From the Ruins of Empire

Title: From the Ruins of Empire – The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia

Author: Pankaj Mishra

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2012 (First)

ISBN: 9781846144783

Pages: 356

Asia is the cradle of all civilizations and religions now extant in the world. Europe was groping in barbaric darkness while culture had its finest flowers lolling in the gardens of Asia. This state of affairs continued till the fifteenth century when Europe at last caught up with Renaissance and overtook it two centuries later with Enlightenment. Industrial Revolution and the multifaceted devices science had invented helped the Europeans expand into Asia in search of colonies. Steeped in a culture that was stagnant for many millennia, Asia was humbled and European hegemony ruled over her. Asians watched their masters and responded in various ways to challenge them. A few imitated them, while many others wanted to go back to the fundamentals of their culture and religion. The first copied the concepts of modern society like national states, capitalism, socialism, rule of law and secularism, while the latter fell back on fundamentalism, which is mocking the foundations of the world order now. Pankaj Mishra tells about the pioneering intellectuals who guided the so-called Asian remaking that revolted against the West and put Asian countries on the path of progress after decolonization. The author principally writes for the Guardian, the New York Times and other leading journals. He lives in London and Shimla.

Originality and individuality had departed from the social and political mores of Asia from the mid-nineteenth century. The great continent had become the battleground of major European powers in their quest to carve up ever lucrative slices of the territorial pie with abundant raw materials and cheap labour. All the major upheavals in Asian history from 1850 till present are succinctly summed up by the author, which include the Indian Mutiny, Anglo-Afghan wars, Ottoman modernization, Turkish and Arab nationalism, the Russo-Japanese War, the Chinese Revolution, the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference, Japanese militarism, decolonization, postcolonial nationalism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. All these factors that decided the present shape of Asia are inextricably linked in some way or the other to western ideals. It was surprising at first to watch Europe subdue Asia as individually the Europeans are no more brave, innovative or sensitive or loyal than Asians. However, the social institutions that guided the Europeans were modern and full of energy. As members of corporate groups, churches, or governments and as efficient users of scientific knowledge, the Europeans mustered more power than the wealthiest empires of Asia (p.40).

Most Asians, as well as the book’s author assume an unappreciative perspective on Europe’s surging ahead after the Enlightenment. This did not come about in a day or two. Innovations and interdependent entities like efficient taxation, codified laws, conscript armies, and capital-raising joint-stock companies moulded its development. While Europe was perfecting these mechanisms with which they set out to subjugate the world, Asia was blissfully immersed in despotism and blindly following traditional wisdom. European subordination of Asia was not merely economic, political or military. It was also intellectual, moral and spiritual, which left its victims resentful but also envious of their conquerors.

Mishra tells his narrative based on the lives of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Liang Qichao and Rabindranath Tagore. All three tried to follow the West in the beginning, but quickly diverted their trajectory as soon as they detected the grave inner conflicts behind the facade of Western civilization. Al-Afghani fell out with the monarchs of Iran, Egypt and Turkey, even though he entered their services with the promise of radical new thinking. Communism also exerted its appeal on rising Asian intellectuals like Lian Qichao of China. One thing is to be clearly kept in mind here. Communism was yet one more Western ideology imported to Asia, like democracy, imperialism and nationalism. Qichao’s original view was that socialism had its roots in the terrible class inequalities and conflicts created by the laissez-faire policies followed in Western Europe after the Industrial Revolution. China, or any other Asian country, had experienced no such polarization or clashes. It was patriotism, not communism which had prompted Ho Chi Minh to believe in Lenin. Perhaps that’s the reason why communism enjoyed a more lasting presence in Asia. Even long after the overthrow of Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe, Chinese Communist Party is still going strong. Tagore, the celebrated Indian poet of global renown, believed that Western civilization, built upon the cult of money and power was inherently destructive and needed to be tempered by the spiritual wisdom of the East.

Asians discovered the chinks in Europe’s armour of superiority during and after the First World War. The war was bloody and exacted a heavy toll from the combatants. This fratricidal warfare among European states goaded the Asian intelligentsia into recognizing the pitfalls associated with blindly following the West. The Great Depression and the Second World War put the final nail in the coffin of colonialism. At this point, Islamic and other Asian countries parted their ways. Every nation dived into their cultural traditions when they faced a superior rival in the form of European imperialism which couldn’t be defeated in a conventional way. Countries like India and China extracted new hope and aspirations from the rich mines of those countries’ social treasure accumulated over the ages. But Islam was different. It is not just a religion, but a whole way of life that negates local differences and enhances blind devotion to a set of beliefs that reward obedience rather than skepticism. Countries like Iran and Turkey had a fertile past, but the disillusioned intelligentsia turned towards pan-Islamism as the key to unlock their winning streak once again. This had disastrous consequences. Not only did the strategy failed to produce a stable result (with a few exceptions like the Iranian theocratic state), it turned towards violent extremism that proved to be a scourge of the entire world. On the home front too, Israel emerged as a challenge to Arab self-pride. As terrorism was strictly dealt with elsewhere, the militants turned upon their own brothers. Now, Muslims are perhaps the largest victim of Islamic terror.

Mishra handles Europe and its ideals with a tinge of hostility and resigned acceptance. The demoralizing facets of colonialism are obviously exaggerated while the real civilizing mission goes unnoticed. Asian intellectuals used European capitals as their base for obtaining and dissipating knowledge. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani operated out of Paris and London in his intellectual career. The British readily tolerated him though he was preaching against their influence in the Muslim world. Tagore had a sizeable following in Britain. This was actually one of the drawbacks arraigned against European liberalism – that they allowed the lofty ideals of enlightened toleration in their own homeland, but denied it in the colonies. The book unfairly ascribes racial prejudices to most Western leaders before and during the World Wars. British Prime Minister Lloyd George might indeed have used the term ‘nigger’, or Australian Premier Billy Hughes might have uttered ‘cannibalism’, but such words were used in common parlance in those times. We should not judge the past in the glow of enlightenment of a future era. The book is provided with a good index, an extensive section on Notes and a commendable bibliography.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Changing Gods

Title: Changing Gods – Rethinking Conversion in India

Author: Rudolf C Heredia

Publisher: Penguin, 2007 (First)

ISBN: 9780143101901

Pages: 386

India is a secular country where the government does not interfere in religious affairs of the people and freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitution. Semitic religions are guided by notions of theological superiority and they engage in proselytizing and converting people of other faiths. The newly converted immediately thereupon scorn their earlier companions and way of life to undergo a cultural makeover. This creates strife in society, as the majority community takes this to be backstabbing under the guise of secularism. Why conversion? Strange it might seem, but the author is not able to provide a convincing response to this straightforward question in this book on rethinking religious conversion. Earlier, there was a plain plan of action. The white evangelicals treated native religions like Hinduism and Buddhism as manifestations of devil worship. Till a few decades ago, they openly preached this in the streets of India, giving a strong dose of dressing down to the gods and goddesses. As time went on and as people no longer takes such rebuke on their divine figureheads lightly, the missionaries backed down and changed track. The author claims oppression of the backward castes as the current reason for conversion. All these are clever stratagems of the preacher. This book presents the case of the evangelist on why conversion is necessary and can even be good for Indian society. Rudolf C Heredia is the founder director of the Social Science Centre with interests in religion, education and globalization. He has authored many books.

When the founding fathers of the Indian Constitution decided to include a proviso granting freedom to propagate one’s religion in the rule book, little did they realize the loophole they were providing to the proselytizing forces descending on the country like a swarm of locusts. Freedom of conscience means the liberty to enquire into the tenets of other religions on an individual basis and convert to another religion if he or she is truly convinced of its merits. It is and should be a personal decision. But what did actually happen? Some Christian sects took this as a ‘free for all’ to command the immense financial muscle of American evangelicalism and carry on proselytizing in India on an industrial scale with targets and incentives. There are now full-time professionals with monthly and annual targets in the business of religious conversion. Many states in the North East like Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram soon found themselves Christian-majority states, with their share in the population reaching as high as 90 per cent. After successfully completing the conversion drive in the North East, they diverted their attention to the tribal areas of Chhatisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand with similar success. Alarm bells started ringing at this stage. Under the guise of secularism which was granted magnanimously by the majority community (83 per cent of the members in the Constituent Assembly were Hindus), a subversive program was afoot to undermine the demographic pattern and the majority religion in India. Heredia also indirectly accepts the truth of this paradigm with his comment that ‘religious conversion is an unavoidable stumbling block for any aspiration for religious harmony, for any real hope of true religious understanding, both of which are so essential to contain a potentially divisive diversity’. Proselytizing is illegal in Israel, Nepal and all Muslim countries. Just compare the fate of Christians in Syria and Lebanon where they comprised nearly half of the population till a few decades ago. Gandhi termed conversion as ‘colonization of conscience’.

Heredia never questions the fact that India allows religious freedom to all. What he is furious about is the supposed ‘restrictions’ placed on preachers and pastors with foreign money at their backs in converting the people of this country. In a curious instance of retrospective reconciliation with Marxist thinkers, he quotes from them when it suits him to expose the Hindu fundamentalists. Leftist historians like Romila Thapar and Kosambi are mentioned aggressively. He bends over backwards to accommodate Islamic forces, comparing militant but nationalist organizations like the IRA and ULFA to the jihadis. Conquest and forced conversion in medieval India is written off with a casual remark that “obviously there was an inducement to convert and when the alternatives to refusal were extremely stark; it could easily amount to compulsion’ (p.44). Also, he assuages the victims that ‘there were great advantages for a subject people in adopting the religion of their conquerors’ (p.43). The founder of Wahhabism, which is the fountainhead of much of the violent terror in the world, is a reformer for the author. The Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim’s invasion and annexation of Sindh in 711 CE which heralded a millennium of Islamic invasion of India, is justified on the basis that the local ruler failed to protect Arab dhows from local pirates! Most of the sultans destroyed temples, but the author is ready to condone this too with an outrageous platitude as to “show dominance in newly conquered territories and when temple patrons were disloyal to the ruling power’.

The book treats India’s constitution as a sacred document wherever it allows religious freedom and propagation of religion, but assumes a don’t-care stance as far as national interests are concerned, as in comparing the troubles in Bangladesh in 1971 with the ‘unresolved plight of the Kashmiris’ (p.52). Does the author really feel that the Christians get a better treatment in Pakistan? Heredia then goes into a tirade against the Sangh Parivar and its opposition to religious conversion. The oppression faced by Dalits is his major area of concern, but grudgingly accept that their situation is not bettered by conversion. The author vilifies the Sangh’s catchphrase ‘justice for all, appeasement of none’, but can’t find anything faulty with it. The book persistently equates the Hinduism of the Parivar with nationalism and surmises that ‘religious fundamentalism is a quest for uncertainty and security in an unpredictable and changing world’.

Undue concern with party politics is evident in many pages of the book. The May 2004 election result in which the ruling BJP was swept out of power, is termed as a victory of secularism. He even hopes that this parliamentary election ‘might presage a return to reason but it was still a very precariously balanced multi-party coalition of varying and warring interests’. Such a shortsighted political view is laughable now, in view of the saffron party’s grand victory in 2014. Evoking suspicions of smear campaign, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi is projected as a Hindu-Sikh conflict. This is pure humbug, as the hands of prominent Congress-men and their accomplices in fomenting the riot are already widely known. In some instances, even Muslims also took up arms against the Sikhs at the instigation of Congress leaders. Poetic exaggerations in ancient Tamil texts which says that 8000 Jain monks were impaled at Madurai by Shaivite kings is taken literally by the author as another instance of the perceived intolerance of Hinduism.

The author finds Sangh Parivar’s call to ‘cultural nationalism’ unsettling and he assails it incessantly by claiming that it is basically an upper caste-class instrument for dominance. Heredia’s logic for conversion is self-defeating when he asks whether if a person finds that changing his religion promotes his economic opportunities and democratic rights, or his upward social mobility in some way, should he be prevented by the state from converting. If a minority religion can guarantee all these to its neophytes with foreign money flowing in like water, wouldn’t it be a mockery of the secularism to which the author pays lip service whenever it suits his purpose? Heredia’s contradictory logic is striking when he argues that religion can’t be banished to the private life of an individual, ‘because it is never just an individual or family affair, but has necessary community and social dimensions’ (p.143). However, he denies this faculty to the majority community.

Four case studies of prominent individuals on the issue of religious conversion are given, which includes Ambedkar, Gandhi, Pandita Ramabai and Sister Nivedita. Here too, a conversion out of the Hindu fold is eulogized, while that in the reverse direction is shunned upon. Pandita Ramabai converted to Christianity, so her ’critique of patriarchy can be looked upon and appreciated’. Nivedita was an Irishwoman who converted to Hinduism; hence she represents ‘a revivalism that serves the religious fundamentalists and extremists’ (p.224). Heredia invents excuses to justify and propagate conversions; the conversion of tribals is said to be ‘a search for a group identity and an expression of their quest for autonomy’, while attempts to assimilate them to the national mainstream is excoriated for its attempt to destroy the native ethnic sensibilities of tribal people!

Self-interest and narrow group loyalty can be read between the lines. Heredia is not at all concerned with disallowing reservations in jobs for those scheduled castes who had converted to Christianity or Islam. He mentions this, but is not prompted to raise this issue as a case of discrimination. What is the motive here? Conversion from scheduled castes has tapered off as a result of denying the benefits of reservation and so there is no point in making a hue and cry about it. On the other hand, the tribals continue to enjoy reservation even after conversion. Most of the conversions to Christianity take place among tribals and this explains the author’s silence on this point. Hindu organizations are now in the process of conversions themselves. Ghar Vapasi (homecoming) as they call it irritates the author so much that he feels it ‘intimidating’. However, if you allow conversions in this country, all organizations are free to employ it, which is only natural justice. When open conversions began to attract ire, the missionaries are now using covert tricks like ‘Krista-bhakta movement’ of 1992. This society convenes bhajans and prayer meetings like Hindus, but with Christ as the ishtadevata. Conversions are not immediately sought either.

The book is really difficult to read as most of the ideas are recycled and churned with clever wordplay which makes a lot of noise, but without any real substance. A good index and a commendable list of references are included.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

Armies of God

Title: Armies of God – Islam and the Empire on the Nile 1869 – 1899

Author: Dominic Green

Publisher: Arrow Books, 2008 (First published 2007)

ISBN: 9780099487050

Pages: 370

After Britain consolidated her colonial stranglehold on India, the trade route linking the two countries assumed strategic importance and had to be protected at any cost. The naval route around the Cape of Good Hope was sufficiently fortified by a series of ports on both coasts of Africa. Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 to find a stable alternate route to India led to a race between Britain and France over the control of Egypt. The digging and opening up of Suez Canal in 1869 under French supervision and management reduced the distance to India by 4000 miles. With this, Egypt became the pivot on which British imperialist designs rested in balancing its careful exclusion of other European powers from its sphere of influence and marketing of the colonial produce. As the Suez carried 70% of British steamer ships to India, their statesmen detached Egypt from the influence of Ottoman sultans and invested its puppets as Egypt’s rulers under the honorific ‘khedive’, whose scope ended up somewhere between a sultan and a vassal. Egyptian society was the most socially advanced in Africa and the people resented the British game of running the land behind the façade of an impotent khedive. The native soldiers rebelled against British power and Turkish nobility which treated them as outcastes. All these rebellions were mercilessly put down by the British. At this pitiable state of affairs in the nation’s mainstream politics, the dark forces of religion raised its ugly head. A Sufi mystic arose in Sudan, which was annexed to Egypt a few decades before, and claimed himself to be a prophet of god. His warriors fought with diabolical vigour and utmost religious fanaticism. The origins of modern jihad in the Middle East may be traced to this religious upstart. He won a few battles at first, inflicting heavy losses on the British. But a retributive force was soon assembled that decimated the jihadis in a battle between their medieval army brandishing spears and swords with a few rifles against the world’s most sophisticated military power with high-speed machine guns. This book tells the story of British interventionism in Egypt from the opening of the Suez in 1869 to the aftermath of the victory in Sudan in 1899. Dominic Green is a scholar of English literature and Jewish studies who is currently the Mandel Fellow in Comparative History at Brandeis University.

Ours is an age of science and enlightened idealism. Even though each person can’t individually live up to the lofty heights of ideal behaviour, it is an accepted moral that each should at least strive for it. Religion also has assumed the mantle of benevolent altruism as if it had been its preserve over the ages. This is plain wrong. All religions followed evil such as slavery as long as it was a socially acceptable custom in the society in which it thrived. Slavery was wiped off the face of the earth not by calls to fraternity and divine love professed by the religions. In fact, they tried to cling on to this heinous custom citing divine sanction in the holy books. The author presents the case of Egypt in 1857 when the Ottoman sultan Abdul Mejid banned slave trade under British pressure. Islamic law allowed slave hunts and trading as long as a Muslim didn’t enslave a fellow Muslim. They were allowed to wage jihad, capture infidels or Christians, enslave them and use them in further jihads to expand the dar al-Islam (land of Islam). This was so conventional and commonplace that the slave raiders used the term ghazwa to describe their campaigns as in early Islam in Arabia. The condition of the slaves was pitiable in the extreme. They were chained, whipped, and deprived of food and water. The elderly were left to die by the wayside and very young infants who couldn’t walk simply thrown aside. The male slaves were castrated by cutting off the entire genitalia at the abdomen and cauterized the wound with boiling butter. The eunuchs were a cherished commodity to guard the extensive harems of sultans. As soon as the slave trade was banned, the business interests and religious conservatives in Mecca set off a jihad against the Ottoman authorities.

The much trumpeted ‘White Man’s Burden’ consisted of civilizing the black people of the world. The British believed in ‘Three Cs’ for African enlightenment – Christianity, commerce and civilization. But the local ethos in Africa had not grown much beyond loyalty to one’s own tribe fortified with Islamic precepts. This was obviously poorly assimilated. Fraternity among Muslims naturally rose up when they faced a common Christian enemy, but in his absence, they fought each other. Shiism expects a redeemer to appear at the end of time. Called Mahdi by the adherents, the redeemer is thought to conquer the world and establish a kingdom of god on earth. Mohammed Ahmed, a mystic from Dongola claimed himself the Mahdi and established a theocratic state at Khartoum, enslaving the whole of Sudan. The author presents a clear narrative that brings out the tenuous links Sudan maintained with Egypt and remarks insightfully that in religious societies where religion doubled as politics, messianism was the politics of despair. Ansar, the Mahdi’s troops of loyal followers, sacked Khartoum and brutally decapitated its British Governor Charles Gordon. His lieutenants roamed the city and countryside in jihadi style – looting, raping, pillaging and murdering the defenseless citizens not following the conquerors’ religious sect. Captured women were congregated in the market place and the jihadi leaders took their pick. The Mahdi’s plan for women is given in the book. He wanted the women not to go outside unless ‘strictly necessary’ and not to speak in public. She could not speak to a man unless she wore a veil. When she did speak, she must whisper. If she uncovered her hair ‘even for the blink of an eye’, she received 27 lashes. If she used ‘obscenity’, she received 80. Her duty was to put her womb at the service of jihad (p.128). Judging from the reports emanating out of the regions of the Middle East where the ISIS hold sway, we have to admit that nothing has changed in the Islamic world in the last 150 years!

British response to the defeat at Khartoum was slow in coming, but well calculated. When at last the retribution came, it depended more on scoring a point over the French rival force that set out to capture and control the headwaters of the Nile. Anyone who regulated the flow of Egypt’s life force of the Nile controlled the economy of the country as well. The intervening period saw the ‘Scramble for Africa’ when the European powers openly bandied about their imperialist ambitions. Britain sat somewhat contented counting on her vast white colonies of Australia and Canada and also its eastern jewel of India. But lesser powers like Italy and Belgium were desperate to make a foothold in Africa which was abundant in natural resources and raw materials of all kinds. The book describes the vagaries of British politics during the period. Readers lose sight of the figures in a melee involving Gladstone, Lord Salisbury and Rosebury. Green presents the portrait of an ineffective, indecisive and openly incoherent administrative apparatus that ran the country. Leaders are accountable to the people in a democracy, but the wild rush behind populism extols the dangers of leaders who have other agendas and personal shopping lists. The punitive force was assembled after a gap of fifteen years. General Herbert Kitchener decimated the Dervishes of the Khalifa’s army, as the Mahdi had died in the meantime and power turned over to a caliph representing the spiritual preceptor. The fight was an uneven one. The local fighters’ captured rifles were no match for the Maxim machine guns of the British which spewed out bullets at a rate of 500 a minute. 10,000 soldiers of the Khalifa were killed in just three hours of fighting and another 16,000 were badly wounded. Not surprisingly, Kitchener unfurled the British flag over Sudan thereby opening up another chapter in the history of colonialism and exploitation by the European powers.

The book is delightfully written with a clear strain of humour and wit permeating its every page. The subtle humour makes us laugh as well as think hard at the fickleness of human character even though the person might be occupying a highly dignified seat. Prime ministers Gladstone, Salisbury, the khedives of Egypt and the military commanders are all the receiving end of Green’s sarcastic best. A lot of monochrome plates and a number of maps are included. Extensive notes are given at the end of the book. A good bibliography and a nice index add to the attraction.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star