Title: A Walk in the Woods
Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: DoubleDay, 1997 (First)
ISBN: 9780385408165
Pages: 320
This book is an interesting addition to the Bill Bryson collection of an avid reader as he is one of the greatest travel writers of the world. He and his friend Stephen Katz hiked through portions of the Appalachian Trail in the US in the spring of 1996 and this book is a humorous account of that memorable trek through the wilderness. The Appalachian Trail (AT) is an iconic, 2200-mile public footpath spanning 14 US states between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine. It is managed by a robust public-private partnership and is the longest continuous, hiking only footpath globally. It attracts three million visitors annually. There are three types of hikes in the trail: Thru-Hiking attempts to hike the entire trail in a single continuous journey; Section-Hiking attempts the trail in smaller, separate chunks over multiple years or decades; and Day-Hiking which explores short, easily accessible segments for a few hours or a single day. Bryson and his friend aspired for a Thru-Hike and started from Georgia on that note. The tough conditions on the trail and extreme weather due to a slowly-retreating winter prompted them to break the journey and attempt a sectional-hike near the end of the trail. Unfortunately, they stopped after two days probably because the hardships of the trek greatly outweighed their expectations of the possible benefits. In the meantime, Bryson did several Day-Hikes while the other was busy with work. In that sense, the duo attempted all three kinds of the trekking and in a single year. The book is eminently readable and a thoroughly enjoyable one. On the final count, the team walked 870 miles in total or just over a third of the entire trail.
A trekking route of this mind-boggling scale is a tribute to the vastness of the US since it could earmark such an expansive piece of real estate for a purely non-commercial activity. An expert hiker would take nearly five months to complete the entire trail. Bryson makes fun of similar trekking circuits in England for its shortness. It is possible to reach a comfortable inn at the end of each day's trek in England whereas the AT requires the enthusiasts to stay in the forest for many days at a stretch and even up to several weeks. The trail in the Appalachians was conceived in the 1920s by a visionary called Benton MacKaye as a hiking trail connecting a network of mountain camps where urban workers could come and refresh themselves. Myron Avery mapped it out and personally superintended the construction of hundreds of miles of path by voluntary labour. He extended its planned length from 1200 miles to well over 2000. The trail was formally completed in 1937. The path had no historical basis. It did not follow any Red Indian trails or colonial post roads and is a genuine product of twentieth century innovation. It's the largest volunteer-run undertaking on earth.
Bryson periodically snipes at the management of the trail and the surrounding woodlands by the government and there are elements which shock the readers. About 240 million acres of forests are owned by the government and its prime activity is to build roads through them! These are to allow private timber companies to get to previously inaccessible stands of trees. This was written in 1996 and the author mentions that 49 million acres are available for logging. Public infrastructure such as national parks are developed along the route, but these entities are severely deficient of funds even though visitor numbers soared. Camp sites and information centres have been shut, warden numbers slashed and essential maintenance is deferred to pitiable outcomes. Environmental hazards of the indirect, organic type also abound in the American wilderness. Extinction of tree and animal species is a grave concern. The widely prevalent American chestnut trees became a memory in a few decades due to an Asian fungus that made its way to the continent for which the tree was not evolutionarily prepared. The mortality rate was 100 percent. It infected a tree and spread its spores to nearby ones through breeze or woodpeckers. The trail is also infested with wild beasts such as the bear, moose or python. Bryson also suggests that microbes carrying a whole lot of infectious vectors such as the hantavirus are there, waiting for the trekkers. To cap it all, there are human murderers who attack the trekkers for no reason, often fatally.
Bryson's humorous take of his experience during travel is what makes his literary work a treasure for the readers. And there are lots and lots of it in this book. He observes that time loses its meaning during the trek which is expected to last several months. When it is dark, one goes to his sleeping bag and when it is light, he gets up and everything in between is just in between. You exist in a kind of mobile Zen mode, with your brain like a balloon tethered with string - accompanying, but not actually part of the body below. When a person is on the Appalachian Trail, the forest is his universe - infinite and entire. It is all he experiences day after day. Eventually it is about all he can imagine. He is aware, of course, that somewhere over the horizon there are mighty cities, busy factories, crowded freeways, but there in that part of the country, where woods drape the landscape for as far as the eye can see, the forest rules (p. 138). Even small pleasures away from the toil of hiking brings a flavour of paradise. The author quips that the greatest reason for being grateful to live in the twentieth century is the joy of stepping from outside on a really hot day into the crisp, clean, surgical chill of an air-conditioned establishment. This is a fact we Indians would readily acknowledge and agree to! Several people carry high-tech equipment to the trail to monitor the weather and all but Bryson admonishes this tendency by claiming that the mountains are not for them and they perhaps shouldn't have ventured to the trail. He also takes stock of what he and his fellow trekker gained for their arduous journey of several weeks. Though it didn't change their lives, he gained an appreciation and respect for woods and wilderness and the colossal scale of America. He lost a lot of weight as well and was remarkably fit for a time afterwards.
There are some interesting aspects related to the trail. Every 20 minutes on the AT, a trekker walked further than the average American walks in a week. The near-total dependence of American life on the automobile is seen here. Since the trek begins in early-spring, dangers of very cold weather predominates in the early phase whereas heat is the main concern towards the final stages. This book discusses about hypothermia (death due to low temperature). It tells the story of 16 Danish seamen who were rescued from the North Sea after only 90 minutes following a shipwreck, suddenly dropping dead on the rescue vessel due to earlier exposure to severe cold. This is just an urban myth and there are no official records of it. Bryson estimates in 1996 that about four million people visit the trail every year. But given its immense length it is never crowded, but the shelters sometimes are because they are few as compared to the number of hikers. The Appalachian is a geologically distinct feature in that these mountains are really very old, in fact one of the oldest landscape features on earth. When simple plants colonized the earth and first creatures crawled out of the sea, it was there at a height of three times its present figure. Most of it had withered away by erosion in the meantime. This is not so surprising. A typical mountain stream will carry away about 1000 cu.ft of mountain in a year in the form of sand granules and suspended particles. That's equivalent to the capacity of an oversized dump truck, but over millions of years, the mountain would grind down to a hill. Bryson cites several instances where the American authorities allows the degradation of its environment either by lack of resources or by wilful negligence. He remarks that the attitude of America to nature is peculiar. Either it is ruthlessly subjugated for commercial profit or is deified as something one drives to. Seldom it occurs to anyone that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit. The AT need not be all wilderness; it could be routed through rural villages with grazing cows and tilled fields.
Bryson did this trip with a friend whom he had not met for a long time. There were moments of friction, but he manages the situation without descending to ill feelings. The rest-shelters are unattended and in the middle of the forest. You can't reserve them for yourself as it is planned to be occupied on first-come-first-served basis. This necessitates meeting and cooperating with strangers every evening. There were all kinds of people and our duo both saw the heights of magnanimity and the depths of selfishness. Bryson had discontinued the trail a few days after the start and visited portions of it in his car. During this time, he generally substitutes his travel adventures with historical and geological snippets just to keep the readers amused.
The book is recommended.
Rating: 4 Star
Title: The Moplah Rebellion 1921
Author: C. Gopalan Nair
Publisher: Voice of India, 2020 (First published 1923)
ISBN: 9789385485220
Pages: 196
Several books on Moplah Rebellion have been reviewed earlier here. Now, why should I add one more to that fold so that we are yet again reminded of a brutal episode of Hindu genocide which occurred in 1921 in areas that constitute the present-day Malappuram district of Kerala? Unlike others, this was written by a well-known civil servant who had grass-roots knowledge of the society as well as how the government functioned. Diwan Bahadur C. Gopalan Nair served as a Deputy Collector in Kozhikode. This book was published in 1923 and remains a highly cited reference material on account of its accurate representation of facts and figures compiled from government records such as official communiques and also from newspaper reports from reputed publications. The communal riots in 1921 erupted in support of saving the Sultan of Turkey against the imperial ambitions of the British at the end of World War I, but it was the Hindus of Malabar who faced the worst. Every conceivable form of inhuman treatment, indignities and humiliation were meted out to them. This book is not lauded for its literary merit, but the exactness of the picture it presents as compared to the true nature of things compels the readers to appreciate the sincerity in the narrative and shudder at the thought of how a group of religiously fanatical people could commit such brutal atrocities on their neighbours.
Students of Indian history know that the 1857 war was the one and the only struggle Hindus and Muslims waged together against the British before 1920. But that was for the reinstatement of the Mughal emperor to his former glory and was really a Muslim cause. The 1920 unity was for the restoration of the Khilafat, which was again a Muslim cause. In fact, the Khilafat was conjured up by Gandhi to make the two communities paddle together towards 'Swaraj'. But, being nurtured on a separatist-communal and intolerant worldview and carried and strengthened by Wahhabi-Farazi movements, the Muslim community was aloof and sometimes hostile to the Congress. If we examine the case of Malabar, the author lists out 51 outbreaks from 1836 to 1919 in which Muslims committed atrocities on Hindus in Malabar in which the British interests were rarely harmed. The violence against Hindus, which was called 'Hal Ilakkam' (loosely translated as religious frenzy), consisted of murder, rape, destruction of temples and forcible conversion of Hindus to the Muslim faith. Was agrarian issues involved in this violence, as is claimed by modern Marxist historians? The facts prove otherwise. T. L. Strange, who studied the outrages deeply in 1852, ruled out agrarian grievances. He noted that the general character of the dealings of the landlords towards their tenants, whether Muslim or Hindu, was 'mild, equitable and forbearing'. He also
noted that the Moplah tenants were very open to evade their obligations and to resort to false and litigious pleas. Hindus lived in such fear of the Moplahs that the landlords were afraid of enforcing their legal rights such as evicting them even if the rent is not paid. Fanaticism is identified as the real cause of Moplah outrage. Today, we call it 'terrorism'.
Gopalan Nair remarks about the religious unity perceived at a reception of Khilafat leaders at
Kozhikode immediately prior to the outbreak and the contrasting picture of one community trying to exterminate the other only a few days later. He contends that the Hindus believed in
Hindu-Muslim unity and never dreamed of a day when the Muslim would turn against him while the other was ready for a general rising and patiently bided his time (p. 23). The display of affection on the part of Moplahs towards Hindus was artificial (p. 27). Their religious frenzy impelled them to convert and their plundering propensities impelled them to loot. There were isolated instances of Muslims helping the Hindus to escape, but these were exceptions. The book then refers to some of the prominent episodes of the outbreak. Ali Musaliar was installed as Ali Raja on Aug 22, 1921, but nine days later, he surrendered to the police. If he had dreamed of saving his skin, it was in vain. He was tried, sentenced and promptly hanged to death in Coimbatore prison six months later. Another such incident was the Pookkottur battle on 26 Aug which was the salvation of Hindus in Ernad and a bright spot for them. It had been arranged that after the Juma prayer, all the Hindus of Manjeri and the neighbouring villages were to be brought to the mosque and converted. Caps, dresses and jackets were all ready for distribution among the converts. As the Muslim side lost the battle with 400 dead while on the British only four were killed, the program had to be given up. The author gives the details of military operations from Aug 1921 to Jan 1922. By December, the riots were effectively crushed and reporting changes from a daily to a weekly basis. Almost all the top leaders of the Moplahs surrendered, who were either summarily shot or hanged after trial. In total, 2266 Moplahs were killed, 5688 were captured alive and 38,256 surrendered. Gopalan Nair also notes that after the backbone of the revolt was broken, there were instances of Hindus and Muslims combining to resist looting and to help in the capture of rebels still refusing to surrender.
There were accusations against the civil administration at the hasty nature in which they summoned the military and the declaration of martial law in the district. The author refutes these arguments as baseless. The cutting of telegraph lines, blocking of roads, destruction of railways and the murders, looting and rioting which took place at Tirurangadi and elsewhere constituted a situation which the civil authorities were powerless to control even with the help of available military force. Martial law was declared on Aug 29, 1921 and withdrawn on Feb 25, 1922. Damages inflicted on government buildings and properties are listed. 44 bridges and 27 culverts were destroyed to hinder troop movement. The number of temples destroyed were not ascertained because the government purposely refrained from attempting to collect accurate figures. The number is estimated to be above 100. The infamous wagon tragedy is referred to as ‘train tragedy’ in this book, in which 70 out of the 100 prisoners sent from Tirur to Coimbatore prison died due to overcrowding and asphyxiation. The dead included three Hindus also. The book includes a short history of the development of the police force in Malabar. It was systematically organised only after the assassination of district collector Connolly in 1855. Earlier, revenue officials like the Tahsildar and his deputies maintained law and order quite inefficiently. The ease with which Connolly was killed and how the murderers moved about without any fear even when the nominal police were on their look out persuaded the authorities to constitute a regular and professional police force. An interesting penal measure in place was collective fines in which a group of people or a village itself was fined if there was reason to believe that they abetted the crime by inaction or silence and thereby helping the culprits who were their co-religionists or neighbours. A sum of Rs. 38,331 was collected from villages implicated in the murder of Connolly and of this sum, Rs. 30,936 was paid to his widow.
The atrocities suffered by the Hindu community is summed up in the book in a matter of fact style. A sanitized version of the heinous acts is summarized in the petition submitted to Lady Reading by the Hindu women of Malabar. They tell about the many wells and tanks filled up with the mutilated who refused to convert, of pregnant women cut to pieces with the unborn babe protruding from the mangled corpse, of their children hacked to death before their eyes, of their husbands and fathers tortured, flayed and burnt alive, of women who were carried away and raped or taken as concubines, of destroyed homes and temples and of how the idols were desecrated by putting the entrails of slaughtered cows where flower garlands used to lie and of the formerly rich and prosperous who had to beg on the streets of Kozhikode for food (p. 64). The author remarks that the way to resist the evil consequences of Muslim fanaticism is for the Hindus to become assertive and present a united front against Moplah aggression (p.114). The book also points to a few pockets of Malabar where the riots did not take place. Kavalappara Nayar and Nambudiris of Pathinalu Desam had made a rule that no land would be given to Moplahs for farming or to settle. There was security for Hindus in these villages. The book also examines the things which motivated the rioters to go on an orgy of demonic violence. A war song composed in memory of the 47 martyrs of Malappuram is given. The song tells of the houris (celestial nymphs) the fighters could possess in heaven upon attaining martyrdom. There are distinct erotic undertones in the song. A comparatively decent allusion is that if the houris spit in the sea, the salt water would become as sweet as honey (p. 121). So it seems that the Moplahs were excited not by religious devotion alone!
Unlike other works of this genre, this book also focuses on the relief and reconversion measures undertaken for the benefit of the victims. Central relief camps were organized by associations like the Servants of India Society which provided shelter and food to Hindus who lost everything. 22 camps were organized, which housed 26,000 people who belonged to all castes. Reconversion efforts were also in place. People who were circumcised or cohabitated were to be returned to their old faith after taking Panchagavya for three days at a temple and repeating the chant 'Narayana' or 'Shiva' at least 12,000 times a day, for 12 days! These rules were not applicable to Brahmin converts who apparently lost their caste permanently. Arya Samaj stepped in at this moment and performed reconversion in a much simpler way. About 2500 people were reconverted. In spite of this, there was another threat from the Muslims for the reconverted. Of the 51 violent outbreaks that took place in Malabar, many were related to converts to Islam reverting to their old faith and usually involved the murder of the reconverted people and those who helped them do so. Such people were summarily hacked by Moplahs along with their families. But the author does not comment on any crimes of this nature in the years after 1921. Temple desecration was a regular feature in the outbreaks. The jihadis took shelter in a temple as the last stand and fought the troops from there. This led to the temples being destroyed in the crossfire as well as despoiled by the fanatics, who were anyhow besieged, answering to nature's calls and emptying their bowels inside the premises. The book includes an appendix on the atrocities heaped on Hindu victims which are classified into seven categories: a) brutally dishonouring women b) flaying people alive c) wholesale slaughter of men, women and children d) forcibly converting and murdering those who refused to be converted e) throwing half-dead people into wells and leaving the victims to die a slow and painful death f) burning and looting practically all Hindu and Christian houses in which Moplah women and children also took part in robbing the women of even the garments on their body and g) insulting the religious sentiments of Hindus and destroying or desecrating temples. An account of the inhuman cruelties carried out on Hindus, especially women, are chronicled along with the statements of victims. One person committed suicide after giving the statement.
The book is graced with an excellent foreword by Saradindu Mukherjee which should never be missed. He boils with moral outrage at the injustice done to the Hindu community by Gandhi and Nehru and puts them in the dock by arraying several well-argued charges against them. The author has compiled several macabre photos of the victims. I have not seen these in any other books on the subject, which includes one of a young man who received eighteen sword cuts but still managed to escape with his life, by jumping into a river; of a group of reconverted people staring into an uncertain future; of a group of forced converts in Muslim dress and of the rail wagon in which seventy rioters were killed. The book is a stark warning against tolerating religious intolerance and allowing the intolerant to prosper. It also indicates harsh punishments such as collective fines that can be used nowadays too, to fight fanaticism.
The book is highly recommended.
Rating: 4 Star
Title: Why We Get Fat – And What to Do About It
Author: Gary Taubes
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011 (First)
ISBN: 9780307272706
Pages: 257
In India at least, a person who had recently constructed a new house is an expert 'architect' among his friends and relatives for a few years after the event. Likewise, one who successfully cut short his body weight has the moral authority to preach and pose as a dietary consultant. My body weight was 93 kg in January 2023, and I was tottering into obesity with no control on food intake. I took an exercise regime of walking 6-8 km daily, avoided snacks with evening tea and replaced rice at dinner with chapatti. Within three months, in April 2023, my weight came down to 76 kg, which is still maintained even though some additions in the food intake had taken place and walking is now reduced to 2 km a day. That was why I was interested in this book, especially at the author's assertion that 'the physicians have a flawed belief system that stipulates that the reason we get fat is that we eat too much and/or move too little. So, the cure is to do the opposite'. This got me intrigued, since I had done the same thing and got spectacular results as expected. Instead of eating less and exercising more, the author recommends a low-carbohydrate diet. This may help dietary fat to get burned for energy and keep the person's weight in control. I now think that this logic may have kept my body weight at the lower level in recent time even without much reducing food nor overindulging in physical activity. Gary Taubes is a correspondent for Science magazine. His articles about science, medicine and health have appeared in several magazines and is the author of many books on the same themes.
It is an established fact in modern medical science that the way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more. However, Taubes' main argument in this book is that eating less and moving about more is not a remedy for weight gain. Prescribing low calorie diets for obese and overweight patients leads only to modest weight losses that are transient. Exercising more is no guarantee to lose weight. Poorer people do more physical work, but they are claimed to be fatter than affluent people. This is a contentious point, since this is definitely not valid in the case of India. Maybe the author is recounting his experience in the US. However, Taubes does not underrate the efficacy of physical exertion because he admits that 30 minutes of moderately vigorous physical activity five days a week is necessary to maintain and promote health, but there is no evidence to prove that doing so would make us lean. If we increase our physical activity, we will only work up an appetite. It will make us hungry and chances are that we will increase the calories we consume to compensate. The energy we consume and the energy we expend are claimed to be dependent on each other. Change one, and the other changes to compensate. The author underlines this main argument with the claim that the entire science of obesity got caught up in the circular logic of the calories-in/calories-out hypothesis and it has never been able to escape from this stranglehold.
This book also outlines the metabolic mechanism of its argument, along with experimental results. He describes an experiment in rats with its ovaries removed. This resulted in estrogen deficiency. If estrogen is not available, an enzyme called LPL draws fat out of the blood and stores it in cells, making the animal fatter. To compensate for the absence of this fat in other organs, it eats more. If food is then not available in sufficient quantity, it turns slothful to conserve energy. Fatness is thus caused by the better ability to absorb dietary fat. He concludes with the smart-sounding remark that 'we don't get fat because we overeat; we overeat because we are getting fat'. It was the Germans and Austrians who had founded and done meaningful research in the fields related to obesity. After World War II, the anti-German sentiment in the medical community deliberately neglected their work done in this area. The essential mechanism of weight regulation is that fat is continuously flowing out of fat cells and is circulating around the body to be used for fuel and returned to fat cells if it is not used. Fat is stored as a cluster of three types of fatty acids known as triglycerides. The cluster is too large to pass through the cell membrane. Anything that works to break down those triglycerides into their component fatty acids so that it escapes those cells works to make you leaner. There are dozens of hormones and enzymes that play a role in these processes. Insulin is the primary regulator of that metabolism. An enzyme called HSL breaks down triglycerides and release fatty acids to the blood stream. Insulin suppresses the operation of this enzyme, thereby making the animal fatter. The effect of insulin is to make us fatter.
The single most important advice a reader should take from this book is that one should minimize the amount of carbohydrate in order to remain lean. It's the carbohydrates that ultimately determine how much fat we accumulate because the secretion of insulin is linked to the presence of carbohydrate in the blood. Weight loss regimens succeed when they get rid of the fattening carbohydrates in the diet; they fail when they don't. Some people are predisposed to get fat, but this predisposition is triggered by the quantity and quality of carbohydrate we eat. Again, the fewer carbohydrates we take in, the leaner we will be. The book sounds a warning to those with a sweet tooth. Sugar is addictive to humans in the same way the psychedelic drugs are and for much the same biochemical reasons. In the 1960s, the focus was changed to avoid high-protein items like red meat as far as possible and to shift to carbohydrates. The medical community took this step apparently to ward off cardiac problems caused by the higher cholesterol content in red meat. The author opposes this established wisdom, but he quotes only anecdotal evidence in support of his claims. A science writer such as the author should know better than to rely on anecdotal stories which are no better than hearsay. Besides, research conducted around World Wars I and II and till 1980 are quoted throughout the narrative with no comments on whether later research has confirmed or repudiated any of these results. Readers should exercise a little bit of scepticism because he is taking on the entire medical community on his accusation that they are all wrong on this point. He adds that it was in the 1980s that the medical world adopted the fallacious calories-in/calories-out hypothesis. Another factor worth noting is that the author assumes that those foods which humans are adapted to in the long time when hunter-gatherers flourished would be good for us even now. Agriculture and the resultant carbohydrates were in our diet for only 0.1 per cent of our species' total existence. In the remaining period red meat obtained by hunting was the primary source of food. Hence, the author argues, that it will not be bad for our health.
It is to be accepted that Taubes has made a neat argument in favour of including more protein-rich substances like red meat and curtail intake of carbohydrates in our diet to keep our bodies slim. However, his substantiation of the arguments lacks rigour and readers get a distinct feeling that the narrative is not authentic as far as scientific facts are concerned. Some contentions like obesity is associated also with poverty and not with prosperity alone is not readily digestible as also his claim that poorer people are fatter. Another unfounded assumption is that cancer is prevalent in vegetarian societies like the Hindus of India (p. 171). As is common with many hoax theories in the medical field, he argues that big pharma companies intervene in discussions on health to suit their needs. Similar is his bold remark that health officials hesitate to discuss the concepts put forward in this book because it contradicts what they have been telling all along.
The book is recommended.
Rating: 2 Star
Title: The House of Jaipur – The Inside Story of India’s Most Glamorous Royal Family
Author: John Zubrzycki
Publisher: Juggernaut, 2023 (First published 2020)
ISBN: 9789393986863
Pages: 358
When the British left India in 1947, it was a hotchpotch of 565 princely states that comprised two-fifths of the nation’s geographical area. It was a gargantuan task to integrate them all to the newly formed republic, especially those royals who claimed descent from the sun and the moon. Perhaps this was a great wonder in modern statecraft, but Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and his secretary V. P. Menon did this in a matter of months and that too, without shedding a drop of blood. Looking back with hindsight, the personal kingdoms had degraded to such alarming proportions that the edifice came crumbling down at the merest touch of Patel and Menon with recourse to nothing other than verbal sophistry. The Kachhwaha Rajput kingdom of Jaipur boasted a history lasting a millennium, but wisely decided to join India without any demur. This put a brake to their high-flying lifestyle who spent more than half of a year in the cool climes of Europe and spent the state's money like water on jewellery, polo, alcohol and women. The king of Jaipur in 1947, Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II, had three wives. Out of these, the most famous and glamourous was Gayatri Devi. This book is the story of this royal couple and their children and grandchildren through the numerous petty bickering among themselves and court cases initiated for appropriating more wealth for themselves. Those who had any reservations against scrapping of privy purses by Indira Gandhi would be forced to reconsider their stand, reading about the decadent and extravagant lifestyle of the royals, even after they were ousted from power. A lot had indeed changed as well. Rajput valour, once tested on the battlefield, is now being played out in the political domain, in corporate boardrooms, in courthouses and in the sporting field. John Zubrzycki is an award-winning journalist and acclaimed author specialising in South Asia. His book 'The Last Nizam' was reviewed earlier here.
The author notes the ease with which the native princes got inveigled into serving their British masters after the Mughal suzerainty collapsed. Especially after the 1857 Rebellion, the British also trod carefully. Court ritual was one area the British did not intervene in, but they controlled the administration of the state. British officers served as the state's chief ministers, headed the departments of revenue and public works, commanded its army, managed its railways and directed its educational and medical services. Even then, the princes followed an immensely extravagant lifestyle and shamelessly appropriated public resources for their jewels, hunts, polo matches, European travels and sexual escapades at home and abroad. These royal leeches sucked the blood up from poor subjects who were already half-starving. In India, the princes were bound by tradition-bound strictures that governed their behaviour but they lived on the wild side whenever they were in Europe. Sawai Man Singh II, affectionately called Jai, would leave for England in May every year and return in October. Their European friends visited their princely states in the remaining months, for more parties, more polo and more hunting and dating. The British did little to rein in the princes' extravagant routine or peculiar fetishes. Only the most debauched or corrupt feared dismissal. The rest were left to maintain their feudal traditions.
The book contains several sleazy episodes of Jai when he was in power and how he gracefully vacated the throne to the newly formed Indian republic. He was a philanderer at heart who thought marriage was a necessity and to produce children a duty to the state and to the House. He was so morally weak that his American actress-lover met his second wife in the palace at Jaipur and offered her tips on how to satisfy her husband so that he would visit her more often! Jai had a special rapport with Mountbatten and was the only Indian ruler who called the viceroy by his pet name 'Dickie'. So he signed the Instrument of Accession to India with little demur. Moreover, in March 1948, nine smaller states headed by Kota agreed to merge with the Indian dominion. Udaipur and Jaipur yielded thereafter. The author claims this was achieved by the 'diplomatic skills and subterfuge' by Patel and Menon. Jai relinquished his powers as maharaja in favour of the largely ceremonial office of Rajpramukh. His duties involved presiding over the state legislative assembly sessions and swearing in of ministers.
The royals' eviction from power was swift by comparison with similar events worldwide. With a vengeful Indira Gandhi close on their tail, even the symbols of power were gradually taken away from them. In 1956, Jai was removed as rajpramukh without being consulted or warned. He quickly rose to the occasion and ensured a steady and opulent source of income. The Rambagh Palace was leased out to operate as a hotel. In 1957, Jai considered entering politics. His ancestors had always forged alliances with whoever occupied the throne in Delhi whether it was the Mughals or the British. By going directly to Nehru, he was merely following Jaipur state tradition believing that a political alliance would protect him and his family. His wife Gayatri Devi, referred as Ayesha in the book, actually joined politics and won the 1962 election to Lok Sabha from Jaipur with a margin that found its way into the Guinness Book of World Records. They continued to live a high-profile life with VVIPs visiting them at home. Queen Elizabeth II and Jacqueline Kennedy visited them in the early 1960s, eclipsing government functions which snubbed Nehru. However, the entry into public service did not change the royals' mindset substantially. They always maintained their snobbish disregard to reformed concepts of egalitarianism. While posted as India's ambassador to Spain, Jai employed servants from Jaipur who would touch their foreheads to the ground when they went to receive their master at Madrid airport. Having three wives and numerous affairs served him well, but not for the women. Lonely and with no real role to play in Jai's life, both his surviving wives succumbed to alcoholism before they reached their mid-40s.
The author remarks on the infighting among Rajputs and the divergent political alliances among them. The Kachhwahas of Jaipur was subservient to the Mughals while the Sisodias of Mewar bravely stood their ground. When Aurangzeb took the hands of an 8-year old Jai Singh of Jaipur and playfully asked what he will do, the crafty boy replied that he'd do nothing because he was in secure hands. Impressed by his 'intelligence', the emperor granted him the title 'Sawai', meaning he was as good as 'one-and-a-quarter' men. Three centuries later, when Jai’s funeral procession in 1970 was led by a mahout on an elephant, it carried the Mah-e-Muratib, the ceremonial rod gifted by the Mughals as a token of distinction. This fickleness in pursuit of an ideal was carried into the political space as well. Even though the Congress was staunchly against the royals, they still tried to befriend them in order to gain a share of power. Many voters in Jaipur did not forgive Congress for incarcerating their rajmata and their maharaja during the Emergency. The maharaja in question, Bhawani Singh, stunned them by joining the same party in 1988. The author then wryly comments that the Jaipur rulers always secured their interests. The closing chapters of the book are dedicated to keep track of the innumerable legal disputes brought on by one family against another. The Rajputs continued their cursed internecine warfare, but no blood was being spilled and the arena of conflict had shifted to the law courts, but the same tropes of usurpation, betrayal and dishonour remained.
Apart from the story of the House of Jaipur, the author makes some overarching remarks about India’s judicial system and personality quirks of its top politicians. Indira Gandhi reportedly harboured a visceral contempt for India’s princes and especially despised Gayatri Devi. Noted journalist Khushwant Singh once said that Indira could not stomach a woman more good-looking than herself. Gayatri Devi was arrested a month into the Emergency for violating the draconian COFEPOSA act which was put into force to conserve foreign currency. A few months back, the sleuths had discovered 19 British pounds and a few coins during a raid at her home. This was nothing unusual for she visited England every year, but its possession fell afoul of the law. She was lodged in Tihar jail; in which it is said that an open drain passed through her cell. She bore the hardships stoically for some time, but after five months, wrote a grovelling letter to Indira promising to end political activity and she was subsequently released. Gayatri Devi was a devout anglophile. She donated a large collection of her jewellery to the British Museum in the mid-1990s. Commenting on the never-ending legal wrangles, the book notes that ‘there is no such thing as a closure in India’s labyrinthine court system.’ The House of Jaipur still remains a house divided. The royal family now employs a PR agency to ensure that any public appearances serve to enhance rather than detract from the aura they strive to maintain.
Gayatri Devi is throughout referred as Ayesha in the text which was her pet name given by her mother. This was due to a literary inspiration that caught her mother’s imagination and not at all related to its Islamic namesake. At the time of Gayatri Devi’s birth, her mother was reading the popular adventure novel ‘She: A History of Adventure’ by H. Rider Haggard. The protagonist of the novel is a powerful, eternally beautiful, and mysterious queen named Ayesha and the name stuck. The book follows a gossipy style of reporting. It dedicates several chapters for Gayatri Devi’s licentious mother Indira Devi, who is not related to the House of Jaipur by blood. Her frequent running after paramours and illicit child are given unwanted prominence. In 1929, she threw a party at Cannes in which the centre of attraction was a glittering fountain filled with fifty cases of expensive champagne. Zubrzycki appears to be paranoid about criticisms levelled against Muslim functionaries in princely states which he could have dismissed without comment or even ignored. Instead, he passes judgment on the complaints without going into the merits of each case. He portrays the opposition to officials such as Khusrau Jang and Sir Mirza Ismail as ‘opposition to a Muslim holding a high office in a predominantly Hindu state’. In fact, this finds mention in this review because he does this on three occasions with the exact same words. This may cement his stature as a liberal, but what he loses in the bargain is his credibility.
The book is recommended.
Rating: 3 Star
Title: Heresy – Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of GodAuthor: Catherine NixeyPublisher: Picador, 2024 (First)ISBN: 9781529040364Pages: 364Christianity is the world's largest religion in the matter of mass following. Even though it is splintered into numerous sects with mutually exclusive customs and rituals, there is an underlying unity as far as scriptures are concerned. There's universal agreement on the books included in the New Testament among all major sects and it gives an impression that there is uniformity on scriptures across the entire religion. In fact, this is far from the truth. There was a violent contest between various versions of the holy scriptures and a consensus was reached only in the fourth century CE on what ought to be sanctified as holy or to be condemned as apocryphal. Such omitted works contained extraordinary narratives especially of Jesus and Mary. Some of them portrayed Jesus as having a violent mind which exacted retribution for any slights committed against him. There are others which declare Jesus to be the rightful son of Joseph. As Christianity was elevated to the status of state religion of the Roman Empire after Constantine's reign, it crushed dissenting opinion, hunted out heresy and consigned the heretical texts to flames. The magnificent religious variety that had once flourished within the Roman Empire collapsed as a consequence. In its place an intolerant and virulent form of Christianity arose which exterminated paganism and even more, the heretics within the Christian fold. The Church became the greatest organised persecuting force in human history. This book summarizes Christianity's growth in the four centuries after Christ and the different flavours of religious thought available to the public. Catherine Nixey is a journalist and author. She currently writes for The Economist. Her best-selling first book, 'The Darkening Age' which described the growth of Christianity in the Roman Empire was reviewed earlier here.At the outset, Nixey firmly establishes the idea that contrary to feelings of uniformity in the present world, there were many versions of the Christian holy texts in the ancient world, immediately after Jesus died. Some portrayed him as meek, mild and gentle, while others depicted him fierce, such as one who blinded critics and murdering those who merely bothered him. Almost every early Christian text offers a different or alternate view of the story that is familiar today. Many of these tales were similar to existing legends in paganism. At first, Christianity harped on its tales' similarity to existing beliefs, but when once it became more confident and then aggressive, it rejected the idea that it was similar to any of these other cults. It has also been supremely successful in wiping deviant narratives off from the public mind. Earlier texts that said Mary was not a virgin or that Joseph was Jesus' biological father were discarded when Christianity dominated the West. Yet, some traces of the original version rise up here and there from obscurity which goes unrecognized. A Christmas greeting card that shows an ox and a donkey at Christ's nativity or a scene that pictures Mary in a cave have taken motivation from these long-lost tales, because the New Testament does not mention them. The rich, yet ghoulish descriptions of hell are absent in the scriptures, but was widely prevalent in apocryphal books such as the Apocalypse of Peter or the Apocalypse of Paul. The Nativity Gospel of Thomas is another such book detailed in the text.It's a common misconception among scholars that the pagan gods were/are nothing more than myths and only the monotheistic god can be spelled with a capital G. For centuries, there was a tacit agreement that the Greek and Roman gods fell into the category of history and mythology and is the subject matter of classicists while theologians handled Christianity. But Nixey boldly brackets Christianity with other ancient religions. These portrayed a world in which the pagan religions were ripe fruits waiting for someone to pluck them out and consume. The author refutes this fake notion. Contrary to the claims of Christian theologians, she confirms that the ancient world was not waiting for a saviour. In fact, it was suffering from an overdose of such men who claimed themselves to be sons of god and born of virgins. Apollonius of Tyana was one such character whose antecedents exactly matched that of Jesus. Ancient intellectuals reacted to tales of Jesus with contempt, boredom and barely concealed mirth at the inconsistencies. They also found disgusting and revolting the Christian ritual of ceremoniously drinking the blood and eating the body of the saviour. Jesus' healing miracles were eclipsed in the ancient world with that of Asclepius, who was also a son of god and a miracle worker. He also suffered a violent death and thereafter ascended to heaven. By the first century CE, to be revived from death was such a common phenomenon that it even merited a section in one of the earliest encyclopaedias. Pliny the Elder records a host of such stories and speculates on possible explanations for how it had happened. To the majority of ancient observers, Jesus was nothing more than a magician while many others thought him to be a charlatan. Making food appear from nothing was a staple of ancient magic. The virgin birth was also a contested idea in early times.In the ancient ages, heresy didn't have the negative attributes which it possesses today. The term 'heresy' comes from the Greek word 'haireo' which means 'I choose'. Within just fifty years of Christianity's ascendancy, choice became no longer a praiseworthy attribute, but a poison. Religious heresy was unheard of before the arrival of the messianic religion. Within a century after Jesus' death, Christian writers had begun inveighing against choice or more particularly, heresy. Early and medieval Christians were even ready to kill to stamp out heresy at any cost. Nixey points to the short Albigensian crusade to prove this point. Pope Innocent III exhorted to attack the followers of heresy 'in the name of the God of peace and love'! Thousands were massacred in the French town of Beziers. Unable to distinguish between heretic and believer, the soldiers asked for advice. The abbot asked to kill them all, 'for the Lord knows them that are his' (p. 157). Such propensity for indiscriminate slaughter stems from unalloyed religious bigotry and one example can be indicated from Mughal history as well. Akbar fought Maharana Pratap of Mewar in the Battle of Haldighati in 1576. The Mughal forces were commanded by Raja Man Singh I of Amber, who fought alongside the Mughal commander Asaf Khan. When fierce fighting began, it became incredibly difficult to distinguish between the Kachhwaha Rajputs supporting the Mughals and the Sisodia Rajputs fighting them. Abdul Qadir Badauni records in his memoir Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh that he asked Khan how the Mughal warriors were supposed to distinguish between them. Asaf Khan famously replied: “Shoot at whomsoever you like, on whichever side they may be killed, it will be a gain to Islam”.This book provides one more angle of how Christianity grew and eclipsed all other religions. What is seen played out was that if the tolerant tolerate the intolerant, then the intolerant will wipe out the tolerant over a period of time. This is a crucial lesson of all time and a stark warning to modern secular societies which tolerate anachronistic and savage religious practises of starkly intolerant religions in the name of plurality and diversity. Roman persecution of Christians was light and ineffective because Christianity actually grew over the period. And they adopted repression only when Christians abused the Roman gods or refused to participate in civic rituals that have no underlying religious sanctity. The Christian persecution of other religions was more brutal and mindlessly cruel because the other religions went extinct as a result. Constantine ordered that many pagan temples should have their doors removed, their roof claddings taken off, their sacred idols taken away and their gilding smelted down and added to the treasury. What was very different about Constantine was not that he promoted Christianity, which was unremarkable. What was different was that he reigned for three decades while his rebellious nephew and successor Julian did for only two years. His longevity changed history. Within fifty years of Christianity's ascent, laws forbidding heresy appeared. Just to convene a meeting of heretics was punished with flogging with leaden whips and exile. Offending books were burnt.The author very effectively illustrates how Christianity snuffed out the spirit of inquiry from the minds of the intellectuals in its growth phase. Only when the religious temper mellowed a little by the end of the Middle Ages did the quest for knowledge was rekindled from the ashes. John Chrysostom argued that there was no need of curiosity for the true Christian, because 'where there is faith, there is no need for investigation'. St. Augustine, who was one of the greatest intellectuals of all time yet Christian, condemned the quest of knowledge as 'unhealthy curiosity' which leads to all kinds of ills. Men are led to investigate the secrets of nature, which is irrelevant to their lives. They wish to gain it merely for the sake of knowing. Hence, this 'curiosity' draw man off from the one true object of contemplation, which is god. Religious comparison was common. Classical authors observed and readily admitted similarities between their religion and others. But Christian authors adopted a novel explanation that the similarity was the work of Satan to deceive ordinary men. If Asclepius or Apollonius healed people and raised the dead, it was because they were incarnations of the devil, they argued. For a long time, the world had no knowledge of the alternative scriptures, because mainstream Christianity had so completely taken them out of view. The ancient texts recovered from Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945 contained many heretical texts that present alternate versions of Christian stories which are now taken at face value and without any challenge. The Catholic Church prepared a comprehensive Index of Prohibited Books in 1557 which continued to be updated till 1966.It's always a delight to read one of Nixey's books which are appropriately researched and provide a glimpse of an entirely new vista which lay hidden in plain sight. She replaces those pages torn away from history by organized religion and helps readers evaluate concepts which were taken for granted. This book contains several interesting pictures of sculptures and paintings - some of which are very old - that corroborates the author's arguments. Nixey's paraprosdokian approach (you better look up this term in Google!) is an extremely enjoyable experience for the readers. She describes an incident and the end of the passage takes an unexpected turn which leave the readers wide-mouthed. In this book, she describes a miraculous healer who was claimed to be a god on earth and waking up a dead girl. At the end of the paragraph, this person turns out to be not Jesus, but Apollonius of Tyana. In the previous book 'The Darkening Age', she describes a group of religious zealots in Syria breaking into a temple and smashing the idols there. Everyone thinks them to be Muslim bigots of ISIS, but it was in fact early Christians destroying pagan temples in the fourth century or so.This book is very highly recommended.Rating: 4 Star
Title: The Prince
Author: Niccolo Machiavelli
Translator: W. K. Marriott
Publisher: Fingerprint! Classics, 2025 (First published 1532)
ISBN: 9789354406683
Pages: 174
Please look up the meaning of 'Machiavellianism' and 'Machiavellian' in any dictionary. The specific meaning assigned to the first in Merriam-Webster is that 'the view that politics is amoral and that any means however unscrupulous can justifiably be used in achieving political power', while the second term is defined as 'marked by cunning, duplicity or bad faith'. Not an edifying principle, obviously. Even though all the states, whether old or new, practised them for survival, the moment a keen political observer put it in a language to be understood by a medieval European potentate, it became wily, unscrupulous and cunning advice! Kautilya’s Arthashastra foreshadowed this discourse by eighteen centuries and that treatise is also attributed to be heartless, manipulative and - not altogether strangely - Machiavellian! Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) was a Florentine diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Italian Renaissance. 'The Prince' is dedicated to Lorenzo de Medici in the hope of landing on a plum job. This hardback volume is a collector's item to any serious reader.
Machiavelli spent over a decade navigating the treacherous landscape of Italian city-states, observing the brutal and effective tactics of leaders like Cesare Borgia. In 1512, the fall of the Florentine Republic and the return of the Medici family led to his immediate dismissal, followed by imprisonment and torture. Forced into exile at his country estate, he pivoted to writing as a desperate attempt to remain intellectually engaged with the political world. In 1513, he composed 'The Prince' which was essentially a 'job application' intended to win back the favour of the Medici. It took a radical departure from medieval idealism, focusing instead on political realism (realpolitik). Machiavelli argued that for a ruler to maintain state stability, they must be prepared to act immorally if the specific situation demands it. By strictly separating ethics from governance, he challenged the long-held notion that a successful leader must always be a 'good man' in the religious sense. Today, Machiavelli is regarded as the father of modern political science, for his cold-eyed, unsentimental analysis. In the dedication of his work, Machiavelli declares that he has nothing of value greater than this study which contains knowledge of the actions of great men, acquired by long experience in contemporary affairs and a continual study of antiquity.
The book starts with the definition of a principality, how many types there are, how they can be acquired, how they can be kept and why they are lost. Military is not everything. Although one may be very strong in armed forces, yet in entering a province, one has need of the goodwill of the natives. If the conquered province differs in language or customs or laws, it is better the prince stays in the province and tame the people with moderation. The prince should make himself the head and defender of his less-powerful neighbours and try to weaken the more powerful amongst them. War is not to be avoided and is only deferred to one's own disadvantage. Machiavelli gives the example of Louis XII losing his possessions in Italy by contravening his principles of statecraft.
Democracy in any form was unheard of in Italy at that time. Machiavelli introduces two types of monarchic states. The first one is in which the prince is assisted by his servants functioning as ministers whom he assigns to various provinces and the other is in which the prince is assisted by barons with provincial roots who are not amenable to transfer to any other place. The empire of the Turks was of the former variety which makes it difficult to conquer, but is easy to hold once it is gained. Similar was the empire of Darius which Alexander conquered. The author identifies fortune and goodwill as two unstable things on which a prince must not count on too much. The insults or losses suffered by the nobles is a prickly issue and it is not easy to get past old wrongs. He warns the prince that one who believes that new benefits will cause great personages to forget old injuries is deceived. Unethical injunctions appear at this point. If a prince assumes power by wicked means, but if it was applied at one blow and was necessary to one's security and that are not persisted afterwards, people forget and forgive such men. Injuries ought to be inflicted all at once while benefits are to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer. When people receive goodness from a prince of whom they were expecting evil, they are bound more closely to their benefactor. Machiavelli is under no delusion about the potential of violence. The chief foundations of all states are good laws and good arms. There cannot be good laws when the state is not well-armed. He reiterates that where they are well-armed, they have good laws. The prince should be wary of mercenary troops, as they are ambitious and unfaithful. In peacetime, they rob the state. They are valiant before friends, but cowardly before enemies.
A good portion of the treatise is dedicated to advise on how the prince should handle war and should appear to the people. A prince ought to have no other thought than war and its rules and discipline, for this is the sole art that upholds his position. A prince who does not understand it cannot be respected by his soldiers. He should exercise it either by action or by study. Sometimes, if a prince follows virtue, it would lead to his ruin and if he follows vice, that would bring him security and prosperity. A prince should appear liberal and liberality should be expressed in a way to bring reputation for it. If his liberality becomes excessive, he'd have to raise taxes and he will be reproached for this. If he is able to engage in enterprises without burdening the people, they will overlook even if he is mean. As far as possible, the money he spends for liberality should not be his or his subjects', but of somebody else’s - like pillage. A prince who keeps his subjects united and loyal need not mind the reproach of cruelty. It is better than one showing too much mercy and cause disorders to arise. It is much safer for a prince to be feared than loved. Generally, people are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly and covetous, and they have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared. A prince should keep his hands off the property of his subjects because men are more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. He should avoid being hated.
As Machiavelli believes, the job of a dynamic prince is the ever-continuing persuasion of the subjects to hold him in high esteem even though he may be paying only lip-service to his principles. He proposes a detailed recipe for the prince to remain deceitful. He claims that the populace is in general bad, and will not keep faith with the prince. This makes it justifiable for the prince not to keep faith with them. But he should disguise this behaviour and appear good, thereby being a great pretender and dissembler. The prince should appear to be merciful, faithful, humane, upright and most important of all, religious. His underlying reason for this duplicity is that everyone sees what you appear to be, but few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose you against the opinion of the many. A wise prince should craftily foster some animosity against himself so that having crushed it, his renown may rise higher. The prince ought to keep wise men as advisors and to give them the liberty of speaking the truth to him, but only of those things of which he enquires. If everybody starts speaking the truth, respect for the prince abates. The vulnerability of the people should be exploited, as suggested by the Italian Kautilya. If the prince had inflicted some injury on people and if those injured are poor and scattered, they cannot and will not strike back.
The translation of the book from Italian is done by W.K. Marriott, who has done a clean job by sticking to the original archaic style as far as possible. In fact, he does it a little too well in that the focus is on producing an exact, literal rendering of the original, rather than a paraphrased version more adapted to modern notions of style, expression and narrative. In order to appreciate all of Machiavelli's points and rhetoric, the reader needs to have a good knowledge of the classics and medieval Italian history when Popes had sons and they interfered in secular authority with a fervour that was in no way inspired by the divine. As is expected, gender equality was not a concern for this medieval text. Machiavelli compares fortune to a woman the prince courts. If he wishes to keep her subservient, it was necessary to beat and ill-treat her! And, she is said to be a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent and with more audacity command her.
The book is highly recommended.
Rating: 4 Star
Title: The Life and Times of George Fernandes
Author: Rahul Ramagundam
Publisher: Allen Lane, 2022 (First)
ISBN: 9780670092888
Pages: 533
When a lean, bespectacled trade union leader named George Mathew Isadore Fernandes followed Atal Behari Vajpayee to take the oath of office as the defence minister of India in the BJP-led government in 1998, it was the most incongruous moment for a lot of people who believed that steadfastness to an ideal is the hallmark of a politician. A firebrand organiser of workers who was in the forefront of several militant labour strikes found himself cloistered in a supposedly right-wing outfit. What caused this ‘revolutionary’ shift in his political stand? This question was a burning issue then and is still relevant today when the question of choosing the lesser evil props up in the political domain. This book gathers a comprehensive picture of India over the 80 years when George Fernandes played out his legacy. It is also interwoven with the history of the socialist movement which collapsed to irrelevance from a very promising start. The author claims that this book is the first study that goes into the microscopic details of George Fernandes' complex life and times. It was the shackled photo of him during the Emergency that prompted the author to write a book on him. Rahul Ramagundam is a professor of history at a Delhi-based university. His books are political in nature.
George Fernandes was born in 1930 at Mangalore to Konkani parents. He had a traditional religious upbringing and was enrolled in a seminary at Bengaluru to become a priest. However, the rebel in him was always alert to injustice and he had a tough time with the administrators of the seminary. He left it soon and became attracted to socialist ideals. He went to Mumbai in search of employment as most youths were doing at that time. There he was caught up in the trade union movement and rose quickly in its ranks due to his fiery speeches and bubbly enthusiasm. Aggression, commitment and dedication were the staples on which he built one success after another in the labour union movement. In 1958, he announced a 'Bombay Bandh' for a day which brought the bustling city to a standstill, which was the first of its kind in history and was called in solidarity with striking workers at the Padmini Automobiles. In his work extending to two decades, he organised port and dock workers, municipal employees, hotel and restaurant workers. While at the forefront of striking workers, it can't be denied that he was desirous of accepting positions of power. Fernandes was elected to the Bombay city corporation for the first time in 1961. On the first day when the house commenced, he protested, asking to conduct the proceedings in Marathi. He didn't obey the chair and was forcefully evicted. He was made prominent on the national scene by organising a strike by the railwaymen that eventually failed and initiated his downfall among workers. But it did some lasting changes in the movement also. Ramagundam observes that trade unionism drifted away from the pioneering adventurism by the 1980s. They had become service agencies of political parties and turned organised-labour-centric in outlook. They moved far away from the predicament of unorganised workers. As an example, he notes that the organised workers demanded uniforms made of fashionable terry cloth, without thinking about its impact on the handloom sector, which provided livelihood to millions in the unorganised sector. Their leadership went to lawyers who knew labour laws well with no comprehensive or integrated view of the society.
This book gives as much emphasis in bringing out the politician in Fernandes as in introducing the labour activist. He was really interested in politics and in assuming positions of power. He became the union minister for very important portfolios in 1977 (Desai), 1989 (V.P. Singh) and 1999, 2004 (Vajpayee) cabinets. Even when he was an MP, he listened to tales of injustice from the general populace and acted upon them. His combative instinct, spontaneous repartee, ready wit and confidence made him stand out. He was seen as one who took up cases of injustice whenever and wherever they occurred. He was on the mailing list of all civil rights activists. He was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1967, but miserably lost in 1971 in the same constituency of Bombay South. In this election, he opposed the alliance with Jan Sangh. Also, this was the year when Indira's pro-left policies such as bank nationalization and rescission of privy purses had gained much traction among voters. He opposed the Emergency and planned subversive activities to destabilize the Indira regime. He was arrested and put in jail in shackles. He contested elections from jail, was elected and appointed as a cabinet minister. However, in a short span of three years since arriving triumphantly from Tihar jail, Fernandes found himself ‘dented, deserted and diminished’. His long years in the wilderness had begun. He was a source of great strength in troubleshooting the inter-party rivalries in Vajpayee ministry though he brought in a devastating scandal in the Tehelka episode. The author estimates that Fernandes did not have much electoral strength, but carried political weight. He was successful in bargaining for a position of advantage within the BJP-led NDA on the basis of his sheer stature. He extracted the price for his support and got it.
George Fernandes was not a stranger to jail. He was incarcerated in the trade union days as well as during the Emergencies. He was jailed in 1963 for eight months when Nehru imposed Emergency in the wake of Chinese invasion. He had invoked this draconian measure after the war was over. Police beat him up in 1970 when he led a demonstration of Adivasis in Delhi, though he was an MP then. He suffered a traumatic head injury and this might have contributed to the development of Alzheimer's Disease in his old age, which robbed him of memories. He was again captured in 1976 after living underground for many months during Indira's Emergency. He was caught in connection with the Baroda dynamite case. The motivation for writing this book is claimed to be a photo of Fernandes being taken to court in shackles after this capture. Several chapters describe his underground activities and resistance measures. He strangely had trusting liaison with several women who not always returned the trust. He was tortured in prison and two of his brothers who had no political background were also arrested and tortured.
The most audacious episode in Fernandes' life is, expectedly, the railway strike he engineered in 1974. After the oil shock, inflation was very high and all categories of workers were suffering badly. The railwaymen demanded larger bonus and pay and became restive. Looking back with hindsight, it seems that it was not prudent to challenge the government which itself was reeling under so much international headwinds. Fernandes was militant and stepped up the rhetoric and issued open threats. He thundered that a 7-days' strike of railwaymen will cause every thermal power station to close down; A 10-days' strike would close down every steel plant that would take a year to restart; and finally, a 15-day strike would make India starve. The government prevaricated in negotiations before the strike. A meeting was cancelled at the last minute when a deputy minister's father died and he had to go to his village in Kashmir for the last rites and no alternate negotiator was arranged. Fernandes was arrested a week prior to the strike. The public opposed the strike as the railwaymen were the best organized lot in the country and enjoyed far better pay and privileges than the great majority of the population. The government did not cave in, as it was prepared to suffer the consequences and teach the striking workers a harsh lesson. The workers gave in and unconditionally withdrew the strike after 20 days. The effects of this fiasco was long-lasting. It undid the working class movement in India for a long time. The miserable failure of the strike undermined Fernandes' position in the labour movement. A week after the strike was called off, and workers were beginning to feel the pinch of the government's punitive measures, their wives surrounded Fernandes and tore his clothes, demanding restoration of wages to keep them going. AIRF, his own union of railwaymen, ejected him from its presidency. The workers shouted slogans against him. A decade later, when he became railway minister in the V.P. Singh cabinet he tried to get even by derecognising the union, but they fought back and the attempt was foiled keeping the rancour permanent.
The book is written in a fine style and nice selection of words and phrases. Ramagundam's command over the language is very impressive. Even though the book is rather big, the lilting narrative carries the readers pleasantly through the ups and downs of the protagonist's career. He had an unhappy married life and the strife is clearly visible through page after page. He once said that the day he got married was the last day he ever smiled. His powerful language is sampled in the text, and his repartee to Indira Gandhi is truly famous: "All dictators are congenital liars, but you madam, excel them all". While glimpsing on the early life of Fernandes in Mangalore, the author is particularly harsh on the Christian clergy and their faith as practised in the western coast of India and its undue preference for conversion.
The book is highly recommended.
Rating: 4 Star
