History Liberated

Title: History Liberated – The Sree Chithra Saga
Author: Princess Aswathi Thirunal Gouri Lakshmi Bayi
Publisher: Konark Publishers, 2021 (First)
ISBN: 9788194201892
Pages: 450

The 565 native states which formed a part of British India were in varying degrees of social and material progress. Travancore was the foremost among them, adorned by a long line of enlightened monarchs crowned by the jewel among them – Maharaja Sree Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma. He acceded to India in 1947 and functioned as the Raj Pramukh of the united Travancore-Cochin state till 1956. After stepping down, he graciously lived on as an ordinary citizen of India, eliciting deep respect from the people around him. He passed away in 1991 at the age of 79. Unfortunately, an effort was seen thereafter to belittle him and his lineage through reminiscences which the victims could not effectively refute owing to the great time that elapsed in between. Chithira Thirunal was the son of the younger of the two cousins adopted into the Travancore royal family. When the reigning monarch Sree Moolam Thirunal died, the elder cousin assumed regency powers. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t have male offspring and the crown was transferred to the younger cousin’s lineage. In 1995, one of the granddaughters of the regent rani came out with a book titled ‘At the Turn of the Tide: The Life and Times of Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’ which contained some adverse remarks. Noted author Manu S. Pillai’s 2016 book ‘The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore’ also repeated this trait (this book was reviewed earlier here). The present book is a rejoinder to these two strikes on a simple, progressive and visionary Maharaja. It is also for salvaging Sethu Parvathi Bayi – the junior rani – as she was the target of ‘calculated cruelty’ from some quarters. She is claimed to be victimized for nothing more than being strong-willed and the hardships and sufferings faced by her remains unknown. Princess Aswathi Thirunal Gouri Lakshmi Bayi is a member of the royal family and the niece of Chithira Thirunal. She is an economics graduate and an accomplished poetess. She was awarded the Padma Shree recently. This book seeks to liberate Chithira Thirunal’s history and legacy from the eclipse his rivals had planned.

The narrative begins with the adoption of two young girl cousins to the royal family named Sethu Lakshmi Bayi (elder) and Sethu Parvathi Bayi (younger). This kind of adoption was required in a matrilineal family in which there was no natural-born girl child. The senior male offspring of the elder princess was assured of the throne. The relationship between the princesses and the palace atmosphere were vitiated by the senior Rani’s miscarriage in the eighth month of pregnancy and junior Rani’s safe delivery of a male child. This meant the new-born would be the future king and power would be taken out of the senior Rani’s line. Junior Rani feared assassination attempts on the little prince. She was apprehensive even to hand him over to temple priests for mandatory rituals at the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple. With the ruling king’s early death, senior Rani took over as Regent till the crown prince turned eighteen. She strictly controlled even the petty expenses of the junior’s household. There were times when money was not given to feed the entire household and the children had to obtain food from the kitchen of a loyal retainer. The junior’s mother and siblings were forbidden from staying with or visiting them at Kaudiyar Palace. When Chithira Thirunal was sent to Mysore for administrative training before assuming office, his mother was required to stay away from him. Unable to suffer this disgrace, she chose not to go to Mysore. All these were intentionally done to mentally harass her and the crown prince. Senior Rani’s household, especially her consort, was determined to prolong the regency by alleging grave falsehoods on the mind and character of the prince and his mother. Accusations of black magic involving an attempted human sacrifice of a baby were concocted and levelled against them. The author asserts that three assassination attempts were made on the life of the prince – one on the day of investiture itself and two in his minority. One such attempt was to torch the infant’s bed and to make it appear as originated from a toppled candlestick.

Some interesting features of the Regency rule are mentioned here. The paramountcy of the British was a principle that was displayed in full view of the public even in their most ordinary daily lives and its style and substance. The arrival of dignitaries in hierarchical order for state functions left no doubt unanswered on who’s the highest on the ladder. The Regent rani came first, followed five minutes later by the prince (who later became Maharaja) and the British resident came last. The sequence was reversed in dispersal. In the Investiture Declaration read out by the Resident, Viceroy Willingdon informed the public through his written order of how he was ‘convinced’ of the prince’s suitability for kingship after having an interview and interactions with him. The Maharaja responded in similar vein by profusely thanking the British and conceding that he has taken charge according to usage and recognition of the British government. The author has used every weapon in her resources to strike back at the senior Rani’s household. She is alleged to be partial to Christians and granted them prime land to build churches and ecclesiastical institutions. This was said to be in a bid to impress Viceroy Irwin who was a pious Christian. When charges of unsound mind came up against Chithira Thirunal, some bishops of Travancore sent petitions to the viceroy suggesting the prince’s incompetence to succeed to the throne (p.88). In the same way, the author arraigns some of the peculiarities of the senior Rani’s household. A comparison of the consorts is also made with the senior guy said to be more English than the English, mostly suited and booted and enjoyed hunting. The moral turpitude of injuring a living being for sport is played up and we are informed that though Chithira Thirunal was a sharp shooter who could smash a matchstick from a distance, he never fired to kill.

The Temple Entry Proclamation was the greatest achievement of Sree Chithira Thirunal. At the stroke of a pen, he castigated disgrace and discrimination that lasted many centuries to the dustbin of history and restored the self-respect of the lower castes. This was the first such action in India. Kochi and Malabar followed suit rather late in this respect and their titular rulers forever stopped going to temples when they had to finally permit entry of the untouchables. There is a line of thought that credits Diwan C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer as being instrumental for this crucial step. This book provides sufficient proof to dispel this view. The Maharaja constituted a nine-member committee in 1932 to study this issue, out of which seven were upper castes. In 1934, they recommended many reforms but stopped short of permitting entry. There was the threat of mass conversion of Ezhavas in the background. On Nov 3, 1936, a memorandum signed by 30,522 upper castes appealed for temple entry. A few days later on the Maharaja’s birthday, it was granted. The gates of Kaudiyar Palace were symbolically thrown open to all and a grateful multitude watched their rulers welcoming them from a balcony with open arms. Strangely, the senior Rani – earlier Regent – opposed temple entry and she never visited Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple thereafter. The book gives a very plausible argument for why Chithira Thirunal waited five years for temple entry. This was answered by Sir C.P. He said he advised the Maharaja to go for this reform when a Hindu diwan ruled the state. Thomas Austin and M. Habibullah were the diwans in the early part of the Maharaja’s reign.

In the 1940s, Chithira Thirunal’s star faded in the face of violent and uncompromising agitation for more power to the people’s representatives. At Indian independence, Travancore initially opted not to accede to India and remain independent with a constitution modelled on the USA. The 1946 Punnapra-Vayalar rebellion erupted in which hundreds of communist fighters were killed. This was a case of labour unions adopting political objectives such as removal of the diwan. The author rightfully concludes that this was nothing but a brazen attempt to create martyrs and to strengthen the Communist party. She refers to Nandigram in 2007 as similar to Punnapra-Vayalar. In the Bengal hamlet, the police in the communist-ruled state of West Bengal fired upon farmers protesting against eviction from their homesteads to make way for a new car factory. Many were killed. There the Communist party took the stand that law and order had to be maintained at any cost. Gouri Lakshmi Bayi obliquely admits that the demand for an independent Travancore was Chithira Thirunal’s brainchild. It is claimed to be only a bargaining chip to gain special status for the state. The Maharaja was claimed to be apprehensive that the North-dominated Centre would steamroll the interests of the southern states. Coincidental it might be, but Travancore decided to accede to India just days after an assassination attempt on Diwan Sir C.P. The author however clarifies that the attempt had no role to play in swaying Travancore into the embrace of India. Another progressive step was to abolish the death penalty in Travancore. The book lists out a lot of work done by the Maharaja in bringing modern institutions to his kingdom. This becomes a drag on the readers after some time.

Part 2 of the book is fully reserved for reminiscences of close family members on the Maharaja and his mother, the junior Rani. A collage of photographs of the two enveloping the period from their childhood to old age is artistically conceived and excellently reproduced. Curiously, none of the family explains why Chithira Thirunal chose not to marry and this point remains unanswered. It is true that matriliny made it immaterial whether a king had children or not as the mantle invariably fell on his nephew. The narrative concludes with the scrapping of the post of Raj Pramukh when unified Kerala state was formed. The author hints at many places that the Indian government never kept its word on the promises made to royal houses when their kingdoms were annexed to a newly independent India. The Privy Purse was later repealed but nothing is mentioned about this. The author also indicates about a sequel to this volume, which might not be a good idea. Many incidents of the later period of the Maharaja are only glanced over in passing.

The book has a hard cover and fully printed in very fine and glossy pages which cause it to weigh nearly 2 kg. The author’s deep respect for her uncle, the Maharaja Sree Chithira Thirunal, as a living god is discernible in every page. Several couplets she had penned in his honour and memory are reproduced in the book. Padmanabhaswamy and his temple are the other two major protagonists in the text which put in an appearance every few pages. There are some personal anecdotes narrated, but not enough from a person who had close familiarity with the Maharaja from her birth to his passing away 46 years later. Many rare photographs from the palace albums are included. These photos make for a good excuse to purchase this book. The diction is slightly cumbersome at some points. The author being an established poetess, her choice of words may make a connoisseur of rhyme enthused, but not the ordinary reader in some pages. The Maharaja had confided many things to the author’s care and the readers would have cherished some remembrances about the meeting Chithira Thirunal had had with Viceroy Willingdon which confirmed his suitability to hold the crown. If the Viceroy had decided otherwise, Travancore’s history would have coursed through along a new channel. Nothing is mentioned about this episode.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Nayars of Malabar

Title: Nayars of Malabar
Author: F. Fawcett
Publisher: Asian Educational Services, 1985 (First published 1901)
ISBN: Nil
Pages: 138

The British administrators who ruled over India in the colonial period took it upon themselves to study about their subject population. Though it might appear an enlightened course of action, let it be clearly stated that this effort was solely to find ways in which the natives could be guided and controlled to achieve the ends of the colonial masters. And they found a lot to study with thousands of endogamous social groups called jatis in each province. The results of this research came out as reports, letters to designated learned societies like the Asiatic Society, state manuals, research papers and books. This book is one such study on the Nayar caste in Malabar. Only the northern part of Kerala known as Malabar was under British rule, but the conclusions and characteristics deduced from this study is applicable without much alteration to the entire Nayar caste of Kerala. The modern spelling used to denote the caste is ‘Nair’, but for easy comprehension and in agreement with the terminology in this book, the term ‘Nayar’ is used in this review. Frederick Fawcett (1853 – 1926) was a British civil servant and ethnographer who worked in Kerala as the superintendent of Malabar police. He was an amateur archaeologist and anthropologist and retired in 1911 as the deputy inspector general of police in Madras. Several publications on his topics of interest stand in public domain as testimonials to this man’s varied interests. This book is a part of the series of notes on people of Malabar and pages are numbered from 193 to 323. The book describes Malabar as an earthly paradise where Nature has lavished her gifts with unmatched prodigality. Modern visitors would also find the region as described which confirm its modern epithet ‘God’s Own Country’ as an unchanged certitude. Along with its natural beauty, it is asserted in the book that the most undiluted form of the highest and most abstract religion is seen side by side with the most entirely primitive.

Fawcett identifies 21 clans (sub-castes) among Nayars with the ‘Kiriyathil’ at the top. He expresses doubt on their Dravida lineage and finds similarities with the Uriyas of Gumsoor in Ganjam, Odisha in the matter of outward appearance, customs, habitation and general mode of life. Even though all these clans were Nayars, they are further rearranged in hierarchical order. The Vattakkad and Pallichan clans were lower in standing and generally not allowed to suffix the caste title to their names as done by other Nayars. Matrimony was also restricted among the clans as women were not allowed to marry or cohabit with men who were lower in rank to their clan. The author provides extensive data tables tabulating physical measurements like height, span, chest, cephalic length, nasal height etc. as if these were specimens of some kind with which the outside world has yet to familiarize. A tinge of racism and a slight whiff of eugenics are felt here since we now know that the people of Kerala – irrespective of caste or religion – belong to the same racial stock though individuals may differ. Curiously, this is borne out in the tables too as the physical parameters are almost the same across all clans. The minor differences of a few millimetres in stature are not statistically significant.

Fawcett notes some interesting facts about the Malabar society of his times. A recurring and embarrassing issue was the practice of polyandry practised by some communities and the loosely knit moral standards of the Nayar community. The author quotes learned men reiterate the command that Sudra women in Malabar is ordained to serve the Brahmins and they need not remain chaste. However, the author clearly states that this is not what is seen in practice as ‘nowhere else is the marriage tie more jealously guarded and its breaches more savagely avenged’ (p.228). As a matter of fact, he points out that promiscuity has no more followers in Malabar than elsewhere. The relations between sexes are unusually happy, the reason being that they are less influenced by considerations of property than elsewhere. Flexibility in marriage is also stressed. Should the parties find they are unsuited, they part. There is no dragging on under bondage intolerable to both (p.232). It is also mentioned that all Nayars believe in magical remedies, but he does not judge them by this alone and mitigates it with a remark that ‘such beliefs are very deep in human nature and one of the earliest heirlooms of the human family which may persist to the very end. Reason and culture do not efface it’. The communal situation in Malabar was generally tolerant, but the region had also witnessed heinous communal riots bordering on Hindu genocide in 1921. This book talks about a minor incident which indicates that not all communities practised tolerance on equal measure. Some Mappilas had reportedly destroyed a stone lingam in search of treasure which was worshipped at a forest grove at Kottiyur temple (p.269).

It is amusing to learn about some curious aspects of Malabar society as it existed about 130 years ago. The men were always clean-shaven except during mourning for a near relative. This included removal of body hair from all parts except the crown of head and was done by a professional dedicated to the purpose. In Malabar, the prevalent idea was that no respectable woman shall cover her breast (p.198) though this practice was observed to be fading out of use. An important point to notice is that it was not restricted to the lower castes alone as is usually alleged. The life expectancy was obviously short and this risk was hedged by people opting for more children with the average of about five per family. We see arguments in contemporary media about how climate change makes summers hotter and the weather unpredictable and harsher. An observation about summer heat in Malabar is worth contemplation in this context. Fawcett writes that ‘a few hours’ walk in the midday sun where there is little or no shade is sufficient to bring on fever to the ordinarily strong man’ (p.213). So it seems nothing has changed that much.

The book provides a detailed description of rituals in vogue for birth, marriage and death of a member of the Nayar community. These are mostly copied from written accounts prepared by prominent members of that caste and it’s doubtful if the author had actually witnessed all of them. A description of the religious functions attending to a festival at the Pishari temple in Koyilandi is included. Even though lower castes were not allowed entry in the temple, each and every caste was represented in the festival within a complex web of duties and responsibilities whose filaments crisscrossed across the entire body of the local Hindu society. A peculiar feature of the Kottiyur temple festival mentioned in the book is interesting. The people going to attend it are distinctively rowdy, feeling they have a right to abuse in the vilest and filthiest terms anyone they see on the way which could go up to violence to person and property. But they return like lambs (p.267). The author then identifies the differences between the rituals and customs of Nayars and Nambudiris. The former is more inclined towards animism and deification of ancestors, worship of snakes and kites, sacrifice, magic, witchcraft and sorcery while the Nambudiris employ the purest form of Vedic Brahminism which has its highest expression in the temples attached to Nambudiri houses (illam). The book also carries an informative part on snake worship in Malabar and Travancore.

On the negative side, the book makes some outrageous conclusions drawn from physical measurements of persons belonging to various sub-castes among Nayars. Regarding a particular individual, Fawcett remarks that ‘the person whose cephalic index is the maximum that was measured in Palghat where there are many Pattar (east coast) Brahmins, his father was in all probability, one of them’ (p.207). The author is sometimes deceived by similar sounding names that can have no correlation or causation between them. In the case of a Taravad whose name Thondil that sounds similar to Tindys mentioned as a port of call in Periplus, he surmises that a man belonging to that Taravad ‘bears the name of the place as it was in the days of Ptolemy’ (p.202). Fawcett was a man with wide interests and he wanted to describe the vagaries of his subject-people in all its manifestations. Modesty binds his pen in describing some sexual practices of Nayar women and he writes three sentences in Latin language to describe this amusing peculiarity (p.297) and to wriggle out of the dilemma. Ordinarily, this would have put the readers on the sharp needle of impotent suspense, but with the development of software technology, Google’s translation service from Latin to English would come to their rescue. The book also includes some monochromatic photographs taken by the author.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star
 

The People Next Door

Title: The People Next Door – The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan
Author: T C A Raghavan
Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2017 (First)
ISBN: 9789352770908
Pages: 348

 ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’ is a very famous and thrilling Sherlock Holmes story for the insights the detective infers from the scene of a crime. There is a passage in it that goes like this:

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

The story involves deceit, avarice, crime and punishment. Likewise, India-Pakistan relations also involve most of these attributes and the curious incident is that bilateral relations have not improved a bit in spite of laborious measures undertaken by both sides. As far as India is concerned, Pakistan was always a pain on the western frontier. The nations had fought two large-scale and two small-scale wars over the issue of disputed territory. After realizing the futility of its desire to humble India on the battlefield, Pakistan turned to sponsoring terrorism as state policy to ‘bleed India through a thousand cuts’. The one thing that stands out from this exercise is India’s surprising resilience which always stood one step ahead of its troublesome neighbour. This book is a nice recap of India-Pakistan relations written with the authority of knowledge and experience. T C A Raghavan is a former Indian envoy to Pakistan. He also served in the Pakistan desk in India’s external affairs ministry and as director in the office of India’s foreign minister. Even though no personal anecdotes are mentioned in the book, the author has encapsulated the entire gamut of the relations between the two countries and presented his deductions with a commendable sense of justice and richness with every nuance carefully inserted at the right moment. The typical behaviour of the so called liberal intellectuals in India is to regret the partition that had occurred in 1947 and their wistful longing for Pakistan to come back to India and undo the partition. A useful takeaway from the book is the warning about the irritation such a desire would evoke in Pakistanis. Raghavan enunciates the point that Partition cannot be undone and what is doable is peaceful coexistence at least as non-meddling neighbours if not as friends.

The book narrates several incidents of India-Pakistan relations that vitiated the atmosphere but still are not widely known. Pakistan continues to harbour persons who are fugitives from Indian law such as Dawood Ibrahim, Hafiz Sayeed and Masood Azhar. This one fact amply demonstrates its enmity and hatred to India’s wellbeing. In fact, this is nothing new and was followed right from its existence. The peculiar episode of Bhupat daku is a case in point. Bhupat was a Hindu dacoit from Junagadh in Gujarat who was wanted in the context of 82 murders and several robberies. He escaped to Pakistan to evade Indian law. He was detained there for a year for illegal entry and thereafter it refused to deport him to stand trial for his crimes in India. This was sheer spite as Pakistan had no claim on him. Bhupat then converted to Islam and posed as a freedom fighter from Junagadh who opposed India’s takeover of that state in 1947. Pakistan never extradited him and he died in 2006. This policy is continued in the case of others too. However, with the recently rising trend of ‘unidentified gunmen’ disposing summary justice to some people wanted by India, the continued efficacy of this policy is in doubt.

Even though Afghanistan plays only a marginal role in India-Pakistan strategic reviews, its potential to seriously influence the regional balance is mentioned in the book. This perspective is very rarely seen in books of this genre. The British had unilaterally imposed the Durand Line of border demarcation between undivided India and Afghanistan thereby separating the Pashtun homeland into two. When the British left, the Pashtuns wanted to reunite with Afghanistan but there was no provision to revisit the frontiers on the northwest of Pakistan. Consequently, Afghanistan was the sole member state opposing Pakistan’s entry to the United Nations. Then came the invasion of Kashmir by Pakistani irregular troops in 1947. The UN ordered a ceasefire to which Pakistan proposed a conditional offer. They claimed the invasion to be on security grounds which included preventing India establishing a link for the movement of Pathanistan and to preclude the possibility of a pincer attack by India and Afghanistan. The Soviet occupation beginning in 1979 and the post-Taliban regime were eras in which Pakistan experienced a hostile neighbour on both the east and the west.

The people had to make a hard choice at the time of Partition in the provinces which were bifurcated. Hindus and Sikhs chose India while the Muslims selected Pakistan. The book lists out some Muslims who opted for India even though their native places were within Pakistan and their subsequent actions as it reflected on the relationship between the two countries. Most of these Muslims occupied high positions of power in the bureaucracy. Badruddin Tyabji was one of them working as secretary in the external affairs ministry. He advised Nehru to consider Pakistan as his ‘constituency’ in which he has to get elected. He also suggested treating the government of Pakistan as the opposition and that his reactions to Pakistan should be entirely those of one who was standing for election from there (p.50). In other words, this man was advising Nehru to offer maximum concessions to Pakistan! Nehru fully accepted the counsel was proved by his gifting of 80 per cent of the Indus waters in a treaty also co-signed by the World Bank. A very useful book on the Indus Waters Treaty named 'Indus Divided: India, Pakistan and the River Basin Dispute’ by Daniel Haines was reviewed earlier here. Nehru also agreed to conduct a plebiscite in Kashmir but barely wriggled out of the deal citing US-Pakistan military alliance concluded in the meanwhile. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India’s first education minister, asked Afzal Iqbal, a Pakistani diplomat, regarding the military treaty: “Why did you do this? Kashmir was falling on your lap like a ripe fruit” (p.52). The Urdu poetry in India was also a fit case of doubtful loyalty. The author narrates some differences in mutual perception taking the case of Urdu poetry in the aftermath of the 1965 war. Indian Urdu poets deliberately introduced a line of separation between the people and rulers of Pakistan with the implied suggestion that the Pakistani society is not to blame even though the country was at war with India. This demarcation was purely fictional. On the other hand, the Pakistani Urdu poets had no hesitation at all in branding the whole of India – people and rulers alike – as enemy and called for a jihad. Ali Sardar Jafri extolled the Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and argued that Indian poets should have friendship and sympathy for the people of Pakistan. This was when Faiz was actively supporting the Pakistani war machine and vigorously participating in war mushairas (p.92).

Raghavan includes a pointed analysis of the history of mutual dialog between the two neighbours. Nehru was damagingly generous (as far as India is concerned) but Indira Gandhi was curt most of the time, giving Pakistan no quarter. Pakistan was summarily defeated and split apart doing her tenure as prime minister in 1971. But the Janata party regime that followed (1977-79) was not firm enough with Pakistan. The 1971 victory had changed the Pakistani perspective on India’s fighting spirit. Disparaging rebukes like one Pakistani Muslim is equivalent to ten Hindus in the battlefield had given way to cold and rational estimates of military potential of both countries. Mani Sankar Aiyer, who was the Consul General in Karachi during this time, says that as compared to 1971, the prospect of a conflict with India generated not excitement and conviction of victory but fear and apprehension at the certainty of defeat. This, coupled with the change of guard in Pakistan in the form of General Zia ul Haq, ensured friendly terms for the Janata government. As the painful memory of Bangladesh gradually receded to the background, Pakistan again turned belligerent. Unusually meek overtures from India elicited only contemptuous response from the other side of the border. In June 1996 when Prime Minister Deve Gowda and foreign minister Gujral wrote to their counterparts seeking resumption of foreign secretary-level talks, not even a reply was received. The Gujral doctrine postulated India making unilateral and non-reciprocal concessions to its neighbours (p.221). A B Vajpayee at first stole the show with the explosion of nuclear devices, but then yielded to Pakistan even in the face of growing terrorist attacks in the country and hijacking of a commercial airliner. The secret incursion in Kargil fully exposed Pakistani duplicity. It also illustrated the futility of waiting for international diplomatic pressure to mount on Pakistan for effecting a withdrawal of its troops from Kargil. It was the might of the Indian army and its weaponry that drove Pakistani invaders scurrying to their lair. This was also a classic instance of Pakistan misjudging Indian will and ability to fight back. Of course, the author strictly maintains a tone of balance and an air of equanimity in the narrative exercising special care not to exhibit partisanship, but the message readers get is what is mentioned above.

The book shows a peculiar trait of early Indian envoys to Pakistan as of being under the illusion that partition was a temporary affair and they were working in a region not different from their homeland. Their familiarity with Pakistani officials and a shared common language of Urdu was instrumental in creating a superficial and illusive bonhomie. India’s envoy Kewal Singh attended the wedding of Pakistan foreign minister’s son in Rawalpindi while the 1965 war was raging in Kashmir. The reception was hostile, but he still found some excuse to praise the ‘grace and courtesy’ of some who behaved politely with him. Besides, he had gifted a Benarsi saree to the bride. This was auctioned by the family and the raised money deposited in the Pakistan defence fund (p.86). The author also notes the lengths to which India would go to prevent foreign agencies intervening in Kashmir often at great loss and inconvenience to itself. In the case of the Salal hydroelectric project on the river allotted to Pakistan in the Indus Waters Treaty, India agreed to significantly reduce the height of the check dam and unilaterally cut short the power generation capability in a bid to avoid seeking international arbitration as per the treaty. Raghavan does not propose any magic formula to settle the issues between the two countries. The implication between the lines is that the serious differences are not to be ironed out in any length of time or in any number of meetings. The issues remain exactly as it were before to create an impression that nothing has changed for the better since 1947. But the author notes that ‘clearly enough has changed to make sure that older solutions will not work’. This also puts former foreign minister Natwar Singh’s prescient remark that ‘the future in Indo-Pakistan relations lie in the past’ in bright focus.

The crucial role played by Pakistan army in shaping public opinion in that country is not fully addressed in this book. The irrelevance of elected representatives in deciding long term policy of Pakistan is notorious but not elaborated here. Instead, Raghavan observes that adulation and exasperation with the army controls Pakistan’s response to India. If the army has overplayed its card, the civilians show good regard to India, but once the army retakes its lost ground in domestic politics, this is reversed. In short, Pakistan is forever waiting for an unguarded moment from India to pounce on her. However, with the rising economic heft of India after 2000, they are finding it slightly difficult to keep pace with India. With financial and military gap further widening between the two countries with each passing year, Pakistan is likely to resort once again to unconventional warfare such as terrorism in future. The book’s narrative ends by 2004. Even though coverage is extended to 2015 by means of an epilogue, it misses the most exciting episodes such as the surgical strikes and the Balakot operation.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Separatism among Indian Muslims

Title: Separatism among Indian Muslims – The Politics of the United Provinces Muslims 1860-1923
Author: Francis Robinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1997 (First published 1993)
ISBN: 9780195631265
Pages: 469

The plain fact that India was partitioned in 1947 on the basis of religion requires researchers to analyse the reasons for fissure among the major communities of Hindus and Muslims and the growth of separatism among the Muslims. Several attempts have been made, emphasizing on the political, social, religious, economic and every conceivable parameter on which you can classify human societies. This book sets out to explain the emergence of Muslim separatism largely in terms of the interactions between colonial elites and the colonial state, set against the broader contexts of Hindu and Muslim revivalism. It narrates the communal story between two important failures of Indian political life – the 1857 Rebellion and the Khilafat agitation of the 1920s. These six decades – it seems obvious now – shaped the destiny of the later political frontiers of the subcontinent. It’s a mixture of governmental patronage favouring a community first and then transferring it to its rival. A major theme of the work is the Muslim petulance at permanently losing the privileges they had enjoyed unopposed over a millennium in India. They had initially hoped that when the British left Indian shores at last, power would be handed back to the Muslim dynasties from whom the British had gained control over India. The 1857 Uprising was in fact staged to hoist the Mughal emperor as the nominal sovereign of the country. However, with constitutional reforms getting progressively wider and more inclusive, it dawned on them that the British wanted to devolve more power to the people and eventually to leave the power in full in their hands in a distant future. In such a scenario, the Hindus who constituted a majority would naturally be able to handle more power. The Muslim reluctance to share power with the Hindus lay at the root of separatism and this book spells out how it grew in the sixty years after the 1857 Rebellion. Francis Robinson is a British historian and academic who specialize in the history of South Asia and Islam. He has been twice the president of the Royal Asiatic Society.

It may seem strange to us now why the author had chosen a province whose post-partition position was never in doubt and which had a large Hindu majority all along. Robinson clears this up with an explainer on why he had selected UP as his field of study. The Muslims in UP (then called United Provinces of Agra and Oudh) were at the heart of Muslim separatism unlike Punjab or Bengal. Except Jinnah, they led the Muslim organizations in Indian politics. The secretaries of the All India Muslim League were from UP in the first two decades of its existence. They also dominated the Central Khilafat Committee that played a supra-provincial role in whipping up communal frenzy that ended up in gruesome communal riots. The region of UP was the traditional centre of Muslim rule and civilization in India. For eight centuries before the British dislodged the Mughals, Muslims had been the dominant group though a minority in numbers. They were not at all backward, as being suggested by some of the Left-Islamist cabal of historians. They were a major landholding group occupying approximately one-fifth of the land in the province. They possessed many of the largest estates running into thousands of acres of prime fertile land. They were able to elect 40 per cent of the members in Oudh district boards. The Muslims constituted 35 per cent of all government jobs while in the judicial services, they formed the majority share of 56 per cent. 54 per cent of the tahsildars were Muslims as also most of the kotwals (town police chiefs). This was while their ratio in population was only 12 per cent!

Consider for an instant the imaginary case of Hindu upper castes who predominated the British-Indian bureaucracy opposing the program of providing reservation for lower castes in government jobs and education. How vociferously would modern society have called their hypocrisy out? A similar situation prevailed in nineteenth century UP when the Muslims who dominated the provincial establishment of Mohammedan rulers grudged the increased participation the British were offering to Hindus. The Muslims demurred to send their children to government schools for fear of ‘mingling with students far below them in social rank’. Their religious obligations compelled them to make their boys learn the Koran before they learned anything else, and by the time they had done this, it was usually too late to learn anything else. Their religious leaders believed western learning to be incompatible with Islam. Robinson also describes the major issues that fused the Muslim elite together. In the 1840s, the policy of teaching Persian was stopped and the government switched over to Urdu (not English, as it is widely believed). This concession was to mollify the Muslims as the Urdu language was to be written in the Persian script only. The Urdu-speaking elite identified four threats to their continued domination: education policy, bureaucratic reforms, elective government and Hindu revivalism. In 1900, the sole use of Persian script was modified by allowing the Nagri script as well. This decision which was in the interest of 90 per cent of the population was deeply resented by the Muslims who dreamed to continue their iron-fisted hegemony till the end of days.

This book strongly rejects ‘Divide and Rule’ as a policy deliberately adopted by the British. The real problem confronting Britain was ‘not how to divide and rule India, but how to rule a divided India’ (p.164). If British policy exacerbated Indian social disharmony, it was ‘more out of ignorance or innocence than malice’. Besides, British public opinion was strongly pro-Muslim. The Times, which really informed and led the mass of newspapers about Indian matters, was a great Muslim partisan (p.169). Robinson identifies fear of Muslims that really formed the bedrock of British policy towards them. To deal with them, government adopted special measures and made special concessions, which was not to set them against Hindus that was only a side effect (p.131-2). What the colonialists feared was fanaticism of a terrible order which British administrators clearly feared. UP Lieutenant Governor Anthony MacDonnell objectively spotted it in Muslim government servants. He was sure that ‘in times of Muslim agitation, they did not pull their weight. This was a danger to security of the establishment and their strong position in government service had to be redressed’. However, the author finds this prudent official to be ‘prejudicial’ (p.43). Robinson again remarks that British policy to Muslims was influenced by ‘the publicists’ pen and the assassin’s dagger’. The Chief Justice of Bengal was killed on the steps of the High Court and Viceroy Mayo himself was stabbed to death by a Muslim convict. A little time before his death, Mayo had advised his subordinates that being constantly on the lookout for disturbances within Muslims was one of the most important duties of every officer, civil or military in India (p.100). The provocation could be anything, even as mild as criticising their religion. Pandit Lekh Ram criticized Islam and appealed them to become Aryas. The author then makes the Muslim attack that followed somewhat respectable with the strange remark that ‘eventually, one Muslim was provoked enough to kill him’ (p.68 footnote).

This book takes a detailed look at the factors that prompted Muslims to demand unreasonable constitutional guarantees for themselves. This is a reflection on the collapse of Muslim power in north India that exercised a suffocating dominance over the Hindus who were not allowed to exercise any position of meaningful power or the free practice of their religion. By the nineteenth century, the Hindus saw their chance and began to use them. The divisional commander of Agra observed: The Hindus here, as elsewhere, have begun to assert themselves, and will not now willingly acquiesce, as they appear formerly to have done, in the superiority of the Mohammedans (p.80). This, in a nutshell, is the real and true cause of Muslim separatism in India. An oppressed majority boldly claiming their just share from the hands of a tyrannical minority elite would be glorified as a victory of social justice a century later but this apt epithet is used in India only after carefully asserting which party is the oppressor. With the progressive widening of self-rule and the flicker of democracy gaining traction in the country, the Muslims feared that their claims would be ignored and discriminated against. They opposed elections and representative government as totally unsuited to India. In fact, Muslim elite opposed competitive exams in the civil service too. The principal of Aligarh college told the government that competitive exams would flood the service with men from lower provinces dispossessing Muslims and upper classes in general, such as the Rajput aristocracy (p.118). Syed Ahmed was even more vociferous who tried to provoke regional animosities among Hindus and commented that ‘Bengalis who crawl under his chair at the sight of a table knife would be placed over Rajputs who have not forgotten the swords of their ancestors’ (p.119). Hindus also showed signs of highhandedness. Municipal authorities dominated by elected Hindu councillors tried to shut down meat shops selling beef. Other than this, no religious discrimination is mentioned in the book. In return, cows were openly killed after Muslims regained power in some municipalities.

Robinson evaluates in detail the contributions of Syed Ahmed Khan and the thrust he had imported to the education and political activity of Muslims. Even with the above disparaging remarks about Bengalis, the Muslims of Bengal continued to support him as they knew in their heart that the comment was only intended to create rift among the majority community. The demand was to get enhanced representation in provincial councils, district boards and municipal bodies on account of their past ‘historical importance’ (p.123). This was a euphemism for demanding a quantum of seats unreasonable to and in far excess of their numerical position. It may also be kept in mind that when Pakistan was actually formed, the minorities in that country were not allowed any of the rights the Muslims enjoyed in undivided India. The Muslim educational conference instituted by Khan covertly played politics and opposed Congress. In 1906 this led to the creation of the Muslim League. The Aligarh college – later university – was the base from which a UP Muslim elite group led a Muslim political party in the province and in India as a whole. The British propped up Syed Ahmed and Aligarh college and indirectly assisted in the birth of Muslim political doctrine and separatism. On the level of the divisive sentiment he generated, Syed Ahmed Khan may be termed the Jinnah of the nineteenth century.

The author correctly identifies the concession of separate electorates as tipping point that vindicated the Muslim sense of exclusiveness and belligerence whose natural conclusion was the division of the country. The British tried at first to deny demands for separate electorates as this very concept was alien to the fundamental principles of democracy. The scheme envisaged two votes for Muslims – one in the separate constituency and the other in the general category – while the Hindus had only one. This was so even in East Bengal where Muslims comprised 53 per cent of the population where this high share ensured that a candidate not favoured by Muslims cannot win even the general seat. Persistent pressure forced the government to allocate double the number of seats earlier promised to Muslims as separate electorates. This was in the face of open threats of the Muslim League that their ‘good behaviour could not be guaranteed if the government did not concede this’ (p.158). After attaining this goal, the UP Muslim party was separated into two groups referred to as ‘Old’ and ‘Young’ parties. The ‘Old’ consisted mainly of aristocrats and landowners while the ‘Young’ included professionals and journalists. The ‘Young’ was fiercely bigoted with a pan-Islamic outlook. Issues of Turkey and other Islamic states were foremost in their concern. The Lucknow Pact with Congress was an attempt by the ‘Young’ to come out in the political mainstream and to restrain the gradual ascent of the ulema in the party. It gained them a lot of other concessions from Congress and again increased the Muslim seats as part of the 1919 Montford reforms.

The most important contribution of this book is a concise narrative on the rise of pan-Islamic sentiment among Muslims and the Khilafat agitation it led to. Pan-Islamic outlook is a basic requirement demanded by the religion and almost all the leaders cherished it in their bosom. Mahomed Ali, who grew to be the tallest leader of that time, was a willing proponent from the early years of public life. He set up an Indo-Ottoman colonization society with the aim of starting an Islamic settlement at Adana in Turkey composed of Indian and Turkish Muslims. However, his taste for modernity and refinement can be gauged from his pithy remark on political adjustments: “Constitutions, like pretty women, are meant to be violated” (p.362). The World War I and related developments in Ottoman Empire radicalised Indian Muslims in an extraordinary way. Even women were agitated to an extent that Harcourt Butler, the lieutenant governor of UP, reported that his priority was to keep Muslim women right as they can force their husbands to do something for Islam and that no government in India can control a combination of Muslim priests and women (p.294). The ulema saw their chance for taking a plunge into mainstream politics. The Young party men provided a guiding hand to them. This alliance of the ulema with secular politicians was marked by the contrast between their ultimate objectives. The secular group wanted a slice of power for themselves, but the ulema wanted nothing less than the eventual enforcement of the sharia in India like what the Taliban practises at present in Afghanistan. Their interest was in protecting traditional Islam and their position in it. The ulema were most active in Khilafat which was an agitation for restoring the territory and title of the Turkish sultan who was defeated in World War I. They had the most to gain from non-cooperation. They made donations to non-cooperation movement a form of zakat making it obligatory for believers. Going a step further, the Muttafiqa fatwa signed by 500 ulema made non-cooperation itself a religious duty. They were very particular that Hindus join them in this struggle and was instrumental in persuading Gandhi to put the final shape to the agitation. The book also includes some curious examples of firebrand ulema developing feet of clay at a mere raid on their premises by law enforcement. Abdul Bari was unnerved by CID men poking around Firangi Mahal. He rushed to Nainital where the lieutenant governor was staying, professed his innocence, declared his loyalty and at the end of the interview broke down completely (p.294).

Robinson illustrates the fanatic spirit that enveloped the Khilafat movement which turned against Hindus who were in fact supporting it. Abdul Bari declared that they are determined to ‘fight the enemy of Islam whether he be in Anatolia or Arabia or Agra or Benares’. The Jamiat ul-Ulema supported the Moplahs who converted Hindus by force in Malabar in 1921 (p.338). The Central Khilafat Committee even offered them financial support. When pressure was applied by indignant Congress leaders, they grudgingly offered a small amount of money for the Hindu victims too. A peculiar feature of Muslim politics was evident then. When the hard-line fanatics took over the reins, the so called ‘secular’ Muslim politicians acted as broker between the Congress and the hardliners instead of opposing the latter on ideological lines. Many Muslims rose to high leadership positions at the central and provincial levels. The Congress itself had only four Muslim presidents from its inception in 1885 to 1920. But between 1921 and 1923, three out of its four presidents were Muslims.

As with other liberal scholars, Robinson also dusts off the old and convenient delusion that Muslim politicians were driven by selfish self-interest rather than religious bigotry. Hard-core Muslims had prepared a migration plan to Afghanistan forsaking the British empire to protest against its cavalier treatment of the Turkish Caliph. This important incident which involved the deaths of thousands of people is not mentioned in the book. The author finally concludes that the Muslims in UP were not a nation by the standards applied to modern Europe as they had no racial homogeneity, little common history and many conflicting interests. The book is noted for its detached perspective and helps to bring in some objectivity when the events considered are still capable of arousing much passion on both sides of the border between India and Pakistan. The author has thoroughly researched population and job data community-wise and has included many informative tables categorizing relevant information. It also incorporates the concise biographies of 61 prominent leaders of the Young Party, 44 from Old Party, 12 ulema and 21 other men of importance. Raja Sivaprasad is the only Hindu who had the good fortune to enter this list. Bibliography of the book is impressively comprehensive.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Nationalism without a Nation in India

Title: Nationalism without a Nation in India
Author: G. Aloysius
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998 (First published 1997)
ISBN: 9780195641042
Pages: 265

When the British established their colonial supremacy in India, they brought into being the political unification of the country the scale of which it had not witnessed in several centuries. When the time came to say goodbye to the empire, they were apprehensive about the future of this political unity. Amazingly for them and other Eurocentric doomsayers, India exhibited a remarkable coherence and integrity. There were Western observers who wondered how Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu remained part of the same nation while comparable entities in Europe such as France and England are articulated into mutually hostile nation-states. The prime reason for this harmonious existence is the cultural unity of India that binds varied ethnicities, religions, languages and customs to fuse together. Liberal – especially of the Left-leaning type – scholars find this difficult to swallow and come up with theories which speculate about an impending fall of the Indian nation because of the incongruence of its subject parts. This book is one among this genre that attempts ‘a sociological study of nationalism using the two central theories of social structure and social change as a framework for investigating different spheres of nationalism’. It then concludes that instead of giving birth to one national society, nationalism seems to have delivered a whole litter of communities divided from one another in terms of language, religion, region or caste. G. Aloysius studied at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and is widely known for sociological studies on Indian society and research on social and tribal movements of India.

Aloysius starts with a rhetorical observation that pan-Indian nationalism is elitist, false and insensitive to regional variations. Caste system and its ideology permeated the entire region as the clearest form of hierarchical structuring of society. Brahmins and other upper castes dominated all others and maintained hegemony in the unchanging rural landscape. This was upheld by the political power, both native as well as imperialist. Despite the rise and fall of dynasties and change in political boundaries, the social order remained stable as a ‘universalized norm of custom and tradition’. Resistance to this order was also part and parcel of the tradition from the beginning. The Brahminic system was resisted by heterodox sects like ajivikas and shramanas in the ancient period and sects such as Vira Shaivism, Sikhism and Kabirpanth in medieval times. Contrary to the nationalist claim that the British occupation messed up the natural societal order, Aloysius absolves the imperialists of any such responsibility. The British did not and could not effect any serious change in Indian society and the old order won in the end (p.34).

The book then makes some serious audit of the British Raj in the nineteenth century. It claims that the British only wanted to ensure sufficient revenue for themselves and enjoined the upper castes to be a part of the governing structure. Colonial rule only strengthened the existing caste hierarchy by channelling it into the newly created power machinery. Entering the bureaucracy was through modern education which was monopolized by upper castes. There was no change in agrarian relations too as the government chose not to intervene in social issues. Lower caste movements took part in nation-making at this point by fighting for the concepts of equal social rights leading to citizenship, mass literacy and social-spatial mobility as a new principle of social life. Jotiba Phule elaborated the ideology of Dravidian origin to counter the prevalent Aryan theory of race among Brahmins (p.61). Here the author forgets to mention that the Aryan invasion hypothesis was invented by the British and not the Brahmins. By pushing in the concept of race with this false statement, Aloysius makes an outrageous assessment that the birth and growth of Indian nationalist movement was tinged with racist sentiments and overtones (p.94) thereby making it palatable to his European audience. The 1857 rebellion is said to be based on antagonism with the British largely based on race, religion and colour. In fact, this trope is first introduced in the preface itself which claims that discussions of nationalism in India ranged between sheer xenophobia and ‘sacred patriotism’. This is totally wrong and against the Indian spirit of toleration and assimilation which was never xenophobic. Aloysius seems to be confusing xenophobia with self-defence against foreign invaders.

The book makes a critical study of the religions in India and identifies Hinduism as the root and sole cause of the nation’s backwardness and social oppression. However, in order to appear objective, he cleverly calls it Brahminism when it suits him and goes all out in criticising it. He vacuously asserts that other religions such as Christianity, Islam and Buddhism are egalitarian but Brahminism alone was exploitative. He enthusiastically lauds the missionaries and evangelists since “the evangelists were ferocious in their attack on the inegalitarian nature of social Hinduism” (p.47). Aloysius suggests religious conversion as a way to gain strength and respect for the lower castes. As an illustration, he claims that “Shanar movement [in Kerala and Tamil Nadu] gained additional strength through mass conversions to Christianity in their civil disabilities” (p.56). If the Shanars turned en masse to Christianity, they were no longer Shanars as per caste custom. The author drops an unintended hint that these people continued to be looked upon with their previous caste identity even after conversion. Aloysius then proudly lists conversion to Christianity as a good alternative to ‘caste slavery’ and fumes at those who call the converts ‘rice Christians’ (p.70).

The burning issue in the years leading to independence in 1947 was whether Hindus and Muslims constituted two distinct nations who cannot cohabit together. A lot of heated discourse and human blood flowed to finally settle this issue by partitioning the country. In this context, it is astonishing that Aloysius has totally ignored this point in this work on ‘creating the Indian nation’. Apart from some half-hearted comments on the Muslim elite creating a constituency of their own, this book skirts this crucial subject. The reason is only too obvious. Like all Leftist scholars, he doesn’t want to invite the ire of Islamists and thereby forego their patronage. Instead, he clubs Muslims along with Dalits and other lower castes and depicts them as equally suffering from the atrocities of the upper castes. This leads him to suggest harmony and alliance between them and the lower castes which forces him to invent excuses when such camaraderie was not actually seen anywhere in practice. The Nama Shudras and Muslims were said to be allies in East Bengal against the higher castes. However, in communal riots which frequently occurred, the Nama Shudras were at the receiving end of the violence along with the upper castes in equal measure. Aloysius lightens this contradiction with the remark that it was only the result of ‘near-equal communities competing for the same set of opportunities’ (p.65). But when Kshatriya landlords attacked Noniyas who were their tenants, it was not a local landlord-tenant issue, but an example of caste oppression (p.66). The author also narrates some lofty daydreams on Muslim political awakening. The deprivation caused by the new dispensation of power in favour of upper caste Hindus led to the birth of Muslim nationalism. This author never suspects Muslim exclusivism or plain religious fanaticism behind it. In fact, the alliance between Muslims and the lower castes was only a temporarily prudent strategy to dent the numerical superiority of Hindus and to divide and weaken them further. The so-called upper caste ideology talked about the nation and not about religion, but the author castigates it to be communal. On the other hand, the Muslim demand for Pakistan was openly based on religion but Aloysius finds true national spirit there which was antagonized by Hindu separatism. The Moplah riot of 1921 in Malabar which was an ethnic cleansing of Hindus is presented as an agrarian rebellion in which ‘the polluted castes were spared as a rule while murderous attacks were against oppressive upper castes’ (p.88). Apart from the moral question of justifying violence directed against a community on ideological grounds for being ‘oppressors’, this statement is totally false. There were numerous instances in the riots in which lower castes were also targeted (see my review of Beyond Rampage: West Asian Contacts of Malabar and Khilafat here for more details on this).

Aloysius’ theory of the birth of Indian nationalism can be condensed in a nutshell: the upper castes devised it to maintain their monopoly on state power when the ‘benign’ British gradually began to accommodate the interests of the lower castes. When the share of land revenue in national income dwindled in the 1870s, the British extended protective measures, education and employment to lower castes. Resentment on this count caused the germination of nationalism. Aloysius wastes no opportunity to drive a wedge between the upper and lower castes of Hinduism and to destroy the very fabric of Indian society in the resultant conflagration he thirsts to witness. In response to the British challenge on upper caste monopoly of power, they introduced reforms and revival of the Brahminical ideology. This helped it to settle on reincarnating itself as pan-Indian political-national Hinduism. This provided a context for the politico-economic interests of the same social forces to transform itself as nationalism. By the term ‘they’, the author means Brahmins and a small circle of upper castes centred around them. Moreover, cultural nationalism was constructed in India by the deep commitment and contribution of imperialist and orientalist scholarship (p.135). With this statement, Aloysius transfers the credit for creating nationalism back to the British and alleges that India’s national leaders were afraid of the masses they were supposed to be leading. Due to this mortal fright of the masses, they sought British protection from them (p.117). This set of conclusions is natural as most of the sources and references of this book’s research are colonial scholars. It is true that there was reaction from Orthodox sections against the concept of equality extended to oppressed castes. This does not include the core group of nationalism. But Aloysius maliciously club them together to claim that all of them worked to sabotage the concept of equal rights to subaltern people.

Gandhi’s devotees would cringe with unease at the level of criticism this book levels against him. Aloysius acknowledges that the Gandhian era (1920-1947) of the national movement was multi-class and mass-based. It gained politico-moral legitimacy and achieved enormous power. The author proposes five factors that elevated the image of Gandhi as an ‘event’ or phenomenon, which are a) Congress which was symbiotically related to Gandhi b) the colonial rulers who magnified the Gandhi image c) the support of Gujarati and Marwari communities d) private army of ashram members and volunteers who provided a spiritualist aura to what Gandhi said and did and e) multiplicity of local interpretations of the Gandhian national message. Gandhi functioned as an intra-party dictator and demanded absolute loyalty from other members. His constructive programs, such as eradication of untouchability, were cul-de-sacs that diverted the attention of lower caste reformers and channelled their energy away from the national movement. This is alleged to have helped ensure upper caste monopoly of the new power structure that was emerging with the British exit. Gandhi offered religion to the lower caste masses and politics for the upper caste nationalists. Aloysius never stops to answer the obvious question of why then, did a Brahmin shot him dead. By adopting khilafat and anti-untouchability programs as separate effort for the communities, the author claims that Gandhi destroyed the unity that was developing between the lower castes and Muslims.

Though the purpose of this book is to destroy or prevent whatever unity exists among Hindu communities. He attempts this by harping on the refrain that upper castes still continue to wreak any social improvements. The author considers the lower caste leaders to be not worthy enough to fight the upper castes on their own strength. Incompetence of lower castes is a recurring theme in this work that crops up at several places in the narrative. In fact, it is the narrative. His temerity to downgrade luminaries such as Jotiba Phule, Sri Narayana Guru, E V Ramaswamy Naicker and B R Ambedkar is galling. He does so with the comment that ‘though these people articulated against the cultural nationalism of dominant castes, since ideological articulation was not the forte of subaltern people, the writings and speeches of their spokesmen are not to be taken as the sole source from which to interpret the subaltern weltanschauung’ (p.146). In short, this is like saying “you are good for nothing; but don’t worry, we’ll do your work for you”. This author seems not to have encountered even one of Ambedkar’s works which are brilliantly argued with logic and backed by facts. It was not for nothing that he was trained in constitutional law! Aloysius’ subtle hint to the subaltern people is to wait for a messiah to arise from among the liberals. Probably he fancies himself for this role? Otherwise, they will forever by branded with the oppressed identity and myopic view which can’t see past their communal framework. Aloysius’ evil intent is discernible at another place in which he declares that the ‘golden age of Paraiahs was the eighteenth century when Brahmins and respectable people were murdered in their beds and chased by marauding armies’ (p.32). This does not mean that the Paraiahs did it, but suggests that since the Brahmins suffered, the lower castes enjoyed it. This is nothing short of an evil attempt to perpetuate caste rivalry. Rajiv Malhotra’s comments in ‘Breaking India’ (reviewed earlier here) are noteworthy in this context. Malhotra proves that Leftists and neo-colonial scholars strike at every fault line in Hindu society in an attempt to forestall unity of purpose among the various communities comprising it.

This book by G. Aloysius is nothing but an unalloyed long polemic not only against Indian cultural nationalism but against our entire politico-social norms as well. This brings to mind Macaulay’s quote that the real purpose of colonial education in India is to ‘create a people Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, opinions, morals and intellect’. Reading this book of unabashed eurocentrism, readers wonder not that the author is Macaulay’s child, but his clone! Recently, a British financial journalist remarked that ‘it can often seem a triumph that India exists at all’. It is indeed so, if you pause to observe that spiteful scholars such as this one are continuously chipping away at the foundations of the Indian nation and society with their classist falsehoods. What the author accepts as reliable are quotes from Marx and missionaries only. Some of the corrosive remarks found in the book may be listed below. This list is not comprehensive.

a)    India’s centralizing state is armed to the teeth against its own people (p.2)
b)    Pan-Indian polity no longer attracts the allegiance of the majority of the masses (p.2)
c)    The cleavage within the hierarchical, pre-modern Indian society are at least as important a contradiction as the cleavage between the Indian and the British (p.18)
d)    India’s nationalism is merely a tactical cover up for individual and group pursuit of power, position and profit (p.96)

The book is full of heavy academic jargon and is a burden to read. The author’s condescending attitude to the subaltern people and the air of being their all-knowing guide who knows their things better than them is irritating as well as illogical. Altogether, the reading experience was a waste of time.

The book is not recommended.

Rating: 1 Star

Cleopatra’s Daughter

Title: Cleopatra’s Daughter – Egyptian Princess, Roman Prisoner, African Queen
Author: Jane Draycott
Publisher: Head of Zeus, 2023 (First published 2022)
ISBN: 9781800244825
Pages: 328

Mark Antony of Rome and Queen Cleopatra of Egypt are two historical characters in a crucial chapter of ancient history that ended in tragedy. Though Antony could outsmart the coup leaders who assassinated Julius Caesar and prevent the empire going back to a republic, his constant friction with his ally Octavian led to the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE where the allied forces of Antony and Cleopatra were routed in a naval battle. The winner took the throne as Augustus Caesar and established the Julio-Claudian dynasty in power while the losers committed suicide. The couple is an attractive subject for poets and dramatists across the world. This book tells the story of Cleopatra Selene, the daughter born to Queen Cleopatra of Egypt in her relationship with Mark Antony. The references to the daughter who was an Egyptian princess, then a prisoner in Rome and finally the queen of Mauretania in North Africa are scant in historical records, but the author sifts through all the available material with a fine sieve and comes out with a delightful work of historical narrative. Jane Draycott is a Roman historian and archaeologist with a special interest in Graeco-Roman Egypt. She has degrees in archaeology, ancient history and classics. She is currently lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Glasgow.

The core of the story is astonishingly small. The Egyptian queen which we commonly know as Cleopatra was in fact Cleopatra VII in her regnal name. Julius Caesar helped her overcome dissidence to her rule and later entered into an amorous relationship with her. A prince named Caesarion was born to them. After Caesar’s assassination she entered into another similar relationship with Mark Antony who was assigned the eastern part of the empire as his realm. She bore three children to him – Cleopatra Selene, Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphos. Rome was leaving its republican phase to the consolidation of Augustan Principate. Octavian, or Augustus Caesar, was fed up with Antony because of his poor governance, fickle command over the legions and over-socialization with the Egyptians. The Roman fleet met the combined naval forces of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. Octavian won, forcing the vanquished to flee back to Alexandria and commit suicide there. Octavian executed Caesarion, but let the other children live as hostages with his family in Rome. After a few years, he married Cleopatra Selene off to Juba, who was assigned the kingdom of Mauretania (part of today’s Algeria and Morocco). It is believed that she died in 5 BCE at the age of 35. So, in short, this is the story of an extraordinarily willed woman, who was born a princess in one of the most ancient kingdoms, lost her entire family, birth right and rank to become a Roman prisoner. In the end, she was crowned queen of a brand new kingdom and ruled for two decades. The book includes a discussion on Cleopatra VII’s ethnicity where some scholars believe her to be black. Hence the author hopes that Cleopatra Selene should be much better known to women of colour in particular, with whom they can personally identify and engage with in the historical record. The cause of her death is not exactly known and it is guessed that she might have died in childbirth. The danger in pregnancy and labour to both mother and the baby was a fate no amount of power or prestige could alleviate in the ancient world.

Since the storyline is very lean, the book also covers many facets of the polities of Egypt and Rome and has made a quick review of how life had been in Alexandria and Rome. Readers get an interesting account of the Great Library of Alexandria, the largest in the ancient world. Attached to a temple, it contained up to 70,000 titles. Early Ptolemies were great bibliophiles. Ptolemy II Philadelphos purchased substantial personal libraries of notable book collectors in his kingdom. Ptolemy III Euergetes borrowed manuscripts from other cities and refused to return them. He instituted a policy to search ships docking in Alexandria. If there were any exotic books on board, copies were made and these copies were given back to the owner while the original was added to the Library’s collection. In 48 BCE, a part of the library was damaged by fire which was later repaired by Antony by gifting 200,000 books which were looted from the library of Pergamum that was the Alexandrian library’s foremost rival. The author does not say anything about the library’s eventual destruction by Islamic forces. In 642 CE, Alexandria was captured by the army of Caliph Omar. He ordered the destruction of the library with the infamous outburst that “if these books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them”.

Since the characters on and back of the stage in this book are women, it is only natural that we get a glimpse of the position and status of women in the ancient world. Their position appears to be much better than in the Middle Ages and in at least some places of the same geography even in the modern age. In the latter half of the first century BCE, Rome was full of strong women. Julius Caesar’s wife and Octavian’s sister wielded considerable influence. They were well educated, sometimes even in rhetoric and oratory. A noble lady named Hortensia put her studies to good use in 42 BCE to argue against a tax imposed on Rome’s wealthiest 1400 women. She marched into the Forum and argued her case against the Triumvirate of Octavian, Antony and Lepidus. Although the men were outraged at being upbraided by a woman, the tax was relaxed to apply only to 400 most wealthy women. However, Ptolemaic women of Egypt were more independent and assertive while Roman women were generally dependent and submissive to their menfolk. The status of women outside the ‘civilizing aura’ of the Roman Empire was not bad. Egypt’s southern neighbour kingdom of Kush was ruled by Queen Amanirenas. This is yet more proof that women could handle immense power in their own right than as ‘ornamental appendages of men’. This was true in Israel too. Berenice, the daughter of the Jewish king Herod Agrippa I was in love with Roman Emperor Titus and stayed in the imperial palace. She heavily intervened in the government of the empire and in the judicial system. At home, she had entreated her brother, Herod Agrippa II, to commute all death sentences to life imprisonment. But she was disliked at Rome and was heckled by philosophers at the theatre. This forced Titus to send her back home.

We get a nice picture of Roman polity and religion from the several anecdotes lying scattered in this narrative. Roman empire acquired foreign territories by military conquests and political manoeuvring. It comprised of provinces which were overseen by provincial governors appointed by the Roman Senate. In addition to this, the empire had interests in territories that were not technically part of it. These were client kingdoms whose kings and queens recognized the suzerainty of Rome and had patrons situated within the Roman aristocracy. This political structure is broadly similar to that of the British colonial empire in India. In the case of serious problems in the kingdoms, Rome militarily intervened to restore the authority of the client king. If the situation was unsalvageable, the ruler was replaced or the kingdom annexed outright as a province. A laudable feature of Roman religion was its toleration for other religions such as Egyptian even though it belonged to the conquered people. Destruction of places of religious worship or converting them for the use of victor’s devotees still lay in the future, awaiting the birth of monotheistic religions that claimed monopoly of the one true god. Julius Caesar built a temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis in the centre of Rome where Octavian too had his own quarters. This glow would flicker out in a few centuries and some of the regions would witness the most brutal and sanguinary wars for religion in the form of crusades and resistance to it.

The book also sports an investigation into the descendants of Cleopatra Selene in historical and archaeological records which becomes hazier with the decline of Roman empire. A photograph of the marble bust of Gaius Julius Bessianus is included who served as the chief priest of Elagabalus during 187 – 217 CE. This solar deity was housed in the temple of the sun at Emesa – modern Homs in Syria. It shows a distinctive feature of the top knot hairstyle known as the ushnisha in Sanskrit. This is a clear Buddhist feature which represents supernormal knowledge and consciousness of the Enlightened One in Buddhist iconography. It is curious to see evidence of Indian influence as far west as Syria in the early centuries of the Common Era.

This book is an excellent source for uncomplicated reading which combines the flexibility of fiction with strong roots on historical and archaeological references. With some refining touches, this can be transformed into historical fiction and provides enough material to produce a mega Hollywood movie. The author herself suggests such a possibility and it is quite possible that we may sooner or later hear more of Draycott in a non-historical domain. What this narrative provides is a history of Rome, Egypt, the Levant and North Africa in the second half of the first century BCE. In addition to literary, documentary, archaeological and bio-archaeological evidence, the author uses contextual information sourced from other significant Hellenistic, Roman and Egyptian women’s lives to produce a qualified reconstruction of Cleopatra Selene’s life. The author has filled in many blanks which are quite logical and highly probable that adds value to the work. The book also includes pictures of several breathtakingly detailed and beautiful sculptures and mosaics excavated from Italy and other prominent places like Pompeii which faithfully depict the sophistication of presumably aristocratic life in that era. Colour plates of coins, sculptures and inscriptions are also added to the book. Written in an easy and uncluttered style, the book is a page-turner.

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star

Academic Hinduphobia

Title: Academic Hinduphobia – A Critique of Wendy Doniger’s Erotic School of Indology
Author: Rajiv Malhotra
Publisher: Voice of India, 2017 (First published 2016)
ISBN: 9789385485015
Pages: 426

Rajiv Malhotra is a lone knight fighting for the honour of everything Indian – our culture, language, religion and way of life – in the western world. If gullible Indians can be metaphorically thought of as an old man with poor eyesight and Western scholarship on India as a book with a very fine print, Malhotra is the magnifying glass which sharpens the vision of the naive and also exposes what is written between the lines which one cannot see otherwise. This book explains about the secret agenda of woke scholars of Sanskrit and how they deconstruct India’s religion and philosophy to make it appear exploitative and repressive. Another deviant trait observed in Western scholars such as Wendy Doniger is the excessively overt and bordering on the vulgar sexual vocabulary which permeates their work but which does not faithfully describe the original. Such pathetic exposition of Hinduism and Sanskrit is a clever strategy of these neo-colonial academicians to drive away new initiates and to create revulsion among practicing Hindus about their religion which would make them ashamed of it as a first step to further long-term targets like conversion on a massive scale. No other major world faith is studied by outsiders with the same authority, power and negative perspective as Hinduism is. All academic conferences and seminars are dominated by Western ‘experts’ rather than practicing Hindus. The distortion caused by these influences are identified by the author and presented in a clear and easily understandable form. This is a collection of various essays and articles written by the author against specific books and authors as a part of argument and counter-argument. The period of activity is generally the first decade of this century.

Malhotra identifies the fundamental problem of Indological studies as compared to other cultures. Even though Indians routinely occupy high positions in science, technology, business and other professions, Indology remains the last stronghold of colonialism. It is only a layer of elites from within the colonised culture who are groomed to become proxies for the tradition. They often consider biases against Indic traditions as a great compliment to their own sense of modernity and also as a great Western gift to the Indians. When this mental colonialism is pointed out to them, it evokes severe anger and defensiveness. This engenders a peculiar situation in which a culture is being represented by people who are mentally alien to it. In the West, neo-colonial scholars and their Indian proxies have created a playground which is unfairly tilted against India. To have a genuine dialog of civilizations, the ‘other’ side must be present as itself and not in proxy. It must be able to use its own framework to represent itself and must be free to criticize the dominant culture without fear of undue censorship or academic reprisals. But in the West, especially the US, leading professors of Sanskrit wield tremendous power over the students in controlling their career both pre- and post-college such as withholding research grants or denying the chance to participate in academic conferences which are handsomely financed. This makes all the students to toe their guide’s line. This is analogous to the sepoys and coolies trained and employed by the English East India Company in colonial times to do their dirty work.

It is essential to understand the origins of this estrangement of Indian elite with Sanskrit and the ritualistic practises of Hinduism. This developed in the colonial period when the British faced an urgent necessity to understand Sanskrit scriptures. However, these texts were detached from the realm of secular scholars who were immersed in the prevailing court language of Persian in all the Muslim states. This left only a few priests or religiously-minded people who had mastered the Sanskrit texts available to the British. The British stepped into the shoes of the secular scholar, mastered the ancient rule books and statutes and reinterpreted them to suit their immediate need to administer the country without upsetting the delicate socio-religious pivot. Due to reasons of presumed racial superiority or evangelism, they continued to harbour a clear disdain to the philosophy at the same time. This was in turn taken up by secular Indian scholars after independence. On the political front, the British managed the native states and facilities for the Indian princes. Likewise, they also became trustees of scholarship and thereby to control the intellectual representation systems of India. The technique was to master Sanskrit texts first, then to translate Indic texts while reinterpreting them using the Western narrative. It ensured to maintain the aura of authenticity by using enough Sanskrit verses. Even now, Indians show great respect and favour to Westerners who read or chant Sanskrit hymns and assume them to be masters in a language which they have neglected to learn. This is the primary source of exploitation for agenda-driven scholars such as Wendy Doniger.

The author also tries to understand why such a discriminatory sheen was applied to religious studies in India, whereas in science and technology the country aspired for the best in the world. This deficit came about in post-independent India where religious studies were looked down upon on the basis of the ideal of secularism. The hallmark of a good education in an American liberal arts college involves the study of ancient Greek and Semitic thought, classical Roman, modern European and finally, American thought. This intellectual foundation is deemed essential regardless of one’s religious beliefs. The justification given for the study of Greek classics is not that they are perfectly correct in their worldview or that advancement in thought has not superseded them. These are rightly considered to be essential to understand the history of the Western mind. But Indian classics are equated with religion and hence shunned. Academics won’t touch them even with a very long pole. In the name of modernity and political correctness, Indian classics are virtually banished from India’s higher education. Malhotra comments that this policy would have made Macaulay – the British administrator who formulated the empire’s education system in India to create a set of zombies who would be ‘Indian in blood and colour but British in taste, opinions and morals’ – proud. This produced a strange circumstance in which one has to go to a British, American or German university to get an internationally competitive Ph.D in Sanskrit, Indian classics, Hinduism or Buddhism.

The book then goes on to dissect the works of some Western scholars who had made a mockery of their scholarly credentials by churning out outrageous assessments on their objects of study. The foremost in this group is Wendy Doniger whose book, ‘Hindus – An Alternative History’ created much indignation in India due to its salacious remarks about innocuous matters narrated in Indian sacred literature (reviewed earlier here). The author uses the epithet ‘Wendy’s Children’ to denote other scholars who follow her line. Doniger’s predilection for street language in Vedic translations/interpretations is widely criticized. She merely adds a Freudian coating to bring in a sleazy narrative. She is always obsessed with only one meaning for a Sanskrit term which would be the most sexual imaginable, obtained by stretching the imagery, overruling all other interpretations and varied aspects of meaning. Doniger’s books are fast-food like publications designed to attract attention, readership and sales but are devoid of meticulous scholarship or authenticity (one of her books which exhibit this point, ‘The Ring of Truth’ which purports to examine myths of sex and jewellery, was reviewed earlier. The areas of her real interest can also be gleaned from her book, ‘On Hinduism’ which was also reviewed earlier). Malhotra exposes the academic weaknesses of other scholars of Wendy’s genre such as Jeffrey Kripal, Sarah Caldwell, Paul Cortright and others. Kripal’s work, ‘Kali’s Child’ which portrays Ramakrishna Paramhamsa as a homosexual, works up only filth. Kripal doesn’t know Bengali and the author cites several fundamental errors.

Rajiv Malhotra postulates that the intentions of at least some of the Western scholars on attacking Indian belief systems and attendant philosophy are not so benign after all. He traces the parentage and source of funds of two prominent academicians to Western missionaries who worked in India or to Christian evangelical missions in the US. The Christian conditioning received as part of their religious education as a young student might have moulded their outlook of other religions. He points out a fundamental divergence in a critical aspect between Christianity and Indian religions. The Biblical myths subconsciously drive scholars’ behaviour. In the West, every human being is born sinner because of the original sin committed by Adam and Eve. Similarly, the cosmology of God vs Satan divides everything into Good/Evil essences that play out on earth. By contrast, the Self is the original divinity in Hinduism and so there is no external enemy. In the Mahabharata, the enemies are not evil but had only violated the dharma. Christianity glorified victimhood. Most Christian saints were martyrs who were killed by evil ‘others’. This also is a corollary of the good vs evil narrative. A good victim is glorified and becomes a role model. Jesus is history’s most famous victim. This archetype has played out in Western society in the form of praising victimhood as a sign of being good. These scholars’ denigration of sacred Indian symbols serves to embarrass impressionable Indians so that they feel pressured to dilute their Hindu identity. This does not mean that Indian society didn’t have its share of abuses or oppression like any other society does. The problem is when Western scholars point out Hinduism alone as the cause of this.

I had first thought this book to be a critique on Indian academia which is an unfettered theatre of Left-Islamist activists masquerading as professors but exhibiting an equally strong, if not harsher, Hinduphobia than their American counterparts. But this volume is concerned only with Western universities and the prejudices being nurtured in their precincts. This work is a little dated too, as the action and events referred in the text happened in the years straddling the new millennium. Some ideas, which we take for granted because it is so common, are analysed by Malhotra which convince the reader how much leeway is being granted to scholars who want to wreck the Indian culture from within. These people refer to Hinduism as Brahmanism. The author points this out as a pejorative name because by the same token, Christianity should be referred as ‘Popeism’ or ‘bishopism’. A major part of the book is concerned with the author’s arguments and correspondence against or with anti-Hindu scholars and his defence against their attacks. Some of the articles are unfortunately directed at a personal level. Harping on the Roma (gypsy) ethnicity of Jeffrey Kripal and the sexually abused past of Sarah Caldwell are two cases in point. Besides, the author’s defence of New Age Hindu gurus in the US over their sexual abuse of devotees are not warranted just because they are also targeted by the anti-Hindu academia. This is more fitting for anonymous social media chatter than for serious discourse. The book also includes several caricatures and cartoon depictions of the points detailed in the book which is very enlightening.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star