by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: Kartikeya: The Destroyer’s Son; Author: Anuja Chandramouli; Publisher: Rupa Publications India; Pages: 240; Price: Rs 295
The Hindu pantheon has a number of eminent, eclectic, and enigmatic deities. But few can be more mysterious than its god of war — a key figure in any divine assemblage. Yet, Kartikeya’s origin and even appearance have variant accounts, his achievements eclipsed by his younger sibling, and his following not as universal.
While the general consensus is that he is the son of Shiva, the Destroyer, and Parvati, born to defeat the asuras, who yet again dethroned the devas, there is a certain school that attributes his parentage to fire god Agni. Then there are accounts that say six babies were born of Shiva’s seed and became one, while some say he was one with six faces.
Then did Kartikeya defeat the asura Taraka, or was the asura ruler Soorapadma? What did he do after defeating the asuras? And why is he more popular across south India?
Despite Sanskrit’s pre-eminent poet Kalidasa writing about the birth and exploits of the god in “Kumarasambhava”, there are no definite, conclusive answers — but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. As Anuja Chandramouli, who is a unique combination of new age classicist and a most compelling storyteller, shows in this book.
And her work on Kartikeya — one of the three new books she has out this month — is not merely a recounting of the god’s story in modern language, but an inspired and imaginative retelling. And in this, comes out the essence — which was these accounts’ original motive before form trumped content, and ritual bested right conduct.
For Chandramouli, who has earlier presented Kamadeva and Shakti as seen never before, keeps to her trait of not only working a unique and contemporary sensibility into the lore, but also a more nuanced depiction of good and evil, duty, destiny, power, love, gender relations and rights, especially, and above all, mercy and redemption.
And true to her style, she doesn’t begin with the travails of the devas, but Parvati, who has finally realised her goal of union with Shiva. And when the devas come, it is with their king Indra, who is delivering a long harangue to the trinity’s Preserver, Vishnu, how the divine couple are delaying emergence of their progeny, who will help him regain power.
Chandramouli doesn’t have a very high opinion of the king of the gods as per her unflattering depictions in the past, and here too, it is not much different — with Indra more a resentful, manipulative power-hungry debauchee than a celestial being.
On the other hand, Soorapadma, despite being the “undisputed Lord of the three worlds”, has “grown heartily sick of it all”. And then while his his brother Simha is conscientious in helping better the lot of his subjects despite facing slurs, the other, the infamous Taraka, is cruel but mostly to keep his family’s honour.
The obvious point is that even those portrayed as evil have redeeming points and those as good may not be spotless, and it can also be a circular process — like the cyclical idea of time in the Hindu ethos.
But coming back to our protagonist, Chandramouli lyrically recounts the strange circumstances of his birth — and how it affected the fire god, and the wind god and Ganga herself, his raising, and his relationship with his parents.
And before his battle with the asuras (instigated most cynically by Indra), there is a telling episode where Soorapadma and Simha go to see Kartikeya on Mount Kailash and discuss the limitations of power. The inevitable conflict — told in a dream form that is a staple of Chandramouli — is set against how Kartikeya treats his defeated foes.
All this has to be read to be relished, but not necessarily believed as gospel. For that is the beauty of Hindu religion, in which many versions can co-exist without any problem.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: Lies of the Land – A Brief History of Political Dishonesty; Author: Adam Macqueen; Publisher: Atlantic Books: Pages: 352; Price: Rs 599
Oxymorons, or pairs of contradictory concepts — say, accurate estimate, virtual reality or even happily married — were a literary device for a satirical or poignant representation of human life’s paradoxes. Unfortunately, they seem to have become a regular feature of our present condition:Bbe it affordable housing, business ethics, or political honesty. And the last happens to be particularly incongruous — and lethal.
For while most of these oxymoronic situations concern us on a personal basis, the consequences of less-than-truthful politicians, their manipulations, and their cover-ups can be much greater in scope, as this book on some celebrated cases of political dishonesty over the last six decades or so brings out.
For these leaders and their actions can — did — wreck lives and economies, endanger security and peace, and create a grave trust-deficit between the rulers and the ruled, which can imperil democracy.
While most of us remember the “intelligence” that led to the second Iraq War, the Brexit campaign slogans, the promise of Rs 15 lakh in every Indian’s account, and so on till the phenomenon hit a entire new high with Donald Trump elected US President.
Those a little older will remember Bill Clinton’s travails and those older still will recall Watergate or the Profumo-Keeler scandal. And journalist-cum-author Adam Macqueen brings out many of them here in vivid colour and context, though his focus is limited to Britain and the US.
It is not that all politicians are liars, he says, holding that old joke, “How do you know when a politician is lying? Answer: Their lips are moving” is “90 per cent nonsense wrapped around a hard kernel of truth”.
While there are many politicians who live upright lives and use their power for benefit of people, Macqueen, a long-time correspondent of the fortnightly British satirical and current affairs news magazine Private Eye, holds there are many reasons why we believe otherwise and think the worst of the class.
In a sparkling and incisive introduction on the reasons for political dishonesty, he puts some blame on the “extraordinary polarisation of contemporary politics” where the “centre ground” for independent positions has been largely abandoned and a campaign of extreme vilification launched.
And then there is a great political benefit — “as sure as night follows day, the louder you shout about your opponent’s lies, the less obliged you feel to tell the truth yourself”.
Macqueen, who starts with the story of how the news of Winston Churchill’s first stroke was concealed — with the connivance of leading press barons — and governance carried out in his name, breaks his accounts into nine parts, which include those dealing with sexual peccadilloes, financial scandals, political gambles — including Watergate — political spin, and broken or misleading assurances.
Though in giving the background, course and consequences of these cases of dishonesty and making an incisive summation, he is also frequently wittily caustic.
Dealing with the Clinton-Lewinsky case and the titillating Starr Commission report, Macqueen concludes that sex in the Oval Office “sounds quite fun”, but “compared to other activities that have been conducted there over the years, it’s also pretty harmless”.
Though about scandals, the book is also informative, especially on the genesis of the 1956 Suez Crisis, British politician Enoch Powell’s anti-immigrant “River of Blood” speech in 1968, what the Watergate issue showed about Richard Nixon’s psyche and politics — and how it has a certain resonance with the Oval Office’s present incumbent — the West’s roller-coaster relationship with Libya’s Gaddafi and how Tony Blair did not actually lie about Iraq’s WMDs.
Brexit, as expected, gets an entire section to itself, but it also includes how anti-EU sentiment was stoked over the years, right from the case of the banana classification rules. Trump also figures in all his unbelievable behaviour.
But it is not only a book about politicians and how they got punished for their transgressions, and about the dawning of the “post-truth” era; Macqueen also provides some tips on how people can deal with the malaise.
Now, we need a companion volume on the cases elsewhere, particularly our own country.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: Open Arms; Author: Vince Cable; Publisher: Corvus/Atlantic Books; Pages: 400; Price: Rs 599
It is often conjectured if the reason for long-standing conflicts and insurgencies, in the developing world, especially South Asia, is not only other powers fishing in troubled waters but also the keenness of arms industries, mostly Western, to not lose two eager customers. How far can this powerful, unaccountable and unscrupulous military-industry complex go to maintain its market?
Quite far in subversion, sabotage and even more drastic measures to achieve its goals of huge profits as veteran British politician Vince Cable recounts in this story that seems ripped from today’s headlines.
And what can British housewife-turned-politician Kate Thompson, beleaguered Indian businessman Deepak Parrikar, a lovelorn union leader Steve Grant and Muslim accountant Shaida Khan do to counter the overwhelming adversary, with its links to high power echelons and violent criminals, ranged against them?
Set against the backdrop of the long-running, toxic rivalry in the South Asian subcontinent, Cable’s tale is set in the near future — in 2019 — where relations between India and Pakistan have again deteriorated alarmingly.
As the tension plays out (shown by a piece of “news” reporting some incident of outrage and threats from both sides beginning each chapter), the situation is further complicated by the less than salubrious influence of US arms firms, venal business magnates and extremist politicians to spin an alarming account of how democracies may actually work and the covert, vested interests that influence global developments.
Adding to the already virulent brew, being prepared across both Britain and India, are a host of rabid fanatics — both Islamist and right-wing communal xenophobes — manipulative politicians at all levels, alienated immigrants, doctrinaire trade unionists, oblivious bureaucrats and a sensationalist and/or partisan press.
Thompson is a rather glamorous housewife, who living in a barely formal marriage to a rich businessman, decides to take a plunge into politics, joining the Tory party. But after being elected MP, she finds herself rising at a rate she could have never imagined to be made a junior minister in the Trade Ministry and sent to India to clinch a lucrative arms deal.
But, her meeting with second-generation Indian businessman Parrikar whose company will be a crucial partner in the contract, is not only professionally successful but personally too. However, it leads to a lot of complications for her both in her life and career.
For Parrikar and his family, especially his rather enterprising father, who came up through a gray process, are in the cross-hairs of political and criminal enemies and their travails will not leave her unscathed.
Meanwhile, back in Britain, the company which was supposed to be the British end of the deal, is facing its own set of problems, with a takeover bid by a shadowy American conglomerate, and opposition to its agreements with India by peace and pro-Pakistan activists (different sections, of course) — and Grant and Shaida must see what it portends. A subplot is radicalism among Muslim youth, particularly Shaida’s brother.
Both these worlds, the fate of our characters (and many other rather unsympathetic ones), and the future of the nations come to a thrilling climax, after a trail of twists and turns through the corridors of political and corporate power in Delhi, and London, the high-rises and slums of Mumbai, and inner-city areas of many northern British cities.
Cable, a sitting Liberal Democrat MP who was Business Secretary in the coalition government from 2010-2015, draws on his own experiences of British politics and administration to provide a good feel of the push and pull that can influence even the functioning of well-entrenched democracies.
And though he has a good experience of India, he slips in a couple of places or so — the rank of a Mumbai police officer who plays a key role, the name of an Indian minister that seems incongruous, among others.
An entrancing read, it however sometimes seems there are too many subplots; some cliff-hangers end with a whimper than a bang, and the ending seems a bit hurried. However, since it is Cable’s first novel — after three non-fiction works — it seems possible we might meet some of these characters again.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: A Republic in the Making – India in the 1950s; Author: Gyanesh Kudaisya; Publisher: Oxford University Press; Pages: 250; Price: Rs 575
It seems to have become a compulsion of sorts to criticise some founding fathers, or rather one leading figure among them, for all of India’s ills. This may not only stem from a certain political mindset but also from ignorance of the daunting challenges the newly-free nation faced and how these were tackled under Jawaharlal Nehru who oversaw India’s successful transformation to a stable, peaceful and progressive polity.
Whatever milestones (good or bad) India may have passed in its journey since Nehru — vilified by many today, under the influence of scurrilous social media campaigns or political considerations — it was the course India took in its initial years, when he was in power, that ensured it didn’t fall prey to the authoritarianism or chaotic instability, with or without violence, or inequity many other newly-free nations faced.
One way we can gauge Nehru’s contribution is by examining the challenges and choices that India faced in its momentous first decade and how it came to terms with its diversity, complexity, and inequality, among other issues, as this book seeks to do.
Apart from placing Nehru in perspective in both his successes and failures — as any leader can be expected to have — in his steering of India, and his openness to criticism or mockery (as he famously told cartoonist Shankar — a tradition that seems to been jettisoned now), author Gyanesh Kudaisya also brings certain forgotten or hidden aspects of other Indian leaders to light.
The Mahatma’s views on the national anthem and cow slaughter, Sardar Patel’s stand on Hindu majoritarianism, funding the new Somnath temple and Jammu and Kashmir’s accession and Ambedkar on the political restructuring are especially telling.
So is a notable “what if” of the period — the evolution of the Indian right-wing if Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookeerjee, who was conservative but not communal, had not died suddenly, or if his successor was more independent-minded.
Kudaisya, Associate Professor in South Asian history at the National University of Singapore, notes that despite the title, he actually begins with 1947, with Independence and Partition and ends in 1962, with the India-China War, which actually ended Nehru’s era, even before his death a year and a half later.
“The periodisation, though unconventional, enables us to consider within a single narrative the colossal challenges which India faced in its newly independent nation, the dilemmas and anxieties of its political leadership and the roads taken by it (and not taken)…”
These challenges included the quelling the violence of Partition and dealing with its aftermath. There was also the “cartographic reconstruction” which was not limited to integrating British and Princely India, but also dealing with the vociferous demand for linguistic states and the case of Kashmir.
Then there was the creation of a Constitution, and the “three interrelated developments which underscored the evolving idea of India as a nation” — the project of creating a secular state, the framing of its citizenship law and the controversies over a national and official languages. It was the last in which Hindi’s zealous proponents well showed their myopia (unfortunately, a state of affairs that still persists) and Nehru deserves commendation for his deft handling of the divisive issue.
Finally, Kudaisya takes up the economy and the increasingly contested views (till now) on which paths India should pursue.
Clarifying his intention is not to give a linear and comprehensive account of this period, he says he rather seeks to give a view of the “hopes and aspirations, frustrations and dilemmas of a young nation facing up to extraordinary challenges”.
This, he adds, show the “ideas, paths, and trajectories which were articulated then came to have an enduring significance in shaping the India we know today”.
With his even-handed treatment of personalities and situations, bolstered by an array of boxes on leaders and others still known or now forgotten, hypothetical situations or the paths not taken, maps and tables, Kudaisya recounts admirably the creation of the new India in all its possibilities.
But his work’s real worth will be if it teaches us not to roll back the “integrative revolution” where pre-existing religious, linguistic, and caste identities were subsumed in the idea of being Indian.
Recent developments, however, show this may be too much to seek.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: The Universe Next Door; Author: New Scientist; Publisher: John Murray; Pages: 256; Price: Rs 499
Are the principles explaining the cosmic home’s creation and functioning vital for our continued existence? How would our planet be sans its lunar satellite, if the dinosaurs continued to roam around, or humans didn’t exist or did without bodies or suddenly get wiped out? Can we control climate, time, genetics or replicate matter? And what will eventually happen to us?
These questions — and many others like them across various spheres of science, and even history, as collected in this book — may seem an exercise in imagination, but, as we learn, it has great relevance.
For in trying to find their answers or visualise such scenarios, we come across explanations for several mysteries of life and its plane of existence. We may find how we have got to our present state, and what our future — human and cosmic — may hold.
Introducing this collection of 55 “parallel worlds and possible futures”, Sumit Paul-Choudhury, Editor-in-Chief of popular science magazine New Scientist, admits that “these imaginary universes, separated from our own by accidents of fate, gulfs of time, or chasms of quantum weirdness may seem the stuff of daydreams…”. He, however, notes that thinking about them can amount to more than “amusing speculation”.
“These kinds of questions are valuable because they force us to abandon basic assumptions about how the universe works. That helps us to separate accidents of fate from deep truths — and can lead to answers far more intriguing than our intuition would lead us to expect,” he says.
And a galaxy of New Scientist writers, contributors as well as leading scientists, academicians and science communicators go on to dwell on a whole host of these matters, both universal and human.
The issues can range from those overarching and immutable — for instance the four fundamental forces of nature and what happens if we tinker with them (if we could, that is) — to the course our history would have taken had it been subverted — say, Nazis winning World War II or if Newton didn’t exist or Einstein was ignored.
Others relate to us on a more socially collective basis, concerning our present choices and future prospects — whether all of us going vegetarian would be helpful (the findings may come as an eye-opener to both sides of thought), to more individual in nature, in both abstract (trying to figure out the basis of consciousness — is it a state of matter?) to corporeal (can/will we exist without our bodies).
But though the issues are complex and serious, the treatment is extremely lucid, accessible and vivid — even witty where possible without trivialising the matter, to underline what a strange existence we are in — or could be in.
Take one striking example. Physics theory postulates a multiverse, where every possible world exists and there are infinite versions of all of us. Elaborating on the possibility, one of the contributors says in this many-world interpretation, every decision he (or we) may take in this world, “creates new universes: one for each and every choice I could possibly make”. He goes on to quip there may be one where “I’ve just written a paragraph which explains that more clearly”.
On the other hand, more stunning are the explorations about a world where humans are non-existent or where they suddenly get wiped out, and a world where all life — humans, animals, plants, and microscopic organisms — disappears.
Then a view of what evidence of our life we may leave for our distant descendants is compellingly thought-provoking.
While Indians with an interest in science — rather than the spurious old “glories” and other obscurantist stuff that is being peddled at present — will find this an absorbing read, others should also read it to understand how inconsequential the issues they go virulent about — films, historical “injustices” and so on — are in the greater scheme of things.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
