Purifying the Land of the Pure

Title: Purifying the Land of the Pure – Pakistan’s Religious Minorities

Author: Farahnaz Ispahani

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9789351775522

Pages: 253

India was partitioned in 1947 on the basis of religion. Muslims demanded and obtained Pakistan as their homeland while the other communities declared their divided country secular. The percentage of religious minorities as a share of the population in India increased from 15.9% in 1947 to 20.2% now, while that of Pakistan plummeted from 23% to a paltry 3% in the same period. Pakistanis take pride in trimming down minorities since the name of the country itself means ‘the land of the pure’ and they want to keep it pure without the ‘polluting’ presence of other religions.  Pakistan chose to build the nation on religion rather than civic nationalism. While statesmen and great thinkers usually formulated the guiding principles of most of the nations, fanatic mullahs and bloodthirsty jihadists framed that of Pakistan. This book is about the steady growth of fanaticism and intolerance to the crescendo we observe now. Farahnaz Ispahani is a leading voice for women and religious minorities in Pakistan for the past twenty-five years, first as a journalist, then as a member of the country’s National Assembly. She is a renowned thinker and accredited with several global distinctions. No wonder, she lives in the U.S., as this book is so provocative for the jihadists who might try to endanger her in Pakistan.

Ispahani deftly provides the details of the demise of Pakistan’s founding ideals over the years. Jinnah had high ambitions of his dream child when he declared in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11 August 1947 that every person living in the country should be first, second and last a citizen of the state with equal rights and privileges. In a hyperbole of epic dimensions, he exhorted that people are free to go to temples, mosques or any place of worship and that religion was the personal faith of an individual. He promised that all are citizens and equal citizens of one state in which Muslims are just the majority. In other words, he wanted to bring in a Muslim version of the tolerance existed in India. Things rapidly deteriorated a few years later. Jinnah had appointed Jogender Nath Mandal – a Hindu – as Pakistan’s first law minister. He fled to India three years later, unable to stand the violence against Hindus. The Objectives Resolution introduced by Liaquat Ali Khan in March 1949 bared the thin end of the wedge that was to alienate and isolate the religious minorities. The resolution declared that ‘sovereignty over the entire universe belonged to God Almighty alone and that the state of Pakistan would exercise authority within the limit prescribed by him’. This set the tone for the thorough Islamization of the country, most of it under the harrowing dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq. The author makes a brilliant point here with an analysis of the political bifurcation of Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent as beginning with the establishment of separate electorates granted by Morley – Minto reforms in response to appeals made by Aga Khan III and other Muslim notables. While India’s Constituent Assembly thronged with legal and political luminaries, Pakistan’s assembly ‘boasted’ of such figures as Abul ala Maududi, the founder of the dreaded Jamaat e-Islami and other hardliners and puritans.

Antagonism against the Hindu minority was predictable and even logical, as India was the arch-enemy and mortal rival of Pakistan. They were sidelined and most of them were forced to migrate to India over the years. Now, the Hindus are numerically smaller than the Christian community. After getting rid of Hindus, the Islamist hardliners turned against minority Muslim sects such as Ahmadiyyas and Shias. The comic truth is that these two sects were at the forefront of the clamour for Pakistan, strongly supporting Jinnah in his every step as they ‘feared’ Hindu dominance in India! Jinnah had made Sir Zafrullah Khan, a prominent Ahmadi, as the country’s first foreign minister and that was indeed the tallest position assumed by a member of the sect since. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto instituted a constitutional amendment in 1974 that banned Ahmadis from terming themselves as Muslim and not to call their places of worship mosques. The call to prayer was strictly forbidden for use by Ahmadis. This sect is now bearing the brunt of jihadist violence and thousands of them have so far been butchered like sheep with nobody lifting a finger against the assailants. After effectively terminating the Ahmadi menace, the Sunni radicals turned against the Shias. This was ironic, as the country’s founder Jinnah was a Shia himself who loathed the hard-line teachings of Sunni fundamentalism. It is strange that Pakistan’s most noted personalities had been Shia or Ahmadi. Jinnah was a Shia and Prof. Abdus Salam, who had won the Nobel Prize in Physics, was an Ahmadi. Fundamentalists consistently picketed the gates when Prof. Salam was conducting lectures. Mullahs of the Deobandi persuasion treated all other sects such as Shias, Ahmadis and Barelvis (non-orthodox Sunnis) as apostates. But don’t place your sympathies on the victims yet, as the most progressive Barelvi cleric is known to have remarked that ‘non-Muslims shouldn’t be in the army, judiciary or as minister or be appointed to other posts involving the reposing of confidence (p.61)! Shias are the most vocal advocates of the continuance of brutish blasphemy laws in Pakistan, even though they are most often at the receiving end of litigation on blasphemy. The latest trend in militancy is to target the sufis among Sunni sects.

The author presents a clean case of the rise of fundamentalism and intolerance in Pakistan. Islamization of Zia-ul-Haq was preceded by steady early steps in that direction. The country is said to have slid past the point of no return after 1971. In the civil war and subsequent birth of Bangladesh, Pakistan suffered the worst defeat in its history. The much trumpeted valour of the Pakistani army came to naught and was proved to be a mere bubble that was easily pricked by India, whose determined prime minister was also a woman. 91000 Pakistani soldiers meekly surrendered their arms, military possessions and the country’s honour to India, which mercilessly sliced Pakistan into two, like a piece of cake. This made the Pakistanis realize that their army would never stand a chance to beat the Indian troops in a formal war and instead chose to adopt jihad as an instrument of state policy. Jihadis are trained and armed in Pakistan and later released to commit acts of terrorism in various parts of the globe. The hardliners at home became very powerful as a result and demanded stricter Islamic laws to be enforced. Consequently, the blasphemy laws came into existence during the military rule. The Offence of Zina (unlawful sexual intercourse) was punishable by stoning to death. Rapists could be convicted only if there are four Muslim male witnesses to the deed! If the charge could not be established because of this limitation, the victim would be liable to eighty lashes under the Offence of Qazat (false allegation). A fixed amount at 2.5% was cut automatically from bank deposits as zakat (mandatory charity as per sharia) and handed over to jihadists. The isolation, marginalization and threats of violence against minorities began from school textbooks that were cunningly doctored to pander to extremism. There were only 137 madrasas (religious seminaries) in 1947 in the entire Pakistan, which boomed to 29000 in 2000 with lavish foreign financial assistance channeled through Wahhabi conduits. These are breeding grounds of sadistic jihadis, but the worthless certificates issued by them are recognized as equivalent to university degrees in Pakistan. A word must be said about the blasphemy laws too. An accusation by a rival is enough to guarantee lynching by roaming mobs. If a police officer or a lawyer or a judge dares to express doubt on the veracity of charges, the vigilantes would swoop down on their families and kill them too. If the accused manage to stay alive, he would be condemned by the court with whatever flimsy evidence the prosecution can come up with.

The book is a pleasure to read though the content is macabre. It has covered the entire history of Pakistan till 2014. A sizeable number of Notes are provided, but the absence of an Index is a serious drawback. Besides, the author has assumed intolerance as the single issue on which governments fell in Pakistan. This is not exactly true. Benazir Bhutto’s ouster in 1990 was due as much to the issue of wholesale corruption as it is to intolerance.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Indian Railways

Title: Indian Railways – The Weaving of a National Tapestry

Author: Bibek Debroy, Sanjay Chadha, Vidya Krishnamurthi

Publisher: Portfolio Penguin, 2017 (First)

ISBN: 9780143426752

Pages: 225

India’s railway network is fully owned by the government and is the largest visible embodiment of state power for all practical purposes. A major part of the railway infrastructure was made in British times with a commercial motive to speed up the flow of raw materials from India’s hinterland to the factories on the coast and in England and also to facilitate the trade in finished goods pouring out of England with the markets of India. This was the largest single injection of British capital into India’s economy. In 1947, 50000 miles of lines were laid, a million men were employed and the railway companies possessed an impressive array of 9000 locomotives, 225000 freight cars and 16000 passenger coaches. This anecdotal history of railways in India covers the early stages around 1830s when experimental lines were set up and right up to independence in 1947. This book is significant for the general reader as every Indian is said to have at least ‘one impossibly romantic railway memory’. The authors are leading bureaucrats in the national government. Bibek Debroy is a member of the Niti Aayog, Sanjay Chadha is a joint secretary in the ministry of commerce and Vidya Krishnamurthi is a researcher with Indicus Foundation, New Delhi who had previously worked for Niti Aayog. This book is also the tenth volume in the series of Indian Business being published under the stewardship of Gurcharan Das who has presented this book with a neat introduction.

In fact, Gurcharan Das’ introduction is the only saving grace of the book, since the main text is presented haphazardly and with a shocking disregard to structure. Das makes some original observations which is indeed simple but profound. He remarks that railways made sweeping changes in India. Our pre-modern world had been space-bound and time-free. The only difficulty faced by the villagers was how to travel long distances for a pilgrimage, without any thought to the time it might take. Railways changed all that and our modern world became space-free, but time-bound. Perhaps a reviewer in the future may laugh at this assumption of superior means of transport we treat to be the privileges of the era in which we live in! The fares were not cheap. A person could walk 600 miles and live at a lesser cost for a month, than the rates charged for third class, as remarked by a European who saw the fare structure firsthand. We might wonder at the elaborate and ornate buildings of some of the Victorian era stations we see around us as to its utility. The book provides the answer. The early lines were built following a ‘guarantee system’. The government guaranteed to the company a return of all the expenses added with a 5% profit margin. Such assurances were a recipe for extravagance. There was no incentive to economize on the expenditure and the companies spent money like water to build ostentatious buildings that later brought renown and heritage status. Troubled conditions during the 1857 war of independence forced the authorities to fortify major stations in the North.

The book presents some interesting anecdotes on the gradual development of amenities in trains. Lights, fans, bath rooms and sleeping berths were all later additions and amusing episodes are narrated as to the cause of its coming into being. However, this is the only thing that can be cited in favour of the book. Incongruously for a book of such scope, it abruptly stops at 1947. Probably the bureaucrats who are also the authors of the book wanted to avoid any remarks that might be construed as critical to government policy. But, if you look carefully, the description of events ends around 1910 itself, the later occurrences are just glanced over. The book includes long verbatim extracts and quotes from reports, newspaper articles and comments made in the nineteenth century. In one instance, such a quote runs for 12 consecutive pages! Out of the total 225 pages of the book, about half may be thought of as quotes! A table on the chronology of railways runs through 11 pages, which is hardly intelligible and perfectly useless. There are repetitions in many chapters which suggest the poor quality of coordination between the authors. Such lack of coordination and cooperation is a hallmark of the bureaucracy.

This book is the tenth volume in the series ‘Story of Indian Business’. This fact is not advertised anywhere on the cover, but discreetly mentioned in Gurcharan Das’ introduction. Anyway, this book is a complete disappointment that would damage the reputation and relevance of the whole series. It is also marked by lack of insight and observation on the part of the authors. All scholars remark that the railways had brought about a silent social revolution in India by the non-segregation among Indians. The Europeans made the two upper classes their privilege, true, but the Indian upper castes didn’t enjoy such a convenience however hard they pressed for it. The upper castes had to travel in third class mingled with untouchables and outcastes in the carriages. That railway could bring about such a transforming social change peacefully in a matter of decades is an outstanding achievement that must be applauded as vociferously as possible. But surprisingly, the authors keep mum on this issue. It may be that they don’t subscribe to the idea, but then they should have lambasted it with convincing logic and examples.

The reference materials used in the work are also not impeccable. Many of them are bodily taken from the famous website of IRFCA (Indian Railway Fan Club Association). The book does not provide an index. Some of the photographs provided are also not very appealing.

The book is not recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

Bright Earth

Title: Bright Earth – The Invention of Colour

Author: Philip Ball

Publisher: Penguin, 2002 (First published 2001)

ISBN: 9780140296624

Pages: 434

An elephant is noted for its muscle power, a cheetah for its speed and a dog for the extraordinary ability to smell. What is man worth? Undoubtedly, he is the most intelligent among all creatures, but intelligence is an abstract faculty that is not always obvious – at least for a few among us. The facility of colour vision makes up for a lot of disadvantages in other departments. The ability of the human eye to perceive colour in its rich variety and multitude of hues makes it a truly versatile one. Only a few bird species possess even better capacity to perceive colour than us. Awash in varied colours in our day to day lives, men naturally wanted it to be preserved in art forms civilized societies cultivated. Even primitive tribes are noted for the deft attention to colour they spent on cave paintings on scenes such as the hunt. As art developed into pictures drawn on walls, canvas and paper, artists faced a daunting task as to reproduce the originals according to the artistic mores of the time. This book narrates the development of colour reproduction over the ages and progress of technologies from canvas to the digital computer. The book makes a survey of art in general and concentrates on how the magic of colour was faithfully copied to a medium of expression. Philip Ball is a science writer who has several books to his credit. He regularly contributes to science journals such as Nature and New Scientist. His talent at art appreciation is evident from the fact that he had curated for an exhibition on science and art at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Even though this book was found in the chemistry shelf of the library, it has more of a claim to be in the ‘art’ category. Ball’s description of the famous paintings noted for the ingenuous application of novel pigments and colouring styles are essential reading to students of art and painting. Until the advent of modern synthetic pigments in the nineteenth century, artists’ colours were finely ground minerals. Most of them were later found to be metal-containing compounds. Natural dyes didn’t come in plenty. Hardly a dozen or so pigments were available from nature then, which had exploded to nearly 9000 synthetic dyes as of now. Colour is the medium of painters for expression and communication. As a result, they had diversified the range of colours by careful and skilled mixing of dyestuffs. The book incorporates an excellent narrative on famous paintings and elucidation of the peculiarities of each. All this is backed up with a lot of colour plates depicting those very pictures in detail. Novices in art also find this section extremely helpful, as the author stoops to keep them also on board for his informed appreciation of the pictures. A case in point is the difference that exists between Renaissance paintings with the earlier ones. The painters in the middle ages were equally adept, but the norms that limited their creativity were rather narrow and utilitarian. Painting was a way of telling a story without words. Important characters in the frame should be clearly identified and portrayed in colours that encoded symbolic meanings and redounded to the splendour of the Lord. Renaissance changed all that. The observer’s presence on the scene became implied. The light and shadows and realism of the scene mandated the perspective of the observer to be maintained in the picture. The portrayal became real and effectively tangible. Painting really arrived with the glorious artists of Italian Renaissance. Ball also mentions the characteristic features of later techniques like impressionism, pointillism, fauvism and Orphism.

The twentieth century belonged to physics, but the nineteenth marked the high tide of chemistry. Scientists quickly discerned the intricacies of chemical reactions and the molecular structure. New elements were discovered, after casting out the four ancient elements of earth, air, fire and water. It is with this background that Ball proudly declares that “there will never be another fifty years in chemistry like those that began in the 1770s”. By 1820, chemists spoke much the same language as they do today. For the first time in history, experimenters could somehow predict the outcome and physical properties of their trials, including its colour. A wide range of synthetic dyes soon flooded the market. The pride of place belonged to purple, as all earlier efforts to synthesize this colour of the royalty had failed. The Roman aristocrats used a rich tint of it called Tyrian purple which was extracted from an internal gland of a kind of shell fish found in the ancient city of Tyre. Extraction of the dye was painfully time consuming and the cost of it was astronomical. Each shell fish yielded just a drop and one ounce of the dye could be collected only after sacrificing an astounding 250,000 shell fish in the bargain. It is no wonder then that a pound of purple-dyed wool cost around three times the yearly wage of a baker. This made the colour a monopoly of the rich and powerful in the empire. Later emperors restricted its use among the reigning coterie. This discrimination was overcome not by war or reforms. A revolution of a different kind was needed to democratize the privileges traditionally enjoyed by the wealthy. The spurt in the development of science and technology offered the masses some of the luxuries that couldn’t even be dreamed about by great monarchs – however powerful their stature was. Alexander couldn’t communicate in real time with his governor sitting thousands of miles away however hard he tried, Akbar didn’t receive the quality of medical care when he died at 56 which even a layman now takes for granted. The examples are endless. Similarly, as new chemical processes developed, new dyes of huge range of tints in aniline derivatives appeared by 1850s. Purple came within the reach of ordinary people. Major European corporations like Bayer, Hoechst and BASF were born around this time, mass-producing the colours.

Any treatise on colour won’t be complete without touching upon how colours are preserved or restored after they had aged due to action by light and corrosive gaseous chemicals. This book includes a chapter on preservation techniques. The author being a science writer, the book is up to date with nuances of colour reproduction in the photographic arena as also digital media such as a computer. The author’s comment on the slow development of photography that “many technologies blossom not when the technical means are available, but when a conceptual advance unlocks their potential” is thought provoking.

The book is not at all designed for easy reading, but more than compensates for it by the entry it affords to the reader in the realm of pure art. The experience of glancing over and enjoying the works of masters of painting is exhilarating. It also contains detailed descriptions of chemical processes and materials, which is a little tiresome. A long list of various pigments in its natural form is good for comprehensiveness but unsuited for smooth reading. The book includes a long section on Notes and offers a good bibliography. The index is comprehensive, but a separate list of the paintings would’ve added much more utility. I would have normally rated this book 3-star, but owing to the deep artistic knowledge of the author and for the great opportunity it provided me for getting familiarized with some of the grand representatives of it, I would place it a notch higher.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Pacific

Title: Pacific – The Ocean of the Future

Author: Simon Winchester

Publisher: William Collins, 2016 (First published 2015)

ISBN: 9780007550777

Pages: 492

The Pacific is the world’s largest ocean, covering almost a third of the total surface area of the planet and contributes hugely to its long and short-term weather and climate patterns. The ocean is sprinkled with an enormous number of islands that played a significant part in the colonial game. Even now, a few Western powers claim foothold and sovereignty on most of these islands. The dismantling of the colonial edifice in Asia and Europe has still not reached the Pacific, which was first sighted by a European in 1513, in the person of Vasco Nunez de Balboa, and crossed by Ferdinand Magellan seven years later. It was this great mariner who christened it mare Pacifico. The book includes ten events that took place in the ocean or its rim, after January 1, 1950. The date is set arbitrarily as it is argued to be the cutoff date in radiocarbon dating on which the era of the Present was assigned. As noted, the Pacific is marked by unmistakable signs of occupation by the mighty, even though the book ends by rhapsodizing about the new consensus slowly emerging, in which the culture and customs of the native people are respected by their masters and a happy blending of values is taking place. Simon Winchester is a best-selling British author who has now settled in the U.S. He has published many excellent titles like Krakatoa and The Map that Changed the World’.

Owing to its mammoth size and unimaginably vast quantities of water it contains, the Pacific ocean play a very critical part in forming the climate anywhere on the planet. Winchester makes interesting and absorbing descriptions of how the interplay of heat and water generate such phenomena as El Nino and La Nina, which can make or mar the economies of many countries due to its capacity to change the pattern of rain elsewhere. People who are gleefully unaware of the peculiar changes of wind and warming in the Pacific are given a rude jolt of reality when the monsoon fails, or a typhoon descends on them, which can lead to loss of lives and disruption of normal life for a long time. It is a lesson to learn for all mankind that the little planet we call our home is so fragile and sensitive. Perhaps people may look up with some more gravity on ecological issues after reading this book.

Climate change and global warming may or may not be induced by man’s actions. But, the author describes another set of actions that are fraught with extreme peril and can lead to lasting effects. The remote Pacific islands have long been a favourite testing ground of nuclear weapons by the U.S. This is a thing of the past, now no nation explodes them above ground. The gruesome description of how the bombs were detonated makes chilling reading, especially the apocalyptic narratives of eyewitnesses who saw thermonuclear devices unleash the terrifying destructive forces hidden in their bellies. A group of inhabitants in a nearby island was subjected to radiation from the bomb, as the planners forgot to take the direction of the wind into account. It was a new piece of knowledge that people had in fact died of nuclear bombs in peacetime too.

The author takes a survey of the islands and nations encircling the Pacific, by telling a story about an interesting incident connected to it. Readers thereby get a vivid image of the various states over which the narrative slowly weaves its warp and woof. The separation of the Koreas and the intransigence of North Korea makes one chapter in the book. In 1968, a U.S. spying vessel was captured by North Korea and its occupants were imprisoned. A long and winding negotiation process began, during which the prisoners were tortured and manhandled at will by the dictatorial regime. After a slew of apologies and dispiriting admissions of guilt from the American side, the hostages were freed after eleven months of captivity. This chapter is very relevant now, since we see the rogue grandchild of the man who was the President of North Korea then, engaged in a standoff with the U.S, whose navy has moved its big aircraft carriers to the South China Sea and Kim Jong Un is readying the nuclear-tipped missiles which are boasted to be capable of striking the American mainland. If Kim Jong Un makes any foolish move such as a direct strike, that would surely be the end of him as well as of his regime, but the loss of lives in such an encounter would be frighteningly huge. Kim would do better by not gifting another Pearl Harbour to the U.S.

Pacific ocean is not so pacific as the name implies, but the first widely appealing images that come rushing to our mind would be of paradisiacal tropical islands and cheerfully careless inhabitants. The author identifies the seeds of a future conflict in the region between the U.S. and the rising superpower of the east, China. It has been the studied program of China to spread its maritime influence to a range of islands known as the First Chain in the near term, to the Second Chain in the medium term, and possibly to the Third Chain which includes Hawaii in the long term. China suddenly got a shot in the arm when the Pinatubo volcano erupted in 1991 in the Philippines. The dust and ash fell heavily on two nearby U.S. military bases which had to be closed down. They couldn’t be reopened owing to nationalistic compulsions of Philippine politics. China duly stepped into the power vacuum in the area by forcefully occupying islands near the archipelago which belonged to nobody and began intimidating Philippine fishermen who inadvertently landed there. China’s highhanded and disdainful policies towards its neighbours are bitterly resented by the East Asian nations. It now browbeats them with its fleet of gleaming new warships built during the last quarter century. Winchester presents a scary scenario of Chinese hegemony in the West Pacific which is increasing day by day and is not effectively checked even by American naval power. He has put forward the shift of American attention from Europe and the Middle East to the Western Pacific as a defining feature of the current century in which the possibility of another cold war can’t be entirely ruled out. The book maintains a firm posture against China and its expansionist policies. Is it a sheer coincidence that in the long list of acknowledgements declared by the author, there is not even a single Chinese man or woman?

The book is very easy to read and is a page-turner most of the time. The relevance of some of the chapters to the Pacific theme is somewhat labored. The history of the rise (and possibly fall) of the Sony Corporation is a moot point. Riding on the establishment of a positive business environment after the Second World War, Sony quickly rose to eminence around the world. The most notable display of its competence was in America, but still, no Pacific ethos can be attributed to it without stretching the point too much. Japan’s transition from a naturalistic temperament to a scientific one is a specifically Japanese phenomenon and have nothing to do with the Pacific. The chapter on surfing is totally unappealing to most readers and appears superfluous. On the other hand, a good number of monochrome plates are added as an excellent visual backdrop to the arguments. A comprehensive number of notes and footnotes are provided. The book is also accompanied by a good bibliography and a huge index.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star