Veer Savarkar

Title: Veer Savarkar

Author: Devendra Kumar Sharma

Publisher: Nisha Publications, New Delhi, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9789385621376

Pages: 280

 

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883 – 1966) was an Indian politician, freedom fighter and social reformer who developed the Hindu nationalist political ideology, Hindutva. He is the central icon of modern Hindu nationalist political parties. His last years were clouded with accusations of involvement in Gandhi’s assassination by a member of the Hindu Mahasabha which was led by Savarkar. Though he was acquitted for lack of evidence, the slur on his reputation remained. At the age of 83, he refused to take food and elected to die peacefully at the hour chosen by him. This book looks like a biography, but it is not. It appears that his biographical details are obtained from free sources like Wikipedia with no research or elaboration. A large part of the book contains Savarkar’s writings. Devendra Kumar Sharma was an archivist at National Archives of India and a former professor of history at the University of Allahabad.

 

Sharma provides a very brief narrative on Savarkar’s life which helps only to whet the reader’s appetite. He craved for freedom from foreign rule and was ready for armed conflict to achieve this. He formed a secret society called Abhinav Bharat for waging war against the British. In his drive to promote Swadeshi clothes, he made a bonfire of foreign cloth amid Dussehra festivities in 1905. After completing his B.A degree in India, Savarkar went to England to pursue studies in law. He pined for guerilla warfare while in England and learned bomb-making from a Russian revolutionary. His elder brother was also an ardent supporter of armed conflict against the imperial masters. His brother, Ganesh, organized an armed revolt against the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909. Both the brothers were booked for sedition. Savarkar made a daring attempt to escape from the ship that was carrying him to India. He jumped out of the bathroom porthole while it was berthed at Marseilles, but the French police caught and handed him over to the British. He was sentenced for fifty years of imprisonment as double transportation. He was lodged in the Cellular Jain in the Andamans in 1911. He was moved to Ratnagiri jail in 1924 and interned in a house with the proviso not to leave that district. He was finally released in 1937, after serving a 26-year sentence in one form or the other.

 

Savarkar coined the term ‘Hindutva’ and so it had become necessary to define it. According to this ideology, a ‘Hindu’ is any patriotic individual of India, venturing beyond a religious identity. You are a Hindu if your forefathers belonged to this land, you find yourself connected to this land and your religious commitments evolved from this land. Not only the Hindus – in the current narrow religious sense of the term – as well as adherents of all Indian religions are readily in this fold. With a little wrestling with facts, the others could also be brought within it. Savarkar wants every person belonging to Hindutva to treat India as a holy land. As per this definition, the Muslims and Christians can also be a part of it, if they impart the same respect they bestow on places in Arabia or Israel on an equal measure to India too. However, this argument is rather untidy and one is left to wonder if Savarkar indeed wanted them out of his domain – in spirit, and not in the physical sense.

 

This book explains the factions among freedom fighters and indicates Savarkar’s locus standi. In 1906, there were moderates and militants among the people who opposed the British. The first wanted to appeal to the better nature of the British, while the second felt that passive resistance would achieve their aim. Neither party was concerned about the British military might as they never had any plans to engage them on the battlefield. The revolutionaries distanced themselves from the other two and opted for violent conflict with arms. They knew the consequences too well. They were going to fall victim to the bullets and bayonets and their families are to be ruined. Still they held firm and Savarkar belonged to this group. Savarkar warned his own members that they would have to forego their houses, property, pleasures of life, reputation, affection of the beloved or even face death. The Revolutionaries demanded absolute political independence when the others were not even requesting for dominion status.Moderates tried armchair politics and considered it to be appropriate and honourable. Savarkar was involved in the murder of Sir Curzon Wyllie, a British MP, by Madanlal Dhingra and also in the assassination of A M T Jackson, the collector of Nashik. Savarkar was arrested for abetting the crime and also for illegal transportation of weapons.

 

The author gives only a cursory glance on Savarkar’s work in England. He organized Indian youth, inspired and converted them to the revolutionary path by individual dialogue. He delivered public speeches, wrote books and trained in making and using explosive devices. His literary career is as illustrious as his political work. He produced a biography of Mazzini, the revolutionary Italian leader of nineteenth century whose work liberated Italy out of the Austrian empire. The British promptly banned the book which was revoked only four decades later in 1946, on the eve of independence when Congress assumed control of the provinces. Savarkar’s greatest contribution to Indian historiography is his deep research into the 1857 rebellion and projecting it as a war of independence rather than a petty mutiny, as pejoratively called by the British. Till that time, even educated Indians had thought that the native soldiers who fought in 1857 were brutes and a disgrace to Indian culture by killing innocent Englishmen and violating their women. The hardworking and kindhearted English government was leading India in the path of progress and these stupid, fanatical sepoys created a great obstacle in that path. This was the common reading of the 1857 events. Savarkar undid the web of lies by thoroughly studying the original records available in the India Office library in London. The moment the librarian came to know of his real intention, he was thrown out of the institution. This book was also proscribed and later editions of it were published by such eminent personalities as Bhagat Singh and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

 

Left historians and social media portray Savarkar as a Hindu fundamentalist fanatic. They would be astonished to learn that he was a rationalist. He denied divinity in the scriptures and argued that they should be understood only in consonance with present conditions. He was dead set against caste based discrimination and untouchability. In a revolutionary move, he exhorted all Hindus to marry across caste! He wanted those religious vows that have no material benefit and are solely popularized on the basis of Puranic fables to be reinvented and given a different form. He claimed that in ancient times, certain incidents and lifeless objects were considered as living gods purely due to ignorance regarding the science of creation. Those vows which were popularized merely to appease such gods should be considered worthy of rejection in the present time. In a rhetorical flourish, Savarkar asks that if we thank god for saving us from a calamity, we should also consider who had brought that calamity on us in the first place (p. 238). Savarkar’s progressive mind is revealed in his assertion that a custom that brings only harm on humanity instead of benefitting it even to the slightest extent is adharma. He demanded the conservatives not to raise the bogey of sanatana dharma to stall reform (p.240). Changing a tradition is not an insult to our forefathers. On caste, Savarkar raged incandescent, asking to discard those 5000-year old superstitions of untouchability and scripture-based caste discrimination and also unshackle the bonds that stem from literalist belief in shrutis, smrutis and Puranas that hinder one’s duty (p. 245). He built a temple called Patitpavan Mandir at Ratnagiri which was open to all Hindus irrespective of caste.

 

This book does not serve its purpose as a biography of Savarkar. Its only saving grace is his writings quoted verbatim for nearly two-thirds of the volume. Scant attention has been given to the content. Running against the general trend of the narrative, unnecessarily sharp criticism against the protagonist is also seen at two places which could well be sabotage considering the overall carelessness and pathetic proof-reading of the author and publisher respectively. Sharma claims that Savarkar’s literary work is an ‘extraordinary embodiment of utter mediocrity’ and that the literary corpus does not suggest a creative mind (p.13). After this scathing remark, he revises his opinion a few pages later saying that Savarkar was a great scholar full of originality (p.36). Pages 12 to 18 include undiluted criticism that is incompatible with the spirit of the book’s arguments. Overall, the book looks like it was written by several novices with little communication between them as seen in the multiple repetitions of ideas and total absence of a viable structure for the book. This book is also not well researched.

 

The book is recommended only to those who want to read a summary of Savarkar’s thoughts in his own words as this volume has simply copied many of them intact.

 

Rating: 2 Star

 

Caste

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title: Caste – The Lies that Divide Us

Author: Isabel Wilkerson

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2020 (First)

ISBN: 9780241486511

Pages: 476

Caste is a social marker in India as the inalienable category into which every Hindu is born. This accident of birth into a particular caste then moulds the choices that person has at his disposal later in life. This is the academic aspect of caste. There have been concerted efforts since independence to equalize opportunities available to people as a whole, without reference to the caste into which they were born. Reservation of seats in government bureaucracy and legislature to people of the depressed castes is the world’s most successful affirmative action barring violent revolution and resultant turmoil. With this in mind, I opened the book and was shocked to find that a similar, if not more discriminative, caste system is prevailing in the US even though it is not called as such. Caste system is a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the inferiority of other groups. In this sense, caste is at the centre of American society and maintains the 400-year old social order. This book explains the segregation and discrimination the blacks had to endure for nearly 250 years till the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century and the invisible yet subtle ways in which the old prejudices spring forth even at present at the slightest trigger on presumed racial attitudes. Isabel Wilkerson is an African-American author of the bestselling book The Warmth of Other Suns and has won the Pulitzer Prize. She has taught at Princeton, Emery and Boston universities and has lectured at more than 200 venues across the world.

The word ‘caste’ originated from the Portuguese term ‘casta’ meaning race or breed. The Portuguese were the earliest European traders in South Asia and applied the term to the people of India upon observing the divisions in Hindu society. The sense of ‘breed’ is especially fitting as each caste is endogamic in nature. The Indian caste system is several millennia old, but it is not racial in nature. There is a wide chasm between the highest and lowest castes, but genetic studies reveal that all of them belong to the same race. Well, scientific studies do not pronounce judgment on race, but tell instead that there are very few genetic variations among them, which is essentially the same thing. However, caste system solidified in the US along racial lines with the arrival of African slaves in the American south in 1619, which became the birthplace of the caste system where it was most brutally enforced. It spread to other places from here, but nowhere as harsh as in the South. Wilkerson proposes that three caste systems can be discerned in human history – that in India, the US and in Nazi Germany where the Jews were evicted from all positions of honour and dumped at the bottom ladder virtually overnight. This classification is preposterous as the German case revolved around the social ideology of a political party which could be easily disposed of once that party was ousted from power. It sought to wipe off the Jews who were deemed lower caste. This doesn’t compare with the Indian and American instances which are more rugged. Anyhow, the book is structured around this artificial divide. The author also claims that even with her minimal exposure to Indians, she is able to tell upper and lower castes apart in mixed social gatherings. She comments that the upper castes display certitude in bearing, demeanour, behavior and a visible expectation of centrality (p.31).

Wilkerson dwells on the development of slavery, and by corollary the caste system too, in some detail. The inhuman condition the slaves were forced to live on is a painful reminder of an incredibly cruel era in American history. The white masters exerted absolute ownership on the body and mind of the slaves. They could kill them with impunity, have sexual relations with any slave woman they chose, break up a family by selling off one or more members to different buyers and demanded unconditional loyalty in return. It is hard to imagine the numerous ways in which men lorded over other men upon the flimsy pretext of skin colour. The colonists were unable to enslave the native population and they solved the resultant labour problem by importing Africans in large numbers. With little further use of the original inhabitants, the colonists exiled them. Some measly laws were enacted in the interim period to lighten the burden on slaves. In 1740, the work hours of slaves were limited by law to fifteen. This was no great concession to them because prisoners on hard labour were required to work only ten hours at that time. Even after Abolition and Civil War, the physical plight of slaves did not markedly improve as the occupying unionist forces returned power back to the confederates after a few years of ‘Reconstruction’. The period from this moment to the Second World War is known as Nadir. The blacks had acquired education by this time and were unified enough to feel collective outrage at the naked discrimination. With the enactment of civil rights reforms in the 1960s, equality was achieved in law even though some amount of casteist exclusionism is still prevalent.

This book portrays the brutal conditions that existed in American society to keep the blacks firmly under the yoke. American laws on immigration and marriage restrictions in the 1920s were models for the Nazis. It provided segregated facilities for coloreds and whites in waiting rooms, train cars, sleeping cars, street cars, buses, steam boats and even in prisons. Race was indicated in birth certificates, licenses and death certificates. In many jurisdictions, interracial marriage was a crime punishable by up to ten years’ imprisonment. Ban on intermarriages stayed in the law books for long. Alabama was the last state to repeal it – can you believe it? – in the year 2000.There was a referendum to settle the issue and 40 per cent still voted to keep the rule in the statutes. Most whites refused to associate with a black. Shaking hands with a black man caught on camera made a candidate lose the mayoral polls in Birmingham, Alabama as late as 1961 (p.54). Blacks and whites were permitted to go to the same schools only in the 1970s. The caste system elicited extraordinary effort from the lower castes just to stay afloat in society. A black man who managed to become an architect in the nineteenth century trained himself to read the blueprints upside down because white clients would feel uncomfortable by having him on the same side of the desk as themselves. Wilkerson recounts many instances of racial abuse in the book.

The author analyses the common factors of all caste systems and presents eight of them in some detail. The foremost among them is divine sanction and permissive sacred texts. In the case of India, the Shudras – the lowest among the four Varnas – emanated from the Creator’s feet while Brahmins originated from his face. The colonists likewise found appropriate verses from the Bible to justify slavery. Noah is said to have cursed his grandson Canaan to slavery while piqued by the boy’s father, Noah’s own son, chancing to see his nakedness while sleeping. Leviticus specifically permits the believers to take slaves from religious heathens.

A peculiar characteristic of the racial segregation in the US was the graded differentiation it extended among whites also. Southern and Eastern Europeans were left out of the top tier as also all Asians. In a Japanese man’s case, the US Supreme Court decreed that ‘white’ meant not skin colour, but the race ‘Caucasian’ which present more inconsistencies. People residing at that time in the Caucasus regions were actually deemed lower in the hierarchy.

The author brings out strident arguments to exhibit the amount of injustice still prevailing in American society. However, she seems to cross the line of objectivity at times and provide a biased review of things. Even with the brutal system of slavery in place, it cannot be denied that the impetus to discard the system was kick started and sustained by whites. When the South refused to accede to laws abolishing slavery, it was again the whites who embarked on a civil war to bring the South in line with a loss of 7,50,000 lives in that war. This means that the way forward is one of reconciliation and assimilation and not by seeking reparations from the whites now living in the US for crimes committed by their ancestors. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first black to become President by riding on the back of large scale support from whites. But the author claims that Obama won ‘despite the bulk of the white electorate’ (p.314). This is simply mean. Whites constitute 76 per cent of the population and they traditionally vote for Republicans, but Obama obtained 43 per cent of the white votes. This is more than the support garnered by Bill Clinton, another Democrat candidate, when he managed only 39 per cent of the white votes. Does the author demand that every white should vote for a candidate without considering partisan loyalties, if the candidate happens to be black? In another chapter, she puts up another disgraceful remark that Obama was elected because he was the son of a Kenyan immigrant and a white woman and hence was not a descendant of the slaves. Some of the examples of the present day discrimination tends more towards the fictional as in the case of an Indian PhD holder wearing an oversized shoe because he was afraid to ask the upper caste salesman to search for and find a fitting size.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

 

Economic Sutra

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title: Economic Sutra – Ancient Indian Antecedents to Economic Thought

Author: Satish Y. Deodhar

Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2019 (First)

ISBN: 9780670092864

Pages: 199

 

The field of economic theory and ancient India was long thought to be an oxymoron as the latter was well known for its overarching spirituality in all walks of life. References to ancient non-Western antecedents do not find mention in mainstream literature on the history of economic thought. This is actually an error in perception of the nature of ancient Indian thought which was secular in all aspects affecting ordinary life. This book examines the antecedents of modern economic thought, behaviour and policy as found in the treatises of the ancient Indian subcontinent. This is a part of the IIMA book series on relevant economic concepts organized by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA). It offers an engaging perspective on ancient Indian economic thought by focusing on original and secondary sources. Satish Y. Deodhar teaches economics at IIMA. He is the author of the bestselling book ‘Day to Day Economics’.

 

The first glimpse to ancient Indian thought was facilitated by colonial scholars who learnt Sanskrit as part of their official work. Enquiries in the Islamic period were sporadic and few, like in the lifetimes of Akbar or Dara Shukoh. In that sense, it was the English scholars who lifted the veil on ancient India after a gap of eight centuries. However, they focused only on the other-worldly stream of Indian thought. They interpreted this to be instrumental in the denial of economic betterment and alleviation of poverty in India. Marx was also influenced by this biased opinion, arguing that lack of class conflict prevented India from progressing. As a sequel, Indians were stereotyped as highly spiritual people with a fatalistic outlook. This helped to explain away the abysmal rate of GDP growth in post-independent India as almost a genetic trait inherited from the ancients. This was also disparagingly called the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ when the reason for the slow growth was Nehru’s flawed economic policy which engendered an all-pervasive, state-controlled command economy that shackled the country. When these policies were scrapped in 1991, economic growth shot up to world standards.

 

Deodhar makes a detailed analysis of ideas in ancient Indian thought that specifically deals with economic concepts. Buddha comments householders to acquire wealth through lawful and honourable means. He advised shopkeepers to be shrewd, alert to market conditions and to make a morally justifiable profit (p.31). Even before that, Shukla Yajurveda recognizes four types of commercial activities – agriculture, trade and commerce, animal husbandry and lending at interest. Kautilya, the great political economist of ancient India argued that the ruler must protect the choices of the people in the attainment of purusharthas (goals of man at different stages of life), of which artha (amassing of wealth) was the foremost in his opinion. A charming feature of this book is the great care it lavishes on Tamil classics, which boast of a pedigree comparable to Sanskrit. Thirukural has 700 aphorisms related to wealth. Thiruvalluvar reiterates the Sanskrit purusharthas of dharma, kama, artha and moksha (rightful living, accumulation of wealth, love and happiness and salvation). The idea that wealth brings about further accession of wealth expresses the importance of capital as an input to create more wealth.

 

A superficial discussion on varna and jati and the way Indian society was categorized into numerous jatis (castes) is seen in this book. Varna system was not based on birth and Deodhar claims that it was not hierarchical (p.72). It was the teacher who initiated his pupils into different varnas after studies which the children underwent for many years. Megasthenes, who served as Greek ambassador in Mauryan India mentions that all Indians were free and they did not even consider using foreigners as slaves. This was in stark contrast to Aristotle’s world view which held that some men are by nature slaves and that slavery is both expedient and right. When various crafts and guilds developed, the technology had to be guarded as a secret. This was conveniently done by way of intra-class marriages and dining restrictions. Over time, it got cast into vocations and jatis. Law books such as Manu Smriti caused degeneration of varna system into endogamous groups. It made families perform upanayana (initiation) at an early age of the child rather than a teacher performing it as a commencement ceremony at the end of a 12-year study. The British mixed the concept of race into jati and made them watertight in the bargain.

 

Any discussion on economic thought in India would sooner or later delve into the rich compendium included in the Arthashastra of Kautilya. Luckily, the author spends only a cursory look at the injunctions of Kautilya. He also correlates the concepts with modern society. The ancient preceptor recommends that taxes should be collected the way bees collect honey from flowers. It is also seen that a large differential existed between the top and bottom rungs of imperial jobs. The wage of a minister was 48,000 panas a year while the lowest level public servants received only 60 panas a year. This ratio of 800:1 is an indicator of the large asymmetry in household income. Some amount of state intervention in trade can also be discerned in Arthashastra. It stipulates that the director of trade is to ascertain the cost price after taking into account investment, production, rent, interest, duty and others. For determining the sale price of goods, a 5 to 10 per cent profit for domestic and foreign trade respectively is recommended. Penalties were in place for sale price greater than the permitted markup. Such close intervention in the functioning of markets, if it was indeed in existence, would have resulted in corruption rather than the common folk getting a fair deal.

 

‘Sutra’ is a Sanskrit word that means a string or a thread that holds jewels together. In ancient times, philosophical thoughts, principles and rules were expressed in the form of aphorisms and were written on palm leaves sewn together with a thread. Thus, both figuratively and literally, these writings were called sutras. This book provides a bridge between the elements of pre-Kautilyan economic thoughts and Kautilya’s Arthashastra which is the usual starting point for most researchers on economic theory. Thus we see Panini (700 BCE) mentioning debt and repayment with interest. The notion of expressing interest as a ‘per cent’ of the principal originated in India. Kautilya also talks about varying interest rates for various modes of trade. Higher interest rate was prescribed for money borrowed for risky ventures like overseas trade.

 

The author claims expertise in Sanskrit which he learned at school. This does not seem to be sufficient to extract ideas from ancient texts. In that sense, the author’s claim that he has referred original texts would be in doubt. Still, the amount of research Deodhar has done with secondary sources is impressive. The book takes care not to make the discussion too technical which would have scared the readers away. Readers are also advised not to put too much a premium on the opinions expressed in this book as it is oriented more towards lay people. It includes a crossword at the end in which the clues refer to concepts enunciated in the narrative. Readers are encouraged to try it before and after reading the book and compare the results. Though it looks like comprehension questions in a text book, this provides a measurable parameter of the book’s utility.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 3 Star

 

V. P. Menon – The Unsung Architect of Modern India

Title: V. P. Menon – The Unsung Architect of Modern India

Author: Narayani Basu

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2020 (First)

ISBN: 9789386797681

Pages: 440

 

Sardar Patel was the undoubted leader of the Congress party at the time of independence who was poised to become to the prime minister of the newly independent nation. However, Nehru cleverly pulled strings to lean on Gandhi to make himself the party president and then the prime minister. Patel was never power-hungry and he simply stepped aside for Nehru. He then took the responsibility of merging the 565-odd principalities to India as the minister in charge of the newly formed States ministry. Vappala Pangunny Menon (1893 – 1968), an official from Kerala and the secretary to the ministry, ably helped him achieve the impossible. V P Menon was a master in any field he touched upon. He was the Reforms Commissioner to three viceroys, drafted the plan of partition, Patel’s right hand man and secretary to the States ministry. With a mix of subtlety, gruff charm and ruthlessness, VP cajoled, coaxed and threatened rulers into joining the newborn Indian union. Even though politicians made impassioned speeches about Swaraj, nobody realized the sheer amount of work that went into making a modern nation. VP handled the tedium and technicality of the dream to be made reality which was stupendous. Narayani Basu is the great-grand daughter of V P Menon and is a historian and foreign policy analyst. This is her second book.

V P Menon’s life is amazingly brilliant, perhaps one in a billion, in which a person from a very disadvantaged background rose to the top positions of bureaucracy. He ran away from home at 13, after failing an exam and in revenge burning the school down. He worked in the Kolar Gold Fields and did all sorts of jobs in Mumbai, including selling towels on the streets. A kindly Englishman recommended him as a typist in a government office. VP never looked back and reached the pinnacle by sheer hard work. He never bent his back and was sometimes even blunt almost to the point of rudeness. Even as a lower level officer, he announced his ideas without demur and confidently argued his point in the middle of meetings. Along with surprise, this generated a mix of resentment and grudging respect among the British superiors. Racism was rampant in the colonial bureaucracy, but what mattered to VP was not titles, but authority; the authority to help guide his country on its path to freedom. With this extra care given to his official matters, he failed to bond with his children. He was emotionally distant with them and his sons addressed him ‘Sir’ at home, even as grown men!

 

This book reveals V P Menon’s attitude to some of the Congress’ agitation methods which is filled with post-independence hyperbole. The Congress launched non-cooperation and Satyagraha against the Raj in the 1920s. This was a systemic war which involved the return of decorations and honours, withdrawal of children from government schools and colleges, boycott of law courts by lawyers and litigants alike and the boycott of elections. The next stage anticipated the resignation of all officials and soldiers and non-payment of taxes. This seemed the height of folly to VP especially since he felt he could do something constructive from within the walls of the imperial secretariat. He always felt that the Congress policy of non-cooperation was a total mistake (p.149), especially with reference to the Second World War. The resignation of the Congress-led provincial governments in 1939 and refusal to join the Viceroy’s Executive Council in 1940 in effect gave Pakistan in a platter to the Muslim League. This book also points to VP’s opinion on the Moplah Rebellion of 1921 in Kerala which is trumpeted as a chapter of the freedom struggle but was in fact a one-sided communal riot in which thousands of Hindus were killed, looted, raped and forcibly converted. VP’s neighbourhood was the worst hit. On the audio tape of his interview, his voice crackles and breaks for a minute as he talks about the devastation in his native village. He remarked that the Khilafat leaders were communal and were merely making use of Gandhi for their own purpose (p.60).

 

V P Menon maintained good working relationship with all the people he had had to serve. His dedication to Patel was complete. Patel reciprocated the feelings. During the winter of 1946, VP persuaded Patel to let go of his fond hopes for a united India. Except through Partition, there was no agreement possible and therefore no emancipation from Britain. Patel had no desire to govern India along with Jinnah who put obstacles on every move. VP entered Mountbatten’s inner circle because he was close to Patel, who was the real power in the Congress even though Nehru was its titular head. Another curious fact was also seen here. Both Nehru and Patel had a Menon as their trusted aide – VP for Patel and V K Krishna Menon for Nehru. Even Edwina Mountbatten once intervened to prevent VP’s resignation as Constitutional Advisor when he felt that he was being sidelined.

 

Basu gives a detailed narrative of the events in May and June 1947 which had a profound significance on the nature of the country’s birth as a free nation. Mountbatten’s announcement of 4 June that India will be granted independence on Aug 15 was a bolt from the blue. He gave only ten weeks for the preparations to undergo in the background. A program called Menon Plan was chalked out for the transfer of power to partitioned states. This was prepared hastily in Shimla in four hours. Mountbatten appropriated the plan for himself in his meetings with senior officials at London. The author also investigates the tall claims by the Viceroy in sorting out the Partition issues and comes out with a possible answer. VP and Patel pandered Mountbatten’s enormous ego. They knew that their plans would work only if the Viceroy was not just on board, but its ambassador too. At different points in 1947, he was told deferentially that the only way history could move forward was if he played his part. It worked well.

 

The author also notes the strong undercurrent of spite in Nehru-Patel relations. Nehru was always obsequious to Gandhi while Patel never agreed with his wild ideas once he took office (p.225). Nehru had nearly omitted Patel in the list of ministers in India’s first cabinet. Basu wonders whether this was out of fear of the Sardar who could govern India better than himself. He wanted to fill the cabinet with his cronies and had already dispatched his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit to Moscow as India’s ambassador. In short, Nehru lost no time in stuffing positions of power with his hand-picked people. VP heard of this and implored Mountbatten to intervene with Nehru to revise the list.

 

A detailed narrative on the integration of Indian native states to the Union is included, with special references to Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir. This was VP’s life’s work for which the nation still remembers him with respect and gratitude. He tried all tricks up his sleeve to coerce the petty rulers to part with their fiefs and sign it away to the nation. The book also describes some tactical moves made by VP to bolster India’s position on Kashmir. He pretended that the Instrument of Accession signed by its ruler was dated Oct 26, 1947. On the next day, Indian troops crossed the border to drive out Pakistani tribesmen and disguised soldiers out of Kashmir. Basu hints that the treaty was signed on Oct 27, in fact after the military intervention had taken place. She further claims that both VP and Patel were of the opinion that Kashmiris would opt for Pakistan if a plebiscite was held at that time and VP is said to have implied this in a discussion with Chaudhury Muhammad Ali and Lord Ismay (p.380). However, Pakistan’s refusal to pull out its troops negated the very first condition for plebiscite in the Valley as stipulated by the UN.

 

The first part of the book is riddled with many historical errors. It claims that during the First World War, 1.3 million Indians signed up for the army and ‘Mohandas Gandhi, then a young barrister in London, declared that every Indian should think imperially and began preparations to recruit an Indian Ambulance Corps’ (p.31). Probably the author is confused with the Boer War in South Africa in which Gandhi participated in this way. In another instance of goof up, the author claims that VP witnessed Gandhi arriving at St. James’ Palace for the first Round Table Conference in 1930 (p.97). In fact, Gandhi attended the Second Round Table Conference the next year which VP didn’t attend. It is also shown that the Gandhi-Irwin Pact was signed on 5 May 1931 (p.84). The correct date is 5 March 1931. These wrong facts don’t affect the flow of the narrative, but the author’s credibility is imperiled.

 

The book is successful in bringing to light the man and bureaucrat who V P Menon was. She has relied on the reminiscences of family members and the original soundtrack of audio interviews given by him in the 1960s.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 3 Star