A Strange Wilderness

 

Title: A Strange Wilderness – The Lives of the Great Mathematicians

Author: Amir D Aczel

Publisher: Sterling New York, 2011 (First)

ISBN: 9781402785849

Pages: 284

Some people among us don’t relish the prospect of studying mathematics. The probable reason for this aversion is mostly improper assimilation of fundamentals caused due to lapses in the method of teachers who taught them in primary schools. Such people opt for the inexact sciences like biology or humanities like history when the time comes to make a choice. However, reading about the development of mathematics and the lives of its pioneers is as exciting and satisfying as any. So, this book will be interesting for both math-philes and math-phobes equally. Man innately possesses the ability to compute with simple numbers. Research states that even birds do retain a basic sense of number! The origins of mathematics was surely associated with counting, as those early settlers on the fertile river valleys of Nile and Euphrates-Tigris used them to keep account of their livestock. Gradually, other applications developed, like keeping track of the seasons by counting elapsed days. Early astronomers used it extensively to predict the sowing time. As time went on, mathematics became more complex and began to be applied to all aspects of life. An amusing example of a peculiar rule of marriage among the aborigines of New Guinea presented in the book shows that mathematics can be extended to human relations as well. Amir D Aczel has produced nearly a dozen books on science and mathematics. He lives in the United States and contributes to newspapers and television also. In this nice book, he tells the story of mathematics developing from humble origins to what it is today – touching the everyday lives of all civilized societies in numerous ways. Some books on the mechanism of human brain state that the faculty of language and mathematics will not be developed simultaneously in people. However, this book presents several mathematicians who were adept at both. This pleasantly readable work is a must-have for students of mathematics.

The first two parts of the book neatly sums up the work done by ancient scholars in Egypt, Greece, India, China and the Arab world. Contrary to our expectation, intellectuals in the ancient period also traveled far and wide in search of knowledge. We read about Greek scholars visiting Babylon and Egypt to partake of the knowledge amassed in these cradles of civilization. Thales of Miletus was inspired to formulate the first theorem of mathematics on a visit to the Great Pyramid of Cheops in the 6^th century BCE. Anxious to find the height of the pyramid, he devised an ingenious way by measuring the length of the shadow cast by the structure, which is still intriguing. Restriction of knowledge to the initiates alone had begun in those times in the case of Pythagoras and his disciples, who were very particular in keeping the word to themselves and even going as far as to kill some of their brethren who wanted to spread the message on the existence of irrational numbers which challenged their own intellectual foundations. Aczel gives a fitting representation of Indian thought guided by Aryabhata and Vishnugupta. Though he remarks that the contributions of these masters may have been guided by assimilation of Greek thought diffused through increased trade between the two countries, he has been straightforward in assigning the invention of algebraic and trigonometric ideas to India. Greece excelled in geometry. When the classical age ended in Greece and Alexandria, the beacon of learning passed to the Arabs who kept it lit till Renaissance, when it was handed over to Europe. Combining elements from Greece and India and producing original thought of their own, Arab mathematicians founded the roots of some of the branches of modern mathematics. The term algebra derives its etymology from a treatise called ‘Al Gabr Wa’l Muqabala’ by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi who lived in the court of caliph al-Mamun. Signs of influence of Brahmagupta’s work ‘Brahmasphuta Siddhanta’ are said to be unmistakable in al-Khwarizmi’s work (p.46). With Jamshid al-Kashi (1380 – 1429), Arab scholarship faded into oblivion. Arabs translated ancient Greek manuscripts and Indian numerical notation to Arabic, which was translated to Latin in the Middle Ages, which helped Renaissance science to flourish. The book also sets aside a chapter on Chinese origins of mathematical concepts.

The seventeenth century CE may be credited with the honour of the origin and development of modern mathematics. Descartes, Newton and Leibniz shone with meridian splendour in this period, among an impressive array of scholars. The sharp disparity between England and continental countries like Germany are seen here. While in England it was possible for a talented man to find avenues for further study and research such as Cambridge and Oxford, without worrying too much about the financial circumstances of leading their daily lives, in Germany and other countries, the scholar had had to apply for patronage to a feudal lord or leading members of the clergy. Naturally, such a system was vulnerable to the fortunes of the patron in a battle or to the loss of favour of the patron himself with the king. Wherever there was a stable government, scholarship flourished. France led the field till the beginning of the nineteenth century on account of this, while Germany was splintered among a plethora of weak city states. After the downfall of Napoleon and amid the unsettled political turmoil which followed it, France lost its position it had enjoyed with the work of Laplace, Legendre, Galois, d’Alembert and Lagrange. Germany, consolidated in this century on the political front, and its repercussions were seen in mathematics as well, with the advent of notable personalities like Cantor, Dedekind, Weierstrass and others. We note another noteworthy fact in this regard. Many mathematicians in the Renaissance era were devout Christians, Newton being the most prominent. Mathematicians’ personal beliefs inevitably seeped into their work too. Newton studied the solar system in light of gravitational forces exerted by the bodies in orbit and reached the conclusion that it is stable in the long term due to God’s intervention. Laplace, an atheist who studied the same problem in a Europe conditioned by Enlightenment, declared boastfully that the stability of the solar system is not in need of the god hypothesis. As can be expected, he also reached the conclusion that the solar system is stable.

When we reach the modern period, mathematics has grown complex and out of reach of common people. No fundamental advance has taken place in the last 150 years, except perhaps the impetus made in non-Euclidean geometry by the development of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Researchers studied some of the highly specialized attributes of a theory, aloof from the buzzle of the street and away from any concern to find an application for the theory. Practitioners of pure mathematics take pride in the fact that the extreme abstractness of their field precludes the necessity to look for a practical way to employ the theory. When no path breaking advances were forthcoming, mediocrity set in. Even though Aczel praises the effort of Nicolaus Bourbaki, a group of maverick mathematicians posing as an individual, and Alexander Grothendieck, readers get a feel that instead of pioneering new ways, they have gone in search of cheap popularity tricks and pranks. Grothendieck was a researcher who suddenly turned to politics and environmentalism and effaced himself from public view by hiding somewhere in the Pyrenees. In an act of sheer irresponsibility, he burnt all his contributions to mathematics in addition to taking all electronic content off the Internet. Aczel revers this man, but readers believe that he is an impostor.

The text is very easy to read through, presented in a concise but effective way. All the usual anecdotes and events are included, but the book doesn’t advance any original ideas except the flawed one on the greatness of Grothendieck. There are no exclusive information available in this book, which is unattainable from others. Lot of photographs and paintings are included, along with a good index. The bibliography is extensive. However, the narration abruptly ends, without a proper epilogue or musing about the future course of mathematics. In this vein, it may be thought of as a description without insight or any contribution from the author apart from compiling data about various mathematicians. However, the author gives a respectable mention of Indian masters of old and new, and wholeheartedly acknowledges their pioneering roles. A number of sidebars are provided, but they blend confusingly with the text as the layout doesn’t neatly separate them from the main text.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Portable Atheist

Title: The Portable Atheist – Essential Readings for the Non-Believer

Editor: Christopher Hitchens

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2007 (First)

ISBN: 9780306816086

Pages: 499

Religion has been a cause of strife ever since it had claimed divine revelation and moral monopoly over the acts of men. After watching base acts of terror beginning with crusades, Inquisition and witch hunts, we have now reached the level of suicidal jihadi violence. It is refreshing to welcome skeptics into our fold, so that a critical evaluation of cherished ideas take place, to free our future generations from the shackles of blind obedience to whims and fancies of a few mentally deranged men who lived centuries ago. This book is a collection of 47 essays of rationalist thought expressed over two millennia. As the byline says, this book constitutes essential reading for non-believers.

The saga of irreligious writing is set in motion by a fitting introduction by Hitchens that lays the foundation for what is to follow. His style is subtly irreverent, while many atheistic writers are prepared to extend a bit of courtesy and respect to age-old ideas, however flawed. Hitchens attacks them with tooth and nail. In one breath, he compares and equates the value systems propounded by St. Augustine, Martin Luther, Calvin and Osama bin Laden. Stout believers would recoil in horror at the simile of religions becoming a free market of ideas in the modern world. True to his character, Hitchens likens religion to be man’s oldest enemy. Besides the introductory chapter, he had the selection of authors and essays that form the main text. He states the rationale for including the specific author in many of the chapters. But of course, eminent thinkers like Russell, Sagan and Dawkins don’t need any introduction at all. One glaring drawback is that a piece by Hitchens himself doesn’t find a place in the book! Readers are thus denied a very good opportunity to enjoy the razor sharp logic of the book’s editor.

Readers get a delectable treat of essays written by eminent philosophers from all walks of literary spectrum including poets like Shelley, popularizers of science like Richard Dawkins, ancient thinkers like Lucretius, modern thinkers like Spinoza, men of science like Albert Einstein and Martin Gardener and others. Shelley’s scientific temper astonishes modern readers where poets usually divorce their thinking mind from the path of reason as if it does not concern them. Similarly, any doubt on Einstein’s personal belief in god is dispelled by his remark that he believed in ‘Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a god who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men” (p.164). Russell’s essay is very enlightening on the futility of race and the generalizations based on it. Scholars demolish the false accusation of believers that atheists repent of their sins on deathbed and believe in god. We read about a staunch thinker who heartily discussed about his firm convictions on atheism till moments before his death.          

Science’s hallmark is its curiosity. Constantly aware of what they still don’t know, scientists strive to elicit knowledge from all spheres of intellectual activity. This is in marked contrast to the ways of spiritual masters as St. Augustine, who comments that “there is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing, and which man should not wish to learn” (p.363)!

The most serious accusation conjectured by believers against an atheist society is that it would be without morals. This argument assumes that mankind adheres to moral principles out of fear of retribution in the form of eternal damnation in hell. This idea runs very old. Dostoyevsky once said that ‘if god is dead, then everything is permitted”. The fountainhead of morality is presumed to be god and his religion. This very concept is flawed, whose farcical precept is evident from even a cursory look at the proposition. The ideals which led man and his society were evolved very long ago, even before religions began to take hold. If you covet something in your neighbour’s possession, and are ready to go to any extreme to obtain it, the society in which both are members will be riddled with internecine conflicts, making it an easy prey for rival tribes. So, suppression of obviously selfish motives was accepted by all societies in their initial stages of development itself. Besides, if the only thing that prevents you from committing a heinous crime is the fear of divine retaliation on Judgment Day, what kind of a morality is that?

The book includes two chapters by Ibn Warraq on the Koran and the ‘totalitarian nature of Islam’, which may offend fanatical Muslims. This content might be enough to obtain a ban on many Middle Eastern countries and lapidation for the possessor. A former Muslim and writing under the pseudonym Ibn Warraq, the author critically analyzes the devout contention that the Koran is divinely ordained and finds faults and shortcomings in it. The basic premise of the argument is that the holy book was finalized in its present form only around the 9^th century CE. By this time, the traditions of the prophet (hadith) and the consensus among scholars (ijma) became hardened so as not to allow further accretions. This forced Islam to the cul-de-sac of intellectual mortification and caused it unable to adjust to modern conditions. Ibn Warraq hints that Islam is not relevant in the present day. A curious point to note is that the author even attacks Islam’s strict monotheism, which makes it unique among the comity of modern religions. When multiple gods were removed from popular imagination by the diktat of the new religion of Arabia, lesser gods were said to have been co-opted as jinn, shaitan, ifrit and marid. Isn’t belief in the existence of these supernatural beings accountable as polytheism? However, Ibn Warraq’s arguments cannot be termed as undoubted truths. In many pages, he simply quotes from prominent thinkers as if their opinion is enough to carry conviction.

India is home to fundamentalists of all hues. The mind-numbing cruelty exhibited by Muslim invaders in conquering the country in the Middle Ages has been a recurring theme among them. Leftist historians usually evade the issue altogether, and try to gloss over the details. It would be heartening to note that western thinkers share the perception of nationalist historians. Arthur Schopenhauer, the renowned German philosopher, notes that “the ever-deplorable, wanton and ruthless destruction and disfigurement of ancient temples and images reveal to us even to this day traces of the monotheistic fury of the Muhammadans which was pursued from Mahmud of Ghazni of accursed memory down to Aurangzeb the fratricide” (p.401).

The book is a real assortment of chapters having no link of continuity or style among them. Readers find it difficult to constantly adjust to the tone of various authors in quick succession. Usually, it takes a few chapters to adapt to a writer’s peculiar mode of expressing his opinion. Many chapters are examples of scintillating logic and lucid idea, while a few of them are very harsh on readers, J. L. Mackie’s contribution is one such. The essay is usually only a chapter from an author’s book. This precludes the readers from getting an idea of the background topics already discussed in the earlier chapters of the book. Chapman Cohen’s piece is riddled with references to monism, without explaining for once what it is. The book sports a good index to easily look up references.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Endosulfan

Title: Endosulfan – Global Conspiracy and a Kerala Fraud Story

Author: Kalathil Ramakrishnan

Publisher: genNext Publication, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9789380222400

Pages: 306

India had been a land of famines and food scarcity through the ages. In a country where most of the irrigation is critically dependent on monsoon rains, a miracle was put in place by the architects of the Green Revolution by introducing efficient varieties of seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It is a given that a pesticide is a toxic substance capable of wrecking immense havoc if it enters the human body. This places a restraining hand on the application of pesticides. The target area should be carefully selected and it is to be applied in strictly controlled measures in the specified dosage. The state of Kerala in south India awoke rudely in the year 2000 to allegations against a state-owned plantation as causing deleterious effects on the people living around its cashew estates in Kasargod district, where the company had been spraying endosulfan aerially for nearly two decades. The allegations looked farfetched at first, as such a wide spectrum of diseases was not reported from anywhere else in the country where aerial spray used to take place. The campaign turned vicious by demanding an outright ban on all pesticides. Public opinion also supported the activists wholeheartedly. In this atmosphere of hostile outlook against endosulfan pervading the intellectual circles in the country, India’s Supreme Court temporarily put a ban on the chemical in 2011 which is still not lifted. However, Kalathil Ramakrishnan presents the other side of the story, which he claims to be a hoax run by NGOs receiving money from EU countries which want unpatented endosulfan to be replaced by their own galaxy of patented and expensive pesticides. The book reflects the strident posture of the journalist-author in exposing the fraud involved in building up a false allegation with the enlistment of people alleged to be suffering from diseases caused by the chemical. The author is an independent journalist, who worked in the Kannur bureau of the New Indian Express newspaper from 2001 to 2012. The book is the product of his travels in the affected areas and reports on the issue in leading journals.

Plantation Corporation of Kerala (PCK) is a state government enterprise venturing into plantation crops on an industrial scale. It has many estates in different parts of the state, including a cashew plantation in the Perla village of Kasargod district of Kerala. Tea mosquito bug is the most troublesome pest as far as cashew is concerned. Around 1980, PCK stumbled upon endosulfan as a panacea for bringing the insect menace under check. With proper backup on the safety and technicality of applying the pesticide from prominent agricultural research institutes, the company began aerial spraying of endosulfan in its estates at Perla, Alakkode and Mannarkkad. Another public sector farm at Aralam also used the aerial spray method of administering the chemical. However, in the case of Perla in Kasargod, strange diseases began to be reported from the vicinity. Local activists linked the outbreak to harmful effects of endosulfan. Prominent among them were hydrocephalus (where the head grew disproportionate to body size), cerebral palsy, other neural problems, mental retardation, cancer and skin problems. When the protests grew louder, the company stopped the practice of aerial spraying in 2001, after using it continuously for about two decades. Graphic details of the pathetic lot of villagers who lived around PCK’s estates circulated far and wide in national and international media and forums. Environmental activists campaigned for an outright ban on endosulfan nationwide. India’s Supreme Court finally ordered ad-interim ban on the production and use of endosulfan in the country in 2011.

Ramakrishnan attacks the very premise that the peculiar diseases prevalent in Enmakaje and Padre are caused by the aerial spray of endosulfan. He concedes that ‘a cluster of diseases’ are present in the region, but attributes it to local factors, adverse environmental factors, anthropological reasons or genetic causes, without elaborating on any of them. He argues that the diseases were endemic to the area even before the application of endosulfan. This sounds convincing as even people with ages of 35 and above having congenital ailments are also categorized as endosulfan victims. Natives traditionally prayed in the nearby Jhadadhari shrine for healthy babies. This is construed as evidence that diseases already stalked the region. However, this logic is flawed, as people everywhere pray for healthy children irrespective of whether specific diseases are prevalent in their neighbourhood. Poverty and malnutrition are cited as possible factors too. In short, anything but endosulfan! Racial peculiarities are also alluded to, as the Koragas who are employed in basket weaving are said to have ‘migrated to India from another continent thousands of years ago’ (p.52). Their resemblance to African cousins is attributed by the author to contribute to the occurrence of exotic diseases. A migration that might have occurred in the Late Paleolithic period is claimed by him to have taken place ‘a few’ thousands of years ago.

The book reserves its invective for the studies conducted by NIOH, Kozhikode Medical College, CWRDM and CSE. Out of these, the one done by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) at Delhi may be doubtful, as the organization is notorious for its vigilantism on environment. But the others are government organizations and the author’s tirade against their study reports is more gas than having any substance. He alleges that the government is wasting money in the form of salary, traveling allowance and vehicle expenses in conducting these studies. Inconsistencies occur in the multifaceted attack on the results obtained. The Medical College study examined blood plasma of 43 peoples at SACON lab, Coimbatore. Endosulfan residues were reported to be in the range from 2.5 per cent to 170.4 on page 152 and from 2.5 ppb to 170.4 ppb on page 232. This is surely a typo, but it is a representative sample of the lack of care and rigour gone into the publishing of the book. Disability census data is cleverly compared district-wise to other districts in Kerala to obtain the result that Kasargod is not prone to diseases that are attributed to the pesticide. But nobody had claimed that the district as a whole was affected. If the author had compared specific divisions or villages against similar entities in other districts, some more useful conclusions would have emerged. However, Ramakrishnan brings out the level of social isolation faced by the victims. People from outside the sprayed areas are denying marriage and social interaction with the victims. As the land is thought to be leeched with pesticide, land sharks are having a good time in accumulating sizeable chunks at throwaway prices. The most heartbreaking argument is that the families of children with disabilities found it to be a bonanza and an excuse for the parent not to go for work to earn their livelihood. They are said to be lazy (p.177), feeding on the pensions of their unlucky children afflicted with strange diseases. Barring a few occurrences that may fit this description, this situation can’t be generalized as the pension is a paltry Rs. 2000 ($ 35) per child per month!

So, why does the author believes the whole story to be bogus, and fabricated to delude the world? The only reason he can think of is that endosulfan is a generic pesticide that is not patented. India was the largest exporter of the chemical. It is not used in the European Union (EU) and their companies have patented and expensive pesticides in their product range which they want to thrust upon the developing world. In order to achieve this hidden objective, endosulfan needed to be rooted out. This goal of the EU is being put into practice by NGOs, unsuspecting politicians and environmental activists The Stockholm Convention on persisting organo-chemicals recommended against its use, which the author claims to be not as per procedure. Such decisions are to be taken by consensus alone, but if India and China are opposed to the move, how can an international body reach a unanimous decision? The outcome has to be reached by majority voting, which they employed in this case as well.

The book presents a nice argument on the priorities of new-generation media in Kerala, which is hell bent on appropriating a slice of the cake of viewership. The sharp criticism should serve as an eye-opener. Kerala’s society forms its opinion on the basis of media reports. The agricultural climate has been so skewed that any kind of pesticide is treated with contempt and utmost suspicion. We forget that pesticides and chemical fertilizers are essential to guarantee food security to the world’s second most populous nation. Italy temporarily lifted its ban on endosulfan in 2008 to address the serious issue of pests that suddenly appeared on its hazelnut crop. It is true that the hue and cry against endosulfan is caused mainly by emotional appraisal of the issue when the public see pitiable pictures of children suffering silently in misery. It is also conceivable that a good many people who had contracted diseases through means other than contact with endosulfan is included in the list of beneficiaries for welfare schemes. If the author is to be believed, even people suffering from piles, cirrhosis of lever due to excess consumption of alcohol and those who were incapacitated by falling in disused wells, have been considered as victims. But now is the time to recall Blackstone’s famous adage that ‘it is better to let ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer’. Whatever we may say or do should not serve to deny much needed help – however meager it may be – to the sick children, whether due to endosulfan or not.

The book is brought out with very little attention to proof reading. The publisher is sure to blame. Examples abound in the book, but instances like ‘happeneded’ on p.83, ‘stink operation’ in place of ‘sting operation’ on p.160 and ‘Environmental Pollution Agency’ in lieu of ‘Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’ on p.135 are real monsters. Most of the ideas are repeated in several chapters, thereby causing monotony to readers. Each chapter may be read independently of the others – such is the scale of recapitulations. The book includes a useful index, but a chronology of events related to the whole episode would have been helpful. A brief history of the invention of endosulfan and its widespread use would have added interest to the text. Statistical tables of diseases with comparison to similar regions would buttress the author’s claims.

The book is highly recommended to those who want to hear the other side of the story.

Rating: 2 Star

The Trial

Title: The Trial – Four Thousand Years of Courtroom Drama

Author: Sadakat Kadri

Publisher: Random House, 2006 (First published 2005)

ISBN: 9780375757037

Pages: 459

Irrespective of the social and technical level of progress, all human societies are afflicted with crime.  The definition of crime varies between cultures, but the more heinous ones like murder, rape and loot invite condemnation from one’s fellow beings at all times. Investigation of the crime to find the culprit and the way in which punishment is given to him has undergone tremendous changes over the last 4000 years. Ordeals by fire and water are no longer practiced, as do public executions in most countries. There are widely divergent judicial practices in force in various countries. Trial by jury is so integral to British and American systems that they conceive it to be denial of justice to repudiate it, whereas in several countries like India, it is unheard of. Sadakat Kadri aims to present the history of trials from the earliest episodes in history to O J Simpson’s case in the U.S. This nice summary of the courtroom drama is eminently readable, coming from an author who had studied law and history and is a practicing lawyer in London and New York. Half Finnish and half Pakistani by birth, he lives in London.

Kadri begins with the most sensational trial of ancient times known to us – that of Socrates. Contrary to common perception that he was wrongly charged by a regime that didn’t like criticism of its own actions, the author presents some details that puts the situation quite different than before. It seems that Socrates’ ideals were so rigid that could be implemented only in a totalitarian state. Though not comparable to its modern incarnations, Athenian democracy demanded that the opinions of its free, male citizens counted. On the other hand, Sparta was a military state, which regulated its citizens’ actions, thinking and character. Socrates admired this control with which he hoped the rulers could make the ignorant masses comply with rightly-guided advice of the philosophers. This might have gone well had Sparta not invaded Athens. But the Peloponnesian War (431 – 404 BCE) that ensued turned gruesome and lasted for 27 long years. In the end, Sparta won. A puppet regime was installed in Athens to which Socrates extended his support. When Athens regained its democracy a few years later, Socrates was naturally charged with corrupting the youth of the country, while the charge of collaborating with the enemy hung in the background. In a verdict that is well known, he was condemned and administered poison in his cell. Hence, the prosecution achieved its objective in the very first sensational case known to history.

The book provides a brief description of the flow of history till the reign of Justinian. He formulated a legal code that is still the basis of Western jurisprudence. But Europe lost all contact with it in the Dark Ages, which is traditionally associated to begin with the closure of Plato’s Academy ordered by Justinian himself. Islamic scholars kept the flame of classical learning alight in the Dark Ages in the form of translations and treatises. European crusades in the 11^th and 12^th centuries to retake Jerusalem helped the interchange of information between Islamic and Christian realms. By the 13^th century, a copy of Justinian’s code was unearthed from a monastery. It paved the way for reforming the legal system. The Inquisitorial System of Pope Innocent III took root in the continent, while the more humane jury system prevailed in England. In the former, the judges took the responsibility of investigating the cases as well. Torture was frequently resorted to, to obtain confessions. The act of being charged was itself sufficient to ensure conviction in most instances. Acquittal of a convict was thought to be a failure on the part of the judge, which was sufficient to prompt him to obtain a confession by whatever means possible. The inquisitorial system found itself on the losing side as the secular rulers increasingly asserted their authority on legal matters against hated intervention by popes. Kadri has given a lucid, ringside view of the judicial system which was slowly taking shape in Europe. He lists out various cases with an immensely humorous side tone.

The range of acts for which a trial was conducted is truly bewildering, as shown in the book. In Europe and America, witch hunts that were nothing more than legalized murders took place in the Renaissance era. Women were generally at the receiving end when their neighbours complained against them to have employed witchcraft and caused mental or physical damage to them. The society then turned against the accused women en masse. Evidence, however flimsy, was deemed to secure conviction which was usually death. Kadri likens the illogical mob frenzy associated with witch hunts to that of the accused in cases of sexual assault on young children that raged in California in the 1980s. Similarly, medieval judges could turn against inanimate objects or even animals by trying them for harm done to human beings. Several such incidences are listed out in the book in which rats, dogs or weevils stood accused. All outward appearances were observed in these cases as well, like serving summons and appointing a defence counsel. The reason for such irrational acts may be seen to be the Church’s claim to judge any creature for wrongdoing by assuming the authority of god on earth.

When it comes to modern age, we read about trials on war crimes and crimes against humanity, such as Nuremberg trials of Nazi supremos and that of Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia. At the same time, Kadri shows light on the contours of American injustice when its soldiers who were accused of equally heinous crimes in Vietnam were shamelessly acquitted in show trials. He then unsuccessfully extends the logic to plead the cases of the accused in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons. The author finds fault with Operation Enduring Freedom in which America flushed out the Taliban which was ruling Afghanistan till then and providing a safe haven for al Qaeda operatives who attacked the World Trade Center in 2001. Jury trials were denied to them and Qadri laments that 22 of the Afghan terrorists attempted suicide while in detention! He vents his ire on the U.S. Administration that didn’t grant POW status to them in accordance with the provisions of Geneva Convention. The inhuman treatment meted out to detainees of Abu Ghraib prison is then compared to that of Guantanamo Bay experience in an effort to confuse the reader with this unwarranted comparison of the two detention centres. In Iraq, the Americans tortured the officials and supporters of the regime of Saddam Hussein, who were only performing their duty in accordance with their official responsibility in a sovereign regime similar in stature and equal in rights to that of the U.S. government itself, which was trying them. This abuse of human rights of former Iraqi officials is indeed grave, while the etiquette served in Guantanamo Bay to jihadi beasts captured in Afghanistan was designed to serve them in the same coin. These terrorists would otherwise have detonated themselves anyway or might have mercilessly mowed down innocent shoppers, travelers or theatre-goers.

A break with the beaten path of covering trials in Europe and America alone is exemplified in the coverage of the trial in Israel of Adolph Eichmann, a Nazi killer, after Mossad abducted him from Argentina where he was living incognito for fifteen years after the end of the World War. A book on the history of trials as courtroom drama would do well by the inclusion of Islamic jurisprudence and Sharia courts as well, which is mysteriously omitted in spite of the author’s Pakistani origins. Kadri reserves his good-natured scorn and ridicule on English and American courts alone. But harsh recriminations like “there was no obvious cultural reason why England, born from the same Christian and barbarian superstitions and subject to equally unpleasant bouts of war and pestilence, should have been any less draconian than the rest of the Continent” (p.167) could have been avoided. The diction is full of hearty wit and biting sarcasm thoroughly enjoyable to readers. We would relish several humorous anecdotes given in the book. But Kadri sometimes resorts to difficult terms like ‘discombobulation’ and ‘lachrymose’ which drive most of us to take up the dictionary. The ‘Notes’ section given at the end of the text is very comprehensive which runs to almost a fifth of the book in terms of number of pages. A decent index is spotted at the end, along with monochromatic pictures representing episodes in the narrative.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star