October 15, 2008
This is temporary I hope - I haven't finished this yet, partly due to an unwillingness to go on to watch a bullfight even on paper, what with the very evocative writings of this author.
He truly brings alive the history of the continent, of the indigenous and their encounters with the invading marauders who assumed supremacy due to colour and size, the change over from a once flourishing civilization that not much is known now about, to one in constant state of flux with various military and other regimes and neighbours looking down on the nation that was once great in various achievements.
But reading this made one aware of much of the world that one is generally unlikely to know about, and the history is sometimes - often more often than not so, amazing; and then again a little off-putting in the concepts about bloodshed.
And then the fights themselves, while reading this I found an unasked question being answered, though it was not mentioned here - not as far as I read.
One always wonders why torture an innocent animal like this, one that can be far more useful and friendly too, unlike dangerous ones that can turn into human-hunters, although mostly even they do so usually by accident.
And I wondered if it was not a necessity of food, and the difficulty of killing a bull in prime without a fight, that began as a needful activity and turned into a spectator sport. Else it makes very little sense really.
Various people that go throwing paint on fur coats have not paid attention to this and other cruelty to animals on everyday basis is also due to this - it is easy to shout against a luxury of a few that kills a few animals, but difficult to protest against food of many. This is all the more so, especially when huge financial interests are involved, the butchers (who have taken to call themselves farmers, as if they and not the animals are responsible for the cattle reproduction, which is not a sowing and harvest, it is a mammal reproduction of the species) and the markets that sell and the chains that serve it.
So the protest against mink coats that makes no sense to a vegetarian might be really a token by an awakening mind and consciousness that nevertheless weighs carefully the consequences - if you protest against any chains serving burgers, you might be thrown in jail or worse, asylum; while throwing paint on a coat you couldn't afford anyway is treated lightly, the rich one might be induced to buy another one after all!
It is a fight they pick carefully, and do not even protest the leather shoes or bags or briefcases when those have become unnecessary. And of course those are the least of it all - if you are going to eat a huge quantity of animals in a culture what do you do with the leftovers? The least is leather goods manufacture, which in fact can be done even without the eating part - after all the animals are going to die one day, on their own.
It is far easier to protest killing of foxes in distant regions where their roaming is not a threat to your children and your pets and your barn animals.
October 15, 2008
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December 9, 2010.
Finally one gets over the reluctance to go through a gory death or two, certainly of the innocent animals involved who are bred and brought up only so that they can be murdered for sport, never mind the honour of being mounted on walls of owners and breeders with pride about how they fought well, but also of the men involved in the killing of the animals, occasionally - after all it is an honourable way to kill the poor animals tricked into the arena to be killed, only with swords and other similar weapons rather than with a bullet at a distance safe enough for the killer.
Having sealed oneself to any sensibility of the gore involved, one proceeds to go through the rest of the book and it proves more rewarding with a history of Mexico along with the related parts of history of Spain, US, church, and so forth. It is a letdown to accidentally read the acknowledgement at the end to find that a good deal of it is "fiction" as stated by the writer, but then again, that is about specific people and names mentioned, including that of city of Toledo in Mexico. Other parts however are perfectly true, such as inquisition in Europe in general and Spain in particular. Palafoxes might be fiction, but burning of dissenters by church is as real and historical as bullfights or civil war of US.
That being the case, the initial uncanny feeling one gets while reading the history of Mexico, (with the history of its primitive and beastly nomadic tribals from northern parts creeping closer to and overtaking the far superior civilisation of the Builders who have grown too peaceful to resist the vicious onslaught due precisely to the vastly superior civilisation they have achieved - they have built, are peaceful, have civil administration, and other amenities and achievements more than comparable to any other of the period in the world - and the subsequent subjugation and massacre of the superior civilisation by the wilder tribes from north before the wild tribes settle down, adopt ways of the subjugated ones and absorb their culture and achievements and proceed to be civilised and build on top of the ruins they brought about), that it is all too similar enough to history of Asia (what with tribes of Mongolia and central Asia descending on India and reigning havoc with destruction and massacres before settling down and adopting much of Indian culture including superior buildings albeit built over the destroyed older ones), is all too easily explained after all. It is perhaps an coincidence of history after all, with similar events occurring clear across the world, but it is just as likely a history of another land written by someone more familiar with the more famous history of a much older civilisation overrun by tribes of Mongolia, central Asia, Arabia and then Europe, just as it happened perhaps in Mexico. The Goddess described by Michener with revulsion might be a fact of Mexican history, and then again his description might just be the reaction of Europe to images of Kaalie the Mother Goddess worshiped in India, a reaction that stems through a total absence of perception and comprehension. Certainly the description and the reaction is all too similar, with the difference of the thought that all such images stem from imagination rather than a greater perception of reality, for how could anyone with a more than feeble colour of visage and less than totally vicious lack of regard for others have any superiority of mind and spirit, goes the reasoning.
All this from a source that has historically brutal massacres of any dissenters merely for the reason of dissent, massacres held valid while dissent held abominable even now with usage of words and terminology describing the inquisition, the burning at stakes, the subjugation and conversion of other people, and so forth including enslaving of almost three continents and looting of their wealth while sneering at the people empoverished thereby. It is almost a vicious satire on the thinking of the dominant races that preach of their supposedly superior idols and the murders, massacres and slavery of others in the name of a philosophy of love and kindness, all the while boasting of their horror at idols of others who in fact are far more of the civilised and achieved people in terms of mind and spirit.
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Europe had gunpowder - from China - while Mexico and southern civilisations had astronomy, architecture, and much more; the meeting of the two civilisations resulted in havoc reigned on the latter by the former. Admission of all this is covered with equivocation by the descriptions of human sacrifices by a fictional tribe in a fictional city and building of structures of civil society over an already established city while stealing its valuable minerals - silver in this case - in the book; much of the fiction is only fiction re specific names, while the general history is all too real, only taken from various sources in Mexico and perhaps subconsciously from Asia as well.
The greatest virtue of the book is in the fact that one wishes to go on reading about the history of Mexico and various other parts of the continent of what is so falsely termed "New World" - twenty thousand years of life in the continent, including nearly a millennia of familiarity to Nordic Europe what with Viking settlements in Canada and as far south as Boston, is hardly what one would call "new", unless compared to far more ancient civilisations of Asia such as India or China - and this even apart from the dismay at the discovery of the author's declaration that the specifics herein are "fiction". So next one finishes the other book, not declared fiction by the author of that one but on the contrary one that questions the popular and assiduously propagated versions of history, by Hancock.
One nice point is the beginning of a consciousness in humans of the brains of cattle with the fast learning ability, all too similar to humans; another is about the genealogical relationship of qualities received from the parents - physical abilities from father, courage from mother. Put the two together, it is not difficult to understand how those that live with cattle in harmony rather than a relationship of slavery have a regard for the cattle, brought about by the perceived and understood qualities of gentle and yet strong, courageous species with an ability to understand, an ability to learn and love and more, all too like humans. And if this perception is allowed to filter through the ego it has to lead to the destruction of misogyny - for a clear evidence of qualities of cows compared with bulls has to lead anyone not too stupid to question if the inferiority of the human female is not an invention of male institutions of church and other sort to subjugate and enslave half of humanity for selfish purposes rather than an actual perception of qualities and differences thereof.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Fingerprints of The Gods; by Graham Hancock.
It is taking long to finish not because it is not attractive but on the contrary - it gives so much to think and mull over, one needs time to go over and go back to the book again before reading more, rather than finishing it like a racy read all at one go.
Gives a lot of information and raises a great many questions too, about various parts of the world that were supposed to be unknown until comparatively recently in human history.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
.....................................................
This book was in reading for nearly two years, perhaps longer, when the above was written; one reading over, I suspect it could take another or more before a good comprehension of all that goes into the theory formed here is well understood in detail. It is an intriguing theory, or rather, a banquet of many many theories brought together with much detail of facts around the world from archeological and legendary nature investigated.
When one finishes reading this, one would like to go on and know more and investigate more about the various possibilities. And then one goes on to read the BBC interview where the author reverses much of his revolutionary thinking, and whether in an attempt to placate the historians or otherwise simply bows down to the establishment and their comfortable assertions about age of civilisation et al.
This is where the cursory nature of his looking at legends around this world by whatever name comes in. Fact is people of various disciplines - sciences, history, archeology, whatever - of western establishment, and therefore of most of the world, do not dare to cross the church even when they are against all religion and avowed rationalists according to their own affirmations; their subconscious plays tricks and does not allow them to disobey several dicta of the institution that once burned people alive for daring to disagree, forever calling them heretics and making it sound like that was the greatest atrocity one could think of. So they might claim they do not care for religion or church but would face a huge wall of opposition all the more for the crossing of various bases of church dogma, which of course includes the age of civilisation.
And yet, by what miracle of meditation could another civilisation halfway around the world have known of the fact that the Himaalaya rose out of the ocean, or have a theory of evolution (cloaked in story of Divine appearances or Descent on the earth in successive stages), millennia before Darwin, is a question worth asking.
Moreover there is the engineering feat as well of bringing down Himaalayan mighty river Gangaa by one man, a legend firmly established and worth investigating.) This contradicts the theory that the civilisation is only a few millennia old like the church says. (Alternative, after science in recent decades having established the fact of the rising of Himaalaya from the ocean - just like the old, old legend goes in India since ancient times, is that India knows of such facts due to the sheer brilliance of its thinkers and seers who have extraordinary perception into knowledge west cannot imagine how, since very ancient times; which could be all too correct as well!
Although one must say this author too does the usual callous thing of taking an immense trove of knowledge and taking a few things and attempting to fit them to his own theory - for example, the interpreting of Samudramanthan (churning of oceans - by Gods and their opponents) as the apparently turning of heavens observed from an earth in process of the crust slipping over the core. This interpretation is suited to the theory of the author, but he forgets the churning is supposed to have brought up Himaalaya out of the oceans on the earth, not the Milky Way as the author interprets the ocean. So one needs to think over the discrepancy of the new interpretation and the known and understood one.
So never mind the recanting of the whole cataclysms periodically destroying advanced civilisations theory by the author for various reasons of his unknown to the reader, fact is some of it is known to be true and some seems to fit in with the various stories and legends. Precession of the axis of rotation is true and the changeover from Pisces to Aquarius is expected soon (although he does not make it clear how it happens, does the spring equinox shift to 21 February suddenly or is Aquarius already close to rising with the sun on 21 March, for one thing; and how is this related to the precession of the equinoxes, or is it separate, for another; and so forth); and so is the periodic shifting of the poles, even reversing, while the magnetic poles are already known to have been shifting and are away from the geographic poles. The author mentions and semi explains some of this, repeating but not explaining some parts very well.
Earth crust development theory is startling, unsettling, and one must admit it gives sleepless nights all the more so with a possible next date (21 December 2012) provided with ancient unexplained calculations from Mayan or older civilisations for the end of this civilisation as we know it. Global warming unsettling the earth is yet another factor known to scientists as well as people who do not live with their minds blinkered by the unwillingness to change gas guzzling habits. The latter makes the former seem plausibly loom on the horizon.
Why the author - having established after strenuous arguments that the engineering feats of the older buildings in Egypt and Mexico and Peru and so forth, with details of monoliths placed interlocking in huge structures and so on - now turns around and says they are the work of the known civilisations after all (who produced much inferior structures soon thereafter, which was his first argument for a much older and lost civilisation with tremendous knowledge of various kinds), is unclear - since he merely recants and gives no argument other than being convinced by the establishment after all with its theories he has fought so valiantly through the book.
All in all, much food for thought.
Gives a lot of information and raises a great many questions too, about various parts of the world that were supposed to be unknown until comparatively recently in human history.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
.....................................................
This book was in reading for nearly two years, perhaps longer, when the above was written; one reading over, I suspect it could take another or more before a good comprehension of all that goes into the theory formed here is well understood in detail. It is an intriguing theory, or rather, a banquet of many many theories brought together with much detail of facts around the world from archeological and legendary nature investigated.
When one finishes reading this, one would like to go on and know more and investigate more about the various possibilities. And then one goes on to read the BBC interview where the author reverses much of his revolutionary thinking, and whether in an attempt to placate the historians or otherwise simply bows down to the establishment and their comfortable assertions about age of civilisation et al.
This is where the cursory nature of his looking at legends around this world by whatever name comes in. Fact is people of various disciplines - sciences, history, archeology, whatever - of western establishment, and therefore of most of the world, do not dare to cross the church even when they are against all religion and avowed rationalists according to their own affirmations; their subconscious plays tricks and does not allow them to disobey several dicta of the institution that once burned people alive for daring to disagree, forever calling them heretics and making it sound like that was the greatest atrocity one could think of. So they might claim they do not care for religion or church but would face a huge wall of opposition all the more for the crossing of various bases of church dogma, which of course includes the age of civilisation.
And yet, by what miracle of meditation could another civilisation halfway around the world have known of the fact that the Himaalaya rose out of the ocean, or have a theory of evolution (cloaked in story of Divine appearances or Descent on the earth in successive stages), millennia before Darwin, is a question worth asking.
Moreover there is the engineering feat as well of bringing down Himaalayan mighty river Gangaa by one man, a legend firmly established and worth investigating.) This contradicts the theory that the civilisation is only a few millennia old like the church says. (Alternative, after science in recent decades having established the fact of the rising of Himaalaya from the ocean - just like the old, old legend goes in India since ancient times, is that India knows of such facts due to the sheer brilliance of its thinkers and seers who have extraordinary perception into knowledge west cannot imagine how, since very ancient times; which could be all too correct as well!
Although one must say this author too does the usual callous thing of taking an immense trove of knowledge and taking a few things and attempting to fit them to his own theory - for example, the interpreting of Samudramanthan (churning of oceans - by Gods and their opponents) as the apparently turning of heavens observed from an earth in process of the crust slipping over the core. This interpretation is suited to the theory of the author, but he forgets the churning is supposed to have brought up Himaalaya out of the oceans on the earth, not the Milky Way as the author interprets the ocean. So one needs to think over the discrepancy of the new interpretation and the known and understood one.
So never mind the recanting of the whole cataclysms periodically destroying advanced civilisations theory by the author for various reasons of his unknown to the reader, fact is some of it is known to be true and some seems to fit in with the various stories and legends. Precession of the axis of rotation is true and the changeover from Pisces to Aquarius is expected soon (although he does not make it clear how it happens, does the spring equinox shift to 21 February suddenly or is Aquarius already close to rising with the sun on 21 March, for one thing; and how is this related to the precession of the equinoxes, or is it separate, for another; and so forth); and so is the periodic shifting of the poles, even reversing, while the magnetic poles are already known to have been shifting and are away from the geographic poles. The author mentions and semi explains some of this, repeating but not explaining some parts very well.
Earth crust development theory is startling, unsettling, and one must admit it gives sleepless nights all the more so with a possible next date (21 December 2012) provided with ancient unexplained calculations from Mayan or older civilisations for the end of this civilisation as we know it. Global warming unsettling the earth is yet another factor known to scientists as well as people who do not live with their minds blinkered by the unwillingness to change gas guzzling habits. The latter makes the former seem plausibly loom on the horizon.
Why the author - having established after strenuous arguments that the engineering feats of the older buildings in Egypt and Mexico and Peru and so forth, with details of monoliths placed interlocking in huge structures and so on - now turns around and says they are the work of the known civilisations after all (who produced much inferior structures soon thereafter, which was his first argument for a much older and lost civilisation with tremendous knowledge of various kinds), is unclear - since he merely recants and gives no argument other than being convinced by the establishment after all with its theories he has fought so valiantly through the book.
All in all, much food for thought.
Monday, January 24, 2011
In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce.
Luce is an extremely unfortunate person who looks at a living treasure and is too blinded by his agenda of destruction to recognise the value he is looking at, of an oppoutunity in an eternity he has found for transformation, and carries on the hacking by a sword barely disguised as a pen (or a writing instrument of whatever sort before he publishes). Extremely unfortunate, reminding one of the old proverbs about those who have nothing to receive and hold it when heaven showers blessings.
A priori the very title clears the fact that one must expect some bias, at the very least, from this author; but Luce goes much further in his determination to remain pathetically, despicably poor in matters above stomach, matters of heart and higher mind and spiritual. He deals cleverly enough with mention of all sorts of greatness of India and of those that belong to India, of the culture and people and persona, but camouflages his agenda the usual way in weightage assigned to various matters. His agenda begins to be clear pretty soon, although for a reader unfamiliar with the country - and today that can only be said of people very remote from world concerns - it is an informative book and comprehensively so. The danger is, one might assume it is a fair description. It isn't - and that is clear for anyone familiar with the country, the culture and history thereof.
For instance Luce mentions the train full of people burnt to death, prior to 2002 riots but gives it short shrift, and while he refrains from assigning or admitting where guilt lay thereof he mentions how the people on the train taunted those that have been blamed for the burning of train and the passengers locked in. He refrains from mentioning that the proportion of people arrested was 3:1 during this riots unlike any other occasion of the riots that happened regularly in the state and elsewhere for that matter, but mentions that police were not as impartial as they ought to be.
He does mention '84 massacres and calls them riots, one falsehood; does not mention the partisan role played by the party he approves of for rule, another implicit falsehood; makes no mention of the comments made openly and officially by those responsible for the nation on that occasion, or of the fact that the so called communal party had helped save lives of victims (of another community, those they were supposed to be at war with) during this - '84 - horror; nor of the fact that two of the top persons responsible those horrific days for the nation and city of the capital went on to be top office holders. This last compares ironically with the clamour for resignation of the chief minister of the state accused for 2002 riots.
It gets even more bizarre when compared with his accounts of the '46 massacres explicitly ordered by a communal leader demanding a division of the nation, which forced the division due to the horrific bloodshed the said leader commanded and made happen - thousands dead in a day or two of what was called "action day". He does not see that one man cannot massacre thousands with knives, that the community that obeyed him must then remain suspect that the very least to those that were related to the murdered a la Germans to Jews, and he lets off the said leader lightly with no blame while giving certificate of peace to those responsible for the massacre then.
This very agenda of anti Hindu attacks in the book is camouflaged with praise of the Hindu culture of tolerance and the repeated surprise at India remaining a democracy successfully, not seeing that the latter is due sheer to the very nature of Hinduism, of Indian culture rooted in Hinduism, of ancient treasure of knowledge inherent in the living nation of very ancient roots that did not fall to any conversionist onslaughts the way most of the world did. He repeatedly attacks the highest priests and teachers community of Braahmans, comparing them incessantly with the lowest and accusing them, never reflecting that in his root culture no one expects the pope or the monarch of a nation to live on par with East Enders much less with colonial citizens or ex ruled. That there is a complex net of a hundred if not thousands of communities is forgotten or glossed over for the convenience of attacking Braahmans, never questioning if a carpenter would admit a cleaner as equal for marriage, much less if an ex ruler or a rich owner of a trading house would.
His agenda of attacking Braahman community - who in fact are mostly poor or very poor, since by tradition they are not supposed to engage in money making, devoting themselves to preserving knowledge and helping teach others along with priestly duties of various kinds - is inherited from the days immediately past 1857 when colonising rulers and missionaries alike realised it was necessary to attack and destroy Braahmans in order to demoralise and disintegrate India, since Braahmans kept the roots alive and India living despite horrendous onslaughts from abroad seeking to loot wealth and rule a nation that never went out attacking others. This agenda has been since carried out diligently with every falsehood employed for the purpose, including blaming Braahmans for various acts that in fact the church and especially Rome was responsible in their own territory for, short of the inquisition or slavery.
Another falsehood is about introduction of other religions in India - Luce goes on repeatedly blaming Hindus for holding Islam responsible for attacks and forced conversions and claims that in fact Islam was introduced by traders along the coast by peaceful means, attracting lower classes with its promise of equality. The latter is true on a very small scale of the total experience with Islam in fact whether in India or in general in the world, although the promised equality is a lie, unveiled at that, in any conversionist religion for that matter. Fact is India did experience huge violence due to expansionist agenda of Islam prior to Europe taking over, and those memories necessarily take over being the largest part.
What peaceful introduction of either conversionist religion did take place made no more disturbance than that of any other such faith or community from abroad, and of those India has more than the rest of the world is even aware of existence of. That various people from Jews to Parsees (fleeing Persia at the Islamic threat to their indigenous culture and finding refuge and respite in India, nowhere else, and flourishing here for centuries) in past millennia, to Tibetans and others in more recent times, have found refuge and respite in India to sanctuary and flourishing after a stabilisation, is taken for granted in India as much as the flourishing of various branches of Indigenous faiths either separating or branching or interacting or absorbed back as a stream, including Buddhist and Jain and Sikh and many, many others, old or new.
Luce and his sorts may see it, and yet be unable to comprehend it - which is why his bias and his incessant attacks on the majority while absolving those that have an agenda to convert the world. Luce and his sorts comprehend being a jackal, but do not comprehend gratitude to those that provide sustenance and help in life, without whom life would be direly destitute. Hence his derision of those that love cows and the nation that depends on cattle for milk, farmwork, transport, fuel, and much, much more. He forgets laws of yore in out west in US, not so long ago, hanged a man to death for stealing another man's horse - since life there depended on a horse likely as not. He forgets life in India for the poor billion depends on cattle for the livelihood and food. He can afford to forget it, as can those that just as soon move on when India is torn to shreds and poor starve to death. It is another story for those that care about the land.
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The official description on the site where I discovered the book before finding it in a store and buying it to read it (a site based in US and related generally to books and readers with worldwide membership (but nevertheless an assumption by its US members of an implicit ownership of the site and in fact of the very internet that is in fact a work and space of the whole world to meet), a description which officially may or may not represent the book or the author, and might very well be an editorial comment on the site, goes :-
"India remains a mystery to many Americans, even as it is poised to become the world’s third largest economy within a generation, outstripping Japan. It will surpass China in population by 2032 and will have more English speakers than the United States by 2050. In In Spite of the Gods , Edward Luce, a journalist who covered India for many years, makes brilliant sense of India and its rise to global power. Already a number-one bestseller in India, his book is sure to be acknowledged for years as the definitive introduction to modern India. In Spite of the Gods illuminates a land of many contradictions. The booming tech sector we read so much about in the West, Luce points out, employs no more than one million of India’s 1.1 billion people. Only 35 million people, in fact, have formal enough jobs to pay taxes, while three-quarters of the country lives in extreme deprivation in India’s 600,000 villages. Yet amid all these extremes exists the world’s largest experiment in representative democracy—and a largely successful one, despite bureaucracies riddled with horrifying corruption. Luce shows that India is an economic rival to the U.S. in an entirely different sense than China is. There is nothing in India like the manufacturing capacity of China, despite the huge potential labor force. An inept system of public education leaves most Indians illiterate and unskilled. Yet at the other extreme, the middle class produces ten times as many engineering students a year as the United States. Notwithstanding its future as a major competitor in a globalized economy, American. leaders have been encouraging India’s rise, even welcoming it into the nuclear energy club, hoping to balance China’s influence in Asia. Above all, In Spite of the Gods is an enlightening study of the forces shaping India as it tries to balance the stubborn traditions of the past with an unevenly modernizing present. Deeply informed by scholarship and history, leavened by humor and rich in anecdote, it shows that India has huge opportunities as well as tremendous challenges that make the future “hers to lose.” "
The underlying biases are so taken for granted that they are not clear in plain sight, and amount to biases similar to equating blond with beautiful (with opposite assumptions silent but held tacitly far more strongly).
The title for instance assumes no reaction to any insult to the many, many religions and faiths and differences of thought that are equally held reverent in the country, mainly due to the character of the traditional way of thought of majority and their religion (often denied a status of religion in western television channels, since it does not confirm to a one person one book one god imposed on all followers and attempting to convert all others sort of pattern understood more easily for its simplicity, never mind the similarity of such faiths with any totalitarian way of thought) - but also the very freedom of worship inherent in the character of the nation is blatantly ignored, or worse, heavily disrespected, in the title and the underlying assumption therein.
Often people tend to hold concatenation as causal connection, and in west this has happened with economic rise being related to a relentless imposition of authoritative mode of faith and wiping out of alternatives - even all knowledge and rights thereto - being imprisoned within the authority fences and the duel that therefore necessarily was fought for freedom of thought against the religious authorities. It is forgotten that while this need to fight for the freedom of thought and knowledge might have helped a great deal, the prosperity would be far less if not accompanied by colonial occupation of other continents and usurping of their wealth, whatever the state of the local people and the treatment accorded to them by the colonial usurping occupiers, whether in Australia or across the ocean in American continent or Asia or Africa.
If this is not believable, just think of how life would be in Europe if there were no migration possible to any other continent, if everyone who wished to travel from Europe anywhere had to mortgage a significant part of their properties and undergo humiliating experiences on arrival in the other lands. Without the migration and the loot from other continents, Europe would be very crowded with poor as it was only two centuries ago - in fact, UK sponsored migration to Australia for all her poor just post wwII, officially, just as it was done for a while towards Canada or US prior to the wars so as to free large estates of aristocracy of the poor locals.
Much more to the graphic illustrative point, imagine if Africa owned the diamonds and the firms in Europe and coffee were to be as expensive as diamonds are today to west, while diamonds cost as much as best Champagne (and I mean, Champagne, not sparkling wine from elsewhere) - which might very well happen if local people owned the lands and used it to feed their own, sparing little for export to others for luxuries.
Once a neighbour in Germany had described poverty of East Germany where she visited relatives by relating how they could not afford bananas. I pointed out that first and foremost if the thing does not grow locally it could not be good for health, much less a necessity; as long as they had apples in their back or front yards on trees, they were in good shape for health and food and fruit. Bananas in fact are suitable only for tropical consumption, where they do grow - they are good food for heat of the locales and are cold in effect as food.
But to continue the thread, here is one more - imagine bananas cost more than opium and its byproducts in lands where they do not grow, and coconuts are no less than precious metals by weight. Would that be deprivation, when a product of one's own land gets a mere fraction of that from another? That is what the ex colonial lands (and natives of occupation forgotten lands of Australia and America too) have lived through.
In short, the prosperity of west has just as much to do with the looting via colonial occupations of various lands and migration to the lands taken over for good, as to do with the science versus faith wars Europe had to fight resulting in tremendous growth in science and technology.
Relating this prosperity to the religion of the west is the false assumption inherent in the title. Relating the prosperity to virtue of every kind is the other, deeper false assumption.
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A priori the very title clears the fact that one must expect some bias, at the very least, from this author; but Luce goes much further in his determination to remain pathetically, despicably poor in matters above stomach, matters of heart and higher mind and spiritual. He deals cleverly enough with mention of all sorts of greatness of India and of those that belong to India, of the culture and people and persona, but camouflages his agenda the usual way in weightage assigned to various matters. His agenda begins to be clear pretty soon, although for a reader unfamiliar with the country - and today that can only be said of people very remote from world concerns - it is an informative book and comprehensively so. The danger is, one might assume it is a fair description. It isn't - and that is clear for anyone familiar with the country, the culture and history thereof.
For instance Luce mentions the train full of people burnt to death, prior to 2002 riots but gives it short shrift, and while he refrains from assigning or admitting where guilt lay thereof he mentions how the people on the train taunted those that have been blamed for the burning of train and the passengers locked in. He refrains from mentioning that the proportion of people arrested was 3:1 during this riots unlike any other occasion of the riots that happened regularly in the state and elsewhere for that matter, but mentions that police were not as impartial as they ought to be.
He does mention '84 massacres and calls them riots, one falsehood; does not mention the partisan role played by the party he approves of for rule, another implicit falsehood; makes no mention of the comments made openly and officially by those responsible for the nation on that occasion, or of the fact that the so called communal party had helped save lives of victims (of another community, those they were supposed to be at war with) during this - '84 - horror; nor of the fact that two of the top persons responsible those horrific days for the nation and city of the capital went on to be top office holders. This last compares ironically with the clamour for resignation of the chief minister of the state accused for 2002 riots.
It gets even more bizarre when compared with his accounts of the '46 massacres explicitly ordered by a communal leader demanding a division of the nation, which forced the division due to the horrific bloodshed the said leader commanded and made happen - thousands dead in a day or two of what was called "action day". He does not see that one man cannot massacre thousands with knives, that the community that obeyed him must then remain suspect that the very least to those that were related to the murdered a la Germans to Jews, and he lets off the said leader lightly with no blame while giving certificate of peace to those responsible for the massacre then.
This very agenda of anti Hindu attacks in the book is camouflaged with praise of the Hindu culture of tolerance and the repeated surprise at India remaining a democracy successfully, not seeing that the latter is due sheer to the very nature of Hinduism, of Indian culture rooted in Hinduism, of ancient treasure of knowledge inherent in the living nation of very ancient roots that did not fall to any conversionist onslaughts the way most of the world did. He repeatedly attacks the highest priests and teachers community of Braahmans, comparing them incessantly with the lowest and accusing them, never reflecting that in his root culture no one expects the pope or the monarch of a nation to live on par with East Enders much less with colonial citizens or ex ruled. That there is a complex net of a hundred if not thousands of communities is forgotten or glossed over for the convenience of attacking Braahmans, never questioning if a carpenter would admit a cleaner as equal for marriage, much less if an ex ruler or a rich owner of a trading house would.
His agenda of attacking Braahman community - who in fact are mostly poor or very poor, since by tradition they are not supposed to engage in money making, devoting themselves to preserving knowledge and helping teach others along with priestly duties of various kinds - is inherited from the days immediately past 1857 when colonising rulers and missionaries alike realised it was necessary to attack and destroy Braahmans in order to demoralise and disintegrate India, since Braahmans kept the roots alive and India living despite horrendous onslaughts from abroad seeking to loot wealth and rule a nation that never went out attacking others. This agenda has been since carried out diligently with every falsehood employed for the purpose, including blaming Braahmans for various acts that in fact the church and especially Rome was responsible in their own territory for, short of the inquisition or slavery.
Another falsehood is about introduction of other religions in India - Luce goes on repeatedly blaming Hindus for holding Islam responsible for attacks and forced conversions and claims that in fact Islam was introduced by traders along the coast by peaceful means, attracting lower classes with its promise of equality. The latter is true on a very small scale of the total experience with Islam in fact whether in India or in general in the world, although the promised equality is a lie, unveiled at that, in any conversionist religion for that matter. Fact is India did experience huge violence due to expansionist agenda of Islam prior to Europe taking over, and those memories necessarily take over being the largest part.
What peaceful introduction of either conversionist religion did take place made no more disturbance than that of any other such faith or community from abroad, and of those India has more than the rest of the world is even aware of existence of. That various people from Jews to Parsees (fleeing Persia at the Islamic threat to their indigenous culture and finding refuge and respite in India, nowhere else, and flourishing here for centuries) in past millennia, to Tibetans and others in more recent times, have found refuge and respite in India to sanctuary and flourishing after a stabilisation, is taken for granted in India as much as the flourishing of various branches of Indigenous faiths either separating or branching or interacting or absorbed back as a stream, including Buddhist and Jain and Sikh and many, many others, old or new.
Luce and his sorts may see it, and yet be unable to comprehend it - which is why his bias and his incessant attacks on the majority while absolving those that have an agenda to convert the world. Luce and his sorts comprehend being a jackal, but do not comprehend gratitude to those that provide sustenance and help in life, without whom life would be direly destitute. Hence his derision of those that love cows and the nation that depends on cattle for milk, farmwork, transport, fuel, and much, much more. He forgets laws of yore in out west in US, not so long ago, hanged a man to death for stealing another man's horse - since life there depended on a horse likely as not. He forgets life in India for the poor billion depends on cattle for the livelihood and food. He can afford to forget it, as can those that just as soon move on when India is torn to shreds and poor starve to death. It is another story for those that care about the land.
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The official description on the site where I discovered the book before finding it in a store and buying it to read it (a site based in US and related generally to books and readers with worldwide membership (but nevertheless an assumption by its US members of an implicit ownership of the site and in fact of the very internet that is in fact a work and space of the whole world to meet), a description which officially may or may not represent the book or the author, and might very well be an editorial comment on the site, goes :-
"India remains a mystery to many Americans, even as it is poised to become the world’s third largest economy within a generation, outstripping Japan. It will surpass China in population by 2032 and will have more English speakers than the United States by 2050. In In Spite of the Gods , Edward Luce, a journalist who covered India for many years, makes brilliant sense of India and its rise to global power. Already a number-one bestseller in India, his book is sure to be acknowledged for years as the definitive introduction to modern India. In Spite of the Gods illuminates a land of many contradictions. The booming tech sector we read so much about in the West, Luce points out, employs no more than one million of India’s 1.1 billion people. Only 35 million people, in fact, have formal enough jobs to pay taxes, while three-quarters of the country lives in extreme deprivation in India’s 600,000 villages. Yet amid all these extremes exists the world’s largest experiment in representative democracy—and a largely successful one, despite bureaucracies riddled with horrifying corruption. Luce shows that India is an economic rival to the U.S. in an entirely different sense than China is. There is nothing in India like the manufacturing capacity of China, despite the huge potential labor force. An inept system of public education leaves most Indians illiterate and unskilled. Yet at the other extreme, the middle class produces ten times as many engineering students a year as the United States. Notwithstanding its future as a major competitor in a globalized economy, American. leaders have been encouraging India’s rise, even welcoming it into the nuclear energy club, hoping to balance China’s influence in Asia. Above all, In Spite of the Gods is an enlightening study of the forces shaping India as it tries to balance the stubborn traditions of the past with an unevenly modernizing present. Deeply informed by scholarship and history, leavened by humor and rich in anecdote, it shows that India has huge opportunities as well as tremendous challenges that make the future “hers to lose.” "
The underlying biases are so taken for granted that they are not clear in plain sight, and amount to biases similar to equating blond with beautiful (with opposite assumptions silent but held tacitly far more strongly).
The title for instance assumes no reaction to any insult to the many, many religions and faiths and differences of thought that are equally held reverent in the country, mainly due to the character of the traditional way of thought of majority and their religion (often denied a status of religion in western television channels, since it does not confirm to a one person one book one god imposed on all followers and attempting to convert all others sort of pattern understood more easily for its simplicity, never mind the similarity of such faiths with any totalitarian way of thought) - but also the very freedom of worship inherent in the character of the nation is blatantly ignored, or worse, heavily disrespected, in the title and the underlying assumption therein.
Often people tend to hold concatenation as causal connection, and in west this has happened with economic rise being related to a relentless imposition of authoritative mode of faith and wiping out of alternatives - even all knowledge and rights thereto - being imprisoned within the authority fences and the duel that therefore necessarily was fought for freedom of thought against the religious authorities. It is forgotten that while this need to fight for the freedom of thought and knowledge might have helped a great deal, the prosperity would be far less if not accompanied by colonial occupation of other continents and usurping of their wealth, whatever the state of the local people and the treatment accorded to them by the colonial usurping occupiers, whether in Australia or across the ocean in American continent or Asia or Africa.
If this is not believable, just think of how life would be in Europe if there were no migration possible to any other continent, if everyone who wished to travel from Europe anywhere had to mortgage a significant part of their properties and undergo humiliating experiences on arrival in the other lands. Without the migration and the loot from other continents, Europe would be very crowded with poor as it was only two centuries ago - in fact, UK sponsored migration to Australia for all her poor just post wwII, officially, just as it was done for a while towards Canada or US prior to the wars so as to free large estates of aristocracy of the poor locals.
Much more to the graphic illustrative point, imagine if Africa owned the diamonds and the firms in Europe and coffee were to be as expensive as diamonds are today to west, while diamonds cost as much as best Champagne (and I mean, Champagne, not sparkling wine from elsewhere) - which might very well happen if local people owned the lands and used it to feed their own, sparing little for export to others for luxuries.
Once a neighbour in Germany had described poverty of East Germany where she visited relatives by relating how they could not afford bananas. I pointed out that first and foremost if the thing does not grow locally it could not be good for health, much less a necessity; as long as they had apples in their back or front yards on trees, they were in good shape for health and food and fruit. Bananas in fact are suitable only for tropical consumption, where they do grow - they are good food for heat of the locales and are cold in effect as food.
But to continue the thread, here is one more - imagine bananas cost more than opium and its byproducts in lands where they do not grow, and coconuts are no less than precious metals by weight. Would that be deprivation, when a product of one's own land gets a mere fraction of that from another? That is what the ex colonial lands (and natives of occupation forgotten lands of Australia and America too) have lived through.
In short, the prosperity of west has just as much to do with the looting via colonial occupations of various lands and migration to the lands taken over for good, as to do with the science versus faith wars Europe had to fight resulting in tremendous growth in science and technology.
Relating this prosperity to the religion of the west is the false assumption inherent in the title. Relating the prosperity to virtue of every kind is the other, deeper false assumption.
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From Here to Eternity; by James Jones.
Home truths about war and US military with heartbreaking and one being forced to recognise the truths of this work, From Here To Eternity is to US what All Quiet On The Western Front is to home truths of war in Europe and German army in wwI.
Lincoln's Mothers; by Dorothy Clarke Wilson.
A very good book about some very good people, nice to read, and leaves one with a good feeling suffusing one's heart.
Lincoln spoke about his mother, and most people understood it to be about his birth mother who died soon after. The author here questions that automatic assumption, and while makes no dispute about someone who gave life to such a great man, hypothesises that it might in fact have been about his stepmother who influenced him and was responsible for encouraging his aspirations of reading and learning despite the harsh frontier life of Illinois - Indiana - Kentucky border where his future wife was brought up in a mansion in style with slaves while he lived in a log cabin.
Lincoln spoke about his mother, and most people understood it to be about his birth mother who died soon after. The author here questions that automatic assumption, and while makes no dispute about someone who gave life to such a great man, hypothesises that it might in fact have been about his stepmother who influenced him and was responsible for encouraging his aspirations of reading and learning despite the harsh frontier life of Illinois - Indiana - Kentucky border where his future wife was brought up in a mansion in style with slaves while he lived in a log cabin.
Last Night at Chateau Marmont; by Lauren Weisberger.
Weisenberger is handicapped by her background of fashion magazine and fashion in general, which is good addition to descriptions in a story where it does not irk as it does at serious points. A woman notices her own and her friend's and others' clothings in detail - fine; but does she do so when her life is falling apart, and even if so, does the reader have to wait wading through what everyone is wearing to get to important points such as what is going to happen to her life? In a film one can ignore this on a conscious level, but only when the direction and acting and so forth allows one to do so, as a good film must. In a book the author must exercise some control especially when the book is not about fashion as her famous DWP is.
That she is dealing with serious topic and able to bring one some details of horrors of life of fame along with the skewed balance of lives of those not so famous joined to one famous, is a credit to the writer, and she indeed does it well. She brings home the vicious nature of the paparazzi, the gossip industry created around celebrities by careers depending on the well being and fame of the same famous celebrities, and the devastation wrought in lives affected by this vicious gossip magnified several times compared to lives of the comparatively anonymous. One begins to hate the busybody PROs and columnists and others intruding and destroying the lives of those that are merely seeking a fulfilling life with their talent.
That she is dealing with serious topic and able to bring one some details of horrors of life of fame along with the skewed balance of lives of those not so famous joined to one famous, is a credit to the writer, and she indeed does it well. She brings home the vicious nature of the paparazzi, the gossip industry created around celebrities by careers depending on the well being and fame of the same famous celebrities, and the devastation wrought in lives affected by this vicious gossip magnified several times compared to lives of the comparatively anonymous. One begins to hate the busybody PROs and columnists and others intruding and destroying the lives of those that are merely seeking a fulfilling life with their talent.
India's Unending Journey; by Mark Tully.
Mark Tully is afraid of becoming too Indian, and is like the person fascinated by Gangaa but holds on to a chain on shore while attempting to wash a little of his grime.
Interesting how he sticks to his bringing up prejudices in various contexts where he can open his eyes instead to how much further India takes it. Changing emphasis in the story of Shiva and Paarvatie for instance, reducing the tremendous Divine to the objectified ignominous of a semitic background, not understanding the difference between penance and Tapas, and so forth.
Also, he minimises the various threats that India has faced far more than west, as long as they are from sources British found closer to their ethos - so the massacre of '46 is minimised to a bare mention rather than the graphic butchering of a few thousand within a day or two that occurred on command for the demand to divide India along religious demands of the intolerant. He rightly identifies the two parts thereafter as fanatic and secular, but fails to give enough credit to the mainstream religion of the secular nation for making it possible at all in the first place. (Most so called secular nations of the west have an underpinning nevertheless of some variety of religion recognised by some church as proper, with due recognition of other religions as dim as light of the brightest star on earth, no matter how brilliant it be compared to earth's sun.) Moreover, he fails to take into account the effect of the trauma of years, centuries of butchering suffered by the said mainstream culture still continuing in forms of terrorist attacks orchestrated from across the border, along with organisations like simi. He thinks stick wielders are more of a threat to peace because they speak out, and those that are ready to massacre with more modern weapons than they used in '46 (which was with knives) need no mention in threats to terror.
As for the usual albeit slightly better expo about castes, he shows the same shortcomings. West's failure to recognise that castes are everywhere including in Europe and have always been (the very word being of Anglo Saxon origin in English from German), only the structure of castes being different as in vertical strata unlike the usually horizontal one - in Indian system money is below intellectual and protective functions while elsewhere money is above all and united with power so the lower strata has very little hope to do better or have recognition, for one thing; women had knowledge on par with their male counterparts in India unlike in west, for another; and so forth - and as for being defined by birth, that anomaly in India came in with other cultures dominating after conquest and attempting to dismantle the indigenous culture, whence the discontinuation of the schools called ashrams conducted as live in places for all pupils accepted (various instances have been always clear about people of different backgrounds having lived their student days in the same place, with the poor Braahman - and Braahmans are usually very poor - along with princes and other rich pupils learning on par just as pupils from variety of other backgrounds). Tully has failed to see the significance of something like Mahaabhaarata, and goes only by the usual criticism lashing out from those that had a vested interest in destroying the indigenous culture and imposing theirs.
All in all, he makes it clear he has a long way to go towards evolving into a fair mind, much less a higher comprehension.
Interesting how he sticks to his bringing up prejudices in various contexts where he can open his eyes instead to how much further India takes it. Changing emphasis in the story of Shiva and Paarvatie for instance, reducing the tremendous Divine to the objectified ignominous of a semitic background, not understanding the difference between penance and Tapas, and so forth.
Also, he minimises the various threats that India has faced far more than west, as long as they are from sources British found closer to their ethos - so the massacre of '46 is minimised to a bare mention rather than the graphic butchering of a few thousand within a day or two that occurred on command for the demand to divide India along religious demands of the intolerant. He rightly identifies the two parts thereafter as fanatic and secular, but fails to give enough credit to the mainstream religion of the secular nation for making it possible at all in the first place. (Most so called secular nations of the west have an underpinning nevertheless of some variety of religion recognised by some church as proper, with due recognition of other religions as dim as light of the brightest star on earth, no matter how brilliant it be compared to earth's sun.) Moreover, he fails to take into account the effect of the trauma of years, centuries of butchering suffered by the said mainstream culture still continuing in forms of terrorist attacks orchestrated from across the border, along with organisations like simi. He thinks stick wielders are more of a threat to peace because they speak out, and those that are ready to massacre with more modern weapons than they used in '46 (which was with knives) need no mention in threats to terror.
As for the usual albeit slightly better expo about castes, he shows the same shortcomings. West's failure to recognise that castes are everywhere including in Europe and have always been (the very word being of Anglo Saxon origin in English from German), only the structure of castes being different as in vertical strata unlike the usually horizontal one - in Indian system money is below intellectual and protective functions while elsewhere money is above all and united with power so the lower strata has very little hope to do better or have recognition, for one thing; women had knowledge on par with their male counterparts in India unlike in west, for another; and so forth - and as for being defined by birth, that anomaly in India came in with other cultures dominating after conquest and attempting to dismantle the indigenous culture, whence the discontinuation of the schools called ashrams conducted as live in places for all pupils accepted (various instances have been always clear about people of different backgrounds having lived their student days in the same place, with the poor Braahman - and Braahmans are usually very poor - along with princes and other rich pupils learning on par just as pupils from variety of other backgrounds). Tully has failed to see the significance of something like Mahaabhaarata, and goes only by the usual criticism lashing out from those that had a vested interest in destroying the indigenous culture and imposing theirs.
All in all, he makes it clear he has a long way to go towards evolving into a fair mind, much less a higher comprehension.
The Wedding Girl; by Madeleine Wickham (Sophie Kinsella).
Sophie Kinsella (here using another nom de plume) has developed into or proved to be more than frivolous entertainment for young women and teenage girls, in fact even with her shopaholic series that was true - generally she takes up problems the girls or young women are likely to encounter whether in themselves or in the world and find little if any help from elsewhere, and then proceeds to deal with it all in a sympathetic way with a charming tale woven to a happy ending. This one takes up a slightly deeper level of a problem than shopaholic tendency and makes one go through various pitfalls a young woman can fall into in the happiest of circumstances with no real villains (unless a middle aged woman relative counts as one - but that is overcome easily enough!) - in the process of a social diatribe, though, she does give a rather good picture of what seemingly pretty people are like, in the descriptions of St Catherine flock in general and Tom and Francesca in particular.
Paths of Glory; by Jeffrey Archer.
Archer is a master story teller and this book is another point in evidence, that he holds one glued to the tale that is mostly historical and documented - one assumes he is writing intimate scenes and private thoughts from his own ability rather than any sort of actual documented evidence thereof - and it is not only an eminently readable book, it is one to be recommended on most counts, not the least of which is the sort of determined effort that takes one and more over a barrier, and humanity to a new horizon.
George Mallory, along with his companion for the climb Irvine, has been suspected to be the first known person, certainly of the western world (which, ironically, includes Australia and New Zealand, without anyone giving that particular twist to or convolution of geography a second thought), to have set foot on top of the highest peak of the earth, known by various names - Gaurishankar, Saagarmaathaa, Chomolungmaa, and Everest, amongst many others in all likelihood. Very likely there have been local persons that have climbed it or even traversed the landscape in all sorts of paths as the Himaalaya was rising over the millennia after millennia as it still it, but those are unrecorded and hence even less admitted than the known previous discoverers or even occupants for millennia of other continents that were new to west. Mallory and Irvine vanished around a corner on the climb in 1924 and the body of one was discovered only recently in 1999 while that of Irvine is suspected to have been seen by a Chinese climber who died in an avalanche soon after.
This book is the story of the person and the life of Mallory. Very very interesting, gripping, with all the details about climbing the Eiffel tower and the tower in Venice, and the peaks in Alps and Himaalaya. One is almost there and triumphant for Mallory while weeping for Nyima and laughing ruefully at the Finch escapades.
Archer is strangely callous about some details, perhaps they - one, likely - belong to the history where the British climbers mention one amongst them speaking "the local language" is helpful - which is a bit like an Oriental, an Arab or an African speaking of a fellow Oriental, Arab or African speaking "The European language". There are other such careless little details, but then Archer while benefitting from his readers' avid interest in his work no matter where they are from must affirm his loyalty to the crown and hence show a willingness to be callous to the colonies, even ex colonies.
One rather glaring example of such incorrect detail bordering on false is his epilogue where he mentions someone being murdered by a "Pakistani" in 1931, which is when not only such a thing did not exist, but was not even a demand, only a tool for leverage in hands of someone machiavellian hungry for power who was dismayed to be granted his demand since he would not play by any fair rules or means of any possibility of a dialogue, while in reality he had wanted to really rule India undivided. To set Archer straight, it is no secret that in '31 the concerned person could only have been Indian, and saying Pakistani merely conveys the information in a short and therefore incorrect, false manner that that person's roots as well as future choice of a nationality lay in that direction.
What is irresistible is the descriptions of beauty of Himaalaya, of the peak they tried to conquer, of the view. One almost is catapulted into going over pronto to do it for oneself. Alas, one's years of any such activity are now definitely over, even though now it is practically a highway with several teams a year from anywhere and everywhere around the world achieving the conquest - including handicapped and blind climbers, old people and repeat climbers.
George Mallory, along with his companion for the climb Irvine, has been suspected to be the first known person, certainly of the western world (which, ironically, includes Australia and New Zealand, without anyone giving that particular twist to or convolution of geography a second thought), to have set foot on top of the highest peak of the earth, known by various names - Gaurishankar, Saagarmaathaa, Chomolungmaa, and Everest, amongst many others in all likelihood. Very likely there have been local persons that have climbed it or even traversed the landscape in all sorts of paths as the Himaalaya was rising over the millennia after millennia as it still it, but those are unrecorded and hence even less admitted than the known previous discoverers or even occupants for millennia of other continents that were new to west. Mallory and Irvine vanished around a corner on the climb in 1924 and the body of one was discovered only recently in 1999 while that of Irvine is suspected to have been seen by a Chinese climber who died in an avalanche soon after.
This book is the story of the person and the life of Mallory. Very very interesting, gripping, with all the details about climbing the Eiffel tower and the tower in Venice, and the peaks in Alps and Himaalaya. One is almost there and triumphant for Mallory while weeping for Nyima and laughing ruefully at the Finch escapades.
Archer is strangely callous about some details, perhaps they - one, likely - belong to the history where the British climbers mention one amongst them speaking "the local language" is helpful - which is a bit like an Oriental, an Arab or an African speaking of a fellow Oriental, Arab or African speaking "The European language". There are other such careless little details, but then Archer while benefitting from his readers' avid interest in his work no matter where they are from must affirm his loyalty to the crown and hence show a willingness to be callous to the colonies, even ex colonies.
One rather glaring example of such incorrect detail bordering on false is his epilogue where he mentions someone being murdered by a "Pakistani" in 1931, which is when not only such a thing did not exist, but was not even a demand, only a tool for leverage in hands of someone machiavellian hungry for power who was dismayed to be granted his demand since he would not play by any fair rules or means of any possibility of a dialogue, while in reality he had wanted to really rule India undivided. To set Archer straight, it is no secret that in '31 the concerned person could only have been Indian, and saying Pakistani merely conveys the information in a short and therefore incorrect, false manner that that person's roots as well as future choice of a nationality lay in that direction.
What is irresistible is the descriptions of beauty of Himaalaya, of the peak they tried to conquer, of the view. One almost is catapulted into going over pronto to do it for oneself. Alas, one's years of any such activity are now definitely over, even though now it is practically a highway with several teams a year from anywhere and everywhere around the world achieving the conquest - including handicapped and blind climbers, old people and repeat climbers.
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