A Book of Conquest

Title: A Book of Conquest – The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia

Author: Manan Ahmed Asif

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2016 (First)

ISBN: 9780674660113

Pages: 250

India was partitioned in 1947 to make space for the state of Pakistan as an abode for the Muslims of the subcontinent. In spite of the hollow protestations of secular politicians like Nehru, the wide chasm that separated the Hindu and Muslim communities was obvious to all. Jinnah’s contention that the Hindus and Muslims are two nations enjoyed the benefit of practical wisdom. The newly founded Pakistani state was quick to write a history for themselves, totally unattached to mainstream history of that period, which had centred its attention on Delhi and North India. They elevated Chachnama, a thirteenth century Persian work as the foundational text of the state of Pakistan. This book narrates the conquest of Sind in 712 CE by a general of the Baghdad caliph, named Mohammed bin Qasim. He defeated the Hindu king Dahir and annexed the territory to the caliphate. Though killed by his own master in the end owing to the machinations of the daughters of the dead king Dahir, the process of upheaval set in motion by Qasim heralded more than a millennium of strife between the Hindu and Muslim communities. The author refutes the pedigree of Chachnama as a book of conquest and presents forceful arguments in claiming the ancient text as a fountain of political theory in the genre of books such as the Arthashastra of Kautilya. Manan Ahmed Asif is of Pakistani origin and is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Columbia University.

Chachnama (the annals of Chach) is a book of legends, but the author insists that it contains snippets of conquest, conciliation, dialogue, political theory, alliances and peaceful coexistence of societies. V S Naipaul has another idea about the book as ‘describing the destruction, by an imperialist power with a strong sense of mission and a wide knowledge of the world, of a remote culture that knows only itself and doesn’t begin to understand what it is fighting’! Chachnama was written by Ali Kufi in 1226 CE in the the city of Uch which was the political capital of Sind. It describes the history of the regions of Sind from roughly 680 CE to 716 CE. It tells the story of the Hindu Brahmin king Chach who ruled Sind and its conquest by the Arabs. Asif stresses on the Arab usage of the term “al Hind wa’l Sind” (Hind and Sind) to reiterate the geographic and cultural separateness of the two, thus reinforcing the rationale for Pakistan. He also adds disdainfully that the terms Hindu or India or Hinduism is a construction imposed from the outside (p.31).

Asif’s attempt is path-breaking in that while the established wisdom among historians make Chachnama out as a translation, or rather, ‘trans-creation’ of original Arab accounts contemporaneous with Qasim’s campaign in Sind, he recreates it as an exemplar of political theory and advice. The author makes a thorough survey of the literature. The first account of an expedition to Sind appears in Kitab Futuh al-Bulden by Baladhuri. It mentions a naval expedition by Uthman bin Abi’l Thaqafi, the governor of Bahrain in 636 CE. Further adventures were cut short by the sharp rebuke from caliph Umar, who was more concerned about consolidating his hold on nearer kingdoms such as the subjugation of the Sassanian Empire. Arabs came to Sind on account of the presence of rebels like Kharajites and Alawis who used the province as a base to foment trouble on the caliph’s territories. However, legends have it that Qasim was deputed to extract revenge on the assault of Muslim women at the hands of pirates along the Sind coast, who couldn’t be kept in check by the ruler on land.

Chachnama differs from other conquest narratives. Unlike other stories of invasion that glorify the conqueror, it presents the tale of a just ruler from the pre-Islamic period. Chach was a Hindu king who was a righteous and generous ruler. Baladhuri, whose work is thought to be the source of Chachnama, treats Sind as a frontier province beset with disorder and distress, whereas the author of the latter text keeps Sind as the centre of attention. Moreover, Qasim is portrayed as much more tolerant than many of the later conquerors. He declared that ‘the Budd’ (local temples) are like churches of the Christians and Jews and the fire-houses of the Magians. We don’t know what kind of a person Qasim really was, but the Chachnama finds no practical differences between the elite of the Hindu and Muslim aristocracies.

The author takes great pains to argue his case for Chachnama as a piece of political theory but is far from convincing for anyone who has even a cursory acquaintance with Arthashastra. Chachnama is just a ballad, or story that appeals to the listeners without placing any particular community or religion in a bad light. Influence of Panchatantra is also deduced by Asif, but he makes it clear that the influence came through the Arabic translation of Panchatantra, where it appeared as Kalila wa Dimna in 750 CE. Even accounting for the inspiration from Sufism, assimilation of different polities as not through forced conversion but through alliance and law, will be granting the author of Chachnama an enlightenment of a future era. With no other similar source contemporaneous with it, the author’s argument is plausible, but not exactly possible.

Two basic claims are put forward in this book. One is that Chachnama is neither a work of translation nor a book of conquest. The other is that this must be read as a text of political theory and represents a politically heterogeneous world of thirteenth century Sind. His contention that this is the first instance of Muslim presence in the subcontinent is not exactly true. The western coasts of India, particularly Kerala, have long been in continuous trading contact with Arabia. The first mosque in India is said to have been built in Kerala in the seventh century – without destroying a temple – before the Arab invasion of Sind. However, Sind is undoubtedly the first province of India that decidedly came under Muslim hegemony.

A notable feature of the book is its tirade against British historiography. East India Company’s historians and other Asiatic scholars sifted through the available material in the native languages and presented the history of India as a three-layered body with Hindu, Muslim and British periods, in that sequence. The earliest Hindu period was said to be a golden era that was devastated by a string of Muslim invasions from the outside, which was put under check in the British period through the East India Company’s victory over the Muslims. Quite expectedly, Asif makes a seething criticism against this colonial classification. This might possibly be the official Pakistani view of history. What is astonishing is that the leftist historians of India also toe this same line of reasoning. When you ask them why the British followed this scheme, the old cliché is thrown back in your face – ‘the British wanted to divide and rule’! However, Asif’s argument is quite reasonable and even rational, when Pakistan’s national interests are also weighed in. What is incomprehensible is the blind following of Indian leftist historians of the Pakistani system of historiography.

The book is a little difficult to read in the first part, but is compensated for this with lucidity in the second. The author travels through the ancient city of Uch and his photographs add a lively interest to the narrative. It also contains an excellent section of Notes and a good index.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

A Beautiful Mind

Title: A Beautiful Mind – The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash

Author: Sylvia Nasar

Publisher: TouchStone, 2001 (First published 1998)

ISBN: 9780743224574

Pages: 461

Everyone has heard of a scientist in an unknown land who had gone crazy due to his supreme intelligence. Legends say that he went off-balance after indulging in complex thoughts and experiments (yes, it’s always a ‘he’ in such stories). Nobody could put a name to the protagonist of the tale, and it is always thought to be a figment of imagination. This book presents the story of a gifted mathematician who had gone insane at the height of his career. John Forbes Nash Jr (1928 – 2015) was a mathematician who proposed groundbreaking theorems in the fields of game theory, differential geometry and partial differential equations of pure mathematics. He became mentally deranged at the age of 31 and wandered aimlessly in the campus for three decades prophesying about plans of world domination and how he prevents such events from occurring. After three decades of illness an unbelievable remission took place and Nash could continue his research from where he had stopped. In the meantime, his ideas spread far and wide and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994, along with John Harsanyi and Reinhard Seiten. This book tells the story of Nash’s life till the year 1998. Sylvia Nasar is a German-born American journalist. She has contributed to many journals and worked as Professor of Business Journalism at Colombia University. This is her most noted work and is awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography in 1998.

Nash’s succumbing to mental illness is all the more heart-rending on account of the depths he fell into, as a result of social isolation spawned by the disease. At one time, he was a world-renowned mathematician, a genius, an attractive young man who had just married and in the next year, he lost it all and was doomed to psychiatric institutions periodically and became a raving maniac. He loathed being confined to asylums, yet had to contend with forcible incarceration five times and subjected to therapies like insulin overdose and other very potent new drugs. Nash’s social life before the disease struck him was not much to write home about. He was ‘compulsively rational and wished to turn life’s decisions into calculations of advantage and disadvantage, algorithms or mathematical rules divorced from emotion, convention or tradition’. Even then, he had a mistress and an illegitimate son by her. The worst thing was that Nash was extremely reluctant to spend money on them, at one time even suggesting that the child be put up for adoption by other childless couples. The child’s mother had to sue him for child support before Nash was forced to loosen his purse strings to give some money to his first son. His illness manifested itself after his formal marriage to Alicia Nash and a week after the birth of a son by her. Readers’ sympathy should really be heaped on Alicia rather than Nash himself, who was obviously not sensitive to adversities on account of the disease. She had the unenviable task of taking the decision to hospitalize her husband, much against his will, and supporting the family with her meager income. The times had been terrible to her, as seen in her own falling prey to depression and enlisting psychiatric support. She applied for and obtained divorce from Nash after a few years due to the enormous emotional strain. Nash and Alicia lived separately for some years, but then began to live together again. Three years after the publishing of this book, they married again and remained so till the end of their lives. The cruelest cut must have been the moment when their only son was diagnosed with the same mental disorder as his father. He too was committed to hospitals. After more than two decades of falling into solitude and ill-repute, Nash slowly began to grow better and sane. He was still reserved, but such recluse academicians can still be found in many of the world’s universities. Nash’s remission came about in the mid-1980s and he could once again take part in the research taking place at Princeton.

Nash’s contribution to a branch of mathematics called game theory led to a Nobel Prize in Economics. It was a budding field in the 1940s, when the famous mathematician John von Neumann introduced it to the world. But his theorems on two-person, zero-sum games were not realistic and had few practical applications other than in extreme cases of total war. Concepts like deterrence, limited war, disarmament and negotiation, which are so fundamental a part of day-to-day strategies couldn’t be accommodated in Neumann’s scheme of things. Nash elaborated on the idea to other real-world scenarios as well, and speculated about stable strategies which are since called Nash equilibrium. The author does not say much about game theory at all. This is a general drawback of the book itself. Even though it handles the life of a great mathematician and describes the careers of other great contemporaries, it keeps silent about their areas of specialization. The book contains a vivid description of the secret deliberations of the Nobel Prize committee in which some prominent members fiercely opposed Nash’s candidature on account of his persisting illness. It was a great boost to the morale of Nash and the credibility of the prize itself that it was eventually awarded to him.

Persecution on the basis of religion is rife in today’s world. Things were much worse in the interlude between the two world wars when Germany raised antisemitism to the level of a national credo. Hitler and his Nazi party successfully portrayed Jews as the cause of defeat in war and consequent economic woes of the nation. Targeted physical attacks on Jewish enterprises were followed by intellectual skirmishes against Jewish scholars. It may seem outrageous to us now, but Germans didn’t want to claim Albert Einstein as one of them, solely due to his Jewish ancestry. Academicians escaped out of Germany in droves, while the Nazis rejoiced over their exit. However, this turned out to be a drain on the intellectual reservoir of Germany at immense benefit to the U.S, which granted the fugitives asylum in its prestigious universities. The Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton was founded in the first quarter of the twentieth century by Rockefeller and other rich philanthropists. It beckoned the fleeing scientists with open arms. Einstein, John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner were their prize-catches. The Allies got a big boost during the war upon the efforts of these scientists. The nuclear bomb is the most potent weapon proposed and built by the scientific community. This book narrates this brain drain in very good detail.

What is especially noteworthy is the amount of research the author has made to compile this fairly large book. Comments have been sought from nearly all those who knew Nash before he went ill. Another remarkable fact is the level of support provided by the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton to the sick genius. Though bereft of any official position, it granted him free access to its facilities without hindrance. Such was the degree of respect commanded by Nash that everyone sympathized at his plight and extended whatever help was needed. The book includes some photographs whose clarity and visual appeal leaves much to be desired. Being a biography that covers so large a period, a bit more humour would’ve done wonders to the book.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Why India Needs the Presidential System

Title: Why India Needs the Presidential System

Author: Bhanu Dhamija

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9789351363460

Pages: 373

In one sentence, ‘forceful but not convincing’.

Coalition governments are a nightmare in any democracy, and more so in India where money plays undue influence on the political decision-making. After Rajiv Gandhi’s administration was voted out of power in 1989 and before Narendra Modi sworn in as prime minister in 2014, the quarter century had been a harrowing time for probity and integrity in the public sphere. Since no party could rule on its own, the partners extracted their pound of flesh in the form of concessions and kickbacks. Corruption skyrocketed during the tenure of Manmohan Singh, who had absolutely no popular backing and was selected for the top post only because of his unflinching loyalty to the party bosses. This sad plight of the country evoked responses from scholars and numerous ways were envisaged to make the executive safer from venal legislators, while at the same time keeping it accountable to the people. Bhanu Dhamija proposes the American presidential system in this book as the panacea for all ills facing India at present. The author is a political commentator who is the founder and chairman of the Divya Himachal group, the largest newspaper publishing company in Himachal Pradesh. He has spent long years in the US, where he had founded a media company that published trade journals.

The analysis outlined in the book is heavily tilted towards the American system. The author’s contention is that the three features of a political system, namely political fairness, a national agenda and participatory democracy are not available in India. We had copied the British system as a whole, which is said to be deceptively attractive. There, monarchy was a crucial non-partisan institution in which all powers were reposed. The British system needed a small homogeneous nation with no religious controversy to prosper. Besides, it was fit only for a unitary state and not for a federation like India, as argued by Dhamija. Some comments are very novel, like ‘government is behind every evil in society and every virtue’.

The book laments the dominating role played by the Congress party in the Constituent Assembly and that of Nehru in the Congress and concludes that the Assembly was unduly influenced by this pressure group. Congress controlled 208 out of the 324 seats. Discussions were held in party forums and decisions taken. The members were then issued whip asking to vote along the party line. This eliminated the chance of a free and fair deliberation taking place on the floor of the House. Dhamija even alleges that the Drafting committee of the Assembly was ‘asked only to dress the baby’. He has harsher words about the role played by Nehru, that he ‘believed that he knew what was best for the nation. As such, he felt that his views deserved to reign supreme. He was attracted to the parliamentary system because it offered all the trappings of aggrandizement. It provided the wherewithal for one man to prevail’ (p.15).

Parliamentary system is alleged to have paved the way for the partition of India when coupled with Congress’ reluctance to share power with the opposition. In the 1937 elections to the provinces, Congress won seven out of the eleven states and the Muslim League was summarily defeated, winning nowhere. Jinnah hoped that the Congress would share power with his party in a spirit of accommodation and conciliation. But this didn’t materialize. Of course, the Congress was not under any legal obligation to share power. However, this denial stoked fears of living forever under majority rule in a large section of Muslims. Calls for a separate Islamic state came up in 1940. Dhamija argues that parliamentary system is inherently riddled with the domination of the ruling party, while the aspirations of the minority can be more honourably accommodated in the presidential system. In India, the legislative control of the executive is absent as the government controls the legislature on account of the ruling party’s numerical supremacy in the parliament. Party bosses reign supreme in such a scenario, as seen in the extra-constitutional influence of political dynasties. In the presidential system, the candidates are selected by party primaries. Here, Dhamija forgets that in the Indian context, party bosses can still control the outcome of the primaries.

The book contains comparison of the political systems of India, the UK and the US, with extensive quotes of the speeches in the constituent assemblies. Such fine details of the American system put the readers off a little. On the Indian constitution-making experience, the author has some stunning tales to tell. The constitution developed out of the first draft by B N Rau, the advisor of Nehru. He had sent a questionnaire to the Assembly members soliciting their views on the essential features of the new constitution. He got only one response from the members and hence prepared a draft himself. In a joint meeting of the Union committee headed by Nehru and Provinces committee chaired by Patel, the consensus reached was to go for the presidential system. However, the Union committee mysteriously ignored the suggestion. Similarly, the Provinces committee had decided to employ direct election to choose state governors on the insistence of Patel, but when the Drafting committee introduced it in the Assembly, this was changed in favour of appointment by the Centre. Patel was not present in the Assembly at that time, while Nehru rose to claim that this change was with Patel’s consent. The Centre always viewed strong provinces with suspicion and Nehru’s arguments about an elected governor were, a) elected governor would, to some extent, encourage separatist tendency, b) might be some kind of rival to the government of the province and c) enormous elections would be required to select the governor.

The book compares the bad features of the Indian system with the good ones of the American presidential scheme. There, the outlook of the two major political parties – especially on economic, societal and foreign affairs – are essentially the same. The American society is much more homogeneous than Indian, by melding themselves in the great American Melting-pot. But in India, each caste, community or sect jealously preserves its own customs and characteristics. Speeches in the Constituent Assembly opposing the parliamentary system do seem to be unduly praised in the book. The author forcefully drives home the point that autocracy or oligarchy is much more feasible in the parliamentary system, even though most Indians – many of them very learned – think otherwise. Non-separation of the legislature and executive is the cause of this. Nehru went for a strong government at the centre, but is said to have forgotten that the strength of a nation comes not from a forceful government, but from a willing people. Dhamija describes many grueling episodes from the Emergency era to show how Indira Gandhi usurped all powers to keep within her household.

The author expresses unrestrained enthusiasm for the presidential system. The book is written under the presumption that ‘India’s political system is completely broken’ (p.150), which is definitely not the case. Mitigating features of our country is not taken into consideration. Even though parliamentary system means that one party can run the show singlehandedly, even a cursory glance at the past shows that minorities and sectarian interests are duly accommodated. Examples are cherry picked to bolster the author’s arguments. Dhamija argues that the prime minister’s powers to appoint judges is an intrusion into the freedom of judiciary in India, but praises the American president’s privilege to nominate judges as ‘it is to give expression to people’s wishes in the judiciary’. Indirect election of the Indian prime minister is much derided, but the election of the US president is touted as the supreme example of expression of the people’s free will. This is not exactly so. The American president is elected through an electoral college, and the citizens’ privilege is limited to select a member to this college. How can this be called ‘direct’? More than two prominent candidates have the potential to wreak havoc in that system as well. India’s anti-defection law is vilified as a scheme that subverts free debates and voting in the House. However, when we consider the pathetic state of the legislature that was prevailing until that law came into force, in which there was rampant cross-voting by accepting bribes, one can hardly share the author’s viewpoint. The book is provided with a good bibliography and a nice index to look up the text.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star