The Body – A Guide for Occupants

Title: The Body – A Guide for Occupants

Author: Bill Bryson

Publisher: DoubleDay, 2019 (First)

ISBN: 9780857522405

Pages: 454

 

Bill Bryson is a gifted author for presenting profound concepts fully suffused with humour. He does this often so effortlessly that the readers cherish the opportunity to read one of his books. I am really a fan of him, having read many of his other works. This book is about the human body, the long-suffering servant of the soul. The various subsystems and functions of the body are examined in a light-hearted and appealing way. It deals with birth and death, organs from the skin to the brain, activities like breathing and digestion and how we came to acquire the knowledge of them historically. This book is the easiest way for a lay reader to comprehend what is going on inside and outside our frame and more importantly, to marvel at the working of this wonderful artifact of eons of evolution. It is also to be noted that though the body appears to be arranged neat and tidy from the outside, the inside is haphazard and messy at times.

 

The sense of awe and wonder one feels at the mechanisms that regulate various body parameters is immense. The way white blood cells attack pathogens, how dead cells are replenished in many organs but not all, the mechanism of hearing or vision are all so complicated that people who ascribe an all-powerful creator behind this magic may reasonably be pardoned. You see Bryson exclaiming with wonder, “and you can appreciate what an accomplished creation we are”! You should forgive the author for the remark on ‘creation’ which is used here only as a figure of speech. Bryson is devoted to evolution as the raison d’etre of all lifeforms. He calmly explains how the miraculous functions of a human body part are only an extension of a comparable organ in animals more closely related to humans. It is this solid foundation on modern rational thought that makes this work a pleasure to read. With this underpinning on science, you feel confident to recommend the book to others, especially with impressionable minds.

 

We know that modern science has collected a vast amount of knowledge about the human body, especially on its response to extreme stimulants over the centuries. The author notes that some of it might have come from the gruesome clinical experiments carried out by Nazi doctors on their unfortunate Jewish prisoners or that by Japanese military physicians on Chinese and other prisoners of war during World War II. In Nazi Germany, healthy prisoners were subjected to amputation or experimental limb implants in the hopes of finding better treatments for German casualties. Russian prisoners were plunged into icy water to determine how long a German pilot could survive a downing at sea. Some experiments were driven by nothing more than morbid curiosity. In one, the subject’s eyes were injected with dyes to see if their eye colour could be permanently changed. In fact, many doctors were not forced to perform such experiments, they just volunteered.

 

Bryson not only asserts that evolution is the only plausible mechanism that could bring about the complexity in lifeforms, but attacks Intelligent Design with examples of inconsistencies and ‘not-so-intelligent’ design. If ever there was an event that challenged the concept of Intelligent Design, it is the act of childbirth, in which a large head is passing through a much smaller constriction which came about as a byproduct of bipedalism. The author quips that ‘no woman, however devout, has ever in childbirth said, “Thank you, Lord, for thinking this through for me”. Then, there is a slight inconsistency in the narrative, which, if not cleared by experts would confuse the readers much. The book claims that the moment of birth is quite a miracle. In the womb, the foetus’ lungs are filled with amniotic fluid, but with exquisite timing, at the moment of birth, the fluid drains away, the lungs inflate and blood from the tiny heart is sent on its first circuit around the body (p.299). But in the caption to a colour plate of a foetus of six weeks, it is said that its heart is beating at hundred beats per minute. Is it circulating amniotic fluid through the veins at that time?

 

This book provides clear warnings for health-conscious readers. Coconut oil is said to be essentially nothing but saturated fat in liquid form. It may be tasty, but it is no better than a big scoop of deep fried butter (p.244). This is indeed very bad news for people in Kerala where we know of no other oil than that which is extracted from the hardy coconut and used for practically all purposes like bathing, cooking, cosmetics and others. The text also includes detailed description of diseases that affect us and the precautions that can be taken against them. The pharma industry’s relentless pursuit of finding cures for diseases is also commented upon. However, the author leaves a hint that many germs have by now attained resistance to common antibiotics and future diseases could become more virulent. He warns that the reason we haven’t had another disastrous experience like the Spanish Flu isn’t because we have been especially vigilant, but because we have been lucky (p.335). It is a strange coincidence that just a few months after the publication of this book, Covid 19 struck the world with a devastating trail of death and misery.

 

One sad fact you’d observe in this latest book from Bryson is the absence of his immensely enjoyable humour. Every page of his previous books had made the readers smile with witty remarks, but not this one. This book is definitely valuable, but only for the tons of useful information packed between its covers and arranged in meaningful chapters. It rightly deserves the epithet of a popular science book, but that’s not the richly fulfilling experience a reader expects from Bryson. Anyhow, the personal touch can still be felt, and the last paragraph would make you ponder on the meaning of life itself. It runs like this: ‘The average grave is visited only for about fifteen years, so most of us take a lot longer to vanish from the earth than from others’ memories. If you are cremated, your ashes will weigh about two kilograms. And that’s you gone. But it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?’

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star

 

What Really Happened in Wuhan

Title: What Really Happened in Wuhan

Author: Sharri Markson

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9781460761083

Pages: 422

 

The sudden onslaught and quick global spread of the Covid 19 virus undermined the global society’s safety and security in myriad ways. Millions perished, with thousands not getting basic medical care even in first-world countries. Harsh lockdowns crippled the economies of many nations. The spread of the disease was so fast that large chunks of people suddenly fell ill that imposed a heavy cost on businesses. The virus originated in China but that country tried to hide the occurrence of this mysterious disease in its midst. By the time evasion was out of the question, the virus had already spread to other parts of the world. Even then, it was thought to have originated naturally and diffused through a wet seafood market in Wuhan. China was believed to be complicit in suppressing information on the outbreak for obvious reasons. As a few months went by, scientists were alarmed by the rapid proliferation capacity of the virus. This was found to be due to a protein that appeared to be perfectly designed to attack the human respiratory tract. Doubts arose, because the disease originated near the premises of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) which specializes in studying different corona viruses and was known to be involved in increasing the ferocity of pathogens in order to produce effective vaccines. This book addresses the question whether the virus had accidentally leaked out of the lab due to incompetent safety protocols. Sharri Markson is an Australian journalist and talk show host. She has been at the forefront of breaking news regarding the origins of Covid 19 pandemic since early 2020. She lives in Sydney, Australia.

 

It must be accepted that China was literally overwhelmed by the early growth rate of patients. Non-disclosure of the true reason for casualties was enforced on health workers who were demanded not to talk to media or to express their opinion on social media platforms. Automated detection systems wiped objectionable content clean within minutes of their posting. People who steadfastly insisted on bringing out the truth were taken into custody and detained. In the meanwhile, dead bodies were piling up, left to decay for days in hospital corridors because Chinese authorities refused to officially record any deaths. The bodies were nothing more than a logistical problem for them. After the initial onslaught was endured, China denied human-to-human transmission of Covid 19 even though it was known to them for a month.

 

Markson narrates the invidious suppression methods unleashed by the Chinese state to keep the secret under wraps. China shut down domestic travel from Wuhan for medical concerns, but still allowed international flights to leave the city. Neither did it advise foreign governments to be aware of the risk of people returning from Wuhan. News of the virus was first broken by the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) only on Dec 30, 2019. This is galling as we now know that the outbreak began a full two months back in October of that year. China had to reluctantly confirm the news and switched on a massive cover up operation. All mentions of terms such as ‘unknown Wuhan pneumonia’ or ‘Wuhan seafood market’ were removed from social media. What made this operation so effective was the readiness with which many western scientists and health professionals endorsed the Chinese stand. Scholars who had professional links to virus research in China did not disclose their conflict of interest and acted like impartial arbiters.

 

The author accuses Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) as the institution from which the virus inadvertently escaped. After some tentative suggestions of biological warfare and deliberate release, she finally concedes that the escape was due to some accident. This institute was comparatively new and boasted of Biosafety Level 4 (BSL 4) protocols in place. The institute was set up with French collaboration and technical support. But after the entity began its operation, the French experts were unceremoniously kicked out. For an institute doing research work on corona viruses, it observed substandard and negligent biosafety practices. US scientists also took part in the research for another reason. Obama administration banned gain-of-function research on viruses. This refers to a genetic technique of multiplying a pathogen’s virility many times by tweaking its genome. So they outsourced their research to China and specifically to WIV, where lax standards applied. The author confirms that US public money was funding dangerous projects at WIV which was having no biosafety standards for handling deadly pathogens. This book also alleges that the Covid virus, which is exquisitely matched to humans, might be a product of this collective effort and had been worked on in a lab using humanized mice.

 

Markson makes a seething attack on the World Health Organisation (WHO) whose involvement was lukewarm and partisan to China. It accepted the Chinese arguments without demur even when they flew in the face of common logic. Unnerved by procrastination from China, the US, Australia and New Zealand effected a travel ban on China, but WHO rebuffed them, sanctimoniously advising the nations to take decisions that are ‘evidence-based’ and ‘consistent’. This book is a good effort of journalism, but it does not always follow the time-tested methods in science to ascertain the truth of a proposition. An Australian virus researcher named Petrovsky found a lab origin for the Covid virus. However, his paper did not pass the mandatory peer review process which returned the paper as conspiracy theory. The scientific dictum is that if you can’t convince your peers that your theory is at least plausible, it probably isn’t. However, the scholar and the author accuse the scientific community of cover up. Eventually, he released the paper directly to the general public who are not competent to evaluate the veracity of his claims. The author must understand that this is not valid research.

 

The book is unnecessarily large for the point it wanted to convey. In spite of this big arsenal, the author has not been able to convincingly make out the case for a lab leak and also Chinese military’s involvement in the Wuhan lab for developing deadly biological weapons. The WIV was built, tested and run with input and funding from European and American agencies and it is highly improbable that the institution can do military research without awakening suspicion in them. It may indeed be probable that the virus leaked out of the lab but what Markson offers as evidence in support of the claim is just hyperbole and conjecture. The undue length of the book exhausts the readers, especially because she could have served her purpose with a volume that is half this size.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 2 Star

 

Books Do Furnish A Life

Title: Books Do Furnish A Life – Reading and Writing Science

Author: Richard Dawkins

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9781787633698

Pages: 452

 

Today’s world watches with increasing concern the tussle between science and superstition on the ideological front. The exact sciences like physics, chemistry and astronomy have virtually vanquished their opponents with razor-sharp mathematical predictions and other tangible devices people can feel with their own hands. There is no device in all the lore of humanity that can even remotely be compared with the mobile phone in your pocket. NASA predicts a total solar eclipse in Mexico on Apr 8, 2024 beginning at 18:18 UTC and lasting 4 min 28 sec. Can any traditional astrologer match the precision of this prediction? But the biological sciences obviously don’t enjoy this privilege in equal measure. There are people who challenge the advisability of adopting cutting edge medical technology in favour of traditional medicinal practices or unproven alternatives like homeopathy. However, biology finds greatest resistance when evolution is presented as the most viable explanation of the origin and transmutation of species. Creation and Intelligent Design are the two alternatives put forward by the believers in order to accommodate the divine element somewhere in the grand scheme of things, especially after the collapse of flat earth or earth-centric solar system hypotheses. Scientists thus have a paramount duty to explain their subject and make it as simple as possible, but not simpler, as Einstein insisted. This is especially important as 45 per cent of Americans are reported to believe that all species originated through intelligent design less than 10,000 years ago. In this volume, Richard Dawkins summarises his vast experience in popularizing science through own books and reviews, forewords and afterword written for others’ books. It also includes informative discussions he had with doyens of science.

 

There is no original material in this book as it consists of articles published as early as the late-1980s. In spite of this, none of it appears dated or irrelevant. Dawkins’ arguments against creationism and intelligent design are as sharp as ever. A glaring chink in the armour of Design-advocates is the laryngeal nerve in mammals, especially the giraffe. In the case of lower animals in the evolutionary pyramid, this nerve started from the brain, went past the heart and reached the larynx which was nearby. As the neck became longer through evolution, this nerve was caught on the wrong side of the heart. In man, the distance between brain and larynx is hardly 10 cm, but the nerve comes down from the brain, takes a detour around the heart and goes up again to the larynx. In the case of a giraffe, the length of this nerve is around 15 feet whereas a good designer could have made it within one foot by redesigning. So, Dawkins concludes that the design is not that intelligent, unfit to be the handiwork of an omnipotent divine being.

 

Religion thrives on the innate urge of people to find a purpose to their lives. It is perfectly okay to feel disappointed when you first learn that there is not much purpose to it, as nature has decreed. On closer look, what purpose could there be, other than those equally regulating an animal’s life? Science denies any pre-ordained purpose to life, but Dawkins warns that this should not be treated as a spoilsport. There is reason for everything and understanding it is a part of the pure delight that science gifts to us. While on the topic, he also describes how even reputed scientists can go totally wrong sometimes. When Darwin first published his theory of evolution, it proposed a very long timeframe to sculpt the various life forms. However, the accepted consensus at that time was that the earth, and even the solar system, was only a few thousands of years old. The great physicist Lord Kelvin countered the Darwinian claim with the outrageous contention that assigning an age of millions of years to the earth does not tally with physical principles. Having only the arsenal of thermodynamics with them, the physicists thought that sun’s energy output is caused by burning of a fuel such as coal and the sun’s size constrained it to an age of a few thousands of years. Clearly, the physicists were in serious error of the most fundamental kind here. Though their calculations of the rate of coal burning and estimation of the time required for exhausting a mound of fuel the size of sun was mathematically correct, the energy output from a star followed a brand new approach unknown to nineteenth century physics. The concept of nuclear fusion, which is the secret of sun’s energy, was developed only half a century later, but Kelvin did not live long enough to see his ridiculous arguments upended.

 

Apart from evolutionary biology, of which the author is a master, the book contains some essays on rationalism and scepticism. A talk with the legendary Christopher Hitchens is included which is a leading light for science enthusiasts of all time. The book is divided into many sections, and the part titled ‘Supporting Scepticism’ is the most interesting. Dawkins also gives a tantalizing hint about the title of his next book. He had planned the title of his previous book as ‘Evolution, the Greatest Show on Earth, the Only Game in Town’. Perhaps ‘The Only Game in Town’ is what it is going to be.

 

As with other books from the same author, all articles carry the same incisive flare in exposing superstition or pseudoscience. It is also good for readers to find and read those books for which Dawkins had written testimonials which are reproduced in this book. The book takes the readers along with it in a lucid exposition of the ideas at stake which is delightful and at the same time enlightening too.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star

 

The Paradoxical Prime Minister

Title: The Paradoxical Prime Minister – Narendra Modi and His India

Author: Shashi Tharoor

Publisher: Aleph Book Company, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9789388292177

Pages: 504

 

Do you want to read a political manifesto of a maverick politician that runs into 500 pages of every-bit-politically-correct homilies? You are welcome to this book if you have nothing worthwhile to do. This book was written in 2018, with one year to go for general elections, in the fervent hope that Narendra Modi would be defeated. With huge amounts of cleverly interpreted data and gusts of hot air with lofty principles but no substance, Tharoor hoped to anticipate Modi’s ‘downfall’ which would have burnished his image as an astute politician having his ears to the ground. However, nothing happened eventually. With the declaration of the results, Modi retained power with a larger majority than before and Tharoor’s dreams crashed down like a pack of cards which made his arguments and this book irrelevant. It gives political observers some amusement at the shortsightedness of the author’s arguments with the advantage of hindsight.

 

Modi and his political party, the BJP, are spawned by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The basic theme of the book is Tharoor’s assumption that the RSS is a retrograde organisation that cannot be reconciled to good governance. It tries to divide the people along religious lines. Even though Modi is using high-sounding projects to unleash India’s inherent power, he is constrained by his association with this organisation. This is, in one sentence, what Tharoor elaborates as a glaring paradox using 500 pages of print. He predicted in 2014 that if this contradiction is not resolved, Modi will fail. Obviously, the RSS still guided BJP at the time of publication of this book, so Modi has failed. But the paradox is seen more in Tharoor as he argues in another section that the RSS was in a dilemma over whether or not to support Modi in the 2019 elections (p.82). This is contradictory to the earlier assessment of unbridled involvement. Tharoor also coins a new term, ‘Moditva’, as the ideology that guides the prime minister. This is claimed to be a combination of Hindutva, nationalism, economic development and overweening personal relationship.

 

Looking back after three years of its publication, we see that the book abounds with self-defeating arguments which the author’s poor foresight could not perceive. Criticising Modi’s quip that the government has no business to be in business, Tharoor questions the anomaly of his government owning and running airlines and hotels. This was well before Air India going Tata’s way. Often, we find the author handling data without any slightest hint of where and to whom it belongs. Incidents of rape reportedly increased by 12.4 per cent in 2016 due to Modi’s fault. Luckily, he does not find the prime minister responsible for the twenty per cent drop in rainfall that year!  When it is time for giving a spin on plain truth, the author does it with unabashed ingenuity. Narrating the Godhra incident, the author notes that ’58 men, women and children were killed when a fire broke out on their train as it passed through the Muslim-dominated town of Godhra’. Yes, a fire somehow spontaneously broke out in the train, regarding the origin of which Tharoor has no clue. Can you visualize the wicked smile on his face after writing this deceitful sentence? This is the genre of India’s liberals.

 

The book seems to be a collective effort with inputs from several people because readers can observe subtle contradictions in many chapters. What is consistent in the entirety of the text is its double standards. If liberals criticize Modi on social media, it is ‘freedom of expression’. If his fans pay back in the same coin, it becomes a ‘virulent attack’. He claims that Modi is known in hostile social media circles as ‘feku’ (congenital teller of tall tales), but after some pages, laments that ‘those who speak ill of Modi is being jailed’. Does it mean that all those people who called him ‘feku’ were jailed? In many places, we see Modi being accused of ruining India’s economy. But on demonetization, the book notes that ‘a booming economy that boasted the highest growth rate in the world suddenly became a cash-scarce economy’ (p.336). So, unwittingly he admits that it was booming and with the highest growth rate in the world! No Indian liberal would dream of ending his essay without pandering to Muslim sentiments. A liberal politician doubly so. In a sweeping stroke of indemnification, Tharoor claims that ‘if the Muslim sultans had looted or exploited India and Indians, they spent the proceeds of their loot in India itself’ (p.97).

 

With his abortive UN career behind him, Tharoor thinks he is the guru of foreign policy and the government would do well if they care to learn a lesson or two from him. Strangely, he advises against a strong foreign policy and wants India to be perceived as a soft state. Our country had a disastrous foreign policy for the last thousand years which the author wants to continue and is sure to get duly crumbled up at the slightest challenge from across the border. Perhaps it is in these conditions that ‘strong’ men like him could thrive. Tharoor accuses that ‘an assertive foreign policy, especially towards neighbours, is an aspect of fascism’ (p.61). As is common in this book, we find a contradiction on p.428 when the author warns that ‘a country that refuses to suffer repeated body blows earns more respect than one whose restraint can be interpreted as weakness’. The book includes a near-comprehensive policy analysis of India’s relations with other countries, but keeps silent on the Israel – Palestine issue as Tharoor knows only too well that even the slightest complimentary remark on Israel would lose him precious Muslim votes in the next election.

 

The author takes special care to insert Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘glorious’ deeds for the nation in practically every chapter. No prizes for guessing the reason, as his party boss is the youngest scion of the Nehru family. But this runs into problems. Regarding sedition law, Tharoor quotes Nehru as saying that ‘the sooner we get rid of this provision, the better’. Nehru remained at the helm for seventeen years till his death, but did not find time to abrogate the law. Now, Tharoor holds Modi responsible for keeping this law in our statute books. Some of the author’s concerns smell of deep-rooted provincialism. For example, he worries about failure of population control schemes because ‘it increases the numbers of Hindi speakers’ (p.192). What he finds objectionable in the implementation of GST, apart from the claimed haphazard manner, is that it was made applicable to Jammu and Kashmir, thereby ignoring the state’s special status.

 

In a reverse sense, the book is a fine example of what should be avoided in a multi-ethnic society like India. Tharoor accuses Modi of total failure including the – in truth much successful – Swachh Bharat mission. The reasons cited are laughable. In a bout of insouciant elitism, Tharoor claims that ’45 per cent of north Indians found open defecation pleasurable, comfortable or convenient’ (p.284). Since the author’s political constituency is in the south of the country, he feels confident to abuse the northerners. His political intuition is demonstrated to be little developed when he mockingly asks whether Modi could amend articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution that granted special privileges to Jammu and Kashmir. Tharoor could not imagine even in his wildest dreams that exactly the same thing would happen hardly a year later. So much for his outlook!

 

Tharoor ingeniously employs selective emphasis of numbers to read what he wants from otherwise reliable data sets. With this clever trick up his sleeve, he can interpret data anyway he wants. He claims that Gujarat was in the eighteenth position in terms of literacy when Modi left office as the state’s chief minister. Pretty damning, isn’t it? But if you spend some time and look up the data, it can be seen that, of the large states, only Kerala, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu stood above it. The others are microscopic union territories with populations typically below 100,000. Another aspect of Tharoor’s game with data is selective focusing on figures of specific years. On p.361, he blurts out that ‘the current account deficit had risen to 2 per cent in the last quarter of 2017 and may well cross 2.5 per cent of GDP in Mr. Modi’s final fiscal year’. The true nature of this moral outrage is exposed if we lookup data elsewhere and observe that in the final two years of UPA government, of which Tharoor himself was a minister, the corresponding figures were 4.3 and 4.8 per cent! The author lampoons Modi for setting ambitious targets for solar power generation, but no concrete measures have been taken (p.364). The actual fact is entirely different. In 2014, the installed solar capacity was 2,632 MW, which skyrocketed to 21,651 MW in just four years, which is more than eight times in sheer numbers. The conclusion we can arrive at from all these is that Tharoor’s data is totally unreliable.

 

Even while listing out a litany of complaints, Tharoor makes richly adorned praise for Modi that is embedded inconspicuously in the text. It would be interesting to present here the glowing nature of the tribute. Tharoor concedes Modi to ‘excel at how to impress an audience’ (p.20), ‘never shied away from hard work’ (p.22), ‘independent and self-reliant’ (p.24), ‘compelling orator, the best modern India has ever seen’ (p.35), ‘capable of speaking across the political divide’ (p.40), ‘possessing real austerity and devotion to work’ (p.50), ‘given away most of his salary to charity’ (p.51), ‘a quick student, mastering a vast array of information and retaining it with impressive recall’ (p.64), ‘excelling at direct communication with the masses’ (p.83), ‘recognized the real problem in railways’ (p.382), ‘visibly effective salesman for India, and there is no denying the energy and dynamism he has brought to taking India’s message abroad’ (p.436). Whoa, even Modi’s ardent backers will not be able to list out such a long slew of high accolade.

 

As commented earlier, this book is just sterile eloquence, written as a political manifesto for the author’s 2019 election campaign and to provide a bucket list of salient issues that can be arraigned against the government. Harping on to a small time window, Tharoor has made this book irrelevant thereafter, unlike his other works. Grave predictions like ‘Modi’s term is lurching towards its inglorious conclusion’ expose this elitist politician’s scant grasp of the ground reality and utter ignorance of how people thought. To make up for that gaping hole in his skill set, the book is stuffed with a heavy dose of moral sermon. Imitating the author’s penchant for lesser-known, high-sounding epithets, I would describe this book as a ‘pretentious cant’.

 

The book is a waste of time and not recommended.

 

Rating: 2 Star

 

Aligarh’s First Generation

Title: Aligarh’s First Generation – Muslim Solidarity in British India

Author: David Lelyveld

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2003 (First published 1978)

ISBN: 9780195666670

Pages: 380

 

The nineteenth century was a period of total transition for the Muslim community in India from the conquering masters of the subcontinent to the effete subjects of a foreign colonial power opposed to them in morals and religion. The 1857 Rebellion sought to reinstate the power patterns prevailing at the arrival of Europeans, but they were well past the period of redemption. The rebellion’s collapse sounded the death knell of Islamic imperialism in India that began with Muhammad bin Qasim’s invasion of Sindh in 712 CE. The ulema, as a response to the end of their world, relapsed to revivalist fantasies, but Muslim intellectuals recognised the need to acquire English education and to share power with the British so as to keep the Hindu masses under effective check. Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan (1817 – 1898) established the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh for this purpose in 1875 which then grew into the prestigious Aligarh Muslim University of today. He asserted that the Muslims were a former ruling class now fallen on evil ways and to recover their rightful position they had to cultivate new areas of knowledge, skill and solidarity among themselves. This was expected to germinate in them a new level of consolidation as a qaum (nation or community). This book studies the Aligarh College during its first 25 years when it was under the leadership of Sayyid Ahmed Khan and an English principal Theodore Beck. The students of this period represent the first generation of English-educated Muslims in north India. David Lelyveld is a professor of history at William Paterson University in New Jersey, USA.

 

Lelyveld sets the stage for Aligarh’s establishment by lucidly narrating the social situation. The Mughal nobility was dominated by Muslims with their numerical proportion reaching up to eighty per cent. The administration and judiciary functioned using the Persian language and Muslims considered themselves as the ruling class. Rise of Marathas and then the British did not change matters at the lower level. Muslim officials continued to function till 1837 when Persian was dropped and English took its place. Muslims then began to use Urdu as an alternative as it showed closer fidelity to the locally spoken tongues than Persian. This coincided with a change in British attitudes. Post-1857, British administrators abandoned the idea of society as an aggregation of individuals and accepted as axiomatic the idea that India was composed of separate collectivities. The 1881 census brought forth some peculiar conclusions on Muslim society apart from estimating its numerical strength at a fifth of the population. Denzil Ibbetson, director of the Punjab census, observed two different social structures existing in the east and west of Lahore. In the west, even the Hindus were very loose about rules of endogamy and caste identification while in the east, a Muslim Rajput, Gujjar or Jat was no different from his Hindu counterpart as to social customs, rules of marriage and inheritance. Many Muslims retained Brahmin priests and the author claims that there were even Muslim Brahmins. A Muslim Jat in Delhi was more rigid in caste rules of purity and matrimony than a Hindu Jat in the northwest. He concluded that the difference was national rather than religious (p.15-6). Still, within half a century of this important observation, India was partitioned into two religion-based nations.

 

The reason why Muslims felt the compelling need to learn English is very clearly explained. Several Muslims had created a model of success in government service for most of the nineteenth century. After a maktab (school) education involving mostly religious subjects and training in Persian, they entered into an informal apprenticeship in some government office, usually with a relative or on his recommendation. They then established personal ties with Indians and Englishmen higher up in the hierarchy and entered the permanent rolls. In the Punjab, it was possible to start a career in the army as well before 1857. People with no knowledge of English could thus occupy positions in government. Sayyid Ahmed himself belonged to this genre. By the middle of the century, instead of personal patronage, government jobs began to be filled by competitive examinations with the Indian Civil Service exams in 1856. Muslims who wanted official employment then faced a crisis as the Bengali Hindus who were already familiar with the English language stood a good chance to undercut them. The widespread British antagonism to Muslims as the authors of the 1857 revolt, popular Indian dissatisfaction against officials with Persian background, the encouragement of English educational prerequisites for employment and the organized campaign to recognise Hindi as the language of the courts convinced Muslim intellectuals that change was imperative. In his analysis of 1857, Sayyid Ahmed argued that justice and security for all could be assured only under the strong and neutral British rule. In Moradabad, he even organized a public subscription for charity and illuminations in honour of the reestablishment of British rule after crushing the rebellion.

 

Contrary to the picture painted by some sources, Sayyid Ahmed was not an Islamist. In Muslim eyes, British rule in India had little claim to legitimacy once the East India Company had cast off subordination to the Mughal emperor. Sayyid Ahmed’s family objected when he left to serve the British in 1838. In 1857, some of his relatives died in the rebellion as martyrs, but he steadfastly stood by the British. Even though devout in his religious belief, he wanted to transform the Muslim community to live better lives as per modernity’s norms. Though he could not handle English well, he exhorted the students to learn and master it. Sayyid Ahmed found the ornamentation in Urdu burdensome and found it impossible to write in Urdu without exaggeration and to separate metaphor from concrete reality. He reminded the Muslims that ‘as long as the community does not, by means of English education, become familiar with the exactness of thought and unlearn the looseness of expression, their language cannot be the means of high moral and mental training’ (p.207). Sami Ullah, one of the co-founders of Aligarh, was very pious and served as a counterweight to Sayyid Ahmed’s unorthodoxy in the case of recruitment of students and overseeing their stay in boarding houses attached to the college. This allayed the concerns of many conservative parents.

 

Though the Aligarh college advertised itself as a Muhammadan institution, it did not close its doors to Hindus. There were a number of Hindu students, mostly from the Aligarh locale, engaged as day scholars. The college’s curriculum was not religious, but the same as government-run universities as it was affiliated first to Calcutta and then to Allahabad. The managing committee was responsible as an executive body for the internal management of the college and boarding houses. Of the 25 members in the committee, six were Hindus in the early years. However, this feeling of accommodation did not tally with the religious zeal of the students and teachers. The college cricket team used to stop the match for prayers in between. Once, a student beat a Hindu professor with a shoe in the class room. He was summarily expelled, but then quietly reinstated (p.264).

 

A notable trait in Sayyid Ahmed’s character is his strong dislike for democracy and for sharing power with the Hindus. He drew his cultural breath from Mughal roots and conceived India as a combination of unequal and mutually antagonistic ancestral groups brought to peace only within the authoritarian framework of British rule. He favoured representation by appointment and ruled out democracy as unpractical. He opposed recruitment through competitive exams since he feared it would lead to ‘domination by inferior breeds of men’. Latching on to the idea of Muslim superiority as the former ruling class, he advocated for representation in government be determined by social position through ancestry and not by ability. He dreaded the possibility of living under Hindu rule. In a sense, the Muslims feared that the majority would do to them what they had been doing to the majority when in power! Sayyid Ahmed wanted equal weightage for Muslims just in case elections became unavoidable. In such a scenario, he proposed the expulsion of lower-caste Hindus from the electoral roll so that Muslims could then match the remaining upper-caste Hindus in numerical strength nearly on a one-to-one basis (p.312).

 

This book calmly describes the actions and events that led to the establishment of the college and how it overcame teething troubles. This is done without even a hint of criticism. This also means that the author has channeled the material he collected from reference sources without any value addition. This is cent per cent perspiration and no inspiration. Lelyveld has captured the rise of nationalism in India and how the Muslim intellectuals opposed and tried to derail it. The two-nation theory had its seed sown in the lecture halls of Aligarh, but the author fails to make this connection to the future. On the other hand, the book is written with good scholastic vigour. The author being American with probably no familiarity with the game of Cricket makes an amusing effort to describe how it was played on the field (p.158-9).

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 3 Star