The Great Mughals and Their India

Title: The Great Mughals and Their India

Author: Dirk Collier

Publisher: Hay House India, 2016 (First)

ISBN: 9789381431887

Pages: 400

An enchanting piece of work combining the entertainment of fiction with the levelheadedness of history.

The Mughals ruled India only for two centuries in the real sense of the term. But the legacy they’d left behind, in the country’s culture, languages, art, architecture and society is indelible. The magnificent buildings erected by them, with the Taj Mahal occupying the pinnacle, continues to generate a sense of pride in the people. The most colourful dynasty’s rule in Indian history is not, however, without its due share of horrible atrocities and religious strife. But on the whole, it united the country when the power of sultanates was waning and made it ready for the transition to modernity with the advent of the British. Dirk Collier tells the story of the origin and demise of the powerful Mughal dynasty in India, right from Babur from the central Asian principality of Ferghana, and ending with the death of Bahadur Shah Zafar in Burma, unattended and unmourned in exile. The author is a lawyer and businessman and serves on the board of several organizations. His passion for Asian culture and history was aroused as a result of travels through the continent, predominantly in India and China and he has authored another book of fiction on Akbar the Great. This book is eminently readable for all categories of readers.

The demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya in 1992, which was believed by some to be a mosque built by Babur and by many as the birthplace of Lord Ram, was the single most significant event in the sociopolitical history of independent India. Claiming that the mosque was built on the site of a demolished Hindu temple, militant nationalists destroyed the structure which was more than four centuries old, sparking a spate of communal riots in which hundreds of people belonging to both communities perished. This incident brought into sharp focus the antecedents of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire. Widely believed to be a brave warrior, able administrator and insightful founder of India’s most glamorous dynasty, Babur gets a neat dressing down in the book. Readers would be shocked to find that this man was thought to be a coward and traitor in Persian history. Babur held Samarkand thrice, but each time, he had to flee for his life. During the second attempt, he faced a mighty Uzbek army under the able leadership of Shaybani Khan. Sure of defeat, Babur felt like a trapped rat. His cunning stratagems were to no avail against the Uzbek might. In the end, an agreement was reached when Babur agreed to send his beloved elder sister as a concubine to Shaybani Khan’s harem. Babur escaped with his life and eventually established a kingdom in Kabul. His hopes were raised when the Uzbeks were defeated in their battle against Shah Ismail of Persia. The Persians killed Shaybani Khan and handed Samarkand over to Babur on a platter, on the condition that Babur should convert to Shiism along with the citizens of Samarkand. Ever ready to jump at the chance offered to him, Babur readily agreed. But the people of Samarkand, who took pride in their Sunni tradition and having much more self-respect than their new king, were in no mood to listen. When Babur’s atrocities against the city’s revered Sunni clerics became unbearable, they rose up in revolt and kicked the pretender out. Joined by Uzbeks, the people of Samarkand opened many fronts of war. At Bukhara, when Babur was on the verge of defeat as he usually was against the Uzbeks, Babur begged for Persian help. The Shah graciously sent Najm Beg, a war veteran to relieve him. But the Uzbeks made a surprise attack, in which Beg was killed. The amazing fact was that Babur fled from the scene of battle, with his tail between his legs, abandoning the brave general to his fate who had come all the way from Persia to rescue him. Babur’s personal life was peculiar, even by medieval standards. It appears that he ran a strong trait of homosexuality towards a shapely boy from the camp market and is recorded in his own memoir, Baburnama. His memoir in this regard is shocking to puritanical sentiments as it runs “I developed a strange inclination for him. Before this experience, I had never felt a desire for anyone, nor did I listen to talk of love and affection or speak of such things. I was so bashful that I could not look him in the face, much less converse freely with him. In my excitement and agitation, I could not thank him for coming, much less complain of his leaving…One day….all at once I found myself face-to-face with the boy, and I was so ashamed I almost went to pieces. There was no possibility of looking straight at him or of speaking coherently. With a hundred embarrassments and difficulties I got past him” (p.47). Looks very much like the diary of a young girl, but unbelievably candid from a celebrated scion of pious rectitude! Collier also compares Babur to Hitler for his unapologetic disdain for human life. His self-righteous egotism made him believe that whatever he does to other people is right and good, provided it happens to suit his own selfish purposes. The author asserts that the world would have been a much better place without him, or the likes of him (p.71), which is a bit too harsh of an assessment.

What Babur, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb were not, was more than made up by the syncretistic policies of Akbar the Great. Akbar is the true forerunner of today’s secular Indian leaders. He exhibited a form of enlightenment rarely seen in medieval rulers. Akbar issued regulations forbidding circumcision of young boys before the age of fifteen, an age when a boy was old enough to decide for himself. He banned the enslavement of conquered Hindus and insisted that farmlands in subdued territories shall not be laid waste. In order to wipe off discrimination against Hindus, he abolished the hated religious poll tax of Jizya in 1564, which was re-established in 1679 by that sanctimonious bigot, Aurangzeb. The Ulema strongly opposed this move, claiming divine sanction in the Koran to impose such a tax on people of other religions who were not called for military service. Akbar’s terse rejoinder was that Hindus were not exempt from military duty. Indeed, Rajput warriors formed a major chunk of his fighting machine. He abandoned the lunar Hijri calendar and used instead the solar Persian calendar, starting from his year of accession. Aurangzeb reversed this policy too, and started using the ridiculously impractical lunar system for assessing land revenue based on agricultural yield! Akbar’s greatest gift was his eclectic spirit and quest for truth in all religions. He founded the Ibadat Khana in Agra, where religious discourses took place. At first, only Islamic scholars – from both Sunni and Shia sects – were invited. But the emperor was perplexed at the constant bickering between them. If the religion was truly ordained by god, how could such mortal divergence of opinion can prevail among its followers? Akbar got tired of legalized trivia displayed in discussions on Sharia law, and lost much of his faith. His religious thinking got separated from the mainstream and started flowing through uncharted territory. On ecclesiastic matters where there was discord, Akbar acquired sole right to judge by an Infallibility Decree promulgated in 1579. He introduced Din-e-Ilahi three years later, which was a sect of his own, but didn’t survive his reign. The book portrays Akbar as tolerant, free-thinking and eclectic, bordering on the heretical. But of course, he practiced Islam till his death. He respected all religions, but practically belonged to none. His legacy of tolerance was inherited by Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan’s eldest son, whose work ‘Majma ul-Bahrain’ (the confluence of two oceans) describes India as the fusion of the two religions of Hinduism and Islam.

Collier displays great care to basics such as how the term ‘Mughal’ came into being. Babur was descended from Timur on the paternal and Genghis Khan on the maternal sides. They called themselves ‘Silsila i-Gurkaniyya’ or Gurkanid dynasty, Amir Timur being a Gurkan (son-in-law along the line) of Genghis Khan. The author’s insistence of establishing that the large scale religious conversions, wanton destruction of temples and other persecutions perpetrated on the non-Muslim populations of India by some prominent Mughals was not due to bigotry per se, but to be accounted as a show of imperialism and power. Their limitless ambition and the desire to show off made them do it, he concur. Collier goes out of his way to condone such cruelty in almost a dozen places in the book, with his pesky apology on behalf of the medieval tyrants, as if it is some consolation to the hapless victims. He includes two passages from Sikander Lodi and Alauddin Khilji, who ruled before the Mughals which shows the contempt and hostility with which the sons of the soil were treated by these foreign aggressors. The book proposes that though Islamic power was concentrated in the centre of the country, Islamization was strongest on the fringes of Sindh, Baluchistan and eastern Bengal. This is attributed to the undeveloped or lack of penetration of Hindu social institutions there. This argument needs to be studied in detail by scholars.

The book includes colourful quotes from Abul Fazl and other contemporaries to embellish the narrative. Fazl’s flowery and ornate pedantry helps to evaluate the level of sycophancy demanded by a medieval monarch. He includes a gruesome description of the blinding of Kamran, Humayun’s brother who lost out in the war of succession, that was the bane of the Mughals. He was overpowered and a sharp lancet pierced into both of his eyes – fifty times in a row to make the deed foolproof! The prince bravely withstood the torture, but at the end of it, when a mixture of lemon juice and salt was sprinkled on the wound, he broke down and cried out. Later emperors after Aurangzeb were mocked and humiliated by all. Shah Alam II’s eyes were gouged out with bare hands by Ghulam Qadir, an Afghan chief who captured the palace briefly. To add insult to the injury, the emperor’s son – later crowned as Akbar II – was forced to dance before his father’s tormentor like a slave girl.

This is a fine work of historical overview, without delving too much into the finer details. Historical maps are not included, the only one that of the times of Akbar the Great is given as the frontispiece. Collier has avoided anything that might distract the reader from thoroughly enjoying the book. There is not a single page in it where the reader feels bored. The author has included a section on Taj Mahal, and for dispelling the common misconceptions associated with it like the Black Taj and the urban legend that Shah Jahan had killed the architect after the monument was constructed. A good bibliography and an excellent index add more value to the book.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 5 Star

Coal Wars

Title: Coal Wars – The Future of Energy and the Fate of the Planet

Author: Richard Martin

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9781137279347

Pages: 274

Coal was used since ancient times for heating. But its true potential was realized only in the 18^th century when it fueled the Industrial Revolution that proved to be a watershed moment in human history. The world we now live in owes its origin to the coal-fired boilers of that era, which led to the manufacture of steel. Industry and transportation was dominated by coal for nearly a century. With the discovery of oil, coal took a backseat in the transportation sector, but with cheap electrical energy produced by burning coal, it again rose to prominence in national economies right up to the 1990s. Alternatives to coal came in the form of nuclear power and natural gas. Coal is cheap, but dirty. The noxious gases and toxic substances it releases into the atmosphere pose a serious threat to human health. Stringent air quality rules imposed after the Second World War cast a shadow on the coal industry. Massive investments and complicated technologies were required to retrofit the coal plants to make it compliant to the new environmental regulations. Added to this was the concern about excessive carbon dioxide emission due to coal burning and human-induced climate change. Richard Martin narrates the story of how and why the coal industry’s days came to be numbered, with examples from the U.S. and China, world’s  leading consumers of coal. He is one of America’s foremost writers and analysts on energy, technology and foreign affairs. He is the editorial director at Navigant Research, the premier clean energy research and analysis firm. He is a regular contributor to major magazines and has authored a book on thorium power movement.

Climate change is now an accepted scientific paradigm, but there are business executives still voicing dissent or doubts over it. They generally represent coal, oil and other conventional energy corporations, whose incentive to continue with the status quo can easily be discerned. Regulatory pressure on reduction of output from coal mines is building up in the U.S., but not in other countries, as narrated by Martin. However, the Green Lobby got a shot in the arm in the steep fall in natural gas prices around 2013, as a result of revolutionary growth in shale gas output in the U.S. Now, the society has a much cleaner alternate fuel at its disposal. Coal burning constitute 44% of carbon dioxide emissions, and almost half of world’s electricity is produced in coal-based power plants, which is expected to fall to 40% in a few years. As Martin observes, decline of coal industry in the U.S., and perhaps in the entire world, is irreversible. New, efficient natural gas power plants could be set up with the same amount of money required for setting up pollution control measures in a coal plant. Solar energy and other renewable sources like wind present other alternatives. Utility companies resist any change from established ways. Every rooftop solar array is another few dollars a month out of the pockets of power companies. In order to meet the rising costs, they’ll be forced to ramp up the energy rates, which will make more customers drop out of the grid and opt for distributed power generation. This will create a death spiral, ending up in the death of grid, as the book suggests just a bit too fancifully. Solar producers now export energy to the grid with net metering, and if the utilities’ lobbying is successful, they might be burdened with a solar surcharge to meet the spiraling costs of grid maintenance.

The book presents an abstract estimate of the U.S. energy scenario. Out of 580 coal power plants there, more than 90% are greater than two decades old. Coal power plants are phased out gradually, as the cost to adhere to clean air laws make the activity unprofitable. By 2020, an expected 49,000 megawatt will be retired out of service from a total of 340,000 megawatt – more, if gas prices stay low. In America too, the impact on states which produce dirty coal like Kentucky and West Virginia is more, whereas in Wyoming, the production is still healthy but the future prospects are not rosy either. On the world stage, Germany and Japan is returning to coal as both have decided to shut down their nuclear stations for political reasons. European Union is committed to environmental norms, and they have a peculiar 20-20-20 rule in place. This means that, by 2020, Europe will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, increase use of renewable sources to 20% of total energy consumption and improve energy efficiency by 20%. Coal corporations have not been alert to rise up to the challenge. They are harking on to arguments about energy poverty and TINA (There Is No Alternative) factors, where coal is touted as the only cheap option for power generation. Some regions have gone for alternate industries to accommodate the labour force that will be rendered jobless by the end of coal. Cultivation of hemp is one such option in some areas, where it can be blended with coal in power stations for burning in boilers. Being a mildly psychedelic substance, other legal issues also have to be taken into account.

Martin makes a tour of China’s Shanxi and Hangzhou provinces to assess firsthand the future of coal industry in the world’s largest consumer of coal. In addition to vast, proven indigenous resources, the country has gone for imports on a large scale from the U.S, Australia and Indonesia. No industry is so dependent on what happens in China as the global mining sector. The author finds signals on the ground that China has woken up to the challenge, by closing down small-scale, inefficient mines and consolidate them into efficient, huge coal clusters. China’s coal peak is expected by 2020, but the author makes a guess that it is highly optimistic and 2030 may be a more realistic option. We find a curious fact on China in the book. Whereas in other countries, the environmental organizations are founded and run by individuals and concerned citizens, the government takes that role in China. Of course, these GOs (obviously, they can’t be called NGOs) have made some real effort on the ground and reaped major gains. Street protests over environmental concerns are eagerly taken up by Chinese society, which sometimes even turn violent. Is this a clever tactic of the regime to divert public attention from negation of civic rights to another issue where the government is perceived to be seriously concerned to curb air pollution? The autocratic regime has entered into a virtual contract with the people it governs – guaranteed growth of personal wealth and affluence to the citizens in return for unquestioned political obedience. This makes the uninterrupted operation of the nation’s factories an imperative for the rulers, who, like the proverbial man riding a tiger, is afraid to dismount. The environmental movement in China has succeeded in relocating a major proposed coal-fired power plant in Shenzhen, but couldn’t do anything about such a facility in environmentally fragile Hainan island, where the government ignored protests. However, Martin reposes optimism on China on account of three factors which he enunciates – dynamism of the people as compared to Americans, cooperation with the U.S, at least on matters related to climate change and its belief that every crisis equals risk plus opportunity for the country.

The book is written mainly with an American audience in mind. Most of the chapters describe the American scenario. The chapter on China is really the result of an afterthought to make it appealing to international readers. The cases of Germany and Britain are confined to the epilogue and there’s no mention of India, whose burgeoning appetite for coal has the potential to upset the climate change apple cart. Barack Obama and his ambitious program of curtailing coal is given due prominence. In the first half of the text, the author’s sympathies appear to lie with the sad plight of coal workers when their livelihood is disintegrating moment by moment. But in the latter part, the hidden claws are revealed and Martin goes for the jugular of coal industry. At times, it may feel like irresponsible criticism of that industry, with no viable alternative to offer. This book promotes natural gas as the panacea for the ills of coal, but that also is not entirely devoid of threat to clean air. Pollution with burning gas is less, but still significant. Improved fracking methods resulted in gas prices plummeting in 2014, which had a knock-on effect on coal prices. Now, both fuels are uneconomically priced, as far as the producers are concerned. If coal could be taken off the stage now, it will present a windfall to gas companies. Martin’s feeble attempt to extol the virtues of solar and wind power doesn’t hold much water on an industrial scale, at least for the time being. Natural gas, especially U.S. shale gas producers stand to gain considerable benefit in case any influential political leader takes this book a little too seriously. Lack of a brief history of the development of coal over the ages is a serious drawback to the book.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Kerala and Freedom Struggle

Title: Kerala and Freedom Struggle

Author: Sreedhara Menon A

Publisher: DC Books, 1997 (First)

ISBN: 9788171307449

Pages: 175

Kerala is a small strip of verdant land sandwiched between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea on the southwest coast of India. Historically, the land was divided into three regions – Travancore, Cochin and Malabar. The first two were ruled by native princes and Malabar was part of the Madras province of British India. So, in the strict sense of the term, freedom struggle took place only in Malabar, as the other two regions came out of monarchy a little later than India’s independence in August 1947. But this does not mean that agitations had not taken place in these princely states. Organized movements for responsible government had been going on for decades. In fact, a legislature based on universal adult franchise came into being in Cochin in 1948, the first among all the states of India, even before the new Constitution of India granted that right to all citizens in 1950. Prof. A Sreedhara Menon narrates the tale of the struggle for freedom in Kerala with an added emphasis on the impact it exerted on later social life in the state. The author was a former professor of history who taught for thirty years in government and university service. He has also served as the president of the South Indian History Congress and authored several books and district gazetteers of Kerala. Menon also glimpses on the excessive influence of politics in the academic circles of Kerala in the Post Script.

Kerala’s freedom struggle also marks its departure from the medieval period. Kerala’s provincial kingdoms of the Zamorins, Cochin and Travancore came under the sway of the British, which stood as the paramount power by the end of the 18^th century. Local kings were not even allowed to address the governor as ‘my dear friend’! This transition was rather smooth after the British subjugated Mysore under Tipu Sultan. The Kerala kingdoms were the vassals of Tipu and quite predictably, they accepted the suzerainty of the victors with little demur. Even before the total dominance around 1800, the British had established points of presence on the Kerala coast for purposes of trade and defence. There was an uprising in Attingal in 1721 in which 140 Englishmen were killed, when the hosts of a festival to which they were invited suddenly pounced on them. This was an act of treachery, but of course, anything is right in love and war. However, it is not fair for the author to take pride in comparing the incident to the Battle of Plassey, which was still 36 years in the future, in which only 29 Englishmen were killed. A historian making unnecessary and irrelevant comparison of unrelated historical events should be viewed with an extra dose of skepticism. Again, Menon claims that uprisings against corrupt and autocratic diwans (minister under a king) are to be considered as upsurge against the British. This argument is also objectionable. It is true that the diwans were appointed on the recommendation of the British; but their self-centred actions had fomented trouble for which the British were not politically responsible. Often when public outcry arose, they were conveniently removed from responsible positions by the British themselves. However, the revolts of Pazhassi Raja and Veluthampi Dalawa may be construed as direct challenges against the foreign power. Their struggles were isolated and old fashioned. Veluthampi desperately tried to obtain support from outside, but all were in vain. The crushing of these revolts in 1805 and 1809 respectively may be considered as the definitive end of the medieval era in Kerala. English education came in its wake. People studied European history, literature, Western political thought with its emphasis on individual liberty and political freedom. Kerala’s social ground was ready for a transition to modernity that required social reformers to exert their moral pressure to do away with some of the most heinous customs in the world such untouchability, child marriage and polyandry. Sree Narayana Guru, Ayyan Kali, Chattambi Swami and Vaikunta Swami put into place a total social revolution that readied Kerala to step into modernity by the 1920s.

Freedom struggle in the ordinary sense of the term began only with the Khilafat and non-cooperation movements of 1921 towards which Muslims in Malabar were attracted in large numbers. However, the agitation was soon suppressed by the regime’s military might. At this hour of frustration, the fanatic spirit that lay dormant in Muslim minds came out in the open and erupted as a communal riot of the worse kind ever seen in India. Hindus were killed and forcibly converted on a large scale. Their women were abducted and forcibly married off to Muslims. Even now, there are no clear statistics on the number of Hindus killed or converted. Menon, however, adopts an apologetic stand, which should be expected as this book was written at the behest of the Leftist government in power which always put forth an appeasing sentiment wherever militant reaction was expected. He claims the rebellion as caused by political, economic and communal factors. It was at once an anti-British political upheaval, an agrarian revolt and a communal flare up. The author conveniently ignores hundreds of communal disturbances in the region ever since the defeat of Tipu Sultan. Menon chooses to bury his head in the sand. (Interested readers may read my review of K N Panikkar’s book on Malabar riots titled ‘Against Lord and State’ here). He is not so accommodating on the Communists. He lays bare the core truth hidden in Leftist propaganda about their struggle against the British. In Kayyur, a policeman not on duty was chased by an armed crowd, who later jumped into a river where he was drowned. This is the famous Kayyur riot that took place on March 28, 1941. Four communists, Madathil Appu, Kunhambu Nair, Chirukandan and Abu Baker were arrested and condemned to death. In the meanwhile, the political winds took a U-turn. The Communist party had called for the strike in the first place to protest against Britain’s involvement in the Second World War which it thought to be an imperialist war. However, in the middle of the war in June 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union who was his ally till then. Communists worldwide suddenly took a diametrically opposite view of the war effort and came out in wholehearted support to the government. Anyway, the four comrades were hanged on March 29, 1943 as victims of the opportunism shown by the party. Similarly, the Karivellur Incident (December 20, 1946) which saw two protesters killed in police firing was due to an issue on the sale of paddy and has nothing to do with freedom movement. The unnecessary waste of human lives in Punnapra and Vayalar runs in the same vein. These revolts gave the party something to show as their contribution to the freedom movement, but Jawaharlal Nehru was already in power as interim prime minister during this period. How can they be thought of as freedom struggle then? Malabar was the region in which nationalistic struggles took place, under the leadership of Congress. In Travancore and Cochin, the onus was on having responsible governments. Non-cooperation (1921) and Civil disobedience (1930) agitations got enthusiastic support in Malabar.

The book narrates some noteworthy points on the society of Kerala. Menon writes on the overweening political intervention in every sphere of intellectual activity that is a bane of Kerala. He began writing the book on the special request of the State’s Director of Public Relations. He completed the work within two weeks, but on the final day, a government order was received which constituted a committee for the exercise. The committee comprised of two others in addition to the author, including P Govinda Pillai, who was a diehard Marxist theoretician. Also, the committee was burdened with seeking advice from EMS Namboodiripad, who was a Marxist politician and scholar. This brings into focus the sad plight of history writing which is dominated by Leftists. Peeved at this slight, Menon resigned from the committee and found a private publishing house to bring out the book. With clear references in the book to the Communist Party in not so flattering terms, the government’s apprehensions were not entirely off the mark. Menon narrates a few little known incidents that are interesting to read. When the agitation for entry of untouchables inside Guruvayur temple intensified, the government held a referendum among upper-caste Hindus of Ponnani taluk, in which the temple was located. The results were a glowing tribute to the spirit of tolerance and accommodation. 77% of the people supported temple entry, while only 13% opposed and 10% abstained. Readers are also surprised by the description of a Hindu – Christian riot in Kerala, where the Christian community had long been influentially dynamic, but peaceful. The Christians turned against a meeting held at Thrissur in 1921 by the Congress to promote non-cooperation campaign. They pelted stones against the speakers, in which C Rajagopalachari was personally injured. The meeting was disrupted and it grew into a communal riot that lasted several days. It is also chilling to note that support to the demand for Pakistan was widespread among the Muslims of Malabar, who congregated under the banner of the Muslim League. Abdul Sattar Sait, its regional leader, migrated to Pakistan as soon as it came into being. The antipathy of the communists and Muslim League was the prime factor in turning the Quit India revolt in Kerala into a damp squib.

The book is nicely written, but has the ring of a text book written all over it. The author has acknowledged it and justifies it with the lack of sufficient text books on the subject. The book was written in a period of two weeks, ruling out extensive research. The vast experience of Menon as a reputed professor of history more than compensates for any shortfall. The chapter on legacy of the freedom struggle on Kerala’s literature, politics, art, social life and others seems to be imported in one piece from an unrelated source. While most of India’s historians are leftists as a result of careful pruning at the top echelons of historical associations, Menon displays a refreshingly impartial viewpoint. The whiff of fresh air brought in by the author drives out the stale and stagnant miasma of communist propaganda from an important chapter of Kerala history. The author has included a select bibliography and a basic index.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 2 Star