The Magic of Reality

Title: The Magic of Reality – How We Know What’s Really True

Author: Richard Dawkins

Publisher: Black Swan, 2012 (First published 2011)

ISBN: 978-0-552-77890-9

Pages: 257

Richard Dawkins is a great biologist, rationalist, atheist, popularizer of science and a modern thinker, all rolled into one. Reading one of his books is delightful experience taking into account the enormity of information extracted from it and the lucid common sense approach employed by the author throughout. Many of his books, like The Selfish Gene, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Greatest Show on Earth, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Extended Phenotype, The God Delusion and The Ancestor’s Tale have been reviewed earlier in this blog. Unlike the previous titles, The Magic of Reality is brought out with a younger and more general audience in mind. The author has successfully completed his mission though the book is rather small by Dawkinsian standards. Any young person who reads this book with an open mind and is prepared to fill up the thoughts which the author has developed to its logical conclusions, will not fail to appreciate the pure magic in science and its expositions. Often we wonder at the miraculous happenings recorded in sacred books, but don’t stop to think of the amazement the ancients would have felt had they witnessed some of science’s own miracles which we take for granted today, like jet planes, live television, mobile communication or satellite navigation. As the famous science-fiction writer Arthur C Clarke said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This book also helps us from assigning supernatural origins to a phenomenon which we cannot explain with today’s science. Such an approach is a dead end – if it is indeed supernatural, there is no point trying to shine light on it which will always remain in the shade. Rather, such occurrences should be taken as an opportunity to further the scientific knowledge and to channel scientific methods to new pastures.

Finding a good and suitable title for a book is one of any author’s most difficult tasks. A lot of considerations like appeal to a particular class of readers, the socio-religious-political connotations and such niceties go into selecting a title, not counting the immense pressure sure to be exerted by the publisher who naturally wants to maximise his profit. So, this part cares for the goodness of the name. As for the ‘suitability’ part, there is no hard and fast rule. In fact, we don’t even know of this until reviewers come out with criticisms about the choice of the title. But Dawkins excels superbly in choosing the most correct name for his work, ‘The Magic of Reality’ which he has explained scintillatingly in the first chapter. Reality is something which exist and which can be sensed by us. In this, we are aided by instruments which extend our five natural sense organs dealing with sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. We are aided by telescopes, microscopes, ENT machines or MRI scanners to sense the real things existing in places where our natural senses can’t reach. Or, we may build models, sometimes physical or sometimes abstract, whose predictions can be tested by our senses which correspond to reality. Moving on to magic, there are three types – supernatural, stage tricks and poetic. The first lives in myths and fables fit only to fire up the imaginations of little children, the second is very enjoyable as a means of social interaction, but it is only a trick. The third, poetic magic is which make us wonder struck with awe at the glimpse of a star-studded night sky, a splendid rainbow, a nicely performed musical item or a deeply appealing piece of poetry. What Dawkins means by the title is that the real things, which exist around us can inspire in us a sense of poetic magic if we care to look into the science which explains them.

The rainbow and its spectrum of colours is something Dawkins cherishes most and represents as a supreme exemplar of poetic magic. In the chapter, ‘What is Rainbow?’, this phenomenon is explained in nice detail. Not only that, he has written a separate book titled Unweaving the Rainbow, which argues that though science has demonstrated the secrets behind rainbow and other mesmerizing experiences, they still appear magical. Dawkins’ attempts to narrate concepts in physics is marked by its simplicity and sharpness of comprehension. Though not a physicist himself, and who in fact harbours a not too flattering view of 19^th century physicists because of their stubborn belief that the immense age of earth suggested by biologists and geologists based on fossils and land formations was not tenable because there was no known process in physics at that time to explain the availability of a non-depleting energy source for so long a time. The deep secrets behind the origin of the universe, its expansion, birth and death of stars, how seasons are experienced and such topics find an able educator in Dawkins. Whenever he is not well versed enough to illustrate advanced concepts in exotic areas of quantum theory, the author bows gracefully, declaring that he is not qualified enough to do that, but the concept is well understood by scientists in the concerned branches.

True to his credentials as a foremost popularizer of science, the author dwells at length on the question of what is a miracle and how it should be dealt with. This chapter should make serious reading for real investigators of truth. A miracle is an event which challenges all natural explanations and would violate established scientific principles. But before we gulp it in one piece, we should consider the alternative explanations of the stated incident. Dawkins presents David Hume, a 19^th century thinker and his rules for deciding on the truth of miracles. Hume argues that a miracle should be accepted only if the falsification of it by logical means is even more miraculous than the first one. Even in reported miracles experienced by thosands of people, there is the often plausible explanation that the incident was falsely or even fraudulently reported. Rumours run thick and fast when outlandish occurrences are involved. Dawkins comments that when rumours are old enough, it becomes tradition.

The book is a pleasure to read which young readers would find very useful. As noted earlier, the title is apt and perfectly explains the function the book is called upon to perform, namely, making the readers marvel at the magic (in a poetic sense) which reality evokes (or rather, should evoke) in us. While describing how ordinary material are composed of atoms on a tiny scale, Dawkins cleverly wriggles free from explaining quarks, which are the components of protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei. He says, “Quarks are not something I am not going to talk about in this book. That’s not because I think you wouldn’t understand. It is because I know I don’t understand it” (p.93). This seems to be an intelligent ruse not to get bogged down in quantum phenomena which are counter-intuitive and happening at such small scales. This may even be construed by some people to be working in a mysterious way which we cannot grasp. In a scholarly fashion, Dawkins gets over this difficulty too, because he had already stipulated that reality is something which can be tested by the predictions of a model if it can’t be sensed directly by us, which quantum mechanics admirably does.

The ideas presented in the book are logically and conceptually structured well. Every chapter begins by telling a myth existing in various societies and related to the topic. Indian and Chinese myths are also narrated, but not numerous enough. These myths always pale in comparison with the scientific wonders which follow in the discussion. The contents are much illuminating and entertaining. ‘Who was the first person?’ is the title of an interesting chapter to answer that frequently asked question. In a narrative interspersed with fact and wit, the author conclusively establishes that there never was such a person to pinpoint. The evolution was so gradual that it is like asking when a person turned old. Getting aged is a similar slow process that we can’t designate a particular day as the one in which that person became an old man. To tide over the problem, we use arbitrary criteria to determine old age, like the day when that person turned 60, or likewise. This chapter is essentially a synopsis of Dawkins’ another illuminating work, ‘The Ancestor’s Tale’.

The only negative aspect is that the book is intended only for teenagers or other people who have only a cursory exposure to physics and hence lacks depth. A few colour plates illustrating some of the concepts detailed in the main body of the work would’ve been immensely appealing. This shortfall is all the more made stark by the fact that most of the author’s other books do possess this. Though the cover of the book loudly proclaim that it is illustrated by Dave McKean, the renowned designer and illustrator, his output fails to impress. In fact, the readers won’t even notice the caricatures as they look so commonplace and irrelevant.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Stalin’s Nemesis

Title: Stalin’s Nemesis – The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky

Author: Bertrand M Patenaude

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2009 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-571-22875-1

Pages: 273

Vladimir Ilych Lenin and Lev Davidovich Trotsky led the October Revolution in 1917 to establish the first socialist state on to the feudal political landscape of Russia. The two men fought together in the civil war which ensued and by 1919, the fledgling workers’ empire was strong enough to walk on its own. It proved to be an example worth imitating for the numerous labour movements in other parts of the world and a process of exporting revolution piecemeal began in right earnest. Soviet Union provided the theoretical, moral, political and financial backbone of other revolutionary parties and bankrolled them. However, everything was not right at the heart of revolution. Lenin’s health was deteriorating and struggle for succession began among the remaining top leadership. Stalin, a one-time seminary student who turned man of steel crushed all opposition to his leadership and stepped to the throne as a dictator. His opponents, Trotsky being the prominent among them, were devastated and framed under false charges. Stalin’s vindictiveness was exhibited on nobody more cruelly than Trotsky. He was exiled and assassinated, and all of his family members were also hunted down and shot. The gruesome story of a hunted man banished to a foreign land is narrated in the book written by Bertrand M Patenaude who is a lecturer at Stanford University and the author of several books on Russian and Soviet history.

Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein in 1879 in Ukraine. He was the intellectual figurehead of the party due to his fine oratory and fiery speeches which coaxed the masses to rise in revolt. Fighting against all slander due to his Jewish origins, Trotsky was indispensable to Lenin, though he joined the party only in 1917 – the year of the revolution. After the revolution installed Lenin’s government in Moscow, Russia plunged into a civil war between Bolsheviks, the rulers and White Guards. Trotsky became the War Commissar and travelled everywhere the war raged in a train which housed his offices, accommodation, weapons, soldiers and a printing press. He energised the revolutionaries and was merciless against deserters. His draconian measures included holding one’s relatives responsible for his good conduct – a measure to which Trotsky himself would fall victim later. He was imprisoned in 1926 and sent to Kazakhstan. Stalin was itching for more severe reprisals which led to Trotsky’s deportation to Turkey in 1929. He was never to return to the USSR.

Trotsky organized his supporters in prominent European capitals and carried out propaganda against the dictatorial regime of Stalin. He termed it dictatorship over the proletariat in a mocking paraphrase of the credo of Communism, dictatorship of the proletariat. GPU, Stalin’s secret service was behind the exiled old man who found it wise to relocate himself to Paris. Security concerns drove him to Norway. However, he found the country too vulnerable to Russian intimidation. When the trial of Trotsky’s onetime confidantes began in Moscow in August 1936 on trumped up charges, he was even put under house arrest as per Stalin’s instructions. Trotsky sought asylum in Mexico where influential painter Diego Rivera intervened on his behalf and asylum was granted. He reached Mexico in January 1937.

The author paints the true picture of an exiled revolutionary marshalling his allies and catering to the theoretical mess created by Trotskyism’s split from mainline Communist ideology. He refused to lend weight to the idea that Stalinist regime has lost its legitimacy as a representative of the proletariat. He was extremely reluctant to sling mud on the system he himself had fought hard to install over the unwilling majority. The Mexican communists, who were dancing to the tunes composed in Moscow protested, often violently, against providing a haven for Trotsky. Dark clouds of World War II was looming over the horizon of Europe. Hitler made a non-aggression pact with Stalin and invaded Poland. The Nazi-Communist coalition quickly subjugated Poland in 1939. Stalin also annexed Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and invaded Finland. The sudden friendship with Nazis made the Mexican communists change the language of ridicule they used against Trotsky. Instead of accusing him as an agent of Gestapo, Hitler’s secret police, they now charged him in the payroll of American imperialists. Trotsky’s steadfast allegiance to communist ideals are expressed in his reaction to Russian annexation of Eastern European countries. Even though directed by Stalin, he hailed the overpowering of Poland and its neighbours as a victory for socialist revolution and urged the Russians to secure the means of production from private hands in these states.

NKVD, Stalin’s newly constituted secret service was leaving no stone unturned in infiltrating Trotsky’s Mexican household. Several operatives tried and at last, a Belgian agent managed to sneek in and hit Trotsky fatally on the head. He died two days later in a hospital on August 21, 1940. Trotsky’s legacy lived till the world war ended, but thereafter, the party he established exploded into numerous insignificant splinter groups. Khrushchev made life easier for his allies living in USSR, after Stalin’s death. Then Gorbachev came and presided over the dismantling of the failed workers’ empire in 1991. Even Gorbachev, who rehabilitated Bolsheviks hunted and killed by Stalin termed Trotsky as irrelevant and as marked by Lenin as ambitious. Trotsky’s assassin served twenty years in Mexican prison and was released in 1960. He was secretly awarded an ‘Order of Lenin’ in Moscow for carrying out the ‘special task’ wonderfully. The house in which Trotsky lived in Mexico is now a museum.

The author presents delightful insight into the nature and style of Trotsky that differed from established principles earmarked for socialist leaders. The single most objectionable principle of Communist regimes is its insistence that arts and literature should serve as another front of the revolution. Individualism and mysticism as expressed in literature are anathema to them. All totalitarian regimes used arts and literature as instruments of state education and propaganda. Patenaude lucidly portrays Trotsky’s opposition to such servility who always maintained that art must make its own way and by its own means and that the domain of art is not one in which the party is called upon to command. The author’s unique style of occasionally going back to Trotsky’s revolutionary past in USSR in response to his remininscences and utterances to his companions provide the only interest in the long narrative.

The book has miserably failed to describe the reign of terror and suppression which raged Stalinist Russia in full. Instead of stressing on the finer points of departure between Trotsky and Stalin, Patenaude is more interested in titillating the readers with Trotsky’s affairs with his benefactor’s wife in Mexico and boring them with unnecessary details of his residences and of his correspondence. The book falls to pitiable depths when all the author could illustrate about Trotsky’s exiled life is about the menu for his lunch and how it seemed bland to the supporting crew. Unnecessary reproduction of the contents of the letter written by Trotsky to his estranged wife after formally ending one of his affairs makes the book stoop to the level of voyeurism. His description of their intimate moments together given in page 62 is nothing but pornography. It is really terrible that the author has chosen to produce the contents verbatim!

The book is reluctantly recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

Jinnah Vs Gandhi

Title: Jinnah Vs Gandhi

Author: Roderick Matthews

Publisher: Hachette India 2012 (First)

ISBN: 978-81-9061-739-0

Pages: 301

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the fathers of the modern Indian and Pakistani nations respectively, has attracted the attention of many political thinkers, journalists and writers throughout the world. Even after 65 years after they departed from this world, the very notion that present-day analysts are still sufficiently lured by their charisma to attempt a comparative analysis of their political lives is proof of the special niches the two great leaders have carved out for themselves in the national mindset of both India and Pakistan. Roderick Matthews is a freelance writer living in London, specializing in Indian history. He has a personal link to the legacy of Gandhi as it was his great-grandmother, Lady Cecilia Roberts who had looked after him when he fell ill on a visit to London in 1914. However, the author has not harboured any irrational soft feelings to the half-naked fakir and has subjected him to a sharp and impartial analysis.

Gandhi and Jinnah were the undisputed leaders of political factions they represented in pre-independent India. But, the similarity seems to end there. Gandhi was an idealist, who believed in moral truth as the foundation for all outward manifestations of personal conduct. Even when discussing issues of national and international ramifications, he believed in the inner lights of the individuals participating in the deliberations and the wonders ‘a change of heart’ can do for the individual as well as the country. As a result of this coupling at the personal level, he enjoyed a wide and varied friendship. Contrary to this, Jinnah was a liberal at first who later modified his program to protection of Muslims against a supposed Hindu tyranny as his sole agenda. Means was not a bother for him when the end justified it. While Gandhi was open and inclusive, Jinnah was reticent and defensive. Ahimsa, or non-violence was Gandhi’s creed which he believed could be extended to all struggles against oppressors, if the protests are staged in a sufficiently massive scale. He could convincingly prove his point as the British left, though not immediately and the transition of power was less violent than perhaps it might’ve been if confronted with more force.

In fact, it was not Jinnah who first termed Indian Muslims as a nation. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan had already done this in late 19^th century. Establishment of Muslim League in 1906 gave a political platform for such ideas to be publicly expressed. Jinnah propounded his two-nation theory only in 1937 when avenues of cooperation with belligerent Congress leaders appeared to have closed down. But, the very idea that Muslims constituted a monolithic state arching over the sub-nationalities was proved conclusively false in 1971 when another Muslim state, Bangladesh, was carved out of Pakistan as a result of popular uprising and Indian military support. However, there were points in which Jinnah was proved correct in the 1920s. In a bid to find a moral issue to unite Hindus and Muslims, Gandhi initiated the Khilafat (Caliphate) movement which demanded the restoration of the Ottoman Sultan dethroned by British in 1918. The concept of  caliph was an anachronistic one which Jinnah thought unworthy to fight for. Gandhi went along with his plan and at many places, the struggle degenerated into an orgy of frightfulness. In Malabar, the Muslim protestors turned against the British and their Hindu neighbours in a violent paroxysm of murder, looting, arson, rape and forced conversions to Islam on a scale unheard of in Kerala. Gandhi’s pathetic reaction to this was that they were religious men fighting for their religion in a way they considered religious (p.40).

The Montagu-Chelmsford recommendations (1919) paved the way for constitutional reforms in India. It provided a sense of direction to India’s politicians who were stranded at the end of World War I, in search of the path to self-determination. Gandhi’s campaigns which ensured participation of the masses transplanted politics from the drawing rooms to the streets. This estranged Muslim League as they feared that in a popular upsurge, the majority community stands to exert a powerful hold in all avenues of power. Widespread communal riots in the mid-1920s and opposition to Simon Commission (1928) put Congress and the League in different boats. Jinnah was effectively sidelined in this period due to disunity in his party. Dominant provincial leaders like Fazl-i-Husain of Punjab was more interested in provincial autonomy under a weak central regime while Jinnah wanted a strong government at the centre.

The provincial governments which assumed power in 1937 as a result of the Government of India Act, 1935 was a watershed moment in national politics. Jinnah’s Muslim League was convincingly routed everywhere, even while trumpeting that they alone represented Muslim interests. Congress won eight out of the eleven provinces with Bengal and Punjab won by Islamic parties unsympathetic to Muslim League. Stung into action, Jinnah demanded that power be shared with his party, but Congress, in a short-sighted moment arisen out of euphoria was not in a mood to listen. This was the point at which Jinnah set upon partition as the final goal. Rahmat Ali, a student in England, had started arguing for a Muslim state of Pakistan in the North-West. His demands were exorbitant, asking for an independent state wherever Muslims were in a local majority, such as Haidaristan (Delhi), Osmanistan (Hyderabad), Maplistan (Malabar) and so forth. During the second World War, Congress opposed British government for making the country a partner in the war without prior consultation with its leaders. Jinnah sided with the British and remained loyal throughout the war. After it was over, mounting difficulties to keep the subcontinent under subjugation and the change of government at home made the British announce a slew of measures intended to bring total freedom to India. Jinnah threw all his weight behind the demand for a separate state for Muslims which was foisted up with mass action that was a euphemism for bloody communal violence. As a result, every party in the negotiating table had come around to partition by May 1947. Anyway, the Pakistan which Jinnah had in mind was not the same state run by venom-spitting Mullahs and terrorists of today. In a public address in Karachi on 11 August 1947, he assured full religious freedom to minorities and declared that religion would not be an issue to affect a citizen’s prospects in the new state. However, this remark is usually expunged in modern Pakistani accounts of their father of the nation.

The book contains several curious facts. The comparison between India and Pakistan is enlightening. Matthews says, “India, created by collective leadership and built on principles of diversity and tolerance, has become a country addicted to debate; Pakistan, the product of fear, single-mindedness and hero-worship has become a country marked by intolerance and inclinded to authoritarianism” (p.6). Such clarity in comparisons is a feature of the author and extends to the estimation of differences between the leaders. “Gandhi began his career looking for a way to realize his religious aims in political terms, while Jinnah ended his career looking for a way to fulfil his political aim in religious terms” (p.39). Gandhi’s embrace of the lost cause of Khilafat may be thought of as one of the reasons which divided the two major religions of India. His campaign to restore the caliph fanned the flames of Muslim fanaticism leading to widespread violence and forced conversions. Where there were 16 major communal incidents between 1900 and 1922, there were 72 such incidents between 1923 and 1926 (p.103). The amusing fact is that in a decision speaking of wisdom, Jinnah and the Muslim League stayed away from the Khilafat campaign.

The book helps to dispel the aura of a troublemaker surrounding Jinnah in India and presents the image of an intelligent leader who was forced to extreme corners after suffering non-cooperation from his Congress colleagues. It depicts a liberal man having a Parsi wife who started his career with secular ideals in mind, but finally ended up creating a theocratic state. Matthews provides a masterly dissection of biographies and accounts of the two politicians with a precise pointer at the end to show where that particular account has deviated from the correct path. The reading which went into this review is commendable. On the disadvantageous aspects, it may be noted that the author’s analysis of events and personalities though extensive, is uninteresting to read and loaded with pedantic play of terms and comparison, becoming difficult to navigate. In his bid to examine the personalities in as many points of detail as possible, a great many chapters are included, with not much coherence or continuity between them.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

Waterloo

Title: Waterloo – The Battle That Brought Down Napoleon

Author: Jeremy Black

Publisher: Icon Books 2011 (First published: 2010)

ISBN: 978-1-848-31233-3

Pages: 217

Jeremy Black, a professor of history at the University of Exeter is one of the world’s leading military historians. He is a member of Royal Historical Society and a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. This book is a fitting tribute to his reputation as an expert in military history. Though unappealing to the general reader who is more interested in the socio-political factors leading to the battle and its repercussions, Black’s history of Europe’s most famous battle is a treasure trove of data for students seeking tidbits of military history. Waterloo is synonymous not only with the nadir of Napoleon’s meteoric rise, but this small village in Belgium is a powerful symbol of patriotic pride for most Britons as evidenced by the slew of place names and commemorative objects. The battle served to reestablish the Bourbon dynasty ousted during the French Revolution, but France had changed a lot during the intervening three decades that the royals were removed from power not much later.

Napoleon Bonaparte, born in 1769, joined the French army as a second lieutenant at the age of 16. The French Revolution in 1789 helped the careers of talented opportunists like him and he rose to General in 1796 through his characteristic self-confidence, swift decision-making, rapid mobility and concentration of strength at the decisive point. He usurped power in 1799 and crowned emperor in 1804. Always nursing grand schemes of domination over the neighbours, the state was always at war during Napoleon’s reign. The success of revolution at home ensured the presence of talented officers in the army as against aristocrats in the ancien regime. But this novelty and Napoleon’s battle tactics which afforded victory in early battles began to wear off towards the end of his career. On the other hand, British forces also were not well off. The miserable defeat in the American War of Independence where the colonials were supported by the French was a severe strain on morale. Arthur Wellesley’s dynamic leadership and victories at several battles in the 15 years leading to 1815 had galvanized an effective fighting spirit in them which was aided by a united coalition in which every partner was bent upon unseating Napoleon, who was relentlessly waging war and tearing down treaties which he himself had penned. Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington went on to become a prominent statesman, becoming the prime minister of Britain for a brief stint.

Napoleon’s star had started waning after 1805 when his navy was humbled by Admiral Nelson at Trafalgar. Combined with reverses in the Iberian peninsula came the awareness among European rulers that he is not to be trusted. Pride and overconfidence blinding his usually clear judgment, the French army undertook a devastating campaign against Russia, ultimately capturing Moscow. Obtained at great cost, Napoleon could hold on to Moscow for hardly one month after fierce opposition drove them back. Exposed to the severe Russian winter and with supply lines disrupted, French victory soon turned to defeat. Tens of thousands of soldiers and horses died in the ignominious retreat. It is estimated that 180,000 horses were lost, which continued to be a grave strain on French military might at later battles. He lost in 1814 and was exiled to the small island of Elba, but effected an escape and returned to power in France in March 1815. The major powers of Europe – Austria, Prussia, Russia and Britain – struck an alliance and met Napoleon’s forces at Waterloo in Belgium on 16 June 1815.

The fight lasted only three days. At the end of the third day, 18 June 1815 which was Sunday, Napoleon’s forces were routed conclusively. The tactical alliance between the British and Prussians stood its ground as they joined forces to oppose the French. The only difference of opinion among them was how to name the just concluded battle. Prussians liked the appellation ‘La Belle Alliance’ and ‘Mont St. Jean’ but Wellington preferred Waterloo, which was easier for the British to pronounce. Napoleon fled back to Paris and abdicated in favour of his sone on 22 June, but the choice was not acceptable to the prominent in the regime. Anglo-Prussian troops occupied Paris on 7 July. Louis XVIII returned on the following day amidst little popular joy. Napoleon was arrested and permanently exiled to St. Helena, a small island on the South Atlantic where he was killed by slow poisoning with arsenic.

Waterloo deserves a prominent place in world history. It was the last major European battle to be personally directed by one of the commanders from frontline positions. Napoleon’s opponents were so strong and united that even if he had won there, France would still have been crushed in a long drawn-out war on the scales of the two world wars. As such, Europe was saved from such a fratricidal conflict. Britain gained enormously from France’s defeat – it annexed Sri Lanka and many port towns around the world, catapulting its navy to the pinnacle. European powers proceeded on the path of colonization in the later years of that century.

A curious fact can also be discerned by Indian readers about the undue glorification of Pazhassi Raja, a local chieftain in Northern Kerala at the beginning of 19^th century. Dealing the Raja was Arthur Wellesley’s final assignment in India. He had fought Tipu earlier. Though the revolt of Pazhassi is celebrated as a great event, it doesn’t even find mention in British accounts of Wellesley’s antecedents in India, as this book don’t mention this struggle at all when detailing the Duke’s engagements in India (p. 41).

The book is very tedious and thoroughly fails to grab the attention of the general reader. In fact, such a person’s patience is tried the most in the chapter containing actual description of the confrontation. The reader loses track of his bearings in the myriad accounts of such and such troops doing such and such things against the opponents. Also, the work miserably fails to bring the contingencies which led to the war to the reader’s attention. It is solely concerned with the verbatim narration of the battle and is useless for people other than students of military history.

The book is not recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

The Siege of Mecca

Title: The Siege of Mecca – The Forgotten Uprising

Author: Yaroslav Trofimov

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2007 (First)

ISBN: 978-1-846-14060-0

Pages: 260

The Grand Mosque at Mecca is the holiest shrine of Islam, containing Kaaba. It is to this place of worship that Muslims anywhere in the world turn their faces to, when they supplicate five times a day. Established by the Prophet himself, the mosque commands unadulterated respect from all believers of the Islamic faith. This book narrates a shocking incident in 1979 when a group of ultra-orthodox Sunni militants swooped on the mosque, taking hostages of pilgrims and didn’t budge for two weeks, during which time the Saudi royal regime faced its greatest threat to stability in seven decades of assuming power. The book explains the historical background when the house of Saud rose to the throne, the discontent among hardcore elements against percolation of modern conveniences like radio and television and the ‘polluting’ presence of foreigners in the aftermath of oil exploration, the meticulous planning and execution of the attack, how the Saudis managed to evict the rebels in a bloody onslaught and the repercussions the incident evoked in other parts of the world like strengthening of anti-American sentiment in the Muslim countries and the rise of Islamic terrorism spearheaded by organisations like Al Qaeda. Being the foreign correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, who has reported extensively from the Middle East, Trofimov has put together a riveting book with insightful comments about the course of radicalism following the carnage at Mecca in 1979.

The tribe of Quraysh occupied the neibourhood of Mecca from time immemorial. Prophet Mohammed, who was a  member of the tribe, preached the tenets of Islam there, but were not accepted by his fellows. He fled to Medina and organised recapture of the holy city. Ever since, the shrine at Mecca was under Muslim control. The Arabian peninsula came under the possession of Ottoman Turks, from whom it was wrested by Jordanian kings. In 1902, Abdelaziz, who was later to claim the whole of Arabia began to annex territories to his widening kingdom. The crack troops which helped him in this venture was the Wahhabis who practiced a strict form of Islam with no music, alcohol or tobacco. The Ikhwan, who were the extreme elements in the coalition mercilessly mowed down infidels and fellow Shiites alike. Their cruelty knew no bounds, and one of their favourite acts of decimating civilian populations was the slicing open of pregnant women’s wombs. This tactic they employed everywhere they went, including Karbala in Iraq and other fringe societies on the Arabian coast. When Abdelaziz consolidated his kingdom, he had had to rein in these blood thirsty warriors, sometimes through violent means, causing a rift between them.

Juhayman al Uteybi, the leader of the 1979 uprising, was born in a Bedouin tribe and worked in the inner security corps which provided personal cover for the royals. Being a firebrand himself, his ideas were moulded into fanatical shape by a blind scholar Bin Baz, who opposed every modern idea or artefact and still believed the earth to be flat. The Wahhabi clerics practiced a measure of guarded tolerance to the perceived vices of the royal family like allowing foreigners in the country and personal frolicking in European tourist spots. Juhayman found this contradiction eroding the moral sanctity of the Ulema’s teachings. Also, he didn’t have a fat paycheck from the government unlike the senior clerics. His split with the official clergy came in 1977, prompting him to clandestinely bring out a book from Kuwait and distribute it in the kingdom. Titled ‘Seven Epistles’, it provided the material for officials to take action against his gang. Mabaheth, the secret police, swept the leaders in jail in 1978, but released them without framing charges, on the intervention of Bin Baz himself. Little did they know that the genie they are releasing from the bottle was going to turn unmanageable.

Islam expected the arrival of a Mehdi, redeemer, to appear on earth when sin and injustice filled it. Juhayman projected his brother in law, Mohammed Abdullah to be the Mehdi. As per tradition, the Mehdi is to appear in the Grand Mosque at the turn of the century and the year 1400 in the Islamic calendar was just turning up on Nov 20, 1979. On that day, a group of rebels led by Juhayman took the Grand Mosque by force in a pre-dawn attack. Poorly guarded as the Haj season was over, the mosque fell to them pretty easily. Shooting and killing of guards ensued and the sacred precincts of the Holy of Holies was desecrated with human blood. Juhayman proclaimed Abdullah as the Mehdi at the shrine. Saudi government suppressed the news at first, by cutting off all international telephone lines but this proved ideal for wild rumours to circulate. Accusations of all sorts flung far and wide, with the assailants falsely identified as Iranian shiites, American sponsored militants and even Jews. This caused repercussions in other countries too. Pakistan was the worst, where hordes of ultra-religious fanatics from the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad stormed the U.S. embassy and set it alight, killing three employees.

While in Mecca, Saudi authorities tried desperately to storm the compound and wrest control back. Their two attempts to inflitrate in the first 48 hours horribly went wrong, with the captains and a large number of soldiers falling dead before well-aimed enemy bullets. After three days of attacks and counterattacks, Saudi troops broke open the defensive perimeter and retook the above-ground structures of the shrine, after killing Mohammed Abdullah, the self-proclaimed Mahdi. But dissidents withdrew to labyrinthine cellars in the basement level galleries called Qaboos and put up a brave defense. All attempts, including limited amount of chemical warfare failed to evict them from the hideouts. Without a cohesive strategy or tactical manouvres, the Saudi National Guards were being killed in droves. The underground galleries saw the wiping off of royal troops fighting in narrow corridors. The siege went on for days and the Saudis finally sought professional help from the French. GIGN, the elite French commando force responded by sending three trainers and a planeload of chemicals and weapons. On the morning of Dec 4, exactly two weeks after the standoff began, the authorities were able to assume full control of the shrine. Juhayman, the firebrand leader who sent hundreds of others to sure death, meekly surrendered in the end and pleaded for mercy to the king, in vain. All adults in the captured rebels were beheaded as per Sharia law. The final death toll released officially put the toll at 270, including 127 soldiers, 117 rebels and 26 pilgrims caught in the crossfire.

The author paints this incident in 1979 as a major factor which contributed to the rise of Islamic terrorism. In a bid to channel away the frustration of extreme radicals within the kingdom, Saudi Arabia bankrolled Wahhabi-controlled religious universities and the proxy war against Soviets who occupied Afghanistan in Dec 1979. America saw this invasion as a golden opportunity to divert Islamists’ opposition to them towards the Russians and succeeded in this venture. Aided in warfare by CIA and in cash by the Saudis, Afghani Taliban humbled the Russian troops. Recruits flew in from everywhere in the Islamic world, one of them a shy 22-year old man from Saudi Arabia named Osama bin Laden! The age of Al Qaeda was dawning.

The book is very pleasant to read with witty remarks and enlightening comments. It succinctly brings the readers up to date on the history of Arabia. Nobody can present the history of a nation in so few words, without missing any of the important points. The book presents a rational and insightful narrative about the origins of terrorism and Al Qaeda in the aftermath of the Mecca uprising. Trofimov, however does not rise above the sense of superiority frequently exhibited by Western authors when handling topics of Asian origin. The book extolls in every sentence the viewpoint of an American man who is a firm part of the establishment.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Last Nizam

Title: The Last Nizam – The Rise and Fall of India’s Greatest Princely State

Author: John Zubrzycki

Publisher: Picador, 2006 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-330-45138-3

Pages: 334

Being a journalist, John Zubrzycki displays commendable width in the amount of his researches, but in the same coin, lacks depth too. This Australian writer has travelled and worked in India over the past thirty years, and the familiarity is observable from the apt comments about Indian social life and how it would receive a ex-monarch into its fold. Hyderabad was the largest Indian princely state that enjoyed a 21-gun salute from the British. The traditional king of Hyderabad, known as the Nizam, had enormous amounts of booty that he was regarded as the richest man in the world at that time. We have an adage, as rich as Croesus, which refers to the fabulous riches of the ancient Greek king Croesus, and Nizam was a modern-day Croesus. To complete the analogy, both men lost their kingdoms and wealth to a superior power and had to act as vassals to them – Emperor Cyrus in the case of Croesus and the British and later, the Indian government for the Nizam. The book presents a very handy account of the rise of the dynasty, its consolidation, its warm relations and alliance with the British, how it tried to thwart the democratic aspirations of its people, had to lay down power to elected representatives of Indian democracy and how the last Nizam squandered the enormous resources to become a virtual pauper in a foreign land, Australia, to which he was attracted.

The emergence of the Nizamate in 18^th century was to fill the political vacuum created by the demise of Mughal empire in its first quarter. Aurangzeb, with his impudent and shortsighted policies had ensured the alienation of allies and enemies alike. The wreckage caused by him was so severe that Mughal authority collapsed like a pack of cards after his death. The viceroys of provinces and local chieftains asserted their dominance without referring to Delhi. Nadir Shah’s devastating raid on Delhi in 1739 provided the coup de grace for the ailing monarchy. Meanwhile, Qamruddin, who was the Mughal general assigned to Deccan defeated the Qutb Shahi kingdom at Golconda and assumed reign as a representative of the titular Mughal emperor. He assumed the title Nizam ul-Mulk and the established the foundations of a dynasty which was to last two centuries. The Nizams always displayed loyalty to the absentee emperor, minted coins and read Khutbah prayers in the name of his master. Nizam ul-Mulk’s death in 1748 triggered the curse of Islamic dynasties in India, the war of succession. A bloody and brutal pogrom followed in which brothers killed brothers and sons plotted against fathers. The French and British, who were eagerly watching from the sidelines stepped up their presence, both commercial and military, took sides in these wars and with the smart deployment of their highly disciplined troops ensured that whoever ruled Hyderabad had to be the puppet of one or the other.

The power struggles between the contenders in 18^th century Deccan – the Nizam, the Marathas, Mysore, the British and the French – kindled a game of political musical chair, with opportunism, breach of trust and clandestine deals becoming the order of the day. In the end, the British, along with the Nizam and Marathas routed Tipu Sultan of Mysore and his French allies. Those who praise Tipu for fighting the British in a spirit of patriotic fervour conveniently forget that he was only a pawn in the French game plan against the British. South India came under British dominance for the next 150 years. Nizam’s real power was much curtailed, always the strings were pulled by the British resident and the Diwan (prime minister) who most often deferred to the Europeans. The 19^th century saw two powerful Diwans who ruled the state for nearly 30 years in the first and second halves of the century. However, their characters could not have been more contrasting. Chandu Lal was corrupt to the core and amassed a great fortune by the time he stepped down, while Salar Jung was an example of rectitude and an imaginative administrator who transformed Hyderabad from a Mughal-style fiefdom to a modern state. He alienated the British too, by voicing against their partisan actions. He died penniless, with a great debt to be paid back. Ever since the British assumed the administration of the subcontinent, succession struggles became a thing of the past. Successors were identified early on and investiture required the approval of the viceroy. Nizams now had a peaceful ascendancy to the throne and a confirmed long tenor.

The Nizams were loyal supporters and the lynchpins of the colonial regime. He ruthlessly suppressed the first signs of mutiny in 1857 when it surfaced in Hyderabad. The alliance continued in world wars too, at considerable embarrassment to the Nizam after World War I when Britain denuded the Turkish Caliph of his power. The Caliph was also the spiritual head of all Sunni Muslims, but the Nizam played the gamble and won. Osman Ali Khan became the Seventh Nizam in 1911. He was the founder of Osmania University and several modern establishments, but was personally corrupt and stooped in debauchery. He had about 300 concubines in his harem and though an extreme miser, was perfectly willing to ‘buy’ women to his harem. He aspired also to step in to the vacant post of Caliph, who was exiled in Paris. He arranged the marriage of his sons to the only daughter and niece of the Caliph. Thus, his grand son, who was the Last Nizam was poised to be the successor to the Caliph. Osman Ali Khan continued his corrupt ways even in times of great financial strain to the state. He gobbled up 27.3% of the state’s revenue to lavish on women and jewels, while King George V in contemporary England took only 0.091%. He was so rich that it was said that he could comfortably live in style on the interest of the interest on his income.

Hyderabad was a state in which Muslims who constituted only 10% of the population controlled the entire government machinery and had a 100% monopoly of government jobs. Nizam’s medieval mindset couldn’t accommodate the democratic aspirations of his Hindu subjects who made up 90% of the population. Instead, his quasi-state militia, called Razakars, tyrannized over them. Osman Ali’s plan was to accede to Pakistan if his demand for independence was not accepted when India gained its freedom from the British. He amassed weapons on a large scale from Pakistan through an Australian arms dealer to block the Indian army’s entry. He even moved the UN Security Council on Aug 21, 1948 to intervene to maintain the status quo. To the Indian army which was straining on the leash on his borders, this was the last straw. It quickly moved into Hyderabad at 4 am on Sep 13 in a manouvre euphemistically called the ‘Police Action’ by Indian historians. Nizam capitulated in two days which reportedly saw 20,000 people die.

Mukarram Jah, the grand son of Osman Ali Khan and designated Nizam was a young boy when his kingdom got absorbed in India. Having a Turkish mother who vehemently kept him aloof from sycophants and the degenerating culture of Hyderabadi nobility made him have a decent education. Though he was very poor in studies, he enrolled at premier institutions. After the Seventh Nizam died, Mukarram Jah was crowned the Eighth Nizam in 1967 with Indian approval. His status was short lived though, as part of Indira Gandhi’s socialist agenda, the privy purse and other prerogatives of the princes were abolished. There were to be no more Nizams, Jah became the last. He spent most of his time and money farming in a half-million acre estate in Western Australia, but ended up selling all of his property due to poor financial acumen. Bogged down in thousands of law suits filed against him by thousands of his own relatives who were bent upon receiving a share of the spoils, Jah decided to sell his valuable jewellery. The government stopped the auction, claiming historic importance to the artifacts which later bought them in an arbitrated settlement. He now lives in Turkey.

The book presents some curious but definitive clues to the bigoted mindset of early Nizams even behind their veneer of sophistication. Asaf Jah is said to have remarked in his last will and testament that Brahmins were fit only to be hanged and quartered (p.20). The moral bankruptcy of every Nizam who sat on the throne is laid out in vivid detail. They were profligate spenders on jewellery and women, and pathetically addicted to gems who were willing to opulent drawals on the state treasury for their personal gains. All of them possessed a huge zenana which, by some accounts, counted up to 10,000 women to satisfy every perverted carnal lust. They stuffed the harems with dancing girls and daughters of nobles who willingly pimped them for petty favours. The Nizams were ignorant of and completely indifferent to the administrative needs of his state or to the welfare of his people and cared only for the gratification of his whims and desires (p.106). Many a time, when the state was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, Nizam still measured his gold by the ton and pearls by kilograms. 30% of land in his dominion was his private property called sarf-i-khas.

The book is truly illuminating as it exposes the extent of moral abyss a ruler can fall into. It also contains a set of good photographs to enliven the reading experience. On the other hand, there are several printing errors and omissions, particularly in years and dates. It calls for better proof reading. Also, the unnecessary elaboration of Mukarram Jah’s family life in Australia with his secretary-turned-princess Australian wife who later died of AIDS is uninteresting.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star