The Malabar Rebellion

Title: The Malabar Rebellion
Author: Gangadharan M
Publisher: DC Books, 2008 (First)
ISBN: 9788126418633
Pages: 295

The Malabar Rebellion, also called the Mappila riots, is a major conflagration in South India that began as a insurrection against British rule, but later degraded as a communal riot. Even today, discussions on the riot are sure to awake passions and conflicting versions of opinion in Kerala. The riots also provide an abject lesson for politicians who ride the communal tiger to achieve short term goals. The Congress roped in fanatics in the name of Khilafat, but later lost all control of them. The fanatics had no plans to follow the path of non-violence, other than to establish a Khilafat kingdom. It is worthwhile now to examine the close similarities in the modes of punishment the Khilafatists meted out to dissidents and sinners – according to their narrow definition – with that of the Islamic State in Iraq, which we witnessed in recent months. Both involved beheadings, extortion of protection money from non-Muslims and death for indulging in prostitution. The book provides day to day exposition of events from its inception to its eventual suppression. The book also brings to light the utterly selfish trait of the rebel leaders to save their skins by offering themselves as prisoners to the Government troops when the tide turned. Even though they exhorted their ranks to fight till death, which thousands did and died as a result, the leaders – Ali Musaliar of Tirurangadi, Variankunnath Kunhamed Haji and Chembrasseri Tangal – meekly surrendered to the British, who summarily courtmartialled and shot them! M Gangadharan was a professor of history, associated with editing and publishing of magazines of art and ideas. He has published a number of works in Malayalam on literary, social and political criticism.

The book unveils a neat picture of the events that led to the violent outbreak of riots. The Mappilas, who controlled the maritime trade with West Asia, found their profession being usurped by the Portuguese. The Mappilas were violent in preserving their monopoly, but the Portuguese doubly so, in wresting it from them. Finally, the Europeans had their way and Indian foreign trade flowed through their hands alone. By the 18th century, when Portuguese power finally ebbed, the Mappilas found to their dismay that time was not on their side. Bombay had assumed the pole position in foreign trade by that point. Islam is a religion as well as a political philosophy. When Mysore invaded Malabar under Hyder Ali (1766), the Mappilas tasted the intoxicating sweetness of political power for the first time. When Tipu Sultan was defeated (1792), and the country was subjugated by the British, they resented the change of masters in a vehement show of discontent. The British had a tough time collecting revenue from the province. There were a slew of violent outbreaks throughout the 19th century. Matters were further worsened by the agrarian situation obtained at that time in Malabar. Most of the land belonged to Jenmis of the Nambudiri caste. There were intermediaries called kanamdars and then the tenants, kudiyans, who bore the full brunt of the demands of the upper castes. Mappilas were tenants mostly, and they opposed the exploitation by channeling the rage through religious lines.

The aftermath of the First World War witnessed tumultuous events in India’s political scene of action. Protests against Rowlatt Act, which curtailed freedom of expression, put the British on the defensive. The massacre at Jalianwala Bagh occurred when the government tried to crush the protests by force. Crawling orders were promulgated there, and natives were forced to crawl on all fours in a street where a British woman was assaulted the previous day. The whole of India seethed in anger as a result. Curiously, or rather shockingly, Indian Muslims’ cause of anger was not this issue on their own door steps, but rather against the British action against the Sultan of Turkey, who was also the self-styled caliph. He was the temporal leader of the faithful, and the Allies’ curtailment of his imperial position was construed as an act against Islam. The Congress party under Gandhiji found this to be a golden opportunity to turn the Muslims against the British. Though Jalianwala Bagh didn’t make any impression on them, Khilafat did. Even though the people of Turkey itself was fed up with the sultan, who was soon deposed in a military coup, Indian Muslims wanted him back in power which he had lost as a result of the disastrous performance of the Turkish forces in the world war. That the Muslims were turned on by Khilafat, and not national consciousness, was exposed when the leader Shoukat Ali made a speech at a Congress conference at Erode, Tamil Nadu. He told the audience that for every one rupee a Hindu donates to the Congress, 12 annas (75%) go to the Congress and 4 annas (25%) to Khilafat, while the rupee donated by a Muslim will be divided in the ratio of 12 annas to Khilafat and 4 annas to the Congress.

Courting communalism to win short term goals is like playing with fire, and the Congress learnt this lesson with a rebellion that sprang out in Malabar in August 1921. Ali Musaliar of Tirurangadi challenged the British authority and set up a parallel administration. Government’s blotched and insensitive attempts to rein in the rebels made the situation rather worse. The rioters wanted to establish an Islamic state, Mappilastan, and forced many Hindus to convert to Islam. Loot and forced collection of money and grains made Hindus flee the riot hit areas. Nobody was allowed to travel freely in South Malabar, without a ‘passport’ issued by Variankunnath Kunhamed Haji, a rebel leader. K Madhavan Nair, who was the President of the state Congress party and de jure of the Khilafat agitation itself, remarked that “Not only Mappilas who were ordinarily of bad character, but Mappilas considered decent till then also joined the looters or helped them, or shared the loot. In most places, the prominent among the Mappilas did not try sincerely to stop the loot” (p.178).

The rebellion was brutal and inhuman. Hundreds of Hindus were killed, raped and looted and thousands more were forcibly converted to Islam. Naturally, the military action was also equally brutal and inhuman. The troops killed at their sweet will and burnt the houses of Mapplias indiscriminately, without regard to whether they were rebels or not. In Melmuri amsam alone, 246 persons were killed in action. This sent a chill down the spines of the rebels who were soon found looking for a face saving strategy for surrender. Government offered liberal terms to those who offered to lay down their arms, which were not often implemented. The Wagon Tragedy, in which 70 people (67 Muslims and 3 Hindus) were killed, was another horrible incident.

Analysts who look into the reasons why Islamic terrorism find willing recruits anywhere in the world fail to point their fingers to fanaticism as the root cause. They come up with umpteen reasons like poverty, unemployment, political repression, corrupt administration and what not! But never once do they identify the real motive behind the birth of suicide bombers – religious fanaticism. Political correctness might be a compelling factor in suppressing the truth as the scholars don’t want to alienate powerful elements in the society, who professes to condemn terrorist attacks after the event, but takes no effort to prevent such outbreaks. There was a welcome change in the governmental panels set up to look into religious violence reported from Malabar. The Special Commission in 1952 reported that the violence was “due to the most decided fanaticism of the Mappilas” (p.26). And then, “the Hindus in the parts where outbreaks are most frequent, stand in such fear of the Mappilas as mostly not to dare to press for their rights against them” (p.26). Winterbotham, who was a member of the Revenue Board who inquired about the outbreaks in 1896 found poverty and discontent of tenants as one of the causes of the riot, but found it difficult to explain why “many scores of lads” and even a “few in comfortable circumstances have been tempted to throw away their lives” (p.30). The poverty hypothesis is rubbished by this shrewd observation. He further reports that “no words can depict the abject terror of the Hindus of all ranks and classes, while a gang of Mapplia fanatics is on the war path” (p.30). As William Logan remarks in his Malabar Manual (1887), “the exhibition of Mappila fanaticism is used as a means towards an end…the land is passing slowly but surely into the possession of the Mappilas and the Hindus are going to the wall” (p.31). Exhortations to evict the land of Kafirs (infidels) echoed throughout South Malabar. All these points suffice to prove the point that the Mapplias wanted to make Malabar an Islamic state on the lines of what we see in Iraq and Syria these days. Violent uprisings were frequent in Malabar, such as those in the years 1836, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1858, 1860, 1864, 1865, 1873, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1894, 1896, 1915 and 1919. The stage was being set for the final showdown of 1921-22. People who portray the rebellion as part of India’s freedom struggle may read this again.

This book presents an objective view of the incidents in Malabar through official narratives. Even though one may accuse the government of using propaganda to support the official version, reports of district authorities to the provincial administration in Madras is free of hyperbole and stated the bare facts as they unfurled. Gangadharan intervenes wherever required, with clarifications which give the reader directions to the places and persons to look for. Analysis of the composition of the rioters, its causes and character, the role of the officials, the rationale of the spread and sustenance, the impacts and its consequences are painstakingly laid bare. The book includes a few maps showing the areas of unrest and also an index for easily locating the topics. The impressive bibliography provides many outlets for inquisitive spirits who want to proceed further from where the author had stopped.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

A Study of History, Vol 10

Title: A Study of History, Vol 10 – The Inspirations of Historians

Author: Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1985 (First published 1954)

ISBN: 978-0-19-215218-3

Pages: 442

This is my 300^th book review in this blog and how to do it better than having a work of Toynbee to celebrate it with? This volume is in effect the epilogue of the other nine volumes that went before it. The central theme of the series ends in the first nine volumes, and this one is to acknowledge the author’s debt to persons, books and works of art that helped him in preparing the text. There is also an autobiographical section on the inspirations that move historians to produce masterpieces of research. Readers would be left wondering at the varied sources of inspiration the author identified and assimilated to his heart’s content. Inspiration is not something that can be gulped in by anybody who happens to come along the way. It requires talent to identify whether what is offered to him is worthy of further investigation and pick up which one to discard. It also exposes the effects of changes in school curriculum effected in the first quarter of the previous century in England, which did away with Greek and Latin in favour of subjects which are more relevant to the pupil in his career oriented along the lines of science. Toynbee does not criticize the new approach as such, but thanks his good fortune for having had the opportunity to have an education that sprouted from the springs of classics. This deep knowledge of the ancient texts in their native tongues helped such scholars to live in two worlds simultaneously. Whenever such learned men experienced an event in the social or political life of the society of the present, they could immediately think of a similar incident in the lives of the Greek or Roman communities which had grabbed much of their attention in their academic lives. The ‘Acknowledgements’ section of the book stands out as a grand effort to express the author’s gratitude to the persons and books that made him what he was. The notion of expressing indebtedness is itself borrowed from the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, and the very first book to which Toynbee expresses thanks is Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, though he has wrung Gibbon much in his references to the author in this, as well as other, volumes of the series. This book also includes a comprehensive index to volumes 7 to 10, which envelops a large fraction of the total number of pages.

Inspiration for pursuing history takes root in childhood. The inclination to history comes about in varied ways. If the child happens to live in a town full of historic monuments, or associated with episodes of history, it will be primed for a career in it. Or the inclination may come through religious literature, in which history stands frozen across time. But there is no hard and fast rule on this, as the interest may be kindled prosaically through reading of books, as in Toynbee’s case, which is also augmented by the fact that his mother was herself much learned and a historian too. The author considers his education in Greek and Latin to be a great blessing, as it moved way soon after to the modern syllabus where the topics taught at schools and universities concerned with mundane affairs. He assigns three reasons for setting out on a thorough reading of history and finding the operation of laws in the passage of historical events. The first is his background in the classical languages, then the exposure made available to western scholars, of the varied civilizations on the face of the planet as a result of global exploration by western mariners, and lastly, his own encounter with the First World War. Great wars, and the ruin and desolation it garners in its wake, make profound impact on historians. It germinates in them the idea of seeking the answer to a paramount question, “how the present state of things came about?” Scholars compare the present state of affairs to a corresponding period in the lives of other civilizations. In short, Toynbee tells the story of how he became the historian of the post-Modern world.

This book contains many autobiographical sketches. The most notable is the author’s ambition to become the historian of the universal state of Western Christendom, to which civilization he too belongs, and whose universal state phase has not been materialized yet on its way to disintegration. Early historians of the same genre include Josephus who wrote about the Roman empire when it conquered Palestine, Clarendon during the English civil war, Thucydides of the Peloponnesian Wars and Rhodes of the American civil war. He has taken Polybius as the model for him in this outcome aspired for. Polybius lived during the Punic Wars, and recorded the struggle between two titans that ended up with the wiping out of Carthage and enthronement of Rome as the sole ecumenical power. He was a prisoner of war, who later commanded respect from his captors. Alluding to this episode, and hinting at his own passion to become the West’s historian, he says, “It might be guessed however, that, if Rome’s role were to be played in a post-Modern western world by the United States, the historian of her involuntary assumption of dominion would be a West European, and it could be prophesied with greater confidence that, if the latter day West European Polybius did leave his native land to do this piece of creative intellectual work, he would visit the United States neither as a prisoner-of-war nor as a political hostage but as the hospitably invited guest of some politically disinterested non-governmental American institution dedicated single-mindedly to the promotion of knowledge” (p.66). When we remember that Toynbee worked exactly in such a position at Princeton, readers get a glance of his well-deserved ambition.

The book sports a long appendix on the accepted chronology for dating the reign of the First Dynasty of Babylon. There are four rival propositions for setting the time period of the dynasty that is more widely known for the name of a great ruler, Hammu Rabi, who belonged to this group. This explains the pitfalls in adopting a contender at the expense of others. Corroboration for the precepts of a chronology may have to be sought in the histories of other civilizations. In the present case, the clue needed to be looked for in the travails of the adjacent Egyptian civilization. Then comes the invasion of Hyksos, a barbarian war band from central Asia that ran over the west Asian societies. While there is no accord among historians regarding the composition of Hyksos in racial terms, Toynbee suggests a startling proposition that has tremendous potential to attract the attention of Indian historians, if proved right. According to the author’s theory, the Hyksos consisted of Sanskrit speaking barbarians who erupted out of central Asian pasture lands. When they reached Eastern Iran, they separated into two streams, one which turned left and descended on the Indus valley, while the other turned right and moved straight across to Egypt. Even though Toynbee does not propose it in verbatim, this date of the bifurcation of the nomad horde and its overflow to the Indus region is around the 18^th century BCE, which has great appeal to another theory that the native Indus culture succumbed to Aryan assault at this time. Everything is perfectly matched and scholars may find this arena ripe for further investigation and harvesting of fruitful results. However, the appendix is painfully long and technical for the taste of the general reader. The intricacies of fixing the prons and cons of rival chronologies is very tedious and such elaborate nitpicking is unwarranted for common readers. What other thing can we expect from the discussion of a topic in which even Toynbee describes himself as a layman?

The author’s proclivity to be a Christian moralist shines through in more than one passage. He defines history as a vision of God revealing himself in action to souls that were sincerely seeking him and then, the historian’s path is said to be ascending from a feeling for the poetry in History through a sense of awe at God’s action in History to a participation in Man’s fellowship with Man which brings him to the threshold of the saint’s communion with God (p.129)! Even though Gibbon is acknowledged in glowing terms, one barb is still reserved for him for harbouring “a narrowness of his sympathies with the human objects of his studies”. Toynbee seems bent on unseating Gibbon from the throne in which literature has placed him.

An excellent advice is given to prospective writers in turning a deaf ear to critics, as “An author had better retire from business if he has not the humility to conceive of the possibility that, after all, he may be mistaken, and if he has not also the common sense to see, in the living authorities on his subject, not critics to be combated after publication, but mentors to be consulted before it, at a stage when it is still not too late to profit by their fruitfully chastening strictures” (p.229).

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

The Pashtuns

Title: The Pashtuns – The Unresolved Key to the Future of Pakistan and Afghanistan

Author: Abubakar Siddique

Publisher: Random House India, 2014 (First)

ISBN: 978-81-8400-607-0

Pages: 271

Formerly called Pathans, and now indigenized to Pashtuns, the sturdy people of Pakistan's north west and Afghanistan's south east provinces make a unique amalgam of tribes seen anywhere else in the world. Fanciful tales have often been told about them, of honour killings, blood feuds between families and tribes and a propensity for keeping vendetta alive for a long time until retribution for an actual or perceived slight is extracted from the other party. These belligerent people have traditionally been ruled by chieftains according to tribal mores and customs. Outsiders found it expedient not to stir up a hornet's nest by unnecessarily provoking confrontation with them. The British fought some disastrously expensive battles with them in the 19th century and were only too happy to demarcate a border and safely withdraw behind it. But the region's history transformed in a unique way by the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. The country became a battleground for Islamist fighters coming from all Muslim nations of the world, taking it out with the infidels. When the Soviets were routed and driven out, the mujahedeen fought amongst themselves, eventually making Taliban gravitate to the top spot. Then the flirtation with global terrorism ensured their downfall. But during all these episodes of modern history enacting violently, the Pashtuns were forced to toe the Islamic line at the expense of tribal affinity. We see a tribal society gradually absorbed into the pan-Islamic current and conforming to the hard rules of it. The loss of a tribe causes no concern for the broad world, but the present context is further vitiated by Islamic terrorism exported by secret sponsors in the oil rich states. However, the author presents a picture which is not altogether hopeless. He believes that the Pashtuns are desperately in need of peace now and this idea is dawning on them after nearly four decades of hard fought battles in which the death toll was very painful for the society. Icons like Malala Yousufzai reflect the beginning of the slow transition to peace. The book is a must read for those who take an active interest in the region's present and future. Being in an effortlessly readable format and decor, the book is extremely relevant in today's South Asian scenario. Abubakar Siddique is a senior correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Based in Prague, he covers the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia, with particular focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Siddique has spent the past decade and a half researching and writing about terrorism, security, political and humanitarian issues in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Pashtun heartland, the border region where he was born. His background and professional experience have given him a specialized knowledge of the politics, social life and security situation in this strategic and volatile region.

The Pashtuns occupy a prominent position in Indian history as the founders of the Lodi dynasty, the last among Delhi’s sultanates when Babar snuffed out Afghan ascendancy in the Battle of Panipat in 1526, by establishing the Mughal dynasty, which was Turkish in origin. Though the Pashtuns were able to defeat the second Mughal, Humayun, for a short period, their star had set for the final time in the sub-continent. Ahmed Shah Abdali, who later renamed his tribe to Durrani made a trailblazing drive to power in Afghanistan. It were people affiliated to this family and tribe who ruled the country till monarchy itself was abrogated by communists in the 1970s. Then came the invasion of the Soviets that would change Pashtun social life forever. The Pashtuns were tribal people imbued with a strong group ethos and consisting of allegiance to nang (honour), melmastya (hospitality) and badal (reciprocity, often revenge). Outsiders attacked them, like the British did, in a vain bid to annex the country. But the people maintained their tribal outlook and continued their simple, but chivalrous pursuit of the three goals. The Soviet occupation changed all that. Islamic fighters congregated in Afghanistan in drones. Attracted by a call to Jihad against Russian infidels, the fighters included fanatics from all over the Muslim world which had no affinity to the Pashtuns’ tribal mores, but to the Sharia alone. This corrupted the Pashtuns’ outlook, who eagerly embraced the culture of weapons and Jihad. Siddique skillfully presents the picture of a once simple tribal society trying to find its roots in the changed social milieu of pan- Islamic terrorist ideology.

An illuminating assessment of the socio-political climate of Pakistan and Afghanistan follows. Right from its inception, Pak military wanted to have an elbow room in its western neighbor in the scenario of an all out war against its eastern enemy – India. But they were reluctant to extend wholehearted support to Pashtuns who formed sizeable communities in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA provinces. A consolidation of Pashtun nationalism was certain to ignore the sanctity of the Durand Line that demarcated the two countries de jure. Calls for a Pashtunistan were being heard aloud. But the act of imposing such a frontier was a clever move on the part of the colonial British in effort to remind them never to cross it to avoid disastrous consequences. But the tribal affinities transcend national boundaries and Pakistan was paranoid more than ever, after the secession of Bangladesh that the Pashtuns across the border may team up with their brothers in Pak border districts. So, when an opportunity presented itself for uniting Islamic forces to oppose Soviet occupation, it sensed its chance and intensely pushed for a pan-Islamic coalition in whose melting pot tribal affiliations would fuse together under the blinding radiation of Sharia philosophy in the garb of the Arabic language. Mercenary Jihadists from West and central Asia and also from the other Islamic nations fought together under the green banner of Islam and won the war. The soviets were thrown out and the Mujahideen assumed power. Internecine warfare among the former fighters helped Taliban win the race to absolute power. The author identifies the present position as a unique one in which the Taliban is forced to make their tribal identity play second fiddle to Islamic compulsions. At the same time, he makes some unusual maneuvers  to claim that the Taliban, which was ousted from power after the post-9/11 blitz in Afghanistan have now recouped and are ready to assume power again, as part of an international agreement on power sharing after the western powers evacuate their troops from the territory. This time, he concludes, the Taliban is doing its homework to govern better by reconciling with the other tribal factions in the country and not to repeat the earlier mistake of playing into the hands of terrorist organizations like the al Qaeda. The book thus offers a peek into the mind of the Taliban, which is quietly licking its wounds in Afghanistan’s tribal heart lands.

The book presents a balanced view of the socio-political situation in the two countries. He proposes a road map for future progress which is a snapshot of a whole slew of measures rational and practicable. Any attempt at long term stability in the region involves close cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Even though Siddique shies away from using the terms ‘terrorist’ to denote organizations like the Taliban or Lashkar e-Jhangvi, no sympathizing with the terrorists is visible in the text. It is curious to note the synonyms the author utilizes, like ‘extremists’, ‘Jihadists’, ‘militant’ , but not ‘terrorist’.! Siddique recognizes the Taliban as an organization that can and should rule over future Afghanistan. He cites examples where Taliban is at the receiving end, like the mass grave of about 2000 Taliban fighters found near Mazar-e Sharif who were killed by Hazaras in encounters. He also takes pains to clarify that the Taliban militia, with the exception of the Haqqani network, don’t indulge in terrorism elsewhere.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

A Study of History, Vol 9

Title: A Study of History, Vol 9 – Contacts between Civilizations in Time, Law and Freedom in History

Author: Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1985 (First published 1954)

ISBN: 978-0-19-215217-6

Pages: 759

 

This volume took ages to complete. Being the largest in the series, and handling a multitude of issues, this volume is a manifesto of the Western Society’s prospects at the time of taking stock at the culmination of the Second World War that pulverized the moral element in Europe’s psyche. We can also see the author revising some of his earlier theories in light of newer archeological findings and also because of the change in the author’s perception in the intervening two decades. The highlight of the volume is the contacts between civilizations in the time domain, also known as Renaissances. Toynbee dispels the myths about renaissance harboured by many readers. We have heard about the Renaissance that visited Italy in the 15^th century, which also coincided with the worldwide expansion of the Western Culture. We take it for granted that it was a benevolent characteristic that freed Europe from the dark ages of ignorance. However, the author treats this in a different way. Revival of classical learning in Greek and Latin was said to be asphyxiating for the vernacular languages and the return of the vernaculars in full glory some two hundred years later at the expense of Greek and Latin paved the way for resuming progress. The treatise of Renaissance in this book is spread over only two-fifths of the text. The other two parts that are given extensive coverage are the cases of Law and Freedom in History and the Prospects of the Western Civilization. The first narrates about the plausibility of there occurring a law that governs human actions constituting history. But more noteworthy is the third part where the historical scholar writing with anguish at the close of two excruciating world wars ruminating pessimistically at the future prospects of the society to which he belongs. Many times we see dark anticipation of a third war, as the cold war began in right earnest in the 1950s while Toynbee was writing these lines.

Renaissances which are contact between civilizations in the time dimension occur when the intelligensia of an affiliated civilization invokes the ghost of a dead civilization that is apparented to it. The ghost thus animating the flesh once again finds expression in several facets of the civilization like political ideas and institutions, law, philosophies, languages, literatures, visual arts and religious ideals and institutions. The most prominent manifestation of all is obviously in the political plane, where the Roman Empire, which was the universal state of Hellenistic culture, was re-incarnated as the East Roman Empire at Constantinople and the Holy Roman Empire in Western Christendom. Even though shorn of all actual powers, the symbolic investiture of privilege drove these institutions forward until the first succumbed to the arms of the Ottoman Turks in 1453 and the other in 1805 of Napoleon. Perhaps the most visual of the renaissances took place in 14^th-15^th centuries in Italy when remnants of Hellenistic arts and literature were resuscitated and spread to the other parts of Europe. Toynbee argues that the vernacular languages soon broke free from the stultifying grasp of resurgent Greek, while in China the breaking free did not take place until after the revolutions in 1900s. The Hellenistic culture of city states transformed to the scale of kingdoms and carried forward its divisive ethos. It may look satisfying to Indian readers that Toynbee attributes harmonious relationship between Sanskrit which was renovated, with vernaculars to compete for patronage. This was due to the ubiquitous circulation of the epics and religious myths that first found expression in Sanskrit, but which never receded from public mind. Renaissance on the religious plane constitutes renewed interest in pilgrimages to the holy places of a religion and the irrepressible urge to conquer them, if they happen to fall into the hands of rival religions in the meanwhile. Such overdrive resulted in crusades, which was a dominant landmark in human history.

The term ‘Renaissance’ evokes memories of a beneficial phenomenon, but this false concept is convincingly repudiated. Renaissance is the evocation of the ghost of a past civilization by a necromancer in a living society at the cost of sacrificing the vitality of his contemporaries. The revenant ideas eclipse the natural growth of modern concepts that are the offsprings of the later society. Aristotle’s logic, which was rejuvenated in the 12^th century in Western Europe, could be dismantled only in the 17^th century, upon which the inborn trend of inquisitiveness carried European science forward. The Church persecuted Galileo, because his theories ran counter to Aristotelian postulates, but not against any of the injunctions in the Bible. What Toynbee establishes with elaborate arguments is that Europe progressed only when the renaissance was effectively capped. This took place in the religious plane as well. Western Christendom was deeply involved in the Crusades to liberate Christian holy places in Palestine. They succeeded in it by 12^th-13^th centuries, when there were born many Frankish Kingdoms in the holy land. The crusades finally turned out to be inimical not only to Muslims but also to the crusaders’ co-religionists - the Eastern Orthodox Christians. Finally Islam cast these aliens out of Palestine for good. Toynbee postulates that this expulsion proved to be a blessing in disguise for the Western Europeans who turned their attentions to the west, towards the Atlantic Ocean. Consequently, mariners from the Iberian Peninsula crossed the ocean and discovered the New World. Immense wealth gobbled by the Europeans from newly conquered domains made them so powerful as to serve a turning point in history. Genoa and Venice, two Italian principalities that continued to prosper through trade with Middle East, even after the Westerners were driven out, were also stultified when the Iberian states launched on a new era of discovery. The old order went under and the new could gain the upper hand only when the last traces of renaissance on the religious domain were cast out.

A sizeable section of this book is devoted to ‘law and freedom in history’. Here the author addresses an issue the reader harbors in his mind right from starting reading of the first volume of the series. How can Toynbee make laws and theories about historical events which didn’t follow any human or natural rhythm as in the case of physical events? This chapter analyzes the various aspects of historical acts that follow a rhythm, with some consideration on why they are influenced in the suggested manner. This is best illustrated in the cycles of war and peace in the lives of civilizations. Toynbee identifies a cycle of events in the life of a society. There will be a premonitory war, then a general war, then a breathing space, supplementary wars and a general peace following it. This argument is driven forcefully home with instances taken from three civilizations, the Hellenistic (321 – 31 BCE), the Sinic (497 - 221 BCE), and the Western (1494 – 1945 CE).  As usual, with the other volumes, this text is also overloaded with references to an omnipotent God whose will makes men dance to its tune. The description is sometimes inconsistent at best and outright contradictory at its worst.  In the section of ‘law and freedom in history’, the author analyses whether human acts that make up the history of a civilization is based on a law to which human will is inexorably linked or whether he is free to choose an outcome at will. Then Toynbee takes a somersault by claiming that “this liberty is also a law of love; for man’s freedom could only have been given to man by a God who is love in person“(p.395). The argument, logic and result is made irrelevant by this sweeping statement that’s the outcome of a theist when he can’t think of anything better to say. This attitude coming from a distinguished author thoroughly disappointed the readers.

No other religion strictly adheres to its doctrine of forbidding all representation of living beings in the visual media than Islam. Recent controversy erupted upon the graphical portrayal of its Prophet in European satirical journals find their origins in the taboo on visual depiction. While it seems, this issue is solely concerned with Islam, reading Toynbee on Renaissance of religious ideals and institutions bring forth the fact that it is proscribed for Christianity and Judaism as well. This section offers an enlightening analysis of the internal tussle in Christianity between iconoclasts and iconodules. One of the commandments enjoined by Moses was that “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the Earth, thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them” This was strictly followed by Jewry and they looked upon with disdain Christianity’s supposed compromise with Hellenistic paganism in adopting visual forms of adoration in its theology and art. This was necessary for the new religion that tried to become the universal religion of the Hellenistic culture while Judaism could afford to be dogmatic in its desert fastness in Judea. There had always been opposition against using idols and pictures for worship. The second council at Nicaea (787 CE) came out in favor of icons, which was vehemently opposed in Western Christendom. However, unlike Islam’s dry puritanism, Christianity never fully did away with images. Even the latest offensive for iconoclasm spearheaded by Martin Luther as the Protestant Reformation never really succeeded in wiping out idols.      

Toynbee’s animosity to Gibbon’s ideas was noticed in an earlier volume. In the present text, he devotes an annex to rubbishing his senior’s review of the state of Western society in the 1780s. Gibbon paints a self-congratulatory picture of a civilization that has mastered all challenges from barbarians and was in the path of peaceful progress. With the unfair advantage of hindsight, Toynbee attacks Gibbon with devastating precision. This appears to be a case of being wise after the event. In the 1780s, when the ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ was coming out of the press, Europe was in a comfortable position, but it very soon turned sour, which couldn’t be foreseen by the great historian.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star