Akbar: The Great Mughal

Title: Akbar: The Great Mughal – The Definitive Biography
Author: Ira Mukhoty
Publisher: Aleph, 2020 (First)
ISBN: 9789389836042
Pages: 544
 
There are numerous accounts of Akbar in current day circulation. Akbar was different among Mughal emperors in consolidating the dynasty’s power through incorporation of Hindus in the power structure of his empire. Make no mistake about it; their representation was only marginal and limited to the very powerful rajas. The Muslims who constituted just ten per cent of the population still occupied eighty per cent of the aristocracy. But, medieval India was not a democracy and Akbar’s reforms made his polity markedly different from his sultanate predecessors and bigoted successors. The image of Akbar as a benevolent monarch is fused into folklore and he is given a respectable position in the popular imagination even today. However, a full-length biography of Akbar is rare and this book seeks to fill that gap. It divides the Mughal emperor’s life into six sections in this comparatively large book. Ira Mukhoty is a Cambridge-educated Indian author who lives in Delhi and writes about historical and mythical literary work. Most of her effort is directed at clarifying the faded outlines of women characters in them. This book on Akbar may seem at first not to be in the author’s genre, but the long descriptions of Akbar’s wives, mothers and aunts and their influence in the administration makes it clear that she has not veered much from her objectives.
 
Mukhoty constantly seeks to show how important Mughal women were in the life of Akbar. She provides poignant portraits of their lives too. In the early years of Mughal rule, the Timurid women led unfettered lives. They accompanied Humayun in his wanderings and rode into India on horseback. These women were thinly veiled and participated in the public life of the emperor and their advice was constantly sought. As the empire consolidated, more formal zenana came into being, but the influence of elderly women never waned. They even took part in clashes for gaining favour at the court. Bairam Khan, Akbar’s guardian while enthroned as a minor, had many tugs of war with the harem in his attempt to nestle the young price under his wings. Akbar had implicit faith and profound trust in these women which included his mother Hamida Banu, his aunt Gulbadan, stepmother Bega Begum and his milk mothers Maham Anaga and Jiji Anaga. Throughout his life, he showed them extravagant devotion and would grant them their smallest wishes. The senior women once engaged in a Hajj pilgrimage lasting nearly three years without a male relative’s escort. They also moderated the severity of succession struggles by acting as intermediaries between the contenders.
 
Readers get a fancied picture of the role of Hindus in the administration through this book. The author narrates the accounts of a few nobles to present a rosy picture of accommodation in Akbar’s bureaucracy. Raja Man Singh, ruler of Amer/Jaipur, was the powerful governor of Bengal and he seems to have enjoyed much freedom in doing what he thought best. He performed an elaborate and ostentatious shraddha (a post-cremation rite) at Gaya for 45 days and built temples there. This is claimed to be a testament not only to the wealth he commanded but also to the ambition he rightly claimed as a highly successful commander in Akbar’s service. However the author fails to mention India’s cultural unity, the motive force that propelled a Rajasthani aristocrat to perform the funeral rites of his ancestors on the shores of a river in Bihar. Keeping with the book’s theme, the author argues that Akbar’s Hindu wives influenced his religious policy. He prohibited enslavement of prisoners of war, the practice of imperial soldiers making captive the women, children and kinsmen of opposing soldiers. If this is true, Akbar was clearly ahead of his times. Still, one wonders if this basic principle of humaneness needed to be told to convince an ‘enlightened emperor’. This book blows up the liberal fiction that destruction of temples in medieval times was only a strategy of the winning party to humiliate the loser and that this happened during battles between Hindu kings also. Raja Man Singh, governor of Bengal, defeated Kedar Rai of Jessore in 1594. Singh seized the black stone idol of Sila Mata and instead of smashing it to smithereens, took it to Jaipur, built a temple and worshipped it. The temple can still be seen there.
 
Akbar was the most liberal of Mughal emperors regarding toleration of non-Muslims. People of all faiths were inducted into the nobility. The author states that Akbar even stopped performing namaz, though the veracity of this statement is doubtful. However, the ulema rose in rebellion in Bengal and Bihar over the emperor’s eclecticism. A disaffected mullah, Qazi Muhammad Yazdi, went to the extreme act of denouncing Akbar as an infidel and issued a fatwa of kufr (disbelief) calling on all righteous Muslims to take up arms and revolt against the emperor. The cause of Islam was just a convenient rallying point for disgruntled officers who were deeply resentful of the measures taken by Akbar to reduce the rampant corruption and nepotism in his administration. This is a typical left-liberal justification to push bigotry under the carpet and to suggest economic interests as an alternative. The mansabdars (nobles) had to fight shoulder to shoulder irrespective of their religion, but the fanaticism exhibited by some of them was shocking. Raja Man Singh led the Mughal assault in the 1564 Battle of Gogunda against Rana Pratap of Mewar. At one point, the Rajputs on the Mughal side got so entangled with the Mewar warriors in the heat of battle that it was difficult to distinguish friend from foe. At this time, the chronicler Badauni asked Asaf Khan, a prominent noble battling alongside, how to tell them apart. Asaf Khan told him to continue firing indiscriminately, as ‘on whichever side they may be killed, it will be a gain to Islam’ (p.206). Similarly conspicuous by hatred is Badauni’s reporting of the deaths of two Rajput nobles in 1589. Raja Todar Mal and Bhagwant Das were those two Rajputs with decades of selfless service of Akbar. Badauni wrote that ‘they hastened to the abode of hell and torment and in the lowest pit became the food of serpents and scorpions. May God scorch them both’ (p.358).
 
Surprisingly for a well-researched book, this one shows some inconsistencies which the author should have tried to avoid. One is regarding an incident extolled as Akbar’s kindness. A courtier named Muhammad Hussain Mirza led a rebellion against the emperor which was brutally crushed by imperial forces. But Akbar granted pardon to the rebel and confined him to the custody of one Rai Singh (p.151). However, right on the next page she tells that ‘the heads of Muhammad Hussain Mirza and Ikhtiyar ul-Mulk were sent to Agra’ (p.152). Another instance of ambiguity is a little more serious. Mukhoty states that ‘Akbar left Fatehpur Sikri for the Punjab in 1585. When he left, there was no indication that he would never return and that the great lively discussions of the Ibadat Khana were forever silenced’ (p.317). With this in black and white she narrates in another part of the book that to counter Salim’s insurrection, ‘Akbar finally returned to Fatehpur Sikri in 1601’ (p.433). Admittedly, the emperor stayed in his old capital for only a few days, but the imagery of farewell in the first case is however rendered pointless.
 
The book digs its roots to very good reference sources, but its reliance on Audrey Truschke for the role of Sanskrit in the Mughal court adversely affects its credibility. As is well known, Truschke’s works are often a compendium of arguments with an agenda and with a smattering of the subject matter than a product of impartial and genuine scholarship. The low status of women in Mughal period is examined in detail, but the author arraigns the Rajput courts for controlling their women strictly within defined notions of honour. This is very strange since it is clear that they were emulating their Mughal masters in this regard. A considerable number of reference sources in this book are women. It also contains a fine sampling of Mughal paintings and the narrative gives special emphasis on art in general. The blending processes of Indian, Persian and European artistic styles are lucidly explained.
 
The book is recommended.
 
Rating: 3 Star
 

India that is Bharat

Title: India that is Bharat – Coloniality, Civilisation and Constitution

Author: J Sai Deepak

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9789354352492

Pages: 460

 

India attained its political independence from Britain in 1947. Even though the foreign masters were forced to go home, the soul of colonialism firmly stayed back. India did not even try to dismantle the colonial institutions, but chose to wear some of them on its sleeves. The concept of a nation-state, constitutionalism, modernity, secularism and the understanding of what is a civilisation are borrowed from the British and held in high esteem. At this point, the question naturally arises whether these aren’t indeed ideals that are estimable and worthy of emulation. Without a trace of doubt we can answer it in the affirmative, but with a caveat. Our value system is moulded by education and exchange of ideas both locally and between nations. Both of these modes are suffused with colonial morals. Unbeknown to us, the colonized people’s thoughts are restrained within the bounds set by ideas having a colonial origin. Indian society unquestionably accepted the ideas of modernity that came to dominate intellectual life in the nineteenth century and accepted as valid by both the colonizer and the colonized. The veneer of coloniality is to be first removed to appreciate the indigenous values that have been systematically vilified by colonial era historians and evangelists. This book seeks to unravel the veil of coloniality that has profoundly shaped the thinking of the conquered by white European Christian subjugation. The title of the book refers to Article 1 of the Indian Constitution which states that India, that is, Bharat shall be a union of states. The title also refers to the unreconciled dichotomy between an India shaped by colonialism and a Bharat which represents indigenous consciousness. J. Sai Deepak is an engineer-turned-lawyer practicing as an arguing counsel before the Supreme Court of India. He has carved a niche for himself as a litigator in civil, commercial and constitutional matters. This is his first book.

 

Sai Deepak promotes the use of the word ‘coloniality’ to denote the mindset that still keeps the coloniser’s ideals deeply entrenched in the colonised’s thoughts. Coloniality is the fundamental element of colonialism that facilitates colonization of the mind through complete domination of the culture and world view of the colonized society. A confusing point confronts us here. Unlike other colonialized societies, the religion and culture of India is still largely intact after centuries of European Christian and Middle Eastern colonization, the latter being a euphemism for Muslim conquest of India. The author argues that beneath this façade of continuity, the essential cultural aspects have changed to emulate the European prototypes. The vision of independence coined by native elites was limited to the politico-economic sphere but did not include decolonization on the cultural front. The true genius of European colonialism lay not in the political and economic repression of the native, but in successfully projecting his way of life as the aspirational ideal.

 

The author then moves on to explain how the colonizer could dislodge awareness of one’s roots from the minds of Indian ‘heathens’. The education policy of Britain was heavily tinted by the evangelical hue where the missionaries were assigned the task of teaching the children of other faiths seemingly secular topics. The evangelists always dangled the carrot of conversion as a way of uplifting the natives through plum jobs in the colonial administration. On the other hand, the government wanted to produce a generation of people ‘Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect’. We have to accept that the colonizer achieved what he targeted. Colonial education annihilated a society’s belief in itself. It made the colonized people see their past as one vast wasteland of non-achievement and it made them desirous of distancing themselves from that wasteland. European coloniality was directly responsible for disrupting the sacred relationship between indigenous peoples and nature, the destruction of their faith, language, political and social structures and knowledge – in short, their entire culture. The Christian tenet that placed man at the centre of creation brought in the idea of nature as just a resource for exploitation. The world is still witnessing the dreadful aftereffects of carrying this idea too far.

 

What is really unexpected for the readers is to learn that the modern morals shared by colonialism such as rationality and secularism were shaped by reformative concepts on Christianity which found its expression in the Protestant Reformation. The religious wars popularly known as the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia which ended it engendered nation-states and postulated the twin ideals of a spiritual and temporal sphere. Enlightenment represented the predominance of reason over faith. Noted philosopher John Locke divided society also into two spheres, the civil and the religious. This suggested a civil authority to safeguard the nation and also to prevent outrages of humans who are designed ‘to prey on the fruits of others’ labour’. This was a replica of the Christian political theology of two kingdoms – the material and spiritual. The civil society acted as a secularized reproduction of the Christian assumption that humans are stained by sin and fundamentally depraved. The book criticizes the claim of the Indian elite that Britain unified the country and made investments in infrastructure such as the railways. The very idea of India, its civilizational unity, its relationship with time and its subjectivity have been thus tied to the advent of the colonizer. This is an abysmal understanding of global history and clear evidence of the nature and dominance of coloniality in Indian secular thinking.

 

The colonial influence on the legal systems and constitution is still felt, mostly to the detriment of diversity and indigenous spirit. Traditionally, the colonies were forced to adopt legal mechanisms to preserve their integrity upon achieving independence to overcome the fissiparous tendencies created by the imposition of nation-statehood. The foremost among these was a constitution which was initially intended to be a means to forge a nation-state. This was often elevated to the status of a religious document. Judiciary in decolonized societies assumes a similar position as the Roman Catholic Church during Reformation. Instead of decentralizing morality and allowing the society’s indigenous cultural moorings to inform law and policy, blind and unthinking constitutionalism has effectively contributed to the concentration of totalizing powers over morality and world view in the hands of unelected institutions and individuals. This is a clear reference to the author’s own experience when he appeared in court to argue against the plea of feminists demanding entry into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. This temple forbids entry of women of reproductive age based on custom and legend of the deity who is worshipped as a brahmachari. The court ruled for entry of women in an immediately stunning though eventually fruitless verdict.

 

Sai Deepak spares enough space to examine the difficulties posed by the framework of a nation-state on India. The monochromatic concept of a nation-state does not do justice to India on account of the sheer human diversity. A different yardstick is to be applied, such as the civilisation-state like China or Japan. In a civilisation-state, the core unit is not the individual; instead it is the group or groups to which a person belongs. This is a crucial difference between the concept proposed by the author and what the people have become used to over the centuries. Individuals, of course, have rights, but it should necessarily be traded off if it adversely affects the interests of the group or the civilizational interest. The author is somewhat vague on this front, claiming that such ideas would become clarified only after decoloniality is applied to the accumulated wisdom.

 

This book ends with the introduction of the Government of India Act, 1919 which the author claims to be the first Constitution of India. Even though the British state claimed to be secular and thus impartial to all religions, almost a quarter of this book is dedicated to list out the instances in which it went out of the way to promote Christian evangelism. The Charter Act of 1833 included provisions for appointing bishops to the presidency towns, with the Kolkata bishop having supremacy over them. The onus for appointing the bishop was on the government. Similarly, the 1919 Constitution specified that the expenditures made for ecclesiastical purposes shall not be submitted to the vote in the legislative assembly and that they should also not be open for discussion. Many more such cases are described in the book. But the utmost harm to Indian society was felt on another arena. The blatantly Christian attempt to understand the fundamental tenets of Hinduism led to the quest for a Moses-like law giver. This quest yielded Manu, author of the Manu Smriti. This treatise in fact constituted only a descriptive recording of customs and practices, rather than religious law, but it is now wrongly treated as the essence of Hinduism by liberal thinkers.

 

Make no mistake about it. This book is a very serious effort and has the potential to change the outlook of readers. This is only the first part of a trilogy. It provides the theoretical underpinnings of a new school of thought in Indian politics. That it supports the Right is an understatement. This book furnishes its theoretical framework in a sophisticated language understandable to all political scientists in the world. This book also heralds the coming of age of solid rightist thinking. If I may say so without causing offence, the arguments and logic in this book unshackles the proponents of Hindutva from the philosophically candid but rather unsophisticated oeuvre of the early leaders of the Sangh. The author consistently uses the term ‘Bharat’ throughout the book. Any slight incoherence in his logic is answered by the convenient assertion that whether the issue of pre-colonial India needed reform cannot be examined until there is a decolonialised understanding of pre-colonial India’s indigenous culture and society.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star

 

Hormis

Title: Hormis – Biography of K P Hormis, Founder of Federal Bank

Author: K P Joseph

Publisher: DC Books, 2016 (First published 2005)

ISBN: 978812641117

Pages: 294

 

This book is the biography of Kulangara Paulo Hormis (1917 – 1988), founder of Federal Bank, the largest private sector bank in Kerala. Even though unable to attract industry, Kerala was a fertile land for financial institutions of various kinds. With an early flourishing of money economy, the need to develop institutions to avail credit was felt among the local people and associations for running chit funds were fairly popular even almost a century ago. These funds slowly evolved into banks, but the very large number of such firms engendered instability and crashes. Eventually, consolidation among banks took place by mergers and takeovers. The Federal Bank rose as a very prominent enterprise in central Kerala led by Hormis, who rose from an ordinary family involved in agriculture and small scale trade. Hormis graduated in law and took over the bank to grow its business and assets manifold. The bank and its leader faced crippling restrictions during the Indira Gandhi era in which high growth would have made the government take over the bank ‘in national interest’. Hormis led the bank through severe crises and remained at the helm till Parkinson’s disease debilitated him. K P Joseph, who is the author, is a former civil servant and one-time consultant of FAO, UN. Joseph has worked in several places in India and abroad and is related to Hormis through his daughter’s in-laws.

 

Hormis had a good education by the day’s standards, having studied at Trichy and Thiruvananthapuram. After attaining a legal degree, he found that refurbishing a failed bank was easier than starting one from scratch. This saved him the legal lacunae in building up a Greenfield financial institution. Travancore Federal Bank was formed in 1931 at Thiruvalla, but had become dysfunctional a few years after. Hormis took over the bank in 1944 and transplanted it to Aluva. He rechristened it as Federal Bank in 1947. Unlike the typical businessman, he openly took sides in politics. Hormis always supported the Congress party and he made a brief foray into electoral politics through that party. In 1954, he contested and won from Perumbavur constituency of Thiru-Kochi assembly, defeating the reputed administrator-cum-writer Malayattoor Ramakrishnan of the CPI. He did not return to politics after that term was over, but lent support to the people’s liberation struggle to oust the EMS ministry in 1959. Hormis retired in 1979, but declined send-off as he waited for a re-appointment by RBI which did not arrive. This shows the amount of discriminatory power wielded by regulatory agencies over private enterprise. Hormis’ outlook for the bank was to promote economic development of the country with particular emphasis to Kerala. He wished to do intensive banking in the state by a network of branches in its every village linking them with branches in all important cities of India.

 

Even though a businessman, Hormis let his political opinion be known to everybody by running for the assembly elections on a Congress ticket. However, he respected the sincerity of early Communist leaders in Kerala, but bemoaned their utopian idealism, senseless violence and fundamentalist approach to problems. Gherao as a strike tool was first used in Kerala against Hormis. He was also manhandled by striking workers. This was only a small price to pay for entrepreneurs who chose to start business in Kerala in the 1960s and 70s. Hormis never believed that a violent revolution would liberate the poor from their poverty. It will only be through empowerment of the poor like inculcation of saving habit, development of social capital, promotion of entrepreneurship and extension of credit to ordinary people. The book presents a very short description of what happened to the banking sector under the first Communist ministry in Kerala. The credit-deposit ratio sank abysmally due to lesser advances. Stagnation in industry and agriculture ate into the profit margins of banking. The economic downturn is attributed to uncertainties in economy due to concerns over the state government’s policy. It also interfered with the deposit regimes of the banks insisting on atrocious and unheard of ratios regarding deposit liabilities and paid up capital (p.163).

 

Hormis was a devout Christian who faithfully practiced what his faith demanded. In addition to regularly attending church services, he contributed his sincere hard work to auxiliary church bodies like the Marian Sodality. While studying for law in Thiruvananthapuram, he joined the Catholic League and stayed in a Catholic hostel run by priests. This religious affiliation prevented him from joining political movements. Diwan Sir C P Ramaswamy Iyer banned political organisations clamouring for responsible government. This left the student community seething in anger. The church was also poised against the diwan due to his perceived antipathy to Christian entrepreneurs in the state. But at this time, Archbishop Mar Ivanios became friendly with the diwan who then gave permission to start a school which later developed into the Mar Ivanios College. Even though a fairly religious person, Hormis retained his power to spot talent in others. While in the bank, he employed people of all faiths in positions of responsibility. His thoughts sometimes proved prophetic. He recommended disinvestment of government equity in existing industries as a way to finance new industries. He had done the homework well and suggested in the legislative assembly to liquidate the shares in Travancore Rayons and Aluminium Industries at 60-70% profit per share and reinvest the money.

 

The author was a civil servant and this book is probably his first. Joseph has employed a condescending style in the book. After writing a paragraph on Hormis, he would churn out several pages on Indian history or political movement of the time even though these may have no relationship to the subject under discussion. The shortsightedness of the author’s vision is amazing. He quotes from a speech made by Sonia Gandhi – whom he calls the architect of the new government that took over in 2004 – and claims that Hormis’ vision was not different from Sonia Gandhi’s! I am sure Hormis wouldn’t have felt flattered had he been alive. Moreover, the author shows an unwarranted partiality to Christian religion throughout the narrative. In one instance, he takes pride on his religion not recognizing castes. While describing the funeral services of Hormis, the author remarks that ‘of all the religions, Christianity is unique in dealing with human life here and hereafter with great optimism and sense of triumph. Of all Christian denominations, Catholicism treats death with the greatest of dignity’ (p.280). He then goes on to reproduce verbatim the church service with prayers and all devotional chants.

 

This book builds a biography up from scratch even though the author seems to be not personally acquainted with the protagonist. For the first thirty years of his subject’s life, the author does not have a clue and looks like using information from a biodata to make the biography. He has not bothered to interview people who had personal friendship with Hormis. This omission leads to a bland narrative that doesn’t do justice to the legendary person. To make up for the shortcoming, Joseph uses his imagination to fill the gaps in. For example, he tells that Hormis went into a reverie of his past life while lying in a hospital bed in a serious condition from which he never recovered. He then lists out a summary of his life as the dying man’s ‘thoughts’. In another part, the speeches made by Hormis and other VIPs on inauguration of new bank branches are reproduced in full. Then comes lengthy quotations from the Bible, Indian and Kerala histories and works of Nehru. These material fill up almost half of the book. Writing sixteen years after the death of his subject, the author is hard pressed to make reading material. The overall impression is that the author has failed to do justice to Hormis’ memory in this book. Incidentally, the book’s reluctance to discuss the thorny issue of bank nationalization in 1969 and how it threatened the comparatively larger Federal Bank is highly disappointing.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 2 Star

 

A Brief History of Motion

Title: A Brief History of Motion – From the Wheel to the Car to What Comes Next

Author: Tom Standage

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9781526608314

Pages: 246

 

Transportation of men and material from one location to another in a fast and efficient manner is an indicator of civilizational progress when taken over a large interval of time. I insist on having the disclaimer on time because in most cities and urban landscapes of the world, transportation speed and efficiency is considerably less than what it were a half-century ago. However, a liberating breakthrough is sure to occur and take human progress to the next level. That is the lesson we learn from the history of various cultures and their technology. Innovative technologies often initially present themselves with potential for doubt and confusion about its feasibility. Today, there is once again that sense of change, opportunity and uncertainty, as a result of a sudden proliferation of new forms of transport. Experts predict a not-so-late demise of the car as a mode of travel which moved humanity in the twentieth century. This book is a good narrative of man’s progress from invention of the wheel to smartphone-enabled ride sharing services on a driverless vehicle. Tom Standage is deputy editor at the Economist and editor of its future-gazing annual ‘The World Ahead’. He is also the author of many best-selling books and lives in London.

 

Just as it is apt to begin from the very beginning, Standage starts the narrative with early forms of transport. It is widely believed that the wheel was invented in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BCE as a means for conveying grain from one place to the other. This book proposes that it was invented in Europe, in the Carpathian mountain region in west Ukraine, for transporting copper ore about 400 years earlier than the date on which wheel was supposed to have come into being in Mesopotamia. To consolidate the claim, the author alludes to Ljubljana Marshes wheel found in Poland at around the same time. Wherever it may have originated, some of the formal rules governing the use of wheeled vehicles and the earliest examples of urban environments being reshaped to accommodate them date to the Roman period in the late centuries BCE. There was public pressure not to allow wheeled vehicles on city streets which were the preserve of the townsfolk. However, Julius Caesar introduced a law in 45 BCE, the Lex Julia Municipalis, allowing their use in the city of Rome only from dusk until dawn.

 

The next revolution in transport occurred around the early-twentieth century with the development of cars. Horses, which were used for transport and hauling carriages, had become a nightmare for most cities when their numbers proliferated and horse manure had become a grave environmental issue for the town’s inhabitants. Alternate vehicles used steam, petrol and electricity. It is curious to learn that battery-powered cars entered the fray more than a century ago. But with the discovery of new petroleum reserves in many parts of the globe, cheap fuel oil replaced all others as the prime mover. Cars became accessible to the common man with the introduction of Ford Model T. Prices of cars ranged from $2800 to $7000, but the Model T was priced at $850 only. Unlike others, its advertisements did not depict a target customer or context of use, implying that this universal car was suitable for everyone. The challenge was to build an engine that was light but powerful. Ford identified Vanadium steel, which had just then become commercially available in Europe. Ford’s ‘moving assembly line’ concept reduced the production cost to a great extent. The Model T sold for just $298 in five years and it cornered a market share of 55 per cent. By extending car ownership down the income scale, the Model T brought motoring to the masses.

 

After building up the story of the automobile, the book looks into the mess it had unintentionally brought about in urban settlements. Clogging of road lanes due to heavy traffic and pollution has prompted authorities to curb vehicular traffic in selected areas of the city. This was necessitated due to transfer of population to the suburbs when better transportation was available a half century ago. Standage examines the urban layouts by Cesare Marchetti. It suggests that one hour is, on average, how long people are willing to spend travelling to and from work each day and has been so for centuries. Some people commute much shorter or longer, but the average holds for a whole city’s population. When faster modes of transport emerge, cities grow in size.

 

The author also studies the impact cars and automobiles have brought in re-moulding social relationships and societal restrictions. Cars and the freedom they provided were central to the teenage culture that began to take shape in 1940s America and exported worldwide. It changed the eating habits too. The drive-in restaurants that sprang up along American highways, catering to time-pressed drivers with fast service and the promise of consistency under a nationwide brand, gave rise to the modern concept of fast food. Cars have been the driving force in creating shopping patterns. In a future in which cars would assume a decidedly less prominent role, its owners’ habits are bound to change. Although teenagers and young adults embrace malls and large supermarkets as a social space, malls are in retreat. By 2005, around 1500 enclosed malls were built in the US, but hardly any have been built since then. Smartphones provide a far more convenient venue to chat with friends and other social activities. The Covid pandemic has also encouraged customers to buy from online stores rather than physical nearby outlets.

 

Standage makes a few intelligent guesses about the future of personal transportation in future. An obvious candidate is the electric car which makes a comeback facilitated by the Lithium-ion battery that expanded the storage capacity of batteries. He argues that the concept of a personally owned car would soon become obsolete. Ride-sharing and ride-hailing are suggested as the two alternatives enabled by powerful smartphones. Improvements in mass transport systems such as the Hyperloop are not even mentioned. Similarly conspicuous by absence is the story of air travel and its potential for the future. The book can be clearly divided into two halves – one being the historical development of automobiles and the other being deliberations on the future. The first part is very interesting to read, but the latter appears to be labored. The practical implications of the author’s imagined future would become apparent only after a few decades. The author’s prediction that personal ownership of cars would shrink in the future is a bold one as it requires letting go of a major icon of flaunting one’s wealth in many societies. The availability of shared vehicles in the case of a national or climate emergency is also a point which would weigh heavily in the decision-making process of the people.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 3 Star