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

A Brief History of Motion

Title: A Brief History of Motion – From the Wheel to the Car to What Comes Next

Author: Tom Standage

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9781526608314

Pages: 246

 

Transportation of men and material from one location to another in a fast and efficient manner is an indicator of civilizational progress when taken over a large interval of time. I insist on having the disclaimer on time because in most cities and urban landscapes of the world, transportation speed and efficiency is considerably less than what it were a half-century ago. However, a liberating breakthrough is sure to occur and take human progress to the next level. That is the lesson we learn from the history of various cultures and their technology. Innovative technologies often initially present themselves with potential for doubt and confusion about its feasibility. Today, there is once again that sense of change, opportunity and uncertainty, as a result of a sudden proliferation of new forms of transport. Experts predict a not-so-late demise of the car as a mode of travel which moved humanity in the twentieth century. This book is a good narrative of man’s progress from invention of the wheel to smartphone-enabled ride sharing services on a driverless vehicle. Tom Standage is deputy editor at the Economist and editor of its future-gazing annual ‘The World Ahead’. He is also the author of many best-selling books and lives in London.

 

Just as it is apt to begin from the very beginning, Standage starts the narrative with early forms of transport. It is widely believed that the wheel was invented in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BCE as a means for conveying grain from one place to the other. This book proposes that it was invented in Europe, in the Carpathian mountain region in west Ukraine, for transporting copper ore about 400 years earlier than the date on which wheel was supposed to have come into being in Mesopotamia. To consolidate the claim, the author alludes to Ljubljana Marshes wheel found in Poland at around the same time. Wherever it may have originated, some of the formal rules governing the use of wheeled vehicles and the earliest examples of urban environments being reshaped to accommodate them date to the Roman period in the late centuries BCE. There was public pressure not to allow wheeled vehicles on city streets which were the preserve of the townsfolk. However, Julius Caesar introduced a law in 45 BCE, the Lex Julia Municipalis, allowing their use in the city of Rome only from dusk until dawn.

 

The next revolution in transport occurred around the early-twentieth century with the development of cars. Horses, which were used for transport and hauling carriages, had become a nightmare for most cities when their numbers proliferated and horse manure had become a grave environmental issue for the town’s inhabitants. Alternate vehicles used steam, petrol and electricity. It is curious to learn that battery-powered cars entered the fray more than a century ago. But with the discovery of new petroleum reserves in many parts of the globe, cheap fuel oil replaced all others as the prime mover. Cars became accessible to the common man with the introduction of Ford Model T. Prices of cars ranged from $2800 to $7000, but the Model T was priced at $850 only. Unlike others, its advertisements did not depict a target customer or context of use, implying that this universal car was suitable for everyone. The challenge was to build an engine that was light but powerful. Ford identified Vanadium steel, which had just then become commercially available in Europe. Ford’s ‘moving assembly line’ concept reduced the production cost to a great extent. The Model T sold for just $298 in five years and it cornered a market share of 55 per cent. By extending car ownership down the income scale, the Model T brought motoring to the masses.

 

After building up the story of the automobile, the book looks into the mess it had unintentionally brought about in urban settlements. Clogging of road lanes due to heavy traffic and pollution has prompted authorities to curb vehicular traffic in selected areas of the city. This was necessitated due to transfer of population to the suburbs when better transportation was available a half century ago. Standage examines the urban layouts by Cesare Marchetti. It suggests that one hour is, on average, how long people are willing to spend travelling to and from work each day and has been so for centuries. Some people commute much shorter or longer, but the average holds for a whole city’s population. When faster modes of transport emerge, cities grow in size.

 

The author also studies the impact cars and automobiles have brought in re-moulding social relationships and societal restrictions. Cars and the freedom they provided were central to the teenage culture that began to take shape in 1940s America and exported worldwide. It changed the eating habits too. The drive-in restaurants that sprang up along American highways, catering to time-pressed drivers with fast service and the promise of consistency under a nationwide brand, gave rise to the modern concept of fast food. Cars have been the driving force in creating shopping patterns. In a future in which cars would assume a decidedly less prominent role, its owners’ habits are bound to change. Although teenagers and young adults embrace malls and large supermarkets as a social space, malls are in retreat. By 2005, around 1500 enclosed malls were built in the US, but hardly any have been built since then. Smartphones provide a far more convenient venue to chat with friends and other social activities. The Covid pandemic has also encouraged customers to buy from online stores rather than physical nearby outlets.

 

Standage makes a few intelligent guesses about the future of personal transportation in future. An obvious candidate is the electric car which makes a comeback facilitated by the Lithium-ion battery that expanded the storage capacity of batteries. He argues that the concept of a personally owned car would soon become obsolete. Ride-sharing and ride-hailing are suggested as the two alternatives enabled by powerful smartphones. Improvements in mass transport systems such as the Hyperloop are not even mentioned. Similarly conspicuous by absence is the story of air travel and its potential for the future. The book can be clearly divided into two halves – one being the historical development of automobiles and the other being deliberations on the future. The first part is very interesting to read, but the latter appears to be labored. The practical implications of the author’s imagined future would become apparent only after a few decades. The author’s prediction that personal ownership of cars would shrink in the future is a bold one as it requires letting go of a major icon of flaunting one’s wealth in many societies. The availability of shared vehicles in the case of a national or climate emergency is also a point which would weigh heavily in the decision-making process of the people.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 3 Star

 

Quiet

Title: Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
Author: Susan Cain
Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2012 (First)
ISBN: 9780670916764
Pages: 333

One out of every two or three people is an introvert, who feels unsettled in company, tries to avoid public view and prefers to settle down calmly in the peace of a favourite niche. Their social life is difficult as they lack the ability to connect to a large group of people effortlessly. In the modern society which prefers extroverts to handle its economic prospects, this temperamental peculiarity puts a good number of people, probably almost half of them, at a disadvantage which they don’t deserve. This book takes up the question of introversion, analyses the pathways in which this condition is manifested and more importantly, how to handle them if one happens to be your spouse, child, friend or colleague. Susan Cain is an American writer and lecturer who was also a former lawyer and negotiations consultant.

We live with a value system that places extroversion as the ideal for a successful life. This makes introverts experience stress in their studies and careers. Cain argues that this value system is inherently flawed. If introverts lack social skills, they are more than compensated by the ability to tune in to their inner worlds and the treasures to be found there. There are introverted people who act like extroverts and still be successful professionally. These closet introverts pass undetected in public spaces until some life event such as winning a lottery or inheriting a large sum of money jolts them into taking stock of their true natures. Introverts are scientifically identified as possessing a very distinct personality only a century ago. Jung defined introverts as those who are drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling and extroverts to the external life of people and activities. Introverts focus on the meaning they make of the events swishing around them while extroverts plunge into the events themselves. Introverts charge their batteries by being alone and extroverts do this when they socialize.

Cain discusses about the physiological traits in human brain that makes introverts special. There is an area called amygdala in the brain which is its emotional switchboard receiving information from the senses and then signaling the rest of the brain and nervous system how to respond. It detects new and threatening things in the environment. This area is more sensitive and easily triggered in introverts which force them to be apprehensive to new things and experiences. Infants born with an especially excitable amygdala would wiggle and howl when shown unfamiliar objects. They grow up to be children who are more likely to feel vigilant when meeting new people. Likewise, there is a neural basis for extroversion also. The nucleus accumbens, the brain’s pleasure centre, is a part of the limbic system which we share with the most primitive mammals. It is emotional and instinctive that prompts the animal to seek and maximize pleasure at any cost. The activity in this area is regulated by the neocortex – or new brain – evolved many thousands of years after the limbic system. This part is responsible for thinking, planning and language, the very faculties that make us human. It is the seat of rationality that moderates the impulses of the limbic system. In extroverts, the old brain predominates a tad too much than introverts. However, nurturing has a major role in shaping up personality, but the book gives a clear hint that genetic factors remain more decisive than environmental ones.

Contrary to popular expectations, the author asserts that there is no field of social activity that is out of bounds for introverts. They may not enjoy what they are doing, but the efficacy of the performance would be indistinguishable from that of extroverts. Such a person donning the mantle of an extrovert needs to withdraw occasionally to some restorative niche to re-energize. On the leadership question, she finds instances where introverts are ideally suited, such as teams where creative subordinates work under them. In this case, the leader gets more from the team as he would be a good listener and lacks interest in dominating social situations. Introverts are more likely to hear and implement suggestions from his team members.

Cain also looks at the issue of racial predilection among introverts. Asian Americans tend to be more introverted, mainly due to cultural bias. Here, the examples are only from China, Korea and Japan which is extrapolated to Asia as a whole. Individuals in Asia are taught to see themselves as part of a greater whole. They often subordinate their desires to the group’s interests, accepting their place in the hierarchy. This is too sweeping a generalization as to carry any conviction. It seems that the author goes by folk wisdom rather than serious scientific research. In the same vein, westerners value boldness and verbal skills – traits that promote individuality – while Asians prize quiet, humility and sensitivity that foster group cohesion. Cain categorically affirms that this does not mean that one is superior to the other, but that a profound difference in cultural values has a powerful impact on the personality styles favoured by each culture. Or in other words, the book concludes that introverts and extroverts are equally likely to be agreeable and that introverts are in no way antisocial.

The book introduces a good number of personality tests which are new to most readers. These tests measure up peculiar aspects of a person’s inherent nature. It also dispels some commonly believed myths such as venting anger soothes. The author denies this and claims that instead, it fuels it (p.233). This is a postulate of the catharsis hypothesis which is claimed to be a myth. The book is leant too heavily on the sociological domain and not even glances on the microbiological side of the same story. As a result, the genetic sources of introversion are not given any consideration. This is a serious drawback on an otherwise well readable book.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Homo Deus

Title: Homo Deus – A Brief History of Tomorrow

Author: Yuval Noah Harari

Publisher: Vintage, 2017 (First published 2015)

ISBN: 9781784703936

Pages: 513

Yuval Noah Harari captured the imagination of millions of readers with his masterpiece ‘Sapiens’ which I am yet to read. This book is designed as something between a sequel and an afterthought of its more famous sibling. In this book, Harari sets out to explore the uncharted territory of the future humanscape, armed with a cutting analysis of human progress till now. Predicting the future of technology is a precarious initiative. We have seen Lord Kelvin prophesying the end of physics by the year 1900 and how wide he was off the mark. Harari makes three predictions about human life in the twenty-first century with one eye unflailingly focused on the road ahead while the other scanning the past for confirmation of his numerous theories. Wars and diseases will be totally eliminated and mankind would achieve the power to upgrade itself into a powerful being that is capable of exercising many of the privileges of divine beings in myths and legends such as growing organs or everlasting life. This quasi-divine species he euphemistically call Homeo deus. Harari is an Israeli historian and a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

For thousands of years, humankind prayed and hoped for a day in which there will be no wars, no diseases and people lived for a very long time. Religions offered promises at first, but they rather contributed only bellicosity in their adherents. There is little chance of peace even if one religion dominated the entire earth. The religious wars between the Catholics and Protestants in the seventeenth century and the continuing strife between the Shia and Sunni factions in Islam reaffirm this hypothesis. On the other hand, increasingly lethal weapons applied brakes on man’s urge to go to war by propagating the doctrine of MAD - mutually assured destruction. Harari argues that without nuclear weapons, there would have been no Beatles, no Woodstock and no overflowing supermarkets in the west. The socialist world led by the USSR overwhelmed the liberal world in conventional weapons, but the US and its allies trumped them on nuclear warheads. Humanity is on the cusp of attaining immortality - which only means that there will not be any deaths due to diseases - even at the risk of handing over the burden of running the world to powerful, inorganic and non-conscious algorithms.

The progress experienced by Homo sapiens in the last few centuries is not solely engendered by technological improvements. A profound transformation was also going on in the social front. For 300 years, the world has been dominated by humanism, which sanctifies the life, happiness and power of Homo sapiens. Humanism put man at the centre of creation. It elevated us as the ultimate source of meaning of the world order. By corollary, our free will is therefore the highest authority of all. By such a transfer, meaning and source of authority divorced themselves from the divine will. This prime position of human will is manifest in five idioms of the modern world: the voter knows best, the customer is always right, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, if it feels good, do it and think for yourself. Harari also describes the split of humanism into three branches: liberalism, socialist humanism and evolutionary humanism. The first is epitomized by Western democratic societies, the second by the now defunct Soviet style communist societies and the third was represented by the Nazi-fascist regimes. The last two, for all practical purposes, no longer exist in the world. Harari’s rigid classifications remind the readers of the accuracy of the exact sciences. How far one could go with such a classification in the humanities is debatable.

Only physical and structural level, man is not above the other animals. How then did we get on top of them? Tool making and intelligence were particularly important for the ascent of mankind. But this was not the whole story. A million years ago, humans were already the most intelligent, tool making animal. The cutting edge came about around 70,000 years ago when the species underwent a cognitive revolution. Speech enabled humans to co-operate flexibly in large numbers, even with complete strangers. No animal shares this unique faculty. That's why the numbers are never enough to mount a revolution. Such upheavals are usually made by small networks of agitators rather than by the masses. Only man can weave an inter-subjective web of meaning, a web of laws, forces, critics and places that exist purely in their collective imagination. This web, exemplified by such abstract concepts as a nation, religion or even commercial enterprises, allows humans to bond together and flourish.

Harari handles the post-humanist scenario, taking into account the development in microbiology and computers. When the working of the brain was analysed, the concept of free will breathed its last. Our decisions, will, delusions and the feeling of general well being are made possible by changes in electrochemical processes in it and the startling fact is that it can be controlled remotely! Along with free will, the idea of a single authentic self went obsolete in one stroke. The next step came when it was evident that organisms are algorithms and life is a complex series of data processing. The advent of artificial intelligence decoupled from conscience and was non-conscious in nature, but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves. Harari predicts the death of humanism at this point which is also where algorithms take charge of the planet. Humans would be treated as pet animals at that time. Much of this talk sounds like science fiction.

The author is unconcerned with the sensibilities of conservative readers. His statement that “if an extramarital affair provides an outlet for emotional and sexual desire that are not satisfied by your spouse of twenty years and if your new lover is kind, passionate and sensitive to your needs - why not enjoy it?” (p.263) maybe sound practical advice but comes as a shocking moral pronouncement for most others. Another casual generalisation that ruffles the feathers of many is that “when genetic engineering and artificial intelligence reveal their full potential, liberalism, democracy and free markets might become as obsolete as flint knives, tape cassettes, Islam and communism” (p.323).

The book is nicely written, but with occasional whiffs of pompous hot air. Staunch believers may better avoid this book in which a tirade against God and religion is seen in every third page. The narrative is designed like an absorbing speech or an enchanting lecture. It is interesting to read as a whole, but there are portions which the reader finds tiresome, such as conscience of sentient beings, and the ethical repercussions of the inevitable algorithmic takeover.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

I Should Have Honor

Title: I Should Have Honor – A Memoir of Hope and Pride in Pakistan

Author: Khalida Brohi

Publisher: Random House, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9780399588013

Pages: 202

Man really needs something to live for. His existence is made worthwhile by the ideals he cherishes. If he happens to be situated with good financial support, such existential issues may not bother him. But in extremely poor societies, where each day’s business of living is so tough, the people really need something to justify their miserable lives. They turn towards honour as the reason for the pride they feel about themselves. In traditional societies, women's honour – translated in local terms as their strict sexual discretion – characterizes the honour of the family, clan and tribe. In extremely poor and superstitious tribal societies of Pakistan, a woman's sexual escapades are treated very seriously. If she falls for the charms of another man, or simply be in love with a person from another tribe, the tribe’s honour is deemed to be lost. Containment of the women within the house and purdah are enforced invariably, but still misdemeanours occur all the time. The tribal or family elders prescribe a punishment of death on the unfortunate woman who is sometimes executed by her own close relatives. Such honour killings are observed mainly in South Asia and particularly rampant in Pakistan where the country's religiously flavoured criminal laws in fact encourage this heinous crime. This book is the story of a young Pakistani woman who engaged the establishment and its tribal society in her quest for ensuring a respected status and empowerment of women. Khalida Brohi is an award winning activist and entrepreneur. Her non-profit organisation, Sughar, unleashes leadership skills and economic power in tribal women in Pakistan. She has served on the board of directors of the International Youth Foundation. She and her American husband split their time between the US and Pakistan.

Life is especially hard in poor societies. Most children are given only the first two years for infancy, then three years to learn to be a responsible. Around the age of 7 or 8 children get busy helping their parents with daily chores and taking care of other younger siblings. Boys even earn income for the family. Taking on adult responsibilities so early on in their life makes the majority of the children look like adults. Rudiments of educational facilities are available even in Pakistan's remote tribal habitats, but the tribe usually do not send their boys to them. Education for girls is simply unheard of. The author's family migrated from their native Balochistan to urban Sindh to educate their girls. In tribal lands, those children who are not fit for any productive labour for the family are sent to school apparently to get rid of the trouble they make while at home. Brohi stresses on the importance of education as the key to unlock and enjoy a new world. In Pakistan, it can also mean a choice between life and death.

As noted earlier, tribal people values honour the most, greater than life. The author quotes a local saying: ‘Izzat mare, pen mare te maf’ (even if I have nothing, I should have honour). The book’s title is derived from its latter half. Since tribal honour rests solely on the shoulders of women, girls are married off during childhood – the earlier the better. The author was promised in marriage even before she was born, but her educated father resisted peer pressure to give her a fulfilling education. Brohi points out widespread modern conservatism in the country’s cities. Balochistan may be poor and tribal, but it allows its women to go outside and work along with the men while going out to the street in front of one's house requires seeking permission in Karachi.

Honour killings go on without let or hindrance because of the overhauling General Zia ul-Haq effected in 1977 to make Pakistan an Islamic state. He enforced a new set of ordinances that claimed to Islamize the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan. Among these Hudud ordinances, qisas (retaliation) and diyat (compensation) were later used the most to justify honour killings. Under qisas and diyat, a killer could be forgiven if the family of the victim forgave him. This condition is automatically satisfied when the victim and the killer belong to the same family. In a case of zina (extramarital sex), a woman who was raped had to bring four male witnesses to prove she had been raped. Otherwise, she would be punished in the name of honour (p.96). The purpose of honour killings is to destroy not just the body but also the soul, so that by forgetting her, the family can hope to restore the dignity they have lost because of her. Often after a girl is murdered, her belongings are buried or burnt; friends and family are not to speak of her ever again; her name is never mentioned aloud. It is supposed to be as if she never lived (p.63). Brohi’s cousin was murdered by her uncle for falling in love and eloping with a local boy. He strangled her by the side of a freshly dug grave in her full view. About thousand women are killed each year in Pakistan in the name of honour and these are just the reported cases.

Brohi’s father played a crucial role in making her what she is today. He gave her full freedom to express herself and raise her voice against atrocities committed against women in the name of honour. But when religious extremists turned against her and exploded a bomb to blow up her office, he restrained her freedom. Brohi resented this and sought asylum in the US. She appears to be a lucky girl whom everyone she came into contact with adored. Her American lover voluntarily abandoned Christianity and embraced Islam so as to make the match acceptable to her family.

Khalida Brohi began her career by writing poems against the murder of women and recited them in NGO conferences organised by her father. Realising the futility of taking on injustices head on, she later changed the strategy to co-opt the tribal leaders in facilitating to provide a space for their women. Gradually, more men started seeing their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters not as secret objects to be hidden away, but as valuable human beings who could make important contributions. She realised the empowerment of women by finding them jobs and making them earners of income for their families. Traditional embroidery was adapted to a commercial scale and the produce of the women were sold through malls in cities.

Even though tribal life has its drawbacks, the support systems it provides for its needy members is plainly visible for all to see. In case of sickness or death of a person, the family takes over the role of the caregiver without anyone formally requesting them to do that. Brohi maintains her roots to Baloch culture by frequent visits to her ancestral village. The book is neatly written so as to be an encouragement to other aspiring young women who hold the destiny of their own and their nations in their tiny hands.

The book is recommended

Rating: 3 Star