The Man Who Invented History

Title: The Man Who Invented History – Travels with Herodotus
Author: Justin Marozzi
Publisher: John Murray, 2009 (First)
ISBN: 9780719567131
Pages: 333

Legend is a collection of traditions handed across generations in oral form while history is a collection of traditions transmitted in the written form. This is a very loose interpretation or definition of the state of things as far as these two ideas are concerned. How did history originate? Hagiographies aside, we have a clear source of the description of past events and a resourceful attempt to pinpoint the reasons that led to specific events. Herodotus, also known as the Father of History, was a Greek geographer and historian who compiled a history of the Greco-Persian wars in the fifth century BCE. In it, he examined what prompts a king or a country to go to war and comes up with the famous axiom that 'no one is fool enough to choose war instead of peace. In peace, sons bury fathers, but in war, fathers bury sons'. Justin Marozzi is an English journalist, historian and travel writer who offers easily and pleasantly readable travel histories. In this book, he retraces the travels of Herodotus into Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and Greece and provides a re-reading of the ancient Greek historian in the changed intellectual setting of the modern era and finds that Herodotus is still relevant, perhaps even more so, than in the centuries that had gone.

Herodotus' book 'The Histories' is a chronological history of the Persian wars, of kings like Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and Xerxes. It also consists of hundreds of digressions some of which are not relevant to the storyline, but consciously incorporated to titillate the audience because Herodotus told his story in front of groups of his countrymen. 'The Histories' is somewhat huge and with full of digressions, containing illicit eroticism, sex, love, violence, crime, strange customs of foreign peoples, imagined scenes in royal bedrooms, flashbacks, dream sequences, geographical speculations, natural history, short stories and Greek myths. It's history as well as a page-turner (p. 6). The book includes rich samplings of these asides. Still, the original is beyond the reach of Marozzi as it contains stories about 'life-saving dolphins, multiple testicle slicers, other-worldly animals, beard-growing priestesses' and so on. Herodotus acknowledges the fantastical nature of his narrative and confesses that 'I am obliged to record the things I am told, but I am certainly not required to believe them'. Moreover, he wrote in prose. In an era when poetry was the ultimate form of literary expression, Herodotus mastered prose. History is often said to show warnings to present society on the logic that 'if one understands the past, he will be able to avoid making the same mistake twice'. Marozzi deems this to be one of history's most enduring illusions.

Herodotus' historiography, as reported by the author, is rather straightforward. He relied for his historical enquiries on the priests, with whom he appears to have checked in on every trip. He introduced the concept of cities rising and falling as time goes on and of empires coming and going. It was a penetrating observation when history itself was in its infancy. Herodotus is the quintessential travel writer and historian and travel writing has a long and distinguished tradition of artifice and exaggeration which is abundantly exhibited by his works. What makes Herodotus' works stand apart is the supreme ideal of religious tolerance in his narrative at a time before the region was filled with the monotheistic bigotry of the Abrahamic faiths. Castigating the Persian King Cambyses who desecrated Egyptian temples after conquering the land, he remarks: "Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things" (p. 95). Herodotus was the first to record so much details about Egypt which provided the world with the greatest store of information about the country until the nineteenth century. He devoted an enormous chunk of his book 'Histories' to Egypt. He describes about the 'opposites', how everything about Egypt is completely different from the rest of the world such as its writing system that goes from the right to left, the practice of circumcision, and priests shaving their heads. But there is nothing scornful or dismissive in the narrative or in his tone. The richness and diversity of human life is something to be cherished, not to fear or despise, he seems to say. What Herodotus said about Greece is not much dwelt upon, even though the author has spent a considerable time there. He contents with the remark that a new era of Athenian democracy and the golden era of Greece was dawning at the time Herodotus lived and observed.

Marozzi travels to Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and Greece and retrace the travels of the ancient Greek historian. He visited Bodrum in Turkey which was Herodotus' birthplace that was known as Halicarnassus at that time. At every place, the author visits local scholars and archaeologists to assess how Herodotus is still relevant to the local society. His visit to Babylon in Iraq coincided with the US invasion against Saddam's 'weapons of mass destruction' and the Iraqi society was on the boil. He spends a tense time there expecting a terror attack every time he steps out of the International Green Zone. He compares Bush's war to Xerxes' against Greece which he undertook repudiating the sage advice of his uncle to his cost. Egypt was safe, but again they 'are religious to excess, beyond any other nation in the world' as observed by Herodotus 2500 years ago. He further points out the moral decay in Egyptian society. On Greece, the author notes democracy as a significant feature of Greece then as well as now. The fact that democracy established itself in Greece but lost out to monarchy in Persia, is thought of as a defining feature of the Hellenic spirit. Two and a half millennia later, Greeks are still passionate about their democracy. They go on strike or do a protest march at the drop of a hat.

Quite obviously, Herodotus was constantly interested in religion as he is fascinated with how two civilizations with different customs come to confront each other in wars. It was like this in the fifth century BCE and it still is, in the twenty-first century except that it is the Greek Orthodox Church which serves as the bastion of Greek identity against the encroaches of Islam from the East. This being so, Marozzi displays an evident asymmetry while handling the two religions. While he maintains a respectful silence towards Islam in spite of the horrifying instances of terrorism that was running rampant around him at the time of his visit, he mocks the Greek Orthodox Church and makes fun of it in every possible way. This goes even to the extent of body-shaming senior clergy as in one instance he describes a high priest as 'a man who could eat half a cow, a couple of chickens, a side of ham and still have room for baklava and ice cream' (p. 314). But in Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, he is a disciplined school boy who does not waver from the obedient line when Islamic practices are concerned. They are never criticised and not even their perceived shortcomings are pointed out even though he has met activists in all these places. Marozzi takes particular care not to revisit the Ottoman occupation of Greece that was ended only in 1832. The centuries of Turkish dominance were a devastating period in Greek history that saw enslavement of the people to their Muslim overlords. This background must be kept in mind while evaluating the Greeks' attitude to Turkey. Without narrating this crucial backdrop, the author criticises Greeks' natural animosity against Turks who occupied them for five centuries and nearly wiped out its culture. He introduces the head of the Greek Orthodox Church and a right-wing politician who accuse the Turks as barbarians as intolerant individuals and their outlook uncivilized even though they clarify that what they mean is those Turks who actually took part in the atrocities. At the same time, he joins a protest march organised by Left student unions against the 'imperialist' policies of America and Britain, which is the author's own country. This protest burned violent in the end and clashed with the police. Wokes seem to be anti-national everywhere.

It is evident from the text that the author fancies himself as a modern-day Herodotus, the Father of History. He faithfully follows the master in his footsteps and even tries to imitate the tropes which were used to attract readers' attention. Unfortunately, he does not live up to the reputation of his celebrated role model except in making some explicit and suggestive descriptions of erotic situations. Marozzi's obsession with erotic passages in Herodotus' narrative makes the book unrecommendable to general readers. Of course, this is subjective and relative too. There are people who would enjoy them. The reason for including so much of them in the book seems to be the same as that of the original - to keep the readers or listeners amused. The author plays some tricks to extrapolate them to modern times. Herodotus speaks of a strange Babylonian custom where every woman must go to the temple of Aphrodite once in her life and sit there till a stranger comes to have intercourse with her. Then she can go home. Herodotus slyly notes that some unattractive ones have to linger for three or four years to get the chance. Here Marozzi takes over and informs us that the Polish archaeologist blonde who guided him at Babylon 'would not have had to hang around for so long'! As part of following the Herodotean tradition of recording strange events, this book witnesses the exorcism of a woman in an Orthodox Church in Thessaloniki by a priest. The interesting part is that the woman was a doctor. However, this may be doubted to have been a deliberate inclusion to accentuate the cultural backwardness of modern Greece and to stress the author's perception that it does not inherit the intellectual efflorescence of ancient Greece. This is unfortunate because the author was helped to the extreme by Greek cooperation while travelling the country and its warm hospitality is repaid like this.

The book is recommended only to serious readers of history.

Rating: 2 Star

Shattered Lands

Title: Shattered Lands – Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia
Author: Sam Dalrymple
Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2025 (First)
ISBN: 9789369894628
Pages: 520

Hindu nationalists flaunt the map of an undivided India - Akhand Bharat - that existed in the ancient period where Indian culture prospered and illuminated the culturally benighted frontier lands. This territory usually consisted of the modern nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and of course, India too. This diagram is only a plot of the cultural spread of India, but critics accuse it to be evidence of hegemonic designs on the part of Hindu nationalists quite forgetting that this map is or were not a political one. India’s soft power united this varied landscape rather than a central administration, bureaucracy or military. In truth, all the people who look at the map know in their hearts that such a political union never existed in the past and most likely would not come into being in the future. At this point, it may appear as something out of the blue to learn that such a political union, or an approximation to it, really existed till 1937 which was divided five time and the final partition occurred as late as 1971 to make the map that we see today. At that time, Afghanistan still did not belong to India, but Burma, South Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait did. This book tells the story of five partitions of the British Indian Empire that most people don’t know about – apart from the partition of India in 1947 and that of Pakistan in 1971 (to make room for Bangladesh). Sam Dalrymple is the son of William Dalrymple, but the biographic note on the book curiously omit this information. Instead, it goes on with a lengthy introduction such as he was a Delhi-raised Scottish historian and award-winning film maker. This is his first book. Even though Sam does not flaunt his pedigree, he follows his father in spirit and exhibits an anti-Hindu and anti-Indian bias which is a shade darker than William’s. This generalisation is a sweeping one that does not include his latest book, ‘The Golden Road’.

The author starts with debunking the urban legend that the Great Wall of China was the only man-made structure visible from outer space. It is not, he asserts, but adds that the India-Pakistan border is, especially at night. A wall of separation, which didn’t exist a few decades before, came up overnight and has become a noted feature of the earth, as proof that one’s nationality need not be of one’s conscious choice. Till 1928, a vast swathe of Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, were bound together under a single imperial banner known officially as the Indian Empire or as the Raj. Its people used the Indian Rupee and were issued passports stamped ‘Indian Empire’. All the protectorates in Arabia were legally part of India under the Interpretation Act of 1889. The list of Indian princely states even opened alphabetically with Abu Dhabi. The British were determined not to let the Arab territory administered by an independent Indian nation. As a result, they separated the Arab states on Apr 1, 1947, just four months before independence. Dalrymple claims that it was India’s greatest lost opportunity, willingly giving up the combined oil wealth of Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE. The sheikhs were some of the poorest rulers because oil industry was still in its infancy and they were not entitled to any gun salutes. However, the era was not only that of partition but of integration too. Over 550 princely states vanished from the map through the pioneering efforts of V.P. Menon and Sardar Patel. India had increased by almost two-thirds and Pakistan’s landmass doubled. There is no other revolution in history that ended so many monarchies in so short a span of time and without liquidating the monarchs.

The book consistently exhibits an anti-Hindu bias which sometimes spill over to anti-India hatred. Dalrymple alleges that Hindu nationalism was a key driving force in the earlier partitions separating Burma and Arabia (p.7) on the flimsy assumption that these regions do not belong to the Akhand Bharat imagined by them. This seems not to be true as a few pages later (p.18), he informs that Simon commissioners found Rangoon restive with a strong demand to separate from India. In fact, just before Simon reached there, he wrote to his mother that ‘Burma is not really India at all’. Even Gandhi was for separation because in 1927 he categorically stated that ‘I have no doubt in my mind that Burma cannot form part of India under Swaraj’ (p.21). The second Round Table Conference, which included Gandhi, decided to separate Burma on Apr 1, 1937. A prominent section of the Burmese society wanted to stay with India. A Buddhist monk affectionately called Mahatma Ottama opposed Burmese separation. He became the president of the Hindu Maha Sabha in 1935. This was the first time a Buddhist ever held that position. However, anti-Indian riots in Burma in 1930 and afterwards killed hundreds. The author further claims that the decision to separate Burma was not taken with any long-term planning. The government overlooked the fact that 15 percent of India’s rice had come from Burma which was blocked by Japanese occupation in World War II. Famine spread in Bengal and the government stood watching in heartless indifference. Millions died of starvation but the British government was not providing any relief (p.111). The author assigns only partial responsibility to them as the provincial government was run by Indians from 1937 onwards. Censorship prevented any news of it coming out. At the end of two years after the famine began, the death toll touched two million. The book shows how the British put paid to any chance of making India grander. A few days after Burma was separated, the decision to free Aden and other Arabian states were taken. The aim was that Indians would not be allowed to run the Persian Gulf in the event of independence. Perhaps the British had subconsciously felt in 1937 that India’s freedom was not far away.

Sam Dalrymple’s abomination of Hindu organisations which spills over into a dislike of India as a whole, is incomprehensible as he is a permanent resident of Delhi and Indians form the bulk of his readership. As such, a very jaundiced version of the events leading to and arising out of the Partition is given in the book which offers nothing new except the anti-India tirades. In 1946, the Muslim League obtained 87 percent of the Muslim vote on the issue of Pakistan’s creation. It was a referendum for Pakistan and Indian Muslims eagerly came out to support creating a Muslim nation by dividing India. Ironically, the most fervent support had come from Muslims in the provinces which stayed in India. However, these Muslims did not migrate to Pakistan when that county was formed, but continued their residence in India. The author's clear anti-Hindu prejudice comes out in the open in reports on Partition-related violence. He virtually claims that Hindus started the violence on Direct Action Day in Kolkata. On the other side, looters raiding Hindu shops were said to be ‘stocking up before the feared second famine’ (p.151). He accuses the RSS of training young men in Lahore in ‘using bombs and pistols’ (p.154). This is alleged to have prompted Jinnah to expand the Muslim League National Guards a hundredfold for the defence of Muslims. Even the religious violence is portrayed as simple excesses by Hindu organisations. He repeats some incidents of Muslims saving their Hindu neighbours during riots in East and West Pakistan while the brutality of violence is the prime focus when India is concerned. In Hyderabad, the author dismisses the Razakars’ brutal anti-Hindu violence as exaggerations (p.265) while conjuring up instances of conversion of Muslim women after Hyderabad’s forced annexation to India. He sources this outrageous accusation only from the book written by Abdul Ghafoor Noorani. Even Pakistan’s invasion of Kashmir in Oct 1947 is portrayed as a ‘reaction’ to the massacre of Muslims in Jammu. He even makes out that had Pakistan did not hesitate to move in support of the Lashkar invaders, Indian army would not have been able to push them back. All of this is typical Pakistani propaganda regurgitated by a British author for consumption by an unsuspecting Indian public!

In addition to having a dig at Indian nationalism every now and then, Dalrymple surreptitiously nurtures Naga separatism in the tribal areas of India’s northeast. He coins phrases like ‘unresolved questions of nationality in the Indo-Burmese border lands’ as a result of the latter’s separation from India in 1937. He claims that ‘Nagas felt betrayed’ by the British decision to split into two states. There’s even a map of ‘Greater Nagaland’ comprising regions of Manipur, Assam, Arunachal and Burma (p.328). It is to be feared that this Delhi-domiciled Scot may become a leech extracting lifeblood out of India. His remarks on the disturbed post-partition religious atmosphere are not honest but specious claims like ‘no truth or reconciliation mission has ever tried to address any of the deep-seated traumas of the fifth of the world’s population whose lives are daily informed by these great tragedies (p.428). This requires one to be intellectually truthful. Accept that Muslim invaders have carried out countless atrocities in India, then recognise it as evil and try to reconcile the modern world with lessons learned from the past. Instead, the secular liberals deny them outright or claim that these were beneficial to Indians. Such a road will take you nowhere. The book also provides some interesting facts about the Indian community in Arabia. The Sultan of Oman made Kanak Khimji, a Gujarati merchant, a sheikh of the new ‘Bania’ tribe. He was the first Hindu sheikh.

This book is a hodgepodge of Left-Islamist calumnies against Hindu nationalism which on closer inspection is a scapegoat to mask its real intent to go for India's jugular. There is no doubt that if this book was published in Pakistan, Sam Dalrymple would have been feted with the prestigious Nishan-e-Pakistan. Instead, as of now, the naive Indian society subsidizes this insidious piece of one-sided research. Sardar Patel is portrayed as a villain who helped the RSS kill Muslims while serving as the Home Minister. He accuses that Patel ordered the release of criminals and justifying the violence. V.P. Menon is termed as ‘indentured-labourer-turned civil servant’. On the other hand, he worships Nehru and rehabilitates the Junagadh Nawab who loved dogs better than his begums and was corrupt to the core. This is alleged to be false and made up by India because the Nawab chose to accede to Pakistan even though his country was Hindu-majority and shared no land border with Pakistan. Make no mistake about it – The author’s writing style is as pleasant as his father’s and he is sure to attract more and more gullible Indians as his fans. That’s the saddest part. This book is hence a dollop of poison coated with honey. The book makes a prescient observation about the world that the last decade has witnessed the decline of globalization, the strengthening of borders and the resurgence of nationalism across the world.

The book is recommended only to those readers who can see through its charming shell at the malicious intent lurking at the core.

Rating: 1 Star

The Revenge of Geography

Title: The Revenge of Geography – What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
Author: Robert D. Kaplan
Publisher: Random House, 2012 (First)
ISBN: 9781400069835
Pages: 403

The concept of a land of domicile, a country or a nation, is inseparably linked to geography which demarcates the boundaries of the entity. A nation is virtual, but its boundaries are often not. Kalidasa's epic poem Kumarasambhava starts with a description of the borders of India thus: "In the northern direction lies the divine-souled lord of mountains named Himalaya. Plunging into the eastern and western oceans, he stands as if he were the measuring rod of earth". These lines were composed in central India in the fourth century CE. Similarly, every country was demarcated by its natural frontiers. As migrations and invasions upset the rhythm of political life, artificial or no borders came up to separate nations. When natural borders faded, religion, ethnicity, language and ideology came to separate human societies. With the blindingly fast adoption of technology in transportation and communication, geography was thought to be irrelevant in the twentieth century because people could talk to each other in real time across the globe and can meet in person in a few hours. While this may be the obvious thing, this book argues that geography is not totally displaced and sometimes it will come back with a vengeance upsetting a strategic calculation or as an unexpected demographic flashpoint. The book supports these findings with well-thought-out arguments. Robert D. Kaplan is a renowned foreign policy expert who has authored fourteen books on foreign affairs and travel. He has been a foreign correspondent for The Atlantic for more than a quarter-century.

Kaplan makes a short review of the state of things and its historical development to the position it is in now. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, geography was an honoured discipline to which politics, culture and economics were often conceived of in reference to the relief maps. The author addresses the question of historical consequences and economic progress of different states based on their geography. An interesting point is his response to the question of why Africa is so poor. The geographically anchored answer is that though it has an area five times that of Europe, its coastline is only a quarter as long. It lacks many good natural harbours. Few of tropical Africa's rivers are navigable from the sea, often dropping from interior tableland by a series of falls, so that interior Africa was isolated from the coast. Moreover, the Sahara Desert hindered human contact from the north. The thick forests also prevented easy travel along the route. This may seem to be a deterministic argument which concedes to fate the full responsibility on the destiny of a region. Technology helped mankind to undo the geographical knot. The first cycle of the post-Cold War era saw military interventions in Kuwait, Serbia and Kosovo which appeared to be benign and also a defeat of geography through air power and the triumph of humanitarian intervention. In the second cycle involving Iraq and Afghanistan, the revenge of geography turned the tables on the Americans. This link to geography and human action was noted by ancient scholars as well. Herodotus, born around 490 BCE, maintains the perfect balance between geography and societal interactions in his narrative about the origins and execution of war between the Greeks and Persians.

The book then examines the theories put forward by eminent scholars around the turn of the twentieth century and how relevant they still are to deciding the probable course of action. Sir Halford J. Mackinder is the father of modern-day geopolitics whose thesis made central Asia the pivot on which the great empires of the Eurasian heartland rested. Russia was adjacent to this region whose natural protective border was only forests which were porous to the horse-mounted barbarians. In the thirteenth century, it fell prey to the Golden Horde of Mongols. Thus Russia would be denied access to the European Renaissance and branded forever with the bitterest feelings of inferiority and insecurity. Nicholas J. Spykman thought a little differently. Instead of the central heartland, he held that the Rimland of Asia such as comprising the demographic giants of Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, Japan and the oil-rich Middle East, with their littorals, was the key to world power because in addition to dominating Eurasia, the maritime-oriented Rimland was central to contact with the outside world. The defence of Western Europe, Israel, moderate Arab states, Shah's Iran and the wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam all carried the notion of preventing a communist empire in the heartland from extending control to the Rimland. The third complementary theory in this field is from Alfred Thayer Mahan who postulated that sea power was not only more important than land power in the fight for dominance, but also less threatening to international stability. The limited capacity of navies to extend coercive force inland made them no menace to liberty and usually limited them to the role of protecting commercial shipping lines. Hence, he argued, instead of the heartland of Eurasia, the Indian and Pacific oceans are the geographical pivot of empires.

    The book provides some prescient observations on the political mindset of Russia that would set it in a belligerent mood against its neighbours and the Western world. Russia was always trying to expand whether it was under the Romanovs, Communists or Putin. Its expansionism was fuelled by its vulnerable state, which had no natural frontiers and hence always subject to invasions from the outside. In 1991, Russia was shorn off all its annexes in central Asia and was stripped to its lowest land extent since the time of Catherine the Great. The 2022 Ukraine war has its roots in this mentality of Russian politicians. Kaplan argues (in 2012) that Putin's concentration on Ukraine is proof of his desire to anchor Russia in Europe by re-creating a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Ukraine is the pivot state that in and of itself transforms Russia. With it back under Russian domination, 46 million people would be added to Russia's Western-oriented demography. Examining the Indian subcontinent, the author comments that with the real possibility of the US and China becoming rivals, the direction in which India tilts could determine the course of geopolitics in Eurasia, or in other words, India would be the ultimate pivot state (p.228). He also advises the US to engage in wars where their air and sea power is involved, but not the army. It is the permanence of small wars that can undo America, not the odd, once every third of a century miscalculation, however much tragedy and consternation that causes.

With the theories set in the foreground Kaplan goes back and analyses each region one by one in some detail. He examines Europe, Central Asia, India, China, the Middle East, Iran and Turkey, Mexico and the oceanic appendages of great powers. Relying on Toynbee's statement that the static border between a prosperous and civilized state and a less civilized and poor neighbour, always works to the advantage of the economically weaker but physically virile barbarian, unless the border is pushed outward by the stronger nation. He cautions that the border between the US and Mexico falls in this category and speculates on the probability of Mexicans overrunning the southern frontier states of the US at least. The author wants the theocratic regime in Iran to get toppled, but stops short of condemning them on the issue of human rights violations against its own citizens. He suggests diplomatically that the Shia imagination is more easily adaptable than Sunni to the idea of revolution which required a sense of history and social justice combined with that of martyrdom, but clarifies immediately that the world will not see the true appeal of Iran in all its cultural glory until the clerical regime liberalizes or is toppled.

This book was written in 2012 and appears so outdated after the Ukraine war of 2022, Gaza conflict in 2023 and the Iran war of 2026, all of which seem to have rewritten the balancing equations of power in the world. The book accepts as a precondition that the US can control almost anything anywhere in the world and though it can sometimes make mistakes, taken as a whole it is a benevolent power. This prejudice forces the author to handle other issues as consequences rather than causes. A lot of political and strategic analysts' writings are examined and quoted in support of the author's argument.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

A Small Town in Ukraine

Title: A Small Town in Ukraine – The Place We Came from, the Place We Went Back to
Author: Bernard Wasserstein
Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9780241632703
Pages: 290

Hitler and the Nazis massacred six million Jews in the Holocaust. Beneath this ball-park figure lies an unimaginable level of suffering: both of individuals and the families they belonged to. Families were plucked out of their surroundings and thrown into a machine that usually crushed them out of existence. If they were lucky to escape with their lives, often death looked like the more desirable fate. Bernard Wasserstein, the author of this book, is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Chicago and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. Being a Jew whose grandparents lived in Berlin, Germany in the Hitler period, he recounts the story of how they met their death in the Nazi pogrom. His grandparents and paternal aunt perished in the genocide in Poland while his father miraculously escaped as he was away at the time when the family was rounded up. The family originally belonged to the small town of Krakowiec (pronounced Krakowitz) in Poland on the Ukrainian border. Both the World Wars found this little town in the midst of the combat zone. Its ownership changed hands several times - from the Habsburg Austrians to Poland, then to Germany, then to the Soviet Union and finally to Ukraine where it now rests and its name has been changed to Krakovets. This book tells the history of this town too as an inseparable aside to the destiny of the Wasserstein family even though they lived only for a short time in the end. This book is an attempt to observe and understand how some of the great forces that determined the history of our time could affect ordinary people.

Berl Wasserstein, the author's grandfather, was the head of the family in the 1910s and they hailed from Krakowiec. Being a remote backwater there were no prospects to prosper by industry. The suffocating anti-Semitism thwarted Jewish enterprise to improve their lot. Berl migrated to Berlin which offered better opportunities along with his wife Czarna and children Addi Wasserstein (the author's father) and daughter Lotte (author's aunt). This was 1930s when the Nazis controlled the political and commercial aspects of Germany. Legally, the family were Polish citizens as German identity papers were not issued to them. However, anticipating expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany, Poland shut its gates to those who had not been to Poland in the preceding few years even though they claimed Polish citizenship. Germany expelled all male Jews and Berl and Addi were stranded in the no-man's land between the two countries. They were taken back to Germany temporarily and asked to leave the country. All except Addi went back to Krakowiec and lived there for a few months. When Germany overran the place in World War II, Jews were first isolated in ghettos and then taken to a labour camp where the family was mercilessly shot. Meanwhile, Addi found safe passage to Hungary just before the gates closed. He moved on to Italy, Turkey and finally to Palestine. He then migrated to England to set up a new life there. This story is narrated by the author in a poignant manner. It is only with a sense of deep sadness that readers can go through this book. How stoically the victims met their fate continues to amaze me.

The book provides some horrifying examples of how anti-Semitism was practiced in eastern Europe. In some instances, every Jew was mandated to wear a white armband with a blue star of David. If a Jew passed a German in the street, he was required to remove his hat on pain of death. Anti-Semitism ran high in Poland from very early on. When the town of Krakowiec was annexed to Austria in 1772, its Empress Maria Theresa expressed horror and disgust at the discovery that her new territory contained 200,000 Jews. She considered Jews a plague who practice 'all sorts of dirty dealing'. During World War II, the fortunes of Germany and Soviet Union ebbed and flowed many times. Having tasted German rule, the Jews greeted Soviet occupation with relief, as the lesser evil. The joke went round that whereas the Nazis had condemned the Jews to death, under the Soviets the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Wasserstein brings out the ethnic rivalries in Eastern Galicia to which the town belonged. The Poles and Ukrainians were at each other's throats and both of them were against the Jews. Roman Shukhevych, who is feted as a Ukrainian freedom fighter is claimed in this book as a Nazi collaborator, anti-Soviet guerrilla leader and ethnic cleanser of Poles and Jews. It appears that the Soviet rule was somewhat benign to Jews. But, the Soviet administration carefully avoided the word 'Jew' in their reports on Nazi atrocities. It was replaced with the term 'Soviet citizens'. A final, posthumous indignity was thus inflicted on the victims - the deprivation of their core identity. Today, there is no memorial to its former Jewish inhabitants in Krakovets, apart from a meagre wooden signpost placed in an empty field to mark the location of the former Jewish cemetery.

The book is quite easy to read and the narrative is in an appealing style to most readers. Most of the Polish names of people and places appear without vowels and are hard to pronounce. It also contains a detailed history of Krakowiec over the centuries which seems laborious and does not serve any purpose. If the family was not staying in the town for decades, their links to the place would be tenuous. However, this book is another worthy reminder of the Holocaust and impels the global citizens to take all measures not to repeat such a terrible episode in the future.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Alcohol – A History

Title: Alcohol – A History
Author: Rod Phillips
Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2016 (First published 2014)
ISBN: 9789385755903
Pages: 370

Alcohol has a very long history of association with mankind, just like the taming of domestic animals or the invention of the wheel. The discovery of the fermentation of sugar in fruits into alcohol was definitely a landmark event in history as it probably provided humans the first opportunity to experience something 'out of the ordinary' - those who drink surely know what I am talking about! Over the ages, the drink went through several transformations, such as an intoxicating substance to a healthy beverage and nowadays back to an undesirable one. When the quality of water supply in European cities was abysmal, alcohol was the only liquid safe to drink. But when the health risks of unwholesome potable water were realized and extensive piping arrangements were provided to ensure safe drinking water to the masses, alcohol was dislodged from the lofty pedestal on which it had reigned for much of history. Then came non-alcoholic beverages such as tea and coffee that provided an acceptable alternative to alcohol as a stimulant. Temperance and prohibitionist movements took birth around this time and severe restrictions were placed on the distribution of alcohol. The US - of all the places - experimented with a total ban on alcohol for 13 years from 1920 to 1933. This book provides a good summary of alcohol from the ancient past to the twenty-first century. The drawback is that it focusses only on the West. Rod Phillips is professor of history at Carlton University and is the author of 'A Short History of Wine'.

Phillips provides a skeletal account of the discovery and development of alcohol from the hoary past. 9000 years ago, someone found that if the juice of fruit or berries were left for a short time in warm enough conditions, it began to bubble or froth. Once the bubbling subsided, the resultant beverage produced a pleasant feeling when consumed in small quantities. Even though alcohol was fermented in almost all of the ancient societies, North America is an anomaly where there is no evidence of native peoples making alcohol despite the availability of suitable raw materials. Ancient Greece and Rome drank only wine and avoided beer, thinking it unfit for civilized people. They exported the knowledge of vine cultivation and winemaking to all of the known world. The Middle Ages (1000 - 1500) saw the birth of the alcohol industry close on the heels of economic prosperity and urbanization. City dwellers were not able to produce their own food and drink. Improvements in recipes catapulted the industry to new heights. Ale was made with gruit which was not suitable for keeping for a long time. Replacement of gruit with hops for bittering ensured longer preservation and industry flourished in the Middle Ages. Alcohol was considered safe for consumption as sources of plain water in Europe and America were polluted. The fermentation process itself and the method of adding alcohol to water killed harmful bacteria.

This book clearly traces out the social background in which alcohol entered the diet of Europeans and how opposition built up against it, along with the reasons. By the end of 1500s, distilled spirits entered mainstream drinking culture instead of fermented beverages. The first form of spirits to be produced was brandy which is distilled from wine, similarly rum was distilled from molasses. The distilled alcohol was known as aquavitae (water of life) in Europe. They contained much higher alcohol content than fermented drinks. By the early modern period (1500-1700), alcohol became firmly entrenched in the daily diets of European populations. Resistance to alcohol came to the fore in the nineteenth century when biblical scholars were working in a cultural climate increasingly receptive to temperance and prohibitionist ideas. They reinterpreted the treatment of alcohol in the Bible and claimed that wherever the term was used in a positive sense, it in fact meant grape juice. When tea was first introduced, it was recognized as having stimulating effects somewhat similar to alcohol's. Writers argued that tea was preferable to wine, because it conveyed all the benefits of wine without the disadvantages of intoxication and hangover. In the nineteenth century, many governments provided safe drinking water to many urban populations. Though this was led by concerns for public health and ideas about personal and social hygiene, it provided one of the bases for radical anti-alcohol movements. This made possible a real shift in the attitudes for a future without alcohol.

Being sourced from antiquity itself, alcohol attached itself to religion as well. Christianity elevated wine to a position of centrality in its symbolism and rituals, while Islam rejected alcohol entirely and forbade its followers to drink alcoholic beverages. Perhaps the greatest sanctity for wine was accorded by Christianity through the concept of transubstantiation, that at the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The wine used for this purpose was especially blessed and not of the ordinary variety. The author claims that Christianity introduced Christ as resembling a wine god in the model of Dionysus of Rome, who was also born of a god and a human woman. He too performed the miracle of turning water into wine, although he converted only three jars, whereas Christ did six! The importance of wine for communion led the Christian church and its institutions to become significant sponsors of an extensive wine industry. Many vineyards were planted on monastic lands and monasteries became important commercial producers of wine, a major part of which was sold to secular society. Phillips also points out that though Islam banned alcohol, it granted access to it in paradise, which is depicted as flowing with rivers of delicious wine. When temperance movements arose in modern times, many of them were imbued with Christian virtues and the religion's inalienable link to wine became a sticking point. A way out came in the form of Louis Pasteur who found that heating up grape juice killed off the yeasts needed to turn its sugars into alcohol. This enabled the production of stable juice that was free from the risk of fermentation. This 'unfermented wine' was used in church services. The Catholic Church, however, continues to use wine.

This book examines the issue of the use of alcohol with people of other continents, but sadly leaves out Asia. Portuguese wine was used in the slave trade to pay for the slaves. The Europeans also introduced alcoholic beverages in their colonies. In Mexico, they couldn't displace the local variety known as pulque, to which the whites were addicted too. Missionaries opposed selling alcohol to Native Americans only because 'it made them more difficult to convert' (p. 149). The eighteenth century saw the emergence of clearly defined, class-based drinking cultures and a much starker differentiation between elite and popular drinking. Native Americans were prohibited from alcoholic beverages by peculiar laws preventing sale of liquor to them. These became redundant in 1920 when Prohibition was extended to all races. When it was repealed in 1933, the Native Americans continued to be under prohibition. This was lifted only in 1953.

The twentieth century was the most restraining ever on alcohol. World War I was a watershed in the history of alcohol. Under the pressure of extended military conflict, growing concerns about alcohol crystallized and many governments introduced regulations which were largely maintained and even intensified long after the conflict ended. The US prohibited alcohol for recreational consumption in 1920. For thirteen years, the people of America resorted to a slew of subterfuges to get hands on a bottle of it. Finally, convinced of its futility, the ban was lifted in 1933. This rethink was also due to the Depression because it made the state lose revenue on liquor sales and employment opportunities for the vast unemployed masses in the liquor industry. In Nazi Germany, thousands of individuals identified as alcoholics were sterilized because they believed that it will be passed on to descendants. This was the taste of eugenics vigorously followed by the Nazi party. However, with the failure of Prohibition everywhere, the moralistic approach to alcoholism was shunned and more practical organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous emerged in 1935.

Considering the subject matter, I had expected at least a part of the narrative in a lighter vein. This expectation was belied from the outset as Phillips vied for an academic thesis that may grant him a higher degree than to entertain the readers. This makes the text somewhat tedious. A lot of information is condensed into its pages that may be of better use to a student than a hobbyist reader. Leaving out Asia is an unpardonable lapse in a book of this nature. To compensate for this shortcoming in some measure, the author has included some very basic, fleeting references to China, but India is totally left out. As parts of history, quotes from books of the period are included, which adequately illustrates several aspects of the issue at hand. This book leaves out scientific matter altogether. One would be interested to know the mechanism of how alcohol affects the brain and nervous system, and also how the body finally disposes it off, thereby causing irreversible damage to the liver. The author should have devoted a chapter on this topic. As of now, readers sign off from the book with a feeling that consuming alcohol is a pleasurable experience and that's why puritans oppose it in every way they can. Its life-threatening aftereffects are not at all highlighted.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History – The Rashidun Caliphs

Title: Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History – The Rashidun Caliphs
Author: Tayeb El-Hibri
Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2018 (First)
ISBN: 9780231150835
Pages: 471

When Muhammad died in 632 CE, he didn't leave behind any clear instructions on the successor. Since he died in Medina, the two factions in early Islamic society - the Muhajirun (emigrants) and the Ansar (helpers) - sprang into action to get one among them elected as the caliph (commander of the faithful). Umar cleverly handled the power struggle and ensured the almost unanimous selection of Abu Bakr as the caliph. The supporters of Ali, who was the son-in-law of the Prophet and therefore of the same family, felt that he was unjustly side-lined in the selection process. In fact, Ali would continue to be overlooked twice more as Umar and Uthman would step on to the top post in the coming years. He finally obtained the position as the fourth caliph and the first four are called the Rashidun (rightly guided) caliphs. After Ali's death in 661, the caliphate moved away from the companions of the Prophet and effectually ended up as a kingship. This book covers the period from 632 to 661 CE when the reign of the Rashidun caliphs ended. The divergence in the religious concepts of the institutions of Shias and Sunnis emanate from the initial disagreement over who should have succeeded the Prophet and what really happened on the eve of his death. This study revisits these issues in religious and historical sources and argues for an alternative reading of this history as a largely parabolic cycle of literary narrative. It advises that the study of Islamic chronicles should be as texts of representation than as factual testimonies preserved in time. Tayeb el-Hibri is professor of Near Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

El-Hibri claims that the texts of early Islamic history were finalized only in the ninth century under the tutelage of the Abbasid dynasty on the caliphate. Naturally, the writers preferred themes and parables better appreciated by their patrons even at the cost of verisimilitude. Furthermore, the Quranic reticence on storytelling did not prevent Jewish and Christian converts after Muhammad's death from developing the tradition of religious storytelling anew. There were two schools of study of the early Islamic caliphate - the credulous and the skeptical. The credulous approach places significant belief in the historicity of Islamic traditions and the skeptical approach ranges from placing some trust in them to complete rejection. The skeptical approach is a new development. Religious scholars in the ninth century were in a dilemma over the mortal fight among the Rashidun caliphs for political power. Three out of the four were brutally assassinated. In light of this, they ignored the turbulent history of Uthman and Ali's reigns, opting to emphasize the flattering portions of the biographies. Conflict was blamed on outside instigators while the companions were portrayed as having acted in good faith. Ninth century writers in the Abbasid period answered contemporary economic questions about taxation by attributing certain principles to the Rashidun caliphs making it a touchstone for imagined, idealized practices. The polemical constructions of Sunni hadiths in the ninth century ran parallel to the standard narrative of the Rashidun caliphate with all its controversies and consistently legitimized what they did. 

The book presents the various scenarios and dramatic developments following the death of each leader. Prophet's succession was a contentious issue and we see that the selection of Abu Bakr was not entirely a foregone conclusion at first and also find the different versions of how he came to lead the prayer while the Prophet was alive, but sick. Abu Bakr played a leading role in healing the rift between the Muhajirun and Ansar factions in Medina and reuniting the community with sober council and kind words. Family renown was an overriding factor in early Arab society. It still is. Abu Bakr tells the Ansar that even though they possess all fine qualities, the Arabs will not recognize their authority except in the clan of the Quraysh, for they represent the best in lineage and standing (p.51). Abu Bakr also had a point of contention with the Prophet's daughter too. Bitterness between Fatima and Abu Bakr over her inheriting the estate of Fadak conquered from the Jews spilled over into day-to-day affairs. She insisted that the estate be handed over to her, but Abu Bakr managed to change the inheritance laws to the extent that a sole, surviving daughter of a deceased man would not be allowed to gain the majority share of inheritance from her father as her kin.

The reigns of the next two caliphs were marked by sectarian discord and allegations of nepotism especially in the allocation of war booty. They were also temperamentally much different from the first. Whereas Abu Bakr represented the experience of belief as a leap of faith and trust in the revealed word, Umar represented the experience of belief as an observation of the law and organizing norms. Umar's injunctions prohibited the drinking of wine, instituted the veiling of women and the clear demarcation between believers and non-believers. He is represented as an authoritarian and somewhat angry character. Umar made allies of religiously dubious but politically crafty figures like Muawiya and al-Mughira who knew what to say to Umar and when to say it. Umar was able to bring many new regions like Persia and Khurasan under the Arab sway but Umar and Ali appeared as patrons of the Arab and Persian camps respectively. Persia in general and Khurasan in particular would rise later as the chief patron of the Hashimite cause of Ali. Uthman is presented as a weak character. Scholars claim that Uthman came from a wealthy family, but there are no stories about his being a daring defender of Islam in its uncertain days. Hence, the later eulogy of him as a true companion of the Prophet may be a back-projection of Sunni praise on account of his becoming the third caliph. The slow progress towards the overthrow of Uthman is portrayed in an extensive set of narratives by Tabari about the companions abandoning Uthman to certain death. Muawiya requested Uthman to shift to Damascus from Medina but the latter didn't want to. Uthman was killed by opponents from Kufa, Basra and Egypt. The remaining companions failed to come to his aid. If some of them had intervened, the rebels would have departed in shame.

Ali at last became caliph when Uthman was killed by rebels who were alleged to have his tacit support. Ali's ascendancy set in a fissiparous trend that would rent the community asunder as Shias and Sunnis. The tragic wipe off of his family in the civil war is still mourned by the Shias. At the outset, Ali refused to countenance the contentious officials appointed by his predecessor even if that meant the disintegration of his rule in the provinces. To Ali, political war was a crusade of virtue and he stigmatized any attempt at compromise as something bordering on hypocrisy (p.96). Thus, Ali would be haunted by political setbacks throughout his career. He would often go by ideals rather than sound strategy and conceded his enemies space which a prudent commander would not have. At the Battle of Siffin, he allowed the camp of Muawiya to drink from the wells under Ali's control. In the battle, he fought valiantly alongside his troops, even though he himself had advised Umar against doing this at the Battle of Qadisiyya which Umar led, claiming that it would embolden the enemy to target him. The later narrators also focussed on Ali with a negative perspective. In spite of the wrongs done to Ali, they still conceived a contradictory perspective whereby even though Ali was pitied for his loss of the caliphate, his political distancing was still considered a necessity in order to give legitimacy to the Abbasid line, away from the Prophet's own Hashimite family. With the assassination of Ali, Muawiya transformed the caliphate into a more traditional kingship. Muawiya's qualities of forbearance, endurance and his discretionary system of pardons to wrongdoers and former foes helped him to gradually reconstitute a base of tribal support focused on his new centre in Damascus. Hampered by strict legal and religious codes that sacrificed all political and social considerations, Ali was unable to compromise for political expediency. The transfer of the leadership to Umayyads projected the province of Syria as the bastion of Sunnism in the caliphate, which was devoid of sectarian pretensions unlike the newly conquered regions of Iran and Iraq.

El-Hibri stresses that the stories preserved in the early Islamic narratives were neither real in its details nor intended to be factual. Rather, it played with classical biblical imagery to communicate a parable. To make every anecdote conform to this hypothesis, the author makes abundant use of symbolism to make them suited to what he proposes. This can be elaborated by an example: Arab conquest of Persia is mentioned in the book which unseated the king Yazdajird who fled. Disguised, he sought asylum at a local peasant's cabin who demanded four dirhams as rent for the stay. El-Hibri takes over at this point and argues that 'four' is the numerical symbol of justice or may have symbolized the cardinal points in the empire. This is a rather forced view and with that kind of license, you can claim anything. This book appears to be a learned attempt to focus on Islam's common legacy which it shares with Christianity rather than harping on its exclusivity. This focus on the biblical roots of early Islamic historiography makes it more appealing and acceptable to a Western audience. It does not lay stress on the intolerant mindset of the caliphs even though many instances can be discerned by the reader in passing through the narrative. This book is not for beginners as it assumes a somewhat deep familiarity with the source material. It mainly concentrates on the works of Tabari and also Ibn Sa'd, Baladhuri and Waqidi. It provides a transcript of the original Arabic verses of important citations. The Roman letters ensures that the reader can at least get to know of how the original sounded.

The book is recommended to serious readers who has a background of early Islamic history.

Rating: 2 Star

Mein Kampf

Title: Mein Kampf
Author: Adolf Hitler
Publisher: Jainco Publishers (First published 1926)
ISBN: 9788189474065
Pages: 581

First of all, let me confess that this is not a review of the title mentioned above, but of Mein Kampf itself, because Goodreads does not allow me to add that title nor a review of it. The need for this illogical censoring is hard to comprehend because only by the interchange of ideas can a regressive system could be kept in check. So, let's get back to Adolf Hitler and his book. This man, who found Germany lying prostrated after the defeat in World War I, found a scapegoat in the Jewish community for the defeat and then tried to exterminate them, in the process wrecking Germany in toto in another world war. Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. I sought in this book the answer to the question that was in my mind for a long time – what made this man go after a miniscule community that had been living in Germany for centuries? Unfortunately, the answer could not be found. Even with the rabid anti-Semitic rant running from cover to cover, hints of a drastic measure such as the Holocaust is not to be seen. What Hitler repeatedly asserts in the text is that while the written word is for the intellectuals, the masses need the spoken word to get mobilized. Hence it is likely that he had chosen a sanitized version of his real thought in the book. Moreover, he started writing this book in 1924 while serving a prison sentence in the fortress of Landsberg am Lech when there was no prospect for him to ever achieve absolute power in Germany. This is organized in two volumes. The first covers Hitler's life, his migration from Austria to Germany and the foundation of the National Socialist Labour party. Volume 2 covers the ideals of the movement and was published in 1926, long before the party had any serious chance of assuming power. 

The first part, or volume 1, of the book covers the life of Hitler only in the broadest outline. There's no mention about his mother or siblings. Even the problems he faced in education and employment are utilized for buttressing the arguments of the Nazi movement. He makes some general observations in this volume. One is that every great movement on this earth owes its growth to great speakers and not to great writers. Obviously, he has only the demagogues in mind. The tactical object of a fight of the party was the winning over of the child in school. So, the first rallying cry should be addressed to the child. Hitler wants the study of history to be a search for and discover the forces that are the causes of those results which appear before our eyes as historical events. He also ascertains that people should be aware of the political situation in a country. Those who have no understanding of the political world around them have no right to criticize or complain. The importance of the politician is a concept that is frequently stressed in this book. Only in rare cases are kings found to be models of wisdom and understanding and integrity of character, though we might like to think otherwise. 

Hitler makes a survey of political systems that allegedly strived to keep Germany vanquished and identifies Marxism and Judaism as the culprits. He denies the religious nature of the latter and asserts that since the ideal of the Jew is world domination, it must be regarded as a political system and not religious. His antagonism with social democrats is evident in its equalisation with communism. He then makes a tirade on them, dripping with contempt in every sentence. He alleges that everything that was considered worthy are disparaged by the Marxists. The nation was deemed to be an invention of the capitalist class and the fatherland was an instrument of the bourgeoisie for the exploitation of the working masses. Rule of law, according to them, was a means of holding down the proletariat, religion a means to dope the people and morality a badge of stupid and sheepish docility. There was nothing that they did not drag in the mud. He takes on the employers who refuse to listen to the changing times and claims that there are employers who lack social understanding and have wrong ideas of justice and fair play. Against such people, it is not only the right but the duty of their employees to protect their interests by forming a trade union. Freedom of the press is alleged to be a euphemism under which journalists escape legal punishment for deceiving the public and poisoning the public mind. 

Hitler had strong likes and dislikes not just to people or races but also to places. He loved Munich, to which city he migrated from Vienna in 1912. He abhorred Vienna which was thought to be a 'Babylon of races'. Being an artist himself, Hitler states that one must know Munich if one wants to know Germany because Munich is called the metropolis of German art. What is striking in Hitler's narrative is the shockingly low regard he displays towards the masses whom he treats as nothing more than asses. He asserts that the broad masses possess 'a very short measure of thinking power'. A large section of them is claimed to believe that a person who is incomprehensible must be profoundly wise. Not only that, the masses are first set in motion along a definite direction by men of superior talents, but once in motion, they are like a flywheel to sustain the momentum. A politician who follows policies of value and significance for the future, Hitler says, is not understood by the mass of the people who find 'beer and milk' a more persuasive index of political values than far-sighted plans for the future. Hitler exhibits an underlying trust in the necessity of God to manage the society. He is never against the church nor does he belong to it. He believed that he is doing work to make the society conform to what god had willed. Often he refers to the eternal entity as 'Creator'. The concept of councils or parliament to act as a check on the power of a single individual was anathema to him. He stresses again and again that the majority can never replace the man. The majority is said to represent only ignorance and cowardice. A majority of ignorant and incompetent pass judgment on profound issues affecting the nation. Discussions are alleged to be conducted in an atmosphere befitting a card table which seems to be a much more fitting occupation for most of the deputies. Hitler opposed birth control. He envisaged a trouble-free expansion of population and competition between individuals for survival. In such a case, only healthy and strong individuals will survive. On the other hand, birth control brings to life fewer individuals and the drive to save feeble and diseased creatures will become strong. A worthless generation of human progeny will result. Here, direct traces of eugenics can be seen. He also puts forward early marriages as an alternative to prostitution and the venereal diseases it brings about. He intends that the only meaning of marriage is the increasing and maintaining the human species and the race. 

As we know, Hitler's downfall was directly caused by his rabid ideas on racial superiority and anti-Semitism. He describes about his early experiences with Jews in a way he interacted with an animal. In school, he knew a Jewish boy but all were 'on their guard in their relations with him'. In a disgusting narrative, Hitler evaluates the Jewish community in his home town of Linz. He finds that over the centuries the Jews 'had become Europeanized in external appearance and were so much like other human beings'. He reminisces that in Vienna, he looked at anti-Semitic newspapers with disgust. Then he changes track and blurts out that they 'do not wash and the odour of these people would make him sick'. He accuses them of dominating the press and theatre and vilifying the German nation while praising the virtues of the racially mixed French nation. Marxism is claimed to be a handiwork of the Jews that would bring only disaster to people who follow it. Again, he blames the Jews of lacking any sense of working for ideals and to sacrifice one's life for the society. The absence of a Jewish state in the world (at that time!) is construed as proof of this accusation. According to Hitler, the highest aim of human existence is not the maintenance of a state or government but the conservation of the race. The world is not there to be possessed by faint-hearted, inferior races. Results of inter-racial breeding are said to be that the level of the superior race becomes lowered and physical and mental degeneration sets in in the offspring. In order to preserve a certain culture, the type of manhood that creates such a culture must be preserved. 

In the second part of the narrative, Hitler expounds on the core philosophy of the National Socialist movement and the required changes in German foreign policy if his party came to power. He proposes colonization and exploitation of other nations to enrich his. He argues that vast, uncultivated open spaces all around the globe are not to be held unutilized in reserve for the future. Such land awaits people who have the strength to acquire it. Instead of looking for colonies in Africa and Asia and thereby antagonizing England, he advocates colonization of exploitable farm land in Russia in alliance with England. He is willing to sacrifice German navy if that would please England to remain in league with them. Hitler believes Nordic whites to constitute the Aryan race and imagines it to be superior to all others in the world. He postulates that every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science and technical skill was almost exclusively the product of the Aryan creative power. He then finds the culturally rich Asian communities contradicting his hypothesis and retorts that the culture that is seen in Asian societies was created by Aryans who intermingled with them and got degenerated. The other races serve the purpose of the horse, to bring mechanical power to the creative enterprise of the Aryans. Whenever he talks about race, he brings in the Jew and claims that as long as a people remain racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of their blood, they can never be overcome by the Jew. A state is not an end; it is only a means to preserve the human race which has the potential to build a culture through the innate qualities pertaining to that race and bitterly complain that the then existing German state was not based on a uniform racial type. The Swastika in the Nazi flag signified the mission to struggle for the victory of the Aryan race.

Hitler often stresses on the Weltanschauung of the Nazi movement which can loosely be approximated as 'worldview'. It recognizes the significance of race and personal worth rather than collective work. It is interesting to have a glance at his future targets. The parliamentarian principle will be expurgated and personal responsibility will be substituted in its stead. For this to happen, the best brains (Aryans) should reach a position of dominant importance and influence in the community. Parliament can still be accommodated by restricting its role to an advisory council instead of decision making. The responsibility can and must be borne by one individual, who alone will be vested with authority and the right to command. Hitler seems to be exasperated with the presence of intellectuals in political movements and wants workers who blindly follow the leader. He suggests that a political movement will not be very effective in fighting if it were made up exclusively of intellectuals. He diligently balances the Protestant and Catholic elements in German society and admonishes each from attacking the other. In a chilling evocation of the eugenic spirit, Hitler advocates forced sterilizing of syphilitics, those suffering from tuberculosis or hereditary diseases, cripples and imbeciles. His advice for such people is to adopt healthy children and raise them as worthy of the 'race'. Hitler is full of ideas on how to change the school curriculum to reflect his party's goals. Science subjects need not be given special focus but emphasis must be made on subjects such as ancient history in such a way that the concept of 'race' is clearly brought out. Physical training should be made mandatory for all children. It should extend to a minimum of two hours per day with special encouragement for practising boxing. People who have a beautiful physique should be brought into the foreground, so that they might encourage the development of a beautiful bodily form among the people in general. The book also exposes Hitler's real opinion on the freedom movements then going in European colonies in Asia and Africa, India being a prominent case. Several leaders had gone to Germany to seek and enlist its assistance because Germany was the biggest rival to Britain. An organization called the 'League of Oppressed Nations' came into being, which requested the German intelligentsia for support. Hitler describes such people as charlatans who had no backing at home and not authorized by anybody. He advises not to waste time meeting such people and goes on to predict that England will never lose India unless it admits racial disruption in her administrative machinery in India or if it was overcome by some other nation in a war. He further adds that as a German, he'd prefer to see India under British domination than under that of any other country. 

The narrative is so impersonal as to feel like it was written by a propaganda machine. The party and its wicked ideology are the only two motivating factors as far as Hitler was concerned. He quotes from classical works occasionally to prove a point but these are few and far between. The text overflows with ideas and the entire book can be thought of as a long speech with an adoring audience in front of the orator. He puts forward several theories as if they are well-accepted principles but are in fact nothing more than Hitler's half-baked whims. No evidence from history is cited for any of the arguments. It seems that he enjoyed his military service in World War I and cherished his frontline experience on the battlefield, by providing glowing and nostalgic memories of the fighting. The book includes several rare photographs of Hitler depicting various episodes in his life. The book is mediocre and the expressed ideas stand unproven. It is nothing better than 581 pages of hallucinating rant.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star