My Life as a Comrade

Title: My Life as a Comrade
Author: K K Shailaja with Manju Sara Rajan
Publisher: Juggernaut, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9789393986597
Pages: 306

K K Shailaja, affectionately called Shailaja teacher, was the most popular and efficient minister in the cabinet led by Pinarayi Vijayan during 2016-2021 in Kerala. As the minister in charge of public health, she steered Kerala’s fabled healthcare system to handle major crises like the outbreak of Nipah and flood in 2018 and the pandemic Covid-19 in 2020. This is a memoir as well as biography of her life as a little girl growing up in a remote village in Kannur and moving into political work. She was elected many times as the representative of that area in the state assembly and was inducted as minister in 2016. Her brilliant track record as minister overshadowed all others including the chief minister. Consequently, she was left out of the next cabinet when her party again formed the ministry in 2021 even though her winning margin of 61,000 votes against her rival was the largest in the state. This book is co-authored with Manju Sara Rajan who is a writer, editor and arts manager. She is the former CEO of the Kochi Biennale Foundation where she oversaw the management of the Kochi Muziris Biennale in 2016.

Communists in Kerala are a confused lot. When the communist regimes in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe collapsed like a pack of cards, Kerala’s communists transformed their political affiliation into a kind of religious belief that Marx’s ideas were gospel truth and applicable for all time but what was found wanting was their physical implementation in those countries where it was enforced till the 1990s. This self-delusion propels Shailaja to assert that what it means for a communist is engaging in the class struggle to eradicate existing ‘feudal-capitalistic structures’ that support class inequalities (p.2). She starts the book with the intension to tell her ‘personal story as well as the story of Malabar and the growth of communism in Kerala’. Of course, by communism she means only the political party with a red flag having the hammer and sickle emblazoned on it and nothing to do with armed revolution. However, she rightfully points out that communism’s influence has seeped into the psyche of most Malayalis, whether they identify with the Left politically or not. Every Malayali is a socialist in some way (p.43). It is jokingly said that ‘if you are not a communist at age 20, you have no heart; but if at age 30 you are still a communist, then you have no brains’. Kerala refuses to grow up in this juvenile respect. The author professes to be a committed socialist and praises the Cuban healthcare system whenever a slender opportunity presents itself. Not only that, she ascribes the success of Kerala’s health sector during the several crises between 2016 and 2021 (during her tenure as minister) as a vindication of the communist dream (p.243). Social revolution that occurred in Kerala is claimed to be facilitated by communists. The author also adds that in fact, many communist politicians gave up their caste-based symbols to shed the allegiance and entitlement attached to them (p.244). This is also a pious wish and piece of propaganda as not only most, but almost all of the Communist stalwarts in the state carried the caste tail in their names till the end.

A persistent false claim made by the Communists in Kerala is that the province’s pole position in education, healthcare and social reforms owes its origin to the work and policies of the communist party in Kerala. In fact, this claim is not even false: it’s absurd. Shailaja argues that the first EMS government’s education bill which guaranteed free education to all, eventually paved the way for Kerala’s much-touted status as India’s most literate state (p.44). To punch holes in this claim, you need only to look up the census figures of 1951. The regions that became Kerala six years later (except Malabar) were the most literate in India even in 1951. The author also proudly talks about ‘party families’ in Kannur in which every member belongs to the communist party and they shun association with other party members. Marital alliances are based on political affiliations of the families. Loyalty to the party is stronger than sanguinary bonds for these people. The loyalty comes in strange and ridiculous varieties. The author had erected the red party flag in front of her house at Pazhassi as a mark of affiliation. Moreover, her husband demanded their son not to enroll for ‘bourgeois streams like medicine or engineering’. Ironically, many of the top brass of communist leaders in Kerala educate their wards overseas who then find lucrative employment in multinationals which their parents and party cadres resist by tooth and nail back home. We also read about occasions when the leaders receive illegitimate personal help across party lines while the ranks battled it out on the streets. In 2004, the party asked the author to do full time political work by resigning her job as a school teacher. She had 18 years of teaching experience and the previous five years as a member of the legislative assembly couldn’t be counted as part of her teaching career. She wanted to have full pension while taking voluntary retirement at that point which required a minimum of 20 years of service. The rival UDF government was in power then, but they obliged her request and issued a special order taking her tenure of 5 years as an MLA countable for pension as a school teacher! Of course, the author could have chosen not to include this incident in the book and no would have been the wiser. But since it is there, it still rankles on the political sensibility and rectitude of the common man.

The book’s title would have served better justice to its content had it been changed to ‘My Life as a Minister’ as most of the informative and refreshing tract deals with her stint as a minister of Kerala in charge of the health portfolio. A good description of the development work undertaken in hospitals and clinics to give them a facelift is provided. Upgradation of facilities and manpower also were undertaken with the public participating in providing the financial resources. Shailaja observes tactfully that money is not the only problem in government, but the will and motivation to do something is even more rare than money (p.171). She also laments that while it may take up to three years even to develop a concept, five years is not enough to ensure its success. The book also includes an eventful narrative on how Nipah and Covid-19 outbreaks were successfully handled in Kerala. Irrespective of political fault lines, it ensured her public image as an efficient and dedicated political worker. During these testing times, officials of the health department worked not as a team, but as a family. They disagreed and argued but there was an intimacy and understanding in the team.

Quite naturally, Shailaja devotes a considerable space to showcase her winning performance in combating the pandemic. ‘The Guardian’ published a profile of her with the headline ‘The Corona Virus Slayer! How Kerala’s rock star health minister helped save it from Covid-19’. The UN invited her to speak on Public Servants’ day in the General Assembly. The Covid mortality rate in Kerala is claimed to be 0.5 per cent while the national average was 1.2 per cent. However, independent online sources indicate that Kerala’s rate was 1.03 per cent which is not that different from the national rate. The book also includes an analysis of excess deaths above the normal in a year. In 2020, there were 29,000 fewer deaths than in 2019. This may be because the Covid curbs led to fewer fatal traffic accidents. Even if traffic deaths were omitted, there were still 24,000 fewer deaths. With this stellar performance behind her, we would have expected her to receive a second term in office as minister. Strangely, she was sidelined and a novice took her place which can only be attributed as a case of king’s envy.

The book includes a timeline of Kerala history which quite incomprehensibly begins with the invasion of Haidar Ali of Mysore in 1766-92 as if Kerala had no history worth its name before the Muslim conquest. This illogical slip is all the more galling as Malabar was the port at which Vasco da Gama made landfall on his epic transoceanic voyage in 1498. The narrative in the book is nothing but a very long political speech with little regard to facts. The author deliberately and fastidiously weaves in a fabricated story of caste oppression. She freely borrows from her grandmother’s experiences in moulding a presentable story of how she was discriminated based on caste. Even then, we often see the landlord, who was an upper caste man, intervening of behalf of the author’s family than against it. It is said that sins of fathers visit the sons, but oppression: would it visit the granddaughter? In one page, she grieves that the landlord sucked the tenants dry with nothing left over after extracting his rent. However, she concedes in another page that her ‘mother and aunt could use the money received as agricultural labourers to buy some cows’ (p.51). There is lavish praise heaped on the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan which looks a bit like apple polishing. The book also includes a lecture on why the ‘Kerala Model of Development’ is the way to emulate for other states in India. It is amusing to note that Shailaja in fact believes in her senseless political rhetoric. After reading the book, people are a bit confused as to why it is written in English as the author had to seek the help of a ghost-writer. If she had used Malayalam, which was also her mother tongue, she could have reached the hearts of her readers effortlessly. But then, we should also keep in mind the target audience. Buoyed by the recognition in international fora, Shailaja seems to have been carried away by the adulation and wanted to expand her wings far wider than the narrow borders of Kerala. Unfortunately, the fate of Icarus was what awaited her. With this imagined stature, she wanted to have a more prominent role for herself in Kerala where people even envisaged her in the role of the state’s first woman chief minister. Politics is a mystery right till it unfolds and there’s no other way to know her fate than wait and watch.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

India’s Secret War

Title: India’s Secret War – BSF and Nine Months to the Birth of Bangladesh
Author: Ushinor Majumdar
Publisher: Penguin Veer, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9780143460268
Pages: 289

1971 was a watershed moment in the Indian subcontinent’s history. It negated the raison d’etre of one of the nations in it. Pakistan was formed in 1947 by dividing India on the basis of religion. The Muslim League claimed Muslims of India to be a separate nation and demanded a separate homeland for them. The fallacy of this logic was pointed out then itself by astute observers but Jinnah and his ilk were adamant in realizing their dream. However, problems arose the moment Pakistan was formed. It constituted two disjoined parts separated by 1000 km of Indian territory in between. 55 per cent of the new nation spoke Bengali as their mother tongue but they practically had no representation in the higher cadres of government and military. Urdu was forcefully imposed on the East, by replacing Bengali. People of East Pakistan resented the dominance of the Western territory which itself was dominated by Punjab. 23 years after independence, Pakistan cobbled together a constitution and elections were held to the National Assembly. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, a rising Bengali leader, swept East Pakistan and obtained majority in the federal assembly. West Pakistanis faced the unpalatable situation of swearing in Mujib as the prime minister. Subterfuges operated at all levels and Mujib found himself arrested and lodged in a Pakistani jail rather than administering the country. Bengalis erupted in rebellion and the province wanted to secede. Repressive measures were undertaken by the Pakistan army. Hundreds of thousands of men were tortured and killed while an equal number of women were raped or taken as sex slaves. Ten million people crossed over to India as refugees. India helped them fight against their oppressors by providing men and material for battles against the Pak army. It did this by cleverly employing the services of its young Border Security Force (BSF) which was constituted only in 1965. It also helped India disclaim any official army involvement. In December 1971, India and Pakistan went in for a war in which Pakistan was humiliated by the surrender of 91,000 of its elite troops and secession of the eastern appanage as Bangladesh. This book tells the story of the operations in 1971 orchestrated by BSF. Ushinor Majumdar is an investigative journalist with Outlook magazine since 2015. This is his second book.

The book also includes a brief narrative of the worsening of the relationship between the eastern and western parts of Pakistan. It appears as if the Muslim League had roped in Bengali Muslims only as a ballast to lend credence to their demand for a nation for all Muslims of India. Apart from religion, there was nothing to unite these Muslim provinces together. Linguistic and cultural differences rattled from the very word go. Jinnah visited East Pakistan only once and disdainfully rejected the proposal to make Bengali one of the national languages of Pakistan. This was awkward when the new nation was taken as a whole as 55 per cent of the population spoke Bengali while only 7 per cent spoke Urdu. Pakistan banned the broadcast of Rabindra Sangeet on radio as it was claimed to violate Pakistan’s cultural values. The Bengali Muslims hated Urdu to the core. When hostilities actually began in 1971, the Bengali resistance movement was initially called the Mukti Fauj (means liberation army in Urdu) but its name was soon changed to Mukti Bahini which meant the same but was Bengali in timbre. In 1962, Mujib secretly reached out to Jawaharlal Nehru with a plan to secede from Pakistan. Astonishingly, Nehru declined to back the initiative as he probably did not have the stomach to antagonize Pakistan. Perhaps this was as well in hindsight, because if a war had broken out then, it was likely that Nehru’s leadership would have ensured defeat of the Indian troops like he did against China! On a more serious note, it might have saved the lives and honour of thousands if he had taken the challenge up.

Bengalis constituted only a very minor share of Pakistan’s military which was totally dominated by Punjabis and Pathans. The army was mockingly called ‘Khan Sena’ in East Pakistan hinting at the typical surname of those soldiers. There was an ill-equipped East Pakistan regiment of the army and a border force called East Bengal Rifles which was fully Bengali in makeup. The liberation movement was formed around the nucleus of the defected military personnel of Bengali origin who joined Mujib. Pakistan used local allies called Razakars and mixed them with regular troops to carry out atrocities in Bangladesh and inside India’s borders. These people were Bengalis but their Islamist doctrinaire bound them to the yoke that enslaved their countrymen. The BSF was the nodal agency in coordinating with the rebels and refugees. They provided shelter to politicians and freedom fighters. Top leaders were flown in to meet Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The name of the new nation and a draft constitution was formed in meetings of rebels conducted inside India. A provisional government was set up in land liberated by the combined efforts of the BSF and Mukti Bahini. Full logistics of moving the people and the press across the border was undertaken by BSF. India’s actions were timely and apt for the dismemberment of her arch enemy. Pakistan was training and arming the separatist Mizo National Front of Mizoram in 1971. In fact, they fought on many occasions alongside the Pakistan army against the BSF and Mukti Bahini troops.

Majumdar is successful in presenting the details of the numerous skirmishes between the opponents in a manner interesting to general readers. It’s a bane of war histories written by veteran soldiers to stick to military lingo and infinite detail while explaining the happenings on the battlefield. This sometimes sounds like what is taught in soldier-training sessions. Majumdar is a journalist and it shows in his choice of narratives and simple language. Bengali rebels arranged sabotage of road and rail bridges after crossing the border, sometimes with BSF men supporting them in combat. The book is written from a BSF perspective and the main contributors of data are retired BSF officers and troops who had long retired from service but were eager to share their experiences with the author. The author also makes effective efforts to bring out the atrocities carried out by the Pakistan army on Bangladeshi civilians. On several occasions, he mention finding the gory bodily remains of women inside surrendered of evacuated military camps who were kidnapped from the surrounding areas and then raped inside the Pakistan military camps.

Even though India won the war in the end, the result was not a foregone conclusion. Indian military sorely lacked resources and modernization of weaponry. The Nehruvian socialist system had already taken its toll on Indian economy. The country languished in extreme poverty with practically no foreign currency reserves. When the BSF was formed in 1965, its director general asked for foreign exchange to procure wireless sets and weapons from abroad. This was denied. He then decided to build the radio sets internally and set up a technical wing. They were fruitful in their efforts but the situation was ironic. Here was a border police force assembling and testing radio sets instead of concentrating their attention on guarding the frontier! The 3-inch mortar used by the BSF was obsolete by 1971. The sad fact was that they were using it against a regular army having sophisticated American and European weapons. Pakistan’s advanced arsenal could not be effectively used on the battlefield because of its incompetent ground troops lacking the expertise to do so. Indian victory depended on soldiers’ valour in the face of poor resources. However, better investment on modernization of forces would have averted many unnecessary casualties and many Indian women could have been saved from the unenviable fate of widowhood.

The book is easy to read and effortlessly takes the readers along with the narrative. It essentially covers the eight-month period from end-March 1971 when Mujib was arrested and the pogrom started to early-December 1971 when full-scale war began. A chapter is earmarked for activity on the western front in the war even though that is not directly relevant to the efforts on the eastern front. On the other hand, the actual war for the liberation of Bangladesh and capture of Dacca is condensed to an unsatisfactory few pages. This may be because the whole of the action was taken up by the Indian army and the BSF had had only a minor role to play. The book also provides some glimpses on the religiosity of Indian soldiers and how soldiers of all religions took part in the festivities of the others as a team.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Upright Thinkers

Title: The Upright Thinkers – The human journey from living in trees to understanding the cosmos
Author: Leonard Mlodinow
Publisher: Penguin, 2016 (First published 2015)
ISBN: 9780141981017
Pages: 340

“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is so comprehensible”, said Stephen Hawking. There are two points here. One is that the profundity of the universe can be understood by the tiny electrical pathways in the brain of a developed ape species that is man. The second point is more inscrutable. Why, among the millions of living or dead species, Homo sapiens is the only genre which can think about its origins and its place in the world? This book is the story of the development of thought and how it went about redefining man’s position in the race for survival. The search for knowledge is the most human of all our desires. Man is a born thinker. The first two parts of the book summarizes the history of human intellect and the growth of science – with special reference to physics. It expounds how knowledge of the things which we can actually observe developed, following Newton’s methods. The final part deals with concepts that can’t be seen, felt or even where its reality is suspect – such as quantum objects. Leonard Mlodinow is an American theoretical physicist and mathematician, screen writer and author. In physics, he is known for his work on approximating the spectrum of atoms and the quantum theory of light.

The early part of the book explains the evolution of humans and what led to the growth of their thinking ability. Nature invested its resources in developing the human brain. Chimps and bonobos are very muscular and have the ability to pull with a force exceeding 550 kg. They also have sharp and rugged teeth to tear with ease through hard nutshells. Man is not endowed with any of these extraordinary facilities, but his brain is exceptionally gifted. The human brain, which accounts for only 2 per cent of the body weight, consumes nearly 20 per cent of the energy a body absorbs. This investment on brain helped us make thinkers who ask questions. Only humans exhibit the quest to understand its own existence. Late Paleolithic and early Neolithic people turned their focus away from mere survival and toward non-essential truths about themselves and their surroundings. This was one of the most meaningful steps in the history of human intellect. Instead of simply believing that somebody or something is at the root of happenings in this world, the early intellectuals stumbled upon the theory that natural forces are behind them. Understanding nature in terms of laws was a new mode of thinking that revolutionized the life of societies. To look at the workings of nature and infer the underlying abstract principle was an enormous advance in human development.

Mlodinow talks about the development of rational thinking in ancient Greece that was channeled to late-medieval Europe through translations made by Arabic scholars. In sixth century BCE, a group of Greek revolutionary thinkers came up with a rational approach to nature, which was claimed to be an ordered entity, and not at chaos. Knowledge was imparted from a master to his disciples directly. The term ‘academy’ owes its origin to the institution run by Plato. The middle ages saw the rise of religion and the eclipse of institutions of high learning. Europe started its dreary stroll through the dark ages. Learning was rekindled among the enfolding darkness by universities that sprang up here and there under the watch of a benign monarch. Scholars needed to be saved from the demands of daily toil to feed their families and to provide them with a pecuniary resource in return for the ‘thoughts’ they expended to push the envelope of useful knowledge at the societal level. Early universities were far different from what they are today. A statute in thirteenth century Germany forbade senior students from drenching freshmen with urine. Professors were paid directly by students, who could also hire and fire them. Students fined their professors for unexcused absence or tardiness, or for not answering difficult questions. If a lecture was not interesting or proceeded too slowly or quickly, they’d jeer and become rowdy. Leipzig town passed a rule against throwing stones at professors!

Human awareness reached its pinnacle in its quest for knowledge with the development of scientific thought after Renaissance. Falsifiability being one of the critical norms of scientific genuineness, many scientists’ work must inevitably end in failures or dead ends. Still, they are exhorted not to fear taking risks or to explore fields not frequented by others. The author advises the scientists to shed the anxiety of being wrong. Any innovator goes down more dead ends than glorious boulevards. To be afraid to take a wrong turn is to guarantee not going anywhere interesting. The book describes about the little known aspect of Newton’s experimentation with alchemy. Even though it ultimately ended in failure, the knowledge collected and documented by Newton helped to advance the experimental methods of various chemicals. There are many crazy schemes, even in modern science, that were proved wrong. The wrong ones are quickly forgotten and the time put into them having ultimately been wasted. Often we call the proponents of these schemes failures or crackpots. But heroism is about taking risks. Mlodinow highlights the factor that helped foster the scientific quest. Science had to overcome the natural human tendencies to feel that we are special and that deities or magic govern the world. That meant overcoming the God-centric doctrine of the church and the human-centric theories of Aristotle. The book illustrates several instances where the theories of Aristotle proved to be the bigger hurdles to innovation than religion. In the end, the author summarizes that it is a fine line that separates an outlandish, crackpot project and an innovative idea that changes everything.

The book then examines the development of the modern disciplines of physics, chemistry and biology based on the lives of the pioneering spirits of each stream. Galileo set the ball rolling in the sixteenth century, followed by glorious stars in the constellation such as Newton, Dalton, Mendeleev, Darwin and Einstein. The biographic sketches are refreshingly updated but the content is essentially the same as one could obtain from any book on popular science. What Mlodinow emphasizes is that these men were not superhuman, but possessed normal human fallibilities. Their life is portrayed as something that is fit for emulation rather than restricted to adoration or even worship in extreme cases.

This text nicely explains the limitations of Newton’s theory of classical mechanics and concludes that it is plain wrong when the domain is as small as the inside of an atom or as big as the gravitational neighbourhood of a star. In the first case, quantum theory has replaced Newtonian mechanics while in the latter, Einstein’s general relativity is the only theory to reach the truth. The inadequacy of Newton’s theory became apparent in failing to explain the phenomenon of black-body radiation which is narrated in detail. The book maintains a personal touch by elegantly roping in the comments made by the author’s late father whose remarks which appeared naïve at first sight exhibited a facet of truth and insight. The senior Mlodinow was tortured in the concentration camps on account of being Jewish and narrowly escaped death when his native country of Poland was run over by the Nazis. He didn't have much education, yet had the wisdom to accept facts foreign to him but process them in the right way. Even if you forgot all the arguments of the author on science, chances are that you are likely to remember some of the expressions or at least the attitude, of his father to science.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

We Also Make Policy

Title: We Also Make Policy – An Insider’s Account of How the Finance Ministry Functions
Author: Subhash Chandra Garg
Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9789356994713
Pages: 494

This book is the memoirs of Subhash Chandra Garg who was the Finance secretary of the government of India in charge of the crucial Economic Affairs department from 2017 to 2019. He was a 1983 batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre. With a long stint in the finance portfolio, he had also worked as the director of World Bank in the US. He had a cordial relationship with Arun Jaitley who was the finance minister who selected him. As Jaitley fell ill, he was substituted by Piyush Goyal. Garg had a strained relationship with him. After the 2019 elections, Nirmala Sitharaman assumed charge as the minister and there was open fight between her and Garg. From the hints in the book, it is safe to assume that the author exhibited a clear streak of independence in work bordering on insubordination. We see him locking horns with other ministers too. After only 55 days of working together, Sitharaman transferred him out of finance to the less glamorous ministry of Power. This shift to a junior position upset him and he took voluntary retirement from service within three months even though Garg protests that the transfer was not the reason for his quitting. This book encapsulates the major issues handled during his tenure and the story of how the policy is formulated in the highest echelons of government. The book has definitely proved its worth in providing ‘an insider’s view of how the Finance ministry functions’ even though the emerging picture is not so reassuring because of the fuzziness of thoughts, clash of opposing visions and the slow pace of decision-making in the government.

It is well known that the postings in the highest circles of bureaucracy are controlled by the wishes of the political masters. Whether it was the result of coincidence or an engineered confluence of circumstances or a pure merit-based selection, Garg was selected as the Director of World Bank while serving in Rajasthan as the state’s finance secretary. It was equally out of the normal that he was recalled before the end of tenure and placed as the secretary in charge of economic affairs in the central finance ministry which oversees the most critical units that set policy such as budget preparation, liaison with RBI and SEBI, setting the government’s monetary policy, inflation targets and printing of currency. No wonder the author was stung when he was shifted out of the ministry.

Recently, the finance ministers of the four south Indian states vehemently complained about the unfair allocation of more financial resources to north Indian states on the basis of the 2011, rather than the 1971 census figures. The southern states performed better in birth control and as a result their population share to the total declined. This in turn reduced their share of resources. This was claimed to be based on the report of the 15th Finance Commission. Garg was instrumental in setting the agenda and guiding the Commission and this book informs that the population aspect was thought of in the initial stages itself and a compensating factor beneficial to the southern states introduced in the final report. He claims that the insistence on using 1971 figures is fiscally counterproductive. The whole objective of the Finance Commission is to determine the right amount of central taxes to be devolved to the states to meet the gap in their fiscal needs to provide a minimum and common standard of services all over the country. This required the Finance Commission to direct resources toward poorer and more populous states. Hence the better performers were given an incentive in a new way which he deliberates in full.

Garg also comments on some policy decisions which were taken in a good spirit but which did not bring in the desired results. He designates the 2016 demonetisation as ‘a misadventure’ and ‘not a clear success’. With this understatement, he examines another policy front opened by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) without any political backing. The central bank under Urjit Patel as governor actively pushed for localization of financial and payment data. IT law did not mandate it but Patel ‘somehow got convinced that data localization was in the national interest’. There was no demand from the players, public or the government and it was very difficult for multinationals to redesign the data storage networks. The author accuses that it was entirely one individual’s preference. We see bureaucrat babus in various departments quickly ganging up for data privacy. This looked eerily similar to the license-quota-permit raj the nation dismantled in the early-1990s liberalization drive. The spectre of the license raj still haunts the corridors of power ready to pounce back at the slightest notice. This book provides many examples in which officers still think in the same way an official in the same capacity thought forty or fifty years ago. It is often the political nudge that sets the trajectory right. This book should be a warning to political visionaries who plan to reform the administration. They would do well to permanently exorcise this ghost of the socialist era, once and for all.

The current Narendra Modi regime provided a tremendous boost to the economy, catapulting the GDP from the tenth position in 2014 to the fifth slot at present. This book claims that even in the face of this huge progress, there is still scope for improvement. It still suffers due to policy paralysis in certain sectors such as the issue of sovereign bonds in foreign currency and privatization of more airports after divesting the six in 2020. Increased lethargy, lack of direction and blurred focus affect the privatization of CPSEs and asset monetization policies. Garg also summarizes the way in which the government should behave on this front. There is no reason for the government to continue in business. Its responsibility is to deliver public goods, formulate policies for businesses and redistribute income from the rich to the poor. Operating businesses is none of its business. It’s a waste of fiscal resources and governance. Privatization is the most appropriate model and the need of the hour is for the government to get out of most CPSEs producing goods and services. It need not be defensive about privatization.

Garg’s writing style is matter of fact, to the point and informational. However, it is not a pleasant read for ordinary readers. Bureaucrats may enjoy the not-clearly expressed nuances and appreciate them with their familiarity to the concerned backstage politics. This makes the narrative rather stiff for others. Besides, this book does not pack enough gossip to make it delectable for the general public. Another notable aspect is the freedom the bureaucrats possess in sticking to their stubborn positions even against the wishes of their politician bosses. Our author was on good terms with Arun Jaitley when he was the minister. After his exit on medical grounds, Piyush Goyal assumed charge. Nirmala Sitharaman took over the portfolio after the 2019 elections. Garg was at loggerheads with both of them. Sitharaman resented his continuing in the ministry and he was shunted to the ministry of power which felt like a demotion to him and he opted to take voluntary retirement with one year to spare in his normal service. In the power ministry too, he had serious differences of opinion with its minister who was himself an ex-IAS officer. Even with all these fights behind him, the author could escape almost unhurt with nothing more serious than transfers to less prestigious offices. This shows that these positions of power and good pay are also conferred with security of tenure. The author summarizes his career with a one-liner that is the pinnacle of understatement - “Life is never dull in the Ministry of Finance”. The book is not exciting, but a good read.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Goa, 1961

Title: Goa, 1961 – The Complete Story of Nationalism and Integration
Author: Valmiki Faleiro
Publisher: Vintage Penguin, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9780670097920
Pages: 391

Great Britain was not the only colonial power that had possessions in India. Even after 1947, the French and the Portuguese continued to hold on to their colonies of Pondicherry and Goa respectively, along with its hinterlands. However, with the achievement of India’s freedom and strengthening of popular freedom movements in these provinces, the writing on the wall was very clear and distinct – colonialism has to go. France addressed this issue and gracefully left India with a treaty in 1956 and India looked eagerly to Portugal to follow suit. However, being less well developed on international etiquette and civilizational maturity, Portugal held on to its Goan estate with a fierceness that originated from stubbornness and autocracy at home. The Portuguese dictator Salazar reiterated his intention to keep Goa under Portuguese rule. Peaceful agitations continued but its prospects of success dwindled each day as Salazar ratcheted up the oppression machinery. Finally, on Dec 18, 1961, Indian armed forces rushed into Goa in a ‘police action’ and subjugated it within 36 hours. The demoralized and ill-equipped Portuguese forces didn’t even put up a decent fight before surrendering. The outcome was rather low key with 22 dead on the Indian side, 17 on the Portuguese side and over 3000 Portuguese prisoners of war. This book is a review of the situation in 1961, with events leading up to it and the consequences of India deliberately veering off its much professed ideal of peace and nonviolence. Valmiki Faleiro is a journalist and prolific writer. He was once the Mayor of Margao city.

The first part of the book describes how Portugal alienated ordinary Goans with its highhanded policies. The locally anointed Catholic priests were against the white clergy from the very beginning. To add to the discrimination, Goa was downgraded from a province of Portugal in 1930 to a mere colony. From the status of citizens of Portugal, Goans were overnight reduced into its ‘subjects’. Civil servants in Goa were replaced with whites to ‘renationalize Goa’. With Salazar’s dictatorial rule of 36 years in Portugal starting from 1932, all political parties in Goa were banned and public get-togethers of any sort discouraged. Even wedding invitations were mandated to carry the seal of the censor. Goans had to suffer racial slurs pronounced by white Portuguese administrators and politicians, such as the remark by one of them that ‘the Goans are for our race what the woodworm is to the wood’. Twentieth century Goa was of no economic or strategic significance to Portugal. Salazar declared in 1954 that maintaining Goa required an annual burden of 7 million escudos. But still, Goa was an emotion, a remnant of Portugal’s glorious nautical history. Portugal also entertained the Hyderabad Nizam’s interests to merge with Pakistan. He had requested one year’s time for accession to India after independence. In the meantime, he offered to buy Goa and thus have a seaport accessible to his landlocked state. His plan was to become a part of Pakistan as its third wing! Nizam’s hopes were dashed in 1948 in another police action staged by Sardar Patel and Hyderabad was annexed to India. This strengthened the apprehensions of Delhi that allowing the Portuguese to stay on in Goa would be a thorn in the nation’s flesh.

The book summarizes the confused and ambivalent attitude of the Congress party towards Goa. While the party was spearheading the freedom struggle against the British, the Goa National Congress (GNC) was doing the same against Portugal in Goa. There were numerous such organisations practicing both violent and nonviolent means. But in 1934, the Congress dissociated its links to GNC citing Goa as an alien land! The GNC then shifted its office from Goa to Mumbai, but the Congress was unimpressed. After independence too, the Nehru government was always reluctant to take the plunge in evicting the Portuguese. In 1954, freedom fighters liberated the Portuguese territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. This intensified the Goan agitation but Nehru still demurred to intervene because ‘it will be construed as India’s interference in the internal affairs of Portugal’ (p.40). Nehru was forever conscious of his personal reputation even at the cost of national interest. He extended the principle of nonviolence, which can at best be regarded as only an aspiration in foreign policy, to absurd limits. The repressive Goan police shot at unarmed satyagrahis on Aug 15, 1955, in which 22 were killed. Nehru came under immense pressure to intervene militarily, but he reiterated in various fora that India will not send in troops. The book indicates that the decision to send troops was also influenced by pressure from external agents. In the Non-Aligned Movement summit held in Sep 1961, Nehru was criticized by the newly created African states to act strong. Several delegates told to his face ‘to act and not just talk’. Besides, things were not going well in the internal politics and economic spheres and a general election was scheduled for Feb 1962. Nehru finally decided to attack and annex Goa in Dec 1961.

Faleiro discusses about how oppressive was the Portuguese regime, particularly after assumption of the prime minister’s office by Salazar. Goa was historically, geographically, ethnically, culturally, linguistically and legally one with India. During British rule, it was commercially integrated to India. Goans were granted free entry to India while Indians were restricted to enter Goa. Tens of thousands of Goans were employed and permanently domiciled in different parts of India. Numerous Goans worked in India’s military and some of them had reached its top positions too. The living standards of colonial Goa were dismal with no opportunities for higher education and decent employment locally. This lack of facilities prompted upwardly mobile Goans to emigrate out of it. As a result, the proportion of Christians in the total population plummeted. They were 64 per cent in 1850. This came down to 38 per cent in 1961 and further slid to 25 per cent in 2011.

As mentioned earlier, Nehru was dilly-dallying on the use of military to liberate Goa. This book explains the alternate actions which he took to bring Portugal to accept his claim of Goa. But as was his industrial, economic and military policies back home, this too was a disaster. India declared an economic blockade of Goa in 1953, preventing all material export from India. But Goa imported all commodities from overseas, including vegetables and cotton yarn from Pakistan. To meet the extra monetary demand due to increased freight, mining and export of the plentiful iron and manganese ores were boosted many fold. Nehru’s administration faced this unexpected challenge with dismay and indecision. Instead of crippling the Goan economy, the blockade resulted in an economic boom. Consumer goods were heavily controlled in Nehruvian socialist economy and as a result, large scale smuggling of these articles occurred across the porous borders of Goa. The ineffective blockade was finally lifted in April 1961, but smuggling continued unabated. India’s decision to take the so-called ‘police action’ was also affected by Portuguese weakness which was established by events in Africa. The French gave freedom to Dahomey (Benin) in 1960. There was a 4-acre micro-territory of Portugal called Sao Joao Batista de Ajuda inside this country which they refused to relinquish to Benin. Having run out of patience, Benin’s forces occupied the territory in July 1961 and served as a model for Nehru to imitate.

The book dedicates a considerable space for elaborating the military activities of Dec 18-19, 1961 in which the Portuguese forces sued for peace and surrendered within 36 hours after the first shot was fired. They were ill-equipped and demoralized. The Portuguese had estimated that even if they deployed its entire military, it would not have held on for more than five days! However, India’s intelligence units failed to make a realistic estimate of Portugal’s defence capability in Goa and as a result erred on the side of caution. The result was like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. Portugal was hugely outmatched in infantry, artillery and navy. There were 17 Indian warships against Portugal’s single ship and they had no air power to defend Goa. One good thing was that the Portuguese surrendered without shedding much blood on both sides even though Salazar had ordered them to fight to the last man and destroy the magnificent buildings of Old Goa. The PoWs were court-martialed in Portugal after their release from India and awarded prison sentences. Some elements had portrayed the Goan Catholic community as pro-Portuguese, un-Indian and antinational. The author takes great pains to debunk this falsehood citing the active participation of the community in the struggle against Portugal. The elite of both Hindus and Christians and the business class supported the Portuguese rule but that was not extended to the ordinary people. The book also includes a note on the crimes committed by a few Indian soldiers on the civilians of Goa as if they were a conquered people. These were extremely isolated events which were quickly acted upon. In fact, the attack included the participation of several Goan officers to convince the locals that the invaders are actually one with them.

The book narrates several goof ups of Nehru but claims that India rose to become ‘a world leader against colonialism after 1947’. It also gives credit to defence minister V K Krishna Menon in planning the Goan offensive, sometimes compelling a reluctant Nehru to fall in line. It also hints that the Chinese attack on Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh hardly a year later was an indirect consequence to India’s 1961 operation in Goa. What is noteworthy in the book is its repeated emphasis on the participation of Goan Christians in the liberation effort. Describing several incidents of protests involving and avoiding violence, the author establishes the truth that Goa’s liberation involved people of both Christian and Hindu faiths in substantial measure. The book also includes a list of 209 Catholic freedom fighters as an annexure. This book provides a good reading experience of a chapter in Indian history which is usually rolled up in one sentence or as a footnote in mainstream rendering of history as it is thought to be an aberration on India’s policy of peace, non-intervention and nonviolence. But Goa is the one episode in which India behaved – as John F Kennedy quipped – ‘like what a normal state would do, instead of sermonizing to the world lofty and impractical homilies’. The author is a Goan and he has included some anecdotes gleaned from local circles.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Remnants of a Separation

 

Title: Remnants of a Separation – A History of the Partition through Material History
Author: Aanchal Malhotra
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2017 (First)
ISBN: 9789352770120
Pages: 385

Before I begin: This is my 700th book review here. The journey which started about sixteen years ago still runs smoothly and happily.

The partition of India into two independent countries in 1947 was sordid to begin with but it turned into a disastrous nightmare with each passing week. An estimated one million people were killed, numerous women were raped or abducted and many tens of thousands were forcibly converted to Islam. Several millions had no choice but to migrate to the other side of the border with whatever little they could carry, mostly in their hands. In several instances, they had only a few minutes to prepare for cutting all roots from their native land. This book is about the reminiscences of those people who migrated in 1947. They were lucky to have escaped with their life, but not so fortunate as to be free of first-hand experiences of the carnage that was played out, especially in Punjab. This book does not simply compile the recollections of these octogenarians but makes them relive their past life based on the few material things they could bring along and has assumed a large sentimental value such as a piece of cloth, a utensil, an ornament or a souvenir connected to a prized association. The book carries the memories from a generation receding into the past to a generation advancing into the future, both with great speed. Aanchal Malhotra is an artist and oral historian working with memory and material culture. She is the co-founder of the ‘Museum of Material Memory’, a digital repository of material culture from the Indian subcontinent, tracing family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity. The author is a descendant of migrants on both sides of the family. This is her dissertation thesis for the degree of MFA (Master of Fine Arts).

This book is organized as a collection of conversations with individuals who witnessed and experienced the unforgettable moments in the subcontinent’s history and its partition. Author’s engagement with the most senior members of a family (the partition is already 76 years old), persuade their great-grandchildren to view them in a new light and as a source of inspiration and encouragement. After all, not everyone goes through the tough times as brought down by cataclysmic events related to the partition of a country that was an organic whole for most of recorded history. The importance of material memory is focused on in this book. Not content with learning the individual experiences, Malhotra prompts her subjects to show her any item of interest that they had brought along in the exodus and still holds dear. These small articles of personal attachment suddenly get transformed into a tangible link to the painful past. We also see that younger family members, who had viewed these items with nothing better than indifference, if at all, quickly find them cherishable and priceless. In a sense, it brings out the links to the past as well as strengthens the ties to the future. The author’s remark on memory loss caused by aging is arresting: “memory begins to fade little by little. First the edges soften, eroding away the most recent years and then slowly age gnaws its way till it reaches even the seemingly impenetrable, the nucleus of our lives – our oldest and dearest memories”.

 One similarity that runs through all the people’s experiences in the early stages is the disbelief and skepticism on the viability of partition itself. The sheer fact that a nation can be divided and its people separated did not cross the minds of common people who went about their normal lives while Muslim politicians openly demanded partition. There were indeed a few ‘nationalist’ Muslim leaders high up in the Congress hierarchy who opposed it but their ratio could be expressed in ppm (parts per million) rather than percentages. The author here gives some leeway to the guilty party and gives the nuance that both political sides wanted partition. She had to travel to Pakistan and interview the people who left India that probably made her adopt this ambivalent argument that is designed not to irritate anybody, but at the cost of truth. Lack of clarity on borders made the situation troublesome as Hindu pockets in Pakistan and Muslim pockets in India near the prospective border did not know to which country they would be annexed to by Cyril Radcliffe, the arbiter of the fate of millions. This book suggests that Radcliffe faltered in some cases and succumbed to favours by conceding to the needs of the elite few over the needs of many, much against the mapmaker’s better judgement.

The author claims that one cannot attribute the events that unraveled in 1947 to a single cause or community and hence the notion of singular responsibility is thereby absent (p.33). This is plain wrong and the result of unwillingness to see the elephant in the room. It was the Muslim side which demanded partition right from the partition of Bengal in 1905, also largely on religious lines. The Bengal division was later reversed, but as the Muslim League grew stronger and stronger with each passing year on the base of concessions by the Congress, it could finally run its writ in 1947. The demand for Pakistan was ignored at first and later resisted, but the League then intensified their claim and resorted to horrible violence such as the Direct Action Day of Calcutta in 1946. Pakistan was born with both pre-natal and post-natal bloodshed. Even then, 35 million Muslims chose to stay back in India. The author’s quest to balance the narrative is obviously woven to please their descendants. Malhotra then notes that ‘it is not religion; it is human nature and quest for power that drives madness of violence’. This is so absurd that it is not even wrong. It is what you can call a secularization of bigotry. The violence was aided and abetted by the tenets of a particular religion. When it flared beyond control, others also imitated their methods to pay them back in the same coin. This reluctance to face the intense religious zeal of interlocutors that went in in the creation of Pakistan is exemplified by an incident narrated in the book. Azra, a 90-year old matriarch in Lahore, had migrated from Jalandhar in Indian Punjab. She recalls that she had actively participated in public processions in Jalandhar shouting Hamara dil mein Quran hai (we hold the Quran in our hearts) and Hamein Pakistan chahiye (we want our Pakistan). At this point, our author incredulously ejaculates ‘but did you actually believe them?’ (p.65). She evidently did, but our author was not willing to accept that the old woman sitting in front of her was a fanatic of the first order! This is a classic instance of the typical liberal hare standing stunned motionless against the headlights of fanaticism. We also read about people who so loved the land to which they belonged that they were ready to convert for the simple privilege of being allowed to stay there. Bhoptiyan village in Lahore district was a Sikh majority one. All the Sikhs converted to Islam to remain there. The author also suggests a division of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 as a workable solution to the Kashmir problem which is embarrassingly naïve.

Even though the author has interviewed 19 people from both sides of the border and presented their cases with a heart-warming clarity, she has clearly missed the communal wood for the individual trees. We see that the people who had gone over to Pakistan do not flinch when asked whether they wanted to undo partition. They don’t. One of them says that there is indeed ‘a difference’ between Hindus and Muslims. The author is unnerved by this candid assertion and mumbles farak kya hai (what’s the difference) to which the kind Pakistani replies that ‘even though we considered ourselves equal to the Hindus in every way, there was no denying the inherent differences’ (p.180). Another boasts that ‘it was not money or material prosperity that brought me here to Pakistan but inspiration. I was inspired by the idea of this land and aspired to become something for it’. On the other hand, this book narrates an incident in which a person who had gone to Pakistan coming back a few years later and establishing a Muslim shrine in Samana, Punjab at which place people of all religions pray. Another lady claims to have come from a generation who professes to be secular and open to pluralism and multiculturalism. These facets are seen in action in India alone, while in Pakistan the minorities are either killed off or converted. One only needs to look at the percentages of minority population in both countries in 1947 and compare it to the numbers at present. The author also claims that when she read Jinnah’s Pakistan Address of March 1940, she ‘could not understand the vehemence, perhaps due to my own naivety’ (p.181). Bigotry is incomprehensible to the liberal mind. The unfortunate part is that since she does not understand it she assumes it to be absent.

Aged people are the subject matter of the book, but it is touching and the way the young generation treats the old is just lovely. The insight that has gone into the author’s occasional philosophical remarks such as ‘life is not easy, but it is never supposed to be’ is truly great. Even people who are not in any way connected to the partition would find this book appealing as it provides a pathway to the hearts and minds of their grandparents and to reevaluate them on the face of challenges they had encountered and overcome. A particular thing to note is that the book is biased towards stories of the rich, influential people like zamindars with large havelis, topmost bureaucrats or people who could afford a year-long world tour in 1947. Anyway, the book presents a rich and fulfilling reading experience.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan

Title: Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan – And the Struggle with the Musalman Powers of the South
Author: Lewin B. Bowring
Publisher: Asian Educational Services, 2003 (First published 1899)
ISBN: Nil
Pages: 233

Lewin B. Bowring was a British civil servant who served as the Chief Commissioner of Mysore from 1862 to 1870. This was the time when the maharajah was all but deposed in name and the kingdom was being directly administered by British officers. Bowring was a man of letters who used the sources that came into his notice in his official capacity and created a concise narrative of the reign of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan. He is much more objective than contemporary British authors but harbours an affiliation to the official perspective. The rule of the father and son duo lasted only 38 years, which might seem at first sight a glitch in the centuries-old rule of the Hindu Wodeyar dynasty of Mysore. But the upheaval the state witnessed in this interval – innumerable wars, sieges, victories, defeats, pillage, booty, plunder, torture of innocent people and forced conversions – mark it as the lowest period in Mysore’s history. Nor was it redeemed to any extent by any gracious policy of these two tyrants. Even today, the name of Tipu Sultan evokes strong responses from the descendants of his victims and serves only to divide the society. In the case of impact on the country, Tipu’s rule may be compared to that of Saddam Hussein and the hard times Iraq had to go through during his devastating stint in power.

In the book’s first part, Bowring depicts Haidar Ali’s ascendancy to power noting that he was treacherous but extremely fortunate. He was a faujdar or military commander of the Wodeyar kings. He was an able soldier who chased the powerful Marathas out of the country. Raised to the title of Fateh Haidar Bahadur, he was the person the king sought help from when the incompetent king found himself in thrall by minister Nanjraj. Haider ousted Nanjraj but himself kept the king a prisoner. At this stage, Khande Rao, another minister, sought help from the Marathas. Haidar was defeated at first but the Marathas had to hastily return due to their defeat to Abdali at Panipat in 1761. Haidar then gained absolute control of Mysore and imprisoned his enemies. He mockingly promised to cherish Khande Rao like a parrot. True to his word, Rao was put in an iron cage and fed uncooked rice and milk till the end of his life. Haidar never refrained from any act, however dastardly, if that could gain something for him. The chief of Chitradurg, Madakei Nayak, stoutly resisted him. However, Haidar saw that the enemy had 3000 Muslim soldiers in his troops, induced a Muslim holy man to corrupt them and betray their master. Nayak was defeated and 20,000 young boys were forcibly taken away to Seringapatam to be converted to Islam.

Bowring also makes an effort to estimate the personality and character of both the protagonists. Haidar was a bold, original and enterprising commander who was skillful in tactics, fertile in resources, full of energy and never desponding in defeat. Unfortunately, he was also a man of the loosest morals and never spared any woman who had the misfortune to attract his attention (p.77-8). He habitually circumcised the prisoners of war for conversion. Still, the author claims that he was free from bigotry when compared to his son Tipu. Just imagine how fiendish Tipu might have seemed to his contemporaries! Haidar was permissive in employing people of other religions as his officials so long as they obeyed his orders.

This book introduces Tipu as a conceited zealot and bloodthirsty tyrant who always violated treaties and ceasefire obligations. Many a times, he promised personal safety to the besieged but as soon as they surrendered, imprisoned them. Tipu was a bitter foe of the British but that does not make him a freedom fighter. He was an ally of the French who were also looking to establish colonies in India. Tipu in fact drove the kings of Cochin, Travancore and Coorg to the bosom of the British to obtain help in defending against Tipu’s invasions. But Tipu’s star set in 1792 when the allied forces of the British, Nizam and the Marathas besieged Seringapatam and a humiliating treaty of capitulation was imposed on him. He had to cede half of his territories, pay three million rupees, release all prisoners and give two of his sons as hostages. Bowring deduces that Tipu was urged on by religious bigotry, innate cruelty and despotism. He thought little of sacrificing thousands of lives to his ardent zeal and revengeful feelings. These darker shades in his disposition are not relieved by any evidence of princely generosity, such as Haidar Ali occasionally showed (p.220). He sent ambassadors to Mauritius, which was the nearest French military base urging its governor to invade India as Tipu’s ally. Napoleon’s victory in Egypt in 1798 and other international interests finally convinced Britain to unseat this thorn in their flesh. Tipu fell in battle and died befitting a brave warrior. That seems the only saving grace for him.

The book includes a whole chapter on Tipu’s fanaticism and cruelty as if it had anticipated the glorifying false narrative a section of the people would attribute to him in future. During the siege of Mangalore, 30,000 Christians were taken to Seringapatam and forcibly converted. Similar was the fate of the people of Coorg who revolted. He destroyed numerous temples in Malabar and forcibly converted its inhabitants. In Kuttippuram, 2000 Nairs were converted and forced to eat beef as proof of their conversion. He frequently mentioned in his dispatches that ‘Hindustan is overrun with infidels and polytheists’ (p.187). He changed place names to denote their submission to Islam. Devanahalli, where he was born, was renamed Yusafabad, Chitradurga to Farukh-yab Hisar, Mangalore to Jamalabad, Sadashivgarh to Majidabad, Madikeri to Zafirabad and many more. Tipu filled his subordinate cadre with officials who shared his ruthless spirit. There was a commander named Mohammed Raza in his army. He was popularly called Benki Nawab which means Lord of the Fire. It is said that on one occasion, he shut certain Nairs up with their wives and children in a house and burnt them alive (p.191).

The book affords much historical vigour in presenting the narrative. Whenever a king or dynasty is mentioned, their pedigree and succession charts for a few generations before and after are given. Bowring assumes the shades of a disdainful Orientalist at times. It is almost a creed for him that the natives are not trustworthy. He comments that European diplomats are no match for the duplicity and craft of Orientals. By the time this book was written in 1899, the French had been totally eclipsed and marginalized to a few toeholds on the subcontinent’s coast. This encourages him to do a What-If analysis related to the mid-eighteenth century wars. The author points out that the French reserved all its strength for operations against the British in North America and seemed indifferent to recovering the prestige it had lost in India. Had it dispatched a sufficient army to the Coromandel Coast when Haidar was operating against the Madras forces, Fort St. George would have fallen and British authority would have been supplanted by the French. In the end, De Bussy arrived too late. With Haidar’s death and the success of Hastings’ diplomacy, French influence terminally declined. The Chapter 15 titled ‘Haider declares War Against the English’ was missing in the copy I handled, but the pages were numbered sequentially without any error.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star