The Island of the Colour-blind

Title: The Island of the Colour-blind

Author: Oliver Sacks

Publisher: Picador, 2012 (First published 1996)

ISBN: 9780330526104

Pages: 361

Islands are unique in many ways. The separation guaranteed by the vastness of the sea ensures subtle changes in the language and culture of the societies inhabiting them and the mainland, even though one is an offspring of the other. Not only in sociocultural mores, the isolation brings about genetic changes in the people, animals and plants. This was observed and characterized in great detail by none other than Charles Darwin himself, by his famous voyage around the globe in HMS Beagle. The rate of changes accumulated in the genome in response to natural selection against local conditions prevailing in an island will be far greater than that on the mainland. Darwin was amazed and encouraged by the sharp evolutionary changes he observed on the Galapagos Islands, which finally led to his theory of evolution. With this in the background, we turn to this book that showcases two remote islands in the Pacific Ocean, distant thousands of miles from the continents, in which two grotesque illnesses are widely prevalent in the indigenous populations. In Pingelap, total colour-blindness is fairly common, and in Guam, a neurological disease called lytico-bodig, that exhibits symptoms of Parkinsonism and paralysis affects a section of the populace born before 1945. The author visits these islands in turn, muses on them and the probable causes. Oliver Sacks is a physician and the author of many books. Born in London and educated at Oxford, he now lives in New York where he is Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University.

There are many places in the world where first cousin marriage is common. In many parts of India itself, this was the norm before education and better living standards threw open the door to the outside world to those languishing in fetid superstition. Science has categorically outlined the dangers of inbreeding including widespread prevalence of genetic disorders, to mention nothing about the eventual impoverishment of the gene pool. Genetic diseases are marked often by recessive genes. Since every person possesses two sets of genes inherited from the father and mother, if one copy of the gene is healthy, the recessive gene stays dormant, without causing its harmful effects. The person with one faulty gene acts as a carrier of the disease, but the ailment itself will not be expressed in his body. When too much breeding occurs between people who are closely related, the chances of an offspring getting two copies of the recessive gene heightens. The higher than normal incidence of lunacy and other genetic defects observed in Kerala’s matrilineal society of the previous centuries may be taken note of. Pingelap Atoll’s people had to pass through a natural catastrophe that forced them to resort to inbreeding as a case of necessity. This paradise-like atoll in the middle of the Pacific vastness was hit by a huge typhoon in 1775. Most of the inhabitants perished. Out of the thousand or so dwellers, around twenty, mainly from the chief’s family, survived. The population slowly picked up over the decades, but the harmful effects of inbreeding began to tell heavily on the society’s well being. The loss of colour vision, called achromatopsia, spread among the descendants. The patients lacked all sense of colour, losing the cone cells in the retina which distinguishes colour. They depend only on the rod cells, which normal people use to see in darkness. As a result, people suffering from the disorder find it difficult to fully open their eyes in bright sunlight. This is accompanied by squint. Some semblance to normal human eyes can be generated by the liberal use of dark sunglasses. There is no cure for the disease as yet. Among the general population in other parts of the world, the rate of incidence is 1 in 30,000 whereas it is an astounding 1 in 12 in Pingelap.

Sacks presents another startling phenomenon from Guam Island in the Pacific, which falls under U.S. administration. It is a U.S. military base, with a large area of the island out of bounds for ordinary citizens. The indigenous people in this lovely tropical island is afflicted with a paralyzing sickness called lytico-bodig, somewhat related to encephalitis lethargica. The sufferers show symptoms of Parkinson’s disease or display extreme inability to move muscles or speak. The disease worsens progressively, and finally kills the patient. This disease affects only the indigenous people of the island. The cause of this ailment is still shrouded in mystery. The chapter offers an absorbing discussion on the probable causes of the disease. A strong contender is the cycad plant found in large numbers on the island, whose seeds are eaten by the people as a source of protein during droughts or famines. This was widely used during the Second World War when the island was under Japanese occupation and the local people were mercilessly starved. The highest incidence of the malady was on the people born during the war years when all they had to eat was the cycad seeds. After the island was retaken by American troops, matters returned to normalcy. There has not been a single case of lytico-bodig on the people born after the event. The cycad plant contains a neurotoxin that may be responsible for the deleterious effects, but elaborate preparation of the seed before consumption takes care of removing most of the toxin. Scientists posit that genetic predisposition and deficiency of minerals rich in calcium and aluminium may also explain the phenomenon. The last word has not been said yet.

The book is not just about diseases and cycads alone. It narrates a really adventurous travel to the beautiful Pacific islands. To reach Pohnpei, Sacks had to undergo some anxious hours in the form of a damaged plane tyre. Many of the islands in the Pacific are controlled by U.S. military. Repairs to the plane were carried out in a military base and the passengers were grudgingly allowed to stay on the island under the watchful eyes of the soldiers – a prospect equally disliked by both parties. The author gives a thrilling description of his journeys on the islands and the heaven-like beaches ideal for swimming or snorkeling. His revulsion to military bureaucracy is evident in more than one place in the book. Guam is a pretty island, but most of the prettiest beaches are under military control. Access is granted after thorough interrogation and that too, after forcing the visitors to wait for hours. But the author has not proposed exposure to radioactivity or other military-related causes for the spread of lytico-bodig.

An illuminating discussion on ancient plants like ferns and cycads that still exist in the world is also presented as a bonus. Apparently, this was facilitated by his visit to Rota Island, near Guam. This book includes a huge section of Notes that runs to about a third of the book. But they are very informative and readers don’t feel interrupted from the main story even though they have to frequently refer to these elaborate pieces of information. Nice sketches of the trees and plants are very apt to the theme. An expansive bibliography and index add to the attraction of the book. The book was first published nearly twenty years ago, and that may be why he has not included the names of those genes that cause the diseases. Not that the readers get any wiser by a cryptic acronym, but it contributes to a feeling that the malady is being studied in detail by the academia and pharma.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Fever Trail

Title: The Fever Trail – In Search of the Cure for Malaria

Author: Mark Honigsbaum

Publisher: Pan Books, 2002 (First published 2001)

ISBN: 9780330481854

Pages: 333

Malaria is a scourge of mankind. Till a few centuries back, it afflicted all parts of the globe with equal severity, but is now confined mainly to the Third World. Millions of children die every year in sub-Saharan Africa due to this illness and the drain on the economy caused by the incapacitation of healthy individuals is considerable. It has killed 60 times more people than AIDS. The book presents a detailed historical narrative of the search for finding a cure for malaria. It tells the story of finding a natural cure in the bark of the cinchona tree in its natural habitat of South America and the epic struggle by a few spirited explorers to get its seeds out to the whole world for starting cultivations elsewhere. The book ends with a brief description of the state of the art in finding a vaccine for it. Mark Honigsbaum is a medical historian and journalist with a long standing interest in the history and science of infectious diseases. He is a regular contributor to British newspapers and has authored four books.

The cinchona plant is a miracle, in the sense that its bark contains the cure for malaria. The case of a single plant being the only effective remedy for a killer disease is rare. It is equally miraculous that man found out about the tree and its gift, as historians suggest that malaria was not endemic to South America. The disease came with the conquistadores from the Old World. The question of who discovered the febrifugal property of the plant may never be answered, but urban legend associates its widespread use with Dona Francisca Henriquez de Ribera, the fourth Countess of Chinchon in Spain, who was the vicereine of Peru. Legend has it that she became ill with malaria and the viceroy despaired of her life. When all else failed, a local Jesuit priest suggested the dried bark of a tree called ayac cara (bitter bark) or quinquina (bark of barks). The lady was cured after administering the bark and the story spread like wildfire. When Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy was faced with the task of naming the species, he settled on cinchona, somehow omitting the first ‘h’ of the lady’s estate. The plant’s original habitat was South America. The finest cinchonas were very particular about the region in which they thrived. The best trees were found on the slopes of Cajanuma Mountain in the Loja province of Ecuador. Honigsbaum don’t keep the reader in suspense of how malaria came to the New World. He ascribes this with the slave trade, in which tens of thousands of Blacks were transported forcibly from the malaria-infected river banks of Africa. Some of the Africans have a natural genetic defence against the disease in the form of sickle-shaped cells in their blood stream, but they act as carriers of the sickness. It is notable that Africans were vulnerable to malaria for indeed a very long time that evolution has favoured a group of individuals with the trait of sickle cells, which of course produces other debilitating effects. The mosquitos which flourished in the half-cleared swamps of South America vectored the parasite Plasmodium falciparum among the natives as well as European settlers.

The book tells the story of transplantation of cinchona trees from South America to India and Java. By the 19^th century, quinine production had started on an industrial scale. Having the monopoly of the bark, the governments of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador jealously guarded the trees, forbidding export of live plants and seeds. As the bark grew dearer in price, smuggling rose proportionately. Besides, excessive harvest of bark and indiscriminate felling of trees threatened the existence of the species itself. The British and Dutch governments watched the emerging scenario with growing alarm. The South American republics often fought amongst themselves and were breeding grounds for bloody revolutions and coups. Even though it amounted to looting of the biological asset of a sovereign state, it was in the interest of humanity to transplant the trees to save it from extinction and to produce quinine in large quantities for selling to the public at affordable prices. Several teams tried their luck on the slopes of Andes and its foot hills. Richard Spruce, Clements Markham and Charles Ledger were successful in getting the plants and seeds out of South America. However, while haggling over the price, some of it reached the hands of the Dutch. Soon, large gardens of cinchonas sprouted in Dutch Java and at Nilgiri and Darjeeling in India. The Javan plantations carefully grafted the trees to obtain fine specimens with huge quinine content, while the Indian trees got hybridized due to lack of scientific cultivation. Consequently, the cost of Javan quinine was lesser. The Dutch could sell it with greater profit too. By the 1880s, quinine price had reached rock bottom due to increased production in Asia. The South American bark industry collapsed as a result.

Even though the author gives an exhaustive description of the quest for cinchona trees – even by narrating the day to day incidents during the exploration – he glosses over the heroic search for the vector of the disease and Ronald Ross’ discovery that the mosquito was the medium of propagation of the disease. Common wisdom was that malaria was spread through foul air – miasma – found in the presence of swamps and marshes. This was overturned only in the 19^th century when researchers identified the mosquito to be the real culprit. Honigsbaum quotes Susruta, who was an ancient proponent of medical profession that five varieties of diseases are caused by mosquitos. But it is to be noted that Susruta does not identify malaria as such and definitely, this observation was far advanced than the medical line of thought in the middle ages.

The final few chapters of the book are devoted to the quest for finding a synthetic prophylaxis against the disease. Chloroquine is one of the most widely used remedy, but researchers are worried that the malaria parasite is growing resistance to the medicine. This is a terrifying prospect for global society considering the ease with which the malady spreads and it’s long lasting debilitating effects. The falciparum parasite was evolved a very long time ago, conferring on it many genetic traits for survival. A close ancestor of the parasite even has the ability to produce chlorophyll, showing its origin in the remotest antiquity when life itself made its first waddling steps. The book ends with a survey of the quest for finding a vaccine to malaria so that it can be prevented from affecting an individual, rather than as a cure. Researchers are working on the project worldwide, but big pharma’s budget is still not being allocated to it in sufficient measure. Among the researchers in the forefront of the study, the author gives pride of place to Manuel Elkin Patarroyo, a highly influential Colombian researcher. Even though his methodology appears to be a little dubious, his vaccine named SPf66 is still the most efficacious one, though it has much more miles to go before universal adoption. Honigsbaum ends the narrative describing the many initiatives which were projected to be on the verge of bearing fruit. This book was published in 2001, but even now, a vaccine for malaria is still elusive.

The book is very nicely structured with clear text accompanied by good photographic plates and maps. An informative section of foot-notes is given along with an exhaustive bibliography and a thoroughly comprehensive index. The narrative is very lucid and appeals to all classes of readers. The book includes flowery praise for the philanthropic contributions of the Wellcome Trust. However, when we realize that the author is currently working as a Wellcome Research Fellow at Queen Mary University in London, we begin to have doubts on the veracity of the assertion.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Merchants of Tamilakam

Title: Merchants of Tamilakam – Pioneers of International Trade

Author: Kanakalatha Mukund

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2012 (First)

ISBN: 9780670085217

Pages: 191

This book is one among a series on the ‘Story of Indian Business’ by various authors, with Gurcharan Das as the series editor. The author, Kanakalatha Mukund is not a historian in the conventional sense, having a PhD in economics. She was on the faculty of Economics and Social Studies of Bombay and Bhopal universities. An economist with a keen interest in history, she has authored many books and lives in Coonoor in the Nilgiris. This volume covers the history of trade in the millennium between the dawn of Sangam Age in the first century CE to the disintegration of Chola power in the thirteenth century CE. Powerful kingdoms arose in the region only around the middle of the period, but commerce thrived even under weak kings underlying the fact that absence of undue intervention in the affairs of the market is more conducive for economic activity than any kind of protection the king can confer on the merchants. Development of the local temple as a factor in the distribution of surplus wealth is also described in detail. The region’s maritime provenance is also examined in the light of the supposed territorial conquest of Sumatra, Malaya and Sri Lanka and consequent expansion of trade between the countries. In the historical context, Tamilakam refers to the region of peninsular south India that lies to the south of the Deccan plateau. On a modern map, this is roughly coterminous with the Indian States of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. However, the author somehow manages to examine the history with a strictly Tamil point of view.

The book incorporates an inspiring foreword by Gurcharan Das, former CEO of Procter & Gamble and now full time writer and a renowned author. Apart from commenting on the text to follow, he makes a good comparison of the societies and economies of India and China. Relative merits of the two societies can’t be compared in a few pages, but Das provides some clear arguments that is elegant due to its simplicity. He also suggests actions on what to do with the immense hoard of treasure found in the cellars of Shri Padmanabha Swamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

Major avenues of gainful occupation in ancient Tamilakam were agriculture and commerce. Spices, food grains and pearls were traded for bullion, salt, gemstones, and wine. A brisk trade was ongoing with the Roman Empire when the Sangam Age dawned in the first century CE. Literary and epigraphical evidence in the Tamil country is corroborated by geographical works by noted Roman authors like Ptolemy, Strabo and Pliny. Another great work is the ‘Periplus of the Erythrean Sea’, which is a travelogue of an unknown sailor who travelled to South India. Tamil country served as a hub for international trade. The Roman vessels didn’t venture past India in quest of produce from South East and Far East Asia. Likewise, the sailors from China, Malaya and Sumatra plied their trade only till South India. This made Tamilakam a trans-shipment terminal for the world’s most prominent sea lanes.

Mukund brings to light the real significance of the central position of the temple in Tamil society and commerce. Travellers to Tamil Nadu often wonder at the magnificence of these huge structures in its imposing vastness and the delicate stone carvings. But no clear answer was forthcoming to the straightforward question of what social function did they perform. Mukund details the economically central position of the temple. It received donations in the form of land, cash, jewelry and livestock. In the absence of a welfare state, the crucial task of redistribution of capital was carried out by the temple, which lent the livestock to shepherds for proper rearing and offering loans to the village and town assemblies for executing public works for the benefit of the residents and local economy. Similarly, donated land was given on rent to cultivators. Inscriptions and copper plates preserved in many temples attest to the steadily incoming flow of donations and the systematic redistribution of wealth. Endowment to the temple was sure to ensure religious merit and acceptance in the society to which one belonged.

Many references are seen in this book which are either historically inaccurate or wrong interpretations of ambivalent references in ancient works. It associates the ancient Chera capital of Vanji with Karoor in Tamil Nadu whereas the town was located near Kodungallur in coastal Kerala. Here, the author succumbs to the prevalent school of narrow-minded Tamil historians who want to confine important places of ancient Tamil history within the confines of the present State of Tamil Nadu. Another attempt along this route of Tamil nationalism is the author’s repeated assertions that the Chola kings subdued Sri Lanka in the 11^th century and made it a province of Tamilakam. It claims a strong Tamil presence in the island nation going back to Chola times. This point is reiterated almost half a dozen times, seemingly without any necessity. But on closer inspection, one may suspect that it is a clever device to confer respectability on the Sri Lankan Tamils’ demand for a separate homeland in view of the historical right. Incidentally, it may be pointed out that the emblem of the LTTE which drenched Sri Lanka in pools of blood – before being smashed out of existence by the Sri Lankan Army – was the tiger.They borrowed this symbol taking pride in the conquest of Sri Lanka by the Chola kings. Kanakalatha Mukund looks like lending a helping hand to the dreaded tigers with a cue from history, which is a shot in the arm for Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka.

It is a first principle of historians that the political boundaries of the State to which one belongs should not be construed as the timeless borders over centuries of history. It doesn’t constitute an ‘intelligent field of study’ in the opinion of Arnold Toynbee. Mukund miserably fails to grasp this basic dictum and narrates the history of Tamilakam by forcing the events and places within Tamil Nadu’s present boundaries. The State of Kerala also belonged to Tamilakam and played a crucial role in the political sphere by the presence of Chera capital city there and Roman trade through its ports. In fact, the Romans knew mostly about only the ports on the west coast and it was only much later did they realize about ports on the Coromandel coast. The author is however tight-lipped about Kerala. This shows lack of research and credible resources on the part of the author. Even though she claims that the Chera capital was located at Karoor, she omits the Cheras also, without a single mention in the book! The text falls to the level of misdirected propaganda for Tamil nationalism with the unfounded assertion that the Pallavas and Cholas conquered Malaya, Sumatra and Java. There are tenuous references in the literary sources, but the author naively takes them at face value. If the conquest had indeed taken place, then why was it that we don’t see any relic of Tamil language in those countries, apart from very few artifacts naturally associated with trade? Another baseless premise is that a high level of literacy prevailed in Tamil society in the ancient period (p.41). The evidence suggested is a list of the poets of the era! However great may be their literary merit, it doesn’t reflect on the general state of literacy. This is as flawed an argument like stating that the late-19^th century Bengal was high in literacy by quoting the names of Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and others.

The book is not recommended as the attempt has not been successful.

Rating: 2 Star

The Tears of the Rajas

Title: The Tears of the Rajas – Mutiny, Money and Marriage in India 1805 – 1905

Author: Ferdinand Mount

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9781471129452

Pages: 773

An intensely objective historical narrative full of the romance and vibrancy of subjective fiction.

The British came to India as merchants on the heels of the Portuguese and the Dutch. At first, they were dazzled by the splendours of Indian royal courts. But gradually this changed in response to Europe’s growing affluence caused by the flow of newly discovered South American gold and the surplus derived from keeping Arab middlemen out of its Asiatic trade. They became bolder and began to deal on equal terms with native rulers. No time was lost before the foreign traders took it on their heads that combining possession of land on the subcontinent was very conducive to trade. This led to battles with royal houses that was easily won by the East India Company’s superior firepower. But even then, Britain lacked the economic as well as human resources to subdue a country which was many times her size in every parameter of national reckoning. The solution to this problem led the British to grab the country like a ripe cherry. The Company recruited Indians in their army and solved the manpower problem. Large sums of money were borrowed from Indian moneylenders at first, and then from local rajas for the Company’s campaigns, thereby resolving the financial question as well. This worked perfectly for the foreigners and in no time, large tracts of the country were annexed to the Company’s possessions. The book tells the story of 19^th century India when the British completed their quest for landgrabbing and how a shocking counter-offensive was offered from the Indian side in the form of the Great Mutiny. The story is told keeping the family of John Low, a Scottish military officer who served in India in the Company’s Army and also in administrative capacity as Resident of Lucknow, Hyderabad, Gwalior and Oudh, completing his tenure with a position in the Supreme Council of the Governor General. It narrates the lives of British officials in India at that time, full of the agony of making a living in a foreign land that was riddled with heat, sickness and social isolation. The families kept close to each other in the provinces and the newly established hill stations. The mortality rate was astounding in all age groups. Mount describes the historical events of the century interspersed with family stories of the prominent among them – the Lows, who were incidentally the distant relatives of the author as well as David Cameron, the serving British prime minister. Sir William Robert Ferdinand Mount, usually known as Ferdinand Mount, is a British writer and novelist, columnist and commentator on politics.

The book starts with an interesting and balanced narrative of the mutinies at Vellore in 1806 and at Masulipatam in 1809. The first was undertaken by native Indian sepoys and the latter by white officers themselves. In a country where almost everybody is still living by obeying the commandments of religion – mostly of the ceremonial and definitely very little of the moral type – it is understandable that the native soldiers would be disaffected at the slightest pretext of an affront to their caste and religion from British authority. The spark that lighted the conflagration was the decision to introduce a new uniform and turban among the sepoys. In a classic case of outright insensitivity to the religious feelings of Indians, the cockade of the turbans was made of pig-skin or cow leather, the objects abhorred by Muslims and Hindus in equal measure! The political and military leadership decided to ride roughshod over dissent in the name of discipline. The sons and daughters of Tipu Sultan, who was killed earlier, were lodged in Vellore Fort at that time. The sepoys erupted in mutiny under the princes’ moral authority. The mutiny lasted hardly a few hours, but it spilt European blood. A greater crime was unthinkable to the White administration. Hundreds of sepoys were mowed down in cold blood summarily, without any trial or court martial, and even without asserting whether all of them were indeed mutineers. Compared to this, the white mutiny was a damp affair, caused by the disparity between the Company’s white soldiers and the Crown’s white soldiers stationed side by side in Madras Presidency. Miffed by the paltry pay and perceived lack of opportunity for promotions as compared to the Crown’s soldiers, the company’s white officers rebelled. It was soon brought under control, but what is evident from the whole episode is the dissimilar punishment meted out to the rebels. While the sepoys who only obeyed the orders of the mutinous officers were summarily dismissed, the quantum of punishment was extremely light for the whites. Even after being sacked for the time being, some of them rose later to the level of even Generals.

The title of the book is justified by the absorbing description of how the British managed to oust the local kings from power and annex that state to the Raj. The petty rulers provided ample excuse for them to intervene as a result of internecine warfare. When one side asks the foreign power for support, they convince the ruler of the need to garrison a considerable number of the company’s troops in that state. The troops were called ‘Subsidiary’ in the sense that they are maintained on subsidy paid by the raja who had no other choice. They could pay this hefty sum either in cash, or more probably, lending a large tract of land to the Company whose revenue may be used for maintaining the sepoys. An officer called ‘Resident’ will be posted to the kingdom who oversaw all the administrative decisions of the king. Even though the king paid for the soldiers, the Resident had absolute control over them. Falling in arrears was a dreaded thing. They were also asked to lend huge sums as loans to the Company to meet its balance of payment crises or to send an expeditionary force to subjugate another state in the vicinity. It was a Win–Win situation for the British. A lion’s share of the Company’s army was native sepoys – ten to one against Europeans – recruited from North India. The pay and perks of a very large portion of them was met by the rajas themselves for the ‘privilege’ of stationing the troops in their country. For war expenses, the rajas could again be approached for loans, which was to be repaid at the Company’s sweet will. The colonizing British subdued Indian states one by one using Indian military manpower and Indian money. A more ingenious scheme is hard to find anywhere in the world. But another important thing should also be kept in mind. The local rulers were mostly cowardly, profligate and licentious. The sins of the British were considerable, but that in no way absolved the equally loathsome depredations of the native kings. The king of Lucknow, Nasir-ud-din Haidar, was so deranged by liquor and piety that he donned the attire of a pregnant woman when the celebration of the birth of the Imam was held in the Shia-dominated Lucknow court. He came out with a doll to symbolize the child birth he had undergone. Gangadhar Rao, the king of Jhansi and the husband of Rani Laxmi Bai was said to be in the habit of dressing up as a woman and abstaining from religious practices for four days in a month, as if menstruating! All royal houses constantly lived in the fear of usurpation. They lavished state funds on wine, women and magnificent buildings. The fabled art and culture of Lucknow court is a direct byproduct of this extravagant expenditure, but expressing the idea in such a brutally straightforward way makes one sound philistine, isn’t it?

As is usually seen in British books on the Mutiny of 1857 produced after India’s independence, this one too brings to light the injustices of the colonial administration’s expansionist policies. This achieved momentum during the reign of Lord Dalhousie, who forcibly annexed the principalities of Nagpur, Jhansi and Oudh and a large part of the fertile districts of Hyderabad renowned for its cotton production. English textile mills ended their shameful reliance on cotton produced by slave labour in the southern U.S. after its supply was thus ensured from India. The British failed to conceive popular antipathy generated on account of forcefully ousting hereditary sovereigns who had ruled the country for several generations and who possessed the adoration and awe of the people in spite of their moral and financial depredations. Many officials thought that the people would wholeheartedly support their rule, once the king was deposed along with his corrupt and extortionate courtiers. The Mutiny came as a rude shock to them, seeing the troops they recruited, trained and armed, turn against them. The atrocities on the white population were gruesome, but equally horrible was the retribution by the well educated gentlemen who composed the Queen’s and Company’s officer corps. At Lucknow, they set on fire the bodies of hundreds of rebel sepoys making a large heap of the corpses as well was seriously injured Indian troops. Eye witnesses state that the cries of the living ones from among the fire, imploring them to shoot instead was heartbreaking. The book presents in revealing detail the sieges of Delhi and Lucknow which the British soldiers retook from the mutineers.

Mount presents the events in crisp logical order and analyses the events with current practices in a witty and down to earth way. He brings out the inconsistencies of British foreign policy towards the native states by comparison with the stated objectives and actual practices. Some of the royal customs seem strange to modern society, but couched in a different language and setting, we see them repeating again and again to this day. Wajid Ali Shah, the deposed ruler of Oudh used to contract muta (temporary marriage sanctioned by religious law) with the women to whom he was attracted to. This royal prerogative may seem barbaric and immoral to us, but the author compares these women to the White House interns under the tenures of John F Kennedy and Bill Clinton, suggesting that eventually, the end result was the same! The book includes good photographic plates displaying the major characters in the narrative. It also provides a comprehensive set of notes for further reference and an excellent index for the inquisitive reader.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star