ‘persuade him to stay on in power’, especially after 1958 when he expressed the desire to retire or take a sabbatical. This book is a product of the left-liberal ecosystem pervading every nook and cranny of the Western academia. This book is a paean to Nehru depicting him as a great man who can do no wrong. Every shortfall or anomaly in his character is glossed over or ignored or alleged to be someone else’s fault. Even his political tricks like threatening to resign when confronted with stubborn opponents in the party are naively taken at face value and immense inferences are drawn from these false premises. Sherman criticizes everything in Nehru’s India – even the very idea of India – except the great man himself! She argues that Nehru was no architect of modern India because he had no blueprint in his head or articulated in five-year plans. Then comes the surprising but wrong conclusion that Nehru wasuncomfortable with blind devotion and consistently resisted the iconization that is central to a cult of personality (p.205). She conveniently does not mention that Nehru awarded himself the Bharat Ratna in 1955 – India’s highest civilian honour – or cause his own birthday to be celebrated as the national children’s day. Any way you look at it, these two acts cannot be taken to be an exemplar of humility! When a tunnel was opened in 1956 to connect Jammu with Kashmir Valley, Nehru ‘allowed’ it to be named after him as the Jawahar tunnel! Still, the author claims that this was not an attempt to develop a personality cult around carefully crafted imagery to maintain absolute power (p.16). Nehru personally chose the country’s first ambassadors to prominent nations on the basis of their ‘eminent’ status in the national movement as well as their wit, charm and intellectual abilities (p.23). But the author forgets to explain why he chose Vijayalakshmi Pandit – his own sister – as the ambassador to the US. The book is riddled with so many of these omissions.

Unashamedly reflecting an air of colonial haughtiness, the author hints that India was not doing enough to prop up secularism in the Nehru era and that it should have accommodated more Muslim demands. She claims that Indian secularism is largely figurative and was focussed on the celebration of exceptional individuals and reverence for great monuments. But this iconic approach did not tally with the everyday in practice. India introduced permits for controlling the re-entry of Muslims who had already migrated to Pakistan in 1948. Around 2000 Muslims were doing this each day. Nothing in this gesture was related to patriotism, but a clever ploy to prevent their real estate from being reassigned to Hindu and Sikh refugees who were forcibly evicted from their homes in Pakistan. The Hindus and Sikhs were not allowed to re-enter Pakistan. This just measure is portrayed as injuring secularism! After Hyderabad was annexed by military force, the government sought to reduce the number of Muslims in the state service from 85 per cent to 50 per cent. This is construed as another failure of secularism (p.64). What the author deftly conceals is that Muslims constituted only 13 per cent of Hyderabad’s population but the Nizam had exclusively stuffed them in his services. Moreover, the book employs the old imperialist ploy to drive a wedge between Dalits and other Hindus and to club the former along with Muslims as a minority community separate from Hindus. In her study of secularism in the 1950s, the author implies that Dalits and Muslims had a stake in secularism (p.59). The book further claims that India’s non-alignment was only a political trick to work with superpower competition to its advantage. India was enmeshed in the Anglo-American economic system which provided two-thirds of India’s imports in 1964 while the USSR provided only a tenth. Aid from the US was six times more than Russian aid in 1945.

The book makes a survey of India’s economic policies and concludes that everything smacked of failure. Nationalization was claimed to be only a relatively small feature of Indian economic life in the early period of Nehru’s tenure. The top rate of income tax was 80 per cent, which most people evaded by paying bribes. The author examines the land distribution reforms assisted by Vinoba Bhave’s Bhudan movement. In the end, this philanthropic exercise is portrayed as a hypocritical one in which the land donated is shown as non-productive and inaccessible. This is a recurring theme in the book. Reading these lines, one would feel wonder at the mere fact that India is still existing intact as a nation. Rather than challenging existing hierarchies, Indian socialism attempted to co-opt them and awaken in elites a sense of trusteeship and responsibility towards their fellow countrymen. Instead, the elites simply enlisted the new institutions and worked them for their own benefit (p.113). Sherman rightfully points out that India succumbed to political corruption at this point in time of license-quota-permit raj. A single mill in Mumbai had to fill out some 577 forms each year. A license was only a permit which entitles the holder to apply for numerous other sanctions and permissions. Within this tangled bureaucratic complex, corruption naturally reigned. The primary inconvenience to the industrialists lay in all the efforts to evade government control rather than in submitting to it. The ruling party nonchalantly extracted its pound of flesh from the industry. Tata Steel (TISCO then) obtained permission from court to allow them to donate to Congress party because the ‘stability, security, profits and future expansion of the company were linked up with the continuance of Congress government’ (p.160).

This book is a propaganda piece of the American left academia that thrives in developing countries through NGOs and seeks to displace the national spirit in those countries. The contribution of the Ford Foundation to the development of many social projects in the 1950s is extolled at every opportunity while wholly Indian experiments are deemed to be failures. Contributions of Indian pioneers are narrated only if they are educated overseas at some point in their career. Sherman frequently appears unduly concerned about inequality in society and accuses paternalistic local societies for all the problems they have to endure. After a brief charade of appearing to be objective, the political agenda slips into the open. She alleges that the Indian government ‘assaults on free press, universities and courts from 2015 onwards’ and that some international organisations (meaning the cabal that funds the NGOs) have downgraded India’s democratic rating, as if this act was a huge indictment on India for which every Indian has to hang his or her head in shame. Mind you, the author never mentions the Emergency years (1975-77) but implies that democracy in India is eclipsed only from the year 2015. The book provides an interesting portrayal of modernity which is said to be a group of processes set in train somewhere around the fifteenth century and gaining pace by the nineteenth. These concerned economic connectivity and technical innovation, as well as state-making practices, changing understandings of the self and new experiences of time (p.178).

It has been a long time since I encountered a book on India written by a westerner who still retains the imperial and condescending outlook on our country. Such books invariably talked about peeling plaster in government buildings, pot-holed roads, frequent power outages and omnipresent filth on streets. This colonial memsahib is flustered with Indian archives which are said to be kept in a most careless and inefficient way. She limits the coverage of the Bengal famine of 1943 to just one sentence because it was engendered by Churchill’s apathy to Indians but castigates the Indian government under Nehru for mishandling the ‘perilously close to famine conditions in 1950 and 51’ (p.104). The author has made extensive research for this book, but the experience appears to be marred by lack of insight and the knowledge of how Indian society works.

The book is just a piece of the Left narrative and not recommended for general readers.

Rating: 2 Star

Eminent Distorians

 

Title: Eminent Distorians - Twists and Truths in Bharat's History
Author: Utpal Kumar
Publisher: BluOne Ink, 2025 (First)
ISBN: 9789365477184
Pages: 290

India’s post-colonial historiography was under the absolute control of Marxist historians who were tolerated at the highest echelons of institutions by Nehru and Indira Gandhi. These people created an ecosystem of their own which stifled dissent of any kind from the established view. Academic positions, research grants, publication of research papers and publicity in the mainstream media were jealously guarded by this coterie of scholars whose sole purpose of existence was to churn out a version of Indian history that stuck to leftist notions defined by them. There were some lone voices which opposed the vested interests but they ended up as a cry in the wilderness. This book vows to expose them. The author is inspired by Sita Ram Goel who was the single individual who moved the left intellectual mountain in India and took the entrenched ‘eminent historians’ by the horns and exposed their distortions, often deliberate and mischievous. This book’s title is indebted to Arun Shourie’s work on a similar theme titled ‘Eminent Historians’ reviewed earlier here. The idea is that these scholars distorted history and hence this group is called ‘distorians’. Utpal Kumar is an editor at News18 and FirstPost who has more than two decades of journalistic experience. This is his second book.

Historians such as Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, R S Sharma and others fit the bill of distorians. The book includes a catalog of the errors and disasters they had heaped on the national intellect. They are accused to have subverted the minds of people, turned them rootless and apologetic about the past. They regarded the essence of Indian culture, the very ‘Indianness’ to be a regressive phenomenon. Anything and everything emerging out in this land was seen to be the result of either an invasion or migration from the outside. They rivalled each other in duplicity or masquerade to play down the violence inflicted by Muslim invaders on India in the form of destruction and conversion of temples into mosques, forced conversion of Hindus, abducting women as sex-slaves and plunder of the national wealth. The author prudently points out that truth and reconciliation, and not duplicity and deception are the first steps towards amicable relations between Hindus and Muslims in today’s India. Forgiveness cannot precede an admission of guilt. Kumar ascribes the distorians to stoop low to any level to confront their rivals. Writing matter-of-factly about a Muslim tyrant spontaneously becomes an act of Islamophobia. So, Mahmud of Ghazni’s obsession to become a ghazi (holy warrior) or but shikan (idol breaker) is projected in economic terms and sanitized.

The author then makes a survey of Indian history in the remaining chapters and classifies the doctored theories of the distorians according to chronological periods. Their falsification starts with the Aryan Invasion theory in which a set of outsiders from central Asia invaded India and destroyed the original Dravidian civilization and dislocated the natives. However, the contradictions and inconsistencies in this flawed theory are so grave that the distorians are now forced to modify the theory as one of Aryan migration, and not invasion. But it still contains the riddle of the illiterate, pastoral Aryans producing one of the most profound texts in human history (the Vedas) while the urbane, sophisticated Harappans ending up without having any literature of their own. The author argues that ancient Indian civilization is indigenous. Desiccation and drying up of the Saraswati river which took place around 1900 BCE led to the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization. Excavation of archaeological detritus and genetic analysis of human remains found at Rakhigarhi in Haryana prove that there is no genetic overlap from the outside and the present inhabitants share the genome. Kumar alleges that the distorians could not comprehend any non-Muslim dynasty far away from Delhi could step into greatness which is exemplified by the cavalier treatment they had given to the Cholas of Tamil Nadu who were reduced to being a regional power though the dynasty had a vast maritime realm to rule. This was the only time Indian forces conquered far-off places. This wicked lot of distorians is interested only in eulogizing defeat and ignoring victories.

The author dispels the false assumption of many people that the Islamic invasions which started in 712 CE were continuous and indefensible. In fact, they were held in check by several Indian dynasties. Arab incursion to Indian coast began in 637 CE, at the time of the second caliph himself. It was only in 712 they could gain a foothold in Sindh with the military victory of Muhammad bin Qasim. There is another false notion circulating regarding the different racial lineages among Muslim invaders: Arabs are said to be gentler but India had the misfortune to give in to Turks or Afghans the most number of times. The book compares the atrocities committed by Turkish and Arab invaders and proves that both were equally cruel and bigoted in decimating the Hindus. This deflates the distorians’ assertion that India had the misfortune to be conquered by the ‘uncivilized Turks’ than the ‘cultured Arabs’. The author identifies the root cause of the similarity in violent actions between the two in the religious tenets of Islam itself which call for these acts to be performed on infidels and concludes that ‘cultured’ Arabs were therefore as brutal and barbaric as the ‘uncouth’ Turks (p.116). Kumar also weighs Akbar’s reign for his tolerance of other religions but this study does not go much deep. It is true that during Akbar’s ascendancy, the state officially relinquished its anti-Hindu stand. Jizya and pilgrimage taxes were withdrawn. However, his acceptance of Hindu princesses into his harem should not be considered as an act of charity or broadmindedness. In his reign, 38 Rajput princesses were married to the royal household: 12 to Akbar, 17 to Jahangir, six to Daniyal, two to Murad and one to Shah Jehan. There were five weddings in Jahangir’s reign, five in Shah Jehan’s and nine in Aurangzeb’s time. Even then, not a single Mughal princess was married to a Rajput prince and all of the Hindu princesses were first converted to Islam before the wedding ceremony. To use modern parlance, this was in no way nobler than the ‘love jihad’! A survey of Tipu Sultan’s real character as a hard-line Islamist and the fall of the Sikh kingdom in Punjab are also included. It also explains why the Sikh contingent fought alongside the British in suppressing the 1857 rebellion. However, his contention that the Sikhs were mortally against any descendant of the Mughal dynasty appears to be an oversimplification.

Another aspect in which the distorians excel is in making us believe that the British took over India from the Mughals. This is total falsehood, since before the British could establish themselves, the Marathas were the numero uno power. Peshwa Baji Rao I was undefeated in over forty battles. Other local rulers could outsmart the Mughals but this fact is obfuscated in the distorted history which is thrust down the bills of unsuspecting students. Defeat of the Mughals at the Battle of Saraighat in 1671 at the hands of Lachit Barphukan in Assam which checked their spread in that region is a largely unknown saga. Moreover, India has never holistically examined the predatory nature of British rule nor sought an apology. It was an era of wanton violence which killed 200 million people and institutionalized loot that drained off at least 45 trillion USD from India to Britain between 1765 and 1938.

The book then examines the freedom struggle and the initial decades of post-colonial India in which power was usurped by the Gandhi faction. In the manipulative historiography, one is made to believe that India’s freedom struggle was all about Gandhi after his arrival from South Africa in 1915. The revolutionaries had played an equally important, if not bigger, role in getting freedom. The presence of revolutionaries and their successes helped Gandhi bargain better deals with the colonial masters who in turn handled them with kid gloves at a time when revolutionaries were made to go through the worst of hardships at the Cellular Jail and elsewhere. When it came to power-sharing negotiations with the British, there was no one left in their ranks to do the talking. This moment was seized by the Gandhians to their advantage who obliterated them from history. The author claims that the free nation born in 1947 was unapologetically Hindu and cites in its support the Vedic rituals held in Rajendra Prasad’s residence in his official capacity as the Chairman of the Constituent Assembly which were also attended by Nehru himself. The illustrations in the original Constitution which freely used Hindu symbols reiterate this point. However, as Nehru’s rivals vacated the political arena, the situation changed and mechanical secularism took their place. It was the Nehruvian conspiracy in the 1950s that saw further ascendancy in the 1960s and 1970s which pushed the country towards a socialist, secular order much against the civilizational grain of this land.

It is unfortunate having to note that the book has not justified the thunder in the title. Instead of a roar arising from painful indignation at the disservice these distorians have been inflicting on the social and political fabric of the country, the author coolly diverges to put together his view of Indian history. I had purchased this book having been sufficiently impressed by the grandiloquent title but it has not been value for money. Of course, Kumar’s perspective on India’s history is very interesting, informative and up to date, but that was not the purpose implied by the title. Instead of going deep into the modus operandi of the distorians – how they secure plum positions in government and academia, how a coterie is formed around them, how they manipulate NCERT textbooks, how they distribute patronage among their acolytes and how they zealously attack dissenting sane voices with the ferocity of a pack of wolves – the author digresses to offer a nationalist perspective of history in a highly condensed form. This exhibits a clear subjective bias which a distorian can easily exploit to discredit the entire narrative. To quote just one example: the author’s attempt to place the Mahabharata war coinciding with the drying up of Saraswati river around 1900 BCE is a little laboured and appears to be not much convincing. On the other hand, his take on refuting the Aryan Invasion Theory is superbly presented.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Iconoclast

Title: Iconoclast – A Reflective Biography of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar
Author: Anand Teltumbde
Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2024 (First)
ISBN: 9780670093885
Pages: 676

Babasaheb Ambedkar is the architect of the Indian Constitution. He was also the figurehead of Dalit emancipation, rising from a low social and economic background to reach the topmost constitutional positions in the country. There have been numerous biographies of Ambedkar and precisely because of this, the author notes what is different in this book. It claims to follow Ambedkar’s approach of weighing facts on the touchstone of rationality and also to add reflections of the author to the story already told many times. The reflections are in the form of comments, questions and discussions on points deemed to be consequential to the lives of Dalits as well as others. Ambedkar defined himself as an iconoclast – a breaker of icons. It is hence ironic that he himself was elevated to the status of an idol in recent times. His writings are characterized by a direct, incisive, hard-hitting and combatant style. Anand Teltumbde is an engineering and management expert who turned to social work while employed in the highest management cadre of a central PSU. He is the husband of Ambedkar’s granddaughter. He was arrested in 2020 on the charge of instigating the Bhima-Koregaon violence and incarcerated for two years along with other urban naxals. The author is peeved at this and goes on a tirade accusing the Modi-led government of being fascist, authoritarian and totalitarian throughout the entire length of the book.

Ambedkar lived for the uplift of Dalits. His writings on Dalit causes may appear to be a one-sided narrative, declining to extend credit to others even when it is due. But his wisdom on public finance and political economy is unparalleled and out-of-the-box. His solution to the development of Indian agriculture is logical while sounding extraordinary. It was believed that the low productivity of land holdings was because of its small size. He showed that economic size of this land is not determined by the size in geographical area but by optimal provision of factors of production. A large surplus population was superficially engaged in agriculture with no capital. Ambedkar proposed India’s industrialization as a solution to its agricultural problems which would absorb surplus labour and generate savings to be ploughed back into agriculture. It is unfortunate that Jawaharlal Nehru could not see this truth even in 1951. There is no doubt that Ambedkar denounced Hindu society for casteism and the discrimination it heaped on the downtrodden people. Still, he notes in his essay ‘Castes in India’ that there is a deep cultural unity in Hindu society but this larger cultural unit is parcelled into bits by castes. However, the author challenges and negates this prudent observation. Ambedkar metaphorically compared Hindu society with a multi-storeyed tower with no stairs to connect one storey to the other. Each storey represented an individual caste. Teltumbde do modify this metaphor to a tower with five storeys, each housing innumerable castes in contention with each other.

This book covers the early work of Ambedkar in good detail, especially after completion of his education in the US and UK. A satyagraha was organized in Mahad for the use of Chowdar water tank for Dalits in 1927. This faithfully followed the Gandhian model of nonviolence and carried a portrait of Gandhi on the dais. This agitation failed. Babasaheb opposed separate electorates to Muslims in his minority report submitted to the Simon Commission in 1928. He suggested general electorates with reserved seats for Muslims and Dalits. The author narrates how the Congress mainstream ignored the wails of Dalits right from the 1920s. A committee headed by Motilal Nehru drafted a Swaraj constitution in 1928 and it did not provide representation for Dalits. Congress did not even invite any Dalit organisation to discuss on it (p.143). This was also the time that convinced Babasaheb that untouchability was practised by other religions too. During one of their journeys to Aurangabad, Ambedkar and his team visited the Daulatabad fort nearby. They washed their faces and feet on the pavement in the fort with water from a tank outside the monument. As soon as they did this, enraged Muslims confronted and abused them menacingly for daring to pollute the tank. Babasaheb noted that it could have led to a riot in the town (p.192).

The 1930s were the formative decade in Ambedkar’s career, bringing out the constitutional expert in him. He attended all three Round Table Conferences (RTC) convened to settle contentious issues before an anticipated constitution of India coming into force in 1935. He shifted his focus in the RTCs from untouchability as a socio-religious issue to a political question. He used the opportunity to internationalize the problem of untouchability. The British favoured him at that time because it justified the continued presence of their rule. Closer to the actual transfer of power, the issue ceased to be useful for their interests and they discarded the issues of caste/untouchability as well as Ambedkar himself. Gandhi attended only one RTC and Teltumbde observes that he was ill-equipped to participate in it. When grave constitutional and communal points were raised in the conference, he had only platitudes to offer, rather than views or suggestions of a constructive character. In the end, Babasaheb was victorious in getting adequate representation for Dalits in legislatures. However, he had to compromise on the issue of separate electorates while yielding to Gandhi’s fast unto death against this attempt to divide the Hindu society. In the 1937 elections, he was elected to the Bombay provincial assembly. He tried to unite Dalits and workers with communist support. He backed the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan acknowledging the validity of their claim that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations and the two cannot live peacefully together.

Ambedkar reached the pinnacle of his achievements in the 1940s. He was nominated to the Viceroy’s Executive Council in the war period. However in 1945, his party AISCF was trounced by Congress in the elections which won 123 out of 151 seats reserved for SCs while the former could win only two. This convinced the British that Congress was the true representative of depressed classes and Babasaheb’s bargaining power fell. His memoranda to the Cabinet Mission of 1946 regarding safeguards for SCs were ignored. Ambedkar did not find a place in the interim cabinet and Congress’ Jagjivan Ram was included in his place. The colonial rule transformed the rebel in Ambedkar into a statesman during the war period and then he was side-lined when the British deal with the Congress was fructified. The author alleges that Gandhian strategy then embalmed his as a ‘modern Manu’ (p.338). It was with this intention that he was co-opted as the chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution. Author accuses Babasaheb of then endearing himself to the Constituent Assembly as an ultra-nationalist even though he had opposed Congress’ nationalist movement till then. He who had voiced for separate electorates for SCs would oppose it later and accept joint electorates (p.333). Teltumbde then argues that all crucial decisions were taken without involving Ambedkar. Out of the various subcommittees of the Constituent Assembly, Nehru presided over three panels, while Patel and Rajendra Prasad headed two each, strategically controlling all decisions of the Assembly. Babasaheb’s task was alleged to be limited to document decisions in constitutional language.

A great contribution of this book is the inferences it provides readers regarding Ambedkar’s relations with Hinduism. It is true that he renounced it and termed it as the sole reason for oppression of the Dalits. What he fought tooth and nail in this equation was the caste system. When he opted for conversion, he chose Buddhism which some scholars say was nothing more than Hindu Protestantism in the early stages. Babasaheb was emotionally as well as culturally anchored tightly to Mother India. During Partition, he called for the division of Kashmir along Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist lines and the Muslim areas were to be given to Pakistan if they wished so and proved in a plebiscite. However, he declared that the Hindus of Jammu and Buddhists of Ladakh belonged to ‘our religion and culture’ and to protect them is not communalism (p.427). The author criticises Ambedkar for Islamophobia on his warnings in the Rajya Sabha against the possibility of Pakistan teaming up with other Islamic countries against India. He even feigns to point fingers at Babasaheb for not toeing the author’s line of thinking. Ambedkar accepted the two-nation theory but did not trace its roots in the Brahminic aspirations to recreate their hegemonic control (p.325). But Teltumbde does this with a ridiculous set of arguments that has no substance. His criticism of Babasaheb is unnecessarily sharp so as to put the great man in a bad light. He corrects Ambedkar himself even on the name of his ancestral village to Ambadava and claims that Ambedkar had wrongly spelt it as Ambawade! The author further arraigns him to be of having a ‘faulty understanding of socialism and communism’. Moreover, strategic incoherence is alleged to be a trait on his person (p.425). This is in spite of Ambedkar’s own justification for the occasional inconsistency in his words and actions with the rhetoric that consistency was the virtue of the ass. This biography is not only ‘reflective’, it is actually critical. The author goes after later followers of Ambedkarism too, because they packaged him into an icon endowed with infallibility. Any view or act that does not reflect devotion to him could be blasphemy. This is contrary to Ambedkar’s opinion of the relationship of great people to ordinary ones. This leads us to doubt whether this book is an attempt to strike hard on the blind followers.

What is evident in this book is the inveterate hostility Congress under Nehru displayed towards Ambedkar. He was defeated from a Bombay constituency to reach the Constituent Assembly. He then managed to enter the Assembly from East Bengal. Gandhi then intervened to call a truce to utilize Babasaheb’s talent in drafting the Constitution. He entered Nehru’s cabinet as law minister but had to resign soon. Again, he was defeated in the elections by Congress candidates. He was then elected to the Rajya Sabha. Probably because of being fed up with all these manoeuvres and side-linings, Ambedkar exploded in the Rajya Sabha that he was merely a hack and made the Constitution against his will. He said he was quite prepared to burn it because ‘it does not suit anybody’ (p.437). What he meant was that decisions were already taken by a clique in the Congress party and then he was forced to translate them into constitutional language by the drafting committee. It is also to be remembered that Nehru awarded himself the ‘Bharat Ratna’ in a most petty act of aggrandizement while ignoring the Babasaheb, who was awarded the highest civilian honour posthumously only in 1990 by V P Singh. The author narrates the mental conflicts Ambedkar had to undergo in converting to another religion and to choose Buddhism for it. He ascribed rationalism and scientific spirit in a religion which he deemed to be Navayana Buddhism in contrast to Mahayana and Vajrayana. Teltumbde claims that transmigration of soul from one body to another is a Buddhist belief which Ambedkar denied. This claim is doubtful because it is well known that Buddhism does not recognize the soul while karma is believed to be transmigrating. The author also confirms that Buddhism did not abolish casteism and in fact, castes are present in the societies of Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Nepal. Howsoever intensely Babasaheb detested Hinduism, his voice cracked and tears rolled down his cheeks when he declared that he was renouncing it before the huge crowd at Deeksha Bhumi in Nagpur.

The book is divided into seven phases of his life and a posthumous phase is added to explain how the Ambedkar icon was turned into a divine avatar in the later decades while the political organisations he spawned splintered and crumbled one after the other. Ambedkar paid little heed to organisation. His parties rallied mainly on his charisma. When he was no more, his shoes proved too big for his successors who turned to fratricidal warfare that led to the collapse of all factions. In the 1960s, Congress began to woo Dalits as a vote bank. They lured its leaders with power and the masses with the Ambedkar icon as a proxy for their identity aspirations. Some of the militant organisations like the Dalit Panthers which was modelled on the Black Civil Rights movements in the US and came into being in the 1970s, denounced the Ambedkarite vision of using only constitutional methods to resolve grievances and openly allied with the far-left rebels. It is to be kept in mind that Ambedkar was a staunch opponent of communism and its class-based theories of political action.

At 676 pages, the book is a bit too large, but the reading process is hassle-free and enjoyable, despite the occasional political outbursts of the author accusing the present Indian government under Modi to be autocratic. This political bias seems to have turned him into a cynic who is unable to find anything good even in the case of the protagonist of the book – none other than Babasaheb himself. Considering the fierce criticism levelled against him on all areas of his work – social, political, constitutional and legislative – one wonders whether this book is part of a cancel culture. Ambedkar’s remarks on the desirability of women entering politics and the relationship of several women politicians with Nehru given on page 477 are indeed shocking. If you respect Ambedkar, several parts of this book would make you uncomfortable by pointing out inconsistencies, contradictions and even personal quirks in his character and life-work. The book includes more than 200 pictures covering various phases of his life. This effectively makes it a pictorial biography. However, many photographs are group photos involving many people. After completing the book, what is obvious and standing out is the personal stamp of the author, particularly his prejudices.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Stone Tower

Title: The Stone Tower – Ptolemy, the Silk Road and a 2000-year old Riddle
Author: Riaz Dean
Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2022 (First)
ISBN: 9780670093625
Pages: 225

Rome flourished in the first century BCE by establishing colonies and client-states all over the Mediterranean littoral which pushed up trade like never before. They consumed spices and silk from Asia and supplied gold in exchange for them as they did not possess the items which the Asians would accept in lieu of their produce. A network of trading routes and caravanserais developed in central Asia as a conduit for the flow of trade from China and India to Rome and Egypt. This network was later christened the Silk Road and proved to be a unifier of the east with the west. It was not only trade that was carried along the road. Religion, culture, language, script, sculpture and technology changed hands. This road was thus instrumental in coining the destiny of all modern Asian societies, particularly China. This book is an attempt to solve a 2000-year old question of ancient geography about a stone tower at the exact middle of the Silk Road. Riaz Dean is an independent scholar and author. This book is the result of a solo journey the author made retracing the old Silk Road.

The term ‘Silk Road’ was coined only in 1877 by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen. This was only an academic exercise as the actual route was copiously mentioned by ancient and early-medieval historians. A first century CE treatise called ‘Geographia’ by Claudius Ptolemy listed thousands of places along the Silk Road. It was he who first suggested the presence of a feature called ‘Stone Tower’ on the exact middle of the road. This was a special place high up in the mountains situated on the doorway to China’s western extremity called the ‘Roof of the World’. The book is split into three parts, the first of which explains the birth of the Silk Road, the second covers key events in history that determined the tower’s establishment at the halfway mark and the third pinpoints where the tower was actually located. The author narrates Chinese history of the second century BCE to explain how the trade route was established in the first place. Zhang Qian, a commander of the palace guards of Han empire led several missions to the west in an effort to find an ally against the hostile Xiongnu barbarians. Following Qian’s epic first mission, the Han began sending out more envoys to engage with newly found nations to the west. Other than goods to trade, they took expensive gifts for the nobles and their courts, an armed escort for protection, servants and ample supplies. For these long and arduous journeys, they needed caravans and the trade route came into being.

An overland route presents problems of its own, in the form of border protocols, brigandage and vagaries of extreme geography such as steep snow-clad hills and inhospitable deserts along the way. Naturally, the maritime spice route offered a better alternative for the movement of goods although the distances by sea were greater between the east and the west, particularly during times when the Silk Road became too dangerous. The rivalry between Rome and Parthia did not make the situation any better. The Romans controlled the maritime routes but the Parthians would not let them deal directly with the Chinese using overland routes. Rome then tried to bypass trade out of Parthia which levied heavy taxes for protection. This rivalry soon developed into full-fledged warfare that led to the doom of both the empires. Initially, silk was very costly, effectively worth its weight in gold. Even the very wealthy could not afford it, who sewed small patches of it on their clothing. Production of silk was a jealously guarded secret in China. On pain of death, no person was permitted to remove its eggs or cocoons; foreigners were not allowed near nurseries and guards searched merchants leaving China. However, paper was the most important item traded from the east, considering its impact on the transfer of knowledge through the printed word. Other forms of agriculture and technology, like cultivation of grapes, wine making and manufacture of coloured glassware travelled from west to east. Buddhism also spread along this route from India. This book describes Aurel Stein’s explorations in Xinjiang and central Asia which contributed greatly to archaeological and literary corpus of the ancient world. However, his appropriation of literary manuscripts by bribing Chinese monks was controversial.

The author’s quest for the Stone Tower fails to enthuse the reader on multiple counts. One reason is the uncertainty on the nature of the landmark. Ptolemy does not say whether the Stone Tower was a settlement, natural feature or a manmade structure. The inexactness in the suggested Ptolemaic coordinates signifies an area of 30,000 sq.km in which the Stone Tower could be found. Aurel Stein explored the regions in search of it in the first quarter of the twentieth century based on these coordinates and warned about the unreliable character of the information. Stein identified a settlement at Daraut-Kurghan in southern Kyrgyzstan as the location of the Stone Tower, because the Perso-Turkish name roughly translated to ‘a tower at the gorge’. Along with this, Dean also suggests three plausible locations – Tashkurgan in Xinjiang, Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Osh in Kyrgyzstan. Out of these four, the author selects a sacred mountain near Osh called Suleiman-Too as the Stone Tower. Unfortunately, the entire episode fails to excite the readers.

This book is an excellent source of Chinese and central Asian history and ethnic movements in the three centuries starting from 150 BCE. It describes the unsettling periods in which the Xiongnu tribes made repeated onslaughts on the Han empire which has some parallels to the ravages Roman empire encountered about half a millennium later. It also truthfully captures the domino effect created by fleeing nomadic tribes in displacing more units on their run to safety. The Xiongnu displaced the Yuezhi, who upturned the Sakas who in turn rode into India and disturbed the political balance. The book also neatly summarizes the commercial, literary and cultural interchanges across different societies along the Silk Road. The Taklamakan desert harbours many secrets of the ancient trade and its unnaturally arid climate preserves the artefacts with surprisingly little damage. A well-funded archaeological mission backed by technology is sure to unlock many treasures from the dry sands of Taklamakan. Apart from these, the actual quest to find the Stone Tower appears to be ‘much ado about nothing’. At least, Dean is not much successful in convincing the readers about the absolute necessity of the perilous adventures he undertook in central Asia looking for the tower. The book is effectively a sequel to the author’s earlier book, ‘Mapping the Great Game’ (reviewed earlier here). The book includes many photographs which would have been breath-taking had they been in colour instead of monochrome.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Ashoka – Portrait of a Philosopher King

Title: Ashoka – Portrait of a Philosopher King
Author: Patrick Olivelle
Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9789356993228
Pages: 356

This book is the first in a series called ‘Indian Lives’ which will be a collection of prominent personalities which will illuminate the rich, complex and contested history of the subcontinent. Ashoka stands out among all the kings and emperors of the world who held sway over the people over several millennia. He is made known to us by the edicts he carved in prominent rock faces and polished pillars spread out in his empire in which he exhorted his subjects to follow dharma meticulously and to lead a morally pure life following his example. Through these inscriptions, he offered religious freedom for all the diverse sects subject only to the contention that they respect other faiths which may differ from their ideology. This was a glowing model for later religions which was unthinkable in medieval Europe or even in modern Middle East where no opposition to the prevailing dogma would be encouraged. Also, Ashoka was the lone king in world history who was strong enough to say ‘I’m sorry’ and had had a distinctive moral philosophy which he sought to imbibe on his people. The Ashokan inscriptions containing 4614 words was the most studied piece of secular ancient Indian writing. This was tough work as the writing system did not separate words with blank spaces or punctuations. Patrick Olivelle is a Sri Lankan scholar who is currently professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of about thirty books on Indology and ancient Sanskrit literature.

Olivelle makes a short analysis of the salient points related to the country, its polity and Ashoka himself. The emperor used the name Piyadasi (Prakrit for priyadarshi, dear to behold) and the honorific Devanampiya (beloved of the gods) to refer to himself on the edicts; the name ‘Ashoka’ was first obtained from later Buddhist hagiographies, but the minor rock edicts in Nittur, Udegolam and Maski in Karnataka mentions the name ‘Ashoka’ (without sorrow) as well as ‘devanampiya’. The pillars on which later edicts were engraved were incredibly well polished. This superb quality of polish achieved for pillars and their capitals is intriguing because it was not repeated later. Ashoka intended the edicts only to preach morality is evident from the fact that one central aspect of the state that is hardly mentioned in Ashoka’s inscriptions is the economy. No mention is made even of revenue officers without whom taxes could not have been collected. Though a Sri Lankan, the author was educated and is working in western academia and appears more loyally inclined to western ideals than a native American or European. Without any corroborative evidence, the author credits Greek influence in moulding Ashoka’s administrative apparatus. He suggests familiarity to Greek customs and education brought on by the entourage of Greek princesses brought as wives of Ashoka’s father and grandfather Chandragupta Maurya as the reason for the expansive and Universalist vision of Ashoka’s moral philosophy.

The book makes an elucidation of the edicts and how it helped to promote literacy and fellow-feeling in the empire of Ashoka. Standardization of language (Ashokan Prakrit) and Brahmi script across most of the empire helped spread literacy across the country. Local dialects were spoken at various provinces and in the case of Karnataka, some form of Dravidian language was spoken, but the inscriptions were in Prakrit except in Afghanistan where Greek and Aramaic were also inscribed. The language, script and literacy gave a strong foundation to the new imagined community that he was trying to build in which he was the father and the people were children. Ashoka was more in contact with neighbours from the Northwest than from the South. He refers to his southern neighbours anonymously using ethnic or geographical names, but in the case of western Hellenistic regions, he refers to the kings by their exact names, suggesting better diplomatic contacts. The fourteen major rock edicts were located close to large towns at the borders of the empire, minor edicts are found at some distance from human habitations like hills or boulders, which were possibly pilgrimage sites. The pillar edicts are placed in the heartland of the empire. The author appears to be such a Hellenophile that whether it is the inscriptional techniques, construction of edict-bearing stone pillars or even the script itself, he credits the Greeks or Persians with it. For the pillars, he even suggests Egypt as a source only because Ashoka had sent a diplomatic mission to Alexandria. It seems like he does not want to ascribe originality of any kind to ancient India.

Ashoka extends great respect to all heterodox sects and to Brahmins in particular. In almost every rock edict, he exhorts others to honour them as a class. This flies in the face of left historians’ portrayal of Brahmins who were claimed to be working against the Buddhist system. Moreover, Ashoka is silent on the four-fold division (chaturvarna). He seems either not to have been aware of it or not to have thought it to be significant. The very term ‘varna’ or any of the names of the three varnas other than Brahmin are completely absent in Ashoka’s vocabulary. Even Brahmins are mentioned in the context of religious organisations and not as a social or demographic group. This contrasts with the author’s antipathy to Brahmins in his statement that ‘displacement of Brahmins from their privileged position within the social and political hierarchy was clearly one of the major consequences of Ashokan reforms’ (p.263). Further, Brahmins are always contrasted not to the other three varnas, but to wandering ascetics or Sramanas (p.57). This observation simply illustrates that the varna system was not internalized by the society. Olivelle suspects that the varna system was fabricated by later Brahmins and it was most likely aspirational and prescriptive, rather than descriptive. Non-Sanskrit inscriptions before the second century CE does not talk about varnas. The book also indicates a weakness of Ashokan dharma that might have contributed to its downfall after the patron’s demise. While Ashoka was downgrading the domestic religious rites, Brahminical texts like Apastamba’s dharmasutra and gruhyasutras which were penned at around this time were encouraging them. It served as an extension of Vedic ritual forms and Brahmin expertise into the realm of popular ceremonial that had previously lain beyond their purview. The book also includes a vitriolic attack by Buddhist monks made against Brahmins in the Anguttara Nikaya comparing them to dogs using filthy metaphors (p.242-3). Obviously, the antagonism existed on the Buddhist side too.

This book takes some effort to understand the personality of Ashoka from his inscriptions since we do not have any other source to do so. Ashoka was a penitent, but not a pacifist. We see traces of his veiled threat to use force in his message to the forest people within his territories. He never forsakes capital punishment but allowed only a reprieve of three days for the convict to reflect on his life and to give gifts as part of dharma. Ashoka never said he became a vegetarian. Pillar edict V states that ‘whereas hundreds of thousands of animals were slaughtered in the royal kitchen, now only three are killed per day’. Obviously, this will be for the king! But the author quotes a phrase ‘Saka parthiva’ of Sanskrit grammarian Patanjali and gives the meaning as ‘vegetarian king’ after slightly modifying it to ‘saka bhoji parthiva’, which is unintended in the original. However, this is absolutely stretching things a bit too far. Saka parthiva can also mean Saka king. In variance to accepted wisdom, Olivelle does not think Ashoka was an avid follower of Buddhism after the ‘initial years of conversion’. He argues that Buddhism was widespread in India even before Ashoka became a lay disciple and began vigorously supporting it. After the early years, his interest shifted to a personalized concept of dharma rather than Buddhist religion itself. He uses it as a non-sectarian religious and moral concept. Ashoka does not mention any of the central doctrinal tenets of Buddhism anywhere in his edicts. The other ideas of ahimsa and doing good to others are to be found in the repertoire of all religious sects. The author then analyses the concept of Ashokan dharma. The word ‘dharma’ was coined by Rig Vedic poets. There are no Indo-European cognates for this term in any language. Upanishads handle this only marginally. Ashoka was in no small measure responsible for dharma assuming the centrality it did in Indian history.

Olivelle does not stop to find whether Ashoka had turned puritan in his prescriptions and pronouncements on dharma. Traces of coercion in Ashoka’s methods to spread his moral philosophy are also to be doubted. Minor Rock Edict I states that before the time Ashoka turned a lay disciple, men in Jambudvipa were unmingled with gods and they were made to mingle with them by Ashoka’s striving (p.45). Within a few years of becoming an upasaka, Ashoka issues a reading list for Buddhist monks and nuns to practice dharma better. In the schism edict, he virtually threatens any monk or nun who causes dissension in the Sangha with banishment. He forbade popular festivals for the merrymaking it entailed and frowned upon even domestic ceremonies as trivial and frivolous.

Part 1 of the book examines Ashoka’s role as a ruler of the land, composer of the moral lessons and builder of the finely polished pillars. Parts 2 and 3 deal with Ashoka as a lay disciple of Buddhism and his maturing to a moral philosopher respectively and Part 4 examines his character as an ecumenist. The author is a scholar of Sanskrit beyond doubt, but readers occasionally have some discomfort on his interpretation of words used in the inscriptions. He possibly misinterprets ‘janapada’ in edicts as rural countryside (p.35) which can also mean a republic. In the section on Mauryan state, he deems ‘rajuka’ officers to be assigned to rural districts. It is debatable whether an ancient kingdom would have rural development in their radar. There can be a possible error in his interpretation of Ashoka’s Lumbini inscription in which he makes the village of Lumbini tax-free and ‘to have a one-eighth portion’. Quoting another author Harry Fawk, the author surmises that this refers to one-eighth portion of Buddha’s remains are to be interred there (p.111). But this may more likely to be a cess on some merchandise in a nearby trading post so as to form an income stream for the village. Having read the entire book, readers are mildly surprised that the author has never considered for a moment the possibility that the entire edicts might be a politician’s hyperbole on how the empire is, and should be, run? Quite plausibly, this can be the ancient equivalent of the grand manifestos put out by political parties during election time in India. The book compiles the essentials of Ashokan dharma which is condensed into: few evil acts, many good deeds, compassion, gift-giving, truthfulness and purity of heart. The emperor was also tolerant. He permitted all religious sects under the overarching title of Pashandas to reside anywhere they chose and to carry out their sermonizing with moderation. He also visited them without discrimination, offered gifts and paid homages.

This book includes a foreword by Ramachandra Guha, the general editor of the ‘Indian Lives’ series, but looks lacklustre considering it is the first step in a supposedly great journey. Olivelle also tries unsuccessfully to project modern social constructs to Ashokan rule. He believes that Ashoka wanted to create ‘a community of people to socially bind them together’ in his empire. This is said to be similar to the idea of civil religion proposed by Rousseau to create unification of communities that form a nation and suggests that Ashoka’s obsession with dharma was a manifestation of this urge. This exemplifies the conclusion that the author is not much aware of how an ancient pagan polity worked in practice. Olivelle’s comparison of Ashoka to the much later Mughal emperor Akbar and India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru as the reincarnations of Ashoka in their ecumenism (p.274) is simply outrageous as well as ridiculous. This assertion only proves that the author belongs to the clique of historians who enjoyed the run of the place in modern Indian historiography in the post-independence period.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

My Father’s Brain

Title: My Father’s Brain – Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer’s
Author: Sandeep Jauhar
Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9780670097913
Pages: 238

The mind is the single organ that makes an individual. Located in the brain – or you can take it to be the brain itself – it runs the software that animates a person. Without it, he turns into a vegetative state. Alzheimer’s disease is the most dreaded illness that afflicts this vital organ. An affected person loses memory first and then bodily functions in a gradually degenerating spiral from which no cure has been found yet. And it is fairly commonplace too, as evidenced by the increasing life expectancy all over the world. By the middle of this century, 100 million people would be affected by this malady all over the world, trailing only to heart disease and cancer. The resulting condition called dementia is actually more feared than cancer. In fact, it is deemed more terrible than death itself. This book presents a first-hand experience of an Indian medical doctor settled in the US, when his scientist father developed the disease and died around seven years after its detection. It is the painful story of the irreversible descent to death, punctuated by several episodes of strife and an undignified existence. An unhappy trait of the disease is that a patient can continue indefinitely on provision of nourishment intravenously even long after he has lost the ability even to sit up straight. Sandeep Jauhar is a cardiologist of Indian origin settled in the US. He is the author of many acclaimed books on medical topics. He writes regularly for the opinion section of the New York Times.

Being a physician himself, the author understood the problems his father was facing right from pathology even though the knowledge helped very little in giving care to a person who was losing the moorings that tied him to family and society. Jauhar provides an easily comprehensible description of what was happening in the brain when Alzheimer’s takes over. The hippocampus and its associated structures responsible for processing short- and long-term memories are often the first structures damaged in Alzheimer’s which is why they often cannot remember recent events like what they ate for lunch though they may retain memories from childhood or early adulthood. As the disease worsens, memory is completely obliterated and the person enters a state of perpetual present and unable to remember anything that can relate them to a family member or intimate friend. Apart from loss of memory, it leads one incapable of normal thought or to feel empathy to others. Alzheimer’s unravels the brain almost exactly in the reverse order as it develops from birth. Initially, patients can no longer walk unaided. Then they cannot sit up without assistance. Next they lose the ability to smile. Finally, they cannot even hold up their own heads. The author also presents a gruesome side effect of the symptoms. Amygdala, which is responsible for the processing of emotions, is only a few millimetres away from the hippocampus. Disease in the latter quickly travels to the former. So, often amnesia coexists with emotional outbursts out of proportion to the events that triggered them. Hence, lies and deception may be a shortcut to navigating such fraught moments. Anyway, they cannot remember what was said a few minutes earlier. The author discouraged this option at first, but slowly saw the logic and fell in line with his other siblings and caregivers.

The book presents a short primer on development of the awareness of old-age dementia as a physical process. It describes the studies of Alois Alzheimer in the early decades of the last century. He found that senile plaques of the beta-amyloid protein were getting deposited in brain tissues. The disease was first described in a middle-aged patient and it was thought it differed from normal, senile dementia. This outlook was changed by the 1970s and both were proved to be one and the same disease. Writing from the US, Jauhar observes it to be the fourth most fatal disease among elderly Americans. Former President Ronald Reagan was also a victim of it whose cognitive difficulties began to be evident in the last few years of his presidency. Dementia remains the only chronic and widespread medical scourge for which there are no effective treatments. What the patient gets today has changed little from what Alzheimer was able to offer his patients in 1901.

Having a close relative with Alzheimer’s disease is an excruciating experience, probably more for the caregivers than the patient himself. This is made all the more worse if the offspring have their own reasons in slackening care for their parents. This includes dwindling time, growing responsibilities at work, social commitment or perhaps insufficient inclination too. Presence of hallucinations or delusions in the patient increases the risk of disability, institutionalization and death. As the disease spreads to more areas of the brain such as hypothalamus, they will lose the sense of hot and cold and may wear woollen cloths in summer leading to other complications like dehydration. Even though the disease cannot be cured, the author suggests some methods by which its onset can be delayed. Higher social interactions such as relationships, environment and family support may lessen the impact of dementia. Studies show that people who were widowed experienced mental decline that was three times faster than that of similar people who had not lost a spouse. Getting enough sleep, engaging in social and cognitive activities that stimulate the brain, avoiding smoking and heavy drinking and minimizing stress also would help. But this sounds like the recipe for a healthy living and not much more. It shows the helplessness of the medical establishment in tackling the malady. Jauhar also briefly pauses to reflect on the legal and ethical aspects of terminating the miserable lives of demented persons. In Scotland in the year 2003, a man was acquitted with only a mild censure for smothering his demented wife with a pillow. She was 85 and they were married for 55 years.

The deterioration of the author’s father rivets the attention of the readers and brings to the foreground the stress of his three children to cope with the situation. He was a renowned botanist specialising in better-yielding varieties of wheat. He was a professor who published numerous papers on plant cytogenetics. Apart from the brain, there were no other physical illnesses for this 79-year old man. The portrayal of the shrinking brain and its manifestations in the degeneration of imagination, perceptions, ambitions and expectations haunt the readers. Within minutes or even less, his mood will swing from rage to resignation and even joy. His ability to forget, which is actually his disability to remember, was a curse as well as a blessing, because he will immediately forget whatever nonsense was said to placate him. The high cost of healthcare and assisted living is another factor that stands out in the narrative. Two of his sons were specialist medical practitioners yet even they struggled to meet the expenses.

This work is not to be taken as a medical primer on the disease. Its primary aim is to present the affected family’s concerns and anguish. The book clearly captures the strain in relationships between the siblings and their father as the disease progressed towards the end. It seems the in-laws were the first to back out of the rigour. This is ameliorated to some extent in the American setting in which parents lived separately from their children. The brothers and their sister often quibbled about how to proceed in caring for their father. To add to the woes, their mother developed Parkinson’s disease and died some years before his death. The atmosphere becomes poignant when the final days arrived which is very touching for those who have already lost one or both of their parents. The dilemma became all the more painful when one of them wanted to end the suffering by withdrawal or medication. In the end, the saga came to a sad but merciful end when death was assisted by withdrawal of fluids while administering short doses of morphine.

And, readers feel that one of their close relatives has died.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star