The Sanjay Story: From Anand Bhavan to Amethi; by Vinod Mehta.

This book could have been benefited with a newer edition to add information after the famous first ever defeat of congress government in India, because the subject of the book not only died suddenly and accidentally soon after this, but far more happened, much of the events of eighties related to the family and the nation woven intricately together as it then used to, that could have put a lot more in perspective. For reasons perhaps not that obscure, this wasn't done.

Much of what is here was known to most who lived through those times, especially those connected in any way with India, especially those that lived in India, even if press was silent for most part about negatives related to the family. This was so not merely during the emergency when political silence was imposed, but also before and after, when personal details of non exemplary nature were kept off. Indeed that was so until the Times motto, very characteristic of a GWTW English era, of "all news that is fit to be printed" was replaced with another set of values and style, especially in film journalism where gossip and dirt was brought in in seventies and paid news replaced it all parading as all news and thought there could be. In non film journalism and indeed in officialdom people still did and do cater to power, which is perceived as intricately related to this family albeit the winner branch of it rather than the thrown out wife and son of the subject of this book, who remain mostly ignored but for the opposition generosity in giving them space in the party. That the family is for now out of power even as opposition, while opposition is a strong winner and ruling party, has changed only a little of that equation as far as most press and other officialdom go.

Mehta here gives little that is not known, and leaves out much that is known, which he states could have filled another book but was not included for reasons of journalistic integrity, specifically for lack of substantiation - so most of this is a reliving through the known and few unknown details. He mentions the big theft, but leaves out the real mccoy that was change of name due to the incident overseas, and instead claims the subject of his book left the Rolls Royce apprenticeship due to being no longer interested.

What is really interesting is that he leaves the book and the reader, after meticulously cataloguing all the unsavoury details of Sanjay Gandhi's exploits and misdeeds known and less known in detail, is that he makes one question instead if the guy wasn't so much a villain as a character out of place and out of his time, and would have been instead seen as a saviour and unquestionable prince and king benefic and loved by his people if only time and place were different. This may or may not have been his intention - after all his very meticulous balancing of the book might not have been all that merely due to integrity of journalism, but more of a safety precaution, since one couldn't even then have been certain of just how long congress and the family would be not in power. Indeed they were back in two years, except for Sanjay who was no longer quite the unopposed prince and died before he could come back to that position.

This impression, of a man out of his time and place but not intrinsically bad per se as much as
simply lacking the circumstances that could have instead made him look very different, is perhaps all the more stronger if one has just finished reading about the various royal families and persona of Europe, One gets the impression they got away with much including deaths of millions, being not personally responsible for events they presided over as heads of nations, and more.

Indeed the author leaves one with the impression that the one single characteristic of the man was that he was autocratic in his style of thought and decisions, and while he heard and understood others when he did meet or hear them, he gave little importance to what he did not consider worth taking into account. In the process much was discarded that could have benefited him, from school education to the final routing at elections due to not listening to those that knew better.

One might wonder if there was more in this line - after all various despots of many nations did flourish quite long and well under a benevolent eye from a superpower, due to their ability to agree to just that much; that some of them cheated on the agreements successfully and were never punished is yet more evidence that perhaps downfall of this young man, fortuitous for the nation or not, was not all due to his serious flaws as much as due to faults that put him out of ever being supported by a superpower.

Mehta mentions Sanjay's own family but little, makes no mention of death of his father in law and the Sikh problems that the nation and more specifically the family faced after the death of Sanjay Gandhi and especially more so after the events that unfolded post his death. All that of course happened after this book was published, but he has added only a new forward to the book, mentioning only the death of Sanjay Gandhi and no more.

All in all one wonders if the author was all along merely in a fortuitous circumstance as people in higher positions during and post British times tended to be, rather than earning it with merit. One expected much more of the book on this subject, more than this, better than this, due to his name and position of being a well known top journalist and editor of decades of top magazines.

One of the examples where it fails or at least falls very short is the infamous Turkman Gate episode of emergency misdeeds - Mehta describes it as a slum, deserving of being razed to the ground, and only badly done as in human terms: Tavleen Singh, another journalist of excellence, has explained it differently, in her book Durbar. And while Mehta does give a lot of details about the whole operation making one cringe as one reads it, it is the crucial difference in describing it merely as a slum that is a serious discrepancy at the very least if not outright mistake.
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So Mehta wrote the book soon post emergency, and the subject and his mother being still very much then alive, didn't take chances but wrote so meticulously that it comes across as all documentation of what most others either wrote or said until then, or could find easily enough, with - as he very explicitly and pointedly mentions - much withheld. He really hasn't said anything that could help them persecute him legitimately, if and when back in power, which they did come soon enough, even though Sanjay died very soon and suddenly in an accident with a plane he was flying crashing near his home that was the home of his mother, then again the prime minister of India. 

The effect is to make one wonder if he really wished one to take a startled second look at whether the guy was not a villain but a much misunderstood visionary out of time and space and role, with much that was blamed on him being not his fault, much that was his fault not being held up for him to be accountable to but minor stuff, and much that was his accomplishment being lost in the sycophancy during the emergency.

One small detail comes to mind much later post having finished the book and been busy at other stuff, which - the detail - is interesting in its shedding light on the author.

He has made it a point to give details of how he was asked, with no uncertainty, by henchmen of the power during emergency, to give publicity favourable to Sanjay Gandhi via articles and editorials, which other publications did readily enough (he refrains from mentioning the chief publication that stood out against it all, funnily enough!) - which he meticulously mentions he had not until then complied with, and later fortunately didn't have to, due to emergency being lifted.

And therein lies the secret of why he gives detailed description of the circumstances and wedding of the parents, Indira Nehru and Feroze Gandhi, pointing out and specifically mentioning that the ceremony might not have been legal or legitimate, at all. Most people would satisfy themselves using a small one word. But Indian culture being unlike that of west, no such words exist in India for children of parents who might not be married to one another, and the concept of such stigma for children is borrowed or imposed via colonial rules of foreign origin over a millennia, as are the small words.
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Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor; by Anne Edwards.

The title is slightly misleading, in calling Queen May a matriarch, and then painstakingly being accurate in how she was first and foremost a devoted loyal monarchist - for, being a queen consort and not a Regina, not born to rule, her being a matriarch is halfway at best, and that limited to how she brought up her children and held power over her brood - which was only by setting example they all looked up to and some tried to aspire to, at best. As the author establishes over and over, she was not very maternal, mothering at best at a distance and certainly not when her brood was young, so much so her first two sons suffered as babies at hands of their then nanny and it went undetected for years, enough to perhaps leave a mark that defined them for ever, until the famous abdication by the elder and the suffering of the second in having to take over.

Matriarch is a title that best fits Queen Victoria of course, clear in her role almost at or soon enough after birth, and a Regina, but one that directed the course of European history with her matchmaking between her brood and other royal houses of Europe, and preferably between cousins so the ties of familial loyalty binded them, which did not always succeed as she wished - since familiarity and familial ties can do just the opposite, but succeeded enough that all royal houses of Europe were and are related closely. That few survived as royal is another story.

Queen May, born Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, was none of that, however close a relative of Queen Victoria and however admiring of royalty, or beloved of her people and her descendents. What she certainly was is the queen that defined the monarchy and the British royal family for future generations, The author repeats over and over how royal, how queenly she always was, far more so than those that were more royal. This is more a trait of character of course, and rarely acquired by mere will, or even due to birth and training. May was born in and brought up in an impecunious family, her father being the son of a morganatic marriage and thereby deprived of the benefits of the Teck and other estate holdings, and so at mercy of the greater royal relative Queen Victoria. If May was as royal as, or more royal in her bearing than, Victoria, this was certainly due to her own persona.

What examples she set have survived a few generations, and only Princess Diana was different in ways that were remarked about, in her keeping her children close and showing affection openly in private and public - and this perhaps is one of the few ways where emulation by example of a beloved and revered ancestor and Queen was not always the best idea. Queen May was uncomfortable with babies although she had six, never was close to them until they were adult if then, and this had a negative effect best not discussed - and it isn't, even in this book, albeit one might be given the impression there was no such taboo. One cannot help being oneself, of course, but bringing up babies is vital and leaving it to care of nannies quite so much can and often enough does have effects not possible to countermand later, and one has to reflect how much superior the joint familes of Asia and other older cultures are in this respect where grandparents and other relatives are not far away sporadic visitors but on hand to spare the young mother and babies of the stress. In this case the grandparents of May's children were Prince and Princess of Wales, later King Edward and Queen Alexandra, usually not far away but limited by European or English tradition of not being everyday presence, and thus not able to detect the hurt to the young princes their grandsons.

So there are comparisons, inevitably brought to mind, with more recent royals, and this is perhaps not an accident or unintended effect but even so much as the very purpose of the book - the repeated references to the beauty of Princess and later Queen Alexandra, her identity as the beauty, her vanity, her attachment to her children and especially to her first and second son, are just a tad too often enough to make one wonder if this is yet another attempt by royals to get the people to not quite love and revere the beloved recent Princess of Wales, Diana.

There is more - there are references often and frequent to various women the princes, and especially those who were Prince of Wales at one time or another, played with - and were loyal to, for years; which does make one wonder, is the reader being subliminally suggested to play the game as the people of England then did, accepting and loving the prince no matter what, and more - since Princess of Wales and later Queen Alexandra played her role as required, is the reader suggested to follow the example of the royal family in censuring Princess Diana for not doing so, and instead attempting to live rather than complying and following the example, to be a decorative living fossil in a palace?

Inevitably also the comparison of Edward eighth and his abdication which his mother disapproved of enough to receive him rarely thereafter, and his wife never, is unmistakable with the present circumstances with question about whether succession should pass directly to Diana's son William who inherits his mother's popularity and looks, or is the reader being again subliminally suggested to adhere to English tradition and approve, indeed love, the erring ex husband of Diana, as Edward was even when he abdicated and only visited rarely as Duke of Windsor?

Whatever the truth of that, and those are not small considerations, one does enjoy reading this, due to the times and the scope of the subject, and in that it disappoints in more than one way. - of the most interesting events and persona there is but fleeting reference on the whole, except as it affected the royal family and England. So the world wars first and second are referred to a bit more than the Russian events, latter more in that the then King of England failed to save his cousins and their children, which is blamed conveniently on Lloyd George, and as for India, the longer references are to the royal visits, while the millions starved due to harvests being taken away for soldiers is not mentioned other than as a quirk of India millions dying of famines, Jalianwala is a passing mention, Gandhi is a nuisance (author might have used another word, or not), and independence of India with the hurried and badly done partition resulting in ten million deaths due to British taking flight in a hurry is not mentioned at all.

One does get copious descriptions of clothes and jewellery worn by various persona royal or otherwise, and there are photographs not as satisfactory as found elsewhere, but then perhaps the book was commissioned for the subliminal purposes and might just do the job, of making people accepting substitutes preferred by husbands - Alice Keppel was, would be the royal diktat, and look at how everyone suffered only because Wallis wasn't, would be another subliminal suggestion.

One comparison not mentioned is inevitable though, of the present queen being a lot more like her grandmother in looks and bearing, albeit more like her mother in other respects.

The Patrician" by John Galsworthy.

Beauty of nature, of England and of London, of humans that appreciate it and take it for granted, live it, and imbibe it in different ways in their own lives and their own psyche - and are coming from different castes socially and economically, brought up with, different sets of circumstances, leading to different values and conclusions about life and people - and their interactions that bring joy and pain to more than those that they encounter.

Pure Galsworthy, all of it.

If there is beauty and love and expectation, as is usual in Galsworthy, there is going to be expectation too, and in this the book falls short only in that it stops halfway compared to what one is led to expect if one read Forsyte Chronicles before this. Which a generic reader is likely to have.

But if one has read more than only the superlative Forsyte Chronicles, one is likely also to have realised that that work was probably a more matured, later achievement, while the other works are all leading up to it. This work is probably half way in that it does not lack finesse, but stops short of courage to bring about a satisfactory resolution to the love thwarted by circumstances. Then again, those were the realities of the day and it is probably a good thing to face how it was, even as times were changing. So some were able to go forth in the Forsyte best fashion while others, like even the majority of Forsyte clan, were not quite that fortunate.

One will recognise the various characters here as earlier sketches of what matures in Forsyte Chronicles, but it is nevertheless wonderful to go through this, and of course, the lyrical portrayal of beauty of nature as the characters live through it, walk in it, is always lovely, and never same.

Big Book Of Malice by Khushwant Singh.

In one place Khushwant Singh seems plaintive in complaining about how his freedom to express his views was impinged upon by Bengal being furious about his very negative views about Bengal in general and their specifically having produced no great geniuses, and even more specifically stating that Tagore's poetry and general literary work was nothing much, nor were other great people of stature from Bengal that Bengalis were so proud of.

This might seem naive on his part, and it would be easy to point out that his right to express his opinion is not curtailed by others' disapproval of it, since they have not lost their right to express their opinions of him when he was accorded by the right by the same constitution.

That would be easy, but naive, since he is not a terrible two toddler even though more often than not his attitude is precisely that of one, including much verbal fondling and exposing of his nether equipment. He has been to not merely the most progressive school begun and sponsored in India by Indians, but also colleges and universities across various nations (that since split in two, and then more parts depending on how one counts them) to study, and then to various other places to lecture and more, all without any merit whatsoever if one is to judge by his writing. He is good at reading, observing, listening and then penning down a summary, by standards more applicable to high school.

In reality the baffled reader at his atrociously bad view of a very talented and prolific people might give it up as a bratty idiot's way of making himself noticed, until one comes across the reasons why
the homeland he had to give up at partition split further into two. And then one realises his posturing is merely copy of attitudes of the worst in the erstwhile homeland where he himself states he and his ilk was ignored and never much part of the general majority who drove them away and massacred millions when the said homeland was designated for faith of the majority.

He and his community of those that had to leave northwest for mainland India at independence due to partition have never given up pining for it, and they have clung to attitudes reflecting those of their lost neighbours no matter how atrocious those attitudes, how racist, perhaps from a perverse loyalty in hope that they might one day be accepted back. That they know this is not likely, and if it were there just might be yet another genocide by the same faith that drove them away, does not deter them in this attitude albeit it makes them silent as to the reasons for the loyalty, and for continuing racism on lines of pak attitudes.

'71 war for independence of Bangladesh was due chiefly to the pak attitudes of racism and denigration of their larger half of nation - larger by populace count - with very frank discriminatory speech that still continues about how the Bengal people are dark, short, unlike the tall and fair and hefty Northwest, and how they are poor and frugal. That the pak leadership was responsible for the poverty is conveniently forgotten - they fleeced the nation and allocated the largest share to Punjab alone, chiefly to capital and to military and a few political leaders, leaving all Bengal then and all the rest then and now in dire poverty - and even post losing half the nation, the same fleecing is applied to other parts of the nation, fleecing of Baluchistan going on since six decades although that part never joined willingly, and of other provinces.

What was worse, and still continues in parts still under occupation by pak military such as Baluchistan and more, was genocide. East Bengal had massacre of three million people of all ages across genders by pak military in the single year of '71 after the cyclones and subsequent famine had claimed a large number already, and this was not all. UN had to open abortion clinics to deal with half a million women of east Bengal raped by pak military, and that was just for vengeance. For use, they had fifty thousand or so women kept chained and naked so they could not escape or drown themselves in any river in the land full of water so much so it is colloquially nicknamed "Jol Baangla" - literally, Water Bengal.

This does not end the list of horrors perpetrated - Dhaka university had a separate genocide perpetrated by the pak military, to finish off a huge number of intelligentsia of Bengal that prides itself on flowering of intellect in every field. Notably, even now the pak attitude is of denigration about Bangladesh expressed in a dismissive "it was only intellectuals, a few of them, who wanted independence". It would be easy to remind them the new nation has been free to rejoin the pak union during the four decades since. Easy, but futile, since they know they are lying to cover up their atrocities.

And Khushwant Singh and his ilk have hearts bleeding for the rapist, massacring brethren of theirs who once did it to their own, before they did it to east Bengal. So their solution is to join in denigrating all Bengal and all geniuses of Bengal. In Khushwant Singh's own favourite imagery, it is a contest of how far can he write his name in sands of his lost homeland.
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There are readable pieces of course, and often information one is unaware of about people one has known a bit about or famous ones in any case. More often it is about denigrating those respected and defending some atrocious person or event or action.

One example that comes to mind is about a very respected film producer and director, Chetan Anand, whom this author knew in college in Lahore and was enamoured much of - he never fails to mention his good looks, his fair complexion, and other qualities he was impressed with. One would already conclude he was in love with Chetan Anand, if it were not for the prolific mention of how he took trouble to watch women as and when he could without being caught, including women whom he would normally not get a look even at the face of such as those from household of Nawab of Bhopal (Pataudi?) as they bathed in a spot they thought was secluded.

Even in the first mention of Chetan Anand he takes care to denigrate him with a careless mention of how he became a producer and never amounted to much. In this he mentions meeting him in Mumbai and abusing him thoroughly in public, before his very young and beautiful inamorata the ethereal Priya Rajvansh, too - which one can be sure he took special delight in doing, for the show rather than for any real feeling of injury at being ignored by the man he had probably cherished unknown to the object of cherishing.

One of course can be very sure he never gave this treatment to anyone from across the northwest border post independence, however atrocious their behaviour, but that is obvious. With them it is a slave-like devotion he exhibits even when they are hanged and deserve it for the genocide if nothing else.

Reality is, Chetan Anand was much respected for his eclectic productions, and for his direction of films, in the few chosen ones he worked with, usually under his own banner. He was not prolific in numbers like his two younger brothers, but his work offers some assurance of not being merely for commerce, and his brothers as his colleagues respected him for it, and quite rightly too. His most famous brother kept some of that quality in his own productions, while the middle one was very good making success of a venture in market. When two of the three worked together, it was gold.

But then, Khushwant Singh was in all probability either jealous or was reacting like a lover rejected in favour of a beautiful woman that Chetan Anand chose instead - quite possible, the latter, too, since his extraordinarily prolific discussions about women and nether parts cross all possible borders of decency and even of disgusting and become tedious to the point of boring, not that different from effect of looking out of a train window around early morning in India in overpopulated parts - perhaps he is merely protesting too much, since his faith in all probability won't allow him to acknowledge the real object of his passion, and the faith of his masters would likely stone him to death after having used him to his satisfaction.
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Monday, June 15, 2015.
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(Re Maneka Gandhi, Younger daughter in law of Indira Gandhi. Khushwant Singh describes her being thrown out of her marital home after she lost her husband and was made to sign away her rights to her husband's share of property as a condition of her being allowed to stay. Most witnesses and friends including Maneka herself exculpate Indira Gandhi of blame, all agreeing that she needed her elder son and he would have been made to leave his mother if Maneka had not been thrown out without a penny.)


Khushwant was as frank in labeling his malice as he was about copious descriptions of his and other people's nether parts, or his watching various women in various stages of undressing, or worse. A good deal of it is simply provoking by a puck, if one is provoked he has victory and if not he is willing to go to lower levels of disgusting.

But honest or real journalist he was not and if he heard would probably say he did not claim it, and was frank he merely gossiped on strength of his familiarity with so called high society. In this too however, he is as circumspect as any social climber, unlike Tavleen Singh who managed to maintain decency and courage and journalistic ethos and more.

When emergency was declared in mid seventies Khushwant Singh couldn't stop praising not only the then newly dictator but also her younger son and his very young wife, Maneka Anand who was a new addition to the Nehru dynasty of Indira Gandhi family. That this praise might render him slightly ridiculous seems to have bothered him far less than a possible incarceration like others of the time who were honest in disapproval of the times and political measures.

In the series of books with malice in titles where various pieces of gossip about society are collected, there is at least one piece about the finale of the chapter of the young couple, Sanjay and Maneka. This was written post Sanjay's death and he was eyewitness to the events as they unfolded around the exit of Maneka from the home of her mother in law where she had arrived as a bride and lived until then.

There are others who wrote or spoke about it. Pupul Jayakar mentions the event in her biography of Indira Gandhi and it is a very open, honest account of the conversation the two friends had. Maneka herself speaks of this and of her married life until then, in a conversation with the ever elegant Simi Garewal. But this account by Khushwant Singh is notable for a flavour missing from other accounts.

By any standard applicable to the situation, this exit of a poor young woman who had been made to sign away any and every right to share of property due to her husband as a condition to her staying in the home with her son, was a despicable act on part of the in-laws. Both Pupul Jayakar and Maneka herself exculpate the mother in law who was fragile with the loss of support of the younger son that was her chief support at family and in politics, and was dependent on the elder son who never wanted politics and had a wife who was supposedly against it all, their friends all either western or high society or both. Indira Gandhi is quoted by Pupul Jayakar as saying, what could she do, she needed her son. Maneka puts the blame squarely on her sole sister in law for having her thrown out of the home where the two women had an equal right morally, traditionally, and in every other way possible.

Khushwant Singh cannot deny any of it, but would rather play it safe, and most people in the situation remain silent as the party did. Not he - he has an extra point to prove, to claim that in spite of sharing a communal tie and of his having specialised as an academic by translating religious texts of his faith, he was not exactly on side of the young woman thrown out penniless from her marital home.

So he resorts to gossipy account of how she did not go quietly, how she let loose verbally and insisted on having dinner before leaving. All to indicate that she was not pathetic but a fighter, and to perhaps allow a reader to speculate that her character was unpleasant and was responsible for her losing family, rights to property, et al. Total bs of course.

One wonders if he needed to cover up so strenuously only because he was of the same community that Maneka belonged to, or was he afraid he would be targeted by the elder sister in law and mafia to boot, or was it worse? Who knows.

It is always easy to blame a victim, especially a young widow who has signed away her rights to share of wealth, and has a small son to bring up to boot. She is expected to beg and placate others, with the one in power at marital home in position of making her a social outcast.

One expects better of those supposedly brought up in high society with a decent education, however. In this respect as probably in all others the three women - Pupul Jayakar, Simi Garewal and Tavleen Singh - fare far above.

Perhaps courage is a feminine virtue after all. .....................................................................................................

Wednesday, June 24, 2015.
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Society, Gossip, Khushwant Singh, Malice, Et Al

Khushwant was as frank in labeling his malice as he was about copious descriptions of his and other people's nether parts, or his watching various women in various stages of undressing, or worse. A good deal of it is simply provoking by a puck, if one is provoked he has victory and if not he is willing to go to lower levels of disgusting.

But honest or real journalist he was not and if he heard would probably say he did not claim it, and was frank he merely gossiped on strength of his familiarity with so called high society. In this too however, he is as circumspect as any social climber, unlike Tavleen Singh who managed to maintain decency and courage and journalistic ethos and more.

When emergency was declared in mid seventies Khushwant Singh couldn't stop praising not only the then newly dictator but also her younger son and his very young wife, Maneka Anand who was a new addition to the Nehru dynasty of Indira Gandhi family. That this praise might render him slightly ridiculous seems to have bothered him far less than a possible incarceration like others of the time who were honest in disapproval of the times and political measures.

In the series of books with malice in titles where various pieces of gossip about society are collected, there is at least one piece about the finale of the chapter of the young couple, Sanjay and Maneka. This was written post Sanjay's death and he was eyewitness to the events as they unfolded around the exit of Maneka from the home of her mother in law where she had arrived as a bride and lived until then.

There are others who wrote or spoke about it. Pupul Jayakar mentions the event in her biography of Indira Gandhi and it is a very open, honest account of the conversation the two friends had. Maneka herself speaks of this and of her married life until then, in a conversation with the ever elegant Simi Garewal. But this account by Khushwant Singh is notable for a flavour missing from other accounts.

By any standard applicable to the situation, this exit of a poor young woman who had been made to sign away any and every right to share of property due to her husband as a condition to her staying in the home with her son, was a despicable act on part of the in-laws. Both Pupul Jayakar and Maneka herself exculpate the mother in law who was fragile with the loss of support of the younger son that was her chief support at family and in politics, and was dependent on the elder son who never wanted politics and had a wife who was supposedly against it all, their friends all either western or high society or both. Indira Gandhi is quoted by Pupul Jayakar as saying, what could she do, she needed her son. Maneka puts the blame squarely on her sole sister in law for having her thrown out of the home where the two women had an equal right morally, traditionally, and in every other way possible.

Khushwant Singh cannot deny any of it, but would rather play it safe, and most people in the situation remain silent as the party did. Not he - he has an extra point to prove, to claim that in spite of sharing a communal tie and of his having specialised as an academic by translating religious texts of his faith, he was not exactly on side of the young woman thrown out penniless from her marital home.

So he resorts to gossipy account of how she did not go quietly, how she let loose verbally and insisted on having dinner before leaving. All to indicate that she was not pathetic but a fighter, and to perhaps
allow a reader to speculate that her character was unpleasant and was responsible for her losing family, rights to property, et al. Total bs of course.

One wonders if he needed to cover up so strenuously only because he was of the same community that Maneka belonged to, or was he afraid he would be targeted by the elder sister in law and mafia to boot, or was it worse? Who knows.

It is always easy to blame a victim, especially a young widow who has signed away her rights to share of wealth, and has a small son to bring up to boot. She is expected to beg and placate others, with the one in power at marital home in position of making her a social outcast.

One expects better of those supposedly brought up in high society with a decent education, however. In this respect as probably in all others the three women - Pupul Jayakar, Simi Garewal and Tavleen Singh - fare far above.

Perhaps courage is a feminine virtue after all.

Khushwant Singh's Big Book of Malice; by Khushwant Singh.

In one place Khushwant Singh seems plaintive in complaining about how his freedom to express his views was impinged upon by Bengal being furious about his very negative views about Bengal in general and their specifically having produced no great geniuses, and even more specifically stating that Tagore's poetry and general literary work was nothing much, nor were other great people of stature from Bengal that Bengalis were so proud of.

This might seem naive on his part, and it would be easy to point out that his right to express his opinion is not curtailed by others' disapproval of it, since they have not lost their right to express their opinions of him when he was accorded by the right by the same constitution.

That would be easy, but naive, since he is not a terrible two toddler even though more often than not his attitude is precisely that of one, including much verbal fondling and exposing of his nether equipment. He has been to not merely the most progressive school begun and sponsored in India by Indians, but also colleges and universities across various nations (that since split in two, and then more parts depending on how one counts them) to study, and then to various other places to lecture and more, all without any merit whatsoever if one is to judge by his writing. He is good at reading, observing, listening and then penning down a summary, by standards more applicable to high school.

In reality the baffled reader at his atrociously bad view of a very talented and prolific people might give it up as a bratty idiot's way of making himself noticed, until one comes across the reasons why
the homeland he had to give up at partition split further into two. And then one realises his posturing is merely copy of attitudes of the worst in the erstwhile homeland where he himself states he and his ilk was ignored and never much part of the general majority who drove them away and massacred millions when the said homeland was designated for faith of the majority.

He and his community of those that had to leave northwest for mainland India at independence due to partition have never given up pining for it, and they have clung to attitudes reflecting those of their lost neighbours no matter how atrocious those attitudes, how racist, perhaps from a perverse loyalty in hope that they might one day be accepted back. That they know this is not likely, and if it were there just might be yet another genocide by the same faith that drove them away, does not deter them in this attitude albeit it makes them silent as to the reasons for the loyalty, and for continuing racism on lines of pak attitudes.

'71 war for independence of Bangladesh was due chiefly to the pak attitudes of racism and denigration of their larger half of nation - larger by populace count - with very frank discriminatory speech that still continues about how the Bengal people are dark, short, unlike the tall and fair and hefty Northwest, and how they are poor and frugal. That the pak leadership was responsible for the poverty is conveniently forgotten - they fleeced the nation and allocated the largest share to Punjab alone, chiefly to capital and to military and a few political leaders, leaving all Bengal then and all the rest then and now in dire poverty - and even post losing half the nation, the same fleecing is applied to other parts of the nation, fleecing of Baluchistan going on since six decades although that part never joined willingly, and of other provinces.

What was worse, and still continues in parts still under occupation by pak military such as Baluchistan and more, was genocide. East Bengal had massacre of three million people of all ages across genders by pak military in the single year of '71 after the cyclones and subsequent famine had claimed a large number already, and this was not all. UN had to open abortion clinics to deal with half a million women of east Bengal raped by pak military, and that was just for vengeance. For use, they had fifty thousand or so women kept chained and naked so they could not escape or drown themselves in any river in the land full of water so much so it is colloquially nicknamed "Jol Baangla" - literally, Water Bengal.

This does not end the list of horrors perpetrated - Dhaka university had a separate genocide perpetrated by the pak military, to finish off a huge number of intelligentsia of Bengal that prides itself on flowering of intellect in every field. Notably, even now the pak attitude is of denigration about Bangladesh expressed in a dismissive "it was only intellectuals, a few of them, who wanted independence". It would be easy to remind them the new nation has been free to rejoin the pak union during the four decades since. Easy, but futile, since they know they are lying to cover up their atrocities.

And Khushwant Singh and his ilk have hearts bleeding for the rapist, massacring brethren of theirs who once did it to their own, before they did it to east Bengal. So their solution is to join in denigrating all Bengal and all geniuses of Bengal. In Khushwant Singh's own favourite imagery, it is a contest of how far can he write his name in sands of his lost homeland.
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There are readable pieces of course, and often information one is unaware of about people one has known a bit about or famous ones in any case. More often it is about denigrating those respected and defending some atrocious person or event or action.

One example that comes to mind is about a very respected film producer and director, Chetan Anand, whom this author knew in college in Lahore and was enamoured much of - he never fails to mention his good looks, his fair complexion, and other qualities he was impressed with. One would already conclude he was in love with Chetan Anand, if it were not for the prolific mention of how he took trouble to watch women as and when he could without being caught, including women whom he would normally not get a look even at the face of such as those from household of Nawab of Bhopal (Pataudi?) as they bathed in a spot they thought was secluded.

Even in the first mention of Chetan Anand he takes care to denigrate him with a careless mention of how he became a producer and never amounted to much. In this he mentions meeting him in Mumbai and abusing him thoroughly in public, before his very young and beautiful inamorata the ethereal Priya Rajvansh, too - which one can be sure he took special delight in doing, for the show rather than for any real feeling of injury at being ignored by the man he had probably cherished unknown to the object of cherishing.

One of course can be very sure he never gave this treatment to anyone from across the northwest border post independence, however atrocious their behaviour, but that is obvious. With them it is a slave-like devotion he exhibits even when they are hanged and deserve it for the genocide if nothing else.

Reality is, Chetan Anand was much respected for his eclectic productions, and for his direction of films, in the few chosen ones he worked with, usually under his own banner. He was not prolific in numbers like his two younger brothers, but his work offers some assurance of not being merely for commerce, and his brothers as his colleagues respected him for it, and quite rightly too. His most famous brother kept some of that quality in his own productions, while the middle one was very good making success of a venture in market. When two of the three worked together, it was gold.

But then, Khushwant Singh was in all probability either jealous or was reacting like a lover rejected in favour of a beautiful woman that Chetan Anand chose instead - quite possible, the latter, too, since his extraordinarily prolific discussions about women and nether parts cross all possible borders of decency and even of disgusting and become tedious to the point of boring, not that different from effect of looking out of a train window around early morning in India in overpopulated parts - perhaps he is merely protesting too much, since his faith in all probability won't allow him to acknowledge the real object of his passion, and the faith of his masters would likely stone him to death after having used him to his satisfaction.
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Monday, June 15, 2015.
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(Re Maneka Gandhi, Younger daughter in law of Indira Gandhi. Khushwant Singh describes her being thrown out of her marital home after she lost her husband and was made to sign away her rights to her husband's share of property as a condition of her being allowed to stay. Most witnesses and friends including Maneka herself exculpate Indira Gandhi of blame, all agreeing that she needed her elder son and he would have been made to leave his mother if Maneka had not been thrown out without a penny.)


Khushwant was as frank in labeling his malice as he was about copious descriptions of his and other people's nether parts, or his watching various women in various stages of undressing, or worse. A good deal of it is simply provoking by a puck, if one is provoked he has victory and if not he is willing to go to lower levels of disgusting.

But honest or real journalist he was not and if he heard would probably say he did not claim it, and was frank he merely gossiped on strength of his familiarity with so called high society. In this too however, he is as circumspect as any social climber, unlike Tavleen Singh who managed to maintain decency and courage and journalistic ethos and more.

When emergency was declared in mid seventies Khushwant Singh couldn't stop praising not only the then newly dictator but also her younger son and his very young wife, Maneka Anand who was a new addition to the Nehru dynasty of Indira Gandhi family. That this praise might render him slightly ridiculous seems to have bothered him far less than a possible incarceration like others of the time who were honest in disapproval of the times and political measures.

In the series of books with malice in titles where various pieces of gossip about society are collected, there is at least one piece about the finale of the chapter of the young couple, Sanjay and Maneka. This was written post Sanjay's death and he was eyewitness to the events as they unfolded around the exit of Maneka from the home of her mother in law where she had arrived as a bride and lived until then.

There are others who wrote or spoke about it. Pupul Jayakar mentions the event in her biography of Indira Gandhi and it is a very open, honest account of the conversation the two friends had. Maneka herself speaks of this and of her married life until then, in a conversation with the ever elegant Simi Garewal. But this account by Khushwant Singh is notable for a flavour missing from other accounts.

By any standard applicable to the situation, this exit of a poor young woman who had been made to sign away any and every right to share of property due to her husband as a condition to her staying in the home with her son, was a despicable act on part of the in-laws. Both Pupul Jayakar and Maneka herself exculpate the mother in law who was fragile with the loss of support of the younger son that was her chief support at family and in politics, and was dependent on the elder son who never wanted politics and had a wife who was supposedly against it all, their friends all either western or high society or both. Indira Gandhi is quoted by Pupul Jayakar as saying, what could she do, she needed her son. Maneka puts the blame squarely on her sole sister in law for having her thrown out of the home where the two women had an equal right morally, traditionally, and in every other way possible.

Khushwant Singh cannot deny any of it, but would rather play it safe, and most people in the situation remain silent as the party did. Not he - he has an extra point to prove, to claim that in spite of sharing a communal tie and of his having specialised as an academic by translating religious texts of his faith, he was not exactly on side of the young woman thrown out penniless from her marital home.

So he resorts to gossipy account of how she did not go quietly, how she let loose verbally and insisted on having dinner before leaving. All to indicate that she was not pathetic but a fighter, and to perhaps allow a reader to speculate that her character was unpleasant and was responsible for her losing family, rights to property, et al. Total bs of course.

One wonders if he needed to cover up so strenuously only because he was of the same community that Maneka belonged to, or was he afraid he would be targeted by the elder sister in law and mafia to boot, or was it worse? Who knows.

It is always easy to blame a victim, especially a young widow who has signed away her rights to share of wealth, and has a small son to bring up to boot. She is expected to beg and placate others, with the one in power at marital home in position of making her a social outcast.

One expects better of those supposedly brought up in high society with a decent education, however. In this respect as probably in all others the three women - Pupul Jayakar, Simi Garewal and Tavleen Singh - fare far above.

Perhaps courage is a feminine virtue after all. .....................................................................................................

Wednesday, June 24, 2015.
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More Malicious Gossip: by Khushwant Singh.

More of the same, in more than one way, as the Malicious Gossip before this, with some new parts. There is a part with description of places and there are reviews in another one.

Khushwant reviews Nirad Chaudhary's book in one piece, for example, abusing Hinduism and India generally, with a lazy glee. Lazy because he gives excerpts and little if anything else. Glee is obvious in how very copiously he quotes the abusive, negative, and so forth.

Both of these guys being completely ignorant of their nation of origin, and dismissive of most of anything not taught in their curriculum designed by Macaulay's program to manufacture brown sahibs that would smash India to bits without Brits having to do it, pretty much like the Madras corps used to defeat Indian freedom fighters and Indian soldiers and policemen to subdue Asia so that pretty much all Asia hated Indians, this piece offers anything new only in that these two should be quite so thoroughly ignorant of nation of their origin and culture thereof, but then again this simply means that the two of them either ignored their own roots or disparaged them at heart, preferring to follow the paleface (as natives of another continent called them) invaders. Most Indian know better.

One clue to this author is in another piece where he describes Syria generally and Damascus to begin with. He takes care to point at the locals looking very like Europeans, being quite specific about their golden hair and light skins and so forth. This is very typical of his own origin of deep in region now in Pakistan and bringing up surrounded mostly by Muslim local neighbours, which inculcated values in him more of Muslim than Indian original culture.

Still, there are some interesting bits, from his sheer accessibility to hoi polloi, not because they are interesting by themselves or their inaccessibility makes them so, but because often connections emerge that one was unaware of.

And more than anything else these pieces are strong evidence of how women are maligned generally for no reason other than that they are women and convenient to attack - this guy gossips, and how!

Why I Supported the Emergency: Essays and Profiles; by Khushwant Singh, Sheela Reddy (Introduction).

If it were limited to what he wrote as short pieces that are collected in this and in various other books, it would be a questionably good read, most of the part anyway - he does have some sort of germ in his head so to speak in language familiar to him, in that he is not happy giving intelligent commentary and rare beautiful descriptions of people and places; he absolutely must disgust the reader in general, possibly delighting a few, by copious and explicit references either to nether parts of his own or other people; or worse, explicit description leaving the reader in no uncertainty how he viewed the other half of humanity only as a package to contain those parts.

In this he is far from content to merely insult all people with higher sensibilities or all women, including his own family. In a forward to one such collection by one of the many the young protegies of his who met him some time when she was young and he far from that, she mentions how he spoke explicitly humiliating a Nobel prize winning much revered poet of his nation and how he delighted in insulting and provoking a whole people, and one can only surmise from his copious references to various other poets from parts that separated from the motherland depriving him of home he had to forever hanker after, that this was his revenge on the motherland that gave him refuge, revenge for having been deprived of his home by those that threw out all other communities that they could not live with and demanded a separate nation via breaking up the motherland with threats of massacre executed before and during the partition.

His own parents lived in the capital, and his bringing up was in many places including the capital, but he was in tears when visiting his childhood village where he spent his early years with his grandmother, and where he is very aware of the community that surrounded them was always keeping away from them, no matter how friendly he or his community or even those in majority in the nation as a whole were, then or since. And his response is to be friendly with them, visit them, regret how they are not responding generally, and insult those that gave him not merely home but positions and honour despite not quite proven merit.

The pieces themselves are readable, no more and no less, in most part. If one misses them it is no big deal. And this can be said about all such collections of pieces by this author, perhaps even by all that he wrote.
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That is even more true about this book, judging by the very first piece that provides the title for the book.

Emergency was a traumatic period of history in India post independence, and that is saying something about a nation that was beset by various problems and is only now emerging a little out but not by far. There had been famines before that, riots provoked by those that thrived politically only due to lack of harmony in communal scenario and depended on vote bank politics, and wars due to attacks by nations across the borders. Emergency was traumatic, and that was not merely for the western educated upper and middle class and political elite, or intelligentsia alone - if that were so it would hardly provide a wavelet in a nation that survived a millennium of various marauders and invaders and colonial rules.

Emergency was traumatic to the nation as a whole, because democracy was and is seriously ingrained in the very fabric of the nation where even faith is a matter of personal choice and family, community fabric, not enforced with threats of hell. This, apart from diversity of every other sort - languages, dress, food, cuisine, not to mention the geographical and climatic diversity, is essential to the nation's  very soul.

Emergency was imposed when a high court ruled that the election of the then prime minister was illegal due to a person in administrative office being used in political work - not that this is unusual, it was only that it was carelessly done in that it could be proved in court. Various political persona and intelligentsia suspected of freedom of thought and likelihood of not complying and obeying the ruling party diktats were summarily thrown in jail, and some suffered great deal due to health and age. This author was not one of them, and was free to support it for stupid reasons as many then did.

One wishes his reasons were some profound secrets now exposed, so one could sympathise at the very least. But no, the reasons were simple - a matter of law and order, which he says is more paramount than question of security and liberty of individuals that was suspended during the time, which the nation was uncertain for how long, or whether it was going to be forever, with democracy forever gone.

There were many others who spoke in accord with this sentiment about preferring law and order, and this is very reminiscent of those that praised Germany during pre WWII era, for trains running on time. This author went part of the way to support it for those reasons and describes how his publication was suspended for a few weeks, until it was pointed out that the ruling dictatorship could not care less, when he began publication. Perhaps that is to win back approval.

Yes, it is important to maintain law and order, to have trains run on time and streets clean. But at the expense of life and liberty of populace as a whole, no it is not. When people had their homes bulldozed summarily and young people lost chance to have a family without their consent to the process, people simmered with disapproval, and India was fortunate enough in being able to exercise her democratic rights and show the world and the stunned prime minister and her party that the people did care, and used their rights to protect, for democracy.

This author on the other hand had during those years gone on to praise not only the dictator and her action but did - and in various pieces included in various collections - praise the younger son who was, it is believed across India for credible reasons, responsible for the emergency and various actions that wreaked havoc during the time. He however did not limit himself to that, and went ridiculously further.

Now one finds why - his own background is responsible for some part of that. He came from roots that were built on much wealth and much much more bestowed on people due to favours from rulers, rather than achievements of one's own in academic and other fields, and this favoured status brought forth not merely wealth and title and upper class life with all the other privileges that one can see naturally going with it - social connections with other upper class and political persona and hoi polloi generally, including various foreign diplomats and others - but also grants and positions that more deserving candidates ought to have had, and would have done more justice to.

So naturally he saw nothing amiss with praising in national publications young people who had power to back them up in whatever they wished to do and very little qualifications - and if he had praised them in a judicious manner being familiar with them personally, that would be excusable, but no, he had to cross limits of ridiculous where it became apparent it was a court jester perhaps doing a clown act for fear of life and liberty and more, of his wealth and titles and future.

One would see that as the reason and excuse him as India does anyone helpless with fear for family welfare, but here he goes and includes the first piece that mentions law and order as the reason for disapproval of freedom of individuals and democracy in general, and even more, goes on to say he disapproved of a person whose life and work followed that of the so called father of the nation, in opposing a dictatorial rule in peaceful ways of civil disobedience.

Of course, his own privileged and bestowed status being due to bestowal by the colonial rulers who were questionably worse, and his love for the people who broke up the nation and his forever hankering after that broken off piece and the people who were with those that massacred innocents, at cost of insulting and humiliating people of high culture and more, is all in accord with the justification of emergency and praise for the young in power who had done little in way of achievement.

But none of that can be called fair or just or anything remotely of that sort. Then again, he gave up his career in law, had never done well academically, and frankly states that he took up writing about his community as a means to make a career by specialising in something. In that too, he began by translating prayers of his faith, and then went on to denounce all religions and spirituality in general and those that he was not afraid to attack in particular. Attacking Bengal is not as expensive as attacking those across the Northwest border post partition, and their culture or faith. He refrained from indulging in this. It all comes to childhood taboos in his case, and caste as practised everywhere other than India.
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MALICIOUS GOSSIP: by Khushwant Singh.

If it were limited to what he wrote as short pieces that are collected in this and in various other books, it would be a questionably good read, most of the part anyway - he does have some sort of germ in his head so to speak in language familiar to him, in that he is not happy giving intelligent commentary and rare beautiful descriptions of people and places; he absolutely must disgust the reader in general, possibly delighting a few, by copious and explicit references either to nether parts of his own or other people; or worse, explicit description leaving the reader in no uncertainty how he viewed the other half of humanity only as a package to contain those parts.

In this he is far from content to merely insult all people with higher sensibilities or all women, including his own family. In a forward to one such collection by one of the many the young protegies of his who met him some time when she was young and he far from that, she mentions how he spoke explicitly humiliating a Nobel prize winning much revered poet of his nation and how he delighted in insulting and provoking a whole people, and one can only surmise from his copious references to various other poets from parts that separated from the motherland depriving him of home he had to forever hanker after, that this was his revenge on the motherland that gave him refuge, revenge for having been deprived of his home by those that threw out all other communities that they could not live with and demanded a separate nation via breaking up the motherland with threats of massacre executed before and during the partition.

His own parents lived in the capital, and his bringing up was in many places including the capital, but he was in tears when visiting his childhood village where he spent his early years with his grandmother, and where he is very aware of the community that surrounded them was always keeping away from them, no matter how friendly he or his community or even those in majority in the nation as a whole were, then or since. And his response is to be friendly with them, visit them, regret how they are not responding generally, and insult those that gave him not merely home but positions and honour despite not quite proven merit.

The pieces themselves are readable, no more and no less, in most part. If one misses them it is no big deal. And this can be said about all such collections of pieces by this author, perhaps even by all that he wrote.

Truth, Love & A Little Malice; by Khushwant Singh

Surprisingly for an author who was not only funded by various universities and other prestigious institutions of US, UK and India, and edited several books and several periodicals, this autobiography has inexplicable typos or spelling mistakes of trivial sort - and very noticeably so.

If one is put off by copious references and more copious descriptions of nether equipment of various characters including the author, and lacks the patience and determination to go past it to see why this person was so famous and had such status, this book is not what one ought to take up.

At that it is uncertain if one should even if one does possess the virtues needed to go through it - rewards are very few, say one reference to a charmed moonlit night with nightingale, and another to magnolias (which he does not seem to have noticed blossom in Europe too, and in India in cooler places, albeit another variety - golden from cream to gold-saffron shades, in relatively less cool places too).

Other than this, one repents having read it, especially if one is not interested in gossip and malice and huge egomania of the author, especially when it is against good people, or when he seems not to notice he is criticising those that share his most severe faults. For instance he complains about a fellow author who was more interested in precisely what he himself describes copiously, rather than blossoming fields of saffron or other beauties of India he was shown - and fails to notice the irony of the complaint (or was that a deliberate devilish act, complaining against someone else who does it, just so one says "oh, but you know, you are doing it too" and he has his laughter about how naughty he has been both ways?).

What happened when I proceeded to begin this review was almost surrealistically as if KGB knew I was going to write negatively about a small tool of their infamous boss, and proceeded to undo various settings for security of my pc - sites inviting me to buy horrendous unwanted stuff would not go away, and advertisements pretending to be chat sites where supposedly young attractive blond females kept plaguing the pages of shelfari and reappearing. When I managed to remove it all, my computer informed me they had changed the dangerous settings I had installed, and the filth reappeared. It was almost a premonition about this book, except it was after reading it and before being able to begin writing this review.

It is unlikely this guy was a tool of stalin, but you never know, after all there would not be a label to the effect would there, except he was more likely working for the other side, what with his various prestigious assignments from US mentioned extensively here - from Rockefeller foundation funding his writing about history of his people (which he assures us is the only reason he maintained his hair and dressing style for, not religion but communal identification), to teaching at various universities including Princeton. All this would point at his being a great mind and a scholar, if not for reading this book or other pieces elsewhere, where such a calibre is notable by its absence. And if he wished to hide it for sake of appearing a buffoon only so his hidden career would go unnoticed, then the various prestigious scholarly assignments and copious funding thereof by various institutions of the world is completely baffling.

The author is a product of what might transpire if the much maligned caste systems of India or even England and Europe generally - although the latter two are different from that of India, and were practised in colonies very differently when it came to local people - are demolished with no other system to take their place. The author was born into a family that was placed by sheer luck in way of destiny, in that his father was one of the builders given contract to build New Delhi, built a major part of it (and his own palatial homes in centre of the new city, with "leftover" material and labour), was knighted for the trouble apart from the wealth made on this project, and thus the family was in high circles of politics and hoi polloi of the city and the nation, with contacts that were therefore not merely local or national but international, and various prestigious assignments one after another as he himself went on giving up job after job deciding it did not suit him, having proved no merit for either the next assignment or the past one, and definitely not of the level he kept on getting more and more of.

This basically is society as it gets if all old caste systems with breeding and training in family and society is done away with - money buys everything through social contacts if not directly, while poor with real and far superior talent go begging.

Various refugees and migrants of various lands one has known over decades share this, with one another largely and specifically with this author, that they hate having had to leave for survival, they grieve and mourn those that they left, they attempt to befriend then over life just so they themselves are not guilty of having left for just reason, and they turn their grief and pain of separation into a subtle or open tool of disdain and derision against precisely the land, the nation that gave them a life, a refuge, honour and more.

This author is honest in admitting and declaring how unfriendly the people of the homeland he was separated from were, but he is not merely attempting to befriend them lifelong, he is forever denying the nation they created is doing anything wrong, even when it is all too obvious; and he disdains and more, generally and specifically, the people who made his final homeland possible at all. It is as if the freedom, the possibility of learning and achieving a social status, is all merely his due, as is destroying all sorts of people who were on the whole beyond good, while befriending dictators and worse of his earlier home.

And having done his worst in all of this he proceeds to complain about the visitor who notices filth more than beauty shown him by the author.

Why does one read this, one might ask. Apart from a wish not to be put off by his deliberate filth in the first few pages, one might wish to know more about the history of the nation told in an intimate view - his father built New Delhi, he lived amongst the hoi polloi of the land and knew people of wealth and power in Delhi over the lifetime of his long life - and one might have read another, far more interesting and better written account by another, younger, author. The aims of reading if limited to this fail, however. He is there to expose anyone of quality with a view of their backside exposed so to speak figuratively, as long as they are of majority of India. Or anything respected by the said majority.

For example he congratulates himself about having saved Penguin India by pointing at an extremely offensive part of Ginsberg's book describing all Goddesses of India as prostitutes, final result being the book was published in India without the said offensive part but elsewhere with it, with no protest from either India or majority of India, but he stands by ban on Salman Rushdie in India, with no comment in that context about freedom of speech or authors.

One wonders if the hypocrisy is deliberately exposed by him here, just to see if he could set fire to majority of India by informing them of Ginsberg's offensive remarks, or if he wished to see if they read him at all and reacted if they did. Wonder if it was a disappointment, in that so far there seems to have been no protest against Ginsberg in India.

If one does not read this, one has lost very little.

Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits; by Rahul Pandita

Once it was a political play between various empires, England and Russia and Turkey and France, to control what they variously named Near East, Levant, or otherwise. The objective of the so called Great Game was to control the landmass from Mediterranean to India - that is, India as it had always been understood since antiquity  until 1947, before it was "partitioned" to suit "religious" fanatics who could not live with "others" but insisted anyway on occupying others' lands and then killing them.

This was especially important to England for not losing the so called Jewel in the Crown that was India. So they played it better than others, divided the various lands, and India too before they had to leave. This last bit meant creating a new "nation" that was in no way different from India except it was given over to the fanatics who would kill thousands in name of faith, with really the lust for killing and theft driving them more than anything else, by carving up India and thereby encouraging the killings. India the new, truncated land found it hard to come together but she did, and the thorns or bullets were various pieces dominated by the fanatics either because a ruler was of them (even if majority in that state was not), or else because a good proportion but not necessarily majority was of them (those states where majority were of them were already given to the new carved out portion, whether they wished or not, for example the Frontier Province, now renamed Waziristan, as most parts in the carved out piece are often redivided and at the very least renamed, just so no one could without confusion refer to them).

And this became an immediate danger to newly independent India, what with so called "tribals" revolt in Kashmir, which in reality was nothing but tribals from outside Kashmir - from the newly carved piece of India - being sent along with military support, to destabilise India in every way, beginning with attacks on Hindu populace to continue, after a million or so killed so more could be induced to leave and the new "nation" was limited to one religion.

Kashmir however had a monarch who saw finally the wisdom of accepting India instead of his wish to be separate as a nation, and once accession was signed Indian military could protect Kashmir. This, the new nation of Pakistan understood, could only be changed by the usual tactics of old since a millennia - attack, lie, propaganda, massacres, deny attacks - rather than the new civil ways of UN and appeals.

Kashmir had been at the receiving end of attacks and massacres by muslims from north and west as long as rest of India had, and populations had been massacred and converted at sword point for that millennia and more. And now the case for "majority" of population in Kashmir was made by Pakistan, with no thought to the question of what if India used the same thinking and insisted only majority live in India.

This book is the documented tale of the most recent decades and the horrors suffered by Hindu populations in Kashmir at hands of terrorists, armed with money and weapons provided freely by US that were meant for throwing out USSR from Afghanistan (never mind the reality of the invitation to USSR by the then Afghan ruler to help him control just such Islamic terror in his nation), with false propaganda and more. False, because most Hindus of the northwest and north, or east, were thrown out and had to relocate to India as refugees, only due to massacres they suffered at hands of such terrorists who changed locals, their neighbours and friends, into beasts of horror more often than humanitarian helpers (yes, the latter happened too, and this author acknowledges it as much as any other Indian, including refugees who had to flee for life). If not for such horrors, not only Kashmir but both Pakistan and Bangladesh would not be as devoid of people of other religions as they now are. India has people of more religions than perhaps even the rest of the world and so would have been both these pieces carved out of India.

The horrors faced by Kashmiri Hindus match those of Germany during and before WWII in every way, and the only difference apparent is of organisation - Germans were more organised than anyone else as they always are at everything material; and the terrorists entering Kashmir whether locals converted via sojourn into pakistan for the purpose of terror indoctrination or total strangers from as far as Levant and Africa arriving to wreak havoc on hapless peaceful intellectuals, farmers and people of other such occupations, these terrorists were all too primitive and without any shame about their main purpose being kill, rape, loot.

Importance of this work is of documentation, of these horrors they faced in their homeland in Kashmir, at hands of neighbours and strangers, and also of documentation of the superb history of the Hindu populace of Kashmir and their achievements in realms of knowledge and more.

What is also a horror is how these people's travails were ignored for the two decades that saw propaganda against Hindus in another part of India, and against persecution of muslims of Bosnia. It is as if Hindu were of least importance, not only in an era when US became supreme and Russia lost the great game finally on world stage, but also in their own homeland.

That India is secular is merely due to precisely this characteristic being an integral part of Hindu religion where any path to Divine is considered as good as any other, and conversion an unnecessary idiocy. Fact remains that even if India is officially secular and the only officially Hindu nation is the tiny Nepal, over a billion Hindus of India and diaspora across the world has no other homeland other than India. So this second class citizenship in one's own homeland politically, in fact albeit not de jure, via the rule of past decades and due media falling in step with powers behind on world stage, only makes it a subdued horror for the whole populace on a level that Kashmir Hindus suffered for a long time on a far more open level.

One ought to thank whatever powers made it possible for the author to document this tale, if one cares about such matters as truth, over and above the propaganda and powers and swords dangling at throats if one so cares.

Arranged Marriage: by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

Even without checking with the date of publication, this seems to be an early work by the author, going by content and the raw quality, and the germs of later works of hers one finds here. At that, the themes she explores later with a more wide canvas in other works are worth it, and some others one wishes as one reads she would revisit and explore more. The latter fits for example the separations and self discoveries that women come through, which might be a description of more than one or two of these stories.

Here she is looking at lives of women from India living in US, either having arrived as brides unfamiliar with all but rudimentary level of familiarity with English language and west and US generally, or a later generation culturally if not in time of women who are living in US as students, pursuing an academic life, and not quite separated from mainstream life there either, as the brides are.

The readership she might have found uncertain, in that most readers from US would find this only marginally interesting if that, since India in general and Indian culture in particular are baffling to most west and a facile attitude of derision or outright hostility are often easier for those not quite brought up to see good in others even if unfamiliar. Readership from India might have been equally questionable, on the whole, since the author is so courageous in exploring lives of women from India living in US, and dealing with intimate details of life. Few are really bothered or willing to see reality of these concerns, and most would call it a few names and leave it at that. So courage it must have been for the author to be open in writing about lives of women and their concerns, without objectifying them, as most people do in every corner of the globe.

One is glad she did have such courage and wrote.

Mightier than the Sword; by Jeffrey Archer.

The Clifton Chronicles: Book 5, Mightier than the Sword (2015) by Jeffrey Archer

Clifton Chronicles have had readers hanging for the next chapter from the beginning, and book 4 was no exception. Book 5 deviates from the series slightly - someone might have pointed out to the author that clear definitions of good people separated from bad is not quite considered literature by elite, and confusion or at least grey shades must be stroked in. So he has gone major in the adorable little boy who has grown up, unlike his adopted sister and in reality half sister of his mom (if not of both his parents) who got killed in the earlier one, and takes the pick for being shaded grey. He is good, but feels the need to prove himself adequate as a man in providing for his life on his own, and strays from being perfect on a level understood by all good people, albeit within law. This provides the shading, while the major themes are Virginia Fenwick, Major Fisher and co championing vendetta against Barringtons for being good, trying to destroy them, not quite succeeding yet but not quite failed completely either, nor quite vanquished themselves - that is left for the book 6, surprisingly, since initially readers were promised only five books in the series. Since readers are hooked, more the better, and the series could go on as long as the author lives.

This one introduces a new factor, that of cold war and suppression of authors in particular and intelligentsia in general by former Soviet regime; one is reminded of various real life figures who suffered this in the figure of Babakov whose book about Uncle Joe has been all but completely destroyed and has only Harry Clifton for a possible saviour, since not only he champions his cause, using his own status as an author célébré, but also uses his status as a peripheral diplomat to travel to USSR to get a hidden copy out, and has other arrows to his bow when caught. It would be delightful if Archer did not make officials of USSR look quite so stupid, apart from smug, but then he is looking at the world from English point of view, only slightly less obvious than US and France - and of course, Germany - in its derogatory view of the world in general and anyone opposing the west in particular.

Giles Barrington's new involvement meanwhile comes as a surprise, it is all too facile, and while he is sincere and his object d'amour not yet obvious about whether she is indeed involved or is a weapon used by east block to trap a member of parliament of England. It could be both, and then one would have the wait to see which way she finally steps.

Oh, and the ship did not sink - nor was there loss of life, unlike promised at the end of the last book. But the miscreants escaped, for the most part, including and especially the south american rich villain Martinez. So threats to Barringtons, while dormant, continue, apart from the Fenwick. Perhaps the two are to be brought together in the next book or one after that? Readers of course hope the Barringtons survive and the good win.

Fraternity: by John Galsworthy.

Galsworthy does not cease to amaze. This work is perhaps more amazing in some ways, even when compared to his most famous Forsyte series.

Fraternity begins almost as an afterthought of a yawn, with a small gathering of various persona at an English uppercaste but not quite aristocrat family, two couples where two sisters are married to two brothers and the father of the sisters lives with one of the couples, while the other has a daughter almost engaged to a cousin on her mother's side who is serious about helping the poor. The father, Stone, is writing a book titled Universal Brotherhood of Man, and is dead serious about the whole thought of how humanity is a fraternity. And then the other half he has included not quite explicitly emerges to be a serious omission in terms of thought.

Stone is living with the daughter who is an artist and proud and sensitive - and has lost love of her life, her husband, by expecting much and not letting him know but wait, and baffle him. She is a painter and the young model she used lately needs help, employment, guidance, and more. So the young model is set up as a help for Stone's project to help him copy his fresh works everyday. She lives renting a room in proximity with the seamstress who is employed by the sisters, and the brutish husband of the seamstress begins to be proprietory about the model, and his dark brooding about her occupation in the family and possible connection with the husband of the artist is the beginning of the trouble.

In a society where decency is above all, progressive thought conflicts with old tradition and fraternity of humanity is not in accord with castes where a low caste poor young woman could only be a servant of one sort or another to an upper caste male. The gentleman is sympathetic, and would rather help the young woman, since she has no other guardian, but he fails to see the various complications such innocent help sets in motion - her dependence on him, his being attracted, the jealousy of the poor brute married to the seamstress, the disturbing of balance in his marriage, and more.

Galsworthy takes it to critical planes with some home truths via the young daughter of the family visiting the poor in company of her suitor, and a couple of small and not so small events. Before one knows it is all at a critical stage, and one wonders how it could have come so far with such decent people merely being sympathetic to poor. Decency of people involved does not help any, however, when it comes to it - what does help is the old tradition, caste, where a gentleman may not consort with a woman of low caste. He is not acting on tradition however, he has instincts too finicky, and there is no other way of defining them than in terms of what is called caste.

Much told and many questions but all in the almost impressionistic tradition of words painting a Monet in literature, where one sees only a gentle mist and not much of strong lines, but a picture of a society in churning of times where empire is graduating to a commonwealth of republics and caste is giving way, with tragedies of dire sort in the turmoil depicted with force that hit one and one wonders how the mist overlaying could have hidden it all so - and that is Galsworthy.

The Mirror of Beauty; by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi.

A large part of Urdu literature and related mindset, from related social films in India to the general mindset of a section of the related society (and relatively not known for certain just how large that section is), is still stuck in a time warp of the era gone long before British empire took over,even now. There is nostalgia and more, a feeling of a right to rule India even, and resentment at that right being not handed over by the general populace at large willingly, the said general populace being still non Muslim, a huge defeat for the religion that converted a swath of known world from western Africa to central and parts of southeastern Asia in a short period of a century and then got mired in India, where victory in battlefields was easier than winning over minds, hearts and souls.

In fact this book is about the days of transition from Mughal rule in parts and other Islamic rulers in various parts, with few Hindu rulers here and there, all of this in the process of being taken over by the rule of East India company, and is mostly a lament about how beauty pervaded the Muslim world in every sphere from clothes to poetry, food to perfumes, manners and etiquette to living arrangements, and how it was all destroyed mindlessly by the new rulers.

This book is set in time that predates the first war of independence of India post which England or British empire in the name of the then new young queen Victoria took over rule of India, which in fact was the largest and most prized part of it.
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About painting and art and craft of India, music of India, carpets of India, poetry in Urdu (the name for language of commoners of court during Islamic rule in parts of India where official and court languages were Persian, Arabic and Central Asian while languages of India were as much despised by rulers as people of India), along with poetry in Persian and carpets of central Asia and more.

And about ghosts and spirits and men and women of Islamic culture who are only supposed to have emotions about their Prophet and his progeny, and not about their surroundings, but happen to fall in love with a portrait of a young woman of India supposedly not made from life since that would be a sin and offence in Islam against faith and the person portrayed and her family.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014.
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The story one is enticed with at the beginning, of a young Muslim woman from India of neither wealthy or so called noble family and nor of so called oldest profession either, who is pursued by a young Englishman of reasonably decent but not upper class background working for East India Company at a reasonably good level in India, and of her progeny and descendants until the present era, begins about post one fifth of the tale later, with her ancestry of the painter and other artisans preceding it. Here the narrative picks up a bit, with the spirited youngest child of the family protesting she is every bit as good and deserving of choosing a life for herself as a male, only to get herself a position of comfort but questionable legality and no standing in either English or Indian society of any good standing post her choice of living with the Englishman - neither side recognise the union legally, and few Englishmen do legalise it, and that only when they have given up any thought of returning to England.

But the curiosity the original description of the prologue had awakened, which is what kept one going until this point albeit a bit puzzled with the subsequent complete unrelatedness until it connects at this point with the figure of this young woman Wazir Khanum appearing finally, is now changed into a mixed bag of reactions and enchantment the author wishes to induce in the reader is missing by several miles if not by light years. And that too might come to pass. 

Friday, May 23, 2014.
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The  story becomes immensely more interesting after Wazir Khanum, the character one was introduced to within the first page and waited forever for to appear and finally met when a sixth or more of the narrative one had ploughed through with boring repetitions of long winded names and invocations of piety in midst of wine and women replete parties, has settled in Delhi - and met important figures of that era at a party thrown by the local British Resident (i.e., practically governor) of Delhi. Some of them are known since and much favourite too, particularly the famous poet Mirza Ghalib.

Sunday, May 25, 2014.
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If only there were a better editor for this, someone who could prune or shuffle the way the story is told, especially related to the first fifth or so part, the book would benefit and the reader not require quite so much determination to finish something that is so very tedious until then, and baffling too in that there seem to be three separate stories connected by a thread very thin until then. The story becomes increasingly gripping when the central character introduced during the first few pages makes her appearance post description of her ancestors' four or so generations from Rajasthan to Kashmir to Delhi, and then one begins to be mildly curious if this is related to history in surrounding details if not in the major characters. By the time one begins to suspect the main characters are historical as well, and hence the second part after the introduction describing the researching men and their meeting in the British library, and the protagonist at that point (the author of the book?) receiving papers from solicitors of the older man and encountering a ghost or spirit of the central character, Wazir Khanam.

After her third son and his poetry described and the nom the plume she gives him, it begins to dawn on one that this might be more historical than one thought, in that the main characters are historical too - Wazir Khanam being the mother of a famous poet Dagh of Urdu, and subsequently a bride of one of the princes of Delhi Mughal regime a few years before the regime was wiped out by the British taking over the country completely in all but name. They left a few hundred independent kingdoms in place, but that was merely a convenience for the British, so the administrative responsibilities and burdens could be reduced, a la their deal in Egypt in particular and the then Turkey in general, which - latter - was subsequently divided into over half a dozen nations.

Towards the end where she marries a prince, one gets a glimmer of a possibility that this figure is historical too, known in her own subsequent name Shaukat Mahal, bestowed by her new father in law the Mughal ruler. If only a better edited version had been published, or at least one with a preface to this effect, one might have read it with less tedium and more relaxed anticipation of the familiar pieces of history while being able to enjoy various long descriptions the author goes into while the tale is spinning off one is unsure about who, whether someone related to the character of Wazir Khanum introduced or a completely different one related only by a painting seemingly similar to one of her. And if a reader is not anxious in suspense of this sort, the tedium might have been enjoyment of the details instead.


Monday, June 2, 2014.
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The lack of coherence and the dispersed nature of the narrative at the beginning leaves one confused, and it is only later that the historic nature of the story begins to emerge; with a better editing of the tale as it is told a reader might be more interested and firmly rooted in spite of the long and detailed descriptions that dam the flow of the story routinely, and while the descriptions and details - descriptions of clothes, fabric, paint, paintings, carpets, buildings, architecture, music, ... in short every single detail one might notice at some point or other in life, and is of interest when a discourse about life and culture in a historical tale of a nation is concerned - have their own importance, the storytelling might improve if at the beginning one were not quite so fogged about what the author is trying to do.

As it is, one is unsure if this is one story or several related by a thread, well until one fifth of the story is over and the main character makes her appearance; the historicity is only apparent slowly as major historic characters and details begin to connect with the main characters of the story. And to top it all the book deals with major historic events in a peremptory fashion, mentioning them in passing or not at all, and very little or nothing of tumultuous happenings is given; at the end one is dissatisfied with quite so much not mentioned at all whether of history or the main story.

For example, on the story front, about Wazir Khanam's first two children, who are the link between the author or the person who furnished her portrait and other papers according to first few chapters, little or nothing is mentioned at all after she has to leave them in care of their British relatives who then refuse to allow them to meet. On the history front it would be of interest to know the events after the point where the author ends the story, and more. And even in the main tale much is left out where the story ends.

One wonders if the author was tired out writing, or the book was too long and the publishers insisted on trimming it. In which - either - case it would benefit tremendously by cutting short the repeated long and very boring paragraph long adjectives used for the so called nobility of Muslims every time one is mentioned, until one gets used to not reading them at all. This overemphasis on a verbal kowtowing to every such character by the author works more towards breeding contempt for the whole outlook of this attitude, rather than any possible interest, and far from any glamour or sheen one might feel. One rather gets the feeling that it was a good thing this whole set with this attitude received a setback. And the emphasis on one particular ruler clan being chief in the land, with author's attitude of presenting others as interlopers - never mind that it was those he reveres that were actually outsiders and those he paints as not quite deserving due to not being of foreign origin that were of India and hence with more right to be there in any capacity at all - has the same effect.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014.
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Some of the details of life of upper class or normal Muslim life as mentioned here are limited to just that - Muslim society, upper class or otherwise. The author neglects to mention this detail, and perhaps assumes it applies to all India, but it emphatically does not, and what is more it would horrify anyone of culture stemming from India rather than a desert or cold land far away in another part of the huge continent of Asia.

In the process of describing Wazir Khanum's union with her second lover the author describes as his habit much about clothes and this time some description of changing habits is given. The author states that normal people would wear a set of clothes for three to four days and then send it for wash, and upper class would wear expensive clothes some seven or eight times and then give them away rather than send them for wash.

This last is perhaps, at most, true of his society, but definitely would be considered unclean, not to mention silly and extravagantly wasteful to the extent of sin by wasting money that could be used better for family or even charity, by general Indian society. As for normal people and clothes, what is considered proper in general Indian society is to bathe every morning (post other cleansing inner and outer), wear fresh washed clothes, and have any clothes worn until then washed, usually at home, whether by someone employed for the purpose or a member of the family - and in middle class with good habits inculcated, usually everyone washes one's own used clothes before one bathes, and hangs them out to dry (drying being a matter of few hours) after dressing in fresh clothes.

Expensive clothes might be sent out for cleaning, or cleaned by a specialist employed, but again, wearing them several times would be considered unclean (if one is not given to aping ruling class fashions as a lot of people are), and giving them away for no good reason (such as their being worn out or given to someone such as a comparatively poor relative) sin against wealth and the Giver of all one has.

But these seem to be minor in comparison with what is more of a horror, a description of water room of most Muslim homes as given by the author. This seems to combine not only drinking and bathing water in one place along with other drinks, but also facility for relieving oneself, something that would make general Indian recoil in horror.

In most of normal homes in India, which is to say not the one room tenements of slums of cities and even those, eating and drinking places and objects are strictly separated from any relieving facilities, with not only walls but if possible by distance, away from the main house and from entrance. This is in accordance with the outhouse concept of western mode, and in India even bathing was separated from relieving facility with the former being within home while the latter out and far if possible, and separated at the very least if not. For that matter even in Germany (and perhaps in most of Europe) the toilet in the bathroom is used only for minor purposes, with the separate one aired much more used for serious ones.
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At another point or more than one, the author through his characters and otherwise points at how the then ascendant foreign rulers were deliberate in despising and breaking the rules, the civil codes and more of the previous society and rulers, i.e., of Mughals in particular and Islamic upper class or culture in general. It is ironic in slightly wider perspective in more than one way - the author takes no note of the fact that this is merely a hardship now visited on those that had done the same to India in the name of their own culture and faith for centuries before, in every way possible; and, moreover, that the new foreign rulers were doing it also to India in general, not merely to Muslims, he completely neglects to mention. Or perhaps even to notice?


Tuesday, May 27, 2014.
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Faruqi attempts to make it all enchanting and so forth, with copious descriptions and that too in lyrical style of courtly Urdu translated into English, but it does not translate well, far from it - it is tedious to read and one needs grit and determination to go on with it. What is worse it is incorrect in details of geography and history and spirit of people, so much so as to make it false, so one wonders if in writing this tale it is merely an attempt on part of the writer to do propaganda of his faith and culture in a (very) thinly veiled manner, to lure people via claims of beauty not quite all that visible once inside the cover, and not that much on the cover either.

That he uses a famous work of art of India, a portrait from Rajasthan of Kishengadh school or style of painting, makes it no better, any more than his descriptions of beauty of Kashmir (which he thinks he is subtle in insisting is not part of India even when Lahore and all the rest of the since partitioned part was, right up to 1947), by mentioning India over and over as separate, albeit Lahore not quite so much. Such anomalies he is as unable to think through as he is of looking at a map to see precisely what direction various places he mentions are with respect to one another. Not always, just enough to make one suspect he is in fact incapable of reading one, and is being trifled with by an assistant used for the purpose whose sense of humour comes through in this way.

But to mistake the spirit of Maratha independence and to portray their rule in the way he does is nothing short of wishful black washing of history and people that will invoke mere derision for his attempt. If any of them read this that is, which is sort of unlikely. If they did the book is likely to become a party joke at all sorts of youth events. That should take the sting out of serious disapproval from seniors and scholars.

One of the most shocking and disgusting descriptions involves a father slaying a daughter, her head cut off in public, because she is portrayed by a painter with accurate details of her face, and this involves dishonour of the ruler who is the father - who the writer gives as a Hindu, rather than Muslim, ruler of the region where the Kishengarh paintings are from. The daughter is shamed before the people before she is questioned why she allowed someone to look at her face, and her head cut off before she can answer, which she disdains to do - and one may very well conclude she had never before been seen by anyone outside her immediate family, since she maintains her pride and righteousness. In all likelihood the painting is traditional and if it portrays anyone it is someone long dead, whom the young girl happens to look like for a reason or without one.

Again, it takes a determination without reason to further torture oneself to read it after this, but it comes very early in the book and is unrelated to the story told until then about two scholars interested in research and details of lives of obscure Urdu poetry and poets.

Incidentally the word Urdu literally is related to a particular variety of daal (daal being dry beans consumed on everyday twice basis through India including its partitioned parts), one that happens to be black and white - black skin and white interior; so it is the language of those that happen to have black skin but are white in their heart, as per courts of Islamic rulers of India; i.e., those rulers and their non Indian court is held superior due to being not quite so dark, and local people despised due to being dark.

This racism continues in Pakistan, even within families, with those who can afford to do so whitewashing their future generations by marrying "white" women from as far as Europe, according to another writer from that part of what was until a few decades ago still India. Yet another writer mentions how dark people were preferred in ancient India until foreign rule, but that probably is merely true in that people were not despised or looked down on for skin colour, rather than any preference of colour of any part of skin or hair or eyes, one way or another.

So the eulogising of Urdu which usually goes with hidden or not quite so hidden despising of any other - every other - Indian language is a relic of racist courts of a rule that culminated in European rule superimposing and substituting for other non Indian rulers of India. Which again is in harmony with attempt to impose one's own faith over the world, and to wipe out any other thought or perception. Fortunately this failed in India, although it succeeded in most of the world, and in parts of India too - after all a sword is as tempting to avoid at any cost when pointed at one's throat as a piece of bread is to avail for a starving poor whose normal share of harvest is taken away for feeding the soldiers of the colonial foreigner ruler. Such famines have been known in Ireland as much as in India. Yet the conversion attempts succeeded far less in both places.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014.
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A telling point about the racism of the Islamic rule is a small detail evident in the book - the author, through the characters of 19th century and presumably others of the ilk of previous centuries were only more so, use the word "Hindi" for the language that was until then in courts of Islamic rulers and is now universally called Urdu, wiping out any possible recognition of the fact that India has well over a dozen major languages and over ten times that many dialects, many for each of the major languages, and that this language they spoke was superimposed heavily with foreign languages of the neighbourhood and not really what Indian people spoke but was a commoners' version of what Muslims considered respectable languages, which amounts to scant respect if any at all for any Indian language, much less for the rich ancient culture.

Sunday, May 25, 2014.
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And just in case anyone might possibly mistake him of any sympathy or loyalty towards India rather than the conquerors from nearby lands within Asia who superimposed their languages and culture far more than the latter British, he spends about a page in praise of a Mughal (really this line was only Mughal or Mongol through a daughter of one, and it was Europe that called them Mughals while they themselves did not to begin with, being familiar with the distinction) who butchered not only his own brothers elder or otherwise, but imprisoned his father too, in quest of power and throne; who is known for having banned music, and for his own people (by which it is clear it was not the locals he despised but his own faith and culture) took out a procession to mourn demise of Music.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014.
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One of the parts describes thugs and their ways about the time before British government took over from the until then rule of East India Company. After describing the unsafe circumstances and state of road travel that then existed and the grisly murders including that of the third husband of Wazir Khanam, the author proceeds to explain thugs and their beliefs and practices. In this process he gives a lore that is a deep part of culture of India and is an ancient Indian legend, of  Bhavani, the Mother Goddess - only, post the point of her having vanquished demons and saving the universe, here it is distorted beyond recognition in both spirit and as it is known through India.

It is unclear if the distortion given here by the author of the legend of Bhavani, the Mother Goddess of pantheon of Indian culture from ancient times on and very alive, is really a tradition of the beliefs of the thieving murderers - literal meaning of thugs - or else the author is embellishing it for delight of all those that would have it that culture was brought to India by outsiders and not more than a few centuries ago at that, which conveniently allows such foreign rulers and their rule to be forgiven for all their atrocities and travesties of justice.

And the author after all is all praises for the infamous Aurangzeb and his rule known for despotic nature that gave rise to various attempts to free India from such rule, while mentioning the benign and universally respected Akbar mostly in tandem with the marauding Babar who never liked India and really wanted to rule central Asia as a matter of conviction of a divine mandate for his role in life - only, this belief was shared by his multitude of cousins who routed him out repeatedly, and he turned south to India and hated it.

Akbar on the other hand was vastly different, but is less respected by the author and his ilk for perhaps being less of a tyrant and more of a benign ruler for all of his people including Indians, rather than dividing his benefic and opposite aspects along lines of whether someone was of Indian ancestry and culture or foreign and granting automatic superior status to latter as most foreign rulers did until then - and, it seems, well into their twilight when it was turn of British to rule. Then, of course, the erstwhile upper class complained of the British unfair treatment meted out to them - and judging from this work the author is in sympathy and accord with those attitudes.


Monday, June 2, 2014.
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