In praise of new Bihar

Book Review: Non-fiction/The new Bihar: Rekindling Governance and Development by N K Singh and Nicholas Stern (edited), Harper Collins, 387 pp; Rs799 (Hardback)
Among India’s states, Bihar has long been considered something of a ‘political laboratory’, owing to how, during the anti-colonial movement of the 20th century or in the decades post-independence, it had hosted a series of political movements with overarching effects.

Most noticeable among these had been the JP Movement, which resulted in a national emergency, the imposition of which was proof of the intolerance of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for a new kind of reactionary politics, led by arch socialist and close friend of Nehru’s, Jay Prakash Narayan.

The movement produced many other leaders over time, including Lalu Prasad Yadav, Nitish Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan—three individuals who have been at the helm of Bihar’s politics in the post-Mandal Commission era.

In the years between 1990 and 2004, Bihar had dropped alarmingly low on the developmental indices. But change was at hand when the people brought Nitish Kumar and his allies to power. And it’s the immediate impact of that shift, and the policies that made it possible, that the book The New Bihar: Rekindling Governance and Development, edited by NK Singh and Nicholas Stern, deals with. Comprising the input of well-known developmental economists and policy experts, this anthology aims to highlight the Bihar model of development.

In the 1990s, Lalu Prasad Yadav, an early beneficiary of Lohiaite socialism, had made Bihar a ‘governance-free’ entity of sorts. The state had been set on a downhill trajectory then, which was further sped up by Yadav’s conviction in a fodder scam, following which he passed the mantle to his politically clueless wife. In those years, India was growing at an unprecedented pace, but Bihar appeared to be losing out.

Then came Nitish Kumar. Unlike his predecessors, he took major initiatives to improve governance, infrastructure, education, health, power and agriculture—the reason why, in the last six years, Bihar has achieved such accelerated development compared to other states in the country.

In the book, eminent economists like Amartya Sen, Kaushik Basu, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Meghnad Desai, Shankar Acharya and Arvind Virmani analyse the remarkable turnaround witnessed by Bihar, while policy experts Tarun Das, Deepak Parekh, Lord Billimoria, KV Kamath and Isher Judge Ahluwalia speak of the opportunities and challenges ahead. Most pieces are written in praise of Nitish Kumar, particularly the steps taken in the initial five years of his governance that ensured the functional mainstreaming of the state.

The New Bihar comprises 29 essays altogether. Among these, Sen, who also heads the Nalanda University Project in the state, looks into its distinguished past; Basu, in brief, skims over the fall and rise of Bihar in the last few decades; Acharya, Virmani and Desai discuss the state’s journey to such high economic growth; and Ahluwalia stresses on the importance of urbanisation—although her remarks don’t really seem adequately well-informed regarding Bihar’s ground realities.

Also included is a piece by Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar, among the earliest endorsers of Nitish Kumar’s work, who identifies the critical role of leadership in shaping the developmental agenda against the many odds.

We also have Rukmini Banerjee, who follows the grassroots efforts in uplifting education around the country, and her essay incorporates a lively first-hand account of Bihar’s exceptionally well-functioning primary and girl education policies.

All the accomplishments enumerated in this book paint a picture of a state that was in shambles only a few decades ago, not just in terms of infrastructure, but also how firmly it was in the grips of identity politics back then. But Nitish Kumar and his friend Sushil Modi were able to take an almost bankrupt Bihar and turn it into a state of surplus revenue.

Maintaining this momentum, and reaching the next level of inclusive development, however, is a different story, and the book also touches upon what is to come. The Bharatiya Janata Party is no longer with Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), and it appears unlikely that he will be able to return alone after the assembly poll that has been scheduled in 2015.

However, it is certain that he will remain a key political figure in the state, and the legacy he leaves—particularly the notion that good work earns the good will and trust of the masses—will hopefully keep successive governments from straying too far from the development agenda.

Indeed, whatever Kumar and his ilk have done in the first five years of taking over Bihar have been extraordinary to say the least. He is an acclaimed leader, whose celebrity has stretched beyond India’s boundaries as well. Time and again, for instance, he has tried forging an understanding with Nepal on issues concerning the state and adjoining areas beyond the borders.

However, in a federal polity like India, the head of a state has limited say, more so when the centre is ruled by a different political entity. But there is much Nepal could take away from Bihar’s story—for a country that has been grappling with political deadlock for so long, and which has resulted in a sagging developmental track record, the Bihar model offers up a great many suggestions on how to bounce back with an eye on progress.

The book essentially recognises the passion and effectiveness of a doer, who did not take the luxury pass to power. But it’s also careful not to over-glorify, and stresses time and again on the hurdles ahead for the state and others like it.

The majority of the pieces in The New Bihar are engaging and thought provoking, and will no doubt take the Bihar story, and the story of Nitish Kumar—a ‘thinking politician’, as historian Ramachandra Guha was inclined to call him—to wider audiences than ever before.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Kathmandu Post on April12,2014)

Delhi by Heart

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Delhi by heart by Raza Rumi, Harper Collins, 322p; Rs399 (Paperback)

As Raza is Rumi, so ploy of narrower gratifications should normally evade his identity. Surprisingly (for conformity between author and editor), the cover of Delhi by heart presents this most impartial and genuine self-narration on the city Delhi as—‘Impressions of a Pakistani Traveler’. In actual, the author was never alien to this city—as like many of us, he too could see beyond the boundary without falling in guise of extreme limiting factors—such as nationality and uncomfortable equations among the two nieghbouring nations.

Like insiders of this city, his comfort level is more competent with the old parts of Delhi than its shining hotels and sprawling urban extensions, which tirelessly ostracize wisdom and release endless hallucination of modernism. Clearly, this can’t be confronted by wimps—praying to be separated from the load of past and oddness of present.

Still there is no dearth of alibis from the people and machinery that make the old urban structures, marginalised and dying slow death. Sadly, the pattern of certain kind of living too diminishes with the demise of symbols. Delhi is catching up that pattern blindly—so it’s naturally justified, if majority of its residents know Chirag Delhi by a nearby over-bridge than for its historic significance.

The days are not far when Nizamuddin Dargah would be better known as a landmark to reach Hotel Oberoi—and Kutub Minaar as picnic spot for absentee landlord type scholars from western part of the earth, living in the farmhouses of M.G.Road. This road ends Delhi, hence civilisation and brings Gurgaon—an anti-thesis of former. This book has no taste to travail any uncivilized roads.

Raza’s leaning with the northern India, as he confesses in writing—grown-up by listening the pre-partition stories from elders at home. That part of the land was once his home—he got that sense and also pain for not being able to see it freely. This happened with so many people, we have various accounts on that but those were from earlier generation. Author leads the debate here, as he represents those who didn’t see the trauma of partition though felt its darkness even after decades.

As he shares, his first visit took place to see his forefathers’ land—and in the course of the time, his bond of sharing developed with fellow Indian students in LSE during University days and later working in Multilateral Agencies, being part of Pakistan’s elite Civil Services.

Years back, he moved from the service to become primarily a writer, with free pen and conscience. That made him writing this meticulously researched and well involved book on Delhi—a city that was in want of authentic looking back on its fading edifices and cultural tradition.

As a columnist too, Raza has been writing about Delhi, its people, who are his friends. And on different side—he is the person, whose writing infuse hope from Pakistan. He can speak of his mind, for making the ills obvious, and thus less harmful. However, the establishment running Pakistan like a half-baked democracy has no intention to stop its slumbering for listening rational commentaries.

Raza likes Delhi—and this city reciprocates with him in same warm way. This book marks it better than any other additional attribute. He has remembered his Delhiwaala and they are reading this book and loving it. Even in conservative estimation, I see this book reaching in ‘essential reading list’ on Delhi. This solely based on the authenticity, the book upholds.

Delhi’s eternal characteristics defies partitioning views—so compilation of its good and bad can be sensibly done only by those not pursuing many goals at a time. That stands opposite with most of the historians, claiming to have expertise on this restless city. Raza Rumi’s Delhi by heart is an important addition to the literatures on Delhi and for delinking the concentration of history writing from royalty to people. In either or both ways—the book will command a wide readership, from across the sections.

If travelling can enrich entitlement with the places—its articulation could make history, simple to be remembered. We can believe it, if not overlooking a remarkable book like this one.
-Atul K Thakur
Email:summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Kashmir Walla on October23,2013)

The dark fantasy!

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Ayodhya: The Dark Night by Krishna Jha& Dhirendra K Jha, Harper Collins, 192p; Rs499 (Hardback)
Rationalizing the myth can’t be apt in the case, if it meant for tempering the truths. In India, the dark fantasy of communalism has been forming and deforming under the same contradictions-that stock of confused discourses have made the collective consciousness either weird or ineffective.

Since1947, Indian polity has been grappling with many maladies, but the reassertion of ‘religion as identity’ remains something, which still waiting its existential justification. Under heavy influence of this nefarious syndrome, we can see in South Asia-Pakistan, on the brink of disaster and Afghanistan, as a nation of opium and war.

India’s polity shaped through a democratic Constitution and strong institutional edifices have delivered over the years, though under the strain of sporadic but extreme counter-currents. India’s independence came following with the civilisational history’s worst human displacements and riot-after that, the father of nation was assassinated in 1948, and from here began the politics of Hindu Mahabha and RSS.

That stream of religious-political interface made the otherwise flawed Congress rule in the country, more acceptable and Hinduism, walking with a painful deadlock. Krishna Jha& Dhirendra K Jha’s Ayodhya: The Dark Night is a path-finding study on the means and practicing nuances of right wing politics in India. This book has sensitizing capacity and builds better perspective around a grave plot that has done immense harm to the nation.

Based on irrefutable facts, authors take the matter forward with recalling the fateful night of 22 December1949 in Ayodhya. That night, Abhiram Das-an obscure Sadhu (previously a wanderer from Darbhanga district of Bihar) and his followers successfully installed an idol of Rama in Babri Masjid. They faced resistance, but that overcome by these motley group.

Probably, that night no one of them were knowing the consequences of their act, as they worked blindly for rightist political organisations, politicians with similar taste in Congress and the ICS officer and then DM of Faizabad, , K.K.Nair. This man and his wife from Kerala played a long political inning from UP, besides amassing disproportionate property.

Point worth of noticing is, Ayodhya was not a place of limelight before that, then why it made the centrepoint of Hindu politics? The answer would be hard to get but somewhere, the reaction or action with no sense had formed under the impression that revivalist method of such dangerous scale can give the passage for religious rule in the country.

And that would be legitimized, as balancing course correction of wayward Islamic rule. Things’ didn’t travel the same way and that because, somewhere India is a functional democracy and it has its own compulsions and choices. The mileage was toned down; nevertheless India’s politics entered a different phase, which was not coherent and accommodative.

Nehru, was a firm believer in political processes, though only mildly in struggle after India got independence. So he dealt with Patel in own party and with opposition in well thought out procedures-he secured a temporary balance during his years in power. Subsequently things moved in calm until mid 1980’s. Rajiv Gandhi allowed opening of Babri Masjid and politics ignited after that.

In 1992, Babri Masjid was demolished and it became a full time front of politics between Congress-BJP. This book though has major focus on the beginning of the tragedy, but in patches also covers the events upto 1992. However, a dedicated CPI cadre herself, Krishna Jha, whom I have privilege of knowing for long, could have relate her excellent findings with the dwindling stake of left parties on the wake of high drama.

The books open little on this-but beyond that, it gives enough insight to know communalism has changed the line of political priorities. It also comprehensively recalls the roles Gandhian activists, who fought against the communal politics in Ayodhya. Decades later, the politics is more competitive and dramatic then it was at any point of time in modern India.

Written without obvious political bias and in gentler tone, this book is an essential read to know the genesis, development and saturation of Ayodhya episode. To wipe-out the metaphor (which is unpleasant) would be not possible for anyone, so that would be continuing!
Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Rising Kashmir on May12,2013)

Walking with Lions

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Walking with Lions: Tales from a Diplomatic Past by K Natwar Singh, Harper Collins, 211; Rs299 (Paperback)

K. Natwar Singh has been an articulate diplomat as an Indian Foreign Service official or in general. He was born royal, but grew up with a taste for democratic politics. In a memorable career, spanning over six decades, he has been indeed “walking with lions.” This book, which is a compilation of his 48 essays written for an Indian newspaper, forwards the chances of overture with few secret and mostly impressive known facts about him.

In the author’s unwavering belief in constructing high sense through small sentences, this book opens many sensational episodes from the non-Congress ruling years. On Congress and its leaders (especially with Nehru-Gandhis), his take is more neutral and appears to follow an invisible, but esteemed protocol. A protocol chosen, rather than forced from somewhere. On Morarji Desai’s regime, one can be enlightened by reading this book, which does not overlook follies or hyped wisdom.

Indian diplomacy in post-independence days could not delink from the shadows of its immediate colonial past. Even today, we see our diplomats behaving in an alien way, either at home or in the territory of their assigned mission. But India sailed on those, who exceptionally cued from such ideological draining.

Natwar Singh was among the ablest of them; he served in the mission of Western Europe and Zambia with equal vigor. That was and is a rare scene. He is of those few who have seen the trend of Indian politics since the days of Nehru.

Instead, he had to leave the Ministry of External Affairs much earlier and only to foolishly satisfy a lobby, active to tamper with India’s trade and policies at large. He was an obstacle before those interest groups, so sidelining him came as the easiest option. His successors have proved their disastrous capacity of non-interference, so things are walking a calm path - unfortunately, no distraction is foreseeable.

For long, I have been following Natwar Singh’s writing and his public life and also have the privilege to edit an upcoming anthology, for which he has contributed a very remarkable essay on India’s Foreign Policy (more as an independent writer, than a Congress member). I know him in many ways, though mostly for his scholarism that is above suspicion in all the cases. He has a fondness for letters and he justifies it, when he turns orator or writer.

The essays of this book, have been written on a weekly basis and they seem trying to reach a consensus of memory. This is by a person who has lived many roles in his life and career, and who also epitomizes the beauty of intellect in distinguished public life. His grip over the diverse domains of knowledge spellbind, but it adds on the wider spectrum of knowledge, so nothing gets complicated.

This book is a good read, and offers the reader to come across the hidden or stated events from the past. A diplomat/senior politician’s diary of this standard and in such frankness is an uncommon phenomenon in India, and still I doubt I’ll see a similar stock of opinion coming frequently from the veteran’s league.

They are or would be kept writing for the Gymkhana Club or other ghost club’s members, who unfortunately are the tribes of the past, still destined for a “colonial-hangover” rather than the “much changed destiny.” With this book, see the world (even though momentously) through Natwar Singh’s eyes - you will never feel lost.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in India America Today on March30,2013)

Bookspeaks!

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Jihad or Itjihad by S. Irfan Habib, Harper Collins, 192p; Rs299 (Paperback)
With Jihad or Itjihad,S.Irfan Habib, a historian of scientific standing rejects the stereotypical misrepresentation of Islam, which unfortunately is in vogue these days. He identifies the strength and weakness of Islam, through facts and rational arguments-further, with delineating strongly over Itjihad, he forwards a fresh view to look upon Islam.

On a straight note, the book attempts to make sound observations on the Islam’s contribution in making the world informed and enlighted with modern attributes and sadly how those prominences lost. It makes a valid forthright observation-“While Europe was still stuck in the Dark Ages, scientists in the Islamic world were translating Aristotle, and making huge strides in astronomy, mathematics and philosophy.

Two thousand years later, the idea of 'scientific progress' seems to be locked in a hopeless war with Islam. When and how did Islam lose its enthusiasm for the workings of the natural world?”

The author traces the points of how the normal Islam came to question modern science - beginning with the visionaries of the nineteenth century and continuing with the modern day ideologues. He cites the lives and works of famous men like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, for rejecting the myth that Islam and its followers are ‘anti-modern’. His emphasis is on the correcting the perception, rather confusing the readers with abstract analysis.

Habib also uses his scholarship of history and Islam to question the ambiguous idea of 'Islamic science' as a category distinct from 'modern', 'Eurocentric' science. In an engaging and simpler style, Jihad or Itijihad challenges stereotypes, as well as propaganda. That allows making it in perspective the relationship between Islam and science today, certainly whose ground is challenging!
Book Review: Non-fiction/ Saints and Sinners by Ali Mahmood, Harper Collins, 388p; Rs599 (Hardback)
Ali Mahmood’s Saints and Sinners presents a macro views on the nation’s fortune. His finding though appears not first hand, when he enters the fray of knowing economic miracles or slump from the similar prism. Also he misses the historical truths and strength of leverages, today few new emerging nations easily offering the world.

The basic argument, this book offers: “Some countries prosper while others are left far behind. There are countries which have tried to progress at the cost of great human suffering and those which have reduced or even removed poverty. There are democracies and dictatorships, rogue nations and law-abiding ones. “

Ali Mahmood is a small time politician from Pakistan, with greater interest in global business and knowledge. He has been delving over the reasons of why some nations remain poor and why others grow filthy rich. So, Saints and Sinners comes up with some bizarre conclusions.

As such, looking at the emerging nations of Asia and Africa, he realizes that while peace, stability and good governance through the ‘rule of law’ are essential to growth and prosperity, democracy is not necessarily the best way to achieve ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’. For, military leaders, from Mao to Lee Kuan Yew, have provided stability, scientific and technical excellence, economic growth and prosperity to their nations.

While endorsing the leaderships, he refuses to get informed about the consequences of arbitrary rule. This book seems written to let allow growth overriding all other components that make a system even tentatively inclusive. There is nothing like ‘Devil or Deep Sea’ to choose for the author of this book, but still he opts the way, which would be less acceptable to the informed minds. As page turner, the book holds better hope!

-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Rising Kashmir on April 16,2013)

The enigma of arrival

Book Review: Non-fiction/The Moslems are coming by Azad Essa, Harper Collins, 243 pp; Rs299 (Paperback)
An accidental academics turned ‘desktop terrorist’ and finally as an ‘incidental journalist’, Azad Essa exudes many flavours of multitasking. An irreverent, witty and unusually focussed writer on the wide range of inner contradictions, this India centric updated version of his mildly classic book ‘Zuma’s bastards’ holds much promises than his own anticipation in an interview given to Sarah Khan for New York Times, where he could classify his target readers among the toddlers preparing for SAT type of an obligatory professional target!

Azad, who loves his affiliation with the identities prefer not to shadow his disenchantment towards the odds his surroundings deliver quite often than not. His sarcastic light tone relatively appears more serious when he points on the slushy sanction on burqua in France, notwithstanding even the slight infatuation with this tent like fabrics, he consider this culturally politicized dress not aesthetically fit for romance but still notionally wants no imposition of external compulsions for its functional manuals.

While delving on India’s news making terrains, like Manipur or Kashmir, Azad seems following a much travelled and easy route of looking on the whole issues through a restricted vision of ‘human right violation’. There could be no denial that, it’s also a part of story but over the years, excessive and adamant western conceptualisation has made it more like a bandwagon phenomenon. Problem in Kashmir or Manipur is multi folded and can’t be delved alone through the wit, it requires depth and interface with the ground realities, which certainly this book is lacking.

Being an Al Jazeera journalist, author has used his travelling experiences quite energetically throughout his book-the flow of his opinion on diverse themes, from Arab spring to the cricket world cup of 2011 is quite fascinating and informed. A competent journalist can weave the stories with few facts and lot of imaginations, Azad’s incidental overtures with journalism doesn’t deter him doing the same. The best thing is, he has balance within to make explanation correct and their spontaneity as resolute and impactful as the situation demands.

Many of the essays in this book justifies its aggressive title, and that shrewdness is good but would not be long lasting against the opposite school of thoughts, which believes in ban instead reading of a text for advance contextualization. So far, by chance not any recognizable power has banned this book, although some of Azad’s family members have half heartedly tracked this book and further made unofficial fatwa on this book-this is a family matter, the fine point is! This free flowing collection of Azad’s writing enhances more the capability of judgement than argument, hence readers will find it exactly intelligent through reading most of the pages.

This will be worth of saying on record that, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are the most inspiring faces of India-South Africa diplomatic projects…in opposite, if author consider Hansi Cronje as the third icon of commonness between the India and South Africa on the basis of corrupt entrepreneurial drive, then off-record, he too deserves to be called second counter icon. His occupational fluctuations and extraordinary capacity to derive the facts based on fiction is also not very much untoward of the qualities, on which he deserves this new claim!
Atul Kumar Thakur
June 26th, 2012, Tuesday, New Delhi
Email: summertickets@gmail.com

The visionary’s World

Book Review: Non-fiction/cinema-Deep Focus: Reflections on Cinema by Satyajit Ray (edited by Sandeep Ray), Harper Collins, 171 pp; Rs550 (Hardback)
There is unanimity among different sections of polemists who regard Satyajit Ray as the man who heralded realism in Indian cinema and whose contribution is strongly felt in India and the world; not only in the cinematic arena but on the overall movement of realistic art. Ray was a thinker, writer and gifted speaker, which made him distinctively creative and appealing to different class of observers. The first writing proposal Ray received was from P.C. Mahalnobish, renowned economic planner of free India, who at that time was heading the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Calcutta. Impressed by the young economics student, Mahalanobish offered Ray a regular column in ISI’s journal. This marked the beginning of the latter’s tryst with writing.

At a different point in time, Rabindranath Tagore had induced Ray’s mother to send him to receive art education at Shantiniketan, which Ray happily joined to live under the shadow of Tagore rather than earning a formal recognition in art. After Tagore’s death, he felt living in the campus was purposeless and thus left his art training in the final year in favour of travelling across India with meagre resources but the rich company of a few likeminded friends. Free humane spirits always drove him more than anything else; Ray, like Tagore, remained attached to the beautiful attributes of life and works. As a filmmaker, he met the acclaim he deserved though his contributions as a writer remained subdued under the deep canopy of the former.

It was in 1976, when Ray published his first collection of articles, Our Films, Their Films that critics started to take notice of his sublime, creative side. Our Films, Their Films is one of the most memorable collections of Satyajit Ray's writings, besides My Life, My Work, a five-part lecture delivered by him in Calcutta in English in 1982, and Under Western Eyes, an essay about distorted European and American perceptions of Indian culture as well as Indian cinema, which appeared in Sight and Sound in 1982 and can be called Ray’s finest ever piece in depth and vision.

Deep Focus ,which comes after an abnormal hiatus, is a rich anthology of Satyajit Ray's writings, which includes, Under Western Eyes and twenty one other previously published pieces, compiled under the editorship of his son Sandip Ray. The range of pieces is diverse in length and arc from the subtle to the substantial. They focus on a spectrum of subjects: from the craft of filmmaking and cinema as an art to Ray's childhood memory of an accidental family visit to a “soft porn” Bengali silent film as well as the unusual experience of sitting on a Soviet film festival jury. The book also includes personal responses from Ray’s fellow directors such as Charlie Chaplin, Jean Godard, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosowa and others.

This compendium of Ray’s (literary) work is an impressive feat despite the glaring omission of some of his finest write-ups: Speaking of Films, Ordeals of the Alien, Why do I make films?, and his memorable tribute to Rabindranath Tagore, written in 1991 for the Guardian, which was incidentally, the last article written by Ray in English. However, this book genuinely maintains ----as is the tradition with other earlier Ray centric works—the intricate details of Ray’s cinema through pictorial representation and by recalling the behind the scene catalysts such as Banshi Chandragupta, art director, Subrata Mitra, cameraman and others who assisted Ray very firmly. Under his restless natural urge to depict scene and sensibility, Ray’s star casts were naturally fit to act according to his creative imagination; whether or not the same actors would have well with other directors is a discussion that falls within the realm of conjecture .

Undoubtedly, Ray’s influence in Bengal stands next only to Tagore. This marks the continuance of the Bengali middle class’ articulate fascination with culture and literature very actively; even the long static rule of Left front hardly derailed them from the special works of Bengali cinema, literature and art. On one level, it is satisfying, if not gratifying, to have the legend’s influence so closely down even to the bottom social level but it simultaneously also affirms the blockade of path breaking productions in literature, art or cinema from Bengal. That’s something that cannot be sidelined as a momentary affliction that will soon wither away.

Ray was against any such conformism that prevented looking at retrospective works in new light, new approaches; his writings in this book or his vision across his works exemplify this. He transcended from economics to arts as an academic learner and shifted from his professional overtures with the then leading advertising agency, D.J.Keymer (Now, Oglivy &Mather) towards making realistic Bengali cinema which reveals his dynamism and self discipline. The essays in the present volume highlight, what was not ideal with cinema, society or with the overall systemic structure during the lifetime of Ray while his work continues to be open to varied inferences by critics and intellectuals.

Deep Focus would prove to be a prominent source of reference for all those who love cinema and wish to acquaint themselves with Ray’s vision on different themes, in a different timeframe. If the respective countries (France,Japan and Italy) could be proud on Jean Renior, Akira Kurosowa and Vittorio De Sica, India too could nominate some of the most epoch making cinema makers from her land. But in any case, Ray would be the ranked first and his works would serve to know about India in making and complete totality. Ray mortally departed at dawn of economic liberalisation in India. Twenty years down the lane, all spheres are in laissez faire mode, whereas Satyajit Ray’s idealism or shrewdness faces the risk of oblivion, alas.
Atul Kumar Thakur
June 16, 2012, Saturday, 2012, New Delhi
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Businessworld,June5,2012/ http://www.businessworld.in/businessworld/businessworld/content/Visionary%E2%80%99s-Worldview.html )

Odds on Mahatma

Book Review: Non-fiction/Biography, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his struggle with India by Joseph Lelyveld, Harper Collins, 425 pp; Rs699 (Hardback)

Joseph Lelyveld has written a generally timid book with lot of superstitious opulence’s about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi-infact his level of concentration is not applied on Mahatma Gandhi or Bapu of the world’s most successful democracy. Doing this, he starkly fails to see the persona of Mahatma in proper light who lead India to independence from Britain in 1947. With strict shortsightedness, Lelyveld’s "Great Soul" habitually over informed readers that he was a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical practitioner-one who was often downright cruel to those around him. What this book exerts, Gandhi was closer to the 20th-century typical progressive intellectual, professing his love for mankind as a broader concept while actually marginalising people as individuals.

On his journalistic assignments with New York Times, Joseph Lelyveld covered South Africa (winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for his book about apartheid, “Move Your Shadow”), and spent several years in the late 1960s reporting from India also. But that doesn’t make Lelyveld evidently enough qualified to write about Gandhi’s career on both sides of the Indian Ocean in the absence of fresh insights or simply relying on the fantasies rather much needed facts. So, he misses to bring his subject a reporter’s healthy skepticism and an old India hand’s stubborn fascination with the subcontinent and its people. This is not a proper biography, as it has enough elements of distracting less informed minds on Mahatma and keeping in prolong irritation to those who knows his works and life very deeply.

As desired by the author, even before the release of book, furore was sparked by local media reports, based on early reviews in the western press, some of which were extra focussed on passages in the book that suggested Gandhi had an intimate relationship with a German man named Hermann Kallenbach. Lelyveld has said his work was taken out of context. "I do not allege that Gandhi is a racist or bisexual in Great Soul," he told the Times of India. He added "The word 'bisexual' nowhere appears in the book" which is technically somehow right but absolutely false if the meaning of letters could be taken in basic account. These two unconfirmed references ideally streamline the subversive preoccupation of Lelyveld on Gandhi- that "how completely you have taken ­possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance." Gandhi nicknamed himself "Upper House" and Kallenbach "Lower House," and he made Lower House promise not to "look lustfully upon any woman." The two then pledged "more love, and yet more love . . . such love as they hope the world has not yet seen."

Also "you are always ­before my mind's eye." Later, on his ashram, where even married "inmates" had to swear celibacy, Gandhi said: "I cannot imagine a thing as ugly as the intercourse of men and women." You could even be thrown off the ashram for "excessive tickling." (Salt was also forbidden, because it "arouses the senses.") Throughout the book, Lelyveld has an unknown suspicion over Gandhi’s action…he reminds readers that Gandhi was very much an ordinary aspirant of material world once as he arrived in Durban from Bombay in 1893. Henceforth, he blindly wish to see the contradiction of early modern academic and professional grooming of Gandhi with his life after even his turning into Mahatma-the real case is, no such rift ever existed is his conviction or action!

Lelyveld’s easiest identification of Gandhi is as a “brown man”, and his struggle in South Africa nothing more than for living the common aspiration of the race, he belonged. His racial firmness stays further with taking the outcomes of Gandhi’s campaigns there, neither clear-cut nor long-lasting. More frequently, Lelyveld confuses the struggle with “weakness” and Gandhi’s search for a peaceful revolutionary idea which later made Britain a most ordinary entity after 1947 as “vocation.” Ruthlessly, he also tries to corner the history’s most egalitarian campaigns under Gandhi as the sort of indifferent acts from the motives of consensus that were as par him required to be in sync with ultra left, right and reactionaries. Moreover, against the will of history, Lelyveld seems trying hard to forge Ambedkar’s advent in Indian politics as the anti-thesis of Gandhi, which is worst treatment of the real conflict of interests that existed between two and their stands on caste.

In balancing return, Lelyveld also writes, while he may have “struggled with doubt and self until his last days,” Gandhi “made the predicament of the millions his own, whatever the tensions among them, as no other leader of modern times have.” He adds, Gandhi even with all his inconsistencies, his dream for India remained constant throughout his life. “Today,” Gandhi wrote less than three weeks before he was murdered, “we must forget that we are Hindus or Sikhs or Muslims or Parsis…It is of no consequence by what name we call God in our homes.” Gandhi was always willing to stand up for the Untouchables, just not at the crucial moment when they were demanding the right to enter in temples in 1920’s and ahead.

But soon, Lelyveld returns with the unfortunate citings, that he was equally worried about alienating high caste Hindus. "Would you teach the Gospel to a cow?" he asked a visiting missionary in 1936. "Well, some of the Untouchables are worse than cows in their understanding." But two sentences fall too short to level a charge for establishing him a dualist, what Lelyveld has virulently tries to assert as regular interference throughout the book and remains unsuccessful. Leaning opposite the departing covert rage, lastly Lelyveld hesitatingly admits that, revolutionary tone set by Gandhi through his incessant struggle based on unity against the oppressors from South Africa to India extended a rational model of resistance to the world. Question arises, why then hyper twists followed in his work before knowing his subject from close quarter?

Great Soul could be hardly called a serious work on Gandhi-its central argument is unclear and distortive that makes it vulnerable to be fall at the proper destination. Though who tempted to play with the history in their own terms, may like to call it a work of substance. There should be no surprise, even if Ben Kingsley’s impact on the image of Gandhi would be tried by few to compare with Great Soul in nasty effort of idolizing Gandhi in different unsafe frame! However, if India has its own long history, so it has her own history tellers...on Gandhi, Ramchandra Guha would be remain the authentic voice-his upcoming multi volume biography will certainly clear many unrealistic fogs surrounding the great Gandhi.

Atul Kumar Thakur
March 28, 2012, Wednesday, New Delhi
Email: summertickets@gmail.com

Junkable Jihads!

Book Review: Non-fiction/Jihad on two fronts by Dilip Hiro, Harper Collins/2011, 443 pp; Rs699 (Hardback)
The Cambridge economist Joan Robinson’s remarkable quote on India “whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true” is worth of amplification in the context of south Asia as well which exudes the wider political/historical shadow of India’s influence in the past and substantially of present. This book closely justifies this timeless observation, equally after putting it into strategic domain. Like many recent accounts of the south Asia’s strategic scenario, Dilip Hiro’s book is overwhelmed with the mythical faith over the much chronicled details of twin disturbing fronts, Pakistan and Afghanistan and their umpteenth adverse marks on India. Thus, extraneous primary details leave here the reasons of bliss for occasional enthusiast on India’s strategic standing in the neighbourhood, but mostly deject the readers with eagle eyes on strategic dynamics.

There is something very retro and repetitive about his over emphasised themes that over the years have shattered the chances of peace in India. Certainly he didn’t need a different angle for reaching to the derivation, blossoming and crest status of Jihad, but in narration, he must have tried to differ from the newspapers honchos who are on daily basis feeding not only the instant curiosity but also the sound inquisitors. Incessant meticulous research of Praveen Swami, C.Rajamohan and few others gives easy access to firsthand expert observation on the entire construct, function and proliferation of Jihad powerhouses in India’s historically maligned North West frontiers and in its greater spread. So, the stories of General Zia, India-Israel relations, Cold war nostalgia or dangerously rising wave of fundamentalism inside India’s territory not simply could be the proud possession for concerned readers without adding something noticeable or subtracting even the tints of irrationalities and misconceived observations!

In plain terms, it’s essential for every south Asia expert to realise the absence of steady pleasures and narrowness of crystalline vision while getting fixed with the crucial issues of this region. Expressions are better if they are weak in pedagogy and attached with the subjects, which indeed assist author to concentrate on geopolitical sagas rather keep falling in the waves of unrealistic reprisals. Exposure to raw actuality rather the paper bounded wisdom gives better leeway to align with an absorbing and purposeful work. Here, this gain is nowhere in the sight, that would make many remorseful after spending hours reading hundreds of pages. Fresh way of looking at people, landscape and architecture of terror are more vital today than a conceited effort based only on surpassable details and its over stretching to the level of desperation. A plank to confide on interlude for regenerating appropriate intellectual impulses is very much desirable at this time, when strategic policy debates are increasingly being threatened with the saturation from “awkward running commentary “where no end appears visible in parallel sight.

Not estrangement or preoccupied perspective could be the driving force in reckoning the existing happenings that severely affecting India’s strategic normalcy…an engaging, if not an insider’s frame of mind is an unspecified prerequisite in this regard. An engaging visit to troubled regions like, Kashmir bring face-to-face with the brutality of Jihad and reach of dangerous nasty plots. Equally, it enables in knowing India’s response against the Pakistan sponsored terror network in its territory. The basic point arises here, whether India should continue the traumatic status quo in Kashmir or come with the conclusive steps without acknowledging the roles of wicked third party/Pakistan? Dilip Hiro falls short in taking into account, the basic bone of contentions. With his long journalistic experiences, he would have appealing, had he could elaborate India’s rising position in the world, which is simply unmatchable with its counterpart, Pakistan or the forces engaged in proxy and direct war-game of Jihad.

The wider look allows sorting out few misgivings regarding the view that “Jihad is politically motivated fundamentalism rather merely a fundamentalist assertion”. The political aim of fundamentalism could be understood with its potential tantamount on the normal humanity, where history resides in the minds for few strict purposes and ofcourse not for inserting any unrealistic antagonism among the living communities. There is dearth of constructive works on this particular malady, above journalistic production that could streamline the missing links. This book too appears on backfoot in this regard but still could enlighten many who are perceptively short with the historical background of violence in Indian sub-continent and its perpetual growth over the decades. Experts will miss their chronic searches of any constructive model of solution within the book, though elementary readers would be benefitted by Dilip Hiro’s labour of love for details. Moreover, Junkable Jihads have short lives and few takers beyond the rogue state’s compulsions and bewildering bookaohlic debates, which are lucid from the recent developments and this scenario, would be strengthened more in the days to come!

Atul Kumar Thakur
December 26, 2011, Monday, New Delhi
Email: summertickets@gmail.com

A Book with many Answers

Book Review: - The Book of Answers/A Novel by C.Y.Gopinath
Harper Collins, Price Rs.499, 2011
Though a seasoned journalist himself, C.Y.Gopinath has overstepped the construct of modest polemics to write one of the most remarkable satires that equally touches both the political and social realm with placing an individual at the forefront as a consine bearer. What I liked most in this novel, the quest of protagonist, Patros Patranobis for an ordinary yet satisfying life with his almost wife, Rose and son, Tippy which he has not fathered. But sudden arrival of a mysteriously unusual “The Book of Answers” as a legacy from a long-dead ancestor brings tectonic shift in his personal as well as in the political and social atmosphere around him.

Despite realizing the extraordinary potential of the book, proposition to sale it to a scrapper leaves a beautiful metaphor of an ordinary life that can be still opted by few over the market bound hyper commercial life. In some way, it gives hope for life outside of corrupt nexus. The grabbing of supernaturally efficient “The Book of Answers” by a godmen and passing of its wisdom to the most ruthless character of democracy, politician Ishwar Prasad exactly points out the Orwellian syndrome of “might is only right”. Rest ahead is fine narratives of a democracy with the institutions of flawed governance; though the inferred value of this novel will be universally relevant but in Indian contexts, it matches amazingly. Ethics in Indian politics has remained obstinately low without even slightly distracting by the “hyped magic” of economic reform.

Arrival of the real master of the book, Patros to check the its barbaric influences as damage control and further his searches of key in remote Kerala with witnessing the desperateness eventually visualize the end of a symbolic resistance. Such things hardly surprises us now as we have been and still living in a social order that created for forgetting the many humane attributes in the guise of growth. C.Y.Gopinath deserves all praise to unleash the real happenings in political circle and its consistent harm on the collective cognitive psyches; is this kind of political system that democracy promises by its instinct? Such erosion of responsiveness from one’s defined or undefined role vehementally juxtaposes the idealistic bearing and themes behind foundation of democracy!

In robustly dynamic time, few have patience to read the books like Aldus Huxley’s “Brave new World” which predicted the potential happenings of years ahead. What is viable in the present time to know the shifting of scenes around in simple and lucid expression, where this book succeeded with immaculate dedication of the author to add many positive changes in his surroundings. May be such idealism proceed or not but there will be no denying that a chunk of humanity will be keep striving with intrinsic impulses instead of enforced pressures.

Indian English writing is passing through a very productive phase, this work strengthen such notion with benign readability and indeed delving with the big systemic issues backed by real zeal and not only for grimacing on oddities we face regularly. India as a nation is experimenting with antagonistic ideas; it’s really hard and daunting in this scenario for any writer to interpret the things without reaching to the end of conclusion. Fortunately “The Book of Answers” has conclusion for its readers who can feel the ire of system through words albeit they will simply not stop being enjoying the satire!
Atul Kumar Thakur
July 27, 2011, Tuesday, New Delhi
Email: - summertickets@gmail.com