The Black Hole

Title: The Black Hole – Money, Myth and Empire

Author: Jan Dalley

Publisher: Penguin, 2006 (First)

ISBN: 9780141014999

Pages: 222

If a single event in history can be pointed out as the harbinger of an era, the British victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 can be thought of as the foundation stone for the establishment of colonialism in India that reigned the country for the next two centuries. When the imperial masters finally vacated power in 1947, the country was changed beyond all recognition. Its administrative, legislative, judicial and military structures then resembled the West, which was little regretted. At the same time, the impoverishment of the land was obvious in the form of capital drain to Britain and the repeated famines that devastated the countryside. In short, whichever way you look at it, imperial rule was a profound phase in Indian history. This book assumes immense relevance as it narrates the events that led to the showdown at Plassey. The Nawab of Murshidabad had attacked the British fort at Calcutta and occupied it. Chronicles say that, on June 20, 1756, he forced 146 people of all races and nationalities who defended the fort, to be locked up in a small room, which was known as the Black Hole on account of the placement of only two small, high barred windows for air. The crushing, suffocation and thirst, coupled with the exhaustion of fighting the previous day extracted a heavy toll on the prisoners. When the cell was opened the next day, only 23 people were found to be alive. This horrible incident, popularly known as the Black Hole of Calcutta, ignited British passion to no end, and was instrumental in swiftly organizing military reprisals by the English East India Company, which hastened the advent of colonial rule. Jan Dalley is the literary editor of the Financial Times. She has authored many books and has translated several from the French. She lives in London.

The book provides a snapshot of the growth of East – West trade where the spices were exchanged by the East in favour of gold in return. The growth of English maritime ambition under Elizabeth I initially took the form of piracy. Dalley names the noted mariners of the sixteenth century; all of whom did indulge in piracy on at least a very few occasions. The growth of British trading posts on the Indian mainland was tentative at first. Of the three presidencies of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, the first two were on firmer ground, as the native princes were not strong enough to cross the British. But Calcutta was different. Not only had the British to contend with a mostly indefensible place, but the Murshidabad nawabs were powerful enough to command respect from the traders. The trouble erupted after Siraj ud-Daula ascended the throne of Murshidabad at the young age of 27 after a series of fratricides that was usual in medieval Indian dynasties. He replaced his grandfather, Alivardi Khan who detested the British, but kept on good trading relations with them on account of lucrative profits accrued to him from the enterprise. But the new ruler was impetuous and anxious to affirm his authority very early on his reign. He is said to be so cruel that people on meeting him by chance used to say ‘God save us from him’! He wanted to replace his grandfather’s policy of treating the foreigners with as meticulous care accorded to a beehive while extracting copious amounts of honey and mindful not to provoke them into fits of anger. Fort William at Calcutta was feebly guarded in 1756, with many Englishmen cowardly deserting it at the first hint of trouble. The 500 fighters in the fort belonged to all races – white, brown and black. But they were not a match for the Nawab’s army that was tens of thousands strong. The fort capitulated soon and the Nawab ditched the survivors into the Black Hole, in which 146 people were thrown together in a room only 18 feet long and 14 feet wide. The guards mocked at the frenzy of the people inside for air and water. Only 23 were alive the next morning when the cell was opened.

The author has assumed a stridently nationalistic pose towards the Indian side in the description of the whole episode that is amusing as well as confusing. An Indian would feel amused at the sight of an English author belittling and making tirades against the favourite battle cry of England with which she had aggrandized herself on Indian soil, subjecting it to 190 years of colonial rule. Meanwhile, confusion is spawned by doubts on the quality of judgment made throughout the narrative. But one thing the author should have asked herself is that whether moral support to Siraj ud-Daula was furthering the cause of India as the victim of imperial aggression. Siraj was also a scion of the foreign aggressors that kept India under their yoke far longer than the British did. The native Hindus of Bengal were treated with as contempt by the Muslim kingdoms (with the possible exception of Akbar’s regime) just like or perhaps more than what the British company did. Filling up the aristocracy with expatriates from Afghanistan and Iran, and subjecting the penniless majority to harsh and discriminating religious taxation were hardly the measures which would make a regime dear to the populace. Forced conversions vitiated the atmosphere which was already poignant with mutual hatred between the two communities. The book includes a quote from Col. Scott which helps to make the position clearer. He wrote in 1754 that “Hindu rajahs and population are much disaffected to the Moor (Muslim) government and secretly wish for a change and an opportunity of throwing off their tyrannical yoke”. Hindu merchants naturally sided with foreign traders in the whole issue of Calcutta in 1756. The desperation of the masses is clearly discernible in S C Hill’s study of Bengal, a part of which is reproduced in the book as “there gradually grew up in the minds of the Bengali Hindus that if the worst came to the worst, they might find in the presence of these foreigners a means of escape from the ills by which they were oppressed”.

Dalley makes a spirited but ultimately futile attempt to downplay the significance of the Black Hole incident. Readers are at a loss to determine the motive behind this vain exercise to deny the occurrence of an event that is not only feasible, but corroborated in harrowing detail by the survivors! The pathetic arguments of Dalley are laughable at the least. John Zephaniah Holwell was the City Judge and a survivor of the Black Hole. His vivid account is mercilessly tarnished as an attempt at magnifying his own contribution. An allegation of corruption during his tenure of service is cited as it is sufficient for denigrating his credibility as a witness. Mary Carey was another survivor of the incident at the tender age of 15 and she lived on till 60 in Calcutta. Carey’s interviews are not sufficient proof for the author. Lord Curzon had erected a memorial in 1905 for the victims of the attack, and Dalley quibbles over Curzon’s eulogy terming the prisoners as British, with the silly argument that most of them were not! She accuses Curzon of not naming the victims after a gap of 145 years. Are the Jallianwala Bagh victims named anywhere? Do any failure to name the people who lost their lives negate the truth that the event had occurred? Then the author laments that there were no pictures to establish a record (p.14). This is the most shocking contention of all. What does she mean by pictures? Dalley must realize that she was talking about a point of time when selfies and mobile phones were not available to the victims! After all these dumb claims, she presents a wimpish excuse to downplay the gravity of the incident by saying that, “it was not a massacre, but only a sad blunder. It was not an exceptional death toll” (p.18). This reminds me of a bigoted political observer who denied the Jewish Holocaust as the figure of six million Jews killed was surely a blatant exaggeration. “Probably two or three million”, he said, as if that’d set things right.

Books of such genre usually include a section on the aftermath in which the underdog extracts revenge on the aggressor and satisfy the readers. But Dalley is extraordinarily subdued in this regard, with a  note in passing that Siraj ud-Daula was defeated at the Battle of Plassey with the active connivance of a faction of his courtiers led by his own uncle, Mir Jaffir. The book is a page turner, where the events are so nicely elaborated with unrestrained ease. It is only when the issue of the number of people killed in the Black Hole is raised, or its blood-curdling cruelty, does she go for wild conspiracy theories resembling ‘no man has set foot in the moon’, the 9/11 attacks were CIA-managed’ and the ‘2004 tsunami was the result of a secret American nuclear test’. This small book includes a brief index and a bibliography.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Ashoka in Ancient India

Title: Ashoka in Ancient India

Author: Nayanjot Lahiri

Publisher: Permanent Black, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9788178243887

Pages: 385

If we are asked to name three great Indian emperors of all time, few people would settle at any other combination than Ashoka, Chandragupta II and Akbar. Ashoka is chronologically the first among them. Indian rulers of all times aspired to reflect some aspect of his legacy in their own reign, as he was the founder of a ‘unique political model of humane governance’. Ashoka made discourses with his people in the form of rock edicts scattered all over the country, like some kind of early ‘mann ki bath’. ‘The afterlife of Ashoka, like his real life, is poised between legend and truth’. Nayanjot Lahiri is an eminent historian who has many excellent books to her credit. Lahiri has made a commendable survey of Ashoka as the emperor of India in this book. Devoid of any agenda or political leaning, Lahiri’s works are honest tributes to historical scholarship, as compared to the political manifestos churned out by other reputed authors like Romila Thapar or Irfan Habib.

Lahiri begins with the rationale for yet another book on Ashoka. He had fascinated generations of writers and scholars. The emperor talks to the people through the many rock and pillar edicts distributed across the length and breadth of the land. ‘He did not want to appear to posterity as either recondite or imperious, but instead as a flesh-and-blood ruler guided less by power than compassion’. His renunciation of war at the height of military glory sets him apart from other monarchs. Perhaps this air of edified spirituality endeared him to the later rulers of India. Nehru is said to have identified himself with Ashoka. The national emblem adopted by the newly independent India was the famous Ashokan lion capital at Sarnath. India also adopted the Ashoka Chakra in its flag. The most astonishing fact is that the name of Ashoka had slipped out of the public mind in the subcontinent, as all memory of Ashoka and his edicts was lost in India for some twelve centuries after the visit of Xiunsang, the Chinese pilgrim in the seventh century. People saw these curious inscriptions on rocks in a strange tongue, but remained clueless as to its author. It was the painstaking work of British orientalists in deciphering the stone inscriptions that brought to light the saga of the ancient monarch. This story is told in detail in Charles Allen’s Ashoka – The Search for India’s Lost Emperor (reviewed earlier in this blog). The first modern biography of Ashoka was Vincent Smith’s ‘Asoka – the Buddhist Emperor of India’.

The author narrates the life and times of Ashoka from religious texts like the Ashokavadana, Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa and also from Megasthenes’ Indica, written by a Greek ambassador to Chandragupta’s court (Ashoka’s grandfather). The evidence is patchy and the author has liberally employed her rich imagination to fill up the blanks. The result is a work very much heartening to read. Ashoka’s tenure at Taxila in quelling an insurrection and his stay at Ujjain as the governor of the province are described. Ashoka met a merchant leader’s daughter at Vidisha and two children were born of that dalliance. Even though we would like to think that Ashoka’s polity didn’t discriminate between people of the four varnas, both Mahinda and Sanghamitra didn’t inherit the throne. They were the spiritual heirs of their father and were dispatched to Sri Lanka for missionary work. Ashoka assumed the reins of power after killing his numerous half-brothers. Lahiri wryly remarks that he did much to gain power for which a life of contrition and reflection was necessitated later. He was a Buddhist right from inception on the throne, but his fervor rose as time went on. The battle of Kalinga brought about a transition experience. It was at this time that he employed rocks and pillars to record his proclamations to the people. Ashoka becomes historical and real with these conquests of the mind. Lahiri somewhat justifies the emperor’s military adventures by describing similar expeditions of other world rulers. This is very interesting and informative, but redundant. Kings’ lust for power and aggrandizement can be taken for granted without going to the bother of comparing with others.

The author’s greatest achievement in this text is the illuminating analysis of Ashoka’s edicts that lie scattered over the subcontinent, from Dhauli in Odisha to as far west as Kandahar in Afghanistan. She has travelled to most of the places where the edicts are located and has accorded a vivid description of the lay of the land, the interesting features of the rock and pillars and the meaning of the inscriptions. The narrative assumes the charm of a neatly penned travelogue to those ancient relics. Ashoka had been mindful to inscribe his message to people in hard stone. The maturing of royal philosophy of life is visible from the steady progression of ideas on vegetarianism to morality and support to the Buddhist faith. The first edicts ran from six to twenty-two lines. Later edicts became larger, and a series of messages containing more than a hundred lines are seen. The elaborate carvings extended to multiple rock surfaces as well. The growing confidence of the emperor can be discerned from the standardization of content. One point is to be noted here. The terms ‘major’ and ‘minor’ used to denote the edicts do not imply the size of the rock on which they are inscribed. ‘Major’ denotes the length and content of the message, of which, there are fourteen in number. Meticulous care has been gone into the selection of language and script so as to be intelligible to the people inhabiting the surrounding areas. The language used is Prakrit and script Brahmi for all edicts in the heartland of the empire in present-day India. At the same time, Ashoka was mindful of the influence of foreign languages in his border provinces. This concern is given material form as a bilingual edict near Kandahar. The languages used are Greek and Aramaic and the script Kharoshti. Lahiri notes with approval that the translation was done by capable hands. The interpreter has done a free translation of the message, and the word eusebia is used in place of dharma, which is a tricky word even for modern translators.

Ashoka conceptualizes a rudimentary welfare state, with benevolent concerns for the wellbeing of men as well as animals. This change in administrative policy is suggested to have links with the precepts of Arthashastra, whose composer was a contemporary of Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka’s grandfather. His rock edicts range from the ninth regnal year. The first edict was discovered in 1822 at Girnar, followed by a string of new finds. As of now, 50 such edicts have been catalogued, the latest being at Ratanpurwa, Bihar found in 2009. We agree with the author that Ashoka was ahead of his times, but assigning environmental concerns ascribed to the prohibition of killing fish in the period of chaturmasya (July to September) as a kind of wise effort to protect them during their breeding season is a little farfetched.

This book is a fascinating attempt to recreate the life and times of Ashoka, through his epigraphs, archeology and the traditions in and around the places where these were put up and through an imaginative construction of how people in ancient India were likely to have understood these messages. Lahiri’s mastery of literature as well as history is evident in the scholarly quotes from reputed books of history as well as from Shakespeare. A good number of photographs of the edicts and places where they are located are also provided. The book is also graced with a nice index, an impressive bibliography and large number of notes for clarifying the finer nuances in the text.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Meathooked

Title: Meathooked – The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat

Author: Marta Zaraska

Publisher: Basic Books, 2016 (First)

ISBN: 9780465036622

Pages: 263

Most of us eat meat. Those who shun it and goes vegetarian do it out of a conscious effort, either for religious or ethical reasons. The craving for meat is felt by everybody, but the reasons for it are not so obvious. Since it contained lots of protein, which was not available as a full package from any other food, the thirst for meat was at first thought to be a physiological urge. This book dispels some of the common myths associated with eating meat. It analyses the reasons why meat is so attractive to us, which are linked to our genes, culture, history, the power of the meat industry and the policies of our governments. Marta Zaraska is a Polish Canadian journalist who works as both a foreign affairs correspondent and a science writer. She lives in France and her articles have appeared in leading science journals and other publications.

The book provides a very informative discussion on the history of meat eating. Quite audaciously, the author begins with the evolution of eukaryotic cells (those cells having a nucleus) which is presented as a case of a cell devouring another one of its kind. However, seeding the story right from such primordial mists of time is a case of imaginative overreach than a lucid interpretation of good science. The history of meat eating in hominins is much more interesting as most of our close cousins like gorillas and orang utans are strict vegetarians. In Zaraska’s opinion, the absence of a coat of hair in humans is due to the change in predation habits. To eat the flesh of other animals, either you have to scavenge the remains from other predators’ kills, or you have to hunt the small game yourself. Both cases involve a good amount of running and quite surprisingly, human endurance in running is legendary. Antelope and cheetah are definitely faster, but they can’t keep the pace for an extended period of time as man does. Such a high dissipation of energy mandated an efficient method of cooling and the coat of hair gave way to sweat glands. Stamina for hunting and running necessitated the eating of meat, which is projected as the cause of man’s dependence on meat.

The author dismisses some common misunderstandings about the necessity and efficacy of meat as a provider of protein. Our body needs specific amino acids to make the proteins essential for us. We can obtain these amino acids by decomposing proteins collected from a meaty diet. Of course, these amino acids are available in plant food as well, but the most essential ones (nine in number) come fully assembled in meat and egg. If you want to compensate this using vegetarian food, a lot of varied ingredients are to be painstakingly combined to harness the amount of protein required by the human body. For example, beans have many amino acids, but not the crucial methionine, which is available in plenty in grains. Zaraska makes it absolutely clear that the primary principle of nutrition in the 1950s, which articulated meat as the sole source of protein, is false. With many illustrative and witty examples, she clarifies this point conclusively. This balance of vegetarian food is applicable only to the modern western world who can afford a large variety of vegetables. For poor people in developing countries and those people of the ancient, meat is/was the only option for protein as agricultural yield and variety of vegetables were poor.

It is an undeniable fact that the fascination of meat to a large number of people involves the delicious smell it emits when cooked. The book examines what makes people hooked to meat. The delectable side of attraction to meat is the highly desirable aroma and flavour produced by a chemical reaction known as Maillard reaction that occurs when meat is cooked. There are chest-thumping naturalists among us who would shun anything ‘chemical’ and would go only for ‘natural’ products. These people are sure to miss a heartbeat when they learn that hundreds of chemicals are formed when meat is cooked! Gamma-heptalactone smells fruity, tri-methyl-pyrazine is musty in odour, while 3-octen-2-one is like crushed eggs. And no, they are not added by the cook, but made out of naturally occurring ingredients in meat. Japanese researchers found that contrary to previously believed, human tongue can distinguish a sixth kind of taste, which they termed umami (delicious in Japanese). And they isolated the chemical monosodium glutamate (MSG) from kombu (a kind of edible sea weed widely eaten in East Asia) which activates the umami receptor. Later, they produced the concentrate in industrial scale under the brand name ajinomoto (Japanese for quintessence of flavour). About 3.5% of people are blind to the taste of MSG, and the author hazards a guess that it is the proportion of people who are vegetarians, because, they can’t detect the delicious taste of meat! Apart from conscious vegetarians who stay away from eating meat for religious or ideological reasons, genetic factor is a serious contender for the aversion to flesh. The giant panda though technically belongs to bears and hence should be an ardent carnivore, has a gene that disables umami receptors. It is then no wonder that the panda thrives solely on bamboo shoots.

Zaraska portrays the gruesome methods by which animals are reared and ‘harvested’ (an industrial euphemism for killing) by the meat industry. Some of the practices are unethical and most cruel. Pigs’ testes produce a hormone called androstenone which imparts a bitter taste to its meat after it is killed. The industry’s solution to this issue is shocking – pigs are castrated while young without anesthesia, by making an incision on the testes and slowly squeezing the balls out with the unfortunate pig wailing its lungs out. Pale Veal is a kind of meat produced from animals separated from their mothers soon after birth which are then stuffed into tiny cages that don’t allow any movement and fed with milk formula which is devoid of iron. This deficiency makes the animal anemic and imparts an attractive pale colour to its flesh. The meat is tender because the animals never move, so the muscles are low in collagen. Such veal crates were banned in the EU in 2007, but still permitted in the U.S. There is an indirect cost to animal breeding to be paid by society. 60% of corn and half of soybeans that grow in U.S. are used for feeding livestock. However, there are gentler ways adopted by the meat corporations, at least for enhancing the quality of meat. The last hours and minutes of an animal’s life are much important in determining the taste. The more it suffers, the less tasty it becomes. Stress hormones like adrenaline and increased body temperature at the instant of a violent death reduces the quality by acidifying the muscles. Oozing of liquids that contain protein is a sure sign of stress at the last moment. But clever marketers add absorbent pads at the bottom of the containers to soak up the liquid. The most renowned brands of course use ethical practices, but the cost of it is also high, like Angus beef and Kobe beef.

It is reiterated many times in the book that meat is not a biological necessity to us. We can very well manage with plant-based diets, but the socio-cultural pulls exerted by meat is considerable, even in spite of the health hazards associated with it, such as increased likelihood of cancer, heart diseases, and diabetes. Eating meat symbolized power and potency in sex. Killing and eating something which can hurt us trumpeted the masculinity of the hunter. Going towards more vegetarianism is the way to proceed in view of conservation of resources, pollution and global warming associated with rearing cattle. There can be no hard and fast rule on the definition of vegetarianism. But there are some interesting terms used, like pescaterians (eats no meat, but fish is allowed), pesco pollo vegetarians (no red meat, but chicken and fish agreeable), flexitarians (generally avoids meat but eat it occasionally) and VB6 (vegetarians before 6 pm)! The term ‘vegetarian’ is derived from the Latin word ‘vegetus’ which means ‘a person who lives a healthy life’. Difference between a ‘vegan’ and a ‘vegetarian’ is not spelled out in the book, though it uses both words quite a large number of times. Zaraska addresses the peculiarity of India which traditionally held a vegetarian diet. This may be because the country is home to about fifty varieties of lentils, peas and beans – all loaded with protein. The culinary diversity helped Indians stick on to their plant-based food for this long. It is also said that perhaps nowhere else in the world except in India would it have been possible 3000 years ago to be a strict vegetarian.

The book includes a good index and a considerable section on Notes. It lists some hypotheses which seem to be not entirely based on fact. The author’s assertion that the higher a person’s IQ is at age 10, the less likely he will be a meat lover as an adult is debatable. Similar is the claim that the more a tribe bases its diet on animal products, the less power women hold and the more meat is consumed in a society, the more distance fathers keep from their infants.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star