A Home in Tibet

Title: A Home in Tibet

Author: Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Publisher: Penguin – Viking, 2013 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-670-08693-1

Pages: 303

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is an ethnic Tibetan who studied in India and now lives in the U.S. She is a poet and this book is her first full length volume. Her mother left Tibet in 1959 when China invaded and reached India. Tsering was born in India, but she grew up hearing and cherishing her mother’s fond memories of her childhood in Tibet. After her mother’s demise in a road accident, the author located her extended family in Dhompa, Eastern Tibet. This book is the poetic narrative of her travels to her motherland, where she had become sufficiently foreign as to bypass all inhibitions traditionally commanded from native women. She returned to the U.S after the visit and tells the world of the sights, people, animals and Buddhism of Tibet.

The respect and devotion Tibetans express towards lamas, their spiritual masters and advisers, is a recurring theme of the book. The lamas help the common people in their hour of need, by offering astrological recommendations, clearing the laity’s doubts on every issue and even offering medicines and healing tips, when they are too sick to be cured by native Tibetan medicine. People adore them and the more higher they go in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the level of adoration is akin to divinity. When fur caps and other leather articles became fashion in Tibet, it only took a single admonishment from the Dalai Lama for people to give up the habit. Lamas’ status in society may be compared to that of Brahmins in India, but the title is not hereditary as in India. Traditional governments jealously guarded their organization. The five grave offenses defined are matricide, patricide, murder of a holy man, causing hurt to good men, and creating discord between lamas. And the punishment? To gouge out the offender’s eye, to cut his throat, to cut off his hands, to toss him from a high cliff, or to throw him into deep water. People used to encase revered lamas’ finger nails in pendants and wear on their necks. Even with all this adulation, we doubt whether they gave anything to the society in return. Tibetan society was ignorant and illiterate which naturally suited the lamas’ purpose. They didn’t venture to teach their disciples or to offer any of the civic amenities which were in their power to perform. One of the indirect advantages of Chinese occupation is the curtailment of lamas’ privileges. When people get to know things, lamas will find their own natural place. However, Tsering Wangmo does not raise any point against the status of them, rather, she acknowledges them as the Tibetans’ spiritual guides.

The author’s emotional attachment to her late mother is touching. After escaping from Tibet soon after China’s invasion in 1959, Tsering’s mother wandered for three years under great duress, to find a way out of her subjugated country to Nepal and then to India. Being tied up in a marriage that occurred rather early in her adulthood, she didn’t get on well with her husband, who didn’t obtain a place in the mother or the daughter’s hearts. The author calls her father “her mother’s husband”. So complete is the estrangement that the daughter looked forward only to her mother for love, support, guidance and companionship. Descriptions of the duo’s train journeys in which the daughter’s anguished wait for her mother’s return to the train is very moving. And the mother left her only child after she died in vehicle collision. Tsering found herself alone in the world. She reached out to her extended family in Tibet where numerous cousins warmly welcomed her to their fold. There is no separate word in the Tibetan language for cousins, other than brother or sister. The love that existed between the author and her mother is sure to haunt the reader for some time to come.

Hatred towards the Chinese – to their occupation of Tibet, their administration, its leaders and the large scale changes that is being wrought on the land – is clearly evident throughout the text. No wonder the Chinese refused to grand her visa later, when she tried to visit her homeland again. The 1959 invasion was brutal, most of the older generation carries the scars on their bodies and souls, of the inhuman misery meted out to the defenseless Tibetans by the streams of incoming Chinese soldiers. Many were killed, tortured and imprisoned for long prison terms. They incarcerated the lamas as well, in a bid to prevent a rebel leadership from taking place by the efforts of these educated men and also to obliterate Tibetan culture. After the 1980s, the conditions slightly improved. China now adorns Tibet to make her look good to tourists. Mao’s Cultural Revolution was a time of hell to Tibet – but that was true for China as well. Immense improvements in infrastructure has been brought to Tibet by the Chinese. Tibetans were generally lazy and lived an unsanitary way of life. Many of them didn’t even wash themselves for months together, as the author notes! They are naturally prone to violence as many nomads carry knives in their person and not much reluctant to plunge it upon an opponent. This observation contrasts with Tsering’s assertion at a different place that Buddhism and its doctrine of non-violence is holding its people from forming an effective force to fight the Chinese.

The book is rich with fine diction and lyrical text that carries the narrative to the reaches of poetry. Tsering Wangmo’s command of the English language and vocabulary is amazing. Her choice of words and usage is scholarly. She has been downright successful in bringing out the joys of meeting one’s relatives in a country that was home to her ancestors, but from which she has been banned entry. Also, the anguish and impotent rage that characterizes a nation in captivity is so heart-touchingly illustrated.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

An Indian Odyssey

Title: An Indian Odyssey

Author: Martin Buckley

Publisher: Hutchinson, 2008 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-091-79525-2

Pages: 355

Another book on India based on travels in the country by an Englishman and carefully crafted so as not to ruffle any preconceptions about the country in Europe. It encapsulates the author’s travels in India and Sri Lanka in 1982, and a quarter century later, in 2007 and unified through the subtle trend of Ramayana, India’s great epic. Buckley visits the sites mentioned in Ramayana and weaves his storyline through the lives of contemporary people. The author also tries his hand at a secular translation of the Ramayana which is a good attempt, but may offend some hardliners. Martin Buckley is a journalist and works for television. He had stayed and worked in India for many years. In his dabbles with spirituality, Buckley stays in ashrams and narrates realistically about mystic experiences.

             

Buckley’s narrative never transcends the predictable trajectory familiar to the readers of travelogues penned by Europeans. Abject poverty, lack of hygiene, insufficient water supply, pot holed roads crisscrossed by dangerous over speeding vehicles, venal priests and cut-throat traders, bedbug-infested hotel rooms with peeling plaster, overcrowding in all social functions – the list is endless. It seems that whenever the author ventures out at night, there will be a power cut. On no less than three occasions the occurrence of a power cut is mentioned. The book is a catalogue of the ills of Indian society. Of course, Buckley begins with a caveat that his deposition is bound to ruffle some sensitive feathers, but the readers have to wade through twenty paragraphs of the author’s terrible experiences in order to get at a single paragraph about the object under consideration. Absence of a well-charted itinerary reduces the content to the level of spontaneous rambling rather than a scholarly attempt at deciphering the meaning of it all – as displayed in so elegant and endearing a style as William Dalrymple’s. Even Mark Tully, a colleague of the author touches the skin of India’s soul in his book ‘No Full Stops in India’, reviewed earlier in this blog. This book pales in comparison to those works because of its lack of structure, absence of cohesion in ideas and lack of empathy on the author’s part. You need to think in the same wavelength as your subject in order to bring out a clear analysis of his character. This the author has done only for his spiritual colleagues.

The book essentially being a travelogue of the author’s journeys in India and Sri Lanka, the thread of Ramayana seems to be a clever choice to provide a unifying thread of the seemingly unrelated legs of the journey. Buckley travels the length and breadth of Lanka in search of places and monuments even remotely connected to the epic’s storyline. This rush takes him to LTTE and Sri Lankan army – controlled territories, with attendant problems of securing entry. As the island nation was reeling under a civil war, the marks of destruction and pillage he observes on the way provides a moot reminder of the senselessness of it all. As he rightly observes, the Sinhalese resented Tamil dominance of the bureaucracy and academia, owing to the head start accorded to Tamils in the north of the country, which was famed for its Jaffna University and many illustrious colleges and schools. Tamils were subjected to discrimination and assault. They retaliated, banding together in groups, the LTTE under Prabhakaran the most notorious of them. Civil war raged ahead in full steam and the LTTE was crushed. In the end, the Tamils suffered a double whammy. Not only they were decimated militarily, but those institutions which ensured their primacy in a competitive world, the universities and colleges, were also smashed up and reduced to ruins. Tamils seem to have gone back to the time when their illiterate ancestors were brought to the island, by the British to toil on the newly established tea estates which Sinhalese shunned. They have to start from the scratch again.

A characteristic observation Buckley makes is the venality of Brahmin priests who lord over Hindu temples. All their acts of piety could be bought – for a few rupees. Irrespective of the magnificence and heritage of the temples they officiate upon, a carefully planted cash offering opened all doors. In some places like Varanasi, they actually shamelessly ask the devotees to pay a fixed amount of money, while in others like Rameshwarem, they invariably expect something in return for the favors. Buckley was ordered out of the Rameshwarem temple on account of the fact that he was a non-Hindu one evening, but the very next morning, he manages to make a guided tour of the entire temple, in the company of a paid Brahmin guide. The crass avarice of the Hindu priestly class is displayed in the same vigour by their brothers in Sri Lankan temples too.

Whatever may be the allegations about the book, it faithfully reproduces the profound impact India’s ancient religions with its fallible godheads exerts on its modern adherents. Buckley observes a real, living religion that has thoroughly disseminated its belief system so as to make it accessible to even the lowliest person in the social hierarchy. In fact, when the elites were prevented by compulsion or doubt in pursuing their part of the burden, it was the common people who continued to keep the banner aloft. The sheer faith and fatalism of the devotees amuse and strikes the author with wonder. The assimilating spirit of Hinduism is observed and commended upon.

The content and lay out of the volume is impressive, but it lacks any mention of the author. Perhaps the publishers need to look into this. The book is eminently readable, as any book on India invariably is. That is the mystery and charm of our mother India.

The condescending tone while comparing religious violence in India with Europe is misplaced and not born out on fact. The demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya in 1992 is fancifully compared to the probable destruction of a Macedonian mosque in modern Greece to make way for a temple of Odysseus and the author wonders whether such a thing is imaginable in modern Europe. Unfortunately, not only is it imaginable, but has repeated in gory details many times over the past century. Greece itself witnessed the brutal destruction of several mosques and killing of several hundreds of Muslims in the aftermath of its war against Turkey in the 1920s. Then there is Hitler who killed millions in the name of a flawed political philosophy. And just a few years back, in fact, after the author had returned from his first visit to India, Serbia witnessed genocide and ethnic cleansing not witnessed in the scale of its brutality. Aren’t they countries in modern Europe? Many of Buckley’s descriptions are in bad taste. His disclosure of the sexual escapades with his fellow tourists and workers don’t illuminate or make the text any more interesting. The narration just sticks out like a sore thumb.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Later Mughals

Title: The Later Mughals

Author: William Irvine

Publisher: Low Price Publications, 2011 (First published 1922)

ISBN: 978-81-7536-406-6

Pages: 811

The Mughal dynasty adds colour to India’s medieval history. Whether you admire or hate them, the Turkish family had its roots implanted deep in the nation’s rich repertoire of cultural heritage. Established in 1526 by Babar, the dynasty lingered on till 1857, but the vital sap was squeezed out of its trunk by the death of Aurangzeb, probably due to his thoughtless actions and tactless policies. This presents the history of the later Mughals, from the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 to the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1739, in which the ruling princes bickered and fought among each other in incessant battles to deny the kingdom of its vigour. After two centuries of its founding, the family had grown many fold over the generations and the number of aspirants to the throne also multiplied with every passing generation. Lack of administrative talent and weak nature contributed to the sorry state of affairs when all power concentrated in the hands of ministers and sycophants who invariably shadow people in power. In the book, we see the state gradually disappearing before oncoming events which it was powerless to encounter. It was only a matter of when rather than if, the dynasty would give way to successor states. The coup de grace was administered by Nadir Shah through his devastating raid and plunder of Delhi. The Mughals never recovered from the humiliating shock and country was divided up among their provincial governors and rebels. Irvine presents the story in his thoroughly researched work.

One word about the author is due at this point. William Irvine was the son of a Scottish lawyer and he came to India in 1863 as a member of the coveted Indian Civil Service. Though he didn’t rise much high in his career, taking retirement at the age of 48, he opened his eyes to the history of the people whom he was called upon to rule over. He painstakingly collected many original manuscripts in Persian and other Asiatic tongues and made copies of many original documents collected in museums across Europe. He was a ready reference to historians by sharing those documents with them. This book contains two volumes of his work of the same title, combined into one codex. The first part deals with the period 1707 to 1720 and the second extends it up to 1739.

The book begins with the struggle of succession after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. Being a born suspicious fellow, Alamgir kept his sons and grandsons distant from the capital and weak. So, when the Emperor died, all the pretenders were equally weak. The fratricidal warfare, which is an innate characteristic of the Mughal dynasty, played out again over the bier of the dead king. Brother turned against brother, son against father, father against son – the story of the sanguinary fight for power is endless among Mughals. Bahadur Shah proved successful at the end of the day. His tenure turned out to be the unraveling point of Mughals. The disintegration of the Empire commenced with him and the downfall was swift and brutal. Aurangzeb ruled for 51 years, but just after 32 years of his death, a Persian adventurer rod roughshod over Delhi, sowing death, destruction and plunder in his wake. Irvine presents a glimpse of what initiated the tumultuous fall of the state. Bahadur Shah (Shah Alam) was a weak king in conscience ad decision making capacity. He prevaricated on every issue and was unable to say no to a petitioner. He conferred titles freely to everyone who asked for it. There were several men with the same title. Naturally, this led to discontent.

One important observation none of the readers would fail to make is the unsettled nature of social life. Robbers and plunderers lurked everywhere even in the Emperor’s camp. The moment a whiff of rebellion is aroused, armed gangs came out in the open in search of loot. When Bahadur Shah died in 1712 while camping outside Lahore, the deceased’s sons quickly started to amass soldiers and weapons for the inevitable succession struggle. The camp followers lost no time in pouncing upon their fellows to rob them of whatever valuables they possessed. The case of Churaman Jat exemplifies the point. He robbed the passengers on the road between Agra and Ajmer. When his depredations grow uncontrollably, the Emperor brought him to heel. He was allowed entry into the nobility and the guardianship of the road he used to plunder was entrusted back upon him. But it didn’t improve his inborn traits. He was present at the final battle between Jahangir Shah and Farrukh-Siyar at Agra. Immediately after the warring parties took to the field, Churaman leapt on their baggage indiscriminately to obtain what he wanted.

Mughal administration was inherently corrupt. The Emperor was oblivious to the way his subordinates made money as long as they remitted the calculated revenue from their mansabs. The mansabdari system itself was nothing more than tax farming. Besides, the claim to the mansab and property was not hereditary. When a noble died, the Emperor resumed whatever little he had. This led the nobles to secretly appropriate resources for their descendants’ use. Major decisions could be forced, with the efficient use of bribes. Taking the case of Churaman Jat himself as an example, we see that Raja Jai Singh Sawai of Amber was deployed to capture him. The siege went on for 20 months. Jai Singh was not a gallant soldier and quite inexperienced in military tactics. Churaman made secret overtures to Qutb-ul-Mulk, the Wazir, in order to arrive at a settlement. The Jat promised 50 lakhs of rupees, of which 20 lakhs were promised to the Wazir’s own coffers. A treaty was immediately reached and Jai Singh ignominiously returned. The curious thing was that everyone knew about the pecuniary transactions. We need to look no further to get at the source of corruption in public service, which is the bane of modern India.

India was subject to invasions from Muslim hordes right from 1000 CE. In spite of the incessant pressure from outside and being subject to Muslim rule for centuries, it is a wonder that Hinduism continue to flourish in modern India. Just a cursory look at other colonies in the New World under Spanish masters, Moorish Spain under Christian kings and Islamic sultanates in Africa is enough to highlight the existence of the ancient Indian religion as an example of resilience bordering on nothing short of a miracle. One of the reasons may be deduced from this book. After Aurangzeb, the Mughals were too deeply in fissure and each faction enlisted the support of local chieftains irrespective of their religion. Babur had to contend with only the Rajputs as the Hindu threat to his dominions. But hardly two centuries later, his descendants were in a state of continuous collaboration and contest with Sikhs, Marathas and Jats, as well as, of course Rajputs. We see the resurgence of Hindu power around the 1720s. The restoration of the daughter of Ajit Singh Rathore who was a wife of Emperor Farrukh-Siyar, who was killed, back to Hinduism seems to be a turning point in the relations between the two religions. Taking a convert back to the original faith was opposed tooth and nail by Islamic clerics, but the Mughal administration gave the go ahead signal.

The book ends with the invasion and plunder of Delhi by Nadir Shah who ascended the Persian throne. This decimated all traces of Mughal authority. Had they displayed some diplomacy, Nadir Shah could’ve been pacified and made to return after his victory at Karnal. But the Mughals had several Persians in their employ and Sadat Khan, the governor of Oudh defected to Nadir’s side during the battle. He persuaded the conqueror not to settle for 50 lakhs of rupees offered on the battle field and to press on to Delhi where he would obtain 20 crores. All the treasure and jewels in imperial Delhi was carried away by the Persians, including the Koh-i-Noor and the peacock throne. Still, not satisfied by the bounty, Nadir chastised Sadat Khan openly and he had to commit suicide.

Reading the book is a misery for the reader to contend with. With so many footnotes appearing in every page, the continuity of narrative is frequently interrupted. Instead of pausing for reflections and generalizations, Irvine simply quotes the original authors in painstaking detail, which is not at all appealing to the general readers. Exact itineraries of moving armies are listed in endless detail, like the army reached such and such place on the third day, then another place on the fourth day and such. Altogether, we get an impression that Irvine lacked the drive to come out with a brilliant narrative of analysis and generalization which would have elevated him to the status of an Indian Gibbon. In fact, the author thought about such a possibility and remarked that his only ambition is to enter the foot notes in acknowledgement from a future Gibbon, than to be one himself. The book is also adorned with a fine prologue by Jadunath Sarkar which is a glowing tribute from a disciple to his master.       

The book is recommended only to serious readers of history.

Rating: 2 Star

Once Upon a Time in the Soviet Union

Title: Once Upon a Time in the Soviet Union

Author: Dominique Lapierre

Publisher: Full Circle, 2007 (First published 1957)

ISBN: 978-81-216-1247-0

Pages: 230

Dominique Lapierre is the well known author of many international best sellers like ‘Freedom at Midnight’, ‘The City of Joy’ and ‘It Was Five Past Midnight in Bhopal’. He also supports a major network of humanitarian actions in India and elsewhere. In recognition of his generous solidarity, he has been made ‘Citizen of Honour’ of Calcutta. This book is an account of a mysterious journey made by Lapierre and his colleague and photographer Jean-Pierre Pedrazzini and their wives to the erstwhile Soviet Union for three months in 1956. Though everyone was shocked at the idea when it was first presented to them, a little bit of influence at high places always greased the wheels in communist Russia. The author met and impressed Nikita Khrushchev into granting the team approval to make the tour. This was done in an SUV that travelled 13,000 km over tough Russian roads, challenging all odds. The author embarked on the journey on behalf of ‘Paris Match’, the periodical in which they worked as journalists.

What the readers get to know about the Soviet Union Lapierre and Pedrazzini saw is that the country was a vast prison house in which the dictatorial regime incarcerated its own citizens. Extensive barriers to personal movement, banning of foreign publications and media, unrelenting indoctrination of the tenets of Marxism-Leninism and wide-ranging surveillance by secret agencies numbed all shoots of creativity and enterprise among the people. The regime was not confident enough to let Lapierre and his friends roam the countryside unhindered. A guide, who was a Russian journalist and party member, accompanied them throughout, acting as interface between the author and the Russian Public with whom they interacted. Infrastructural wants were sorely visible everywhere they visited, but the public were on a steady indoctrination that their society was the happiest in the world. Lack of freedom was the gravest aspect. To mask the people about the lack of personal freedom, they were not allowed any foreign contact. Even those people the author interviewed were the privileged among the party. Then also, their living conditions were appalling. Even though the communists publicly decried any form of discrimination of man against man, such deprivations continued unabated in Soviet Union. Higher party and government functionaries, known as the Nomenklatura, were a privileged lot, akin to aristocracy, who had exclusive establishments open to them with public money while the ordinary citizens languished in interminable queues to obtain basic food stuffs.

Lapierre’s journey took place during the reign of Khrushchev, when Stalin’s inhuman tyranny was being exposed to the public eye. But the regime was as hard as ever. A pedestrian who kissed the small French flag pinned to the car was arrested, and sentenced to several years in a Siberian jail. The Russian guide who was a journalist was allowed to go to Paris at the final end of the journey, but his wife was held back in Russia, lest any impulse come over them to seek asylum in France! When Lapierre’s paper published his accounts of the travels, predictably the Russian authorities were offended at the poor treatment they obtained. And what did they do? Arrest the guide as if all of it was his fault and jail him for three years! If this was the atmosphere in Khrushchev’s era, one can only wonder how harsh and pathetic the situation was under Stalin, one of the most heinous mass murderers in modern history.

Having said all this, it must not be denied that Lapierre and his friends had no interest other than the sensational value associated with such a journey. Never for a moment had they turned out a flattering portrait of the Russian vastness they were traversing. As a journalist, what the author wanted from the whole episode was a scoop, and he got it aplenty. What better piece would get news value other than sending your guide to prison for no other crime than accompanying you? Even before his travel, the world knew about the repressive measures of the Soviet administration. Lapierre got permission to go on his fantastic trip from Khrushchev himself. So, in the end, the reader may reach the conclusion that the author had somewhat abused the hospitality provided by Russia. He must have been well aware of what might happen to his guide when his revealing essays hit newsstands, but he stayed the course. A good journalist, but a poor friend and companion!

The narrative is mediocre and interesting only for the exclusivity of the project. The author’s detachment from the adventures is clearly evident. Only when the party is detained by the military police does any emotion comes to the fore. The book contains brief glimpses of five families the team selected supposedly at random. Even the number is quite arbitrary and chosen to impart a semblance of originality. As is common with all of Lapierre’s narratives, the depth of research is only skin deep. The book also contains voluble appeals to donate to the charity works undertaken by the author. Altogether, it looks like a marketing initiative.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star