The Invisible History of the Human Race

Title: The Invisible History of the Human Race – How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Future
Author: Christine Kenneally
Publisher: Penguin, 2015 (First published 2014)
ISBN: 9780143127925
Pages: 355

The first point of reference in the case of narrating the history of an object is the written record mentioning it. Royal proclamations, edicts on rocks and other non-perishable surfaces, literary sources and oral traditions certify to the existence or origin of a thing. If we go a little bit more into the past – before the beginning of language – other material objects substitute the place of written records, such as potsherds, tools, funerary paraphernalia and architecture. By evaluating these specimens, experts can recount many facts about the society who made it. Going further backward brings up fossils, pieces of bone and skull and footprints on a congealed lava flow that provide testimony to endless lifeforms which had once walked on the earth. When man examined all these ideas emanating from outside his body, he turned to the inside by intuition and saw that the book of life was written and lay unread inside each of his cells’ nuclei in the form of DNA. We know that DNA is the marker of heredity, but what is perhaps not widely appreciated is that the DNA carries the story of all ancestral lifeforms which had gone before us. True to the postulates of evolution, the human genome still carries the traces of not only our ancestor human beings but also the genes of other species from which we split and evolved in a different direction. This book provides an interesting overview of this extraordinary field of study which promises a great deal to shed light on our genetic past as well as to make our future life a bit more comfortable by addressing health issues specific to the genome. This book handles aspects of inheritance evaluated in studies from psychology, economics, history and genetics, anecdotes and data from business, science and the lives of many fascinating individuals. Christine Kenneally is an award-winning journalist who has written for many prominent newspapers and magazines. She is the author of two books and lives in Melbourne, Australia.

The book opens with observations on the study of genealogy and the surprisingly stiff opposition to it from some quarters. Genealogy can be traced to the Bible. Romans painted portraits of their forebears on the walls of atriums. Modern western genealogy began with the rise of aristocracy. This may be the reason why socialists oppose any move by a commoner to know more about his ancestors. The author assuages these concerns with the observation that it is only an attempt to build one’s own identity and help others view them, may be in the hope that the person may be a long-lost distant relative. The criticism on this hinges on the premise that the more people turned to their genealogy especially to elevate their status, the more out of step they become with the spirit of an egalitarian republic (this was raised by scholars in the US). They asserted that this attempt to research one’s past was developed of snobbishness and vanity and hence unworthy of honourable attention. Birth and heredity are inevitably tied to racist undertones in a white, western country. The infamous ‘one-drop rule’ determined the race of mixed couples at least in the first hundred years of the American republic. It said: “the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew” (p.60). This racist concept has an exact reflection in India’s caste system where the offspring of two different castes belonged to the lower of the parents’ castes. The author has not observed this Indian connection. In fact, she has not effectively studied Indian society in any detail.

Kenneally examines the birth and development of the scientific basis of heredity in genes and DNA. Darwin’s theory of evolution was a revolutionary concept in 1859 when it was introduced but he did not know of genes. He postulated ‘gemmules’ that were passed from parent to offspring to stamp the hereditary traits on the latter. This was a flawed concept, but the idea of something resembling a gene was essential to explain how traits that were not apparent in parents might appear in a child. Even though the structure of DNA as a double helix was discovered in 1953, it was only in the late-1990s that a study of the genome could become meaningful. Computing power at the command of academia and pioneering industrialists exploded manifold in this period. The author observes that most of our genome is not coding DNA which expresses proteins that are vital for the wellbeing of that organism. Non-coding or junk DNA may influence our genes in significant ways. Even if they don’t, we may learn how to read the book of our history in it. Ancestry is marked by mutations in a being which is passed as such to its progeny. If the mutation is on a coding gene, it may adversely affect a vital protein and endangers its reproductive prospects. That’s why non-coding – sometimes remarked ‘junk’ – part of the DNA becomes crucial for studies about ancestry.

We are inured to accept Nazis catalogued as extreme racists who devised brutal pogroms to cleanse the society of people undesirable to them. This book provides several examples of these devious ways but what startles the readers is the information that the US also followed some of these projects with vigour though to a less sinister degree. Forced sterilizations were practised in the US as part of eugenics. The first man was sterilized in 1907 who was characterized as belonging to a group of ‘shiftless, ignorant and worthless class of antisocial whites’. Between 1907 and 1970, at least 60,000 were judged inadequate and forcibly sterilized by their state administrations to prevent those genes entering the next generation. Ideas about ‘racial hygiene’ were popular even before the Nazis came to power. The interest in genealogy culminated under the Nazi regime and the right to live became virtually dependent on one’s family charts. There were registers maintained by civil government noting down Jewish blood in the family. Hitler’s T4 program was merciless. Parents were encouraged to send their disabled children to special centres for treatment where they were killed by starving or lethal injection. 200,000 people died in these institutions and falsified death certificates were issued to their relatives.

Personal history related to ancestry is sometimes closely guarded by societies, most often to shield the present from unpalatable associations echoing from the past. These efforts make history invisible to some. The perpetrators of the Holocaust, the early descendants of the convicts who helped establish Australia and the victims of the Irish famine of mid-nineteenth century originally suppressed information passing down to their children. Several of the author’s ancestors were convicts, which were exposed only as the outcome of her own genealogical research and to which her parents were ignorant of. Kenneally points out that after the 1960s rights movement, more transparency arrived and people became more relaxed to accept that one or two of their great-great-great grandfathers were not as decent as to make a great-great-great grandchild proud. Kenneally also finds a link between genetics and anti-Semitism in Germany by observing that Jews were attacked and killed more in those towns which had a history of pogroms during the Black Death in the fourteenth century. She do not hint that the people living in those towns in the Nazi period were direct descendants of the medieval society, but this finding sticks out like a pseudo-scientific hypothesis. This book points out the long-term damage inflicted by slave trade on some African nations. The countries that lost more people to slavery were also the poorest countries today. They were, however, among the best developed economies and best-organized states during the slave trade with central governments, national currencies and established trade networks. Many slaves were betrayed by people to whom they were close. Some evidence is presented to conclude that this engendered distrust among people which persists even today. Without some form of general trust, economic activity cannot flourish. The idea that mistrust and silence on a shameful aspect could be passed down for centuries is profound and requires more corroborative evidence.

The book includes some passages which support a biological basis for human races. Since this topic is very controversial, the author wriggles out of an embarrassing position of openly admitting it. Eugenics extolled the racial differences and postulated the superiority of the white race. This was discredited after the Nazi regime’s collapse, but science then took a swing to the other extreme that there is no genetic basis for race. Studies by Lewontin in the 1970s concluded that genetic differences are between individuals only – they may be in a race or across races. This ruled out any genetic basis for race. The Human Genome Project reiterated this by declaring that two random individuals from any one group are almost as different as any two random individuals from the entire world. This underwent a transformation in 2007 when the resolution of genetic analysis improved to evaluate thousands of nucleotide pairs than the earlier hundreds. It is now convincingly displayed that a person’s racial roots can be found by analysing his genome. The book includes a good coverage of DNA testing services now widely available and the uses they can provide to people susceptible to genetic diseases, some of which are capable of decimating a person’s quality of life. Huntington’s disease is a deadly malady, but can be easily predicted if you know where to look in the genome. Pre-natal tests can establish if the foetus carries the disease and can then be terminated. Some communities, such as the Ashkenazi Jews, are inherently endogamous which cause genetic diseases in offspring when the population size is small. In Israel, genetic screening and counselling in the pre-marital and pre-natal stages are a normal part of the culture.

The book can be comfortably read by any class of readers. It drifts slightly out of focus in the initial stages when readers get confused that the author is pointing solely to the ethical aspects of charting family genealogy. It makes precocious conclusions on cultural inheritance of psychology. The author argues that women were freer in plough-based societies (farming communities) than those employed shifting cultivation. This is a long shot with doubtful accuracy. Another assertion is that people tend to cooperate more and divorce rates are less in rice-growing societies. This is because rice is more demanding in the case of irrigation requirements which needs better coordination between people. Another claim is that distant historical events may influence the character of a modern family and the choices of families can illuminate history. In another section, she mentions that carbon dioxide levels dropped by 0.1 ppm because of economic stagnation in the wake of Mongols’ killing raids which exterminated 40 million people in the thirteenth century that caused reforestation on a large scale (p.180). No evidence for this bold assertion is cited. Genetic peculiarities thrown by DNA testing provides some amusing results such as Chengiz Khan’s DNA being found in living people. On the other hand, it is also disclosed that if you go eighty or hundred generations back, there would be very few DNA lines in common with our ancestors so that we can be termed biologically unrelated to many of our blood-relatives. The book strictly follows political correctness in its observations, conclusions and generalizations.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Tipu Sultan

Title: Tipu Sultan – The Saga of Mysore’s Interregnum (1760 – 1799)
Author: Vikram Sampath
Publisher: Vintage, 2024 (First)
ISBN: 9780670094691
Pages: 904

Around midnight on Sep 7, 1965, in the middle of India-Pakistan war, five battleships of the Pakistan navy surreptitiously sailed to Indian waters and struck the temple town of Dwaraka in Gujarat. The target was ostensibly a radar station installed there. But Pakistan had named this mission ‘Operation Somnath’, so the real intent was clearly to destroy the temple there so that the attack would add one more item in the long list of Islamic invasions on Hindu holy places. The attacking vessels were carefully chosen. They were named PNS (Pakistan Navy Ship) Babur, PNS Jahangir, PNS Shah Jehan, PNS Alamgir and PNS Tipu Sultan. The first four were Mughal emperors and their empire geographically overlapped the territory of modern Pakistan. So, there is an iota of justification in selecting them because the Pakistanis may have wanted to relish their legacy of Hindu-bashing. But what about the fifth vessel, the one named after Tipu Sultan? Tipu’s kingdom was entirely bound by South India and which was in no way affiliated to Pakistan. Then why did they choose to honour this Kannada-speaking South Indian? In the answer to this question lies the true legacy of Tipu Sultan. The shrewd Pakistanis had learnt their history lessons well, unlike the pea-brained Indian ‘secular’ historians who dominated Indian academia who still portray Tipu as a tolerant and innovative ruler and a freedom-fighter too! On the other hand, there is a considerable and growing head of opinion judging the sultan as the Aurangzeb of the South. This huge yet excellent book by Vikram Sampath successfully analyses the interregnum in Mysore between 1760 and 1799 filled by the reign of the father-son duo Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan. The book has 904 pages, 775 of them containing the narrative and others cataloguing the immense notes, bibliography and index. This seems to be the largest book ever on Tipu Sultan.

Both Haider and Tipu did not oust the titular Wodeyar king but ruled as his regents, concentrating all power in their hands. Haider did not possess any daring or generous spirit of the hero. He is better known for the steady pursuit of his aims and the moral flexibility of his means. His career was marked by implacable vindictiveness and gross ingratitude since revenge was profitable and gratitude expensive. He adroitly used the machinery of fraud and force to establish and consolidate his authority. Sampath analyses the contrast in personal character between the father and son. Haider, though treacherous to his benefactors, treated his Hindu subjects with goodwill and toleration. He never allowed any reduction in the allowances of temples and even ordered against cow slaughter (p.79). He engraved images of Shiva and Parvati in the newly minted Haidari pagoda coins he introduced in Bidanur. He always dishonoured his promises which included forcefully appropriating the wife of the Prince of Bidanur who was his ally and working closely with him for securing the city against enemies. In battle, he was very firm and ruthless. During the Malabar invasions, Haider offered five rupees to anyone who brought him the head of a Nair that was able to fight; if it was an old man, he gave four rupees and if a boy, three. A price of three rupees was also paid for every Nair woman captured alive (p.107) for sexual slavery. His carnal lust for women was notorious and there was no level to which he would stoop to satisfy his desire. Haider employed nomadic women playing the drum with songs to roam around the country. They collected information on what people thought of him and also about beautiful women in the locality. Haider’s men would then go to the suggested house and brought these beauties to his harem either through coercion or wilful surrender. Sometimes, he ‘graciously’ permitted them to go back to their parents after using them or partitioning them amongst his followers (p.270).

There was much contrast between Haider and Tipu, both physical and mental. The father was fair in complexion like a Persian while the son was exceedingly dark. In some other books, there are even references to him resembling a Siddhi – a descendant of Africans who worked in the royal household. Tipu was imparted a strict religious education which Haider accused as to make him fit for a moulvi than a ruler. Haider also lamented prophetically that the religious bigotry imparted to his teenage son would cause the ruin of their kingdom. True to his father’s concerns, Tipu decimated in sixteen years all that his father conquered in twenty-three years, while not adding anything to his inherited domain. Tipu was not even as brave as he is sometimes made out to be. Of course, he died with a sword in his hand and in battle but that was the immediate outcome of a hopeless situation when the enemies suddenly charged through a breach in the fort walls while he was inspecting it. He was scared of the confederate forces marching to Srirangapatna in the Third Anglo-Mysore war in 1791. He had frescoes and caricatures painted on the outer walls of the town featuring a tiger seizing an Englishman, a horseman cutting off two British heads and the Nawab of Arcot – his enemy but a British ally – in chains. When the opponents neared the capital, he quietly whitewashed it all (p.458). While Haider’s perversities may be excused in view of the mores of the time or even to human frailty, Tipu’s conduct was nothing but monstrous. Tipu thought out novel ways of killing infidels. He ordered 700 families of Vaishnavite Brahmins called Mandyam Aiyangars to be locked inside the Lakshmi Naramsimha Temple in Srirangapatna and let in armed soldiers and elephants into the crowded premises at night. Many of the victims were trampled to death on the eve of Deepavali festival. The reason for this massacre was that one of their caste-men – who was not in the punished crowd – plotted against the sultan. In Calicut, he devised a diabolical way of killing very young children along with their mothers. First the mothers were hung, followed by their children similarly hung from their mother’s necks (p.730). The book includes a glance on Tipu’s register of dreams in which he diligently wrote down his dreams and interpreted them. These also show a deranged mind vehemently wishing for the extermination of all infidels. Sampath also records a few instances in which he acted to the contrary such as patronizing the Ranganathaswamy Temple in the capital and Sringeri Math. But this was after his defeat in 1792 and was more of an effort to rally his Hindu subjects to his cause.

Tipu’s claims to be a freedom-fighter are examined in this book. The only logic behind this fantastic assertion is that he fought against the British. But what he fought for was only his personal wealth in the kingdom which he ruled. He was materially and spiritually allied to foreign powers all the time. Tipu sent an embassy to Caliph Abdul Hamid I in Istanbul and obtained permission to assume the title of an independent king of Mysore. The diary of this embassy titled Waqai-i-Manazil-i-Rum compiled by Mohibbul Hasan was reviewed earlier here. His embassy to France seeking military alliance and partitioning of Indian territory failed to impress Louis XVI only because he was reluctant to antagonize the British. The diplomats were then politely asked to leave. Two of the leaders of the mission – Akbar Ali Khan and Osman Khan – were put to death by Tipu when they came back home. Haider was even more unprincipled in the case of alliances. In 1764, he sought alliance and help from the British at Bombay when he was besieged by Peshwa Madhava Rao. Haider offered the entire sandalwood and pepper trade of the coast to the British and to cede lands north of the Tungabhadra river. Here again, the British were ambivalent as they were wary of offending the Marathas. So much for freedom-fighting!

The book includes a comprehensive review of Mysore’s wars with her neighbours and foreign powers in the four decades after 1760. This seems to be the time when modern Tamil Nadu was completely under the yoke of external rulers like the Nawab of Arcot, governors of Nizam, the Mysore sultans, and the Anglo-French. Mysore’s battles had a profound impact on the twists and turns of Indian history in this century. The First Anglo-Mysore War was the instance that shattered the myth of the invincibility of European powers against an Indian force. Sampath has included many gruesome details of Tipu’s suppression of the natives of Malabar and the inhuman atrocities he inflicted on them in 1789-90. This was in addition to torture, murder, pillage, rape and religious conversion on a large scale. Finally, all powers in the region – British, Nizam and Maratha – joined hands to fight Tipu in the Third Anglo-Mysore war. Governor General Lord Cornwallis himself led the forces. Tipu was totally defeated in the war and was forced to cede half of his kingdom to the victors. As a surety for the pending payment of war indemnity, two of Tipu’s sons, aged four and five years, were handed over to the British as hostages. They returned to their father only after two years when the payment was made in full. After this humiliation, Tipu was not allowed to strengthen his forces. The Allies were waiting for a ruse to oust him. In a sense, his position was comparable to that of Saddam Hussein after his defeat in the First Gulf War in 1991. Alleging that he possessed weapons of mass destruction, he was defeated in 2003 and killed. In a similar vein, Tipu was alleged to be forging links with the French which was in violation of the 1792 ceasefire treaty. The British and Nizam combined their forces and defeated Tipu again in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War in 1799. Tipu himself died defending his citadel. While there was widespread discontent and treachery against Tipu, his own bad leadership, terrible follies, missed opportunities and lack of strategic moves at critical points cost him dearly in the decisive battle.

The book has given great care to see if Tipu can be termed a tolerant ruler at least in the medieval sense but concludes with a negative response. The sheer discrimination of his subjects on the basis of religion was a shame to humanity. Rule 73 of Tipu’s revenue code stated that persons who converted to Islam were entitled to a discount of half of the assessed revenue if he was a farmer. If he was a merchant, his goods shall pass tax-free (p.677). The author also debunks the efforts of modern Left-Islamist historians to add a secularist sheen to the image of Tipu. Several misrepresentation made by Mohibbul Hasan are called out at various points in the book. The atrocities committed on the people of Malabar or Coorg or the Mangalore Christians or Mandyam Iyengars definitely fall in the modern definition of genocide. Sampath concludes that that all kings were violent and all wars were bloody is a flimsy, insufficient cover to show that some were indeed more violent than the norms and manifested a deep-seated theological intent to commit these acts (p.768). Tipu was a mixed bag of arrogant bigotry and trembling superstition. This extraordinary combination made him show occasional respect for the object of persecution amidst general intolerance. In the final stages, he implored Hindu priests to perform pujas for him. Tipu employed several Hindus in his administration and military and they willingly worked their best for him without making even a single attempt on his life. This glaring irony is actually a reflection of the absence of a feeling of belonging to a common community and the lack of an organization that united the Hindu community. They were divided as always even under extreme oppression and the enemy mercilessly cut them down.

The book is an authentic and unbiased version of Tipu’s history with a long list of references, notes, variety of sources, citations and bibliography. Many of the observations made by the author naturally follow from antecedent events which ‘secular’ scholars are loathe to write down even though true. The book is adorned with an excellent foreword by noted Kannada author and historian S. L. Bhyrappa in which he thunders with indignation whether the nation can reinforce secularism by a false portrayal of history. The book gives more prominence to battles that readers get a feeling of always standing on the battlefront. But that was the nature of Tipu’s political policy. The book includes some rare paintings of major personalities produced during Tipu’s rule or immediately after his fall. The author has given some attention to reproduce samples of oriental fascination of British art, theatre, poetry, prose and literature on the subject of Tipu Sultan.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

A History of the Pakistan Army

Title: A History of the Pakistan Army – Wars and Insurrections
Author: Brian Cloughley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999 (First)
ISBN: 9780195790153
Pages: 384

India has a belligerent neighbour on her west, which fought with her in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999. The army is the greatest institution of the Pakistani state. Occasionally, the army is the Pakistani state. India is posed as an existential threat to this Islamic state from the very beginning of its existence. The resulting paranoia helps the army achieve whatever privileges it want – money, land, control of industries, prestige and even civil power. The politicians and soldiers in Pakistan are locked together in a zero-sum game. If one party is weak, the other encroaches on its domain rather than keeping themselves functionally and healthily engaged. This book is a history of the Pakistani army from 1947 to 1997. Though written by an Australian author, it provides a fresh, local perspective as the author has close links to senior army officials in Pakistan. Colonel (retired) Brian Cloughley served in the British and Australian armies in Germany and other theatres. He was the deputy head of UNMOGIP in Kashmir in the 1980s and Australian defence attaché during 1989-94 in Pakistan. While working on this book, he hoped that the army was unlikely ever again to be used to suppress democracy, but this was exactly what came to pass in 1999. This book was published before the Kargil war and the subsequent military takeover of Pakistan.

Cloughley notes on many occasions that many Pakistani army officers are secular in outlook. But this salutary trait was fading away in the 1990s as quite a number of young officers were radicalized and easily swayed by fanatics who blare out against the West in general and the US in particular because they are the powers which stand between them and their ultimate goal of Islam’s takeover of the world. Whatever may be the personal preferences of its officers, the army as a whole used religion and Muslim bigots to the fullest extent against their enemies. The invasion of Kashmir in October 1947 was made by tribesmen motivated by religion and intent on destruction, pillage and rape (p.14). Not only that the Pakistani army did not feel any compunction, it actually encouraged the ‘irregulars’. The author talked to a nun who ran a hospital that fell victim to the tribesmen’s carnal lust and contents to merely record that her disclosure of how her colleagues were killed after inflicting ‘appalling indecencies’ was shocking. The incident is also mentioned in Collins and Lapierre’s ‘The Freedom at Midnight’. This book also shows how Pakistan descended into martial rule regularly. Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and Zia ul-Haq are the three generals described in the book who held the nation in their palms. After this book was published, Pervez Musharraf also entered this list. In the early 1960s, the army had a high opinion of itself without having done very much except expand a bit and conduct some mediocre training with its new American equipment (p.56). A defence assistance pact was signed with the US in 1953 and the army was modernized.

The book observes the dismissive and haughty attitude the army harbours toward local politicians. In 1953, Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Bogra attempted to introduce legislation to cut the size of armed forces, but had to withdraw it under pressure. Meanwhile, Ayub Khan was promoting his henchmen to senior army positions and consolidating his hold on power. The politicians were also corrupt and incompetent and the army was disdainful to them who saw them as more a nuisance than an essential functionary of the state. This book does not examine the issue of corruption in the army. This is not even presented as an afterthought nor an aside. However, appointments and promotions to senior positions were on grounds of loyalty to the chief, which is cited as a structural problem of the Pakistan army especially when the chief nourished political ambitions. Rarely did the army was held accountable by the society. One such moment was the abject failure in the 1971 Bangladesh War, in which 29 senior officers were shunted out in one go that included two generals, eleven lieutenant-generals and ten major-generals. 70,000 soldiers and 20,000 civil servants and military dependents were captured by India as prisoners in that war who were released only after two years. The author claims this to be a violation of Article 118 of the Geneva Convention.

The book reiterates the doubtful role of the US as a trusted ally of Pakistan. They supplied weapons, equipment, spare parts and training to Pakistan, but when the latter was engaged in an actual war against India, the US ditched them in view of the higher priority they accorded to their own international commitments. In 1965 and 1971, US cut off military aid in the middle of hostilities causing a shortage of ammunition and spare parts. India was not much dependent on the US, sourcing the material mainly from USSR and France. The coverage of 1965 and 1971 wars is exhaustive on the micro-scale with details of troop movements and field manoeuvres that are not interesting to general readers. In 1965, Pakistan scored some wins in the preliminary minor skirmishes in the Rann of Kutch and buoyed by this false sense of euphoria went ahead head-on with a futile invasion of India’s Kashmir state. The 1971 war was the culmination of decades of oppression and ill-treatment of the people of East Pakistan. Bengalis were regarded as inferiors by Pathans and Punjabis who had met them, especially in the military. Pakistani soldiers inflicted atrocities on Bangladesh that ‘beggared belief and its details confound description’ (p.150). Cloughley remarks wryly that the soldiers readily obeyed the orders and even relished them. He then provides a backhanded justification to the army’s brutality by describing instances where Bengalis had killed Pakistanis in a gruesome manner and concludes that ‘no one can understand how our fellow human beings could act in such a fashion’.

India is a very strong presence in the book as well as in the Pakistan army’s psyche. The attitude is usually one of contempt and hatred. Ayub Khan, as president of the country, informed his military chief that ‘Hindu morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows delivered at the right time and place’ (p.71). It seems the author also inculcated a part of this mindset, albeit in a minor degree. He runs helter-skelter to compile possible reasons for Pakistan’s rout in 1971 and comes out with a handsome list such as poor leadership of commander A A K Niazi and shortages of airpower, armour and manpower. One divisional commander was said to be spending ‘most of his time on the prayer mat’ (p.210). The causes of failure on the western front is even more exhaustive – poor planning, indecision about deployment, hasty and countermanded regrouping, inadequate or even non-existent coordination between formations, inability to seize the moment for exploitation, lack of cooperation between GHQ and Air HQ and bungling of movement control procedures. The list is endless but better skill and bravery of Indians does not even for a moment crosses his mind. The author generally employs neutral language and occasionally praises Indian troops precisely in those encounters which they had lost. Pakistanis had always considered themselves superior to Indians, so the defeat of 1971 in which half of the country vanished overnight into thin air was difficult to swallow. Expressing his poor opinion of India, the author remarks that ‘Indian officers are genial, comradely and good company when sure that the intelligence services were not looking over their shoulders’ (p.255). He goes on to comment that ‘India’s defence forces are large but their equipment is aging and attempts to design and manufacture advanced weapons were largely unsuccessful. Hence the threat posed by India is not as great as it appears on paper’ (p.339). This was his reading in mid-1990s. He also cautions India on domestic problems such as ‘violence by Dalits’ as an unsettling factor. Here, he simply echoes the Pakistani strategy to drive a wedge between various Hindu communities.

After the 1971 war, the remaining part of the book is a monotonous recapitulation of what happened in Pakistani politics beginning with the usurpation of Bhutto by Zia ul-Haq and ending in 1997 which envelopes the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the Mujahideen resistance. The cursory narrative is in stark contrast to the fact that this was the period when Claughley had actually worked in Pakistan. The Kargil crisis is not covered, but Siachen is. The conspiracy angle of General Zia’s death in a plane crash is not examined. A notable aspect of this part of the book is that it is very shallow. The Islamization of the military which began under Zia is also given short shrift. Besides, readers smell occasional whiffs of white racial superiority in such descriptions as ‘the bureaucratic system created by the British with its checks, balances and counterchecks played into the hands of those given to laziness and manipulation’ (p.27). He is referring to the fall in standards after the colonial masters left. The book makes a sensational but long-discredited allegation against Morarji Desai, former prime minister of India, when he was an ordinary minister in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet. The author claims that Desai was a paid agent of CIA (p.179). The inexplicable point is that even with such a highly placed source, the US could not deduce that India was planning a military incursion in East Pakistan. In another place, Cloughley calls him ‘a traitor’ outright (p.183). The foreword of the book is written by Gen. Abdul Waheed, former army chief of Pakistan. The author has good personal rapport with three successive army chiefs who invited him to attend military exercises and permitted him to freely engage with the top brass. However, the book does not bear witness to the author’s celebrated exposure with the army in bringing out any hitherto unknown fact.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star