Confessions

Title: Confessions

Author: Saint Augustine

Translator: Garry Wills

Publisher: Penguin Classics 2006 (First)

ISBN: 9780143039512

Pages: 353

Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 CE), popularly known as Saint Augustine was an early Christian theologian and philosopher, whose writings and speeches influenced the development of Western Christianity. He is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers and was the bishop of Hippo Regius in modern-day Algeria. Among his most important works are ‘The City of God’ and ‘Confessions’. This book is an autobiographical work, consisting of 13 books written in Latin between 397 and 400 CE. This book covers his youth when he led a profligate life, but having a change of mind, adopted Christianity. The text is translated from Latin by Garry Wills, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, journalist and historian, specializing in American history, politics and religion, especially the history of the Catholic Church.

The period in which St. Augustine lived had profound impact on Christianity. For long the food of lions in the circus, followers of the religion had at last found patronage during the reign of Constantine, who adopted it and made it the state religion. Though Constantine accepted baptism only on his death bed, royal support for Christianity was enough to make it go places and conquer all Europe under its spiritual realm. Paganism, which was all powerful till then, continued to thrive for some more time, as also Manichaeism, to which Augustine himself subscribed during the early part of his life. He flays it in no uncertain words after his conversion, contradicting its principles with a rationalist viewpoint, which he conveniently buries while reviewing Christian arguments and beliefs which are equally fallacious. Roman statesmen like Cicero attracted large followers by their speeches and writings. In fact, Augustine can’t help remarking that the Scriptures are trivial before Cicero’s majesty. Augustine led a life of loose morals till his conversion. Often, he laments at the insatiable lust welling up in him. Even after he began to sway towards Jesus Christ, he put off baptism for some more years. His prayer to god was to “give me chastity and self-control, but not just yet”.

This book is an autobiography. But in the strictest sense of the term, it is not. Augustine’s long remembrances are addressed to god, recognizing and accepting His supreme authority on all things temporal and everlasting. It is said that this work is the world’s longest literary prayer. God is to be sought within ourselves. The saint’s fervent call to the people is to go back into themselves, to their own inner depths. The author’s appeal to god is passionate and fervent, bordering on eroticism. Consider the phrases, “Slow was I, Lord, too slow in loving you. To you, earliest and latest beauty, I was slow in love. You were with me all the while I was not with you, kept from you by things that could not be except by being in you. You shed a perfume – inhaling it, I pant for you. For your taste, I hunger and thirst. At your caress, I am feverish for satiation” (p.234). Now, replace the words ‘Lord’ and ‘God’ with ‘beloved’ or ‘darling’ and see the beautiful song of love emerging out of meaningless spiritual affectation! At the same time, we also see the curtain of monotheistic intolerance rising to come to fruition in the Middle-Ages in Europe. The strict puritanical code he envisages cuts out music, pictures, art and things going beyond the norms of utility. Strict interpretation of religious edicts is followed by insistence of total surrender to god’s will, even at the cost of one’s free will and all things which make life beautiful and meaningful. Augustine’s bent to such puritanical creed is comparable to that of Taliban and the Islamic State at present, proving the point that theocracies are the same everywhere, whatever may be the religion in question.

Augustine was born in 354 CE at Thagaste in modern day Algeria. His mother, Monica, was a devout Christian, but his father was a pagan who converted to Christianity on his death bed. Augustine studied Latin literature and rhetoric at Carthage. He left church to follow the Manichaean religion which was resented by his mother. He lived a hedonistic lifestyle, entering into many illicit relationships, the longest of which lasted fourteen years that also begot a son. He ended the relationship in order to marry a ten-year old heiress. The author could not master Greek, but the shortfall was more than compensated by his prodigious proficiency in Latin. Disturbed by unruly students, he moved to Rome and then to Milan, where he met the city’s charismatic bishop Ambrose, who turned out to be his spiritual mentor. He diverted the author from a life of licentiousness. At the age of 31, Augustine converted. His son also followed suit, but died soon after.

There are no footnotes or glossary on the incidents and characters mentioned in the autobiography. It is quite hard to appreciate the reputation and significance of the formidable people and curious incidents mentioned in the text, without a glossary. Readers are driven to refer to other sources for getting more details on them. The book does not include an index, which is a somewhat serious flaw in undermining the book’s utility as an item of reference. Augustine’s narrative is laborious and full of rhetoric and wordplay. It also brings to light some of the social customs prevalent in Italy of the late-fourth century CE. We read about astrologers who are conversant with the movements of stars and heavenly bodies and who made horoscopes accordingly. He says that some of them are so stringent that they deliberately timed the births of even animals so as to coincide with auspicious moments. It is regrettable to note that such people had not gone extinct even with the passage of seventeen centuries and the percolation of the scientific spirit.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Trial of Bhagat Singh

Title: The Trial of Bhagat Singh – Politics of Justice

Author: Noorani A G

Publisher: Oxford University Press 2006 (First published: 1996)

ISBN: 9780195678178

Pages: 339

India’s struggle for freedom had charted along two prominent currents. The nonviolent stream was headed by Gandhi and Nehru, who was ultimately successful in reaching their goal. The violent stream had no consistent leader. It was led by various people at various times, including Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Veer Damodar Savarkar, Chandra Sekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh and a lot of other heroes. Even when the resources of the empire on which the sun never sets was at its lowest ebb in the Second World War and even when helped by the military might of the Japanese, Bose and his army could not engage the British military in a protracted struggle. It is then no wonder that individual acts of defiance like that of Azad or Bhagat Singh were brutally crushed by the government. Noorani explains the incidents that led to the trial of Bhagat Singh and how justice made way for the expediency of politics. The author extols the story of sacrifice and patriotism of the revolutionaries implicated in the Lahore Conspiracy Case. The author, Abdul Gafoor Abdul Majeed Noorani, is a prominent lawyer in the Supreme Court of India and the Bombay High Court. He has authored more than a dozen books on the partition of India, its freedom struggle and the post-partition politics. This book is at first sight a tribute to Bhagat Singh and his violent revolutionary program, but on closer examination, readers stumbles upon a devious plan. What the author really pointing to is the comparable predicament of the Punjab and Kashmir terrorists and the Indian government’s persistent and harsh measures to curb terrorism. Readers should keep this in mind throughout the book.

While Gandhi and Congress followed the path of ahimsa (nonviolence) in their struggle against the British, young revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh were not so circumspect in selecting their mode of protest. Carried over by the fabled resistance and fighting power of the proletariat as exemplified in the Russian Revolution of 1917, violence was one of the accepted practices of the Revolutionaries. In fact, they were not bothered with any compunction in opting for the ways in which their aim could fructify. Money was always in short supply, which was alleviated by nothing less than robbery! But their guiding principle was that, as far as possible, government treasure should be looted rather than that of individuals (p.16). In other words, they were not reluctant even to rob people if the need arose. This was evidenced in the dacoity at Maulina in Bihar, when an Indian landlord was shot dead and his jewelry stolen. It was the time of Simon Commission’s visit to India to finalize the constitutional reforms of the country. All native organizations opposed the Commission as it didn’t include any Indian member in its panel. Violent protests raged across the country. In Lahore, the agitation was spearheaded by Lala Lajpat Rai, a veteran Congress leader who commanded respect across party lines. Mr. J A Scott, who was the Superintendent of Lahore Police, was a white chauvinist and he used baton charging to disperse the crowd. Scott selectively got hold of Lajpat Rai and beat him up, inflicting serious injuries. Rai succumbed to his injuries a few days later. This unleashed a wave of fury in Punjab. Bhagat Singh and his associates vowed revenge for the death of Rai by assassinating Scott. The attacking party, however, lost sight of the real target and killed J P Saunders, the Assistant Superintendent of Police instead. He was only a probationer and aged just 21 years. Bhagat Singh planned and committed the attack. In the chase which ensured the shooting, they had to kill another Indian policeman, who was pursuing them. They could hoodwink the police for a few months after that and fled to Delhi. There, they planned and executed an attack on the Central Legislative Assembly, which was the Parliament in those days. They threw two crude bombs on the floor of the assembly and fired aimless shots from their revolver. This gun later proved to be the undoing of Bhagat Singh as the Police identified it as the same gun which killed Saunders by analyzing the specific marks on the bullets. The idea was to create maximum impact with minimum injury to members. Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt, who committed the assault, were nabbed by the police. While they were in custody in Delhi, Lahore Police chanced upon locating the house where their accomplices such as Sukh Dev and Raj Guru were busy with bomb making. Unable to withstand torture, five of the accused turned approvers and made a bare chest of the whole story and the alleged plot to rob a bank. Bhagat Singh was implicated in the case and he and eighteen others were put to trial before a special judge.

Being a lawyer himself, Noorani goes in great detail in giving coverage to the trial almost on a daily basis. It is asserted that the government made a travesty of justice in conducting a mock trial and finding the top accused guilty. The trial began with a special judge, but was transferred to a tribunal established by an ordinance of the Viceroy. Unable to muster a majority in the Central Legislative Assembly, the government brought forth an ordinance to constitute a tribunal of three High Court judges. The tribunal and the ordinance which put it into being had a life span of only six months. The prosecution rushed the proceedings through it to complete it within the prescribed time. Moreover, the decisions of the tribunal couldn’t be challenged on appeal in higher courts. The author brings in great eloquence to hammer home the point that the trial was politically motivated and deliberately designed to secure an easy conviction. However, if you get out of the mould of narrow patriotism and look afresh at Noorani’s arguments, it will immediately become evident that it is riddled with holes. A tribunal had to be set up because the single judge could not wade through obstacles created by the defendants. Great legal talent was employed for Bhagat Singh and his accomplices, whose hair-splitting discourse interrupted the court proceedings, sometimes on silly grounds. From the outset, Bhagat Singh and others demanded the status of political prisoners, even though they were charged with double murder. When the jail administration turned down the request, they began an indefinite fast. Starving people cannot attend the court and their counsel then brought forth a legal point that the court can’t proceed without making a note of the defendants’ plea. The text is overflowing with several such examples of the accused persons’ attempt to disrupt the smooth functioning of the court. They continued the tactic in the case of the tribunal too, but the government had foreseen their gambit and had included a proviso in the ordinance setting up the tribunal that if the defendants refuse to appear before the judicial body, it could proceed on its duty even in their absence. Subsequently, of the eighteen accused persons, Bhagat Singh, Sukh Dev and Raj Guru were sentenced to death, seven were transported for life, two were given jail terms, three were acquitted, five absconded and one met his death in hunger strike. Bhagat Singh’s execution was carried out on March 23, 1931 at Lahore Central Jail. He was only 23.

Throughout the text, Noorani trumpets the rhetoric that the nationalist leadership under Gandhi and Nehru stabbed the revolutionaries in the back. This argument is laughable. The revolutionaries were carried away by the example of violence in Russia through which the Communists gained power. They had scant regard for the national leaders, often looking at their nonviolent agitation with the utmost contempt. Besides, it seems from Noorani’s assertion that commutation of the death penalty was within Gandhi’s power had he wished so. In March 1931, Gandhi and Viceroy Irwin reached a pact for the participation of Congress in the Second Round Table Conference scheduled for later that year. The author blames Gandhi for not making commutation of the death sentence as a precondition of the pact.

When all is said and done, we wonder what the real motives of the author in writing such a book decades later, in 1996. The intention is not hard to find. Noorani equates the terrorists in Punjab and Kashmir with Bhagat Singh and his fellow revolutionaries and sets in motion a refrain that the government of independent India is carrying out a far worse miscarriage of justice than the British did. Indian government introduced an act called TADA to confront Sikh and Islamic terrorism in the 1980s. Noorani’s sympathies lie with the terrorists when he compares TADA as much more draconian than the infamous Rowlatt Act. In the first part, the author cleverly works out a sympathy wave on the fate of Bhagat Singh and towards the end of the book, treacherously shifts the sympathy towards terrorists in Punjab and Kashmir. Noorani takes great pains to show that Mohammed Ali Jinnah had made a scintillating speech in the Legislative Assembly in support of the revolutionaries, where in fact, his defense is rather ordinary. Apart from that one speech, Jinnah does not appear anywhere in the text, even though the author invokes him every now and then. Correlate this undue praise for Jinnah with the scorn heaped on Gandhi and Nehru, and you realize the true motive of the author in bringing out this book. Let us make it clear here itself. Terrorism, whoever may be its perpetrators, must be crushed ruthlessly. Bhagat Singh’s act of throwing a bomb in the Assembly was an act of terrorism. If we don’t condemn it, what right do we have in hanging Afzal Guru, who helped make a similar attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001?

Being authored by a lawyer, the book is full of legal jargon. A good part of the appendices are taken up by verbatim reproductions of statements, judgments and ordinances, which is pointless, since the content has been fully enunciated in the text. An index is provided for the content. A few photos of the major figures may have added interest to the book.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

Seven Elements

Title: Seven Elements That Have Changed the World

Author: John Browne

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013 (First)

ISBN: 9780297869894

Pages: 279

All things we come across in our daily lives are made of smaller components of that material. These are in turn made by still smaller factors until we finally reach a point at which what is remaining is unique and can’t be split further. In arithmetic, this may be compared to prime factors of a composite number which can’t be split further. Ancient Greeks thought earth, fire, air and water as the basic elements that constitute the world. As science progressed, we did away with ancient notions and established chemistry as the field which studies properties of elements. Today, we have in the Periodic Table 92 naturally occurring elements, and a few man-made elements that have only a fleeting moment of existence. John Browne identifies seven elements among them that have exerted the greatest influence on human societies. His selection of elements that includes carbon, iron, gold, silver, uranium, titanium and silicon is questionable in terms of significance. Browne himself identifies the subjective nature of his choice, but compensates for this shortfall by a general discussion on the historical, scientific, industrial and economic repercussions of each of them. The author, also a peer with the name Lord Browne of Madingley, joined British Petroleum (BP) in 1966 and grew in career to become its Group Chief Executive from 1995 to 2007. He is an engineer, collector and businessman, who has published his memoirs in book form.

The story of iron and carbon is interlinked as Browne narrates it. Smelting of iron required coal in large quantities. Modern iron and steel conglomerates are concentrated where coal also is cheaply available. On the other hand the utility of carbon is most visibly expressed in fossil fuels which contain molecules of carbon and hydrogen. Oil and natural gas are found at extreme depths under the ground or ocean floor. Elaborate platforms and transmission pipelines built of iron and steel is required to collect the oil. Extensive riches could be generated in the two businesses. The author tells the story of Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller which is intriguing on account of the irony in their thrust for profits and then giving the wealth back to the society in the form of charity. Carnegie was a steel magnate who used every devious method in his arsenal to maximize profits. Curtailing his employees’ wages was one among them. The unions immediately called a strike which was not intensive or combative enough to upset the plans of Carnegie and his managers who were sheltered behind barbed fences and protected by private and armed security guards. As the agitation used force to break up the operations of the company they were shot down. This tarnished his reputation but he continued to make profit. However after he retired from business, Carnegie put up a number of philanthropic institutions and societies that channeled the ill-gotten money in reverse gear for the benefit of the people. Then why did he resort to unscrupulous and inhuman methods to amass it? An exactly similar case is encountered in the life of Rockefeller and his Standard Oil Company. The author being a former chief executive of British petroleum many real life instances that threatened the energy security of the world are mentioned in first hand detail. His proximity to business magnates and powerful politicians of many nations helped him pick the issues affecting production of fossil fuel presently. He attributes arguments like oil peak and decreasing production to doom-mongering. Comparing such pessimistic estimates to the equally fearsome predictions of Malthus in the 18^thcentury Browne concludes that such worst case scenarios failed to take into account rapid changes in technology or material that rewrites the way history is moving. Malthus famously missed out on the Industrial Revolution.

The chapter on uranium lays more stress on its political implications rather than scientific concerns. The issue of ‘high-dread-to-risk-ratio’ of nuclear power is stressed. Contrary to public perception, safety levels in nuclear reactors are much higher than other power stations. The number of accidents in nuclear stations can be counted in the fingers of one hand. But above all, people are scared of radiation which kills life yet is invisible. Those who are exposed to radiation at dangerous levels run the risk of developing cancer at an unpredictable time in their lives. All of these came to the fore in the aftermath of Fukushima reactor accident in Japan in 2011. The reactor cooling systems broke down when it was inundated by tsunami floods triggered by an earthquake of epic proportions. Meltdowns and explosions occurred, with the spread of harmful radiation into the atmosphere. Japanese public opinion quickly swung against nuclear power per se and the country’s reactors were temporarily shut down. However alternate energy sources are highly restricted by the availability and price of oil or natural gas. When the price of gas is high as was seen before 2014 such abandonment of nuclear power in the face of uninformed public opinion is sure to cripple the economies of many developing nations. On the latter half of the chapter Browne examines the issues related to proliferation of nuclear weapons to rogue states like North Korea and Pakistan. The first is a threat to world peace on account of an outdated ideology that dictates terms to its own people while in Pakistan it is only a matter of time when Islamic terrorists get hold of the bomb or at least a stripped down version of it. The Pakistani state is slowly unraveling and peddlers of nuclear technology like A Q Khan are active in the field to furnish the technology to the highest bidder. However Browne stops short of making a full scale indictment on Pakistan.

Even after reading the full text one wonders why titanium is included as such a critical element that changed the world. Browne’s arguments are so unconvincing on this point. But his choice of Silicon as the seventh fully deserves it in every aspect. Silicon is abundant in common sand, but the utility it confers on mankind is simply amazing. The element had several useful incarnations for society. In the Middle-Ages, glass was made of it when Silica was heated with Soda. Great art work was made from it but it was not something indispensable. The crucial transformation of Silicon came about with the invention of transistor in the Bell Labs. With the development of integrated circuit a few years later the era of vacuum tubes were over, along with the displacement of bulky computers and other electronic equipment with compact, versatile and lightweight gizmos. Computing power grew exponentially in accordance with Moore’s law. Today a good mobile phone houses more computing power than that of NASA’s lunar mission when astronauts first landed on moon. Silicon continues to be a highly useful element in the form of optical fibers which conduct high speed communications across the globe.

The book’s greatest disadvantage is that it is nothing more than a journal of random and subjective thought. The ideas and events mentioned in the work are only of the West. The remarks about the East like the Iron Lion of Cangzhou are cursory. Browne’s extensive travel and meeting with the wealthy and powerful as the head of BP has led to insightful recollections which are reproduced in the book. Even though it deals with gold, no reference is made to the intriguing yet fruitless quest of alchemy which tried to turn base metals into gold. On the positive side, Browne expresses a rational and pragmatic approach towards pessimists who trumpet about the extinction of useful commodities like oil in the near future. The book is well adorned with a number of colour plates. It includes a thorough section of Notes, a good bibliography and a commendable index.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star