The Dramatic Decade

Title: The Dramatic Decade – The Indira Gandhi Years

Author: Pranab Mukherjee

Publisher: Rupa Publications, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9788129135742

Pages: 321

Shri Pranab Mukherjee is the current President of India. The first citizen of the country adds lustre to the position he holds on account of the intellectual capacity of the man behind the constitutional paraphernalia. I remember watching an interview with Pranab Mukherjee a few years ago when the anchor asked him what he intends to do after retirement. His answer still rings in my ears. His modest reply was that he’ll retire to his home and read some books which he always wanted to read, but had had not time to! Born in the remote village of Mirati in Birbhum district of Bengal in 1935, Mukherjee steadily climbed higher upon the ladder till he graced the highest chair in India. He could make this dream run on account of the sheer dedication to work and unflinching loyalty to his political masters, notably Indira Gandhi. This book is a record of the first decade of the author’s political and administrative career that spans nearly half a century. Supposedly the first in a trilogy, this volume covers the 1970s, in which India witnessed two great events that come rarely in history – the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 and the disappearance of civil liberties during the Emergency (1975 – 77). Mukherjee was a minister of state in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet during these years and hence presents a ring-side view of political changes as it unfolded tumultuously.

The author gives a detailed view of the politics in East Pakistan that gradually built up its tempo to end in a crescendo of war and liberation. The case of Bangladesh is a poignant reminder to theocracies that religion alone is not a durable cement to keep glued together two societies which are separated by language, geography, cultural outlook and history. East Pakistanis revolted the moment when Urdu was declared as the sole national language of the new state. Democracy always had shallow roots in Pakistan. The top bureaucrats and military men hailing from Punjab dominated Pakistan’s echelons of power. They enforced their will on East Pakistan, just like they do now on Sindh, Baluchistan and Khyber–Pakhtunkhwa. A notable feature was that East Pakistan rioted and voted en masse, so that electoral victories easily came their way. Fazlul Haq’s United Front swept the polls in 1954. The Awami League of Sheikh Mujib ur-Rehman made a still spectacular performance in 1970, when his sweeping victory in East Pakistan ensured absolute majority for his party in the federal legislature as well. West Pakistan declined to share power. They sent in troops to crush the Bengalis with systematic murder, rape and loot. East Pakistan fought back with Indian help which finally transformed into a war between the two neighbours. After only thirteen days of warfare, Pakistan meekly surrendered its 91,000 soldiers in the newly created Bangladesh. Mukherjee presents an absorbing picture of the heroic freedom struggle of Bangladesh.

The events that led to the declaration of Emergency are narrated in some detail, but with a strong bias in favour of the ruling party. This is expected, as the author himself was a minister in the cabinet that signed in Emergency. No details of the excesses during this period is seen in the book, except a few tangential references to the stifling of judiciary, suspension of fundamental rights and political activity, large scale arrests of political leaders and activists, press censorship and extending the tenure of legislature without conducting elections. It is shocking for us to read now that Indira Gandhi transferred sixteen judges of higher courts in a single day so as to ensure compliance to her tricks and strategies. As conciliation to the readers, Mukherjee counts a few positive changes he had observed in the course of Emergency, such as discipline in public life, growing economy, controlled inflation, a reversed trade deficit, enhanced developmental expenditure and crackdown on tax evasion and smuggling. The book also includes Indira Gandhi’s life in the Opposition and how she played her opponents against each other. The Janata party crumbled under its own weight of leaders acting at cross-purposes and selfishly. Even though marked by loss of personal freedom, he ranks the period as one in which Indian democracy matured. He is obviously making a veiled reference to Congress' defeat in the elections held immediately after the lifting of Emergency.

Mukherjee’s loyalty is impeccable. Even when writing at a remove of 35 years, he does not let even a single critical word slip out of his pen. Even though a well-lettered man, the author was not a darling of the crowds, with the result that he lost many elections to the Lok Sabha. It was Indira Gandhi who made him a cabinet minister even after his defeat in the election. Mukherjee returns the trust and affection Indira reposed on him. A split had occurred in the party when Devraj Urs demanded that the Karnataka state party chief to be elected. The author ridicules him for his ‘unrealistic’ stand as the chief were normally nominated by Indira Gandhi herself. She was surrounded by cronies and sycophants as noted by Mukherjee when he terms Janardana Poojary, an MP from Mangaluru, as a ‘devotee’ of Indira Gandhi (p. 219).

Pranabji is not a great story teller by instinct. Terse facts and statistics are reproduced abundantly, but the story is told in a halting style. He sometimes resorts to name all the people who attended a meeting, which finds no relevance to the reader. In a hint of self-promotion, he reproduces verbatim the editorials of major newspapers praising the author’s achievements. The government introduced a scheme of voluntary disclosure of untaxed wealth in 1976. Curiously it may seem, the tax rate for this disclosed income at 50% was actually lower than the 60% rate applied on an honest taxpayer. Naturally, the scheme was a great success and the book includes three editorials lauding him. The book includes a good collection of photographs and lot of appendices detailing points mentioned in passing. A basic index is also provided.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Desperately Seeking Paradise

Title: Desperately Seeking Paradise – Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim

Author: Ziauddin Sardar

Publisher: Granta Books, 2004 (First)

ISBN: 9781862077553

Pages: 354

The present-day world is reeling under the monstrosity of Islamic terror. By the term ‘world’, I don’t mean non-Muslims alone. In a sense, the Muslim community pays a far larger price for the misdeeds of a group of youths among them. The world is also astonished at the silence of moderate Muslims in condemning violence of any kind. A fundamental feature of the Orient, of which Islam sprung out in due course, is to be examined here. Individualism is deeply spurned in the East. The individual is just a cog in the society’s wheel. You have to conform to the fads and fancies currently circulating in your tribe or society. Blind obedience to medieval jurisprudence and ideas of religious association are keeping the Muslims from fully integrating themselves with the world society. For this, their individuals and communities has to ‘reclaim agency, which is the right to re-interpret their religious texts according to their time and context’. The author expresses the voice of the moderates, which the world so yearns to hear. Ziauddin Sardar is a London-based scholar of Pakistani origin, an award-winning writer and public intellectual who specializes in Muslim thought. In this book, he brings into focus the big questions facing Muslim individuals and communities and a silhouette of the suggested solutions. These solutions are not fully formed, hence the caveat ‘sceptical’ in the sub-title of the book.

Sardar’s life in Britain truly reflects that of many millions of refugees from Muslim countries who flee from their home states to escape persecution or poverty. The author, likewise, emigrated from Pakistan at a very young age. But once they take root in their adopted European homeland, they become restless at the egalitarian ideology and tolerant spirit of their new domicile, and take fantastic notions of the (laughable) supremacy of Islam into their heads. Some of them take to terrorism, while intellectuals of the writer’s genre attack the system ideologically. Such ungrateful guests eventually turn a heavy burden on Europe’s ordinary peace-loving citizens. The author joined FOSIS, an Islamic organization created for uniting Muslim students in Britain. We expect this association of youngsters to protest against injustices in the world as all ideological student groups tend to do anywhere. But not FOSIS and other Islamic organizations! Their sense of injustice is attuned to wake up only when Muslims are on the losing side. As the book amply indicates, they didn’t protest against the Vietnam war or the suppression of popular revolt in Eastern Europe. Instead, they organized rallies and seminars to remonstrate against the killing of Sayyid Qutb, the chief ideologue of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, the occupation of Palestine in 1967 and even against Hindu – Muslim communal riots that erupted in India in 1969. A common sentiment of the Muslim refugees in Europe is the wishful longing for the (supposed) former glory of the Muslim empires and its revival. One wonders why did they leave their Muslim states behind in the first place! But Sardar quickly saw through the charades of Jamaat e-Islami of Pakistan and the Muslim Brotherhood as their ‘pre-packaged unwisdom’ repulsed him.

Unable to blend with the British society that offered his family shelter, livelihood and a future to look forward to, the author courted many religious groups like Tabligh and mystics like Sufi practitioners. But everywhere, dissolution of one’s self and total submission to the preceptor was a precondition. Such authoritarianism was couched in elegant phrases like ‘purify the soul from impurities such as cynicism and cleanse the mind of doubt and sarcasm’. Observance of religious practices was a quid pro quo with the almighty for attaining paradise. Such an outlook naturally precludes a multiplicity of teachers for one individual. If one thought differently, either he should remain silent, or create a new religious order. Such strife was fairly common from the birth of Islam itself. Three of the four rightly-guided caliphs were assassinated as also eleven out of the twelve imams of Shiism. Such feuds extended into interpretations of theology and jurisprudence as well. Imam Shafi, who was the founder of the Shafi school of thought (one among the four principal schools) was beaten to death by the followers of Imam Malik, who expounded the Maliki school of thought (also one among the four principal schools). Sufism is touted as a syncretic system more in tune with the cosmopolitan spirit of the modern world. The book hints that Sufism involves much more surrender, as one of its dictum is that ‘there is too much information in the head of young seekers. You must empty your mind of all that you know’ (p.64). Any kind of individuality is shunned and sheepish accompaniment of the master is praised as seen in the example of the author’s own brother. He became the disciple of a Sufi teacher and resigned his job as an economist on the advice of the teacher to take up the position as a carpenter in order to work with his own hands, whose worth was extolled by the spiritual guide. He accepted a wife chosen by the teacher and submitted fully to the order, finally ending up in economic ruin. However, this episode convinced the author that mysticism was deeply flawed and that Sufism does not produce a viable, equitable social order. In the wide travels Sardar had made, he came across the tomb and life story of Mulla Nasruddin Hodja and longs that Muslims everywhere need a character like him to lean against, someone who can point out the absurdities of their situation, someone they can believe and laugh with (p.82). Readers are astonished at the shortsightedness of the author here. All people, not just Muslims, need such a character as Hodja! Sardar is painfully obsessed with Muslim concerns alone. If such is the worldview of the most educated among them, one can only recoil in horror at the ideology of the uneducated bigots!

The difficult and troublesome synthesis of the westernized Muslims to their adopted homeland has long been an issue of serious repercussions in Europe, on account of the participation of such people in heinous terrorist acts. Sardar remarks that Muslims seek liberation from the tyranny of the West and such notions as modernity and secularism. For them, the West is sheer evil – moderates grudgingly tolerate it, hardliners attack it physically. Isn’t it amazing to contemplate why then did they leave their Shariah-ruled home countries to seek refuge in the West? Once their hunger is sated, their need for a shelter is met and they find a living – all with the welfare benefits provided by Western nations – the refugees change colour and longs for Shariah! The author does not have a very high opinion of Shariah, as he states that it is not god-ordained, and made draconian by its oppressive treatment of women and minorities, its emphasis on extreme punishments and its fixation with ossified jurisprudence (p.217). His firm conviction is that acquiring all the trappings of modernity merely leaves the Muslim ummah going round in circles, but getting nowhere. Sardar denounces extremism in no uncertain terms. Islamic fundamentalism is said to be the idea of a state, rather than a god-centred life and thought.

So, what is the real problem the Muslims encounter in blending seamlessly to their adopted Western societies? If you read between the lines of the book, the answer is crystal clear – an overarching superiority complex! For reasons incomprehensible to rational minds, Muslims consider their religion to be at the pinnacle of religious thought and action and looks down on others. Muslims live across national boundaries in the world, but consider themselves to belong to a supra-national assembly called ummah. We see well-settled men getting deeply troubled by minor incursions in Palestine or Chechnya, where the local Muslims suffer a reverse. Even intellectuals harbour this trans-national allegiance which obfuscates the truth that Islam is going on under a fossilized tradition and religious obscurantism. The author never mentions even a single point that affected the British society, even though he had lived there for six decades! He remembers that he is British only when he courts with trouble in Iran, Saudi Arabia or Turkey where they treated him as only a Pakistani. At the first whiff of the slightest threat, out pops the British passport and indignant cries of maltreating a British citizen! A notable feature of Muslim intellectual organizations as seen in the book is the rich source of funds originating in the Middle East that can be used for propaganda or conversions. The 1970s oil crisis had made the gulf states immensely rich. There was no dearth of resources for the author’s many experiments, flowing in from Iran or Saudi Arabia.

The book is concise summary of the social position of a Muslim intellectual in western societies. His numerous travels crisscrossing the Muslim world has helped to bring to light the dilemmas and concerns of those societies. It is a record of the constant striving of the intellectuals to find a way in which Islam can be configured for the modern world and optimizing it to interface smoothly with modernity, science and secularism. The diction is easy on the reader and the personal experiences are narrated with a hearty sense of humour. However, some inferences of the author should be thought of as taking advantage from hindsight. Sardar describes about meeting Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in the 1980s in a conference of the Afghan Mujahideen and how he was shocked by the cold light in his eyes when he shut off the avenues of compromise one by one. He was also stunned by the fanatic spirit of students in a madrassah run by the Haqqania network in Pakistan. The book is gifted with a comprehensive index.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Black Hole

Title: The Black Hole – Money, Myth and Empire

Author: Jan Dalley

Publisher: Penguin, 2006 (First)

ISBN: 9780141014999

Pages: 222

If a single event in history can be pointed out as the harbinger of an era, the British victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 can be thought of as the foundation stone for the establishment of colonialism in India that reigned the country for the next two centuries. When the imperial masters finally vacated power in 1947, the country was changed beyond all recognition. Its administrative, legislative, judicial and military structures then resembled the West, which was little regretted. At the same time, the impoverishment of the land was obvious in the form of capital drain to Britain and the repeated famines that devastated the countryside. In short, whichever way you look at it, imperial rule was a profound phase in Indian history. This book assumes immense relevance as it narrates the events that led to the showdown at Plassey. The Nawab of Murshidabad had attacked the British fort at Calcutta and occupied it. Chronicles say that, on June 20, 1756, he forced 146 people of all races and nationalities who defended the fort, to be locked up in a small room, which was known as the Black Hole on account of the placement of only two small, high barred windows for air. The crushing, suffocation and thirst, coupled with the exhaustion of fighting the previous day extracted a heavy toll on the prisoners. When the cell was opened the next day, only 23 people were found to be alive. This horrible incident, popularly known as the Black Hole of Calcutta, ignited British passion to no end, and was instrumental in swiftly organizing military reprisals by the English East India Company, which hastened the advent of colonial rule. Jan Dalley is the literary editor of the Financial Times. She has authored many books and has translated several from the French. She lives in London.

The book provides a snapshot of the growth of East – West trade where the spices were exchanged by the East in favour of gold in return. The growth of English maritime ambition under Elizabeth I initially took the form of piracy. Dalley names the noted mariners of the sixteenth century; all of whom did indulge in piracy on at least a very few occasions. The growth of British trading posts on the Indian mainland was tentative at first. Of the three presidencies of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, the first two were on firmer ground, as the native princes were not strong enough to cross the British. But Calcutta was different. Not only had the British to contend with a mostly indefensible place, but the Murshidabad nawabs were powerful enough to command respect from the traders. The trouble erupted after Siraj ud-Daula ascended the throne of Murshidabad at the young age of 27 after a series of fratricides that was usual in medieval Indian dynasties. He replaced his grandfather, Alivardi Khan who detested the British, but kept on good trading relations with them on account of lucrative profits accrued to him from the enterprise. But the new ruler was impetuous and anxious to affirm his authority very early on his reign. He is said to be so cruel that people on meeting him by chance used to say ‘God save us from him’! He wanted to replace his grandfather’s policy of treating the foreigners with as meticulous care accorded to a beehive while extracting copious amounts of honey and mindful not to provoke them into fits of anger. Fort William at Calcutta was feebly guarded in 1756, with many Englishmen cowardly deserting it at the first hint of trouble. The 500 fighters in the fort belonged to all races – white, brown and black. But they were not a match for the Nawab’s army that was tens of thousands strong. The fort capitulated soon and the Nawab ditched the survivors into the Black Hole, in which 146 people were thrown together in a room only 18 feet long and 14 feet wide. The guards mocked at the frenzy of the people inside for air and water. Only 23 were alive the next morning when the cell was opened.

The author has assumed a stridently nationalistic pose towards the Indian side in the description of the whole episode that is amusing as well as confusing. An Indian would feel amused at the sight of an English author belittling and making tirades against the favourite battle cry of England with which she had aggrandized herself on Indian soil, subjecting it to 190 years of colonial rule. Meanwhile, confusion is spawned by doubts on the quality of judgment made throughout the narrative. But one thing the author should have asked herself is that whether moral support to Siraj ud-Daula was furthering the cause of India as the victim of imperial aggression. Siraj was also a scion of the foreign aggressors that kept India under their yoke far longer than the British did. The native Hindus of Bengal were treated with as contempt by the Muslim kingdoms (with the possible exception of Akbar’s regime) just like or perhaps more than what the British company did. Filling up the aristocracy with expatriates from Afghanistan and Iran, and subjecting the penniless majority to harsh and discriminating religious taxation were hardly the measures which would make a regime dear to the populace. Forced conversions vitiated the atmosphere which was already poignant with mutual hatred between the two communities. The book includes a quote from Col. Scott which helps to make the position clearer. He wrote in 1754 that “Hindu rajahs and population are much disaffected to the Moor (Muslim) government and secretly wish for a change and an opportunity of throwing off their tyrannical yoke”. Hindu merchants naturally sided with foreign traders in the whole issue of Calcutta in 1756. The desperation of the masses is clearly discernible in S C Hill’s study of Bengal, a part of which is reproduced in the book as “there gradually grew up in the minds of the Bengali Hindus that if the worst came to the worst, they might find in the presence of these foreigners a means of escape from the ills by which they were oppressed”.

Dalley makes a spirited but ultimately futile attempt to downplay the significance of the Black Hole incident. Readers are at a loss to determine the motive behind this vain exercise to deny the occurrence of an event that is not only feasible, but corroborated in harrowing detail by the survivors! The pathetic arguments of Dalley are laughable at the least. John Zephaniah Holwell was the City Judge and a survivor of the Black Hole. His vivid account is mercilessly tarnished as an attempt at magnifying his own contribution. An allegation of corruption during his tenure of service is cited as it is sufficient for denigrating his credibility as a witness. Mary Carey was another survivor of the incident at the tender age of 15 and she lived on till 60 in Calcutta. Carey’s interviews are not sufficient proof for the author. Lord Curzon had erected a memorial in 1905 for the victims of the attack, and Dalley quibbles over Curzon’s eulogy terming the prisoners as British, with the silly argument that most of them were not! She accuses Curzon of not naming the victims after a gap of 145 years. Are the Jallianwala Bagh victims named anywhere? Do any failure to name the people who lost their lives negate the truth that the event had occurred? Then the author laments that there were no pictures to establish a record (p.14). This is the most shocking contention of all. What does she mean by pictures? Dalley must realize that she was talking about a point of time when selfies and mobile phones were not available to the victims! After all these dumb claims, she presents a wimpish excuse to downplay the gravity of the incident by saying that, “it was not a massacre, but only a sad blunder. It was not an exceptional death toll” (p.18). This reminds me of a bigoted political observer who denied the Jewish Holocaust as the figure of six million Jews killed was surely a blatant exaggeration. “Probably two or three million”, he said, as if that’d set things right.

Books of such genre usually include a section on the aftermath in which the underdog extracts revenge on the aggressor and satisfy the readers. But Dalley is extraordinarily subdued in this regard, with a  note in passing that Siraj ud-Daula was defeated at the Battle of Plassey with the active connivance of a faction of his courtiers led by his own uncle, Mir Jaffir. The book is a page turner, where the events are so nicely elaborated with unrestrained ease. It is only when the issue of the number of people killed in the Black Hole is raised, or its blood-curdling cruelty, does she go for wild conspiracy theories resembling ‘no man has set foot in the moon’, the 9/11 attacks were CIA-managed’ and the ‘2004 tsunami was the result of a secret American nuclear test’. This small book includes a brief index and a bibliography.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Ashoka in Ancient India

Title: Ashoka in Ancient India

Author: Nayanjot Lahiri

Publisher: Permanent Black, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9788178243887

Pages: 385

If we are asked to name three great Indian emperors of all time, few people would settle at any other combination than Ashoka, Chandragupta II and Akbar. Ashoka is chronologically the first among them. Indian rulers of all times aspired to reflect some aspect of his legacy in their own reign, as he was the founder of a ‘unique political model of humane governance’. Ashoka made discourses with his people in the form of rock edicts scattered all over the country, like some kind of early ‘mann ki bath’. ‘The afterlife of Ashoka, like his real life, is poised between legend and truth’. Nayanjot Lahiri is an eminent historian who has many excellent books to her credit. Lahiri has made a commendable survey of Ashoka as the emperor of India in this book. Devoid of any agenda or political leaning, Lahiri’s works are honest tributes to historical scholarship, as compared to the political manifestos churned out by other reputed authors like Romila Thapar or Irfan Habib.

Lahiri begins with the rationale for yet another book on Ashoka. He had fascinated generations of writers and scholars. The emperor talks to the people through the many rock and pillar edicts distributed across the length and breadth of the land. ‘He did not want to appear to posterity as either recondite or imperious, but instead as a flesh-and-blood ruler guided less by power than compassion’. His renunciation of war at the height of military glory sets him apart from other monarchs. Perhaps this air of edified spirituality endeared him to the later rulers of India. Nehru is said to have identified himself with Ashoka. The national emblem adopted by the newly independent India was the famous Ashokan lion capital at Sarnath. India also adopted the Ashoka Chakra in its flag. The most astonishing fact is that the name of Ashoka had slipped out of the public mind in the subcontinent, as all memory of Ashoka and his edicts was lost in India for some twelve centuries after the visit of Xiunsang, the Chinese pilgrim in the seventh century. People saw these curious inscriptions on rocks in a strange tongue, but remained clueless as to its author. It was the painstaking work of British orientalists in deciphering the stone inscriptions that brought to light the saga of the ancient monarch. This story is told in detail in Charles Allen’s Ashoka – The Search for India’s Lost Emperor (reviewed earlier in this blog). The first modern biography of Ashoka was Vincent Smith’s ‘Asoka – the Buddhist Emperor of India’.

The author narrates the life and times of Ashoka from religious texts like the Ashokavadana, Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa and also from Megasthenes’ Indica, written by a Greek ambassador to Chandragupta’s court (Ashoka’s grandfather). The evidence is patchy and the author has liberally employed her rich imagination to fill up the blanks. The result is a work very much heartening to read. Ashoka’s tenure at Taxila in quelling an insurrection and his stay at Ujjain as the governor of the province are described. Ashoka met a merchant leader’s daughter at Vidisha and two children were born of that dalliance. Even though we would like to think that Ashoka’s polity didn’t discriminate between people of the four varnas, both Mahinda and Sanghamitra didn’t inherit the throne. They were the spiritual heirs of their father and were dispatched to Sri Lanka for missionary work. Ashoka assumed the reins of power after killing his numerous half-brothers. Lahiri wryly remarks that he did much to gain power for which a life of contrition and reflection was necessitated later. He was a Buddhist right from inception on the throne, but his fervor rose as time went on. The battle of Kalinga brought about a transition experience. It was at this time that he employed rocks and pillars to record his proclamations to the people. Ashoka becomes historical and real with these conquests of the mind. Lahiri somewhat justifies the emperor’s military adventures by describing similar expeditions of other world rulers. This is very interesting and informative, but redundant. Kings’ lust for power and aggrandizement can be taken for granted without going to the bother of comparing with others.

The author’s greatest achievement in this text is the illuminating analysis of Ashoka’s edicts that lie scattered over the subcontinent, from Dhauli in Odisha to as far west as Kandahar in Afghanistan. She has travelled to most of the places where the edicts are located and has accorded a vivid description of the lay of the land, the interesting features of the rock and pillars and the meaning of the inscriptions. The narrative assumes the charm of a neatly penned travelogue to those ancient relics. Ashoka had been mindful to inscribe his message to people in hard stone. The maturing of royal philosophy of life is visible from the steady progression of ideas on vegetarianism to morality and support to the Buddhist faith. The first edicts ran from six to twenty-two lines. Later edicts became larger, and a series of messages containing more than a hundred lines are seen. The elaborate carvings extended to multiple rock surfaces as well. The growing confidence of the emperor can be discerned from the standardization of content. One point is to be noted here. The terms ‘major’ and ‘minor’ used to denote the edicts do not imply the size of the rock on which they are inscribed. ‘Major’ denotes the length and content of the message, of which, there are fourteen in number. Meticulous care has been gone into the selection of language and script so as to be intelligible to the people inhabiting the surrounding areas. The language used is Prakrit and script Brahmi for all edicts in the heartland of the empire in present-day India. At the same time, Ashoka was mindful of the influence of foreign languages in his border provinces. This concern is given material form as a bilingual edict near Kandahar. The languages used are Greek and Aramaic and the script Kharoshti. Lahiri notes with approval that the translation was done by capable hands. The interpreter has done a free translation of the message, and the word eusebia is used in place of dharma, which is a tricky word even for modern translators.

Ashoka conceptualizes a rudimentary welfare state, with benevolent concerns for the wellbeing of men as well as animals. This change in administrative policy is suggested to have links with the precepts of Arthashastra, whose composer was a contemporary of Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka’s grandfather. His rock edicts range from the ninth regnal year. The first edict was discovered in 1822 at Girnar, followed by a string of new finds. As of now, 50 such edicts have been catalogued, the latest being at Ratanpurwa, Bihar found in 2009. We agree with the author that Ashoka was ahead of his times, but assigning environmental concerns ascribed to the prohibition of killing fish in the period of chaturmasya (July to September) as a kind of wise effort to protect them during their breeding season is a little farfetched.

This book is a fascinating attempt to recreate the life and times of Ashoka, through his epigraphs, archeology and the traditions in and around the places where these were put up and through an imaginative construction of how people in ancient India were likely to have understood these messages. Lahiri’s mastery of literature as well as history is evident in the scholarly quotes from reputed books of history as well as from Shakespeare. A good number of photographs of the edicts and places where they are located are also provided. The book is also graced with a nice index, an impressive bibliography and large number of notes for clarifying the finer nuances in the text.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star