Unravelling the Silk Road

Title: Unravelling the Silk Road – Travels and Textiles in Central Asia
Author: Chris Aslan
Publisher: Icon Books, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9781785789861
Pages: 334

In its strictest historical sense, globalization is not a new or even modern concept at all. Exchange of products and services coupled with transfer of wealth across administrative frontiers is what we call globalization now. It does not need ships, aircraft or the internet even though these would greatly aid the trade. In fact, man traded across his tribal borders most of the time and a nation is a somewhat larger tribe. Textiles, spices, tools and jewellery were some of the material interchanged. Central Asia was a major land route of caravan trade between India and China on the eastern side and the Roman Empire and medieval European kingdoms on the western part before maritime navigation had not developed. Out of the cargo, textiles comprised of wool, silk and cotton in the chronological order. The history of the discovery of these materials and how it transformed the societies through which it was carried through provides intriguing reading. Chris Aslan was born in Turkey and spent his childhood there. He lived in the deserts and mountains of Central Asia for fifteen years and still returns regularly to the region. He is a British national. The author has embroidered the wool, silk and cotton roads with his own experiences of living in the region. The book focusses on the crossing points of the roads in Central Asia rather than their termini.

Aslan was drawn to Central Asia as part of his doctoral research in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was not much appeal for democracy in these republics and all of them became ensconced in the palms of former communist party officials who ruled them like dictators. The author first took up a job for promoting tourism in Khiva, Uzbekistan with tenure of two years which got extended to fifteen years. He was involved in work that touched the soul of these lands. He set up a project for de-hairing the fibre from the wool collected from yaks known as yak down. The down is one of the lightest, warmest fibres in the world, three times warmer than sheep wool. This was commercially harvested only from the 1970s and is still often passed off as cashmere. However, the raw fibre is scratchy because it contains the rugged outer hair. Separating this irritant thing is a very tedious process which the author established in the barren landscape of Uzbekistan. History records that Babur employed slaves to do this all day and usually ended up with half a kg a day. Aslan worked in Central Asia under the aegis of a Swedish organization called Operation Mercy which the author glosses over as a Christian organization. Probably, this was an evangelist outfit engaged in religious conversion and missionary work on the sly. This is all the more prescient as the author was expelled from all three countries in which he worked – Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – for causing social unrest as claimed by the governments and in one case for translating the Bible to the local language.

The Central Asian republics still show scars of Russian colonialism first under the Tsars and then Communists. The Tsars annexed these lands in a bid to extend their borders to the Arabian Sea. This put them on a collision course with British colonial regime in India who was trying to nibble its way towards the north, in opposition to the Russian move. This hide and seek match which was the Cold War of the times is called the Great Game. The Bolsheviks employed great effort to settle the nomads and turn them into agriculturists. What began as incentives later transformed into coercion since the nomads were not eager to change their traditional ways. Anyone who owned more than 400 cattle were termed ‘class enemy’ and forcibly dislocated to gulags in Siberia. In an assault on the family unit, wives could be spared exile and destitution only by divorcing their husbands. Stalin launched his notorious five-year plans in 1929 with forced collectivization at its core. All nomads in Turkestan were expected to settle in collective farms. Under-resourced, badly planned and without adequate housing, these farms failed. Livestock died, crops failed and everyone starved. This entirely avoidable, manmade famine killed 1.5 million people but Stalin achieved his objective of largely wiping out nomadism. Family businesses in handicrafts like silk weaving were banned by the Communists as part of an attempt to break down pre-Soviet society and force them into factories instead. Centuries of artistic skill and talent was destroyed along with the complex guilds and training mechanisms that passed down these skills (p.182).

Even though the book’s title flaunts silk prominently, it is not the sole point of concentration in the text. Even then, it describes the various stages of silk production right from the hatching of eggs. The voracious appetite of silkworms is legendary and Aslan narrates some first-hand experiences of dealing with these useful insects. Ancient China was the birthplace of silk and they jealously guarded its production a secret from the outside world. The book includes some stories that look more like legends about how silk eventually transgressed the Great Wall. The Roman Empire was a huge consumer of Chinese silk. One bolt of silk was worth then around 60 kg of rice. Several bolts made up a bale and large camels could carry 250 kg on a long journey. The immense profit accrued on these hazardous journeys across the deserts of Central Asia was worth the risk in attempting the trade. The risk was enormous – an unexpected dry well in an oasis could end up in the death and destruction of the whole caravan. By Justinian’s time, silkworm eggs reached Constantinople and silk-weaving industry flourished in the metropolis. They found the maritime route quicker and more economical. Silk Road then fell into decline. This was not a single long road; it was a network of trading routes. The name was coined only in the nineteenth century.

The book gives equal emphasis to cotton in the narrative. It also brings out the ecological damage this fibre is causing to desiccated Central Asia. Cotton requires ten times as much water as wheat. Scarce water resources were diverted to cotton fields through canals to irrigate them. The Aral Sea, which is a land-locked water body that is roughly the size of Sri Lanka, dried up as a result of this water diversion. The book describes the author’s visits to former harbour towns where the rusting boats are stranded now in the middle of the desert. It we look at the history of cotton, it is seen that exploitation was woven into its fabric from the colonial times. Colonialism exploited India for getting raw cotton, African slaves were captured and transported to the New World to grow cotton and British children were exploited in appalling conditions in the textile mills of Manchester. Cotton manufactured in mechanized looms in the British Northwest undercut Indian produce and India was deindustrialized. Workers went back to fields for cultivation again which ushered in a doomed period of misery and abject poverty. Aslan finds a piece of Dhaka Muslin cloth which is a rare specimen of cotton that is extremely densely woven but exceedingly light and almost transparent. It was worth sixteen times the price of silk. Amir Khusrau noted that a hundred yards of it could pass through the eye of a needle and is described as ‘webs of woven wind’. Only one type of cotton plant found in the hot and humid banks of Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers could create a thread fine enough to make Dhaka Muslin. Production of just one bolt of it could take five months of labour. The type of plant that produced Dhaka Muslin fibres cross-pollinated with hybrid American upland cotton and became extinct. The last of the muslins was woven in the 1860s. Now, a search is on for rediscovering the plant. The book includes a photograph of Dhaka Muslin in a London antique shop. It is so translucent that the glint of the gold ring on an attendant’s finger behind the fabric is clearly seen on the other side.

The book provides a pleasant reading experience and almost a tactile feel of the dressing material described in exclusive detail. Many years of stay and intermingling with local people enable Aslan to dwell authoritatively upon the cultural practices as well as handicrafts. The magical charms used by the Central Asian people to ward off the evil eye makes for a nostalgic touch as we encounter many similarities to those in India. The author had a very adventurous life in living with nature. He was once gored by a yak which mistook his approach to her kid as with malicious intent; had scorpion stings on his chest; swam across the Panj river into Afghanistan which was frequented by narcotics smugglers and had crossed an ice-cold rivulet on a yak while clinging to the herder who was driving it. The author has made a very thorough research for this book and has given many remarks made by early European explorers in nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to leave an impression that these societies were by and large static and not much has changed. Several good books of this genre are listed in the bibliography. On the negative side, the nitty-gritty of weaving a cloth or carpet may be boring for the ordinary reader when it is repeated many times as they will be having no clue of the technical names of the weaving process or machinery.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Aryans

Title: Aryans – The Search for a People, a Place and a Myth
Author: Charles Allen
Publisher: Hachette India, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9789357312684
Pages: 387

The word ‘Aryan’ rose to prominence in European languages by mid-nineteenth century as denoting a race destined to rule over the others. It was virtue of the superlatives they possessed in every factor that ensured a competitive advantage in the fight for survival – such as intelligence, physique, beauty, language and organisation. This was part of a post-factual justification after the Industrial Revolution had made Western Europe prosperous and thriving on colonialism. Concepts of the unadulterated genome of the master Aryan race widely circulated leading to the growth of Nazism in its most horrific form in Germany as well as racism on a full spectrum from the very mild to eugenics in other countries. At the same time, the term ‘Aryan’ was being used in Sanskrit literature for several centuries to denote persons marked by noble demeanour and deeds. When language families were discovered by early Orientalist scholars, they clubbed Indo-European languages under the misnomer of Aryan. The desire of the British colonial regime to legitimise their rule in India was the driving force behind the colonial masters’ research pursuits into India’s religion and sacred literature. Without any credible scientific evidence to support it, the British fabricated the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) which postulated that the Aryans who came from central Asia had colonized India much before the British did. It also questioned Indians’ moral high ground as the original inhabitants. However, as more evidence was collected over the subsequent decades, not only a hole but a huge crater was formed in this argument. This book is a recent effort to vindicate the racially tinged fantasies of imperialist scholars trying to establish the central Asian or south Russian ancestry of Aryans and their ‘invasion’ of India. Charles Allen is the author of a number of best-selling books on India. Two of his books Ashoka and Coromandel were reviewed earlier in Aug 2014 and Dec 2021 respectively. His lasting legacy lies in a series of books about British involvement in India and the effort of early Orientalist scholars. Allen died in 2020 while the book was almost complete. It was edited by David Loyn who has authored the Introduction to this book.

Allen confesses three motives for writing this book. The first and foremost is that he was sorry at the way professional historical research has been ‘hijacked’ in India by the Hindutva movement which deny the influx of Aryans. The second is to give his opinion on how the word ‘Aryan’ became so prominent in the West as a racial indicator and the final reason is his love of archaeology. As a result, this book has a clear political intent and is a tool to influence public opinion in India possibly in view of the general elections in 2024. Can you believe that this book on a people who lived three millennia ago talks about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of India and Narendra Modi? The author also admits that he was greatly influenced by Marxist interpretations of history along with those of other Left-leaning historians such as Eric Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill in his student days (p.176). At the same time, he shows clear traits of white supremacism in his undisguised contempt for Indian scholars and unflinching belief that only the Western scholars understand Sanskrit texts even though it was only the Indians who regard them as sacred. He stoops so low as to abuse critics of Max Muller by calling them ‘zealots’ (p.62). To keep his exit route clear, he then accepts as true their allegations against Muller that he was employed by the colonialist English East India Company to translate Sanskrit texts for the company’s use at the exorbitant rate of GBP 4 per page (equivalent of GBP 800 today) but justifies this robbery of India with the flimsy argument that each page took weeks to produce and the entire project took 25 years to complete. The nostalgic part was that I still remember a researcher from my graduation days who took this much time to complete a project. ‘Why don’t you Indians just shut up and be thankful to the white colonialists who compiled your sacred books at the cost of your freedom?’ is the refrain that resounds silently and between the lines in the entire book.

The book offers a very fine overview on archaeological finds in the former Soviet republics in Central Asia which broadly bear the title of ‘Kurgan’ culture. The places he describes include Arkaim, Yamnaya, Ordek’s Necropolis and Hallstatt. These may be excellent for Google explorers to have a wonderful visual experience visiting these sites in cyberspace. At this point, Allen succumbs to the usual folly of armchair enthusiasts to link two concepts solely relying on how their names sound similar. The Yamnaya culture in Ukraine is examined in interesting detail showcasing the pit-grave burials characteristic to this culture. The author then irrelevantly burps out that ‘in a clear link with South Asia, Yama is also the Hindu god of death’ (p.179). This is only a pipedream as ‘Yama’ in Ukrainian only means a ‘pit’. Allen continuously uses such tricks to fool gullible readers into believing his outrageous conclusions. However, the author also points to the truth in some unrelated parts of the book as if to ease his conscience. He admits that the progress of Proto-Indo-Iranian people (the primal group which split into Aryans in India and Ariyas in Iran) has left little physical trace (p.207). It is also conceded that horse burials are totally absent in India but was widely practised in central Asia. The book cites a medieval Scottish document which recites their migration myth and concludes this as definite proof of how the Aryans migrated from Russian steppes to Scotland (p.128). Here again, words resonating similarly in Old Norse and Sanskrit are considered as enough evidence of their mythologies also being similar (p.133). The German archaeologist Friedrich Klopfleisch, who unearthed several ancient pottery from burial mounds in Jena in nineteenth century is introduced to us and then makes a strange claim that ‘Klopfleisch quite rightly believed them to be speakers of proto-Indo-European and thus ancestral Germans’ (p.143). How could he conclude like this? Can you deduce the language spoken by a person long dead, just by looking at his mummified bones and a few potsherds he used while alive? Inconsistencies similar to this one plague this text in its entirety.

A detailed narrative on the development of Aryan racial feeling in Europe and the appropriation of its supposed symbols by the Nazis and racists are found in this book. Racist thought developed in mid-nineteenth century Europe through the writings of Comte de Gobineau. He found enthusiastic admirers in Nietzsche, Richard Wagner and other thinkers. With German unification in 1871, patriotic sentiments fertilized the hope of descending from a master race (ubermenschen). Germans thought they were destined to bring in a new world order by conquering others by their racial superiority. German society was willing to absorb notions of Aryan supremacy and to suspend belief in matters of national self-image. This book proves that the four-handed Nazi symbol which is commonly confused with the auspicious Hindu symbol of Swastika is in fact ‘hakenkreuz’ (hooked cross). The hakenkreuz symbol was used in the coats of arms of many German municipalities even before theories of Aryan origins had emerged. Hitler had a personal connection to this symbol. The hakenkreuz was prominently displayed in the Lambach monastery where Hitler served as a choir boy. The symbol was engraved on a heraldic shield which was the personal seal of Theodorich Hagn, abbot of the abbey from 1856 to his death in 1872. This makes it obvious that the accursed Nazi symbol has no relation to India or Hinduism. Allen also examines how the false link between ‘Aryan’ and race came about. The word ‘Aryan’ comes from Sanskrit and Avestan where it changes to ‘Ariya’ in the latter. Both these languages give the meaning of ‘good or noble people’ or the ‘venerable ones’. Max Muller postulated that the Indo-European language was spoken by an Aryan race erroneously assuming that the speakers of similar languages were united by blood as well as tongue. But by the end of nineteenth century, consensus emerged that ‘Indo-European’ referred only to a language or group of languages rather than a people. Racist thought had far advanced in Europe by this time portraying the Aryans as a ‘tall, pale-skinned, blue-eyed, fair-haired, clever and martial race’. Muller later corrected this by clarifying that by ‘Aryan’ he meant only language and not race, but the damage had been done.

As noted earlier, this book begins with a political promise that it is a propaganda piece against Hindutva in India, which is alleged to have a xenophobic agenda and lack of respect for Western scholars specializing in Sanskrit. However, Allen confuses Hindutva with Hinduism proper and considers the religion as part of the game and hence a legitimate target for attack. He accuses that ‘intolerance of the Other and the persecution of minorities have been a feature of Indian society not just for centuries but for millennia’ (p.280). This is shocking as India was famous the world over as a safe abode of minorities facing persecution at home. The funny thing is that just four pages before, on p.276, he excitedly informs us about the excellent preservation of Parsee culture in India whereas it had crumbled in its homeland of Iran. As noted in para 3 above, this book is full of such gaping inconsistencies and glaring contradictions. More than that, he uncritically retells half-truths such as crossing the sea resulted in loss of caste and asserts that only the Paraiyar outcastes engaged in it. He is totally unaware of the robust Gujarati merchant class that flourished in East Africa and the Middle East without losing their ‘caste’. Read Chhaya Goswami’s excellent book ‘Globalization Before Its Time’ reviewed here in Dec 2020. Allen puts Swami Vivekananda in a bad light by asserting that he ‘used publicity photos to sell himself to the public’ as ‘a clean-shaven and muscular modern Guru’ (p.293). He accuses ISKCON for ‘helping bring the chauvinist and sectarian Hindutva repackaging of India’s history into the mainstream’. The chapter on ‘Holy Cows and Gurus’ is a brazen attempt to paint a black picture of all great leaders India admire and respect such as Dayanand Saraswati, Tilak, Swami Vivekananda and Aurobindo. After this tirade, the author arraigns against some Indian freedom fighters who died fighting for their motherland. Allen calls them ‘hotheads led by Tilak’s call for violent action’ and notes with smug satisfaction that ‘they were tried and hanged’. He doesn’t mention their name, but is obviously referring to Chapekar brothers who killed W. C. Rand who used vandalism and assault on Indians while working as the Plague commissioner.

The chapters on Indus Valley Civilization and its archaeological remains is a rigmarole of wrong conclusions and even plain ignorance. This book admits that John Marshall’s excavations at Mohenjo Daro were chaotic without any concern for stratification. In short, Marshall’s work was qualitatively more like tilling a farm field than archaeology. Even then he came out with a result which the author grudgingly concedes as something which ‘came as a gift from heaven to the ideologues of the nascent Hindu nationalist movement’ (p.214), because it buttressed their ‘Out of India’ and ‘No Aryan Invasion’ hypotheses. Swastikas were also found on Indus seals. Allen is also confused about what he is trying to establish and confirms at one point that ‘there may have been fighting [between Aryan invaders and original inhabitants of Indus Valley] but few today believe that Aryans put a sudden stop to the Civilization’ (p.217). While balancing the evidence offered by cultural specimens, he claims that the Daimabad Charioteer is an Indus legacy, but this area in Maharashtra was not inside the Culture’s accepted geographical range. In fact, this argument only strengthens the Out of India theory. When unable to find a plausible provenance for the famous ‘Dancing Girl’ sculpture of Indus Valley, he puts forward the silly argument that ‘they were not locally produced’ (p.222). Is he hinting that Amazon and FedEx had a pre-historic franchisee in Mohenjo Daro? Another fallacious and unsubstantiated conjecture is that the people of pre-Aryan Indus cities were lactose intolerant because ‘there is evidence that they produced ghee, which is lactose-free’ (p.230). By the same logic, a country which manufactured insulin must be full of diabetics! When DNA sequencing was done on a female skeleton found from Rakhigarhi, it ruled out any link to Central Asian genes. Allen accepts only those genetic studies done by western academics like David Reich as authentic while the strong protests against his work from Indian researchers are ignored. Based on this cherry-picking and shaky evidence, the author concludes that prior to 2200 BCE, there had been no admixing between original inhabitants and incoming Aryans whom he calls ancestral south Indians (ASI) and ancestral north Indians (ANI) respectively. Then in one instant they mixed like the flick of a switch and immediately stopped mixing thereafter till modern times due to the development of caste system. So embarrassingly naïve is Allen’s grasp of Indian society that I seriously doubt whether he has understood the concept of caste.

 The author tries both sides of the argument of Aryan invasion to see which has better purchase. If he cannot find remnants of Central Asian practices in India, he is equally willing to transport Indian practices there. He then makes a pointless claim that caste system was part and parcel of the proto-Indo-European worldview and cites the two respected groups of druids and mounted knights in ancient European societies as forerunners of Brahmins and Kshatriyas. He invents another category of his own as ‘workers’ to rise the count to three and then atrociously claims that a French mythologist Georges Dumezil who lived in India in the 1920s recorded only three divisions in Indian society. The claim is that since Dumezil has said so, it must be so. Such is the level of white supremacism seen in this book. The skin tones of Aryans also do not match his narrative. Rig Veda describes god Indra as pot-bellied and ‘tawny-skinned’ (brown coloured). This is thought of as the model of a marauding bronze-age chieftain. This human figure is not white, blonde or tall as he ascribes to Aryans in the early chapters. The author also tries to improve upon the Parsee holy book Vendidad by claiming that the sequence of migrations of its early ancestors is not correct and suggests a new itinerary whose only relevance is that it agrees with his theory. Max Muller described the soma plant mentioned in Rig Veda as a creeper, but Allen thinks it is a fleshy, twig-like bush. Either Muller or Allen must be true, but not both. Maps given in the book are not effective in monochrome and the marked regions are difficult to differentiate. Altogether, the book is designed more as a wrecking ball on Hindutva than to serve any constructive purpose. Its sole aim is to debunk the Out-of-India theory that is gaining momentum. It is also an example of the folly that is produced by a scholar whose outlook is blinkered with politics.

The book is still recommended for the fine introduction to archaeological finds in Central Asia.

Rating: 2 Star

Sir C P Ramaswami Aiyar – A Biography

Title: Sir C P Ramaswami Aiyar – A Biography
Author: Saroja Sundararajan
Publisher: Allied Publishers, 2002 (First)
ISBN: 8177643266
Pages: 778

‘Diwan’ was the official title of the prominent minister of a king in an Indian state before all of them were folded down in the 1950s. If you ask a person from Kerala to name a Diwan he can think of, it is absolutely certain that the first or even the only name that comes to his mind will be that of Sir Chetpat Pattabhirama Ramaswami Aiyar (1877 – 1966), commonly known as Sir CP. He was well known for his keenness, intelligence and extraordinary charm. As in this book, ‘he was very intelligent and could not be hoodwinked; he was incorruptible and could not be purchased; he was superhumanly courageous and could not be blackmailed’. Sir CP founded many industries in Travancore and his visionary outlook in developing the state’s infrastructure is legendary. However, you won’t see a picture or bust of him in any public place in Kerala which has erased him from public view. He had the misfortune to cap his long association with the state with a severe calling out on the repressive measures he initiated to suppress the democratic aspirations of the people. He successfully contained a communist uprising in Punnapra-Vayalar, but then turned against the national movement too by advocating independence for Travancore when the British left. This was the proverbial last straw. An assassination attempt on his life took place, after which he resigned from his position as Diwan and left Travancore. This book sums up in around 700 pages the tumultuous life of this great scholar-intellectual who was once known to the British as ‘the cleverest man in India’. Saroja Sundararajan is a distinguished administrator and researcher from Tamil Nadu. She served as the principal of several colleges for 26 years. She has several books of a biographical nature to her credit.

This book provides a good overview of CP’s childhood, education and law study without delving into too much detail. His latter day fame as an authoritarian seems to have been moulded from his student days when he was under the control of his strict, disciplinarian father. To prevent the boy from dozing off while studying, a special lectern was made in which he had to stand all the while he was reading. However, he was mindful of serving the society. He joined the Servants of India Society run by Gokhale after graduation. A short while later, he abandoned it and returned to legal profession as per his father’s persuasion. CP joined the Indian National Congress in 1904, two years after becoming a lawyer. He attended the 1907 Surat conference and many such meetings in the following years. He drafted the Lucknow Pact of 1916 which reconciled the Congress with the Muslim League. He was one of the general secretaries of Congress along with Jawaharlal Nehru. CP associated with Annie Besant and engaged in nationalistic work letting go of a lucrative legal practice. Anyhow, it must be stressed that his social work was not full time and he found enough opportunities to engage in legal work commissioned by very prominent clients.

The author does not say so plainly, but CP was disillusioned with Congress following the ascent of Gandhi and his agitation based on mass participation which invariably ended up in violence even though professing lofty platitudes on ahimsa. Sundararajan notes that ‘by the turn of 1918, CP dissociated himself from Congress owing to various factors’ (p.55). These ‘factors’ are not clearly elucidated. It’s a puzzle that the author is reticent to disclose them even after the lapse of a hundred years. Congress had demanded immediate provincial self-rule at that time which was in stark contradiction of its resolve taken a few months back contemplating a gradual takeover. Hardening of such a nationalistic line made several eminent moderate men to leave the party. This was the time when the non-Brahmin movement was gaining momentum in Tamil Nadu. They targeted CP for being Brahmin – or rather, a successful Brahmin – and subjected him to ridicule and criticism. This bordered on intimidation and physical violence that he started carrying a gun with him in 1920. The non-Brahmin movement is not to be confused with Dalit activism. This was an association of non-Brahmin castes of Hinduism, many of them upper castes themselves, who treated the untouchables with equal or perhaps a little more contempt than the Brahmins. CP then turned to government work and was elected to the provincial legislative council in 1920. In the 1923-28 period, he was appointed the advocate general of Madras and later the Law Member of the Governor’s Executive Council. This is equivalent to a ministership in today’s Indian states. At this point, he was instrumental in clearing the Mettur and Paikara dam projects of their legal hurdles. As a kind of promotion, he was elevated to the Viceroy’s Executive Council as Law Member in 1931 which is equivalent to a union cabinet minister today. CP was a close associate and friend of Lord Willingdon when he was the Madras Governor and later as Viceroy. When India was taken out of the fiduciary gold standard and the economic problems developed, Willingdon was on the verge of resigning his post in protest. It was CP who persuaded him to stay on. Even after he left for England, Willingdon closely followed CP’s work in the press with keen interest and provided feedback occasionally. CP was transferred to the Railways and Commerce portfolio in 1932. He was the first lawyer deemed fit to fill that post. The entire British administration evaluated him as ‘the ablest man in India’.

CP had confessed that there was an autocrat in him. This autocrat had his most fulfilling incarnation as the Diwan of Travancore. This job appealed to CP’s heart who returned to it many times after temporary assignments elsewhere. However, Travancore proved to be his nemesis. Had it not been for Travancore, CP would have had a glorious career in post-independent India. CP was fiercely loyal to Maharaja Sree Chithira Thirunal and his adamant upholding of independence for Travancore as per the Maharaja’s wish cost him the goodwill of eminent statesmen who came to power in Delhi after the British left. This book presents a true picture of CP’s involvement with Travancore. Even before his elevation as Diwan, CP intervened with Viceroy Willingdon and high officials in Delhi in advancing the investiture of Chithira Thirunal by as much as ten months, ending the regency of the Maharaja’s aunt. (More stories on the palace intrigues can be obtained from Manu S. Pillai’s ‘The Ivory Throne’ reviewed in December 2019 and ‘History Liberated: The Sree Chithra Saga’ by Princess Aswathi Thirunal reviewed in July 2024). As Diwan, CP instituted many reforms in the social, political, industrial and commercial frameworks of the princely state, the most important being the Temple Entry Proclamation of 1936 permitting entry of untouchable Hindus inside temples. It was the Maharaja’s initiative as well, but some caste Hindus blockaded CP’s house in protest. His granddaughter, a baby of three years, sustained a fracture on her elbow at that time by falling into a pit in the backyard. The crowd prevented her from being taken to hospital chanting ‘let the granddaughter of untouchable CP die’ (chandalante pothi marikkatte, p.317). The child suffered a permanent deformity on the elbow which she later jokingly referred to as her ‘temple entry elbow’.

The book aptly describes the very strong antipathy of Travancore’s Christian community against CP who tried to curtail the unbridled proselytization and mass conversions in the state. Schools run by the Church received aid from the state but imparted Christian religious education to all children with an eye to ‘catch them young’. The percentage of Christians in the population of Travancore made a quantum jump from 20.6% in 1891 to 31.5% in 1931 and that of Hindus dwindled from 73.2% to 61.6% in the same interval. In 1936, the government forbade schools to be held in churches, places of worship or prayer houses. While instituting compulsory primary education, the 1945 educational reforms withdrew grant-in-aid to schools which taught religion. Churches came out strongly against it but CP stood his ground. The Temple Entry Proclamation closed the tap which supplied converts to Christianity. Piqued by the Proclamation, the Christians of Mankompu desecrated a bust of Chithira Thirunal. CP built a police station there and took strict action (p.324). The inveterate hatred of Travancore State Congress (TSC) towards CP was said to be fed by some Christian leaders in the top rung. The Church used British dignitaries also to their aid. Emily Kinnaird, an English lady and MP, freely indulged in a false but vicious propaganda against CP and Travancore itself by accusing them as anti-Christian. Questions were raised in British parliament on ‘persecution’ of Christians in Travancore. The book includes a long chapter on the liquidation of the Travancore National and Quilon Bank and the imprisonment of its Christian proprietors after a long court battle. They had attacked CP through their newspaper ‘Malayala Manorama’. The author claims that CP had no role in the bank’s unravelling and that the law had merely taken its course. But it is likely that CP was the brain behind the initial run on the bank and its eventual collapse.

Sir CP’s descent to disaster began in 1939 when public demands for responsible government became louder and more strident. Confrontations with TSC on the streets upset the tranquillity of the state. CP tried to downplay popular sentiment as roused by Christians on a communal agenda. The author also follows this line, but it seems not true. All sections of the society came out in support for the agitation. CP gagged several newspapers for reporting on the struggle or criticising him. The trait of authoritarianism was becoming clearly visible. There was also a spat with Gandhi around this time. In 1939, Gandhi advised CP to resign as Diwan as he had ‘heard disparaging remarks about his private character from reliable sources’ (p.377). CP began sounding out on the constitutional changes required in Travancore in view of India’s impending independence. Right from the beginning, he was very vocal against the British model having an executive responsible to the elected legislature. He favoured an irremovable executive with no dependence on legislature modelled on the US Constitution.

The ten months from October 1946 to July 1947 were epoch-making in Kerala history for the lightning pace at which far-reaching transformations took place. It began with the armed Punnapra-Vayalar insurrection and ended with the assassination attempt on CP’s life which injured his spirit more than the body. It all began with a communist-orchestrated militant labour movement in Alappuzha. Coir workers demanded bonus irrespective of profit of the company. CP took a pro-labour attitude and persuaded the company owners to grant four per cent bonus as deferred wages. This was before any labour leader had opened his mouth in the conciliation meeting. Having realized their demand for a song, the workers immediately asked for the end of monarchy and replacement of the Diwan. The government could not countenance such purely political demands coming from labour unions. Armed fighting took place between labour unionists and police. The disturbed areas were put under martial law and CP was made the lieutenant general of the army. The fighters in Vayalar were made to believe that they could effortlessly overwhelm the state forces whose weapons were claimed to be not loaded with ammunition! A brutal carnage then ensued and the number of people killed in the encounters is still not indisputably settled. CP felt singled out in this episode. The neighbouring Cochin state abetted in the uprising by taking no steps to prevent its soil from being used as a base for organizing subversive acts in Travancore. This was alleged to be in a bid for gaining popularity for the Cochin ruler. As independence neared, CP was further isolated from the national mainstream as he was not ready to concede paramountcy to the new regime that will be replacing British power. By April 1947, Baroda, Gwalior, Patiala, Bikaner, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Rewa and Cochin joined the constituent assembly, further cutting Travancore off from the tide. The tug of war continued till CP was taken out of the arena by the stroke of a would-be assassin’s sword. The author insists that the attempt on CP’s life had no relation to Travancore’s decision to finally accede to India. Sundararajan again certifies that the decision on Travancore’s status was the prerogative of the Maharaja and CP’s role in it was only advisory in nature. CP had confirmed it by saying that ‘by temperament and training, I am unfit for compromise, being autocratic and over-decisive’. However, CP was pained at his perceived abandonment by the royal family after he resigned as Diwan. The book narrates CP’s life for the next two decades, till his death in 1966. Though he worked as the vice chancellor of BHU and Annamalai universities, no worthwhile job which taxed his considerable talent in law and administration came his way.

A major shortcoming of the book is that it is written in a reporting style of what the subject said and did and not of what he thought. The author is never in touch with CP’s mind. Even though an extensive collection of his writings and speeches are meticulously maintained by the charitable foundation named after him, there is no mention of any diaries in which he recorded his most intimate thoughts. Did CP keep a diary? We may never know. He started writing a book on his ‘times’ towards the final years of his life, but it did not go anywhere. May be this constrained the author from making any analysis or review of her own rather than reproducing, and probably editing too, of what she had gathered from other sources. A touch of humour always attended his demeanour. This is natural in a person who was bandied about as a ‘Ladies’ man’ by his detractors even though the author stoutly rejects this accusation. When he was offered the post of judge early on in his legal career, CP declined saying that he ‘preferred talking nonsense for a few hours a day’ to ‘listening to nonsense every day and all day long’. Through the biography, Sundararajan also provides a broad outline of the progress of constitutional development in India under British rule. CP was closely associated with numerous reform committees in a substantial way. The book does not mention when CP was knighted and for what services he rendered. Another surprising drawback of the book is the total lack of information on CP’s private life. Even though the names of his wife and three children are mentioned, there is no chapter on how the family fared in the face of turbulent opposition engendered by CP’s official work as the Diwan. This is strange, especially from a woman author. The book includes a lot of monochrome pictures depicting various important occasions of his official life, but their reproduction is low-resolution and of poor quality. Considering their historical significance, readers can only hope that the originals are scrupulously preserved.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

City on Fire

Title: City on Fire – A Boyhood in Aligarh
Author: Zeyad Masroor Khan
Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9789356998247
Pages: 294

In 2017, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman vowed to make Saudi Arabia ‘a bastion of moderate Islam’. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan retorted that ‘Islam cannot be either moderate or non-moderate. Islam can only be one thing’. Of course, he didn’t specify which one. When a terrorist attack takes place, or more commonly when jihadist propaganda is loosened on social media, we wonder why the ‘moderate’ Muslims are silent or inactive in the face of effervescence on the extremists’ part. Instead of addressing the social evils associated with the community such as polygamy, arbitrary termination of marriages at the husband’s whim, discriminatory treatment of women in distribution of family property and a host of other such issues, the so-called moderates blame others for offending the hardliners through any real or imagined action. The true fact is that notions of religious supremacy and the desire to dominate over the other religions are what make the hardliners restless, but the moderates adroitly obfuscate it and loudly play the victim card to find justifications for the physical or ideological violence exerted by the jihadists. This leads us to conclude that Erdogan is, after all, quite right in what he said. This book from Zeyad Masroor Khan is about his life in Aligarh which is marked by frequent skirmishes and riots between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Khan finds the conditions repeated in Delhi as well where he worked as a journalist. The author is a journalist, writer and documentary film-maker based in New Delhi. He has worked with national and international media companies like Reuters, Vice, Brut and Deccan Herald. This is his first book.

Surprisingly for a native, Khan is unusually circumspect and subdued in extolling the legacy of Aligarh in deciding the destiny of the subcontinent. Aligarh was the epicentre of the Pakistan Movement and the nerve centre of the seditious campaign that ended up in the partition of the country. Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan were carried on the shoulders of students whenever they visited the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) which was their intellectual headquarters. Yasmin Khan notes in her book ‘The Great Partition’ that there were student leaders in AMU who openly boasted to have killed Hindus in riots (read my review of ‘The Great Partition’ here). Aligarh Muslims voted en masse for the Muslim League and thronged in support to its policies. The polling data leaves no doubt on the total support the League enjoyed. But when Partition actually came, they chose to happily stay back in India. The author says that after Partition, his grandfather ‘believed in Gandhi and wanted to stay in a secular India’. The author also comments on the violent methods used by the Pakistan supporters: ‘riots were taking place, people were butchered on the streets, trains were robbed and houses set on fire’ (p.21). With this truculent past behind their back, Zeyad Khan is acting astonished that the Hindus were not on friendly terms with them after partition. Communal riots were very common in Aligarh. The book talks about secret electric switches wired in Muslim areas for sounding emergency alarms to quickly gather people for fighting the Hindus.

This book is thoroughly hostile to Hindus and contains unmitigated hatred towards them. All Hindus are straitjacketed to be antagonistic towards Muslims. Some quotes from the book would help to uncover the fangs of venom concealed in the text: “Even the Hindus respected Ishrat Bhai for his honesty” (p.31), “Even the Hindus here are nicer than those from other neighbourhoods” (p.12, speaking about Uparkot), “During riots, Rasool’s house was attacked first, even if they acted all friendly with their Hindu neighbours” (p.32), “In my dreams, I’d see Hindus entering my home and setting it ablaze” (p.247). Muslims living among Hindus on very friendly terms were said to be mercilessly and treacherously assaulted during riots. The constant refrain of the book is that Hindus cheat. If the word ‘Hindu’ was replaced by ‘Jew’, this book would’ve been proscribed as a classic case of anti-Semitism. Beneath all these charades, the author’s real intention to play the victim card on Muslims comes out in the open. Khan is also careful to distinguish Hindus into upper caste and rich businessmen, lower caste labourers who are as poor as Muslims and Dalits (p.14). This newfound sympathy for the oppressed is just another masquerade for cutting down the tall poppy rather than upliftment of the downtrodden. Whenever a riot occurs, it is the Hindu who is on the other side, without any subtle caste demarcations.

The extraordinary effort exerted by Khan in appearing temperamentally indistinguishable from a boy who grew up in the 1990s elsewhere would’ve been appreciable had it not been used for giving respectability to his sinister and vicious narrative. His interest in comic books as a child helped to foster his faculty in handling languages. But the places to access these books were in Hindu areas and Khan narrates going about these places in trepidation that the Hindus may attack him. On the other hand, comic books were considered ‘the pinnacle of wise’ in his family. Drawing or seeing pictures is frowned upon in Islam. Practising music also infuriated some of his family members. Muslim children dutifully attended local madrassas while the author enjoyed reading comic books in Hindu areas. The comics told the story of a detective duo Ram and Rahim who intervened to save the country from aggression. Even though these books thus carried the rudiments of secularism and living in a pluralistic society, the author is anguished that “Muslims were never the central characters in any comic books. They were only the sidekicks and villains, a trend that continued in almost all the ones I read” (p.66). That’s simply because most of the Muslim children didn’t read them! In the books they actually read at madrassas, infidels were the villains. You get heroes in books who appeal to the bulk of its readers. As years go by, Khan tries his best to look and sound like a regular, mainstream school-going boy interested in Cartoon channel and video games. His discusses about a lot of cartoon characters he found attractive on TV. At times, he appeals to reason, ridiculing Muslims’ belief in djinns and spirits. He even pretends to be rational, but beneath this thin veil lurks his poisonous divisive agenda of being victimized in spite of holding all these ‘modern’ habits and tastes. He even feigns that he didn’t know how to offer namaz though he joined the hard-line Tablighi Jamaat a few years later. Khan also confesses that Osama bin Laden was a hero for him after 9/11 and dreamed of the Arab terrorist defeating the US in Afghanistan and then taking over Pakistan and India. He also dreamed that it would lead to Islam’s domination over the whole world. All this is written in a half-humorous way designed to disarm sceptics who might not read the whole book and to wriggle himself free of allegations of vituperation. A careful scrutiny will expose the vicious payload of communal hatred cloaked under the blanket of superficial humour.

Khan’s reproduction of communal unrest in Aligarh is deviously and shamelessly partisan. It serves only to bolster the Left/Islamist propaganda that Muslims are scared to live in India. Such an argument strengthens only the anti-national narrative. Mindless exaggeration oozes out of assertions like “all people in Muslim neighbourhoods lived in anticipation of the bad times that were always round the corner”. Communal tension is said to be a part of existence for Muslims around which the lives of everyone were moulded. This book narrates fine details of violence in which Muslims got killed or injured. These are so one-sided and quoting abuses verbatim that they appear to be insinuations for taking revenge. Aligarh has a history of communal rioting going back several centuries but for the author it mysteriously starts only in 1984 following the build-up of the Ayodhya temple movement. The narrative maliciously and cleverly omits the Rushdie ‘Satanic Verses’ and Shah Bano agitations in which Muslims went on the rampage. At one point, the author is forced to admit that Hindus also were killed in the riots but he rues that they were “fewer in numbers than the Muslims” and makes a sneering comment that “these were small sacrifices to achieve larger goals” (p.172). All the violent scenes portrayed in the book appear to be concocted fantasies and they always take place ‘a few feet away from a police station’ where the policemen ignored appeals for help. On the other hand, he proudly describes how BJP leaders were killed in retaliation (p.180) who were suspected to be behind attacks on Muslims. Khan notes some curious characteristics of AMU professors. Most of them have an ancestral connection to nawabs, zamindars or rich families. Only a few have risen from underprivileged backgrounds. Most are anti-student and part of regional lobbies. Occasionally, there were professors who became goons themselves and carried country-made guns in their pockets (p.188). This confirms Yasmin Khan’s observations referred to in Para 2 above.

It is astonishing that the author maintains his sentiment of hate for most of the narrative. He has packed that much malice in this book. Many a times the readers vainly hope that the verbs and adjectives are being used in half-jest, but it’s not so. Like a guided missile evading and going around obstacles to home in on the target, Khan is very focussed and totally dedicated to deliver his communal payload even though sometimes he acts like a rationalist or a leftist. Any Muslim reading this book will naturally feel pain and get offended. This is quite expected as the story is carefully crafted to produce this effect. Only the last five pages of the book are free from spite. In fact, this portion which tells about the author’s long walks in Aligarh after abandoning his job in Delhi in the aftermath of Covid, is the only saving grace. Then the author observes Hindus living alongside Muslims – as if for the first time – and realizes that they too belong to the Homo sapiens species. Like a flash of lightning suddenly illuminating a dark landscape, his bigoted mind escapes its shackles for a brief moment to realize that ‘forgiveness, coexistence, compassion, empathy and respect’ are the characters which are required to be instilled in every person for a harmonious communal life in India. At this instant, the author acknowledges workers everywhere in the world for giving him hope through their resilience and courage. This looks like a weak strategic ploy to appear leftist rather than borne from any genuine conviction or empathy.

In the beginning of the book, Khan records that ‘slight exaggeration is an inextricable part of Aligarh’s culture. If somebody from Aligarh tells you a story, take it with a grain of salt’ (p.4). Readers are advised to keep this confession in mind while reading through the author’s communally prejudiced rant. However, the exaggeration in this book is not at all slight and you require a full chest of salt to make it palatable. The author has a western audience in mind, possibly of the NGO variety, while telling his story. Usual tropes of foreign authors in India such as pot-holed roads, open drains, nightly power outages, stench from drains and garbage accumulated in streets are mentioned many times for effect even though not exactly suited or even relevant in the context.

This book is a piece of Islamist propaganda and it’s astonishing why HarperCollins chose to publish it. The book is not at all recommended.

Some other books which features Aligarh in a prominent way and were reviewed earlier here are

a)    Aligarh’s First Generation by David Lelyveld (read review here)
b)    Separatism among Indian Muslims by Francis Robinson (read review here)
c)    The Great Partition by Yasmin Khan (read review here)

Rating: 1 Star

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