Charlatans

Title: Charlatans

Author: Robin Cook

Publisher: Macmillan, 2017 (First)

ISBN: 9781447298557

Pages: 435

Rarely do you find reviews of fiction in these columns and the plain truth behind this fact is that I am quite awkward in evaluating that genre of literature. Non-fiction is slightly more difficult to read but reviewing it is quite straightforward as you only have to check the facts, how it relates to the established opinion and/or whether the author has support of enough material to against it. At least, that is the way I do it. On the other hand, reading fiction is really easy, but analyzing it in light of the emotional content of the cast is really formidable. Fiction has infinite range as it is constrained only by the author’s imagination. But once in a while, excellent works of fiction reach one’s hand quite unintentionally, just like this book by Robin Cook sought me out at the library. I thought hard for a moment, but the name of Cook was simply irresistible and outweighed all other considerations. After the sad demise of Michael Crichton, there is no other like Cook who can elevate readers to heights of thrill and excitement, while handling topics within the possibilities offered by science.

‘Charlatans’ is a medical thriller which unfolds in the Boston Memorial Hospital where the chief surgical resident Noah Rothauser is forced to investigate three recent surgical deaths in which his colleague and sweetheart Ava London is involved in the capacity as an anesthesiologist. Trying hard to prove her innocence and competence, Noah is hurled into a whirlwind of events that put the readers at the pinnacle of expectation and interest. His investigation of the avoidable deaths follows through within the confines of leg space afforded by the hospital’s administrative politics and hierarchy. He also gets involved in a brush with the nutritional supplement industry that casts its long shadow on the medical world. The book ends with a rather pessimistic note on how medicine is going to be practiced in the coming decades.

Readers are awed by the complexities of surgical procedures that can go awry even by the patient’s seemingly innocuous negligence of the surgeon’s instructions. So, if your doctor advises you not to eat anything immediately prior to a surgery, just don’t do it. Those who feel that they can get away with a little fooling around should read the first preventable death narrated in the book where a simple hernia procedure turns complicated when the patient vomits the full content of his breakfast into the respiratory system, which kills him. Though fiction, the scenario is entirely plausible and the protagonist terms the practice of eating before a surgery suicidal. Those who have read this book fully understand why.

Going from the particular to the general appeal of the work, the author marks the addiction to social media that is going to have lasting and somewhat deleterious effects on the society. Instant and too frequent communication has affected people’s ability to confront situations which was evolved over eons of time, but is suddenly faced with a novel kind of selection pressure. Cook expounds the wisdom saying ”we are products of the digital age, where truth and intimacy are becoming less and less important. Thanks to the ubiquity of social media in all its forms, we’re all becoming narcissists. Everyone is becoming an elaborate fusion of the real and the virtual”. Free and universal access to knowledge is slowly putting formal education at a disadvantage. Charlatans train with simulators and high-tech sources of information and can easily camouflage their ineptitude. In fact, the whole novel revolves around such an episode. Even though a little put off by the onslaught of technical innovations, the author finally admits that “large scale change is inevitable in the current expensive, long drawn-out, overly competitive path of four years of college, four years of medical school and up to seven years of hospital-based residency, all of which was instituted in 1910 and hasn’t changed much since, will have to be drastically updated”.

Cook raises alarm at the increasing might of the food supplement industry which fools people into purchasing costly snake oil preparations instead of leading a healthy life and having a balanced diet. It is implied that the lobbying powers of this cartel is so pervasive that the DSHEA Act of 1994 is said to have been enacted to let the industry go off hook from administrative and statutory oversight by federal agencies. The lobby indulges in criminal acts in the book’s storyline, but we get an uncanny premonition that fact may not be too far away from fiction, at least in the near future. Here, the growing clout of a group of Ayurveda products promoted by a leading yoga guru in India having connections at the top levels of bureaucracy and politicians cutting across party lines should be food for thought for Indians.

Altogether, the book provides a pleasant reading experience for all categories of connoisseurs. It is a page-turner and it is possible that a few of us can finish it in one go.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Europe’s India

Title: Europe’s India – Words, People, Empires 1500 – 1800

Author: Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2017 (First)

ISBN: 9780674972261

Pages: 394

Cultural contacts between Europe and India commenced on a large scale with the invasion of Alexander of Macedon in 326 BCE. A great deal of trade and literary exchange ensued. With the decline of the Roman Empire in the mid-first millennium CE, all contacts were frozen and remained subdued for another millennium. A fresh wave of energy was imparted to mutual relations with the arrival of Vasco da Gama in Malabar in the year 1498. This time, the engagement was destined to be more drawn out and with lasting consequences for both that still continues. Like two people meeting for the first time, European and Indian scholars, soldiers and administrators noted down the peculiarities of the other out of curiosity, particularly in religion and social mores. By the seventeenth century, things were more familiar between the two and copies and manuscripts of Indian books and religious literature arrived in Europe. The next century saw the establishment of colonialism, with the British setting up regimes with powers of taxation and defence. With absolute sovereignty reaching their hands after Plassey, Orientalism was born that cast its disdainful glance on India. This book envelops the three centuries from 1500 to 1800 in which the relationship solidified into one between a master and his slave. The author adds a concluding chapter to tell the other side of the story, that is, how India viewed Europe during this period. Sanjay Subrahmanyam is an Indian historian who specializes in the early modern period. He works in over ten European and Asian languages and draws on sources from a dazzling array of archives. He holds the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles which he joined in 2004.

The initial approach of the Europeans to comprehend India followed a three-pronged path – historical, philological and ethnographic. Traces of the emergence of multiple images of India in European eyes over three centuries came about through a variety of actors and their perspectives. The Portuguese expressed interest in botany, medicine, navigation and cartography. The Portuguese physician Garcia da Orta published a ‘Colloquies on the Simples, drugs and pharmaceutical products of India’ in Goa in 1563. Its Latin version was released as ‘Aromatum et Simplicium’ in 1567. Even though the author does not hazard a guess in this regard, it can be rightfully surmised that this book worked as the harbinger for the much celebrated tome ‘Hortus Malabaricus’ that came out a full century later as a product of Dutch scholarship.

A much larger stream of observations was going on the religious front. The Portuguese had quite early discerned that the gentiles in India were different from those of Africa and the New World who didn’t possess textual sources to base their faith. Early commentators viewed Indian religion with full-blown contempt. Manucci notes that “their (Indian) religion is nothing but a confused mixture of absurdities and coarse imaginings, unworthy even of the rational man; much less has it the least trace of Divinity as its author “(p.126). The Europeans were equally confused at the multitudes of castes and sects that divided Indian society. It was the Portuguese who first used the term ‘casta’ to refer to the social order in India. Based on this fact, the author hints that caste is a modern phenomenon produced by the historical encounter between India and the Western colonial rule, which is simply outrageous. Does the author imply that caste-based oppression in India began only in the 1700s? After 1650, a consensus emerged among European scholars that there was indeed a religion in India that overarched the castes, though a single name was not given. Subrahmanyam plays spoilsport at this point by not elaborating further on this very interesting point to focus on the time at which the appellation of ‘Hinduism’ came to enfold it. The eclecticism of Indians were noted by the Europeans with a tinge of wonder as we see in a text that the Indians ‘believe that God, for his own purposes, has not only tolerated, but has revealed a mode of worship suited to the people and the climate they inhabit’ (p.276). The greatest peculiarity was that it didn’t demand converts from other faiths.

A good part of the book is dedicated, in effect, to a review of texts produced in Europe, representing the distinct eras under discussion. The review of Picart’s ‘Ceremonies et coutumes’ is exasperating, and the other narratives on James Fraser, Pollier, Walker and others don’t impart a good reading experience. The slow but steady growth of British knowledge of India is neatly catalogued. The earliest collection of Persian manuscripts was that of William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Though Britain was comparatively late in the fray, the gap was filled in no time because of the political dominance enjoyed by the English East India Company, especially in the eighteenth century.

Subrahmanyam’s mastery over many languages is amply and elegantly witnessed in the work. A good many French quotes and book titles in Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch languages are reproduced. Unfortunately, most readers are not conversant in those tongues and we can only guess at the meaning of those lengthy titles which seem to be a characteristic feature of books in that period. The painstaking research that has gone into the making of this book is literally mindboggling. The author mentions nearly a hundred reference works, but a concise list at the end as a section of bibliography would’ve found better use for serious readers who want to follow through from where the author has left off. A comprehensive collection of notes and a very good index add much value to the book. Probably because the author’s erudition is not readily amenable to easy reading, the readers struggle to tide over many parts of the book. This explains the downgrading by a notch from its deserving 3-star. A lot of portraits and landscape paintings of the period enhances visual detail to the narrative.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

Private Traders in Medieval India

Title: Private Traders in Medieval India: British and Indian

Author: Jagadish Narayan Sarkar

Publisher: Bibliophil Kolkata, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9789380477060

Pages: 304

Maritime trade of European commercial establishments after Columbus’ discovery of America paved the way for the emergence of colonialism. In India, the British were comparatively late to enter the trading ring, behind the Portuguese and the Dutch. However, like the proverbial hare and the tortoise, the British outrun the other European powers in the race for territorial sovereignty in this subcontinent. The English East India Company’s transformation from an overseas trading firm to the ruler of the land took place in 150 years from the death of Emperor Akbar. This impressive success story is, surprisingly, not accompanied by an efficient trading policy or stunning military might. On both these fronts, they availed the services of Indians as soldiers to fight the company’s battles and as financiers to bankroll its trade deals. On the policy front too, the company’s stand was shaky, as most of its employees indulged in private trade at their employer’s expense. Such avaricious deals transcended the hierarchical delineations as people on all levels tried their hand to make a quick profit. This book seeks to make an analytical study of the origin, nature, scope and impact of the private trading activities of the English and the measures of the company and its factors abroad for their regulation and suppression. This was first published as a monograph at the Indian History Congress in its Silver Jubilee session at Pune in 1963. This was thoroughly revised and enlarged by adding a section on private trade in Mughal India and outside, dealing with the activities of the Indian ruling classes and officials as well as the business circles. Jagadish Narayan Sarkar was a member of Bihar Educational Service for thirty years and later served Jadavpur University as professor. The Indian History Congress elected him as president in 1976. A prolific contributor to journals in English and Bengali, Dr. Sarkar is the author of numerous scholarly and widely acclaimed books.

The recruits to the East India Company belonged to lower gentry or merchants’ families. They were intelligent, moderately educated and competent. Even with this, their salaries were not proportionately high for the risks involved in a foreign land. Having to endure the blistering climate in India was no mean task, but the prevalence of contagious tropical diseases which often proved fatal was enhanced by poor sanitation as a result of lack of hygienic awareness and scarce financial means. There was always a very high likelihood of returning home in a coffin or worse still, ending up in a grave in the tropics. Naturally, the people were disposed to make some quick money other than salaries which they can repatriate comparatively easily. Private trade was the solution they hit upon in which the goods the company monopolized were clandestinely traded by the clerks and officers, sometimes in the company’s own ships and at times with its own cash. Collusion between the venal officials and seamen of transporting vessels made it impossible for appraisers to tell the legitimate cargo of the company and private merchandise apart. Stern measures were instituted by the company, but the fact that they had had to be issued frequently indicates that those were not very effective.  Some of the rules were later relaxed in order to bring the trade above board, but profiteering went on as usual. The private traders illegally made use of firmans and parwanas issued by local rulers to the company to claim waiver of customs duty for their private consignments. This made their goods more competitive than native traders’. The company was in difficulty here too, since the private traders either bought up produce so that the company’s ships had not much to load, or inundated the markets with cheaper ware which made the official warehouses bristle with unsold goods.

Private trade was a common feature of Mughal administration as well. Court officials, port supervisors, provincial governors, princes of the royal household and even Emperor Aurangzeb himself employed trade with overseas markets to make extra money. This was euphemistically called sauda-i-khas (private trade) as against sauda-i-am (trade in open market). The Mughal practice of farming out taxation of provinces and commercial centres to the highest bidder added to the problem. Aurangzeb was only following in the footsteps of his father Shah Jahan who indulged in trade while serving as governor of Gujarat. The major articles of commerce in those days were spices, cotton goods, tea, silk, sugar, copper, iron, lead, tin, coffee, salt-petre, indigo, opium and diamonds. The aristocrats maintained monopoly of a few items including salt-petre as it was the chief ingredient in making gunpowder and exercised intimidating tactics to make the ordinary traders do as dictated. The Bengal governors made a monopoly on staples and salt. This nudged the prices ever higher, causing distress to common people. Unfair means and rampant corruption made the situation unbearable for the populace.

Indians formed the backbone of English trading networks before 1757. The Europeans couldn’t manage on their own the intricate links between middlemen and producers of the country. Subsequently, they exercised much influence in the presidency towns of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. After Plassey, the administration of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa came in British hands and the experience of 150 years was quite sufficient for them to discard the local assistants as a whole. The trading communities bore the brunt of this rejection. The Parsis, Gujaratis, Bohras and the Moplahs controlled the trade on the West coast while Chettis and groups of Muslim traders dominated commerce on the East.

The book envelopes the time period from the beginning of seventeenth century to late-eighteenth century. The language is terse and not easily amenable to pleasurable reading. The string of footnotes on each page distracts the reader. A lot of typographical errors are seen in the text. The bibliography is impressive and comprehensively covers the period under discussion. The book includes an exhaustive index too.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

Partisans of Allah

Title: Partisans of Allah – Jihad in South Asia

Author: Ayesha Jalal

Publisher: Permanent Black, 2008 (First)

ISBN: 9788178242316

Pages: 373

Many parts of the world we live in are awash in jihadi violence where a group of ultra-orthodox Muslims kill people of their own religion as well as others. The concept of jihad is sanctified by the Koran and enjoined as a duty of every Muslim believer. But what exactly is jihad? The gory pattern we see enacted in the Middle East is a violent one in which its perpetrators believe it to be their religious obligation to kill non-believers and Muslims themselves who don’t subscribe to their brand of orthodoxy. Apologists of Islam denounce the terrorists on the basis of religious precepts enshrined in the Koran. They maintain that there are two kinds of jihad, the greater one (jihad al-akbar) which focuses on the moral uplift of the individual and the lesser one (jihad al-asghar) which sanctions violence in rare, specified instances. Unfortunately, the voice of the pacifists is submerged in the din of carnage orchestrated by jihadis who nurture hopes of usurping worldly power as part of the package. This book dwells on the religious significance of jihad, its origins in South Asia in the eighteenth century, its growth in the intervening period and the takeover of Pakistan by extremist outfits in the 2000s. Ayesha Jalal is the grandniece of the renowned Pakistani fictionist Saadat Hasan Manto and is the Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University. She is the author of many books on Islamic history and the dogmatic underpinnings of jihad.

The literal meaning of ‘jihad’ is the ‘striving for a worthy and ennobling cause’, which has over the years turned into holy war against non-Muslims. Even though apologists studiously argue that jihad as killing people (qittal) is not approved in Islam’s holy traditions, the sad fact is that pious Muslims in all ages looked upon it as a sacred duty. Even in the first century of Islam, the Kharajite sect defined jihad as legitimate violence against the enemies of Islam (p.8). Muslim legists defined jihad as armed struggle to legitimize the wars of conquest fought by the Umayyad (661 – 750 CE) and Abbasid (750 – 1258 CE) caliphs. All these cases of religious violence make the readers wonder whether it is indeed sanctioned in scriptures as claimed by the terrorists. Otherwise, why do people living in widely varying topographies as Indonesia and Egypt and in as diverse a time spanning fourteen centuries stumble upon the same idea of jihad as violence to subjugate people of other religions? Jalal bends over backwards to justify jihad to mollify modern sensibilities. This appears as nothing more than the butcher’s assistant caressing the animal to be slaughtered while the butcher sharpens his knife. She claims that the concept of a ‘dharma yuddha’ (just war) in Hinduism and similar constructs in Judeo-Christian tradition is akin to jihad. But the acknowledged point remains that although all Muslims are not terrorists, all terrorists are Muslims.

That jihad, probably in its less violent incarnation, is supported by a leading intellectual of his times such as Mohammed Iqbal is galling for us. The poet and philosopher who is also the spiritual founder of Pakistan penned a poem titled ‘jihad’ in which he impelled his compatriots to rise up against British colonialism in a jihad. Unfortunately, most such jihads against the British invariably turned against hapless Hindus and Sikhs once the jihadis get to experience a taste of British weapons. Jalal extols the virtues of the Islamic system which grants followers of other religions the status of zimmis upon payment of a tax called jizya. This is claimed to be a ‘substantial improvement’ over slavery! The Hanafi code which consecrates this barbarity is termed ‘liberal’. Those unfortunate people ending up as zimmis silently suffer under the yoke of Islamic domination. They are not allowed to join the armed forces of the country, their testimony is discounted in a court of law, and are forever doomed to be second-rate citizens. Their voice is not allowed to rise outside their own homes. Jalal’s brazen upholding of Hanafi jurisprudence as ‘relatively broadminded’ is disgusting when she points out that it protects the property of non-Muslim people in an Islamic state, but goes on to add that their womenfolk would be treated as war booty just in the same way as jewels and money (p.34). Civilized society should pose here a moment to reflect on the moral corrosion in an Islamic society in which a western-educated author – that too, a woman – sanitizes such savage doctrines and repackage it as wisdom of the forefathers of Islam.

The book’s greatest significance is its crystal clear narration of the growth of jihadism in India. The Mughal Empire started disintegrating right at the death of the bigoted emperor Aurangzeb’s death. Hindu states of Marathas and Rajputs began to extract their revenge for centuries of oppression. A religious scholar, Shah Waliullah became incensed at this slight and exhorted his disciples to wage jihad against the infidels. He advised them to avoid the company of non-Muslims of devilish composition, proposed harsh measures against the Hindus and Shias, suggested banning of Holi and Muharram festivals and urged rulers to confiscate Hindu wealth. He tempted Ahmed Shah Abdali of Afghanistan to invade India and destroy its infidels. He assured god’s recompense to the invader in the hereafter, at the same time offering incalculable booty by pillaging his own countrymen. Waliullah was a proponent of Wahabism and believed steadfastly in its core principles. He had enthusiastic followers in India. Sayyid Ahmed Barelvi, Shah Ismail and 600 of his followers embarked on a jihad against Punjab’s Sikh kingdom in a bid to compel ‘Ranjit Singh to turn Muslim or cut off his head’ (p. 90). Both of them were killed in the battle at Balakote in 1831, but their tombs still continue to inspire suicide bombers operating in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The jihadi leaders preached strange ideologies. Sayyid Ahmed Barelvi insisted that any girl continuing unmarried for twelve days after attaining puberty would become the property of the mujahideen (jihadi fighters) (p.102). Maulana Ahmed Raza Khan gave out a ruling that presented with the choice of giving water to a thirsty infidel or a dog, a believer should make the offering to the dog (p.146).

The book exposes the true colours of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who passed off as a secular leader of the Indian National Congress but harboured notions of jihad. The author herself is surprised at his being mistaken as secular, whereas he was a proponent of Islamic universalism. As per this ideology, Muslims are part of an Ummah, which is a conglomeration of believers cutting across national boundaries. Azad’s logic was that Indian Muslims should take offense at the ill-treatment of his coreligionists in Egypt or in the Balkans. When India reeled in the aftermath of the First World War, Azad and his cronies advocated for an assault against the British for their unseating of the Sultan of Turkey! This solves another puzzle in Indian history. The Jalianwala Bagh massacre occurred in response to a popular uprising against the Rowlatt Act which curtailed freedom of expression. But why should the British impose such a draconian law in India after the war in which India wholeheartedly sided with them and Gandhi in fact participated in the war effort? The hidden reason was the revolutionary activities of the jihadis who plotted to subvert British power. Their underground operations forced the government to put forward harsh measures that ended in the brutal genocide at Jalianwala Bagh in which none of the jihadis were killed. They would shed blood only for religion. However, there were some among them who exhibited compassion and mercy to their brethren among other religions. Maulana Fazl-i-Haq Khairabadi was one such personality. Maulvi Chiragh Ali maintained that Islam was being judged by the standards of Sharia created by men rather than the ethical principles of Koran. Sharia had not been held sacred or unchangeable by enlightened Mohammedans in any age since its compilation in the fourth century of Hejira.

Ayesha Jalal’ style is not amenable to easy reading, but offers some elegant contemporary prose. A glossary given at the end is redundant as she clarifies each new term as and when it is first encountered. Detailed notes are compiled after the main text, but don’t include a bibliography. A good index also accompanies the text which covers the entire range of jihadis from Shah Waliullah in the eighteenth century to Hafiz Mohammed Saeed of the twenty-first.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star