Anecdotes of Aurangzib

Title: Anecdotes of Aurangzib

Author: Jadunath Sarkar

Publisher: Sangam Books 1988 (First published 1912)

ISBN: 0861319583

Pages: 101

This is a nicely written small book on Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughals. Known also as Alamgir, he created fault lines in the administration on account of his bigotry and unmitigated hatred of Hindus and Shia Muslims. What Akbar had made, Aurangzeb undid. Having no long term plan or vision about his empire, he wasted the kingdom’s resources on continued warfare. Weakness thus set in, and the alienation of a large and powerful section of the nobles paved the way for the eventual dissolution of the Mughal Empire. This book is a collection of anecdotes translated from a Persian work which was found in the private collection of William Irvine, the historian of the ‘Later Mughals’ (reviewed earlier in this blog). This manuscript was not known to exist in any other library of Europe or India and no historian had used it till then. It is the Ahkam-i-Alamgiri, attributed to Hamid-ud-din Khan, also called Nimchah-i-Alamgiri. Jadunath Sarkar is the Boswell of Aurangzeb, having written many books and articles about the last of the great Mughals. Sarkar was a learned professor in British India who was knighted for his erudition.

Aurangzeb was an utterly suspicious and deeply jealous person. The Mughal administration was a highly centralized one, with the emperor acting as the fulcrum. Provincial governors had to seek approval for all matters from the emperor. News writers in the provinces informed all incidents, however small and inconsequential, to the capital. The emperor’s own sons were not exempt from these ever watchful spies. In several anecdotes, we see Aurangzeb acting harsher towards his offsprings than other officials. Any small appropriations of royal privilege like organizing elephant fights, riding in a palki (ornamented litter) and playing of kettledrums which the local administrators clandestinely enjoyed were immediately brought to the attention of the emperor and the erring official chastised by severe reprimand or reducing his rank and jagir. From a few anecdotes, we also get to know that Aurangzeb was deeply worried at the prospect of the nemesis of Shah Jahan visting upon him. His sons seemed to be his enemies and were subjected to long terms of confinement. Any kind of initiative or ostentation in their provincial administration were severely put down. Each time he was issuing an order rebuking his son, Aurangzeb wrote that he was doing this to escape the fate that befell on his father, Shah Jahan, who was ease-loving and delegated more power to his sons. Alamgir was also a believer in astrology as we see him extolling the star positions in favour of his acts and decisions.

The anecdotes are categorized into four sections – about the emperor himself, about his sons and grand sons, about his officers and the policy towards Hindus and Shias. A succinct biography of the bigoted king provides a welcome introduction to the anecdotes. Apart from the Ahkam-i-Alamgiri, which is the source of most of the anecdotes in the book through three versions of the manuscript, Sarkar has also relied upon another manuscript called Sharah-i-dastkhat-i-Alamgiri.

Any book on Alamgir can’t omit the grave acts of intolerance instituted by him. Sarkar gives a detailed list on page 8. In an orgy of jehad, Aurangzeb pulled down the Vishwanath temple at Varanasi in 1669, razed the Kesava Rai temple at Mathura to the ground in 1670, built a mosque there, took the idols to Agra and buried them under the steps of Jahanara’s mosque so that they might constantly be trodden on by worshippers going in to pray. The Rajput War of 1679-80 was accompanied by the destruction of 240 temples in Mewar alone, while 67 temples were destroyed in Jaipur, which was in fact an ally of Aurangzeb. Jaziya, the hated poll tax on Hindus, was reimposed in 1679. The poor people who appealed to him crying for its remission were trampled down by elephants and dispersed. With a clever order in 1695 that banned all Hindus except Rajputs from carrying arms or riding elephants and horses, he in effect dismissed all Hindu clerks from office. Custom duties were abolished on Muslims and doubled on Hindus. A nice, tolerant guy indeed! Aurangzeb’s fierce hatred of Hindus was equaled only by his deep aversion to Shias. He liked the naming of a favourite dagger as the ‘Shia-slayer (Rafizi-kush)’. In his correspondence, he never mentions Shias without an abusive epithet : ‘corpse-eating demons (ghul-i-bayabani)’ and misbelievers (batil maz haban)’ were among his favourite phrases (p.10). Even with this background, it looks strange that in his will, he does not earmark the money earned by copying the Quran for his shroud, as it is regarded by the Shia sect as illegal (p.36). Also, his will contains twelve directive sections to his successors as it is a holy figure. Remember that the Shias have twelve imams!

Lack of an index is a serious concern, but owing to the small size and effective categorization of content, it doesn’t cause any significant loss of utility. Authenticity of the events narrated should only be accepted as accorded to the descriptions of a loyal courtier. Unless independent verification is available, they need not be accepted as genuine history. But in another aspect, this book is unique. Students of history always saw Aurangzeb as a stern religious guy who shunned dance, art, music and poetry. This book provides some glimpses of the man behind the veil of imperial portraiture. We see him getting angry, sad and happy, thus bringing out the basic human nature buried deep within the man who was simple in tastes and lived a virtuous life, but whom Indians love to hate.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Inside Central Asia

Title: Inside Central Asia

Author: Dilip Hiro

Publisher: Harper Collins 2010 (First published 2009)

ISBN: 9788172239725

Pages: 448

As the title deservedly implies, the book provides a definitive political and cultural history of the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Iran. The last two are not central Asian in geography, but shares the same cultural mindset as those who are. These states passed through three distinct phases from medieval tribalism to the present time. Pre-revolutionary Tsars forcefully annexed the states that underwent a radical change under the Communists. The countries’ Muslim population lost their religious moorings in the surge of atheist propaganda. But the Islamic spirit lay dormant under the skin which erupted when state oppression melted away with glasnost and perestroika. At present, these states maintain an uneasy balance between autocracy and theocracy. The link between all the central Asian states is still strong, as seen from the close similarity in the socio-political fields among all of them. All this is presented in a vibrant way by Dilip Hiro, who is based in London and writes for many newspapers and magazines. Being the author of more than thirty books, he is an acknowledged commentator on Islamic and west Asian affairs. The bulk of the text covers the two decades from 1988 to 2008, that is, the onset of Soviet Union’s unraveling and the firm establishment of regimes professing democratic spirit of the ‘central Asian variety’!

Hiro successfully paints the portrait of the politically downward-going nation of Turkey. The country possesses a strange admixture of moderate Islam and fundamentalist secularism sown by the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Turkey is a secular, democratic republic by all outward appearances, but what is apparent from the author’s insightful narrative is that secularism runs only skin deep in the modern Turkish society excepting a bunch of die-hard secularists having vested interests in the continuation of the regime – the military, for example. Since the country imposes strict conditions on its citizens’ freedom of expression, the true democratic spirit is also wanting. The extra-democratic sword of the military and its ally, the Constitutional Court, hovers above the free debates and polls of the Turkish parliament. Whenever the parliamentarians decide on a policy that is not approved by the military, it enters the picture, sometimes forcefully, to get the decision annulled and the erring politicians debarred from public life for extended periods. As per the country’s constitution, no citizen is allowed to indulge in activities that weaken the secular fabric of the nation. However, this noble guideline is extended arbitrarily to suppress even personal freedom as to ban the use of women’s head scarves in universities and other government offices. Two-thirds of Turkish women use head scarves while out of their homes. How can you call the regime a democracy that deny the right of a significant share of its women to appear in an attire of their choice, in which they are comfortable? We condemn ISIS and Taliban when they forcefully impose the veil against the wearer’s will. By the same token, the Turkish secularists’ prescription of removing the veil against the wearer’s will should also be condemned. However, it can’t be doubted that the Islamists are gaining more and more ground with each general election, and it is likely that those who are now on the defensive may switch over to an offensive posture in a not-too-distant future. Militant Islam is clever enough to hold its tongue when a strong administration is in place, as is seen in the other chapters when the Communists held the Islamists on the palm of their hands in the central Asian republics. Perhaps the day is not far off when Turkey finally bows its head to the crushing yoke of Sharia law. Hiro correctly identifies the reason for the downfall, even though the society was given an impressive head start by Ataturk. The factors zeroed in are the absence of universal education, aggressive advocacy of nationalism even at the expense of cultural minorities, corruption in government and the autocratic bent of the state machinery. The chapter on Turkey is very illuminating and provides a warning note to Turkish people of the dangers ahead.

When the Communist regime in Soviet Union under Gorbachev floundered, the central Asian republics promptly parted ways with the Russian masters and declared independence on their own. As soon as the overlordship was removed, party bosses in the provinces assumed executive power, hesitatingly at first, but after that with full autocratic paraphernalia. The book narrates several instances spanning all the five former Soviet states – in which the dictator, who was also a party boss just a few years ago – systematically curtailing freedom of expression and the right to form associations. Some of the methods described are quite novel and authoritarian regimes around the world may get a lesson or two, harping on to the ideas practiced. In order to form a political party, the organizers have to prove that all regions, religions and races are represented in their membership. They tour the provinces and collect signatures as a precondition to contest elections. What would happen if an organized gang suddenly pounce upon the collection of signatures and destroy it, with hardly a few days left to register for the elections? This unlikely scenario indeed did happen in central Asia more than once! Surprisingly, the requirement of multi-regional presence had been the sharpest weapon with which the authorities cut down on political freedom.

Hiro shows the condescending attitude exhibited by the western powers towards the leaders of central Asian states, with reference to the lack of personal freedom and democratic institutions under their administrations. The British ambassador to Uzbekistan reached the height of insolence when he publicly chided the president of the country, Islam Karimov, in a function marked to honour visiting European delegates. To the consternation of Uzbek authorities and on live television, the ambassador went on a tirade against the autocratic practices, with the president squeaming in his chair in the dais. When Turkmenistan’s president Niyazov wanted to visit the U.S, it failed to extend diplomatic invitation citing the country’s poor human rights record. Niyazov made the trip as a private visit, in which he was not even allowed entry to the White House. The Turkmen regime forged photos that depicted their president having a chat with the U.S president to show off to their people their ruler’s international clout. This immature step on the part of western powers however cost them dearly. All the central Asian states were thus driven into the open arms of Russia and China. They lost a great opportunity to ensure the contribution of the erstwhile socialist Muslim states in the fight against terror or in extracting oil and precious metals from the resource-rich republics.

Readers get a revealing picture of the Turkish identity that is a common legacy for all the central Asian states and Turkey. The saga of the hunting people in the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia who came to dominate a large part of Asia is still unsung. Except the chapters on Iran and Tajikistan, all others tell the story of how pan-Turkism is a repeating rhythm in the socio-political lives of the nations. Hiro deftly ends each chapter with an idea that points directly to the next chapter, thereby keeping the chain of interest unbroken. The text is enriched by the author’s visit to the places which he describes and the readers are rewarded with a hearty sketch of the exotic places. The book also dispels a deeply routed faith of most Indian readers that the Mahabharata is the world’s longest epic poem with 200,000 lines of verse. Kyrgyzstan boasts that the Epic of Manas comprise of 500,000 lines of verse, helping it occupy the pole position. The Introduction and Summary and Conclusions form the limits in which the text of the book is sandwiched. The book has a good index and an impressive list of books suggested for further reading. The Notes impart authenticity to the ideas and attests to the effort that had gone in research.

Notwithstanding all these, it cannot be denied that a subtle trace of repetitiveness runs throughout the text, but the blame should not be heaped solely on the author. Autocratic governments, violence-ridden political activity, widespread corruption, revival of political Islam and the rush between the West, Russia, China and the regional powers to claim stakes in the central Asian economies – the scenario is the same everywhere you turn to. Once you have seen one, you have seen all. The maps included are very crude that don’t serve any useful purpose. The book could also have included a few colour plates of the land and people of central Asia to elicit more interest from readers.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Muslims of British India

Title: The Muslims of British India

Author: Peter Hardy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press 1998 (First published 1972)

ISBN: 9788175960268

Pages: 306

Partition of India into two states in 1947 was followed by one of the most cruel massacres and transfer of populations between the new states. About half a million people lost their lives and 14 million changed their domicile in the largest human migration in history. Killing and exodus in the name of religion may appear to be ridiculous to those who live in secular societies where the role of the state and the faith are clearly made non-concentric. But not so in India and in most of the Asian countries. Readers may wonder what prompted the inhabitants of undivided India to go for the jugular of their neighbours with so deadly a passion. Was it so tough a job for the followers of the two religions to live together in harmony? Many history books tried to answer this question before and since the partition of India. Unfortunately for us, Indian historians come in three distinct varieties with predictable literary output. Muslim historians come out with the Muslim version of the debate, while Hindu historians publish arguments contrary to them. The third genre – the leftist historians – follow a definitely anti-Hindu, but not quite pro-Muslim stance, in step with their political ideology. The truth gets buried in the melee. So it is a refreshing change to read a work of history coming from the pen of a British author. Naturally, we get to read many episodes in India’s struggle for independence that has not been revealed to us before through the mainstream media. No mention about the author or his profile is given in the book and curiously, it couldn’t be accessed online too! An aura of mystery hence surrounds the figure of Peter Hardy, but no such confusion is observed in his lucid interpretation of the events that led to India’s partition and the role of Muslims in it.

The transition of a powerful community from the privilege of ruling the country to being undistinguished inhabitants who were forced to work for their livelihood is presented in the first part of the book. The century after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 saw the country moving from Islamic rule to the British. This marked the end of seven centuries of Muslim rule which was based on military occupation. Local aristocrats were invariably officers of the garrison. When the British established their ascendancy, these people lost their way of life as well as their livelihood. Out of the Muslim masses which constituted a fifth of the population of British India, the majority lived the same life as their Hindu bretheren in terms of their hand to mouth subsistence. But the aristocrats commanded better visibility and more faithfully represented the Muslim sentiment. British rule thus brought in commercial enterprise as the prime economic activity in place of militarism. The prevalence of robbery and general failure of law and order in the country is to be properly understood in the backdrop of the horde of unemployed soldiers roaming the countryside. Pindaris robbed wayfarers and many of them were Muslims. Hardy blows away the myth that Muslims were at the receiving end of the land reforms instituted by the English East India Company. Presenting statistics pulled out from land revenue records, it is convincingly proved that both Hindus and Muslims suffered in equal measure before the 1857 Mutiny. Coupled with these factors, the rise in arrogance of the British should also be identified for the resentment that was brewing in the subject population. As the Mughal power waned, the British gradually stepped into their shoes. Outward appearances of obeisance to the Mughal emperor was continued for some time, but later, he was sidelined in a humiliating manner. The time was ripe for an outburst, but the British utterly failed to see it coming.

The rebellion in 1857 may be termed as the single event in history (if ever there was one), that marked the transition of India from medievalism to modernity. The age old dispensations of power were removed in one stroke without any prospect of return. About 30 princes of the Mughal line were killed and the emperor exiled to Burma. It was clear to the Muslims that power could not be obtained by force as long as the British were on the scene which was thought at that time to be ever lasting. Two streams of counter-opinions circulated among the Muslim community. One section found the country to be dar al-Harb (abode of enmity) instead of dar al-Islam (abode of peace) and insisted on the impractical policy of migration to other lands where the sharia law prevailed. The other group, led by modern-minded individuals like Sir Saiyid Ahmed Khan articulated for reconciliation with the British. Being a devout Muslim, who even postulated that the sun circulates around the earth, Sir Saiyid identified the issue facing the Muslim society as not the hegemony of the British, which was a fait accompli, but rather the ascendancy of Hindus if the British were to concede the demand of self-representation in the legislature, judiciary and administration. The political ethos prevailing in contemporary Europe didn’t encourage the demand for representation of religious communities. This is the background for the origin of the two-nation theory. If the Hindus and Muslims constituted two nations of the European model, it naturally calls for two separate geographical enclosures for them. Saiyid Amir Ali of Orissa founded the National Mohammedan Association in 1877, which eventually paved the way for the establishment of the Muslim League in 1906. When Indian National Congress was founded in 1885, Muslims under Saiyid Ahmed Khan opposed it on all fronts. Even Badruddin Tyabji, who was one of the earliest Congress presidents, secretly sympathized with the Islamic viewpoint.

Hardy tells the tale of how the Muslims grouped together to become a separate nation within the bounds of a geographical frontier in which Hindus formed the majority. The root of the problem lay in the 18^th century when the collapse of Islamic regimes in power and prestige, coupled with the rise of Maratha and Sikh powers prompted the nebulous Islamic sentiment to solidify at last. Shah Wali-Allah, a Delhi scholar, encouraged Muslims to follow a fundamentalist order. His son, Shah Abd al-Aziz even termed India a dar al-Harb in which the Muslims are enjoined by religious law to wage holy war against the oppressors. Embers of communal passion were stoked by the puritanical writings of Saiyid Ahmed of Rae Bareilly. Muslim resentment began surfacing in violent measures. Dudu Miyan of Bengal accused the government of spending the tax revenue collected from Muslim peasants for Hindu religious rituals. Khalifas were nominated in Bengal villages in which the rebel Tutu Mir killed cows in the open and desecrated local temples with its blood. 19^th century saw the Muslim ulema – the priesthood – gaining strength and the establishment of Dar ul-Ulum at Deoband. Fatwas were sought by the faithful on all matters of personal interactions that often verged on the ridiculous. A scholar, Abd al-Haiy once enunciated a fatwa that a man accidentally touching, in conditions of domestic overcrowding, his foster-brother’s wife’s mother’s thigh is guilty of zina (unlawful intercourse)! Muslim nationalism changed its track again in the 20^th century. What they feared most was the prospect of living in a democratic India after the British had left, and subject to the majority Hindu population who would obviously be controlling the legislature. For Muslims, slavery to the British was infinitely more preferable than the partnership with Hindus on the political plane. The acid test to determine where the sympathy of Indian Muslims lay was the response to Turkey’s defeat in the 1914 World War. As the sultan was also the caliph who controlled Islam’s holiest places, his miserable defeat in the war and humiliating peace treaties antagonized the Indian Muslims who called Khilafat agitation to demand justice to Turkey. This had Congress support, who believed this to be an opportunity to rope in Muslims for the first time in India’s historical struggle for independence. Incidentally, it turned out to be the last as well. The Muslim leaders were interested only in the fate of Turkey and they didn’t care a damn about India’s destiny. Maulana Mohammed Ali, one of the leaders of the movement, openly declared that helping fellow Muslims was the foremost obligation of a Muslim and should the Amir of Afghanistan declare a jihad against India and attack it, Indian Muslims would wholeheartedly join the aggressor (p.195)! Instead of territorial nationalism, they opted for community federalism.

The book is special in the sense that it exposes the unfamiliar side of many nationalist Muslim leaders, who are eulogized in official versions of Indian history. The case of Tyabji is noted earlier. Another shocking expose is that of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad whose credentials sport a stained look if the author is to be believed. In his book titled Masla-i Khilafat, written to support Turkey against Britain, Azad reiterates that “God entrusted the vicegerency of this earth to a succession of different communities, until finally it was entrusted to the community of the Prophet Muhammad” (p.191). Again, he lays down that “it is the individual duty (farz al-ain) of every Muslim to come to the aid of any Muslim government under attack from non-Muslims” (p.192). The mental partition of India had already taken place in the 1920s when the foolish venture of Khilafat raged in the country, foolish in the sense that when the Turks regained power under the able leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, one of his prominent actions was to dethrone the sultan and scrap the title of Khalifa!

Hardy faithfully presents the complex web of interactions among the Muslims of British India. Contrary to popular conception, the community was far from monolithic. Interests of class, role of education, political organization and level of social awareness are all neatly addressed by the author. The community reacted differently to the same impetus in various provinces. It may be remembered that Muslim League couldn’t command power through popular elections till about a decade from partition. The author’s use of statistics is wonderfully to the point and establishes his argument without any further need of query. The sources for these figures are amazingly diverse, from census figures to voting records to land revenue records and to results of school/college examinations. Such commendable use of actual figures is rarely seen in books of history. It is to be stressed here that the readability is not at all suffered by the use of numbers.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

River Out of Eden

Title: River Out of Eden

Author: Richard Dawkins

Publisher: Phoenix 2004 (First published 1995)

ISBN: 9781857994056

Pages: 196

Reading Richard Dawkins is an inspirational venture. What makes the experience so rewarding is the clarity of thought and logical propositions that abound in the book. The explanations are so crystal clear that it would bathe the mental landscape in the pristine light of true knowledge. As the most convincing author in the genre of popular science, as well as being the most down-to-earth one, Dawkins has published many books, each of which is a gem in its own right. Many books are reviewed earlier in this blog itself and I am not a person who would waste an opportunity to get hold of one of Dawkins’ books. ‘River out of Eden’ is a great book that exposes the secret of the river of life that flows uninterrupted from the origins to the present moment. Conflicting and confusing responses may be elicited if one were to ask the reason for life existing on earth. Keeping aside philosophical and religious responses, what we learn from the book is that life’s only purpose is to perpetuate the genetic code that made it in the first place. All the infinite variations and subtle nuances exist for only one purpose – to replicate the DNA that is the basis of heredity – and to ensure its continuity in the world in the form of other beings spawned from the parent. This line of argument may seem blasphemous to some, outrageous to some other, but calm pondering of the basic issue of debate vindicates Dawkins’ stand. The book is adorned with an impressive list of books for future reading and sports a good index. Illustrations are done by Lalla Ward, the author’s wife, which blends harmoniously with the content.

The river flowing out of Eden is a stream of genes, forking billions of times along the way. When a species begins to separate in some way – geographic separation is the most common cause – a bifurcation is said to have taken place in the course of the river. Animals in the two separated streams can still produce offspring during the initial stages, but they don’t do it actually, because of the physical separation. Dawkins postulates that living bodies are only temporary vehicles in which the self-replicating genes find expression, in their flow through time. In fact, he likens the living organisms to the banks of the river, which helps the current to follow its course and not spilled over to other channels. Indian philosophers may bring to notice an arresting resemblance to the ancient spiritual speculation that the body is only a temporary seat of the soul, which itself is immortal. If the term, ‘soul’ is replaced with genes, Dawkins’ example emerges full blown out of the picture. But nothing like this can be further from the spirit of the book as well as Dawkins’ imaginative thought. Deceptive pitfalls await readers who connect science’s discoveries which are based on proof to idle speculation that masquerades as ancient philosophy. Explaining the concepts of mitochondrial DNA, the author establishes that all the people now alive on the planet descended from a single woman who lived around a quarter of a million years ago, most probably in Africa. This great great grandmother, also called Mitochondrial Eve for obvious reasons, was definitely not the only woman alive at that time. There might have been many males in that generation who have descendants today. But the DNA carried forward through the male line is resident in the nucleus of cells and gets eventually lost through sexual recombination. But mitochondrial DNA is passed only through the mother and is uncontaminated. Taking the frequency of random mutations into account, the period at which the ancestor lived could be estimated.

Every one of Dawkins’ books attempts to answer the probing questions posed by creationists to mock at evolution and its mechanisms. One of the commonplace tricks of the creationists is to describe the complexity of a biological artifact, like the eye, and then argue that such a complicated system will not function unless all its parts are complete. There will not be half an eye which would function, they would say. Now comes the statistical part – if an eye can’t function unless it is assembled in full, what are the chances that an entire eye is evolved wholesale by random mutation? Obviously, such a proposition would take a long time to accomplish. In fact, very long in the sense that the time required will be several orders of magnitude greater than the life of the universe! Dawkins, however, damns the argument in his exemplary style. He postulates that the eye need not be a whole organ to perform its function well. Hundreds of eye designs are seen in nature that varies in utility from rudimentary light detection to complex 3-D full-colour vision. All intermediate eyes are living contented lives in their animal bodies. In fact, evolution of the eye has taken place independently around forty times in the animal kingdom. This topic is a favourite one of the author, as we can see it mentioned in his other books as well, notably The Greatest Show on Earth. He adds dance of honeybees as a bonus in this book. This tells about the way in which a bee ‘describes’ about the location of food to its fellows in the hive in the form of a peculiar dance following the figure of ‘8’. What the author asserts is that even though the information interchange is very complicated and ingenuous, its development was not the result of any design, but only by the evolutionary pathways.

Dawkins appears to be well versed in programming and with concepts in modern communication engineering about how to transmit sound and picture over long distances without much loss. His narration of the differences between analog and digital signals is impressive. The supreme ease with which he makes comparison with the digital engineering systems and its biological counterparts helps readers to understand the concepts very well. The most commendable achievement might be the correct identification of DNA coding to be digital. Just as a digital system is a way of working with 1s and 0s, or two states of voltage levels, the DNA is coded with four digits, usually abbreviated as A, T, C and G. Dawkins assumes a fictitious scenario in which a message in ordinary English is interspersed in the genetic sequence of a life form without losing its effectiveness in carrying genetic information that is absolutely necessary for the life of the animal. A queer thought may be presented here as an armchair exercise. What if our entire genome are in fact messages in the language of a super-powerful alien race that somehow colonized the earth in its early phase and deposited the primordial DNA to see how it works? Most of the DNA is believed to be junk in the sense that no useful genes have been detected on these portions. But it is inconceivable that nature would go to the trouble of maintaining so large a part of the DNA for no apparent reason. Isn’t the thought intriguing that these junk regions contain some coded message from another race? It is the realm of science fiction, and if you replace it with divine language, believers could also be taken along. So, it is a double edged sword.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star