The Ruler’s Gaze

Title: The Ruler’s Gaze – A Study of British Rule Over India From a Saidian Perspective

Author: Arvind Sharma

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2017 (First)

ISBN: 9789352641024

Pages: 426

The term ‘Orientalism’ was first coined in the West’s interactions with the Arab world where it proved to be a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of the West. It often involves treating other cultures as exotic, backward, uncivilized and at times dangerous. Edward Wadie Said (1935-2003) was a professor of literature at Columbia University whose 1978 book on Orientalism surmised about the cultural representations that are the bases of it. According to Said, Orientalism is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much orientalist work inherently political and servile to power. This book is a heroic attempt to translate Said’s theories on Orientalism to British scholarship on India and Hinduism and how it faithfully followed the ups and downs of British political power in India. In a quite convincing way, the book impresses on the readers that the relationship between knowledge and power is central to the way the West depicts the non-West. Arvind Sharma served in the distinguished Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and is the Birks Professor of Comparative Religion in the School of Religious Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He has authored many books and was instrumental in facilitating the adoption of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the world’s religions.

The perceptional change among British scholars on the social and literary mores of India underwent a drastic change as British power consolidated in the country. William Jones, a judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta, established the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 and set out to translate many Hindu texts himself. After the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the English made a foothold in Bengal, which was by no means secure. Their administrators in this period exhibit a mixture of tolerance and admiration, which is noted and eulogized by William Dalrymple in his magnificent ‘White Mughals’ (reviewed earlier in this blog).The turn of the nineteenth century foresaw the eventual demise of the Mughals for good, leaving the British in sole control of India. They conclusively defeated the Marathas in 1818 in the Third Battle of Panipat. Only the Sikhs remained free, but they were on friendly terms with the Company. The author notes with characteristic precision that a change in British mindset came about in this period. The Charter Act of 1813 allowed the Christian missionaries unfettered privileges to carry out their evangelizing work in India. These missionaries preached their religion from a position of power and authority backed by British arms, unlike in other parts of the world where they won people over by humility and service. Probably, that may be the reason why they failed so miserably in India! English was made the medium of instruction in schools in the year 1835. With the Mutiny in 1857, racism scaled its utmost heights. The imperialist zenith was reached in 1905, and it was in perceptible decline thereafter till its demise in 1947. Quite unlike Jones, later administrators and scholars like James Mill and Thomas Babington Macaulay thought Indian culture to be worthless, sought to replace it with Western thought and convert the inhabitants to Christianity. Sharma reiterates that this contrast in behaviour is consistent with Edward Said’s hypothesis that power and knowledge of an occupying power always go hand in hand. Vincent Smith’s observation that ‘the India which the British left in 1947 differed greatly from the archaic country which their diplomacy and arms had mastered a century and a half before’ is quite shocking to the sensibilities of modern Indians, even though it is just plain truth.

British rule had been an era of impoverishment. The author reiterates this general observation with solid facts and attempts to guess at those factors which led to the decline. In 1750, India produced about 24.5% of the global manufacturing output, which precipitously fell to just 2% in 1953. Sharma pinpoints the monopolization of land revenue as the primary cause of the collapse of village societies. He attacks the British projection of virtue on themselves in prohibiting the practice of Sati. They in fact formalized this heinous ritual in 1813, but abolished it in 1829. The author also presents a new fact about its surge in Bengal. He reckons that in pre-British India, the widows were supported through revenue-free land grants by local rulers. When the English East India Company took up the function of collecting land revenue, it started cancelling all such charity assignments to maximize their own profits. This led to many middle-aged widows committing Sati, long after their husbands were dead. Similarly, the exaggerated number of thugs caught and killed was a way of asserting the moral supremacy of the conquerors. The book then examines the issues of slavery, legal inequality of castes, dowry system, female infanticide, excesses of the caste system and illiteracy and deposits the blame solely on the British door. It analyzes the reports on indigenous education prepared in the provinces of Madras, Bengal and the Punjab. If the quoted figures are borne out by fact, it is evident that there had been a steep decline in literacy standards during British rule. Two factors that is thought to be behind all these maladies were the unsettled conditions in North India during the unraveling of the Mughal Empire and the large scale usurpation of land revenue by the Company for furthering their imperialist agenda. However, grave doubts exist against Sharma’s arguments on literacy. If literacy fell in British India as a result of British policy, it should have remained at a higher level in princely states where Indian kings administered. Such was not the case is clear from history.

The Greeks and the British were the only two European powers that militarily and culturally engaged India for a considerable time. Even though a chronological gap of two thousand years separates them, Sharma finds similarities in the narratives made by the Europeans on India. Alexander couldn’t consolidate his conquest of the gateway of India, but it opened up a steady stream of communication both ways. The book presents some interesting details of what India got in the deal. Astrology is now so much a part of Indian social life that someone discrediting it as superstition still encounters raised eyebrows. Sharma argues that astrology came to India from Greek sources. The earliest extant Sanskrit work on horoscopy in said to be the ‘Yavanajataka’ of Sphujidhwaja, composed around 150-270 CE. The title itself speaks of its origins and a cursory glance at the content of the work, which is freely available in cyberspace, establishes the hypothesis. This is quite something out of the blue! Ancient Greece is hyped to be the cradle of science and rational inquiry, but it is now alluded that it also housed some of the base superstitions as well. The author concludes that the science of phonetics arose in Europe after the discovery of Sanskrit, which devised the most scientific alphabet in the world. However, this debt is not always acknowledged. The book also examines the similarities in the treatment of Hinduism at the hands of Muslim and British scholars who came into contact with India as conquerors. A typical example is the narrative of Al Biruni, which is highly derogatory towards India. At the end of all these arguments, we are forced to conclude that physical power is the most essential factor that commands respect from foreign intelligentsia.

The book is extensively researched. The impressive bibliography and varied references supporting some of the original arguments attest to that. Sharma has made a unique attempt at quantifying the amount of ‘Orientalism’ prevailing in India during the period 1700-1947 and it is displayed as a graph, that is quite unusual yet heartening in a book on history and religion. The graph resembles a Bell curve, but the author warns not to draw too many inferences from its namesake in statistics. This book contains some excellent repartees to usual Western jibes on India, especially its caste system and perceived backwardness in administration and religious rituals. On the other side, the excessive number of verbatim quotes from other authors reduces the ease of reading, as the reader has to frequently re-adjust to the tenor of the authors. Besides, the author rationalizes some of the evils in Indian society when they come under the attack of Western scholars. He even quotes Manu Smriti to argue that it allows lying in court to save a human life, which may include a Sudra’s. Presumably, this refers to testimony against an accused, which don’t put the ancient legal system in a favourable light. The book is adorned with a comprehensive index and a good section of Notes.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Indira

Title: Indira – The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi

Author: Katherine Frank

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2001 (First)

ISBN: 9780002556460

Pages: 567

Indira Gandhi’s tenure as prime minister of India is remarkable for many firsts. It was the first time that a woman could achieve the country’s topmost political spot. It was then that the country had won a major war in more than a millennium of history. It was also the first time that a democratically elected politician imposed an autocratic regime on the people in the form of Emergency, which the people endured with surprisingly little demur. Katherine Frank was born and educated in the US, is the author of three acclaimed biographies and has taught at universities in West Africa and the Middle East as well as Britain. During six years of researching and writing this book, she spent extended periods in India. Frank presents a comprehensive, but slightly adulatory account of Indira Gandhi, first as the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru and then as the undisputed leader of India for a decade.

Nehru’s family had the stature of a dynasty. Frank notes that the ancestors themselves were very particular in associating with the powers that be. Raj Kaul who migrated from Kashmir to Delhi was a member of the court of Mughal king Farrukhsiyar in 1716. His great grandson Lakshmi Narayan was a lawyer of the English East India Company. Another forefather Gangadhar was a police officer in Delhi when the mutiny broke out in 1857. However, the family’s takeoff to the stratosphere of power took place with Jawaharlal Nehru, based on the wealth generated by Motilal Nehru’s legal practice at Allahabad. The family’s knack of managing finance was lost with Jawaharlal while that of managing politics was missing two generations later in the time of Rajiv Gandhi. Nehru maintained good personal rapport with the British even while opposing them on principles. The Cripps Mission of 1942 which examined constitutional reforms of India was opposed by Congress, but its leader Sir Stafford Cripps was a friend of Nehru. The book mentions a nice anecdote when Cripps visited Nehru’s private residence at Anand Bhawan. He stayed for a few days there and was a strict vegetarian. Not many in Anand Bhawan were vegetarian and very little fruits and vegetables were available in the Allahabad market. Nehru ordered melons from Kabul and grapes from Quetta for the visitor!

Nehru is thought to be a great statesman who moulded India with his ideological principles. Ever since Congress was expelled from power for the first time in 1977, more and more memoirs had started coming out, detailing the political acumen of him. Needless to say, most of the tales are disappointing for patriotic Indians. Some shocking observations can be seen in the book, One Life is not Enough by K Natwar Singh, reviewed earlier in this blog. This book presents a few episodes where the great leader’s true colours can be discerned. And no, I don’t mean to point out anything personal. We may grant him some reprieve on that front on account of the dictum that no man is perfect. But his fumbling on the Kashmir policy has caused great loss of lives and material for the country. Nehru’s Kashmir policy was solely founded on the person of Sheikh Abdulla. When he started showing overbearing and partisan tendencies, Nehru was at a loss to what to do. In the end, he was arrested and put behind bars for nearly a decade that tarnished the country’s credibility in the eyes of the world. In another instance, Frank narrates Nehru’s impulsive reaction to an international incident. When he heard that Chou En Lai’s plane had crashed at Hong Kong, he immediately wanted to send a telegram to the British prime minister, suspecting the incident to be orchestrated by British Intelligence. This message was very rashly worded and it required all the persuasive powers of Indira to detain him from dispatching the message. How much equanimity can we expect from such a person who handled the foreign affairs portfolio till his death? When the pro-American Sri Lankan Prime Minister Sir John L Kotalawala moved a resolution in the 1955 Non-Aligned Summit at Bandung condemning the neo-imperialism of the Communist Bloc, Nehru was so incensed that he wanted to walk out. So much for non-alignment!

Readers are more interested in reading about the events after Indira came to power, but a very large portion of the book is devoted to cover life before her ascent as the prime minister. But it then scrutinizes her unsure progress to the peak of glory in 1971, when Bangladesh was carved out after vivisecting Pakistan. Her early years as prime minister were beset with political and economic problems. To score a point over her rivals in the party, she adopted a socialist façade – without any sincere ideological commitment. She nationalized commercial banks, insurance companies, installed a license-quota-permit raj to rein in private enterprise and forfeited the Privy Purse granted to former sovereigns at the time of accession of their states to India. This endeared her to the masses, but caused catastrophic damage to the economy. The author reiterates the ideological bankruptcy of Indira by comparing the earlier and latter parts of her term from 1966 to 1977. After her son Sanjay’s rise to prominence – who was a proponent of free market competition and autocratic ways in dealing with the public – she backtracked on leftist populism. After reaching the summit of popularity in 1971, the author wryly comments that she had nowhere to go but down.

And down she went! Indira’s rule marked India’s unfortunate decline to corruption and muscle power of the rich. Sanjay openly made or marred deals. The book presents some details of corruption at Sanjay’s Maruti factory, which was set up to manufacture small cars. P N Haksar, the principal private secretary of Indira, was a man of integrity but was jettisoned from the post when he opposed some of Sanjay’s intrigues. Not content with that, Sanjay’s cronies in the government raided the business enterprises run by two elderly relatives of Haksar and arrested them. People who argue that Indira was ignorant of the mischief created by Sanjay will be hard-pressed to find a response as to what happened to Haksar. Indira’s politics was more a show than dedication was clear in her response to a question on literacy in India posed by an American journalist in 1978. Her outburst was ‘I don’t know how important literacy is. What has it done for the West? Are people happier or more alive to problems? On the contrary, I think they have become more superficial” (p.433). It has been the bane of India to have politicians like Indira Gandhi who wanted the people to be kept in darkness and feared that they’d be swept out of power when the populace became enlightened.

Indira Gandhi opened an era of terror in the form of Emergency (1975-77) when individual rights were suspended, opposition leaders put in jail and all political activity stopped. She was thrown out of power, but was rehabilitated three years later when the people who ousted her fought bitterly among themselves. If Indira is still remembered with a touch of fondness, the reason for that is her martyrdom, supposedly while trying to safeguard the integrity of the nation. But Katherine Frank describes many events which reveal that Indira dug her own grave. She encouraged and provided support to Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a dreaded Sikh militant, in order to engineer a split in Akali Dal, a party that stood up to and threatened the political supremacy of Congress in Punjab. She provoked unrest in other parts of the country by dismissing the state governments at her will, for protecting the petty political interests of her own party. The basis of all these undemocratic and underhanded deals was her desire to cling on to power at any cost.

The book is written with a good amount of research on Indira. However, the author’s grasp of the political landscape of India and other political parties than Congress appears to be amateurish and derived unchanged from other works. A noted feature of the book is its propensity to be a fountainhead of gossip. The suggestion on the parentage of Feroze Gandhi is shocking, as also that on his personal life and rumours in Allahabad. Allusions to M O Mathai’s (Nehru’s private secretary) relations with Indira are simply outrageous. It is suggested that a chapter titled ‘She’ was removed from Mathai’s biography at the behest of Indira because it contained nasty personal references to her. The book contains a few monochrome plates, a commendable section of Notes and a good Index. A chronology would’ve helped it much better.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Unholy Alliance

Title: Unholy Alliance – The Agenda Iran, Russia and the Jihadists Share for Conquering the World

Author: Jay Sekulow

Publisher: Howard Books, 2016 (First)

ISBN: 9781501141027

Pages: 310

The Middle East is a very unstable place now. Civil war, religious strife, terrorism and belligerent leaders make this region a grave cause of concern for the entire world on account of the vast quantities of oil exported from there to all parts of the globe, which makes the global economy ticking on. Any upset in the Middle East is guaranteed immediately to reflect in escalated fuel prices around the world. Any catastrophic hindrance to shipment of oil could even lead to recession of the economy that’d cause loss of jobs and civil unrest in a large way. All factors make it imperative for the people of the world to understand what is going on in the Middle East and the parameters that decide the flow of events. Jay Sekulow is a prominent free-speech and religious liberties litigator in the US, having argued twelve times before the US Supreme Court in some of the most groundbreaking First Amendment cases of the past quarter century. As chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), he is a renowned constitutional attorney and an acclaimed and distinguished broadcaster. In this book, Seklulow writes about the deadly situation in the Middle East and the reasons for violence and terrorism which originated there, but is now spilling over to the West under the guise of political asylum to refugees fleeing the war zone in the Middle East. This book makes a general survey of Islam, its history and guiding principles and the history of the Middle East.

Jihad is a religious tenet enjoined for all Muslims in which religious war is to be waged against unbelief. Sharp political observers were quick to leverage this aspect in ways favourable to them against their own fellows in the West with whom they were at war. Germany funded the jihadists at the turn of the twentieth century. Max von Oppenheim, a wealthy explorer, writer and later diplomat, plotted to kill other Europeans by jihadists. He could organize some brave effort, but all of which failed miserably. The Sanussi tribesmen attacked Egypt from Libya, which was instantaneously crushed. The Silk Letter Conspiracy in India was discovered by the British even before it began. However, this episode is little known in Indian history and need to be examined in detail by scholars.

Sekulow makes a study of the differences fundamental to Muslim and Western minds. The Muslim mind is influenced only by Islam, while the Western one is said to be moulded by the concepts of liberty, freedom and diversity, stemming from Judeo-Christian principles such as the imago Dei, which gives inherent value to all human life. Another pillar of difference is the cultural foundation of the two. The Islamic society is based on a ‘shame culture’, where one’s own social standing is adversely affected only when the facts of an evil deed is known to the society. The Westerners follow a ‘guilt culture’, where a person is eaten from the inside by guilt of the deed committed by him. This provides for confession by that individual and reconciliation. The third point of difference is that the Islamic world is intergenerational and community-oriented, whereas the West is much more concerned with individual liberty. Ingenuous the perceived differences are, but the author seems to be lauding the stereotypes.

The book takes another shot at radical Islam in comparing the concept of peace as conceived in the West against that of the Islamic world. Peace in the West is the state of coexisting with neighbours, respecting their rights and beliefs and requiring others to respect ours. To radical Muslims, peace is the state when all infidels have been converted, killed or forced to pay tribute and live by Sharia. The author has a valid point here. India is a country in which the Muslims are in a minority, but the nation grants them a secular polity and equal rights. Mutual respect of religions is a necessary prerequisite for furtherance of such lofty ideals. But, do the radical and say, some of the moderate Muslims in India respect other religions? An honest answer is hard to come by in the open. Sekulow quotes an Islamic scholar on the four teachings in madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan. The principles are 1) If kufr (disbelief, denial of Islam), shirk (saying anything about the oneness of Allah), or irtidad (apostasy) occurs anywhere in the world, the punishment is death and Muslims must enforce that punishment 2) non-Muslims are born to be subjugated. Only Muslims have the right to rule the world. Every non-Muslim government is illegitimate. When Muslims have power, they must take over that government 3) the world must have one government of Muslims, called Khilafah (caliphate). There is no need for separate governments and 4) the concept of modern nation states is kufr, which has no place in Islam. Doubtless to say, these teachings are repeated everywhere radical Muslims preach the doctrine.

An unstated aim of the book is to glorify America as the only country that stands up to and fights the terrorists. The author’s assertion that ‘the United States of America is the greatest country on the face of the earth’ (p.40) sets the tone of what is to come. While narrating the rise of Osama bin Laden in the Afghan war against the Soviets, the author does not mention even once that he was supported by the US in this mission. Shiite Iran’s unholy alliance with Sunni extremists and Russia is the motive of the book, but its alleged simultaneous backing of the Assad regime in Syria and the al-Nusra front is not logical. The book was published during the run up to American presidential election, and Barack Obama is severely criticized for his follies in the Middle East policy. The power vacuum created by Obama’s evacuation of US troops in Iraq was taken over by Russia, Iran and the ISIS. Sekulow assumes that the Judeo-Christian worldview underpinning the Western society is inherently benevolent and does not take into consideration the Enlightenment in Europe that firmly put religion in its place. The book hosts a very large number of notes for clarifying points and a good index.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Muhammad

Title: Muhammad – His Life Based on the Earliest Sources

Author: Martin Lings (Abubakar Sirajuddin)

Publisher: Other Books, 2015 (First published 1983)

ISBN: 9789380081540

Pages: 451

Martin Lings was born in England and spent his higher studies in the US. At 31, he went to Cairo and became a lecturer in Cairo University. He learned Arabic and got immersed in the study of Sufism. He converted to Islam and adopted Abubakar Sirajuddin as his new name. Lings produced and staged Shakespearean plays which were always a fascination for him. He belonged to the perennialist stream of mystical philosophy and considered himself as a Sufi. The author wanted to be known by his adopted Muslim name in later life, but the publishers of this book continues to use his old Christian name as some kind of a ruse to attract people belonging to other religions. Though written in an archaic style, it is comparatively new, having published for the first time in 1983.

Muhammad, as we all know, is the prophet of Islam who established his new, monotheistic religion among the tribes of Arabia in the seventh century CE. Arabian polity was strongly riven by tribal affiliations. Blood feud was common, which escalated ordinary scuffles that can be expected in any society, to murder and retaliatory assassinations in return. Muhammad’s legacy consisted primarily in knitting the clans and tribes together into a homogeneous society. At least, they remained so till his death. An example cited in the book is exemplary to enlighten his message of accommodation. When the clans in his own tribe of Quraysh could not come to terms on who should be privileged to carry the sacred black stone inside Kabah, he intervened with an ingenious plan which was acceptable to all. The prophet asked for a piece of cloth to be brought inside and placed the holy relic in the middle of it. Then he asked the tribal elders of all clans to carry the cloth together and that settled the issue amicably. Similarly in Yathrib, to where he was forced to migrate, the tribes of Aws and Khasraj were always in a state of civil war. Muhammad ended the strife and united the people of Medina (Yathrib). This united army humbled all the other tribes of Arabia.

Muhammad’s prophecy was first acknowledged by Bahira, a Christian monk, when he was only nine years of age and was following a caravan. Jewish scholars also did the same, which shows the common thread of ecclesiastical etiquette that binds the three religions. Arabia was the sanctuary of paganism at that time. Hubal was the chief god worshipped in Kabah. Three goddesses al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat were worshipped in the other nearby towns. Jews expressed their displeasure of the idolatry when they stopped visiting Kabah after the idol of Hubal was placed there. Quraysh of the pre-Islamic period were very tolerant. They even allowed an icon of the Virgin Mary and the child to be painted on an inside wall of Kabah (p.31). Even when the prophet was thrown out of Mecca, Muslims were still allowed to stay in the city and permitted to pray in the Kabah. The Quraysh hurled insults on the Muslims, who sometimes responded with violence. Muhammad and his followers used to pray in the glens outside Mecca clandestinely. The Quraysh saw them and ridiculed them, which ended in blows. The first blood was shed in the cause of Islam on that day, when Sa’d of Zuhrah struck and wounded one of the disbelievers with the jaw bone of a camel. The prophet was supposedly a good orator whose incising criticism so rattled the Quraysh that they exclaimed that ‘our fathers insulted, our ways scoffed at, and our gods reviled’. Naturally, the prophet was excommunicated from Mecca as a result of this.

Muhammad and his religion were not disposed to return the tolerance enjoyed by them at the hands of the Quraysh. One of his disciples, Abu Dharr of the Bani Ghifar tribe organized highwaymen to waylay the caravans of Mecca but would offer to give back what he had taken on condition that the traders would testify to the oneness of god and the prophethood of Muhammad – in other words, accept Islam (p.78). The book abounds with instances of such highhandedness. The Quraysh even allowed the prophet and his entourage to visit Kabah while they stayed out of the city. But no such magnanimity was showed in return. As soon as the holy city came in Muslim hands, the pagans were banned from visiting the shrine, which continues to this day. Hamzah’s violent retaliation on Abu Jahl for mocking the prophet assured the Quraysh of the new religion’s proneness to violence.

Intolerance is the hallmark of organized Islam in the present world. Contrary to what some of its apologists say, this was so even during the prophet’s lifetime, as seen in this book. The believers abused others at will, but the reverse of it was not permitted. Labid, who was a great Arabian poet of the time, recited a poem,

“Lo, everything save God is naught

And all delights away shall vanish”

The first line was acceptable to Muslims, but Uthman ibn Mazun of Jumah took strong exception to the second. He interjected that the delights of paradise won’t vanish and that the poet had abused god. Such fanatics don’t even leave poetic fantasy alone! In another instance of short temper, we see the antecedents of the attack on the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published caricatures of the prophet. Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf of Bani Nadir wrote satirical poems on Muhammad. Incensed at this, the prophet declared that “he did us injury and wrote poetry against us and none of you shall do this but he shall be put to the sword” (p.220). People who claim that violence is not the Islamic answer to rebuke would be hard put to explain these narrative tales in this book.

Lings claims that this book is written based on the earliest sources on the prophet’s life. The archaic language puts some readers off, but the structure of the book is logical and impartial, to a great extent. Supernatural occurrences are reduced to a minimum. The narrative does not feel like an original English text, which is expected when facts are heavily borrowed from early Arabic texts. It also includes a good index on places, persons, books and tribes.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star