The Love Queen of Malabar

Title: The Love Queen of Malabar – Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das
Author: Merrily Weisbord
Publisher: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011 (First published 2010)
ISBN: 9788173142420
Pages: 278
 
Kamala Surayya, who was earlier known as Kamala Das before her conversion to Islam, was the most unconventional writer in Malayalam who shook the establishment to the core with her bold outbursts on female sexuality in her widely read autobiography ‘My Story’. She was the first woman to write frankly about such topics and would not back down when attacked. Das loved to poke society with pinpricks on the collective morality first as an open-minded woman and when the sex appeal faded as she aged, did the same with her conversion to Islam. Merrily Weisbord is an award-winning Canadian author, film-maker and broadcaster. This book is the memoir of her sweet friendship with Kamala Das beginning in 1995 and lasting till her death even though events occurring after 2005 are not recorded. This book is an essential companion to Surayya’s literary works that helps to unravel the artist’s complex mind from the vivid but misleading clues in her narrative.
 
The author has not used much secondary sources to collect the information she divulges through the pages. Consulting Kamala’s friends and literary associates provide a lot of details, but almost the whole of the material is obtained by direct interviews with her icon over the course of ten years. This period of time wrought tremendous changes in Kamala’s personal, social and literary outlook that we see conflicting opinion on some topics. Even a direct question to the protagonist often elicits answers tinged with fantasy and poetic license. They are not to be accepted literally. A question usually starts a cascade of memories, connections, metaphorical allusions and storytelling. One would get submerged in the flow. Weisbord admits that she is unsure of the revelations’ authenticity, that is, whether Kamala simply imagines them out of her fancies and fantasies. But this is a characteristic of her literary oeuvre. Her autobiography bristles with tantalizing references to intimate encounters while keeping the readers guessing whether they are true or not. This seems more like a professional tactic of an entrepreneur who knows how to sell her product. It doesn’t deserve the exalted philosophical moorings this book liberally ascribes on it. The author also observes that Kamala spent a lifetime hiding, dissimulating and spreading disinformation about her real sexual history. It is difficult to separate sexual fact from fiction in her life and the critics still argue whether the men in ‘My Story’ are imagined or real.
 
Readers will be astonished at the trusting nature of Kamala and how quickly she struck an intimate friendship with the author in a matter of days. This verges on gullibility which might be the reason why she could be easily persuaded to change her faith so late in life. In the beginning, the author proposed a professional relationship as Weisbord was attempting to write a book on her. But Kamala soon proclaimed that whether the book gets written or not, something sweet had come out of the interactions which she cherished. Weisbord visited Kerala many times and Kamala visited Canada twice to remain several weeks under the hospitality of her interviewer. She fully empathized with the author which came from being of the same writers’ tribe. These close encounters help display another curious hallmark of Kamala. Orthodoxy and rebellion coexisted within her. The love queen of Malabar’s veneer was simply a shining initial layer of her many selves. She also exhibited a perplexing lack of open-mindedness in her advice to the author on her personal life. Weisbord had had two divorces and was engaged in a live-in relationship with a third that had lasted for many years. Kamala insisted on formalizing the relationship either by marriage or at least a legal agreement that conferred some rights to her on the partner’s property. Here, Kamala acts like a conventional grandmother. Before conversion, she had a fierce pride of India, rejection of foreign loans, denial of dowry deaths and dismissal of expatriate Indians who pronounce on Indian literature without knowing any language other than English.
 
On Dec 16, 1999, Kamala converted to Islam, changing her name to Surayya. This was a bolt from the blue, including the author, who was kept in the dark in spite of their close friendship. Surayya made a clean break with her past claiming to have taken Krishna from the famous shrine at Guruvayur, taken him home and renamed Muhammad. A concerted effort, often termed ‘love jihad’, had taken place in the conversion drama. It is reported that a young politician named Sadiq Ali approached Kamala as if he was besotted to her. He was 38 and she was 65. He was a Muslim League MP from Malabar and already had two wives. Sadiq Ali is a pseudonym used in the book, but everyone in Kerala is aware of the true identity of this sweet-tongued politician. He made sexual advances and promised to marry her as his third wife, as he was permitted up to four wives as per Islamic law. The only condition was that she should convert to Islam. Kamala did so and instantly Sadiq Ali faded out of her life in a classic instance of ‘love jihad’, his passion presumably a part of his religious duty. A Muslim militant organization took control of her life immediately after conversion while she was feted in many middle-eastern countries. Surayya gradually accepted the loss of Sadiq Ali and struck up another intimate relationship with a Muslim doctor who appears in the final chapters of the book.
 
The author marks how Surayya was soon disillusioned with what she had chosen. She was fed up with fundamentalism, culturally sanctioned male superiority and religious interference in her writing and painting. She gradually gravitated to a sufist interpretation of Islam by merging a few tenets of Hinduism but remained neither fish nor fowl. She propagated a morality based on love and mocked mindless convention but she drew on traditionally based standards of purity to maintain her dignity and self-respect. As she noted, “I speak for the cause of female emancipation, attack the hypocrisy of conventional morality but seek fulfillment within the nest of traditional values” (p.200).
 
The book has successfully conveyed Surayya’s thirst for love. She desperately wanted to be loved, shaking off the scales of her former loveless matrimony. All her actions were initiated by this eagerness to find love. Weisbord also includes liberal snippets of Kamala’s poems and quotes from ‘My Story’. It also includes many poor quality photographs from Kamala’s life, but with no captions.
 
The book is recommended.
 
Rating: 3 Star
 

Backstage

Title: Backstage – The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years

Author: Montek Singh Ahluwalia

Publisher: Rupa Publications, 2020 (First)

ISBN: 9789353338213

Pages: 434

 

Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s stature as an economist is perhaps exceeded only by that of Manmohan Singh. Both served in a range of official positions related to the finance portfolio. While Manmohan Singh returned to the centre stage as a politician first as finance minister and then as prime minister of India, Ahluwalia vacated the stage after his post-retirement stint as the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. Perhaps more meaningful roles await him if ever the Congress comes back to power. This book is his memoirs that consist of three parts – that leading to the 1991 reforms, the 1990s and the decade in which UPA was in power (2004-14). It also includes an epilogue to make a brief commentary on the performance of Modi with a suggestion of required reforms for the government to consider. Montek Singh had a brilliant academic career both in India and England and he returned to India as a civil servant abandoning a highly-paid job with the World Bank. This book is a comprehensive catalogue of almost three decades (1980 – 2014) which redefined India on the world economic map.

 

Along with the author’s reminiscences of his college days and early career in Washington, Ahluwalia provides a snapshot of the economic scene up to 1980, without dwelling too much on the Nehru era. We would be shocked to find too much politicization of the economy, sometimes going against the national interest. India was always ridden with a balance of payments crisis. The World Bank used to extend long term soft loans to developing countries with interest rates close to zero. In order to protect their money, the Bank used to set conditions regarding mandatory changes in the debtor’s economic policy. Opposition politicians used to cite these as infringement on the nation’s sovereignty. In 1966, India devalued the rupee by 36 per cent in one stroke to meet a precondition to a World Bank loan. However, US President Lyndon Johnson intervened to reject India’s claim due to its hostile position on the Vietnam War which US was prosecuting with disastrous consequences resulting in devaluation of the rupee without getting a loan. Another valid instance is related to the Green Revolution. India’s agriculture was in a poor shape with no prospect of a change for the better. The Club of Rome had remarked that India would not be able to feed herself and was too large to be fed by the rest of the world! Import of high yielding varieties of Mexican wheat seed became essential to kick-start the revolution. However, the left parties opposed the idea of Mexican wheat because it was actually developed by the American agronomist Norman Borlaug under a grant from Rockefeller Foundation and perceived it as adoption of US technology. Such was the level at which politics played in economic decision making in India. In the first case, India’s affinity to Vietnam’s suffering population can be justified on moral grounds, but the latter case is a clear vindication of the left’s propensity to follow the Soviet agenda even in spite of collision with India’s national interests in eradication of hunger.

 

Ahluwalia is a darling of the Congress party and he treats the dynasty’s economic policies without any censure even when many of them openly blocked the country’s progress. The cozying up to the family starts with the panegyrical conclusion that ‘Nehru had a distinct vision for India as a post-colonial economy going through a public-sector led process of modernisation’. This is delivered straight without a tinge of criticism. Indira lurched to the left in the 1960s and 70s to exploit populist sentiments for her faction in the party when the Congress was heading to a split. She was, however, somewhat open to reforms in the 1980s, but it was by gradualism and ‘stealth’. Ahluwalia’s claim that Rajiv Gandhi prepared India for the 21^st century does not stand the negative observations that can be pulled out from the book itself. Rajiv was not a warm supporter of reforms. He reluctantly originated some reforms, but that were intended only to tide over the payments crisis India was facing. His attitude to reforms is clear from his well known remark that ‘we must give up controls, without giving up control. He never initiated the kind of systemic policy review that would reveal which strategic controls were to be retained. He was not even willing to issue a white paper on public sector reforms even after much persuasion. FDI remained pegged to priority sectors only and that too was capped at 40 per cent.

 

The real transformation came about in the early 1990s when Narasimha Rao dismantled archaic policies that stifled growth and spawned corruption in bureaucratic and political circles. He was ably assisted by Manmohan Singh handling the finance portfolio but Singh was not Rao’s first choice. It was only when I G Patel refused Rao’s invitation did the mantle fell on Singh. More details may be obtained from the book, ‘Half Lion’ by Vinay Sitapati, which was reviewed earlier. In a way, Singh reversed many of the policies which he himself had helped implement as a bureaucrat during Indira’s tenure. The author remarks that Rao was always cautious of leaving himself open to the charge of pushing through a new policy without consulting all concerned. The change in the world’s perception of India is evident from the response to Reliance Industries’ long term corporate bond with tenure of 100 years. These bonds for $100 million sold extremely well, while in 1991, India as a nation had to physically pledge its gold reserves in London as collateral to a loan from international banks.

 

This book attempts a comparison of Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh for the success of the 1991 reforms. It concedes that Rao recognized that the changes were necessary if India was to realise her full potential, but did not understand the full gamut of changes needed to unleash the economic prowess. Singh had been in government for twenty years as a senior civil servant and was aware of all ripples, however subtle, in Indian economy. Rao backed the policy changes while the crisis was raging and did little to educate the public on the need for continued reform. Singh was Ahluwalia’s mentor and the conduit through which he was absorbed into the civil service. So it is not astonishing to watch the author declaring that Manmohan Singh was the true architect of the reforms, but this would not have happened without Rao’s backing. The architect-backer dichotomy can be lucidly explained by another parallel. Ustad Ahmad Lahouri was the architect of Taj Mahal at Agra while Emperor Shah Jehan was the backer!

 

Ahluwalia devotes considerable effort to present the two tenures of Manmohan Singh as superlatives in performance almost as if he was a member of the cabinet. What he does by silence on Nehruvian policies is complemented by eloquence on Manmohan’s policies. While it may be true that Singh’s quiet leadership was the critical driving force that made the nuclear agreement with the US a reality, the overall failure and universal perception of horrible corruption is linked directly to Singh’s lack of roots in the party or with the public at large. Singh was a person with impeccable integrity but his ministers took him for granted. These aspects are not covered in this book that attempts to lionize Singh. It also tries its hand in whitewashing of 2G and coal block scams claiming that the presumptive loss calculations are flawed. It also contains an outrageous assertion that the CAG was unaware of basic accounting practices!

 

The author then makes a comparison of UPA ministries under Singh and the NDA ministry under Modi. This is just pure political discussion without any technical merit. Many factors are considered for evaluation but are riddled with naked cherry-picking. The contrast is made out between the best years of UPA with the worst of the NDA. For some parameters, he would take the year 2007-08 and for others it would be 2011-12 or any other convenient year. Looking at the statistical gymnastics one wonders whether Ahluwalia is really harping on the possibility of becoming the finance minister of the country in a future Congress regime.

 

The book is somewhat tedious to read at some places even though great effort has been made to make it palatable to the general reader. It provides an on-the-spot assessment of the events that unfolded in 1991 when the country made a paradigm shift from the socialist Nehruvian model. Overall, it gives a glimpse of India from 1980 to 2014.

 

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

 

Great Soul

Title: Great Soul – Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India

Author: Joseph Lelyveld

Publisher: Harper Collins India, 2011 (First)

ISBN: 9789350290583

Pages: 425

This is a book on Gandhi, but this is not just another book on the father of the nation. All other books treat the political narrative as an inalienable part of Gandhi’s personal life. Have you ever come across a book on Gandhi which does not mention the Simon Commission or the Cabinet Mission? That’s how this volume becomes special in biographical narrative. It aims to amplify his life’s account by dwelling on incidents and themes that have often been underplayed. It takes a fresh look to understand and gets fascinated by the long arc of his strenuous life. Through this effort, Gandhi is expressed in vivid colours with all the frailties of a human being rather than the demigod which most historians portray him as. Gandhi bhakts may get stung at first by the mild whiff of criticism they are not accustomed with, but this is a good read for them. Joseph Lelyveld is a Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist and author. This book is banned in Gujarat on account of a reference to Gandhi’s sexual preferences.

Lelyveld follows a nuanced approach to analyse Gandhi’s life in South Africa and comes to the conclusion that the leadership skills and strategy that he would develop later in India to perfection was honed there. When he arrived there in 1893 as a British-trained attorney, he aligned himself only with the well-to-do Indians. His initial protest movements against the local government were against racial laws that discomfited the entire Indian community. Majority of the Indians in South Africa were ‘indentured labourers’ who exclusively worked for a master – which could also be an enterprise or industry – and was in a state very near to slavery. In fact, this system was adopted by the whites to find a suitable workforce when slavery was made illegal. Gandhi kept them at arm’s length, refusing to associate with them. So, his movements lacked mass appeal. Slowly, he became aware that such storms in a teacup were not going to force the hand of the racist government. It was only in 1913, just a year before his permanent return to India that he identified the labourers as brothers and organized a mass satyagraha in protest against a racial law that fined labourers who continued to stay in South Africa after the lapse of their work contract. Also, the government revoked recognition to marriages conducted according to Hindu or Muslim rites. The labourers lined up behind Gandhi with great zeal. Coal mines, plantations, sanitation and all aspects of Natal’s economy ground to a halt. Even though many were killed and hundreds imprisoned or deported, the government had to concede both demands. The aristocrats among Indians opposed Gandhi for roping in the lowly labourers and expelled him from the Natal Indian Congress which was founded by Gandhi himself. However, the immense success of the strike convinced him of the way forward in India. Another curious fact noted in this book is Gandhi’s total disregard for native blacks. He often calls them by the local derogatory epithet of kaffirs. In the several thousands of pages Gandhi wrote in or about South Africa, the names of only three black natives are mentioned. Of these three, he had met only one – John Dube, a Zulu aristocrat. With this background, it is a little surprising that the native regime which came to power after apartheid recognized Gandhi as one of the architects of modern South Africa.

Hindu-Muslim unity, struggle against untouchability and village industries were the three pillars of the Hind Swaraj Gandhi dreamed of. Lelyveld gives a truly revealing account of his crusade against untouchability in particular. There is no doubt that Gandhi meant each word he uttered against this heinous practice found only in India. He practiced what he preached by freely interacting with untouchables and sharing in their burden to clean up society’s waste. Still, he always stopped short of going the whole hog. His double standard in the case of Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924 is especially jarring. The Shiva temple at Vaikom in Kerala, like the numerous temples in the state, had barred its doors to the lower castes. Not only that, use of the thoroughfare around the temple was denied to them. Blocking this crucial pathway in the centre of the town had put the untouchables to immense hardships. They rose up in protest and demanded that the roads be opened to all. Even though temple entry itself was not on the table, the Brahmins who administered the shrine refused to budge. Surprisingly, Gandhi demurred to intervene and even denied them permission to use satyagraha methods which had borne fruit elsewhere. The book devotes a considerable portion to describe the love-hate relationship between Gandhi and Ambedkar. Gandhi respected Ambedkar, but granted him no space to maneuver. His logic of attributing divine agency in human affairs infuriated Ambedkar. Gandhi’s constant effort to arrive at a solution acceptable to all parties on the untouchability issue irked and frequently tested the patience of Dalit leaders.

Gandhi is credited with the achievement of ensuring mass participation in the freedom struggle by replacing the debates and petitions of elite legal luminaries towards the British. There is only one way in which the masses can be mobilized in India – religion. The same thing applies now and did a century ago too. Lelyveld gives examples to prove that Gandhi was not averse to exploit religion in his work in South Africa. In the 1913 Indentured Labourers’ strike, the protestors chanted slogans such as ‘Victory to Ramchandra’ (Jai Shriram?), ‘Victory to Dwarkanath’ and ‘Vande Mataram’. Gandhi then wrote in newspaper articles that they were taking part in a religious war. Gandhi’s plan to opt for mass participation alienated Muslim professionals because of his inclination to pamper the highly religious among them. Also, in a legislative system where the representation would be a reflection of the numerical superiority of Hindus, they rightly apprehended trouble ahead. His advocacy of the cause of Khilafat is the foremost among them. This was an issue that took place in distant Turkey and had no direct political concerns in India. But the Indian Muslims, who thought they were part of a global Muslim brotherhood transcending national frontiers, considered the Ottoman sultans as their caliph. Gandhi supported this thoroughly divisive demand and for a short time it seemed that Hindu-Muslim unity had been achieved at the grass roots level. Swami Shraddhanand, the Arya Samaj leader, was allowed to address the faithful in Delhi’s renowned Jama Masjid. But it faded as quickly as its meteoric rise. Gross violence in the protests persuaded Gandhi to quietly backpedal on the issue. This drove the Muslims into a frenzy that resulted in nationwide communal clashes. On Gandhi’s attempt to communal amity in Noakhali after a pogrom on its Hindu minority, the author finds that ‘an impartial accounting of Gandhi’s four months in Noakhali would show no political or social gains’. The rupture he hoped to forestall had occurred. By June 1948, one million Hindu refugees fled to India and by 1970 that number had swelled to five million.

The book’s subtitle ‘Gandhi’s struggles with India’ amply justifies and provide a clear hint of the special perspective Lelyveld assumes throughout in the book. Usual versions of Gandhi’s life typically drip with reverence to him who can never be wrong and morally invincible. This book sheds the sheen around the semi-mythic personality projected on to the national mindscape. Here we see an individual who is rock solid on his convictions, but usually unable to produce the results he wanted. He strove for unity among Hindus and Muslims, but finally harvested a bitter communal violence that shocked the world. He declared a crusade against untouchability which remained a thorny issue even long after Gandhi succumbed to an assassin’s bullet. On village work, he acknowledged his failure to recruit the corps of self-sacrificing satyagrahis and doubted the potential of the few dozen he had drawn at Sevagram. 

Readers would be astonished at the magical pull Gandhi exerted on his adherents. We also learn about his weird experiments on celibacy and tests on his ability to ward off temptation by sleeping naked with his grand-niece. Lelyveld boldly examines other red herrings in Gandhi’s gigantic literary wealth. It was for suggesting a homosexual liaison with a South African architect named Hermann Kallenbach that the book was banned in some Indian states. The book is a must-read for students of Indian history and Gandhism by showing a lesser known aspect of Gandhi as a deeply fallible human being. It presents a critical narrative of the father of the nation in his experiments with truth. It includes a good collection of rare, early photographs of Gandhi, especially in South Africa. The chapter on Gandhi’s stay at Noakhali and his experiments on brahmacharya involving Manu Gandhi open up a vista which no Indian author dares to unveil.

The book is most highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star