@DeepInThought4U

ॐ तत् सत् || Truth. Dharma. Equality. Free speech. I endeavour to uphold these virtues. I lean neither to the Left nor the Right. Instead I aim to align myself with the Truth. Views expressed in this eclectic blog may be strong, amusing and/or based on personal opinions - all in keeping with the virtues listed above. All open-minded enthusiasts are welcome to peruse, share, learn and teach. Kindly remember to respect copyright and acknowledge this as the source.

Showing posts with label history. Show all posts

Saturday, January 7, 2017

Book conversations: The Ivory Throne

We have all been intrigued by the news of the treasures underneath the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram. This was the carrot on the stick for me, for taking on the onerous task of perusing this nearly 600 page epic. It took some doing, but I was not disappointed. In the process, I was enlightened on the life of one of the most underrated and unrecognised royal figures of India: Queen Regent Sethu Lakshmi Bayi.

Manu S. Pillai takes on the gargantuan task of retelling the story of the Travancore Royal House and comes up trumps. Even though this is said to be his debut release, his proficiency in digging up voluminous historical records, chasing up those who know about the said history, and coming up with an engaging account of the royal family is not entirely surprising considering he has worked with the likes of Shashi Tharoor, who we know is an adept in this very field.

Throughout, Pillai's fondness towards Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi is evident, as he goes about highlighting the goodness of her character, and her farsighted public works as the Queen Regent - something, he points out, even Gandhiji was in awe of. This is in contrast to the character of the Junior Maharani and her family, who come across as petty and scheming.

Palace intrigue, black magic, petty royal disputes, underhand political moves, colonial mores, and alleged profligacy - they are all there in ample measure, as the narrative makes an epic sweep of the history of late 19th and early 20th Century South Kerala region.

While nobody wanted a princely dominion to remain outside the nascent republic of India just after independence, it is nevertheless sad to note the gradual isolation and obviation of the Maharani. (Apparently her elder daughter first moved to Malleswaram in Bengaluru from Kerala - I would love to know where exactly, as I happen to live there.)

In addition to learning about the Queen, there are three less known pieces of information that stand out for me from the book:

the early history of Kerala, when Vasco da Gama and his Portuguese sailors resorted to piracy in the Arabian sea before they could gain access to the markets of Kochi
the unfortunate decline of the matrilineal system of family leadership after the British occupied India and forcibly applied their puritanical rules on the society
Raja Ravi Varma's role in the royal life (he was the grandfather of the Maharani), and the fact that he was not a 'raja' at all!

A little bit more information about the Ivory Throne itself would have been helpful. And Pillai talks about the ongoing temple treasure strife only towards the end, and points out that the matter is pending decision by the Supreme Court. It would be interesting to know what the verdict would be, especially since the current royal family that is involved in the legal imbroglio happens to be from the Junior Rani's side of the family.

Overall, a highly revealing and engaging scholarly work that is worth your time.

Image source: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MD21vjoTL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Book conversations: Beyond the Call of Duty

We usually look back at the British Raj with derision - for very good reasons. However here is a book that shows the opposite: a look at the few notable exceptions to the usual horrid British agents, who went beyond their call of duty to work for the upliftment of the 'natives', as in us.

We usually only remember the Clives and the Simons, as their exploits are recounted in our history books, but this book comes up with a list of some well known and some less known names of British civil and/or military establishment. They worked - sometimes willingly, sometimes more indirectly - to make a difference to the society they were part of at the time.

So the book recounts the following names and their field of achievement in the period of the Raj:

William Jones: Asiatic Society
W H Sleeman: fighting the thug system
Mountstuart Elphinstone: education
James Prinsep: Indian history/geography & numismatics
Arthur Thomas Cotton: building dams
R M Stephenson & John Chapman: railways
The Cunningham brothers: archeology, Sikh history & advocacy of Mysore royalty
Ronald Ross: malaria research
Mark Tully: journalism

Of these, Prinsep's story is astounding due to the sheer number of useful pursuits he undertook during his brief lifetime; Ross' painstaking research on the cause of malaria is awe-inspiring and gets the maximum coverage in the book; while Tully's is the only contemporary British example of any significant contribution to the Indian cause.

Raghunathan and Prasad relate the accounts of these gentlemen in an engaging manner, and their belief in the justness and magnanimity of their actions is evident throughout the book.

It is interesting to note that it was the Madras royalty of those days that conspired against the King of Mysore, which resulted in the annexation of the Mysore throne by the British.

I guess the inter-state rivalry between these two states predated the Kaveri issue!

Personally I would have liked to find out in depth about Francis Cunningham's role in the King of Mysore getting back his right to adopt a heir to the throne.

Nevertheless this is a noteworthy contribution, and should be taken into account by those looking to rename our towns, roads, circles and parks, so that deserving names such as those above are not erased in error.

The rest of the names, if at all retained, should be kept only to remind us of the grave error we committed in letting someone else occupy the country and loot it, so that this never happens again.

Another bonus is the watered-down but easy-to-understand-and-remember account of the establishment of colonial rule in India in the introduction to the book.

Image source: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2BN7rZtXGL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Saturday, July 23, 2016

Book conversations: The Way Things Were

Aatish Taseer takes us on a epic journey through time. He combines certain key historical events that have shaped our nation with the lives of his characters. The other background is Sanskrit, the language that we hold dear as part of our heritage. The title itself is a translation of itihasa: history, or literally, the way things were.

Taseer presents a tale of a modern day king, an elite, who even though is half-foreign, eulogises Sanskrit. He dreams of a time when India returns to its once 'pure state', when all around him his co-elites have moved on; away from the old culture, towards Macaulayism and western capitalism. He even goes on a futile trip to save the Babri demolition.

However, he belongs to an elite class himself, something that Taseer points out was the status of Sanskrit itself; it was a language spoken by the elite (read Brahmins). Through Toby, the king of Kalasuryaketu, and his son to whom he teaches the nuances of the language, one gets to learn about the original meanings of several Sanskrit words.

The tumultuous relationship between Toby and his wife, Uma, and the lavish lifestyles and frivolous pastimes of the families (typified by them playing, quite literally, Trivial Pursuit during a moment of crisis), is juxtaposed against the events of national significance; such as the Emergency, Operation Blue Star, Indira Gandhi's assassination, the anti-Sikh riots, and the Babri demolition.

Taseer simply states the facts of the events through the eyes of his characters who experience their consequences first hand, without taking sides. The conclusion is that it is whimsical to believe that India would ever reach the 'pure state', considering the fact that the views and actions of the right-wing activists is entirely different and a lot less puritanical than what India actually was before the invasions, or even during the Vedic period.

In other words, itihasa - the way things were - was different. This is something that Toby, and through him we, learn in the end.

Taseer plays with the concept of kaala: at once both Time and Death. The story begins with Toby's death and proceeds forwards and backwards through time, until his ashes are immersed in the Taamasa - the 'dark' river that flows through Kalasuryaketu.

The names of the principal characters are derivatives of those of the members of the First Family of the Hindu pantheon. Toby's real name is one of the many names of the Lord of Kaala, Shiva Himself; his wife Uma is of course, Parvathi; and his son Skanda is named after Subramanya. Skanda is even working on the translation of the The Birth (of Subramanya or Karthik).

Overall, it is an engaging, if somewhat bizarre mix of language, culture, class, relationships and yes, itihasa. Taseer's shimmering use of the English language makes it a worthwhile read, and he is in the same league as some of the other users of Asian origin.

And the added attraction of the copy that I read was that it came with the author's signature:

Image source: http://covers.booktopia.com.au/big/9781447272717/the-way-things-were.jpg

Friday, October 2, 2015

Book conversations: Classic Khushwant Singh

When it is a Khushwant Singh book, I just read. Not because of the gossipy nature of the grand old man's writing, but because he is the grand old man of Indian literature. Now of course, he is the late grand old man, which only adds to be appeal.

This compendium of four of Singh's best stories was initially put together 1996. This edition is big - at 851 pages - and, like the man himself towards his end days, appears delicate and old. Some of the thinly cut pages are coming undone, especially towards the latter half of the book.

Nevertheless, it is the content that we are more interested in. If there is one theme that unites all these disparate stories, it is the British Raj. And Partition. Did I mention sex? Yes, that too. In fact, oodles of it! As Singh himself says in his introduction to Delhi, the story is 'injected [with] a lot of seminal fluid'. It appears that the grand old man could not help reverting to his favourite preoccupation, . No wonder he turned out to be the grand old man, because sex (in addition to Scotch) seems to have increased his longevity significantly.

Train to Pakistan is based right in the middle of Partition, and talks about the gradual deterioration of relations between neighbours of the same village, those belonging to different communities; Sikh and Muslim. I Shall... tells the story of a Sikh family during the British Raj, in which the father is loyal to the British, and the son is a bit of a revolutionary seeking freedom from oppression. Here, it is the character of the mother that is interesting to me, because it is reminiscent of Singh's own grandmother, who was known to be a pious lady with a lot of spiritual experiences.

Delhi on the other hand is about his favourite city and its bloody history. Singh apparently worked on Delhi for nearly 20 years, and has put together the accounts of the poet, Mir Taqi Meer, Timur, Nadir Shah, Aurangzeb, Bahadur Shah Zafar, the 1857 uprising (both of which remind one of William Dalrymple's searing account of The Last Mughal), construction of Lutyens' Delhi, Indira Gandhi's assassination and the subsequent massacre of Sikhs in Delhi.

However it is his interspersing of his affair with an eunuch, Bhagmati with the history of Delhi that brings his irreverence to the fore, and perhaps serves as an allegorical reference to Delhi's emasculation at the hands of various invaders and tyrants over the years.

In the last story, Burial..., Singh appears to have based his characters loosely on the 'first' family of Indian politics; especially Nehru & Indira. Singh's irreverence and atheistic tendencies - even though he kept the external appearance of a Sikh throughout his life - is evident here. Hence, we have a tantric sadhvi who bathes naked in the river with her pet tiger and has a sexually charged affair with a rich industrialist, and a yoga teacher who is seduced by his student, the daughter of the industrialist.

As always, through all these stories, Singh's preoccupation with four issues is apparent: sex in its various inglorious manifestations, death and the rituals that follow thereafter, religious irreverence, and a scatological obsession with the workings of the bowels and their products.

He dedicates an entire chapter to the last issue in Delhi. Going back to the first issue, it seems that Singh liked his women with ample tops and voluminous posteriors. And believe me, the description of both the issues is a lot more colourful in Singh's writing!

Image source: http://img6a.flixcart.com/image/book/1/6/9/classic-khushwant-singh-original-imadzqazqucpe76w.jpeg