Why We Fight

Title: Why We Fight – The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace
Author: Christopher Blattman
Publisher: Penguin, 2023 (First published 2022)
ISBN: 9780241989258
Pages: 388

Very common and ordinary thoughts can be sometimes very profound. A book title such as this one touches the basic fabric of community-living, but not many people would have nursed a thought on why quarrel is engendered in a society – like between individuals in a human group, between human groups in a larger conglomeration such as a nation, or between nations in the larger comity of international organizations such as the UN. This book presents a framework to understand the common forces that drive fights that are prolonged and violent between groups. Interpersonal violence is not included as also acrimonious competition between groups which is regarded as normal. Prolonged violence is a rarity and not normal. What is stressed in the book is that competition or quarrel or even a skirmish is common, sustained fights that exhaust resources are not so. The factors which lead a group to take the plunge by delivering the first planned blow that sets off conflict are carefully analysed. Another set of suggestions are given at the end that help to reduce conflict. Christopher Blattman is a professor of Global Conflict studies at the University of Chicago. As a young man, he met his future wife in a Kenyan internet café, where she set him on a path to working on conflict and international development. Through his academic work he has witnessed violence around the world and tried his hand in stemming them.

The book presents some hard facts which are not fairly obvious but would be found convincing if you apply your mind over it. The first principle is that instead of fighting it out on the streets, enemies prefer to loathe one another in peace. The established wisdom often suggest that issues like poverty, scarcity, natural resources, climate change, ethnic fragmentation, polarization and injustice lead to violence. Blattman thinks that though these may be terrible for a particular group, they don’t ignite fighting in a big way. Another counter-intuitive yet logical inference is that peace arises not from brotherly love and cooperation, but from the ever-present threat of violence (p.27). This is discovered in the context of urban gang wars, but a little consideration will show that it holds good for the relations between nations as well. The more destructive our weapons, the easier it is to find peace. When the prospects of war are more ruinous, the bargaining range widens and expands the dividend from peace. By corollary, it shows the arguments of non-violent gurus like Gandhi as just wishful thinking which are nothing but the pampered thoughts of one who had only to deal with a civilized antagonist. If you think that would be praising Britain too much, it may be changed as Gandhi chose to look the other way when his antagonist abandoned civilized ways on other people, but not him.

The book sounds like describing a hypothetical world where pure logic suggests what should take place rather than going behind what is taking place in the real world. The author introduces game theory models to describe real phenomena but which are too idealistic to serve much purpose. This requires rivals striving selfishly for their own interests in an anarchic system where there is no overruling authority to keep rivals from attacking each other. To be selfish is logical, and theory explains much of practice when self-interest in the physical sense is more prominent. Blattman’s theories hopelessly falter when they are applied to terrorism – Muslim suicide bombers blow themselves up for no selfish objective to be achieved in this world. What they aim for is greater things after death. No logic can describe this madness and that may be why the author carefully stays away from even mentioning terrorism in this book that studies reasons for fighting! Oversimplification or reductionism to an imagined principle is another drawback of the book. Street violence between Hindus and Muslims in India is simplified as politically orchestrated for purely political goals. He does not seem to be aware of the deep cleavages between the two communities and instead settle self-satisfyingly with a hypothesis that would do nothing more than please American academics. This book also examines ways to reduce conflict. Unconstrained and over-centralized rule is a basic cause of conflict everywhere. Proper checks and balances are the solutions. The more constrained societies are, the more peaceful they will be. Blattman presents the US constitution and its restrained presidency as the perfect examples for the world to emulate. It is also claimed that narrow dictatorships and military juntas are the most likely to launch wars. Note the qualifier ‘narrow dictatorship’! It’s a subtle ploy to acquit the Chinese regime where a highly distributed Communist party apparatus is said to be exercising enough checks and balances on the executive.

Blattman then makes a careful study of the origins of the tendency to violence in human societies. Humanity’s righteous vengeance is biologically and culturally evolved. This is a powerful social norm that is found in every human society. An instinct for fairness is a must for cooperation in large groups. Strange it may seem, there are powerful motivators to fight and die for others in the society. The author claims that status is what most people care about more than their lives. Nazi air force pilots fought and laid down their lives willingly for an elaborate system of war medals and status recognition. Intangible incentives like these are present in every society. Even though this was the ideal point to hint at, the author prefers to remain silent of Islamist suicide squads and their motivation to do so. Overconfidence is a crucial factor that pushes groups to violence. We are biased to search for evidence to confirm what we already believe. Electing overconfident leaders will narrow bargaining ranges and make peace more fragile. Groupthink, organizational forms and leadership styles are still prone to collective errors. Groups work especially well for problems that have a clear right or wrong answer. In a subjective matter or in uncertain environments, groups don’t take better decisions. Like-minded group members often get more extreme in their views through deliberation.

This book introduces several ideas to reduce conflict and violence between groups in human societies. Economic intertwining is a way to peace such that an attacker feels the financial pinch when a victim who is economically linked to him is assaulted. Social interactions and integrated civic life also help. Here, the author brings forward an Indian example to prove his point which is neither true nor logical. Hindu organizations carried out a Rath Yatra (chariot procession) from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya in UP as part of the Ram temple movement. A string of violence was reported along the route. The author claims that Somnath – from where the procession began – was calm. The reason for this is hypothesized to be that the Hindu and Muslim communities are economically more intermingled there. This is a totally unsubstantiated conjecture. Both the communities are economically very closely linked everywhere in India. Communal tensions occur at some places in spite of that. Here the author is clearly regurgitating the fallacious finding of some local activist. Blattman also looks at the mechanism by which enlightenment ideals spread around the world. Sometime between 1689 and 1776, rights that had been viewed as the rights of a particular people were transferred into universal and natural human rights. The explosion of literary forms like the novel and paintings gave people a window into the minds of other people, cutting across distance and social boundaries. These extended the bounds of sympathy to include the interests of the Other and made fighting less acceptable than before.

The author has a lot of experience working in the world’s most notorious conflict zones and with gang leaders who are waiting for half a chance to be at their enemy’s throats. With this exposure behind him, Blattman proposes some factors that are essential to make and keep peace between contending parties. Peace is said to be the product of socialization. Power should be devolved into more hands. The number of stakeholders should be more to restrain a few intransigents. There is a hunch among scholars that women are more likely to keep peace as rulers. However, a survey of early modern Europe doesn’t buttress this idea where queens were found 40 per cent more likely to make wars than kings. Foreign aid agencies should distribute their resources in decentralized ways through the community, rather than channelling it through the government which would concentrate power in fewer hands. Foreign NGOs always have a poor opinion of third world regimes and would waste no chance to bypass their authority and grow taller in stature than the government in its citizens’ minds. Divisions on wealth and ethnicity are by nature not prone to violence. There are many poor and ethnically divided societies which are not going to dissolve into violence.

The book gives some plain talk on what matters in a standoff between rivals whose fighting capabilities are more or less balanced. Blattman asserts that weak nations do not set the policy agenda; bargaining power comes from the ability to threaten harm. Nations should project their strength in a measure exceeding their actual resources in order to demonstrate a credible deterrent. Even though not clearly spelt out as such, Gandhian nonviolence has no place in the changing balance of power between nations and is not even considered as an alternative system worthy of examination. The author has analysed specific scenarios using game theory models and associated pie charts that look rather too simplified. Religious terrorism is not handled in the book which is a serious disadvantage and this deficiency sticks out prominently in a narrative which is otherwise comprehensive in its analyses of the reasons of conflict. Another disadvantage is the sole anchoring of the narrative on sociology without any link to evolutionary biology that lies underneath. How a trait to fight strategically developed in biological evolution and whether they exist in other animal species would have provided informative context to the discussion.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

History Liberated

Title: History Liberated – The Sree Chithra Saga
Author: Princess Aswathi Thirunal Gouri Lakshmi Bayi
Publisher: Konark Publishers, 2021 (First)
ISBN: 9788194201892
Pages: 450

The 565 native states which formed a part of British India were in varying degrees of social and material progress. Travancore was the foremost among them, adorned by a long line of enlightened monarchs crowned by the jewel among them – Maharaja Sree Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma. He acceded to India in 1947 and functioned as the Raj Pramukh of the united Travancore-Cochin state till 1956. After stepping down, he graciously lived on as an ordinary citizen of India, eliciting deep respect from the people around him. He passed away in 1991 at the age of 79. Unfortunately, an effort was seen thereafter to belittle him and his lineage through reminiscences which the victims could not effectively refute owing to the great time that elapsed in between. Chithira Thirunal was the son of the younger of the two cousins adopted into the Travancore royal family. When the reigning monarch Sree Moolam Thirunal died, the elder cousin assumed regency powers. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t have male offspring and the crown was transferred to the younger cousin’s lineage. In 1995, one of the granddaughters of the regent rani came out with a book titled ‘At the Turn of the Tide: The Life and Times of Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’ which contained some adverse remarks. Noted author Manu S. Pillai’s 2016 book ‘The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore’ also repeated this trait (this book was reviewed earlier here). The present book is a rejoinder to these two strikes on a simple, progressive and visionary Maharaja. It is also for salvaging Sethu Parvathi Bayi – the junior rani – as she was the target of ‘calculated cruelty’ from some quarters. She is claimed to be victimized for nothing more than being strong-willed and the hardships and sufferings faced by her remains unknown. Princess Aswathi Thirunal Gouri Lakshmi Bayi is a member of the royal family and the niece of Chithira Thirunal. She is an economics graduate and an accomplished poetess. She was awarded the Padma Shree recently. This book seeks to liberate Chithira Thirunal’s history and legacy from the eclipse his rivals had planned.

The narrative begins with the adoption of two young girl cousins to the royal family named Sethu Lakshmi Bayi (elder) and Sethu Parvathi Bayi (younger). This kind of adoption was required in a matrilineal family in which there was no natural-born girl child. The senior male offspring of the elder princess was assured of the throne. The relationship between the princesses and the palace atmosphere were vitiated by the senior Rani’s miscarriage in the eighth month of pregnancy and junior Rani’s safe delivery of a male child. This meant the new-born would be the future king and power would be taken out of the senior Rani’s line. Junior Rani feared assassination attempts on the little prince. She was apprehensive even to hand him over to temple priests for mandatory rituals at the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple. With the ruling king’s early death, senior Rani took over as Regent till the crown prince turned eighteen. She strictly controlled even the petty expenses of the junior’s household. There were times when money was not given to feed the entire household and the children had to obtain food from the kitchen of a loyal retainer. The junior’s mother and siblings were forbidden from staying with or visiting them at Kaudiyar Palace. When Chithira Thirunal was sent to Mysore for administrative training before assuming office, his mother was required to stay away from him. Unable to suffer this disgrace, she chose not to go to Mysore. All these were intentionally done to mentally harass her and the crown prince. Senior Rani’s household, especially her consort, was determined to prolong the regency by alleging grave falsehoods on the mind and character of the prince and his mother. Accusations of black magic involving an attempted human sacrifice of a baby were concocted and levelled against them. The author asserts that three assassination attempts were made on the life of the prince – one on the day of investiture itself and two in his minority. One such attempt was to torch the infant’s bed and to make it appear as originated from a toppled candlestick.

Some interesting features of the Regency rule are mentioned here. The paramountcy of the British was a principle that was displayed in full view of the public even in their most ordinary daily lives and its style and substance. The arrival of dignitaries in hierarchical order for state functions left no doubt unanswered on who’s the highest on the ladder. The Regent rani came first, followed five minutes later by the prince (who later became Maharaja) and the British resident came last. The sequence was reversed in dispersal. In the Investiture Declaration read out by the Resident, Viceroy Willingdon informed the public through his written order of how he was ‘convinced’ of the prince’s suitability for kingship after having an interview and interactions with him. The Maharaja responded in similar vein by profusely thanking the British and conceding that he has taken charge according to usage and recognition of the British government. The author has used every weapon in her resources to strike back at the senior Rani’s household. She is alleged to be partial to Christians and granted them prime land to build churches and ecclesiastical institutions. This was said to be in a bid to impress Viceroy Irwin who was a pious Christian. When charges of unsound mind came up against Chithira Thirunal, some bishops of Travancore sent petitions to the viceroy suggesting the prince’s incompetence to succeed to the throne (p.88). In the same way, the author arraigns some of the peculiarities of the senior Rani’s household. A comparison of the consorts is also made with the senior guy said to be more English than the English, mostly suited and booted and enjoyed hunting. The moral turpitude of injuring a living being for sport is played up and we are informed that though Chithira Thirunal was a sharp shooter who could smash a matchstick from a distance, he never fired to kill.

The Temple Entry Proclamation was the greatest achievement of Sree Chithira Thirunal. At the stroke of a pen, he castigated disgrace and discrimination that lasted many centuries to the dustbin of history and restored the self-respect of the lower castes. This was the first such action in India. Kochi and Malabar followed suit rather late in this respect and their titular rulers forever stopped going to temples when they had to finally permit entry of the untouchables. There is a line of thought that credits Diwan C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer as being instrumental for this crucial step. This book provides sufficient proof to dispel this view. The Maharaja constituted a nine-member committee in 1932 to study this issue, out of which seven were upper castes. In 1934, they recommended many reforms but stopped short of permitting entry. There was the threat of mass conversion of Ezhavas in the background. On Nov 3, 1936, a memorandum signed by 30,522 upper castes appealed for temple entry. A few days later on the Maharaja’s birthday, it was granted. The gates of Kaudiyar Palace were symbolically thrown open to all and a grateful multitude watched their rulers welcoming them from a balcony with open arms. Strangely, the senior Rani – earlier Regent – opposed temple entry and she never visited Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple thereafter. The book gives a very plausible argument for why Chithira Thirunal waited five years for temple entry. This was answered by Sir C.P. He said he advised the Maharaja to go for this reform when a Hindu diwan ruled the state. Thomas Austin and M. Habibullah were the diwans in the early part of the Maharaja’s reign.

In the 1940s, Chithira Thirunal’s star faded in the face of violent and uncompromising agitation for more power to the people’s representatives. At Indian independence, Travancore initially opted not to accede to India and remain independent with a constitution modelled on the USA. The 1946 Punnapra-Vayalar rebellion erupted in which hundreds of communist fighters were killed. This was a case of labour unions adopting political objectives such as removal of the diwan. The author rightfully concludes that this was nothing but a brazen attempt to create martyrs and to strengthen the Communist party. She refers to Nandigram in 2007 as similar to Punnapra-Vayalar. In the Bengal hamlet, the police in the communist-ruled state of West Bengal fired upon farmers protesting against eviction from their homesteads to make way for a new car factory. Many were killed. There the Communist party took the stand that law and order had to be maintained at any cost. Gouri Lakshmi Bayi obliquely admits that the demand for an independent Travancore was Chithira Thirunal’s brainchild. It is claimed to be only a bargaining chip to gain special status for the state. The Maharaja was claimed to be apprehensive that the North-dominated Centre would steamroll the interests of the southern states. Coincidental it might be, but Travancore decided to accede to India just days after an assassination attempt on Diwan Sir C.P. The author however clarifies that the attempt had no role to play in swaying Travancore into the embrace of India. Another progressive step was to abolish the death penalty in Travancore. The book lists out a lot of work done by the Maharaja in bringing modern institutions to his kingdom. This becomes a drag on the readers after some time.

Part 2 of the book is fully reserved for reminiscences of close family members on the Maharaja and his mother, the junior Rani. A collage of photographs of the two enveloping the period from their childhood to old age is artistically conceived and excellently reproduced. Curiously, none of the family explains why Chithira Thirunal chose not to marry and this point remains unanswered. It is true that matriliny made it immaterial whether a king had children or not as the mantle invariably fell on his nephew. The narrative concludes with the scrapping of the post of Raj Pramukh when unified Kerala state was formed. The author hints at many places that the Indian government never kept its word on the promises made to royal houses when their kingdoms were annexed to a newly independent India. The Privy Purse was later repealed but nothing is mentioned about this. The author also indicates about a sequel to this volume, which might not be a good idea. Many incidents of the later period of the Maharaja are only glanced over in passing.

The book has a hard cover and fully printed in very fine and glossy pages which cause it to weigh nearly 2 kg. The author’s deep respect for her uncle, the Maharaja Sree Chithira Thirunal, as a living god is discernible in every page. Several couplets she had penned in his honour and memory are reproduced in the book. Padmanabhaswamy and his temple are the other two major protagonists in the text which put in an appearance every few pages. There are some personal anecdotes narrated, but not enough from a person who had close familiarity with the Maharaja from her birth to his passing away 46 years later. Many rare photographs from the palace albums are included. These photos make for a good excuse to purchase this book. The diction is slightly cumbersome at some points. The author being an established poetess, her choice of words may make a connoisseur of rhyme enthused, but not the ordinary reader in some pages. The Maharaja had confided many things to the author’s care and the readers would have cherished some remembrances about the meeting Chithira Thirunal had had with Viceroy Willingdon which confirmed his suitability to hold the crown. If the Viceroy had decided otherwise, Travancore’s history would have coursed through along a new channel. Nothing is mentioned about this episode.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Nayars of Malabar

Title: Nayars of Malabar
Author: F. Fawcett
Publisher: Asian Educational Services, 1985 (First published 1901)
ISBN: Nil
Pages: 138

The British administrators who ruled over India in the colonial period took it upon themselves to study about their subject population. Though it might appear an enlightened course of action, let it be clearly stated that this effort was solely to find ways in which the natives could be guided and controlled to achieve the ends of the colonial masters. And they found a lot to study with thousands of endogamous social groups called jatis in each province. The results of this research came out as reports, letters to designated learned societies like the Asiatic Society, state manuals, research papers and books. This book is one such study on the Nayar caste in Malabar. Only the northern part of Kerala known as Malabar was under British rule, but the conclusions and characteristics deduced from this study is applicable without much alteration to the entire Nayar caste of Kerala. The modern spelling used to denote the caste is ‘Nair’, but for easy comprehension and in agreement with the terminology in this book, the term ‘Nayar’ is used in this review. Frederick Fawcett (1853 – 1926) was a British civil servant and ethnographer who worked in Kerala as the superintendent of Malabar police. He was an amateur archaeologist and anthropologist and retired in 1911 as the deputy inspector general of police in Madras. Several publications on his topics of interest stand in public domain as testimonials to this man’s varied interests. This book is a part of the series of notes on people of Malabar and pages are numbered from 193 to 323. The book describes Malabar as an earthly paradise where Nature has lavished her gifts with unmatched prodigality. Modern visitors would also find the region as described which confirm its modern epithet ‘God’s Own Country’ as an unchanged certitude. Along with its natural beauty, it is asserted in the book that the most undiluted form of the highest and most abstract religion is seen side by side with the most entirely primitive.

Fawcett identifies 21 clans (sub-castes) among Nayars with the ‘Kiriyathil’ at the top. He expresses doubt on their Dravida lineage and finds similarities with the Uriyas of Gumsoor in Ganjam, Odisha in the matter of outward appearance, customs, habitation and general mode of life. Even though all these clans were Nayars, they are further rearranged in hierarchical order. The Vattakkad and Pallichan clans were lower in standing and generally not allowed to suffix the caste title to their names as done by other Nayars. Matrimony was also restricted among the clans as women were not allowed to marry or cohabit with men who were lower in rank to their clan. The author provides extensive data tables tabulating physical measurements like height, span, chest, cephalic length, nasal height etc. as if these were specimens of some kind with which the outside world has yet to familiarize. A tinge of racism and a slight whiff of eugenics are felt here since we now know that the people of Kerala – irrespective of caste or religion – belong to the same racial stock though individuals may differ. Curiously, this is borne out in the tables too as the physical parameters are almost the same across all clans. The minor differences of a few millimetres in stature are not statistically significant.

Fawcett notes some interesting facts about the Malabar society of his times. A recurring and embarrassing issue was the practice of polyandry practised by some communities and the loosely knit moral standards of the Nayar community. The author quotes learned men reiterate the command that Sudra women in Malabar is ordained to serve the Brahmins and they need not remain chaste. However, the author clearly states that this is not what is seen in practice as ‘nowhere else is the marriage tie more jealously guarded and its breaches more savagely avenged’ (p.228). As a matter of fact, he points out that promiscuity has no more followers in Malabar than elsewhere. The relations between sexes are unusually happy, the reason being that they are less influenced by considerations of property than elsewhere. Flexibility in marriage is also stressed. Should the parties find they are unsuited, they part. There is no dragging on under bondage intolerable to both (p.232). It is also mentioned that all Nayars believe in magical remedies, but he does not judge them by this alone and mitigates it with a remark that ‘such beliefs are very deep in human nature and one of the earliest heirlooms of the human family which may persist to the very end. Reason and culture do not efface it’. The communal situation in Malabar was generally tolerant, but the region had also witnessed heinous communal riots bordering on Hindu genocide in 1921. This book talks about a minor incident which indicates that not all communities practised tolerance on equal measure. Some Mappilas had reportedly destroyed a stone lingam in search of treasure which was worshipped at a forest grove at Kottiyur temple (p.269).

It is amusing to learn about some curious aspects of Malabar society as it existed about 130 years ago. The men were always clean-shaven except during mourning for a near relative. This included removal of body hair from all parts except the crown of head and was done by a professional dedicated to the purpose. In Malabar, the prevalent idea was that no respectable woman shall cover her breast (p.198) though this practice was observed to be fading out of use. An important point to notice is that it was not restricted to the lower castes alone as is usually alleged. The life expectancy was obviously short and this risk was hedged by people opting for more children with the average of about five per family. We see arguments in contemporary media about how climate change makes summers hotter and the weather unpredictable and harsher. An observation about summer heat in Malabar is worth contemplation in this context. Fawcett writes that ‘a few hours’ walk in the midday sun where there is little or no shade is sufficient to bring on fever to the ordinarily strong man’ (p.213). So it seems nothing has changed that much.

The book provides a detailed description of rituals in vogue for birth, marriage and death of a member of the Nayar community. These are mostly copied from written accounts prepared by prominent members of that caste and it’s doubtful if the author had actually witnessed all of them. A description of the religious functions attending to a festival at the Pishari temple in Koyilandi is included. Even though lower castes were not allowed entry in the temple, each and every caste was represented in the festival within a complex web of duties and responsibilities whose filaments crisscrossed across the entire body of the local Hindu society. A peculiar feature of the Kottiyur temple festival mentioned in the book is interesting. The people going to attend it are distinctively rowdy, feeling they have a right to abuse in the vilest and filthiest terms anyone they see on the way which could go up to violence to person and property. But they return like lambs (p.267). The author then identifies the differences between the rituals and customs of Nayars and Nambudiris. The former is more inclined towards animism and deification of ancestors, worship of snakes and kites, sacrifice, magic, witchcraft and sorcery while the Nambudiris employ the purest form of Vedic Brahminism which has its highest expression in the temples attached to Nambudiri houses (illam). The book also carries an informative part on snake worship in Malabar and Travancore.

On the negative side, the book makes some outrageous conclusions drawn from physical measurements of persons belonging to various sub-castes among Nayars. Regarding a particular individual, Fawcett remarks that ‘the person whose cephalic index is the maximum that was measured in Palghat where there are many Pattar (east coast) Brahmins, his father was in all probability, one of them’ (p.207). The author is sometimes deceived by similar sounding names that can have no correlation or causation between them. In the case of a Taravad whose name Thondil that sounds similar to Tindys mentioned as a port of call in Periplus, he surmises that a man belonging to that Taravad ‘bears the name of the place as it was in the days of Ptolemy’ (p.202). Fawcett was a man with wide interests and he wanted to describe the vagaries of his subject-people in all its manifestations. Modesty binds his pen in describing some sexual practices of Nayar women and he writes three sentences in Latin language to describe this amusing peculiarity (p.297) and to wriggle out of the dilemma. Ordinarily, this would have put the readers on the sharp needle of impotent suspense, but with the development of software technology, Google’s translation service from Latin to English would come to their rescue. The book also includes some monochromatic photographs taken by the author.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star