Khilji Dynasty

 

Title: Khilji Dynasty

Editor: Bittu K Singh

Publisher: Rudra Publishers Delhi, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9788193115541

Pages: 224

Muslim rule in India begins with the sultanates of Delhi. All earlier incursions, the Arab invasion of Sindh in the 8^th, Mahmud of Ghazni’s in the 11^th and Mohammed Ghori’s in the 12^th centuries were only fleeting moments in history, where the plunderer retired to his home country after collecting the riches. The first sultanate of Ilbari dynasty in Delhi broke away from this tradition by establishing permanent residence in the country, thereby opening a new era in the history of India. Four more dynasties followed the first – Khilji, Tughluq, Sayyid and Lodi. This continued until the edifice erected by Qutb-ud-din Aibak in 1191 was undone by Ibrahim Lodi in 1526 when he suffered a humiliating defeat and death at the hands of Babur. This book tells us the story of the second among them, the Khiljis. Bittu K Singh is the editor of the book. He belongs to Ranchi, Jharkhand, but practices as a lawyer in Delhi. He is reported to be interested in reading autobiographies, good literature and devotional books.

The Khilji dynasty ruled Delhi during a short span of 30 years with only three kings ascending the throne. All three were, however, noted for their faithlessness and ferocity. The Khiljis were Turks, as was their Ilbari predecessors, but owing to their long stay in Afghanistan – their name is derived from the village Qalat-e-Khilji – they were treated as upstarts. The Afghans always had to contend with the second place behind the Turks in Muslim polity. The term Khilji means swordsman or long arm in Turkish, but it denotes a ‘thief’ in Pashto. They served under the Ghaznavids, Ghurids and finally under the Ilbaris, while the former Islamized them. Jalal-ud-din Firuz Khilji served under Balban, suffering under the racialism of the Ilbaris. He usurped power in 1290. His throne was also not to be secure for long. His son-in-law overturned and killed him to get on to the throne as Ala-ud-din Khilji. He had a trusted general in the person of Malik Kafur, who made three successful raids on the South, annexing the vast region for the first time under Delhi sultans. After Ala-ud-din’s death in 1316, his son Qutb-ud-din Mubarak assumed power. He was weak and incompetent and was murdered in 1320 by his own Man Friday to pave the way for the ascent of the Tughluq dynasty. Ala-ud-din Khilji is noted for ensuring strict price control in the sultanate, so that the soldiers could live comfortably with the low salaries he paid them. Price of food grains and all articiles were fixed. Even slaves were sold at fixed prices. A serving girl could be obtained for 5-12 tankas, a concubine for 20-40, slave labourers for 10-15 and ‘handsome’ pages for 20-30 tankas. With strong and clever military movements, he could subdue all four of the South Indian kingdoms – Kakatiyas of Warangal, Yadavas of Devagiri, Hoysalas of Dwarasamudra and Pandyas of Madurai.

Though grievously flawed in design and structure, the book presents good character sketches of Ala-ud-din Khilji and his lover and general, Malik Kafur. A more bloodthirsty killer than Ala-ud-din was hard to come by in history’s annals. What is shocking to some is that he killed Muslims as well on racial grounds. The descendants of the pagan Mongol invaders had stayed back in India and had assumed Islam. They were called ‘New Muslims’ and slowly entered the service of the sultan who restricted them to lower cadres. The higher posts were always reserved for the Turkish men. When a rebellion broke out among the Mongols, he ordered some 30,000 – 40,000 Mongol men to be killed and their women were sold as slaves in Delhi’s fleshpots. Ala-ud-din was bad tempered, obstinate and hard hearted. To cap it all, he was also an illiterate. He banned drinking and wine manufacturing. To prevent nobles joining together against the sultan, he forbade them from visiting each other and forced them to seek his approval prior to establishing matrimonial alliances between their wards. A full-fledged spy network was also employed to snoop on the aristocrats. The Hindus had a nasty time during Ala-ud-din’s rule. He destroyed the Somnath temple, which was a favourite pastime for the Muslim invaders whether they got any booty or not, and carried the parts of the smashed idol to Delhi to make it trodden under the feet of the faithful. Hindus were forbidden from riding caparisoned horses, carrying arms, wearing fine cloths or enjoying any luxury of life. Half of their agricultural produce was appropriated by the sultan. No gold, silver or even a betel nut was said to be seen in a Hindu home. Being ignorant of ecclesiastical matters, Ala-ud-din once summoned the Qadi of Bayana to his court to consult him on the issue of how the Hindus of the country should live in accordance with strict Islamic rules. The qadi’s reply makes interesting reading. He said that “they are called payers of tribute, and when the revenue officer demands silver from them, they should, without question and with all humility and respect, tender gold. If the officer throws dirt (or spits) into their mouths, they must unreluctantly open their mouths wide to receive it. By doing so, they show their respect for the officer. The due submission of the non-Moslems is exhibited in this humble payment and by this throwing of dirt into their mouths. The glorification of Islam is a duty, and contempt of the religion is vain. God holds them in contempt, for He says to keep them under subjection. To keep the Hindus in abasement is especially a religious duty, because they are the most inveterate enemies of the Prophet” (p.28).

Islamic administration was heavily dependent upon slaves recruited from young men of other religions. This was the case with the Ottomans and so were the Delhi sultans. Malik Kafur Hazar Dinari, who original name was Sabour Bhai, was a Hindu boy and the son of a Rajput landlord. Ala-ud-din Khilji was enamoured of the young, effeminate body of the Sabour Bhai and purchased him for 1000 dinars – hence the name hazar dinari. He was then castrated and made to follow Islam. Castration was an integral part of the Islamic slave system as a precaution against diluting the Muslim bloodlines. Ala-ud-din was madly captivated by this eunuch who doubled as a catamite. Kafur conquered the southern kingdoms and brought much wealth to the capital, but he harboured a secret ambition to take over the reins of the sultanate himself. It is alleged that Ala-ud-din’s demise was orchestrated by Kafur’s poisoning. Whatever the truth may be, as soon as his master was out of the way, Malik Kafur blinded two of his erstwhile lord’s sons and unleashed a reign of terror. The helpless princes were said to be blinded “by cutting the eyes from the sockets with a razor, like slices of melon”. Loyal courtiers soon summarily executed him. Qutb-ud-din Mubarak, son of Ala-ud-din assumed kingship, but was soon ousted by his own slave Khizr Khan. Mubarak began his reign by killing his father-in-law and blinding his brothers. Like his father, this wretch was also a sodomite and took delight to appear before his court in female finery and jewels. On some occasions, he appeared stark naked! His vile favourite and companion killed him and mercifully ended the Khilji dynasty.

There are frequent repetitions of the same ideas in the book, some of them up to four or five times and verbatim. We wonder what the editor was doing with the text, some of which even a school boy with a very basic training in English grammar wouldn’t write. There is no analysis in the book. The texts by some authors (who are not mentioned) are arranged haphazardly. The impact of Ala-ud-din’s extreme economic measures like his strict price control of essentials is simply left out. The final chapter on ‘society and culture’ is superfluous and included just to fill some 50 odd pages, which constitute a quarter of the book. This chapter, which is supposedly on the Khilji dynasty, is filled with descriptions of Egyptian architecture and art in the Mughal period, which are totally outside the chronological scope of the book. This book is priced at an exorbitant Rs. 795, which is not worth even a tenth of that. Ala-ud-din’s death is described in various ways in the text. He is said to have been killed (p.15), died (p.35), died of dropsy (p.47) and died due to sickness (p.66). The only saving grace of the book is its collection of good photographs of the coins in circulation during the Khilji period. The book includes an incompetent bibliography but no index.

The book is not recommended.

Rating: 1 Star

Shakespeare

Title: Shakespeare

Author: Bill Bryson

Publisher: William Collins, 2016 (First published 2007)

ISBN: 9780007197903

Pages: 200

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) is the greatest English playwright and one of the finest poets of all time. From humble beginnings in a provincial town, he migrated to London at a young age and strived hard to become an acknowledged author, actor, director and manager in a troupe of actors that thrilled the late-Elizabethan society. He died at the age of 52, and his fame didn’t percolate to the large populace till nearly a century after his death. But thereafter, there was no looking back as far as his renown was concerned. This book is one among a series titled ‘Eminent Lives’ first published by John Atlas and written by Bill Bryson, who is the favourite of millions of readers on account of his witty remarks and presentation through which he introduces profound ideas in a way appealing to all. However, if we examine the book in a critical light, it is not as funny and absorbing as Bryson’s other books such as ‘Down Under’ and ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’, reviewed earlier in this blog.

Bryson brings out some wonderful facts about England’s greatest playwright. There is a ‘wealth of text on him, but the poverty of context in them’ is startling. The Library of Congress holds some 7000 works on Shakespeare. At the same time, the British Library contains 16000 titles on the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon out of which 4000 are relatively new, as books, monographs and other studies. The scholarship is so vast and hairsplitting that we now know that Shakespeare had written 884647 words, 118406 lines, 138198 commas, 26794 colons and 15785 question marks and so on.

This book is interesting in the extreme, more for its mirror on the society of England in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, rather than the actual biography of the great poet cum dramatist. In fact, it presupposes that the readers are quite aware of the life of Shakespeare so that it describes only the background facts, which introduced unexpected twists and turns in his life. Epidemics and mass deaths were prevalent. It was an age in which it was a rare child that knew all four of its grandparents. Population of the country was actually less than what it was three centuries ago, due to plague and other diseases. A nasty outbreak of plague was witnessed in Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford in 1564, the year of his birth, which killed 200 people in the town. Bryson wryly comments that Shakespeare’s greatest achievement was not writing Hamlet or the Sonnets, but just surviving his first year of life. Plague swept every ten years or so, in different counties. People who could relocate to other places left the city behind in such cases. This is one reason why there are such a large number of royal palaces just outside London. For nearly every year out of the two-and-a-half centuries, deaths outnumbered births in that city. What kept the population at a stable figure was the influx of provincials and Protestant refugees from Europe. Life expectancy was a dismal 35 years, so that the city was an overwhelmingly youthful place. Egalitarianism was yet to be fashionable. There were Sumptuary laws that specified what one could wear and linked it to the income he earned and his position in society. Such was the case with food. A cardinal was permitted nine dishes at a meal while most ordinary people were allowed only two courses. Eating meat during Lent was a criminal offense attracting a term in prison. The Church was given the privilege to grant exemption during this period. This made many churches and priests immensely rich by selling such indulgences at great profit to them.

If what one wants from this book is the plain biography of Shakespeare, he is in for disappointment. Similar is the information about the period 1585 – 1592, when he left Stratford-upon-Avon and his family, and established himself as an actor and playwright in London. Bryson also is not able to cast light into this dark period. This was a time when English drama excelled under the splendid talent of many outstanding authors like Kyd, Greene and Watson, all of whom died at an early age. Christopher Marlowe, who was dead at 29, was an able rival of Shakespeare. If Shakespeare had also died at that age, we’d have considered Marlowe the greater writer, but he possessed little gift for comedy and none for creating strong female roles. George Bernard Shaw had remarked that ‘Shakespeare was a wonderful teller of stories so long as someone else had told them first’. Bryson lists many examples where the poet has ‘borrowed almost mechanically’. In some cases, only the theme is admitted from a classic like what Kalidasa, who borrowed the tale of Sakuntala from the Mahabharata. What is noteworthy is that they embellished the plain story into a masterpiece of creativity. The book asserts that what sets Shakespeare apart is his ability to illuminate the workings of the soul and excellence in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression.

Bryson devotes a considerable space in the book for a discussion on the scholarship on Shakespeare and his works – both pro- and anti-. Real Shakespearean scholarship starts with Edward Malone – not much was known about the poet, but Malone found the details of his family and made a grand effort to find the order in which the plays were actually written. At the same time, there was a very strong movement that sought to deny Shakespeare the credit of writing the wonderful plays and poems. Some 5000 books or monographs are written with this objective in mind. The author ridicules the anti-Shakespeare movement as all of it involves manipulative scholarship or sweeping misstatement of facts. James Wilmot was the first to come out with such an argument and then came Delia Bacon, who first claimed that Francis Bacon, her namesake, was the real author. Bacon made a trip to England in 1852 – 1857 for research on the topic and produced a huge, unreadable book. She returned to the U.S. thereafter but became insane. Till her death, she strongly believed that she was the Holy Ghost! Besides Francis Bacon, Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke, Christopher Marlowe and the 17^th Earl of Oxford and about fifty other persons are credited with writing poems and plays under the pseudonym of Shakespeare. Bryson convincingly attacks the fallacy of these claims.

At the outset, the author confesses that this book is not what he thinks of William Shakespeare, but what he had heard about Shakespeare from the people who have spent lifetimes studying and thinking about the great man. Accordingly, this work is a great attempt to see how much of Shakespeare we can know from the record. He came about in an era when English was still struggling to gain respectability from the stranglehold of Latin. The Bodleian Library in Oxford had only 36 books in English out of the 6000 books it possessed in 1605. Even the first text book on English language that came out in 1568 was in Latin. The book presents a bibliography, but curiously, no Index.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Queen Victoria

Title: Queen Victoria – A Life

Author: Lytton Strachey

Publisher: Tauris Parke, 2012 (First published 1921)

ISBN: 9781780760483

Pages: 255

The reign of Alexandrina Victoria (1819 – 1901) as the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was so profound as to be termed the ‘Victorian Era’. At 63 years and six months on the throne, she is second only to her successor, Queen Elizabeth II in the length of reign. Called upon to wear the crown at the tender age of 18, Victoria was the exemplar of public and private morality. Sweeping changes occurred in Britain during the six decades of her reign which saw England getting on to the centre stage of international politics with powerful presence in all corners of the globe. She presided over the making of a superpower, under the watchful eyes of the prime ministers who assumed and remitted office twenty times in her entire career. She ran a large family with nine children, who were married into all the major royal houses of Europe so that the queen came to be affectionately called the ‘Grandmother of Europe’. Giles Lytton Strachey (1880 – 1932) was a British writer and critic and a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. In this award-winning biography of Queen Victoria, the author places before us the image of a stern, but benevolent monarch who at the same time possessed all the emotions of a woman who had an innate respect and capacity for business as well.

People who are familiar only with despotic kings in the fables and real life would feel amazed at the working of constitutional monarchies like that of England, where the lineages that vied for the crown were often living in straitened circumstances till the moment they ascended the throne. Victoria was no different, and so too was King Leopold of Belgium, who was her uncle. The aristocracies of Europe provided princes and princesses to the royal houses thereby maintaining a tinge of supra-national affiliation towards their homes. Victoria, and her consort Albert, had German as their preferred tongue and their warmest sympathies were towards Germany as the mother country. The Duke of Kent - Victoria’s father -  lived in Germany as his finances were not that impressive to maintain the facade of a royal household. The close relationship between the monarchs of various kingdoms – bound together by bonds of consanguinity – was instrumental in moulding the foreign policy of the country. King Leopold of Belgium tried to sway Victoria from the measured route charted by her democratically elected ministers, in vain. But England was an exemption in this, since many of the others still depended on the voice of the sovereign to set the fate of the populace. Victoria, who was said to have stepped all at once from a nursery to the throne, exhibited unusual rectitude and steadfastness in discharging her duties as the Queen of England.

Britain was the most powerful nation in the middle of the nineteenth century, on which the sun never set. They could command the vast resources of a string of colonies in every part of the globe. By corollary, the Queen of England, though constrained by constitutional safeguards, may be said to be the most powerful human being on the planet. Being the husband of such a lady is not an enviable proposition for most men, who could look forward to nothing better than forever be in their wife’s shadow. The book presents a refreshing alternative to this gloomy prospect in the form of Prince Albert, who was also Victoria’s cousin. Their wedded life began with the usual skirmishes, but a strong sense of mutual attachment soon developed between the spouses. Albert, with his deep knowledge of continental politics, came in handy in setting England’s foreign policy. He made negotiations with the politicians on behalf of the queen on delicate issues of international import. He conceived the idea of and was instrumental in staging the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London which showcased the industrial produce of all the nations and was considered to be a milestone in the free run of the Industrial Revolution. The Prince Consort always maintained a balanced view of overseas politics. He could rise above petty electoral politics to which the politicians too easily succumbed. When Albert came to know of a dispatch by the Prime Minister John Russell on the American Civil War, he leaned heavily on the minister to moderate its tone. If the letter had gone forward without the prince’s intervention, Britain would’ve been forced to take sides in the civil war. Albert’s sudden death at the age of 42, after 21 years of conjugal life, shattered Victoria so thoroughly that it took her many years to regain her old composure. Strachey has made a very touching portrait of the last days of the prince and the inconsolable grief of the queen upon the untimely demise of her husband due to Typhoid fever.

Bureaucratic red-tapism and pettiness have been the hallmarks of the administration which the colonies inherited from their erstwhile imperial masters. Presence of this debilitating legacy still haunts India to great annoyance to the public and the business community. This book presents some episodes to remind us of the brutal compartmentalization of Victorian England’s government machinery. A lot of departments were involved in the upkeep and maintenance of the Queen’s palaces. Often, the petty squabbles between the employees of one department against those of another led to inconvenience even to the highest dignitaries. Once, Victoria noticed that that there was no fire in the dining room. Upon examination, it turned out that the Lord Steward lays the wood and Lord Chamberlain lights it. The underlings of these two lords quarreled with each other and the queen had to eat in the cold. Then again, the inside of the palace windows were cleaned by the department of the Lord Chamberlain, while their outsides were cleaned by the Office of Woods and Forests. The gradual change of archaic customs related to the Royals is also mentioned in the text. Up till the very end of the Queen’s reign, ministers were not allowed by custom to sit down in her presence. She once apologetically remarked to a physically exhausted prime minister about her distress in not being able to allow him to be seated. However, towards the end of the century, this custom was abolished.

This book was first published in 1921 and exudes the old charm of a long gone era. The diction is really fine and the narrative is touchingly penned. With a supremely pointed analysis of the characters in the story, Strachey exerts great dexterity in managing the flow of events. This biography is oriented more towards the personal, rather than the political. Readers are expected to be aware of the major European political events of the period on which the queen was called upon to finalize England’s stand. The publishers should consider adding a short description of the major events alluded to in the narrative. The book is endowed with a bibliography and a good index. A set of photographic plates is also added for greater visual interest.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

The Indus Saga

Title: The Indus Saga – From Pataliputra to Partition

Author: Aitzaz Ahsan

Publisher: Roli Books, 2010 (First published 1996)

ISBN: 9788174364210

Pages: 467

India and Pakistan are sworn enemies. There is more than a passing chance that these two nuclear capable countries may start a war with disastrous consequences for both. Indeed, there is no love lost between the two nations; they were arch enemies right from the start when Pakistan broke out of India in 1947. Being an Indian, I can vouch for the degree of suspicion and enmity we harbour against Pakistan and I expect Pakistanis to share this mistrust towards us. This book suggests that Pakistan nurses a bunker-mentality, always wary of aggression and on the defensive, and a fragility syndrome when one is apprehensive that another country may annex them forcefully. This feeling of insecurity stems from anxiety about the logic behind the birth of Pakistan. A sovereign state for Muslims is a weak argument in the face of enlightenment that is visiting more and more parts of the globe. This book provides a solid basis for the birth and continued existence of Pakistan. ‘The Indus Saga’ is the answer to the question ‘Why Pakistan?’ This post-partition justification of the country also laments the unbridled growth of fundamentalism, which is not what Jinnah wanted for his dream republic. Aitzaz Ahsan is a member of the Pakistan People’s Party and belongs to a family with the tradition social work spanning three generations. He was elected to the federal legislative assembly and served as a minister. He is a lawyer with a solid British education at his back. He was incarcerated under arbitrary detention laws, during one such tenure he wrote this book.

The book is based on the surmise that the Indus River, its tributaries and the area surrounding it, formed a distinct, historical, political, cultural and ethnic entity. Since this territory is exactly what is inside the geographical boundary of Pakistan (West Pakistan, if you reckon the 1947 boundary). The subcontinent has its two large river systems – Indus and Ganga. Indus was always separated from India. Its cultural heritage was so distinct that both Shankara and Vivekananda, the two great Hindu integrators, couldn’t create a synthesis of the two regions. Ahsan claims that of the last 6000 years of Indus history, for nearly 5500 years it led a separate life from the Indian mainstream. Only three universal states, the Mauryan, Mughal and the British could integrate them with a unity of command which lasted hardly five centuries. But this argument is a flimsy one. Many local regions in South India were never held under any of the three universal states, but those are now happy members of the Indian Union. The author then puts forward the bold assertion that racially, ethnically, linguistically and culturally, the people of Pakistan are more closely linked to the people of Central Asia and Iran than Indians. It also rubbishes the claims of many in Pakistan’s ruling elite that they descended from the Arabs – the fountain springs of Islam. He takes great pains to explain the ethnic and societal differences existing between the societies of Arabia and Pakistan, but wryly accepts that often, perceptions become more crucial than the facts, even when a perception has been fabricated deliberately by the ruling elite.

The book is structured in a way as to vindicate the author’s ideas on the issues plaguing modern Pakistan. The priestly aristocracy in Mohenjo Daro was steeped in superstition and rituals. Sloth and stagnation ensued from this atrophy that finally led to the civilization’s downfall. Ahsan points a warning finger at Pakistani society that unless they reject the fundamentalists among them, a similar fate is on the cards. The book inevitably includes many references to ancient Indian history as well, which are based on the works of Kosambi and Romila Thapar. Rafiq Zakaria is relied on for the medieval period. There are many faulty notions expressed in the text on Vedic class structure, terming the Shudras as synonymous with Pariahs and that tantrism coexisted with Buddha. The Indus civilization was crucially dependent on bronze. With the spread of iron, state power migrated to the sources of its ore, in Bihar. The first major empire was founded in Pataliputra under the Mauryas. Alexander’s invasion is projected as the first among a series of foreign raids in which the military prowess of the Indus shielded the rest of the country. He also doubts whether Porus had indeed defeated Alexander, judging by the swift withdrawal of the emperor through a riverine route. The first part of the book logically ends with the Arab conquest of Sindh in 711 CE by Mohammed bin Qasim. However, Ahsan takes a wide detour of the Islamic rule with his remark that brahminism, rise of castes, and village isolation are the reasons of the country’s defeat against European imperialism (p.95). This fast forwarding of the Gupta period towards the British ignores the corroding weaknesses the country had inherited under a millennium of Muslim rule.

Pakistan now reels under the iron grip of Islamic fundamentalism. But this present reality has not hindered many Pakistanis from extolling the virtues of bigoted Muslim kings of the Sultanates of Delhi and Mughal Empire, especially Aurangzeb and Babur. However, this book breaks with this tradition and pictures Babur’s attack as a time of extreme hardship to the Muslims of Indus as well. Babur spared only those Pathans who came to plead before him with a clutch of grass between their teeth and surrendering before him as Babur’s cows (p.150). Strife frequently arose between the Indus cultivator and Delhi kings. Hereditary land rights were assigned for zamindars, who were heavily penalized. Things reached such a pass that the term chaghtay in Punjab came to be denoted for robber barons and cruel administrators. It may be remembered here that Mughals claimed descent from Chaghtay Turks! Indus also produced rebels like Abdullah, who led peasant riots in Punjab against the Mughals. Ahsan generalizes the profligate spending in present day Pakistan as originating from the social mindset generated by frequent raids and plunder of the region, epitomized by the expropriation by Taimur, Babur, Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah Abdali. The prevailing anarchy that lasted many centuries forced people to spend as much as they can, obviating the logic to save. The idiomatic refrain in Punjab, which goes like “Only that which you eat is yours, The rest will be appropriated by Ahmed Shah” says it all. This is said to be the root cause of consumerism and ostentation in modern Pakistan. The author makes known the contrast between Indian and Pakistani politicians where the former are noted for the simplicity in attire and lifestyle. Those centuries of anarchy increased the tolerance threshold of the elite to cruel rulers. Governors could freely switch loyalty without stigma to the winning party. The only precondition was to fight bravely till submission. The Bengalis didn’t share this trait of meek acquiescence to authority and the author counts this as one of the reasons why East Pakistan parted ways with Pakistan in 1971. The Sufi orders of the Indus – mainly Chishti, Suhrawardy, Qadri and Naqshbandi – preached the message of goodwill and tolerance among the religions.

Even though the Indian and the Indus mindset was bogged down by centuries of mutually injurious interactions, that which precipitated the partition of the country was the transformation of economy under the British. The Hindu middle class adjusted themselves to the foreign power, just as they did with the Muslim invaders earlier, and became tightly integrated with the administration of the country. The Muslims couldn’t do it sooner than Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, since the elite had not fully come to terms with loss of power to an infidel nation. This caused strife among Hindus and Muslims, which was convenient for the British. A joining of forces took place in the 1857 war of independence, by Awadhi and Bengali sepoys. The Punjabi and Sindhi soldiers who kept their loyalty to their white masters wanted to take revenge against the mutineers who had earlier annexed their homelands. Ahsan claims this to be the first victory of Indus against India. The flashpoint was reached when Congress couldn’t accommodate the Muslim League in its ministries formed in 1937. After this humiliating defeat and during the Second World War, Jinnah assured himself the support of the Muslim landed aristocracy and staked claim for a separate homeland for the Muslims. This was granted eventually, but the author insists that what Jinnah had in mind was nothing like what Pakistan had turned out to be.

This is a great effort to provide a logical necessity of the birth of Pakistan. Very few politicians in the world have such caliber to conjure a fully grown rationale out of thin air. Readers have the right to disagree with the author and many omissions can be pointed out on the argument, but still, Ahsan’s strenuous effort to justify the existence of his nation on valid grounds other than religious, is commendable. His style is very endearing and compact. Even with this broad brush, the logic of East Pakistan is missed out. But it won’t cause a problem now; as that part went on to become another nation in 1971. In order to make up for parts of history that are still missing, Ahsan deploys legends as history, particularly the folk tales of Raja Rasalu and Puran. There might be some truth in the legend, but a folk hero who had spent twelve years in a well hidden from the society is hardly history. Similar is the extravagant claim that the Indus region had a republican tradition with elected monarchy. Ahsan’s demarcation of the region west of the Gurdaspur – Kathiawar salient as the Indus region makes it an outpost of India, but the author always treats it as an outpost of Central Asia. Whatever it may be, the region was never autonomous. Either Delhi or Kabul exercised hegemony over it till 1947, when Pakistan was born.

Before I stop, let me express a word of reassurance to any Pakistani who may be reading these lines. We Indians do not want to annex you to our country under the pretext of Akhand Bharat. Those who raise such a cry are motivated more to whip up nationalism than any real desire to put their words into practice. The reason for this reluctance is not hard to see, that we absolutely don’t want 338 million Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh to enter our electoral rolls!

The book is gifted with a neat Index and good bibliography. A few photographic plates would’ve added much interest.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star