My Father’s Brain

Title: My Father’s Brain – Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer’s
Author: Sandeep Jauhar
Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9780670097913
Pages: 238

The mind is the single organ that makes an individual. Located in the brain – or you can take it to be the brain itself – it runs the software that animates a person. Without it, he turns into a vegetative state. Alzheimer’s disease is the most dreaded illness that afflicts this vital organ. An affected person loses memory first and then bodily functions in a gradually degenerating spiral from which no cure has been found yet. And it is fairly commonplace too, as evidenced by the increasing life expectancy all over the world. By the middle of this century, 100 million people would be affected by this malady all over the world, trailing only to heart disease and cancer. The resulting condition called dementia is actually more feared than cancer. In fact, it is deemed more terrible than death itself. This book presents a first-hand experience of an Indian medical doctor settled in the US, when his scientist father developed the disease and died around seven years after its detection. It is the painful story of the irreversible descent to death, punctuated by several episodes of strife and an undignified existence. An unhappy trait of the disease is that a patient can continue indefinitely on provision of nourishment intravenously even long after he has lost the ability even to sit up straight. Sandeep Jauhar is a cardiologist of Indian origin settled in the US. He is the author of many acclaimed books on medical topics. He writes regularly for the opinion section of the New York Times.

Being a physician himself, the author understood the problems his father was facing right from pathology even though the knowledge helped very little in giving care to a person who was losing the moorings that tied him to family and society. Jauhar provides an easily comprehensible description of what was happening in the brain when Alzheimer’s takes over. The hippocampus and its associated structures responsible for processing short- and long-term memories are often the first structures damaged in Alzheimer’s which is why they often cannot remember recent events like what they ate for lunch though they may retain memories from childhood or early adulthood. As the disease worsens, memory is completely obliterated and the person enters a state of perpetual present and unable to remember anything that can relate them to a family member or intimate friend. Apart from loss of memory, it leads one incapable of normal thought or to feel empathy to others. Alzheimer’s unravels the brain almost exactly in the reverse order as it develops from birth. Initially, patients can no longer walk unaided. Then they cannot sit up without assistance. Next they lose the ability to smile. Finally, they cannot even hold up their own heads. The author also presents a gruesome side effect of the symptoms. Amygdala, which is responsible for the processing of emotions, is only a few millimetres away from the hippocampus. Disease in the latter quickly travels to the former. So, often amnesia coexists with emotional outbursts out of proportion to the events that triggered them. Hence, lies and deception may be a shortcut to navigating such fraught moments. Anyway, they cannot remember what was said a few minutes earlier. The author discouraged this option at first, but slowly saw the logic and fell in line with his other siblings and caregivers.

The book presents a short primer on development of the awareness of old-age dementia as a physical process. It describes the studies of Alois Alzheimer in the early decades of the last century. He found that senile plaques of the beta-amyloid protein were getting deposited in brain tissues. The disease was first described in a middle-aged patient and it was thought it differed from normal, senile dementia. This outlook was changed by the 1970s and both were proved to be one and the same disease. Writing from the US, Jauhar observes it to be the fourth most fatal disease among elderly Americans. Former President Ronald Reagan was also a victim of it whose cognitive difficulties began to be evident in the last few years of his presidency. Dementia remains the only chronic and widespread medical scourge for which there are no effective treatments. What the patient gets today has changed little from what Alzheimer was able to offer his patients in 1901.

Having a close relative with Alzheimer’s disease is an excruciating experience, probably more for the caregivers than the patient himself. This is made all the more worse if the offspring have their own reasons in slackening care for their parents. This includes dwindling time, growing responsibilities at work, social commitment or perhaps insufficient inclination too. Presence of hallucinations or delusions in the patient increases the risk of disability, institutionalization and death. As the disease spreads to more areas of the brain such as hypothalamus, they will lose the sense of hot and cold and may wear woollen cloths in summer leading to other complications like dehydration. Even though the disease cannot be cured, the author suggests some methods by which its onset can be delayed. Higher social interactions such as relationships, environment and family support may lessen the impact of dementia. Studies show that people who were widowed experienced mental decline that was three times faster than that of similar people who had not lost a spouse. Getting enough sleep, engaging in social and cognitive activities that stimulate the brain, avoiding smoking and heavy drinking and minimizing stress also would help. But this sounds like the recipe for a healthy living and not much more. It shows the helplessness of the medical establishment in tackling the malady. Jauhar also briefly pauses to reflect on the legal and ethical aspects of terminating the miserable lives of demented persons. In Scotland in the year 2003, a man was acquitted with only a mild censure for smothering his demented wife with a pillow. She was 85 and they were married for 55 years.

The deterioration of the author’s father rivets the attention of the readers and brings to the foreground the stress of his three children to cope with the situation. He was a renowned botanist specialising in better-yielding varieties of wheat. He was a professor who published numerous papers on plant cytogenetics. Apart from the brain, there were no other physical illnesses for this 79-year old man. The portrayal of the shrinking brain and its manifestations in the degeneration of imagination, perceptions, ambitions and expectations haunt the readers. Within minutes or even less, his mood will swing from rage to resignation and even joy. His ability to forget, which is actually his disability to remember, was a curse as well as a blessing, because he will immediately forget whatever nonsense was said to placate him. The high cost of healthcare and assisted living is another factor that stands out in the narrative. Two of his sons were specialist medical practitioners yet even they struggled to meet the expenses.

This work is not to be taken as a medical primer on the disease. Its primary aim is to present the affected family’s concerns and anguish. The book clearly captures the strain in relationships between the siblings and their father as the disease progressed towards the end. It seems the in-laws were the first to back out of the rigour. This is ameliorated to some extent in the American setting in which parents lived separately from their children. The brothers and their sister often quibbled about how to proceed in caring for their father. To add to the woes, their mother developed Parkinson’s disease and died some years before his death. The atmosphere becomes poignant when the final days arrived which is very touching for those who have already lost one or both of their parents. The dilemma became all the more painful when one of them wanted to end the suffering by withdrawal or medication. In the end, the saga came to a sad but merciful end when death was assisted by withdrawal of fluids while administering short doses of morphine.

And, readers feel that one of their close relatives has died.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

The Golden Road

Title: The Golden Road – How Ancient India Transformed the World
Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2024 (First)
ISBN: 9781408864418
Pages: 482

William Dalrymple has become an Indian writer by now, living near Delhi and almost all his books related to Indian themes and interests. Each of his books lays before us one as yet unseen tapestry of Indian life that is noted for the richness of its warps and wefts tied to a syncretistic culture and firmly rooted in the popular mind. This book presents a refreshing change from others in the author’s oeuvre. No fewer than eight books in that eminent collection were based on an Islamic setting or theme. ‘The City of Djinns’ which showcased life in Delhi could as well have been penned about Baghdad or Samarkand – so completely was the Hindu element filtered out of the narrative like a noise-cancelling earphone cuts out background noise. This book examines how ancient India transformed the world before the Islamic occupation began in the tenth century or so. It is heartening for Indian readers to witness the change in which that ‘noise’ is now transformed into the ‘signal’. It aims to highlight India’s often forgotten position as a crucial economic fulcrum and civilizational engine, at the heart of the ancient and early-medieval worlds and as one of the main motors of global trade and cultural transmission in early world history, fully on a par with and equal to China. A sphere of influence – called Indosphere by the author – was created in Asia where its religion, art, music, dance, textiles, technology, astronomy, math, medicine, mythology, language and literature reigned supreme. This coveted position was achieved not by conquest, but instead by sheer cultural allure and sophistication. That’s why Xuanzang, the Chinese scholar, traveller and translator in seventh century CE, remarked: “people of distant places and with diverse customs generally designate the land they most admire as India”. The book covers three stages of the spread of Indosphere – towards China in the form of Buddhist theology, towards Southeast Asia as commerce, architecture and theology and finally to the Middle East and then to Europe in the form of scientific and mathematical wisdom after Islam’s conquest of these regions.

Indian cultural radiance to China is marked by the accounts of Buddhist monks who came to India in search of unadulterated Buddhist texts written in Sanskrit, the sacred language of Mahayana Buddhism. By the first century BCE, great Buddhist monasteries were very wealthy. They worked and exported cotton and operated mines for mineral trade. They lent money at interest to merchant guilds to support themselves who in turn patronized the viharas like no other. As the paintings in Ajanta caves show, India was already a cosmopolitan and surprisingly urban society full of traders from all over the known world. Outside Europe and parts of the erstwhile Roman empire, India was the place where most Roman coins were unearthed. When Xuanzang entered India at Jalalabad, he remarked that he was entering a holy land, ‘the five Indias made up of more than seventy kingdoms’. But for all its political fragmentation, the idea of India as a single cultural, sacral and geographical unit was still clearly understood from the very earliest times (p.21). The author tells the story of Xuanzang’s sixteen-year trek to India which achieved its aim of transporting a treasure of valuable information on the liturgy of Buddhism which also earned the monk an exalted status at the Tang court. The alliance of him and Empress Wu Zetian transformed Buddhism into the Chinese state religion and having a great sway in the court. Never again would India have such influence at the heart of the Chinese world. Immediately on his footsteps came another monk Yijing in 671 CE. He notes that fifty Chinese monks were studying at Nalanda. Regular translation of authentic Sanskrit texts into Chinese was carried out at the prestigious university. A great maritime Buddhist empire of Srivijaya had prospered at this time in Sumatra based on naval contacts from the shores of Bengal.

Dalrymple notes a subtle shift in Indian maritime trade from Roman empire to Southeast Asia around the fifth century CE. He claims that instead of China, India was the greatest trading partner of Rome. Sea travel was the fastest, safest and most economical way to move people and goods in the pre-modern world. Land travel was risky due to brigandage and inhospitable terrain. The intervening Persian empire was often at war with the Romans, adding to the difficulty in caravan trade. He declares that the term ‘Silk Road’ was coined only in the nineteenth century and did not have such a great provenance in the ancient world as it is portrayed nowadays. This book envisages fervent interaction with Rome after the Battle of Actium in which it conquered Egypt and Cleopatra committed suicide. Many ports sprang up along Red Sea on the Egyptian coast. Roman painters and sculptors also sailed along with the traders and travelled to Kushan kingdoms in the northwest of India. This facilitated mixing of Roman artistic ideas with Indian themes. Dalrymple assigns the origin of Gandhara style sculpture to these Roman artists which is quite in variance to traditional consensus which credits the Bactrian Greeks – who were the descendants of Alexander’s entourage – for the creation of this splendid hybrid art culture. The switchover from West to East for trade probably began with the sacking of Rome and Persian trade blockade of Byzantium in the sixth century CE. Volumes dropped, profits plummeted and Indian traders refocussed to Southeast Asia. Islamic conquests in the seventh century further disrupted trade with Egypt for another two centuries.

While Buddhism was thriving in China, a harmonious blend of it along with Hinduism was finding the ground fertile in Southeast Asia. In the seventh century CE, under the rule of Mahendravarman Pallava and his son Narasimhavarman, trade with Southeast Asia and Suvarnabhumi (Indonesia) burgeoned. Works of the court poet and playwright Dandin began to be read throughout the Indosphere. Indian epics and books began to be read, copied and recited. Indian plays and dances were performed to Indian music. Reliefs of Ramayana and Mahabharata began to be carved on temple walls in Southeast Asia. Free mixing of Hinduism and Buddhism is a striking feature of the region from the fifth century CE (p.181). People learned Brahminical writings and revered the law of the Buddha. These two accommodated each other and often appeared coexisting with local belief systems. The new empire in Southeast Asia grew rich on the spice and gold trade and amassed the resources to develop Indic ideas more extravagantly than any of the relatively small kingdoms which then divided India between them. The vastly bigger architectural plans of Borobudur and Angkorwat attest to this. No Indian import had a deeper or more long-lasting impact than the deeds of the heroes of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. From the fifth century to today, these remain a major feature in the art and culture of Southeast Asia. In Khmer, Hinduism seems to be the favourite choice of the elite, while commoners continued with local deities and beliefs such as ancestor worship. When the kingdoms collapsed, the temples fell into disuse and eventually the jungle reclaimed the land. Was this the same fate of Buddhism in India, where some scholars say it was nothing more than an aristocratic curiosity until the very modern times? The author does not pose this question as well as the enigma of why Hinduism went totally off the board in Cambodia – modern Khmer.

In 2001, I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the name of the new Indonesian president – Megawati Sukarnoputri. I was flabbergasted a few moments later when I learned the name of Indonesia's national airline – Garuda! None of my earlier school textbooks had informed me of the strong ties which once existed between the two nations and the deep cultural bonds. Dalrymple provides the answer to this quirk with historiography in modern India. The Marxist orientation of most of the Indian historians until recently, led to a lack of interest in matters of religion and art, which meant there was little or no pushback from Indian academia against post-colonial Southeast Asian scholars negating Indian influence. Another myth spread by these same historians is the persecution of Buddhism by Hindu kings in India. The author also appears confused about ancient Buddhism as a monolithic cult in the modern sense. This is however contradicted by many facts which he describes at other places in the book. Durga was worshipped at Mes Aynak Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan. Relics of Hindu worship were also found alongside Buddhist remains in Berenike, Egypt. The three great scholars of Buddhism – Asanga, Vasubandhu and Kumarajiva – on whose shoulders once rested the entire theological underpinnings of Mahayana Buddhism, are recorded to be Brahmins. The Jataka tales also indicate that the varna order had some relevance to Buddhists also. Chinese texts of 400 CE talk about a thousand Indian Brahmins living at a small coastal court in the Malay peninsula to whom the locals gave their daughters in marriage (p. 203). Where was the much trumpeted taboo on overseas travel then? These cultured emigres carried with them their epics, literature, mythology, theology, and spiritual and yogic methods. Not only Brahmins, other castes also migrated to Southeast Asia. The author then points out that caste system as well as concepts on ritual purity made no impact on that society. He however assumes that these customs were part of Indian society of that period.

The book illustrates more instances of Hinduism and Buddhism peacefully coexisting side by side and sometimes even indistinguishably in India as well as those places where the Indic culture reached. In fact, it is debatable whether a practitioner of both religions was aware of the miniscule theological differences that separated them. The Kushan period proved to be a great melting pot to fuse civilizations and religions together, mainly Buddhism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. In this syncretic world of evolving divine pantheons, at a crossroads where different civilizations and deities merged, different people recognized and worshipped different gods in the same images. Kujula Kadphises, the Kushan king who patronized Buddhism and provided a conduit to its spread to central Asia also issued coins inscribing the earliest pictorial form of Shiva. In the Bimaran reliquary found near Peshawar, the primal figure of Buddha is flanked by the Hindu gods Indra and Brahma.

The author then turns to how Indian knowledge was disseminated first to Islamic world and from there to Europe. After the Muslim conquest of central Asia, the Barmakids of Balkh converted to Islam and rose to the position of hereditary viziers of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad. They encouraged the flow of Indian mathematical and astronomical theories. The place-value notation, usage of the numeral zero and computation of planetary positions assumed significance. This blossoming of Indian knowledge was brief, however, in the Abbasid capital. Jafar al-Barmak was treacherously beheaded by his childhood companion and caliph Harun al-Rashid (of the Arabian Nights fame), possibly to appropriate the Barmakids’ immense wealth and uprooted the entire family. After the fall of the Barmakids, Arab intellectuals focussed more on retrieving ancient Greek learning than on recovering that of India. The Umayyad caliphate was then flourishing in present-day Spain and Indian knowledge reached there through the medium of Arabic. When the Christian kingdoms reconquered this al-Andalus, the knowledge made its way into Christian Europe and kindled the scientific effervescence after the Renaissance. The medieval European universities were inspired by madrassas which in turn were influenced by Buddhist monasteries which typically had apartments and endowed scholarship for its students as well as a good library. The Indo-Arabic numerals – which are in common usage day – were slow at first to gain acceptance in conservative Europe. Its use was banned in Florence in 1299 as they were more easily altered than Roman numerals, for example, by changing 0 to 6 or 9.

The book then turns to address how the Indosphere collapsed in the medieval period with the rise of Islam. 664 CE was the year in which the Indosphere reached the peak of its influence. In that year, the Damascene Umayyad Arab army destroyed the resplendent Naw Bahar Buddhist vihara in Balkh. This monastery was much appreciated by Xuanzang just twenty years earlier on his journey! With the arrival of Persian-speaking elite seeking refuge following Chengiz Khan’s invasions, the court language in India was changed from Sanskrit to Persian. India’s descent into a centuries-long servitude and intellectual eclipse thus began. Also, the Mongols opened up a vast trade route from the Mediterranean to China by obliterating the intervening political boundaries. The marine routes of the Indosphere lost prominence by thirteenth century. The Muslim armies were fired by a ferocious religious bigotry as well, unlike all the earlier invaders of India. The book describes the sacking of the universities at Nalanda, Odantapura and Vikramashila in a carefully sanitised manner. Even then, it becomes evident that these eminent institutions of learning were decimated for no other reason than the religious zeal of the Muslim invaders. In some cases, the stones were carried off to the river and thrown into it as if to preclude any attempt to rebuild them.

A drawback of the book is the lack of an analysis on why the fabled Indosphere vanished from the daily lives of the people in Southeast Asia and China so suddenly. The author perhaps deliberately omits to point out the spread of Islam in the Malayan and Indonesian archipelagos which might have had a distinct role in its extinction. Or more crucially, he does not dwell on the possibility that the Hindu and Buddhist influence we see plainly in architecture and folk art did not filter down to the ordinary man in the street like Buddhism in ancient India. It might have remained an aristocratic fad while the common man cared little. This aspect requires further study. The text is an effortless read and very appealing as any of Dalrymple’s works. Several beautiful colour and monochrome plates of people, sculpture and temples are included in the book. Pictures of lesser known temples in Cambodia and Indonesia are unique for the richness of sculpture. Besides all these, the book is gratifying to read, with the claim on its flap that ‘India is the forgotten heart of the ancient world’. The book is mind-bogglingly well-researched, with 100 pages of Notes and 50 pages of bibliography. Even with the absence of an objective analysis of the role of Islam in destroying Indic culture and influence, this book is a must-read for all Indians and other enthusiasts of the Asian way of life.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 5 Star

History of the Communist Movement in Kerala

Title: History of the Communist Movement in Kerala
Author: E. Balakrishnan
Publisher: KurukshethraPrakasan, 1998 (First)
ISBN: Nil
Pages: 268

Kerala’s politics differ much from the Indian mainstream. This was so, right from the incorporation of the state in 1956. The state also witnessed the remarkable occurrence of a Communist movement assuming power through a democratic election based on universal adult franchise and secret ballot for the first time in the world. All the material on the origin of the Communist party in Kerala is written by the comrades themselves. This book presents a refreshing alternate review of the birth and growth of communism in Kerala. This is published by Kurukshethra Prakasan, a mouthpiece of the Sangh Parivar. Naturally enough, the party and its leaders are generally criticised, but it keeps a fine balance to present facts without omission or embellishment. The foreword is penned by P. Parameswaran, former director of the Bharatiya Vichara Kendra, a think tank of the Sangh. E. Balakrishnan was associated with the Communist movement from his school days. He was attracted to the Naxalite movement later and was imprisoned for a short time. The atrocities of Stalin and the communist government distanced him from that ideology. He wanted to follow the path of sanyasa, but later abandoned the idea to become a teacher. This book is his dissertation for doctorate at the University of Calicut.

There is a superb introductory chapter by the noted historian M G S Narayanan. It gives a lively summary of the mess Communists have created in Kerala. The commerce and industry of the state have collapsed due to the proletarian culture rampant among all sections of society. All levels of education are over-politicized. The visible prosperity and higher quality of life are artificial and was created by the parallel economy made by remittances from the Middle East where almost a tenth of the Keralites earn their livelihood. This is hailed by the Communists as an economic miracle called the ‘Kerala Model’. MGS also comments on the duplicity of EMS Namboodiripad in ‘donating’ his family property to the party. He also notes the lack of an in-depth analysis of the economic and social factors which controlled and moulded the political fortunes of the Communist movement in Kerala in the book. Balakrishnan begins the narrative with Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience Movement through which most of the founders of the Communist Party cut their teeth. People opposed to Gandhian tactics worked under the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) which in Kerala metamorphosed into the Communist Party. However, the national leaders of CSP maintained their anti-communist stand till the end. The central narrative of the book begins with the formation of the state committee of the Communist Party in 1937 and ends with the dismissal of the Communist ministry in 1959.

As was the international political norm, the Indian Communist Party was also led and subject to handholding by the Soviet Communist party. In 1920, Lenin instructed Indian communists to work alongside the Indian National Congress even though they were bourgeois. Lenin’s plan for colonies was to fight against the imperialists before playing out any ideological strategy to wrest power. M N Roy, however, refused to toe this line. After Stalin came, this policy was reversed and the Communist party assumed an exclusivist posture. When the Soviets faced threats from Nazis, a rapport was offered in 1936 to create a united front even with class enemies to fight fascism. The author critically examines EMS at many places and brings to light his contradictions and occasional pettiness in dealing with rivals. EMS took part in the 1932 Civil Disobedience from the outset as a leader nominated to that position by Kongattil Raman Menon. As a prisoner, his family requested and obtained Class A facilities for himself. This was in stark contrast to AKG or P. Krishna Pillai who enjoyed no special privileges denied to ordinary workers. AKG had a great appeal on the masses. The author alleges that the foremost contribution of the Communist party in Kerala to the struggle for independence was the sabotage of the Gandhian strategy of nonviolence by staging violent upheavals under the guise of Congressmen. Balakrishnan also identifies five features of the Communist party in the pre-independence period. The first is the sabotage referred above. The other four are, 1) disruptive activities within the ranks of the freedom movement by voicing sectarian demands exclusively for the industrial workers and peasants 2) instigation of the peasantry to violence 3) open alliance with the British and 4) inculcation of fascist behavioural patterns among its cadres.

The book elaborately narrates how the disgruntled leaders first took asylum under the shade of CSP before emerging as full-fledged Communists. Congress Socialists opposed Gandhi’s constructive programs like elimination of untouchability as religious reform because it applied to Hinduism alone. In Kerala, they introduced class-war ideas to lure the industrial workers to buttress the party. Evolution of Congress Socialism to Stalinist Communism began in the latter half of 1935. The CSP stood for a democratic, flexible and realistic political line whereas the Communists articulated a doctrinaire, dogmatic, tough and violent strategy. But they were not ignorant of the cruel and brutal repression Stalin was unleashing on his people in the USSR and his rivals in the party. News of Stalinist repression was appearing abundantly in the Malayalam press too, but these heinous atrocities did not deter the likes of EMS or Krishna Pillai who termed them ‘bourgeois and imperialist lies’. In December 1934, K P Gopalan published an article titled ‘Three World Famous Russians’ featuring Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin. Within five days of its publication, Stalin arrested the first two and later executed them after a mockery trial. Still, the Kerala leaders stayed loyal to Stalin as they had developed a trait called ‘authoritarian submission’. While Congress brought all sections of the people together to fight against the British, Communists wanted dictatorship of only the working class. Labour unions became a pawn in the hands of Communist leaders for manipulation for political ends. The first political strike organized by the Travancore Coir Workers Union in 1938 demanded responsible government based on adult franchise in the state rather than better wages or relief measures for the factory staff. Former goons of jenmis (landlords) were accepted as activists in the peasant unions. This was the beginning of the instrumentalization of violence as a political tool. Meanwhile, indoctrination of volunteers and cadres in training camps was organized under the label of KPCC as the socialists had a majority in it.

The decade following the year 1935 was one in which the Communist party in India swayed with the ebbs and tides of the Russian political sea. When Nazis was against the Communists before World War II, they united with other parties to present a common front against fascism. But after the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, Communist policy in India changed and they termed the war ‘imperialist’ and devised stratagems to defeat the British war machine which was arrayed against the Nazi-Communist combine in Europe. Violent protests were organized in Malabar on Sep 15, 1940 that led to police firing and many deaths of both the protestors and policemen. Riots, ostensible for the distribution of scarce rice, broke out in Morazha, Mattannur and Kayyur. Four men were sentenced to death for the murder of a policeman at Kayyur. Meanwhile, EMS transferred his properties to his wife anticipating its attachment by the government. However, the government, and in challenge the court also, struck down this transaction as bogus. When Germany treacherously invaded its Soviet ally in 1941, CPI again changed its policy. After the Soviets allied with the British, Communists did the same in India, betraying the independence movement. Ban on Communists was lifted in 1942. Execution of death sentence of the four Kayyur prisoners carried out at this point was the only awkward moment as far as the party was concerned. Anti-Japanese rallies were organized and Subhash Bose who sought shelter with them was abused in the foulest language. He was called a ‘rascal’ and ‘boot-licker of the Japanese’ (p.169). All peasant and labour unrest was called off to assist the British in their military effort, which was rechristened ‘people’s war’. Active campaigns were initiated to produce more in factories and farms. This cooperation was in spite of the biting inflation of 1943.

Balakrishnan neatly captures the dilemma of the CPI after World War II. Even though they wholeheartedly supported the British, the government sought to mend ways with the Congress and wanted to transfer power to them without much delay. On Dec 4, 1945, the Secretary of State informed British parliament that independence of India was its immediate goal. It was clear to all that total freedom was only months away. An interim government under Jawaharlal Nehru assumed power on Sep 2, 1946 to manage the transition. The Communists desperately wanted to do something big to usher in revolution, if possible, with Russian help. Sensing that time was running out for them, CPI called for resistance in its August 1946 resolution. They fully supported the Pakistan demand as well. Not only two, EMS was suggesting that India was a makeshift patchwork of sixteen nationalities! EMS exhorted Moplahs in Malabar to rebel in response to Muslim League’s call for ‘Direct Action’ in August 1946. Fortunately for Malabar, they did not pay heed to his call. But the Kolkata Muslims did and thousands were killed in the communal riots that ensued. The CPI also organized futile armed action, more in a bid to gain some martyrs for the party rather than effecting any meaningful change in the political scenario. Communists led thousands to avoidable death in Punnapra and Vayalar in October 1946. The author estimates the death toll at 2000, but the Communists concede only a tenth of the figure and calls them out as the only occasion in which a revolutionary party gave the number of its dead which was much less than the official estimates. Violence flared in Malabar as well. Three people were killed in police firing at Karivelloor and five at Kavumbayi. This book continues to point out the revolutionary confusion even after 1947. The Madurai Congress of the party in 1953 reiterated that the objectives of the party can be realized only through a revolution and overthrow of the current Indian state. The party still maintained that India had not achieved ‘real’ independence. The question of political independence of India was recognized only in 1956 in the party congress at Palakkad. The 1958 Amritsar Congress accepted peaceful evolution to socialism which waved the green flag for the party to contest elections.

This book clearly exposes the brazen adherence of early Communist leaders to their ideology even in the face of plain evidence that proved the authoritarianism of its practitioners in the Soviet Union. It includes a review of reportage of Stalinist repression in Malayalam and the national media. As noted earlier, they shrugged it off as an ‘imperialist lie’ and refused to countenance the truth. Propaganda was the lifeblood of the party on which truth was not an essential component. The book lists the newspapers and other publications as well as membership figures of the party and feeder organizations in their formation period. Balakrishnan also makes a comparison of AKG and EMS, the two founding stalwarts of the party. In the early phase of the Communist party, AKG was democratic and accommodative while EMS had a closed mind and treated people on the basis of social classes to which they belonged. A great drawback of the book is that it is solely focussed on Malabar with little or no coverage of party formation in Travancore or Kochi. Great Communist leaders of these two native states had reached the top echelons of the party in future but their trail is not visible here. The narrative is much subdued after 1947 and it feels that the author somehow managed to continue the narrative till 1959 when the EMS ministry was dissolved.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 4 Star