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Book Review: Freedom at Midnight

Vishal Kale — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 05:52:56 +0000

This is a book that has got rave reviews and tremendous fame across the world, a book which supposedly celebrates the phenomenon that is India.

PATKATHA

The book purports to be about how we become Independent, in which endeavour it fails magnificently. Instead, it is all about 2 “heroes” – : Mr. Louise Mountbatten and Mahatma Gandhi. The net effort is an extremely disjointed and disappointing effort that comes across as a work of crass writing. This is particularly because the book has pandered to western tastes and opinions by wavering all over the place, spending entire chapters on hinduism, the habits of maharajas etc. These have obviously nothing to do with the freedom struggle… in fact, there is even a whole page examining the defecation habits in India!!!!

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT THE BOOK

it reveals aspects of Indian history that you didn’t know existed, namely:

The personality, charisma and magic of Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Direct Action Day in August 1946, which, for obvious reasons, is not common knowledge. What was the Action Day? Read the book! I want you to experience the same emotions that I did.
The Indian Independence Act, 1947. Surprised? Read the book to find more!
The British compulsions leading to our Independence
The importance of the maharajas in the Indepedence equation, and the british policy relating to them
The communal situation as it existed in 1947 It also reveals an interesting point of view in relation to Hindu – Muslim relations
It reveals the events leading upto the riots of 1947, and exactly how they came about, their causes and effects. It tells facts not known.
The book also reveals a lot about the lifestyle of the English opressors in India. The author doesn’t regard them as oppressors, btw. That’s my take. Hey, maybe I am wrong: who am I to question the famous author duo? Maybe Independence was the worst thing to happen to us!
It reveals a lot of the politico-legal situation in Pre-Indepedence India
It details the governance of the Britishers
It details the life of the Maharajas of India. Problem is, too much space has been given to this: an entire chapter, no less!
It gives a fascinating, blow-by-blow account of the period from June 1947 leading upto Independence day
It gives an idea of why we have succeeded as a nation, and why our enemy Pakistan did not. That, to my mind, is one of the biggest take-aways of the book
It gives a fascinating close-up look at the personalities of the day: which no history book will reveal
Kashmir: It gives a detailed blow-by-blow account of the Kashmir problem… the book is worth a read for this alone
The division of India has been gone into in considerable detail, and makes for enthralling reading Not only that, a poignant picture has been quite successfully created by the authors that tends to give an overall picture of the impossible task before the map-maker. This whole part is dealt with very well, and gives us a glance at the hidden part of our independence story, as no history book has given in any detail about this aspect of the Independence saga.

THE TWO HEROES OF THE BOOK

The book is all about Mr. and Mrs. Mountbatten till the period upto September – October 1947. The book starts with the events leading upto the appointment of Mr. Mountbatten to the post of Viceroy of British India, and goes on to detail his role in the Independence of our country. As you go through the pages, you find it tells a tale of Independence through the eyes of Mr. Louise Mountbatten. This isn’t such a bad thing, as gives a perspective which has not been revealed to us through our history books. You get to know a lot of events – small and big – as a result of this. It reveals the hidden part of history, like the personalities, the events not mentioned in history books as they were deemed unsuitable etc. {More later}

The second Hero is our very own Mahatma Gandhi, who, like most westerners tend to, is eulogized. Throughout the book, the sceptre of Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi looms large over every page, every paragraph. Read the book… you will understand the Man Mahatma Gandhi much better.

THE PROBLEMS
The book has attempted to do too much too soon is the way I shall put it. A few observations should clarify the point:

This is a book about India – and yet, more than 75% of the reference works are by western authors. That includes books about Hinduism – note that point: a book about India which uses, as a reference, books by western authors about its religions!!!

The book details a lot of “facts” and facts {if you get my point} about Hinduism. No problem with that – but when this runs into pages and pages, you begin to wonder what the heck does this have to do with the basic story? For example, an entire page has been devoted to the “call of nature” style of Indians!!! What is the relevance of that to the topic? And, for the record, the style described therein is, well, obviously archaic and limited to a particular sect. But, the author makes it sound as if every hindu is the same. The passages on our religion are so obviously naïve and western in their tone, that they set me on the track of the references used. Mostly western books by western authors – in a book about India, written in India! Similarly, the whole chapter about the Maharajas is completely out of place in the book. Yes, they were important to the equation – but not their bedroom habits – in detail!
The book comes across as a second – rate effort because of these digressions from the main theme. In doing so, the authors have attempted to play upto the misconceptions regarding India, and make the book more “masaledar”. The whole episodes relating to Hinduism and Maharajas etc could have been curtailed.
The book also downplays the roles of all the other Indian players, like Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, and making them sound like pawns running after Mountbatten. Yes, his role must have been vital – no doubt about that. But not to the extent stated.

“The british left with a debt of xxxxxxxxx pounds from a nation that they were supposed to have exploited”…. a line that tells volumes about the attitudes of the authors

MAHATMA GANDHI

Mahatma Gandhi… the name is drilled into our head, our consciousness, our entire being since the beginning of schooling. Mahatma Gandhi… a great man, we are told. Mahatma Gandhi… the man who got us independence, we are told. Mahatma Gandhi… the man who defied the British, we are told. Mahatma Gandhi… the man who gave us Dandi Salt March, Quit India, Round Table, Fast Unto Death we are told.

It is a matter of deep chagrin and discomfort that we are told little about the man himself, about how he wrought what he did, about his qualities, his frailties, his charisma. Our history is replete with stories about him… but none come close to giving us an understanding of the Phenomenon of Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. And this is where this book scores – despite its obvious pro-British bias and almost scandalous aspersions on various aspects of India.

From the first page of the book to the last, the shadow of Mahatma Gandhi prevails on each and every page. Saying any more would be sacrilege – as I would very much prefer that each one of you Indians read for yourself and discover the facts. That is the redeeming point of the book. On the negative side, you have an imposing Mr. Louie Mountbatten being presented as something of a cross of Moses, Jesus Christ, Manu, Chanakya and Bismark all rolled into one invincible person. On the other side, you have Mahatma Gandhi – the Phenomenon.

The book delves into great detail about Mahatma Gandhi, his qualities, his specialties, his frailties and his style of operation. It gives the reader a fabulous insight into the man – which makes it a must read for all Indians, in my opinion for what it is worth! It delves with the amazing control he had over the Indian masses, their devotion for him, his regard for them and his control over them. It gives the reader some idea about how he became what he was.

It also tells a story of increasing distances between The Mahatma and his protégés in later years in his life. The way the rift begins, and his increasing isolation are very convincingly covered. While most of these aspects are known to us, the presentation highlights the increasing isolation of India’s first son, and has been presented very painfully. It will bring a lump in your throat as well as a bit of anger at both The Mahatma as well as his protégés. Now that is some feat by the authors!

THE ASSASINATION
Of equal weightage is the detailed treatment of the plot to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi – how it was planned, the obstacles, the modus operandi, the motives, the main players, the actual execution, the investigation and the final result. This is given good exposure in the book, and gives us an insight into one of the closed chapters of our history. I will not say more: read the book for details!

The most interesting part of this section of the book is that the main players have been extensively interviewed by the authors, which lends authenticity to the overall scenario. The detail provided is indeed exceptional, and makes for an enthralling read. Here, the authors are in their element.

There are several books by other authors that offer a deeper insight into the precise historical sequence of events – Jaswant Singh, Shashi Tharoor, Bipin Chandra et al…. this book differs in that it offers a first-hand view, which gives a nice insight into personalities. So, the way to do it is to read this book ,and then any of the others mentioned above, which will give the reader a 360 degree view of the events!

Freedom At Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins

admin — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 18:58:00 +0000

Here, I am attempting to review a classic historical treatise, which has won acclaim for itself from diverse corners of the world. I feel inadequate. To exacerbate my feeling of inadequacy, the fact that it has been more than a month since I finished this 700 page long book looms large over my head. Still, I have now been infected by this incurable urge of expressing my view about any and every book I read. So this post, essentially, is my ‘view‘, not a ‘review‘ of Freedom At Midnight.

History is not a hailed discipline in our education system. It is pursued by those whom science rejects and commerce repels. Even still, those who brag about their knowledge of historical occurrences do so on the basis of extensive reading of world history- the wars, the revolutions, the socio-economic evolution. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with it, but how many of us are actually aware of the history of India, and I here mean that part of Indian history which has perhaps been pivotal in shaping the landscape of India as we know it today? All of us have a decent idea about the Indian National Movement, the struggle for freedom, the Gandhis, the Nehrus, the Patels, the Partition; but are we really aware of what was it that went into making India one of the world’s most successful secular democracies?

Lapierre and Collins, through their characteristic exhaustive research, attempt to answer the above question, and a lot many more. Their research was conducted precisely to recreate the drama and the hysteria surrounding just one event, perhaps the most important in the history of Modern India- that of Independence, concomitant to which was the Partition. The idea that I would be reading about 700 pages delineating just one event, however mammoth its significance, was both, intriguing and putting off. I am glad that intrigue prevailed. This book is not a mere collection of words, or recollection of incidents. This book is a magnum opus. And had it not contained its own set of controversial detailing, it might as well have been an indispensable reading for all students of history in India. For me, it still serves much as an authoritative text. When you go through page after page of tireless details, a certain amount of credibility and an acceptance of the veracity of facts builds up inside you along with respect for the authors for their painful investigation of even the minutest of events surrounding India’s independence.

For those not used to Lapierre and Collins’ writings- and they do have to their credit other historical works of unquestionable repute, viz, Paris Is Burning and O Jerusalem- the opening chapters of the book can baffle the reader with both, their verbosity and a little over-the-top detailing. However, that is how the authors set the scene. When you revisit events from Indian history via the narration of these authors, you will be certain to feel a thrill and gush of personal emotions even though everything they’ve written about is a veritable anachronism in the 21st century. Their book is layered with interesting trivia, the most interesting perhaps being the chapter dealing with the lifestyle, the essentially eccentric and amusing lifestyle of Indian Maharajas. Their role in consolidated Indian politics becomes relevant when the independence plan grants them an autonomy to decide which side of the border to join, or to remain independent. More trivia about the division of state property when India was being partitioned can leave you astonished, with anecdotes you would perhaps want to sit over with a coffee and share with your friends.

The book begins with the appointment of Lord Mountbatten as the last Viceroy of India, and goes onto scan in detail many incidents gone unnoticed by famed historians. Particularly interesting are chapters dealing with Cyril Radcliffe’s predicament. He was the cartiographer deployed to undertake the surgical division of Indian mainland, the irony being he had never ever visited India prior to this assignment. The bloodbath which preceded and followed partition has been narrated in a manner to leave you shocked and stirred. Marvelous are the portions dealing in an elaborate manner with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

What I personally loved about the book was the theatrics. Many events, including the riots, were not just described, but narrated as a story from the perspective of that one person who could be easily lost in a crowd, but who as an individual was profoundly affected by the same. The story builds up on you, in a way that you understand the magnitude and consequences of events you read as dull parts of draggy history text. The book dithers a bit too much upon the role of Lord Mountbatten, gloriously described, in the pre and post independence times, so much so that you are forced to feel if the authors had a predilection towards him. However, the latter half of the book more than redeems itself with the kind of aura it builds around the person who inhabits the very soul of India- Mahatma Gandhi. Many a book, including his autobiography, have I read about him, but none has made me fall in love and awe of him as much as Freedom At Midnight. The book also paints interesting portraits of Nehru, Jinnah and Patel- the other big players at the fore of the political battleground. And, most importantly, trust me, you really want to read this book to delve into the chilling details of the fanatical plan which was put in place to end Gandhi’s haloed sojourn among us mortals.

On a scale of 5, not less than 4and 1/2 stars for me. This is one book we all should read, with a warning, it might just bore you in parts, but at the end of it, you will feel immense satisfaction for having dared to undertake this journey.

Reviewed by
Saumya Kulshreshtha
Nascent Emissions

Delhi : 14 Historic Walks by Swapna Liddle

Vibha Sharma — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:27:00 +0000

Title : Delhi 14 Historic Walks

Author : Swapna Liddle

Publisher : Westland

ISBN : 978-93-81626-24-5

Delhi just completed its centenary year as capital of India in 2011. But Delhi’s history goes back much beyond these 100 years. As I wrote in the review of ‘City of Djinns’ – Delhi is the city which bore testimony to the zenith and nadir of great dynasties and empires and it continues to mesmerize many people by being culturally and historically rich city while at the same time adapting with the changing periods. It has innumerable stories hidden beneath its surface which enthrall historians and followers of history.

Swapna Liddle has compiled a wonderful guide book to 14 walking routes in Delhi which includes some signature tourist attractions like - Qutub Minar, Lodi Gardens, Red Fort and Humayun’s Tomb – some of these have been identified as World’s Heritage Sites. However, this list includes some lesser known sites too, for instance – Satpula and Khirki.

There is a detailed map with each of the sites which marks the ‘not to be missed’ places. A few pages are dedicated to giving a glimpse of historical background behind the buildings, monuments or ruins, some architectural details, concepts and techniques adopted in building them while some interesting anecdotes and legends keep the narrative interesting.

I specifically liked the parts where she has brought the attention of the tourists and readers to the subtleties of architectural details. I must quote a small excerpt from the book here – ‘The pillars in the Quwwat-u-Islam Masjid in Qutb Minar complex, are elaborately carved and on close inspection one can see many human, animal and divine figures. Such sculptures seem out of place within a mosque, since depiction of human or animal figures is unacceptable to orthodox Islam as being akin to idolatry. The answer to this mystery lies in the fact that these are reused materials from twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples that had stood in the vicinity and were mostly destroyed by the invading Turks as an act of war.”

I wish I had this book with me while I visited the major heritage sites in Delhi last year. If you are visiting Delhi, you must take this book along so as to take a guided tour of the interesting places in the city. This book is educational, informative and readable much more than regular tourist guides. It can work as a nice supplement to the history books in grade classes too. The author Swapna Liddle is a historian who completed his PhD thesis on cultural history of 19th Century Delhi. She has been conducting historical walks in Delhi for over a decade and has been actively involved in heritage protection and public awareness programmes. So she writes on Delhi with authority and it is interesting to read the facts behind these significant monuments.

She goes on to enlist some very practical information about these sites too – nearest Metro station, price of tickets, parking availability and amenities available in the vicinity, which is absolutely required before heading towards any destination.

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>Jerusalem – The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Vivek Tejuja — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:17:00 +0000

> Title: Jerusalem: The Biography
Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore
Publisher: Weidenfeld And Nicholson, Orion Books, Hachette Book Group
ISBN: 978-0297866923
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 696
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Jerusalem: The Biography is one of the great reads of the year for me and you should not miss out on reading this one. I have always loved reading anything by Simon Sebag Montefiore. He writes with honesty and passion that is hard to miss. Whether it is about Stalin as a boy and adolescent to Monsters and Heroes, Montefiore does a remarkable job of it.

Jerusalem is a true masterpiece – a biography of a city and yet so much more. It is not easy to write about a city – and also considering that the city is so old and ravaged by the brutalities of time. The thing about the book is that the reader feels as though he is stepping back in time and experiencing the history of Jerusalem first hand.
Jerusalem the book has been written in a very colourful manner – full of anecdotes, how the city came to be what it is today, the rulers, the ones who squandered and looted its riches, the ones who hold it in high regard – its Kings and its Prophets. Montefiore does not leave any stone unturned.

Having said that, there were times I would tend to disagree with the author and yet could not put the book down. There is not much in terms of guidance or analysis by the writer, and yet the book shines. What got me started was the role Jerusalem plays in the apocalyptic vision of fundamentalist Christians and Muslims, and how that has been brought to light in this book. The other aspect that got me going was the deep-rooted connection between Christians and Muslims is made so evident and clear throughout the book and the way it is done is marvellous.

Sparkling and profound, the book is written keeping in mind the most terrible things that have happened behind her walls and also the richness of its land. The book does not take sides. It is an unbiased book and at the same time lays the facts as they are which should be the case while writing about a city. My favourite chapter in the book is, “Sunset of the Byzantines” which truly captures the essence of the book – its timeline and charisma in drawing historical references.

To review a book of Jerusalem’s stature would definitely require a research paper. It is that intense and deep. What I can say is that this is not one of your airport reads. It requires the time and attention that a book of this kind deserves. It however makes you turn the page and wonder at the scale and scope of Jerusalem’s place in history.

Letters from a Father to His Daughter by Jawaharlal Nehru

sandhya — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:02:00 +0000

Letters from a Father to His Daughter
Written by Jawaharlal Nehru
Published by Puffin Books, Penguin books India
Ages 8+ yrs

Reviewed by sandhya.

A father and his daughter. The bond has to be seen to be believed!

By the nature of his work in the struggle for the freedom of India, Nehru was often away from his family, and his daughter was away at boarding school. Letters being the prime means of communication at the time, Nehru wrote these, which, according to the foreword written by him, were ‘personal letters addressed to a little girl, ten years of age.’ They, however, speak of many things. In the preface, written in 1973, Indira Gandhi writes, “they deal with the beginnings of the earth and of man’s awareness of himself. They were not merely letters to be read and put away…they taught one to treat nature as a book.”

The letters speak of the beginnings of the universe, the formation of the earth and its landforms, of pre-history, the beginnings of mankind, the migration of human beings- he shows great learning and vision in his conclusions- “It may be that the German and the Negro are descended from different types of men, but some time or other they must have had the same ancestor. The differences must therefore have come in by the process of adaption to their surroundings…so we find that people’s complexions are the result of the climate they live in. They have nothing to do with the worthiness or goodness or beauty of a person.” Explained wonderfully in this vein in language easy enough for a 10 yr old to understand.

He goes on to speak of races, religion- early beliefs and faiths, religions as we know them now, languages- the beginnings of communication by making meaningful sounds, of making meaningful marks leading to writing, of the relationships of the different languages of the world. He speaks of civilisation, the division of labour - leading to the patriarch- which led later to kings and kingdoms. And of ancient civilisations all over the world. About trade and travel.

He speaks of the coming of the Aryans to India, and the Ramayana and the Mahabharatha- I loved the simple way in which he has explained the gist of these great epics- again, putting them in an interesting perspective.

Of the Ramayana, he says, “The Ramayana, as you know, is the story of Ramchandra and Sita against Ravana, king of Lanka, that is now Ceylon…it may be that the story of the Ramayana is really the story of the fights of the Aryans against the people of the South whose leader was Ravana.”

And the Mahabharatha- “It tells of a great fight between Aryans and Aryans. But apart from the fight, it is a wonderful book, full of great ideas and noble stories. Above all, it is dear to all of us because of that jewel of a poem which it contains–the Bhagavad Gita.”

The book comprises 30 letters in all, short, independent reads each, or read in a sequence. Each is a story lucidly told, a father’s affection for his daughter coming across in each. These letters were written over the summer of 1928, and retain all of their freshness for every child who has the opportunity of reading them. They have to be, of course, read in the context of terminologies used in the early 1900s, some of which might not be politically correct today.

This 2004 edition by Puffin is hardcover, printed on crisp white paper, and an easy-on-the-eyes font. With a fresh foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Nehru’s great-grand-daughter.

A logical follow-up to this book would be Nehru’s Glimpses of World History, which was written from October 1930 to August 1933, as letters addressed from prison to his 13-16 year old daughter, published much later.

THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE: Voices from the Partition of India by Urvashi Butalia.

sandhya — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:42:00 +0000

Pic courtesy flipkart

THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
Voices from the Partition of India
Written by Urvashi Butalia
Published by Penguin Books

Reviewed by sandhya.

Urvashi Butalia, the writer, has impressive credentials. Along with Ritu Menon, she set up Kali for Women, the first feminist press in India, in 1984, and later, Zubaan Books. Born to in Ambala, India, to parents who were refugees from West Punjab, now in Pakistan, she grew up hearing stories of the Partition, which tore apart the Indian subcontinent at the time of its freedom from British rule.

She began her research as a process of making sense of her family’s personal tragedy. One thing led to another, and over time she realised that what ‘history’ tells us of the Partition are the bare political facts: tales of warring political parties and the British involvement in the whole gory process, the loss of property and lives, the statistics of the largest mass migration in recent history and violence in the riots between the Hindus, the Muslims and the Sikhs caught in the unfortunate event.

There was not much data on the renting apart of the closely enmeshed fabric of society and the actual sufferings of the flesh-and-blood people caught in the crossfire. The feminist in her also became aware of the huge conspiracy of silence (this term has also been used in reference to the victims of that other regrettable horror of the same time, the Holocaust) that enfolded the suffering of those considered to be of ’not much account’ and therefore on the margins of citizenry- the women, the children and the harijans.

“But the ‘history’ of Partition seemed to lie only in the political developments that led up to it. These other aspects – what had happened to the millions of people who had to live through this time, what we may call the ‘human dimensions’ of this history — somehow seemed to have a ‘lesser’ status in it. Perhaps this was because they had to do with difficult things: loss and sharing, friendship and enmity, grief and joy, with a painful regret and nostalgia for loss of home, country and friends, and with an equally strong determination to create them afresh. These were difficult things to capture ‘factually.’ Yet, could it be that they had no place in the history of Partition? Why, then, did they live on so vividly in individual and collective memory?”

Ms Butalia takes us through these events as pieced together from first-person accounts of survivors. The stories seem fantastic, the violence, the bloodiness ant the loss inexplicable, as does the almost mythological account of a society where the different religions had lived together in harmony, love and trust. Surely something had gone seriously wrong somewhere for the anger to have erupted as it had, killing and maiming millions, and creating a legacy of communal disharmony, and an almost pathological enmity between the two countries which were once part of one whole. A whole that had effectively driven their colonial rulers away.

The feminist in the writer notes some very interesting aspects of the problem. Even the interviews were necessarily taken in a family setting, where men did most of the talking, and women were often silenced. While men spoke of the politics, the killings, the violence, the women’s experience of Partition was largely defined by the death of children, abductions, sexual violence, honour killings, forcible co-habitation/marriages with their abductors, their making peace with it, especially after children were born of these relationships.

During their interviews, Ms Butalia tried to listen to the unsaid, the silences, the sudden breaking-off of the narrative, the nuances. “In my work, the more I looked at women’s voices and found them inserting themselves into the text, the more I realised that the silences did not exist only around women, but also around others, those whose silences have been even less important to society. The search for a history of women was what then led me to a search for a history of others. The voices of women, of children, of untouchables, to me provide not only a different perspective on the history of Partition, but they also establish this history as a process, a continuing history, which lives on in our lives today in a variety of ways.”

Then there was the ultimate insult to injury- the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Act, 1949. A lot of this has been pieced together from accounts of social workers who were actively involved in the operation. Ostentiably to recover abducted women and children and return them to their families, the Act would not take into account the women’s choice in the matter, something that all citizens were given upto the late fifties. After being abducted, these women often got assimilated into those families, bore children out of those relationships, but were torn from these children when they were ‘recovered’ to return to their families of origin. The original families would often refuse to accept these ‘children of sin’ which were left with their abductor-fathers. Quite often these children ended up on the streets with the other children who had been displaced or orphaned in the Partition. Both the women and children were refused the ‘choice’ that citizens of both countries had at the time.

First-hand accounts by some of these children, adults at the time of interviewing, underscore the same conspiracy of silence. Many of them glossed over their accounts, unable as adults to relate their memories of the horrors. Some of them, like a Sikh survivor who was just 9 at the time of Partition, had memories overshadowed by one particular incident- the death of their own familiy’s hands of almost a hundred girls and women to ’save’ their honour – an incident immortalised in the book and later movie Tamas.

In fact, most of these personal stories have been found to a large extent in a multitude of short stories and novellas written by many noted authors who have lived through the Partition- Amrita Pritam (Pinjar), Saadat Hasan Manto (Toba Tek Singh, Kingdom’s End and other stories), Gulzar (Raavi Par and other stories), Khushwant Singh (Train to Pakistan), Bapsi Sidhwa (Ice-Candy Man), Bhisham Sahni (Tamas), and more. Many of these stories have been made into film, reaching a larger audience. Many bollywood movies, too, speak of the Partition or ‘Batwara’ as it is called in Hindi.

History, as told in history books, however, sticks mostly to the bare facts and statistics of the Partition. ‘The other side of silence‘ tries to address this deficit in a more factual way, that can be corroborated, than the fictionalised accounts. Showing us that the fiction is not a very long way off reality.

More than twelve million people left their roots and migrated, about ten million of these crossing the western border. Around two million died in the violence. An estimated 75,000-1,00,000 women are thought to have been abducted and raped by men of religions different from their own (and indeed sometimes by men of their own religion). An estimated 50,000 children were born to the abducted women, an an unaccounted number of children were abandoned or simply lost. ”People travelled in buses, in cars, by train, but mostly on foot in great columns called kafilas, which could stretch for dozens of miles. The longest of them, said to comprise nearly 400,000 people, refugees travelling east to India from western Punjab, took as many as eight days to pass any given spot on its route.”

Ms Butalia has very honestly admitted that her work does not represent the whole of the history of Partition, but is a very personal history, her reading of the interviews she took. She also candidly admits that it is probably a very one-sided view of the whole thing, as by 1984, when she began her research, it was no longer possible to obtain access to those on the other side of the border, and cautions communal groups from using her research to reach their ends.

Here are some more excerpts from the book.

HANA’S SUITCASE by Karen Levine

sandhya — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 06:35:00 +0000

Pic courtesy infibeam

HANA’S SUITCASE
Written by Karen Levine
Published by Jyotsna Prakashan, by permission of Second Story Press

Reviewed by sandhya.

An estimated 11 million people were killed in the Holocaust, of which about 6 million were Jews. Bare statistics. Since then, many stories of those killed and of the survivors have come to light, bringing home the horror of it all, how many ordinary and extraordinary lives have been lost.

Hana Brady would have been just such one faceless statistic.

Our book begins in Tokyo, Japan, in the winter of 2000, when an ordinary looking tattered suitcase from Auschwitz arrives there. On it are these words painted in white- HANA BRADY, 16 May 1931, WAISENKIND (orphan in German). It was sent here from Auschwitz on request by the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Centre.

Pic courtesy:
Tokyo Holocaust Education
Resource Centre

Who was Hana Brady? What was her story? Fumiko Ishioka, the director of the museum, sets out to find out. This is the story of her journey to find out all about the girl, which takes her all the way from Auschwitz to Nove Mesto, in the former Czechoslovakia, where Hana’s story begins.

A happy family of four- the parents and brother-sister, George and Hana. Their life changes in 1939 when the Nazis take over Czechoslovakia. Increasing sanctions make ordinary life difficult and then impossible by degrees, then first her mother and then father is deported.

Then one day, the two children are also deported to Theresienstadt, now Terezin, and they are permitted to take just one suitcase each with their personal belongings. There, they are separated, and later, Hana is transported to Auschwitz on 23rd October, 1944, where she is sent along with the rest of the girls straight from the train to the gas chamber. They had been commanded to leave their suitcases on the railway platform.

Pic courtesy hanassuitcase.ca
Fumiko and George with the suitcase

Fumiko Ishioka doggedly and painstakingly followed the leads from the entry of George and Hana Brady’s name in the Nazi’s registers to trace her journey, and found out about her death, but also the fact that George was known to have survived. By tracing other survivors who were with him in the concentation camp, she finally traced a 75 year old George Brady now residing in Canada, and got in touch with him.

Between them, they brought Hana’s story to us, all his memories and the family photographs that he had saved, and which he now so generously shared. There were also many things that the siblings had put in a box and buried in their backyard all those years ago, in a game of ‘burying treasure’, that were found by another family now living there. Ensuring that she does not remain a faceless statistic. A lovely, lively human being, who was lost to the senseless genocide.

Pic courtesy radio.cz
Hana and George with their
mother Marketa

The book by Karen Levine is simply written, shuttling between Hana’s story in the 1930s, and the story of Fumiko’s effort to bring it to us. There are plenty of real photographs of the Brady family, beginning with the toddler Hana to the 12 yr old Hana on the cover page, copies of the drawings Hana made in the Theresienstadt deportation centre, as also photostat copies of the Nazi records which Fumiko followed on her search.

Crossposted.

Der Deutsche Sommer by Arnab Chakraborthy

Amit Gupta — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 02:56:00 +0000

Author: Arnab Chakraborty

Publisher: Wordizen Books

Der Deutsche Sommer is a memoir of a young Indian student of DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst or German Academic Exchange Service) who travels to Germany under a student exchange program. The author, an ardent soccer fan, is fortunate to experience the excitement of the FIFA Soccer World Cup 2010 held in Germany during his stay there. At a personal level, he is enamoured by the fair and beautiful German women, which entices him to visit the famous Amsterdam red light district where he and his friends exhibit their masculinity. The memoir captures his experience as a student who is travelling abroad on his own for the first time — the excitement, the anticipation and the enthusiasm to make the best of his three-month stay at Aachen, Germany.This opportunity makes the author determined to not only succeed in academics, but also to learn about the history of Germany and especially, delve deep into the background and characteristics of the iron man, Adolf Hitler.

Living abroad, even if it is for a short duration can be a life altering experience. It can make up for some riveting read as i mentioned before in the case of Neeraj Chibba’s Zero Percentile. This book, however, is written more in the travelogue form describing the excitement, the anxieties and the various experiences of the visit to Germany. The author has an eye for detail and each of the initial incidents of taking the first international journey has been written competently. The immigration long queues, the culinary experiences specially if you are a vegetarian, the bouts of patriotism and the home-sickness are dealt with honesty. Most people, like me, who have lived abroad for some duration should be able to relate to it. It would have made a much more enriching reading pleasure if the author would have sticked to these experiences. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite happen.

The basic flaw in the book is that it plays with the inherent spirit of a travelogue. When you pick up a book in this genre, you expect to see a country through the eyes of the writer – his/her own experiences, observations and yearnings. Instead dozens of pages and pages describing German history – about Hitler and his whole life, his contribution towards the World war 2, his ultimate demise; all this is inserted into the book. Not only this, history about soccer, world cups, visit to London and Amsterdam and their history completely sap your energy. If i am looking to know such details about these people or places, i will buy a history book and NOT a travelogue – or worse, i will just use Wikipedia to know the details, for free mind you. All these detailsinterspersed within the narrative is exhausting and the book falls into an incoherent mess. It requires patience to appreciate the portions of actual travelogue, once the author reaches Germany.

There is a huge build-up for the visit to the red-light area in Amsterdam. There are sexist jokes, females are looked and scorned with lusty eyes all through the narrative and lewd remarks are thought off each time a species with two breasts come in the vicinity. All this would have still worked if there was a proper closure when the group of friends reach the area to satisfy the carnal pleasures. But those particular scenes are shoddily written and are touched upon at a superficial level. To say the least, it is too much of a foreplay in the writing with very little reward in the end.

I am going with 2/5 for Arnab Chakraborthy’s German travelogue, Der Deutsche Sommer. It is well researched and gives you glimpses about the European lifestyle. But in the end, it is neither a history book nor a travelogue. It is one of those books where editor slept his/her way through or may be was not paid at all. Just arm yourself with tons of patience before you decide to read this one.

I blog at Love is always new….

>Etruria by Mary Jane Cryan

LindyLou Mac — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 18:27:00 +0000

Etruria–Travel, History and Itineraries in Central Italy by Mary Jane Cryan

Paperback: 155 pages
Genre : Travel and History
Publisher: Etruria Editions Edizioni Archeoares 2010
Source: Purchased directly from the author
Review Quote From Backcover: “Mary Jane Cryan’s latest book, confirms her as a leading voice on that fascinating area of Italy known as Etruria. A scrupulous researcher, she combines scholarship with a passionate love of her subject, bringing long ago personages and events vividly to life.” Margaret Stenhouse, Italy Update.

The March post with a list of books that the other people taking part are reading this month has already been posted. March Reviews
I first met the author of this book virtually in early 2004 when we were planning the latter stages of our move to Italy. We had decided on the region of Northern Lazio as being the place we wanted to start our search for a home. While doing online research we came across Elegant Etruria Mary Jane’s very informative website. We made contact with Mary Jane and it was her that found us the apartment in Tuscania that we would rent while house hunting. When we arrived in March 2004 she was kind enough to help us settle in, which included introducing us to her earlier publications. These we have found to be the perfect guidebooks for helping us learn so much about this beautiful and almost undiscovered region we now call ‘home’
It should be no surprise therefore that as soon as possible we obtained a copy of this her latest book and a perfect candidate for the Italy in Books – Reading Challenge 2011
This latest book is just as compelling as her previous ones, with some enthralling sounding places tempting us yet again to get out there and explore. Thanks Mary Jane for sharing your passion for this region by sharing these intriguing stories. The book is divided into four sections, Itineraries, Influences, Treasures and People. With itineraries that range from The Tombs of Tarquina to Searching for the Stuarts, Influences from America to Ireland, Treasures in gardens and castles and finally so many fascinating people I defy you not to find something amongst these pages that will absorb you.
In conclusion if you decide to come and visit this region in reality or virtually, if you want to discover some of the places that tourists do not normally get to see then make sure you get hold of a copy for yourself. Copies can be purchased direct from Mary Jane by clicking on this link.
Etruria Travel, History and Itineraries in Central Italy

I am also including this video I found on YouTube to tempt you a little further with its atmospheric surroundings. What a beautiful place to have given a book presentation.

I also post these ‘Italy in Books’ reviews on my other blog
News From Italy

>The Last Sunset by Amarinder Singh

admin — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 07:10:00 +0000

The Last Sunset – The Rise & Fall of the Lahore Durbar by Amarinder Singh. After the Mughals exited, but before the British arrived, the Lahore Durbar was presided over by Maharaja Ranjit Singh Bahadur, affectionately known as the ‘Lion of Lahore’, who makes a brief appearance in Amarinder Singh’s narrative, but leaves a lasting impression on his history.

Ranjit Singh, who has been described in the book as a great man and an outstanding military commander, was a mass of contradictions. For instance, he was against the death penalty but not averse to robbing widows, believed treaties were meant to be broken but treated the vanquished with kindness, and thought nothing of inviting guests only to divest them of their most prized possession – like the Kohinoor diamond. He may have spent the better part of the day leading military campaigns, yet he did not always harbour territorial designs and is said to have waged a war on his own governor for a horse. A beautiful Persian horse, but still a horse.

The Lahore Durbar, in Ranjit Singh’s time, constituted what is now Pakistan (minus Sindh and Balochistan). He is perhaps best known for putting the Sikh army on the map and, of course, his love for empire building. The Last Sunset… studies the rapid deterioration of the empire forged by a ruler who combined “cunning, treachery, ruthlessness with diplomacy and military might” to carve out a glorious kingdom, a formidable army and a reputation to match. In the brief but dramatic portion devoted to his life, the writer manages to capture the grandeur of his court (decadent lifestyle and all) and the fickle nature of alliances from multiple perspectives.

It would take just 10 short years for this Durbar to fall apart. The principal portion of the book focuses on major military campaigns between the Sikh and British troops in the post-Ranjit era, as the empire he had so painstakingly built with the help of the much admired Sikh Khalsa Army, raised on European lines, began to fray around the edges. Soon the soldiers, considered to be “the finest material in the world for forming an army” by W G Osborne, military secretary to the governor general of India, would be pitted against the British (1845-46 and 1848-49), the court was to become the epicentre of political intrigues (led by a royal) and Punjab would finally be annexed to the British territory.

Amarinder Singh is from the royal family of Patiala. He was ADC to GOC-in-C, Western Command, in the 1965 war between Pakistan and India and later served as a member of the Parliamentary Defence Committee. His previous books include Lest we Forget: The History of Indian Army from 1947-65 and A Ridge Too Far: War in the Kargil Heights 1999. This Maharaja-turned-soldier-turned-politician records the glorious beginning and not so glorious ending of Ranjit’s Lahore in this meticulously detailed account, cramming maps, order of battles with military strategies and tallying British accounts with what little is known of the Sikh side. He also examines Ranjit’s army that had become the de facto ruler of his state after his death and the conspiracy hatched from within to cut it down to size.

He exposes the cold-blooded role played by the regent – Her Highness Maharani Jinda Kaur (Queen Mother) – as she sent her soldiers into battle ostensibly to defend the kingdom. Faked intelligence was used (which works every time) to rile up the unsuspecting troops, who became convinced that the British Army was coming after them. It was a dangerous gamble but the Maharani hoped to come out as a winner. The Sikhs lose, she gets to stay on as regent; they win, she becomes even more powerful. According to the writer, this was a calculated move designed to clip the wings of a powerful army (a familiar complaint in this part of the world) and strengthen her tenuous hold in the bargain. He notes that though the Sikhs were decisively beaten in the four battles of the war, “but for the regent, her wazir, C-in-C and a mad British officer, Lord Gough’s defeat was near certain”. While the Maharani courted the British and connived against her state in the first war, the blame for the next major conflict is placed at the British doorstep. The author asserts that the Governor General of India Lord Dalhousie simply used the Multan revolt as a pretext to carry out his expansionist plans and intended to “do away” with the Lahore state long before the second Sikh war.

The story concludes with the annexation of Punjab in 1849 and the epilogue continues the story of the exiled Maharaja Duleep Singh and his mother, the resourceful Maharani. The Last Sunset… is the tragic saga of a Durbar in free fall, starting from the first Anglo-Sikh war, where Lahore escaped annexation by the British but came under their supervision, to the second, where the British found themselves in the untenable position of both governing and attacking the Durbar.

Details of the book: The Last Sunset: The Rise And Fall Of The Lahore Durbar/ Author: Amarinder Singh /Hardcover/ pp: 347 pages/ Price: Rs. 695/ Publisher: Roli Books Pvt. Ltd./ Publishing date: Sep 2010/ Language: English/ ISBN-10: 8174367799/ ISBN-13: 978-8174367792.

Photograph: Pic. courtesy: Link.

Reviewed by: Afrah Jamal.

>Sahib: The British Soldier in India by Richard Holmes

admin — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 06:31:00 +0000

They came for the trade. And found something better. When the dust settled, an empire had changed hands. The architects of the change, who bore witness to the rise and fall of the mighty empire, imprinted their impression upon their adopted homeland. The land, in turn, left an indelible mark on the newcomers.

Richard Holmes, himself a soldier and a leading military historian, looks beyond the empire carved from the remains of another civilisation, steering past the colonial designs of the company and later the crown. He seizes upon the red coat and brings the British solider to life by sharing extracts from his letters and references from archived documents. Using their words to animate the land of the pagoda tree (page xxv) – as 18th century India came to be known – and letting their experiences set the tone, he rekindles the magic that went with the trappings of a sahib and the horror inherited with and inflicted upon the land. A land seen as a “patchwork of races”, evoking the sentiment that it was “not yet a nation until time and civilisation rub off the sharp distinctions of caste and soften the acuteness of religious jealousies” (page 43).

Sahib is a leisurely stroll down memory lane – passing by old battlefields where the elements decided the fate of men more than enemy fire; quietly manoeuvring through the site of classic cavalry charges where “hesitation was fatal” and “determination won the day” and heading out to the quayside to meet the new arrivals stalked by death at every turn.

It takes the underbelly of the British Raj in “India’s sunny clime” where light and dark come together to complete the soldiers’ story. Thus compelled, one puts aside the clean cut, storybook version of the Sahib and settles for a darker and edgier alternative by entering an atmosphere charged with excitement, marked by the anticipation of victory and heavy with the presence of death. These men earn respect and admiration for enduring unimaginable hardships. Fear and revulsion swiftly follow as one goes deeper in this wonderfully rich, shockingly violent world where brutality appears to be the trademark of the outgoing and, also, the incoming rulers.

Any romantic notions of war are quickly dashed by the series of events where victors and vanquished are shown to be “equally brutish” and rules of war do not apply. Oftentimes, atrocities are committed by both – one, lashing out with summary public punishment against natives (page 58), the other, unleashing their wrath upon innocents. There are accounts of officers being tried for attacking fellow officers but rarely persecuted for doing the same to the natives. A soldier’s life is shown to be also forever affected by the “living and enduring presence” (page 81) of the Indian revolt (mutiny) – 1857.

The military man of the time comes in different shades. We meet soldiers who have vowed to die for Queen and the country and are bound to go wherever the regiments were posted, closely followed by the soldier without regiments who is an officer in civil appointments (page 198). And mixed among this noble lot are the soldiers of fortune – mercenaries driven by self-interest whose actions merited a remark in the House of Commons that “the Indian society was being corrupted by money grubbing activities of the Company’s servants in a clear breach of the sacred trust that one powerful nation held towards another” (page 52).

One sees the repugnant practices of the time and also comes across rampant racism; the natives are demons/black miscreants whose voices became discordant sounds and their wealth ended up as spoils of war.

The soldier’s vantage point enlightens and entertains. That the 73rd Highlanders (1780) could take the Indian men to be women because of their “genteel and delicate mien” is bewildering. The bond forged between the British officers and the Pathan finds a unique place and a special mention; after Word War I, the appeal of the Frontier endures, where allegiance was given not to the government but to a man. The sepoy has been singled out for praise as are the poor bheesties (water carriers) for fidelity and bravery in every Indian campaign. Contrasts are drawn between officers who “treated their servants with indifference”, and those who forged lifelong bonds. Trivial details find their way into the narrative, from the complexities of travel to the “sheer luxury of an Indian camp’s life”. The story also makes room for “the fishing fleet”, as the few European women who headed East in search of the many eligible men came to be known, and the heartbreak that routinely followed the families.

In this exhaustively researched, deeply moving epic, the Sahib masters the art of war while surviving the rigours of peacetime living, feels “like a lord”, runs into debt despite the low cost of living, and learns to “sling the bat” ending up with a dreadful concoction of English cum “Hindustani” miraculously understood by the natives, before being escorted out of the pages. He summons a bygone era and relies on the testimonies of his peers for a place in history.

Details of the book: Sahib: The British Soldier in India/ Richard Holmes /Paperback/ pp: 572 pages/ Publisher: Harper Collins UK/ Publishing date: October 1, 2006/ Language: English/ ISBN-10: 0007137532/ ISBN-13: 978-0007137534.

Photograph: Pic. courtesy: Link.

Reviewed by: Afrah Jamal.

The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan

Nupur Roopa — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:12:00 +0000

Title: The Twentieth Wife – A Novel
Author: Indu Sundaresan
Publisher: PENGUIN BOOKS INDIA
Edition: Paperback
ISBN: 0143028588

Reading ‘The Twentieth Wife’ by Indu Sundaresan was an enriching experience. I have had the pleasure of reading Indu’s books and was sure that this would be an excellent read.

This debut novel of Indu Sundaresan takes you back to the Mughal era through the pages of history. It is an enchanting tale of Mehrunnisa, who was born penniless but the caravan of destiny took her to India, where ultimately she become an Empress. It is this journey of Mehrunnisa the twentieth wife of the much married Jahangir.

Mehrunnisa was the daughter of a Persian refugee Mirza Ghyas Beg who came to India in the time of Akbar. Her early life was spent near the Mughal court, and her impressionable mind found the aura of the court extremely fascinating. She was eight years old when she encountered Prince Salim for the first time. From the day, she decided that she wanted to marry the prince. What followed is a fascinating tale of an almost unrequited love laced with jealousy, gossips and politics.

Through the pages of the book, we get a glimpse of the Mughal court, the power behind the veil in the so called ‘powerless’ Zenana. Intriguing, fascinating and evocative, Indu writes to captivate. Her language is spellbinding and visual descriptions create vivid images of the lush landscapes through the seasons, the flowers and fruits of the region, rituals, weddings, jewels and silks of the Meena Bazaar.

Small yet beautiful details of the place and the atmosphere give you a feel that you are walking through the roads and lanes of the cities of Lahore and Agra few hundred years ago. Aptly described food and cuisine gives a stunning picture of the shops selling delicacies and exotic dishes cooked in the kitchens.

A historical novel must have facts. The author needs to sift carefully through the contradictory information available to include some and effectively camouflaging with her own imagination Indu has done this exceptionally well.

This book is a part of the Taj Trilogy. The other two books are ‘The Feast of Roses’ and ‘Shadow Princess’. Though the books are interrelated yet can be also read independently. However, if you read one, you can hardly resist reading the other two.

By mybookworld

Manini Chatterjee’s ‘Do and Die’ becomes Ashutosh Gowarikar’s ‘Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey’.

Roshmi — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 08:57:00 +0000

Author’s note: You can read my review of Manini Chatterjee’s excellently researched book: ‘Do and Die: The Chittagong Uprising: 1930-34‘ here.

A few months ago… a film curiously titled “Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey” (KHJJS) hit the theatres. Helmed by the acclaimed Bollywood movie director Ashutosh Gowarikar… there was reason for hope that Gowarikar, who has, over the years, marked out the ‘Historical’ as his preferred territory will not simply make another kitschy Bollywood Hindi Masala/Musical film out of Masterda’s life. He has sung his eulogy to Mughal India in Jodhaa Akbar (2008) and expressed his patriotic fervor in Lagaan (2001) and Swades (2004). Also according to reports, he was adapting the movie from the 1999 book ‘Do and Die: The Chittagong Uprising 1930-34′ by veteran journalist Manini Chatterjee.

But that was clearly not to be. With ‘KHJJS’ he made his grand return to the genre of the ‘Historical’ after his brief stint at a potboiler – an epic 200-minute-long documentary on arranged marriage called ‘What’s Your Raashee?’ that managed to boil one thing for sure – your blood. With his latest film Ashutosh seems to have the plot and the patriotic fire fails to touch the souls. In ‘KHJJS’… he makes a hash nay massacres one of the most inspiring stories of our freedom struggle (the Chattogram uprising) – and successfully reduces it to a dull, painful 165-minute-long abomination… proving the dictum that history is never boring, only the teacher is. First he doesn’t seem to believe in editing, and then his treatment is so banal and dull, that it puts you to sleep… albeit a disturbed sleep complete with nightmares.

We forgave him for re-writing history with ‘Jodhaa Akbar’ for casting the dishy Hrithik Roshan as the Mughal Emperor Akbar… who at 5 feet 7 inches, stout, with mongoloid features and a very loud voice was far from eye candy material. We even overlooked/excused the title of that movie itself – ‘Jodhaa Akbar’. For (according to several accounts) Jodhabai (a Rajput princess) and the daughter of King Bharmal of Amer was one of the many wives of Akbar’s son Prince Salim aka Emperor Jahangir and the mother of Prince Khurram aka Emperor Shah Jahan. Akbar maintained a harem of 33 wives… one of which was the Rajput princess Harka Bai – the mother of Prince Salim aka Emperor Jahangir. Nevertheless we managed to digest Gowarikar’s ‘theory of relativity’. We loved ‘Lagaan’ too but then it was faux history.

What we cannot and will not forgive and forget is this drivel called “Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey” – passing off as a well-researched saga of our freedom struggle. Where the main protagonist, the fearless ‘Masterda’ Surjo Sen (played by the insipid and listless Abhishek Bachchan) cannot even pronounce “Chattogram” properly calling it “Chotto” gram instead. Where the perfectly made-up (17 year old, fiery revolutionary and bomb expert) Kalpana Datta, essayed in all her plastic glory by Deepika Padukone (with her flawed Bengali accent and clad mostly in a saffron coloured saree) who even when caught in the blast of a bomb still looks as clean as she is in her Liril ad. (Errr… was Liril one of the sponsors?? Oof Yu Maa!!!) Incidentally… Kalpana Dutta (1913-1995) was a member of the armed resistance movement led by Surjo Sen, which carried out the ‘Chattogram Astragar Lunthan’ aka the ‘Chittagong armoury raid‘ on April 18, 1930. (‘Chittagong’ is the anglicized version of ‘Chattogram’). In the film you can never forget you are watching Deepika Padukone trying her best to portray Kalpana Dutta as Deepika Padukone!

Ashutosh and his team has made a total hash of Pritilata Waddedar‘s (essayed by Vishakha Singh) radical feminism and heroic martyrdom, with the depiction of her as a love-lorn woman who commits suicide, with no pressure of death, just because she wants to join her dead love. A romantic story I personally am hearing for the first time here. It is a total subversion of what she stood for. They even insinuate a romantic angle between Surjya Sen and Kalpana Dutta – yet another product of the fertile imagination (creative license?) of the esteemed director and his team. Methinks… the viewers should have a license to silence the misuse of creative license.

At the start of a sequence where Pritilala (Vishakha Singh) goes on a crusade of bloody revenge on the British for her (supposed) lover’s death, there is a scene of her in a dark room with her shadowy but emblazoned face and the picture of goddess Durga in the background visible. Gowarikar’s use of the stereotypical, formulaic evocation in Hindi cinema of the goddess to denote a wronged, angry and vengeful woman is not only garish in its aesthetic taste but also seems like the revolutionary was lead more by personal revenge than wrath against the colonizers. Must say… it was Gowarikar’s script tease!

Perhaps he was under pressure by Bollywood culture, etc to ‘conform’ and depict any Indian woman as the weak, long suffering, forever sacrificing, ‘sati-savitri bharatiya nari’… which actually is a result of the joint venture between vested interests and a horde of marauding conquerors who came in from the east and the west… in the last millennium or so. The female revolutionaries of colonial Bengal pushed the envelope and actually broke several barriers sending this ‘society created’ carefully and painstakingly built up ‘sati-savitri bharatiya nari’ image flying out of the window. These ‘society created’ images, social evils, etc also masquerades under the pseudonym – ‘our ancient culture and traditions’ – which (mind you) we all must uphold at any cost. And which our ever-increasing legions of ‘sons of the soil’ vow to do… at regular intervals. This also includes ‘women wearing jeans’ since the ‘ancient culture and traditions of India’ began at the very moment Levy Strauss ‘invented’ the blue jeans in 1873! Wonder why the history of the revolutionaries (especially the female ones) hailing from colonial Bengal – the seat of British power – is unknown to the rest of India… and why only the name of Rani Lakshmibai… the fiery Queen of Jhansi is bandied about?

The film was initially to be shot in West Bengal as it is nearest to Bangladesh (Chittagong is now part of BD) but the esteemed director chose Goa as he felt Goa was more similar to Chittagong than any place in West Bengal! Wonder where he learnt his geography! Akkebare bhugolete gol (difficult to translate, kinda means: total zero in geography).

‘KHJJS’ assumes its audience’s familiarity with the general history of British rule in India. The camera pans over lush green landscape and pans up to make visible a military plane, cut to a scene in a ground with young barefoot lads playing a game of football in spotlessly clean white ‘dhotis’ (called ‘dhutis’ in Bengali) and khadi ‘kurtas’ (called ‘punjabis’ in Bengali. Yes, Bengalis wear punjabis!) The boys look up to see the same plane pass by. Their game is interrupted when an ominous looking truck enters the frame and the football hits it. The British troops tell the kids to buzz off, as they are going to set up camp there… thus usurping the playground from the bunch of teenagers. They decide to seek the help of Abhishek Bachchan oops ‘Masterda’ Surjya Sen, a known revolutionary (and a school teacher) in those parts and offer him a deal. They say to him – “aap desh le lijiye hume hamara maidaan de dijiye” (tr: you can pursue your nationalist cause and free us our play ground). So Abhishek recruits the kids into a grand plan – to simultaneously attack the British armoury, cantonment, telegraph office and European club, where Indians and dogs were not allowed.

The very same kids, who wanted nothing more than their football ground to be returned to them, appalled by the repressive colonial rule and inspired by ‘Masterda’ and other revolutionaries later become valiant soldiers in the ‘Chittagong uprising’. What is amiss is the representation of the transformation process, forming an unbridgeable void in the narrative.

… And all the while their dhotis remain miraculously spotless throughout the game… untouched by the grime of the playground. This “historical” could have done with some dirt, a touch of daily reality of colonial India (or even colonial Bengal) and editing that does not just cut and paste the events together in a teleological narrative… but create conflict of perspectives as the events unfold. The claim of authenticity is made through the proclamation – “This is a true story”, which appears written onscreen before the film plunges into its narrative.

The narrative style is flat, completely lacking nuances in either the characterization or the drawing of the background of colonial Bengal. The British officers are all flat characters-painted pitch black; their sole role is to inflict violence on the innocent teenagers and the other revolutionaries. In the simplistic scheme of things a noble Muslim couple are introduced to nullify the damage caused by the Muslim officer who ruthlessly slaughters the young revolutionaries. It reminds one of the mandatory presences of ‘Karim Chacha’ – with a heart of gold – like character… found in Bollywood potboilers of the 60′s, 70′s, 80′s and 90′s.

What ‘inspired’ the casting for the main protagonists – Abhishek Bachchan as Biplobi Surjo Sen and Deepika Padukone as Kalpana Dutta… is the 8th wonder of the world. While some doubted Abhishek’s casting for Surjya Sen, Ashutosh had no qualms about signing him in, especially, after he saw Abhishek’s ease at handling the traditional Bengali dress of ‘dhuti’ – he was deft at it. Therefore, the humble ‘dhuti’ is the culprit… for this epic disaster that laid a massive turkey at the BO! *Wink* The only positive that this “casting coup” achieved was… both AB junior and DP were able to look eye to eye!

Hopefully ‘Chittagong’ starring Manoj Bajpai will do justice to ‘Masterda’ and our unsung heroes from a forgotten era.

Finally… Gowarikar had this to say about his latest offering… supposedly based on Manini Chatterjee’s book, “From the detailed accounts in the book I had to execute the script keeping the spirit intact and it was okayed by Manini.” Gulp! Ummm… on second thoughts let me be more generous to him and say that his intention is good but his understanding and execution aren’t.

Go for the book and avoid the movie/DVD/VCD at all costs.

Moral of the story: Don’t judge a book by its movie. QED.

Details of the Book: Do and Die: The Chittagong Uprising: 1930-34 by Manini Chatterjee/ Manini Chatterjee/ pp. 356/ Paperback/ Publisher: Penguin Books India (14-Oct-2000)/ ISBN-10: 0140290672/ ISBN-13: 978-0140290677/ Price: Rs. 295.

Photograph: Pic courtesy link.

Reviewed by: Roshmi Sinha (cross posted from here).

Do and Die: The Chittagong Uprising: 1930-34 by Manini Chatterjee.

Roshmi — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 07:32:00 +0000

A forgotten chapter of Indian history brought alive.

Meticulously researched and skillfully narrated, the story of the young idealists, heady with patriotism and ready to die, emphasizes the role of the revolutionaries as an important part of the freedom struggle in India. Manini Chatterjee has presented perhaps the first comprehensive history of the uprising based on a large corpus of original source material. British records and official publications form just one part of this. She has made extensive use of India-centered sources in both English and Bengali: the writings by participants of the uprising, interviews with survivors, newspaper reports, and contemporary political records. Using the skills of a journalist to ask the right questions, Chatterjee uncovers the riveting saga of an intrepid band of men and women who engaged the might and wits of a mature and entrenched colonial state for four long years. Surjya Sen, Kalpana Dutta and their comrades, historical figures whom we have encountered but do not really know, acquire real-life stature in Manini Chatterjee’s telling.

The 1930 Chittagong Youth Revolt, which the British colonialists denigrated as the loot of the Chittagong Armoury, was one of the glorious chapters of the anti-colonial movement of the subcontinent and a valiant example of armed struggle. The exploits of the revolutionaries, whom the British denounced, brutally tortured, tried and hanged as “terrorists”, have entered our folklore of people’s struggle for independence from colonial oppression. The legendary ‘Masterda’ Surjo Sen, the leader of the revolt, has ever remained an icon of revolution and patriotism… in Bengal. The rest of India barely knows this heroic revolutionary… whom the British sought to portray as a midnight terrorist.

On a day (April 18, 1930) that is a landmark in India’s struggle for Independence, the fearless Freedom Fighter ‘Masterda’ Surjo Sen with his comrades-in-arms Ganesh Ghosh, Lokenath Bal, Nirmal Sen, Ambika Chakrobarty, Naresh Roy, Sasanka Datta, Ardhendu Dastidar, Harigopal Bal (Tegra), Tarakeswar Dastidar, Ananta Singh, Jiban Ghoshal, Anand Gupta, Pritilata Waddedar, Kalpana Datta and many others, and a boy barely into his teens… the 14-year-old Subodh Roy, took control of two armouries in Chittagong, raised the Indian National Flag, and declared independence under a Provisional Revolutionary Government operating under the Indian Republican Army. They achieved a siege of remarkable magnitude, against the fully trained and equipped British military.

It took an inordinately long period for new research and interpretations of Indian history to percolate into the school textbooks of independent India. The Uprising of 1857, for example, continued to be referred to as the “Mutiny” of 1857 (a term the British chose in order to minimize the spread and impact of a people’s uprising that enveloped large parts of the subcontinent) in Indian classrooms and textbooks till the early 1970s. An event that however never got upgraded in school textbooks from the status of an “armoury raid” to the popular anti-colonial uprising that it really was, is the Chittagong Uprising of 1930-34. The British used the word “raid” to wish away a challenge that shook their administrative apparatus, and morale, to the core. Wonder why, though.

The revolutionary chapter (or what Chatterjee says has been inaccurately called the “terrorist” chapter) of the freedom movement had a complex and not entirely inimical relationship with the non-violent freedom movement led by the Congress under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. This took very interesting forms in colonial Bengal, of which Chittagong was a part. All the six original leaders of the Chittagong Uprising – Surjya Sen, Nirmal Chandra Sen, Lokenath Bal, Ambika Chakrabarti, Ananta Singh and Ganesh Ghosh, were participants in the Congress-led Civil Disobedience movement launched in 1919. They were bitterly disappointed by Gandhi’s decision to call off the movement in 1922 in the wake of the Chauri Chaura incident. It was as members of the District Congress Committee and other mass fronts of the Congress that they planned and trained for the armed attack on the Chittagong armoury, police headquarters and European club on April 18, 1930, an attack they hoped would yield them a sufficiently large quantity of arms and ammunition. They hoped it would be the prelude to a general uprising. They built up an ‘army’ amongst teenage recruits who were given physical training in physical training clubs, and secret training in arms under cover – a parallel activity which the district administration did not get wise to.

Despite an unforeseen hitch at the last minute, the carefully planned operation goes off flawlessly and takes an unprepared administration totally by surprise. “The strategy and success of the uprising,” Chatterjee writes, “rested on two conditions: the first was to capture the enemies’ armouries and the second was to repulse the attack of the enemy and protect the provisional republican government for as many days as possible”. The revolutionaries were however forced to change direction mid-stream owing to a fatal failure of intelligence on their part. While the armoury contained the best collection of weapons in the district, this proved quite useless, as the ammunition to use it was not stored there. A new magazine had been recently built which the revolutionaries did not know about.

Their plans in disarray, the leaders responded to the situation on instinct. Chatterjee describes the events that followed. The original group found itself separated and in two. The bigger group, largely comprising tired but exhilarated teenagers who did not know the extent of the setback they had suffered, retreated with “Masterda” (as Surjya Sen was called), Nirmal Sen and Ambica Chakrabarti into the Nagarkhana Hills that flanked Chittagong. Around four days later, in what came to be known as the “Battle of Jalalabad” – in a showdown with the mighty Queen’s army, this poorly armed group of 55 men and boys engaged a fully armed battalion of British troops numbering several thousand at Jalalabad hills. 10-12 of them achieved martyrdom, but not before taking down eighty of the colonizers. Several among the group sustained injuries while Ananta Singh, Ganesh Ghosh and two others had an eventful time, evading arrest and reaching Calcutta with great difficulty.

Striking and graphic accounts of the battle of Jalalabad, the encounter at Dhalghat, the attack at Pahartali and the underground resistance form the core of the book. Chatterjee scores in giving a human face to the dry bones of history. The enigmatic ‘Masterda’, the irrepressible Kalpana Dutta and the brooding, tragic Pritilata Waddedar all come alive with their zeal and fervour, love and loss.

Chatterjee traces the continuation of the struggle through many a tortuous twist. The official backlash was heavy (by the end of 1931, Chittagong had come under virtual martial law and the administration had special powers to arrest, detain and punish anyone it thought were connected with the revolutionaries). The survivors of Jalalabad broke up into groups to continue the resistance which now spread to the villages; more recruits joined the struggle, including Kalpana Dutta and Pritilata Waddadar (who chose to commit suicide in an armed action rather than be caught or surrender); several leaders were captured by the police; and an extensive plan to effect the escape of some of the jailed leaders was discovered and foiled by the authorities. Masterda and his comrades, continuously on the run, were finally caught in February 1933. Kalpana Dutta, Tarakeshwar Dastidar and a group of others were arrested in May that year.

The British hanged Surjya Sen along with his fellow revolutionary Tarekeshwar Dastidar on January 12, 1934. But before the death sentence was carried out ‘Masterda’ was brutally tortured. It was reported that the British executioners broke all his teeth with a hammer, plucked out all the nails from his fingers and toes and broke every limb and joints in his body. He was then dragged to the gallows unconscious. After his death nobody performed his funeral. The prison authority, it was found later, put his dead body in a metallic cage and dumped it into the Bay of Bengal. No tomb, plaque, or saintly epithets for him and his ilk… in independent India too. Sadly.

The Chittagong Uprising, Manini Chatterjee persuasively argues, marks a new stage in the participation of women in the freedom struggle. While the Gandhian movement drew women into ‘satyagraha’ in large numbers, the revolutionary movement attracted fewer women but offered them a different quality of experience and involvement, indeed of equality with their men comrades. While Chittagong may have been the first “instance of women decisively crossing the Lakshman Rekha that bound them to home and family” it was not, as Chatterjee suggests, the only instance of this happening. Women continued, at great cost to themselves and to their families, to cut themselves off from traditional support structures and join movements that sought to bring change in radical ways. Women who had cast off traditional roles during a period of struggle found it far more difficult than men to pick up the pieces and reconstruct their lives in “peace time”. They found that while they had changed, the societies in which they lived had not.

This is a book well researched and well told, and certainly enriches our understanding of an important part of our history.

Photograph: Pic courtesy: Link.

Reviewed by: Roshmi Sinha (cross posted from here).

Darby by Jonathan Scott Fuqua

sandhya — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 05:50:00 +0000

Pic courtesy flipkart

DARBY

Written by Jonathon Scott Fuqua

Published by Candlewick Press

Ages 9-12 yrs

Reviewed by sandhya.

Darby Carmichael is a white, 9 yr old girl living in Bennettsville, Marlboro county, South Carolina, in the racially intolerant early 1920s. She has two “best friends”, Beth at the all-white school, and Evette Robinson, the girl who stays on the farm next door, the daughter of a black sharecropper. Darby looks forward to coming home from school everyday, so that she can just run off to play with Evette. Given a choice, of course, Darby would choose Evette over all her other friends, but even at 9, she knows that it cannot be done.

Darby’s dream is to be a newpaper journalist, and she attempts to write for the local daily, helped to a large extent by Evette with whom she discusses her ideas, and who edits her work. This is accepted by Mr Salter, the editor of the Bennettsville Times, who is a friend of her father’s. Of course, he knows all about Evette’s role in this, but does not say anything, as he, along with Darby’s father, is anti racial sentiment.

Darby gets better and better in her writing (with Evette’s help of course), and soon has an article appearing in the daily every week, her family and friends making much of it! So when she witnesses the beating up of Evette’s brother for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, by Turpin Dunn, a white man who she knows her father despises for his ill-manners and bad-tempered behaviour, and who her father knows is a member of the dreaded Klu Klux Klan, she proceeds to write about it. Fully knowing the furore this would cause, her father permits the daily to publish it.

What happens next? How is the following drama played out? Does right prevail in the end?

A wonderful book about the battle of right against wrong, about an innate sense of equality present in a child’s mind, in a first person version of a 9 yr old on the “priviledged” side of racial segregation. A coming of age book, a journey from wide-eyed innocence to the slow dawning of a knowledge of reality, and the courage to stand up for what one thinks is right.

The book reminded me strongly of a well loved favourite-To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee,- and could be said to be along similar lines.

A book in honour of Black History Month.

Crossposted.

ANNE FRANK: The Diary of a Young Girl

sandhya — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:23:00 +0000

Pic courtesy Penguinbooksindia

ANNE FRANK
The Diary of a Young Girl
Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler
Translated by Susan Massotty
Published by Penguin Books India.
Ages 12+

Anne Frank was an ordinary thirteen year old, who kept this diary from her thirteenth birthday for the next two years. She penned all everyday happenings, her feelings about everything and everyone around her. We have her account of her growing-up pains and joys, a lowdown on her relationships, all the yo-yo-ing typical of adolescence, her darkest, deepest secrets and her hopes for the future.

So how is this any different from something that anyone else might have written? Just this, that Anne was a Dutch Jew in hiding from Nazi persecution with her family and four other people. Other than the turmoil normal for her age, there was the fugitive existence, living life on the edge, in constant fear of discovery, and the chaos of having to live in close quarters with family and strangers, with no end to their troubles in sight.

Even in this situation, the diary is so full of life, and of hope, that the reader sometines forgets that this immensely talented girl died before her 16th birthday, and the world lost someone who could probably have been a prolific writer, and an original thinker who believed in the goodness of humans. The future that Anne herself had envisioned for herself.

Some lines of note from her diary-

11th April 1944 :”One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews!”

11th May 1944 : “…my greatest wish is to be a journalist, and later on, a famous writer.”

15th July 1944 : “It’s twice as hard for us young people to hold on to our opinions at a time when ideals are being shattered and destroyed, when the worst side of human nature predominates, when everyone has come to doubt truth, justice and God…Yet I cling to (my ideals) because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

After around two years in hiding, on 4th August, 1944, their hiding place- The Secret Annexe- was discovered, and they were arrested by the Gestapo and deported. The afterword gives details of the eight members’ fate. They were first taken to Westerbork, a transit camp, and then on to Auschwitz. There, the group was separated, and in late October, the two Frank girls were sent to Bergen-Belsen. Anne and her sister were together till their end, dying of typhus in early March 1945, at Bergen-Belsen, a few weeks before the surrender of Germany and the end of WW2 in April 1945. Otto Frank, the girls’ father, was the only survivor, and he was handed Anne’s diary along with other papers by Miep Gies, one of the non-Jews who helped them while they were in hiding.

Otto Frank decided to publish the diary in deference to the wish Anne expresses in it to be a famous writer, and to go on living after her death. He also hoped that it could be instrumental in holding up a mirror to the horrors that can be perpetrated due to prejudice about the ‘other’, so that these things may happen “never again!” An optimistic and foolish hope!

A first edition of the diary was published in 1947, after Otto Frank had edited out what he thought were the more ‘private’ matters- Anne’s thoughts on her relationships with the members of her family, and her growing sexuality, something that he was not comfortable with revealing to the world. This latest, definitive edition has the complete text of the diary, and we get a comprehensive picture of society and of Anne’s life before and after going into hiding.

Crossposted.

>I Shall Live – Surviving the Holocaust Against All Odds by Henry Orenstein

admin — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 17:24:00 +0000

Title : I Shall Live – Surviving the Holocaust Against All Odds
Author : Henry Orenstein
Publisher : Beaufort Books
Reviewed By : Vibha Sharma

‘I Shall Live’ is a first hand account of a person, Henry Orenstein, who had been through the times before, during and after World War II and what all these dreadful years brought for a Jew. Through this book, the author narrates the chronological happenings of the events – the rise of seemingly mighty Third Reich, its march ahead as if it was indomitable, the intoxicating peak for the Nazis when maximum amount of meanest atrocities were meted out to Jews and the inevitable downfall of this large empire. While reading this book, I could not help wondering how a single fanatic person could instigate so many others to let their inner animal come out and how abysmally can a human fall, even animal world looks less cruel and more compassionate compared to what happened during that time.

The author, Henry first introduces us to the life of a regular Jew in Poland – less avenues for education, target of ridicule at almost all places and being denied the basic rights of a citizen of a country. Jews were leading their lives in this hateful environment inspired by anti-Semitic feeling among fellow countrymen. The situation was getting worse with each passing year and the educated Jews were aware of the deteriorating situation of their community in Poland. As Henry mentions in the book, ‘Almost every Jew was living life with a dream – ‘Next year in Jerusalem’, but it was more of a greeting for the older generation who had their roots in Poland and could not think of settling in any other place than their own home – Poland.

But the dreadful period began when in 1939, German army attacked Poland. Sensing more danger for male Jews, Henry accompanied by his father and two brothers – Felek and Sam fled their hometown -Hrubieszow, Poland, leaving his mother and sister Hanka behind. But soon all places became equally insecure and they returned back, spent some months in hiding, soon to be captured by the Nazis in 1942.

Then began the savagery and the brutality of the concentration camps of Budzyn, Majdanek, Plaszow, Ravensbruck, Sachsenhausen and finally the death march which became the march to their
freedom. But they lost their parents very early on and got the news of the barbaric way they were killed and thousands and thousands of other Jews in mass killings. Orenstein questioned himself many times ‘what was the use of fighting, of struggling so hard against all odds to survive? And if by some miracle we succeeded, was it worth it, to go on living in such an evil world? ‘ What made him continue to hold on was the undying urge to live and to see the destruction of Hitler. He mentions that he was aware that he was being a witness to a unique event in the history. ‘Here we were in the twentieth century, and a supposedly civilized nation was doing this.’ Surviving on minimal nutrition, witnessing beatings, death and disease everywhere, constantly fearing whether they would be able to see the next morning while all this time waiting for some miracle to happen – had become constants in their lives in the camps.

In a strange turn of events, special groups of scientists, mathematicians and chemists were formed in the concentration camps and the objective of these groups was to use the intelligence of Jews in inventing a unique gas for the Germans which could help them in the war. Henry and his brothers falsely joined these groups and were spared of the extreme treatment for some time, being part of these special groups.

Orenstein does mention about some God sent people like Mrs. Lipinska who displayed immense courage and went out of their way to save them. Such people justify being human and become a source of inspiration for many. ‘She was truly sent by Him to inspire courage in us, to counterbalance the evil that seemed universal’.

Overall, ‘I Shall Live – Surviving the Holocaust Against All Odds’ is a brilliant journal of events describing the harsh realities of Holocaust and the events leading to it, which would remain as a black mark on the forehead of humanity for all times to come. A must read for all those who want to know more about History, World War II, events leading to it and Holocaust.

>The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

LindyLou Mac — Mon, 31 May 2010 13:04:00 +0000

>Book Review by LindyLouMac

The true story set in 1860 Victorian England of murder committed in a country house which at the time was talked about all over the world. Kate Summerscale has written a well researched account on how this brutal child murder appears to have fuelled the birth of detective fiction.

One night in the summer of 1860 in a large Georgian village house in Road, Wiltshire a horrendous murder is committed. The family wake the next morning to discover that one of the children is missing from his bed, worse follows the child is found dead on the property and all evidence seems to point to the fact that the murderer lived on the premises.

The murder creates a lot of national public interest and within a few weeksLondon detectives have been called in to help solve this dreadful case, where the grieving household members are seen as the main suspects.

The man summoned to Wiltshire to solve the crime is a member ofLondon’ s first official investigation squad at Scotland Yard was Jack Whicher. He was already a well known public figure but the case of SavilleKent’s murder seemed to be the beginning of the end for his career. With the case still unresolved by the beginning of 1861 enquiries had began to peter out and for several months Whicher withdrew from the public eye, only working on cases that were unlikely to attract the newspapers and therefore the publics attention. It was claimed at that time by a work colleague of Whicher’s that the Road Hill murder had undone ‘the best man the Detective department ever possessed’. In fact by March 1864 at the age of 49 he was pensioned off from the Metropolitan Police for reasons of ill health. His discharge papers quoted the reason as ‘congestion of the brain’ which in modern days we would probably refer to as stress, undoubtedly caused by the unsolved puzzle of the Road Hill Murder. In fact this unsolved crime probably worried him for the rest of his life as less when he died in 1881 it was from a perforated stomach ulcer. For a man that was once seen as a brilliant detective he was by then almost forgotten with just a very short obituary in the Police Gazette. He lost his hero status in the eyes of the public when he was unable to say with any certainty who it was carried out the murder of Savill Kent.

An interesting read especially as it is thought that this case was the one that helped mould the format of the detective fiction novel. In fact it is thought that Sergeant Cuff from the novel ‘The Moonstone’ by Wilkie Collins was based on Detective Inspector Whicher himself.

>Songs of Blood and Sword By Fatima Bhutto

admin — Sat, 08 May 2010 19:51:00 +0000

Book Review by Afrah Jamal

Google Fatima Bhutto and George Clooney’s name comes up — the Daily Telegraph thinks they are an item; peruse her new book and the journey through the wonderland with its glitz and glamour takes an unexpectedly macabre twist. Her family history is to blame for blighting the sunny landscape. Bhuttos are the ruling elite. Every so often they run for office. This quest leaves a bloody trail and each attempt almost always ends badly. But their political aspirations override self-preservation. The Bhutto family name is as much a liability as an asset, and each generation manages to find itself contributing to a gruesome storyline.

If there is anyone born to write this story, it is Fatima, proclaims William Dalrymple on the cover of her new book Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir. When it comes to invoking pathos, romanticising her father’s life, glorifying his (questionable) legacy or retelling grandpa’s political history, the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto is, no doubt, the perfect candidate. Her unconventional family history of murder, mayhem and political misdemeanours makes for an incendiary tale. Murtaza was gunned down in a ‘police encounter’ during Benazir Bhutto’s regime. He is not the first Bhutto to have met a violent end. The circumstances of these deaths are a matter of record; scandalous details of their lives are public property. And if their continual bid for a stake in power, notwithstanding a host of pending court cases and/or sedition charges, elicits howls of disapproval, they are no longer audible. Little can be heard above the din of the raging insurgency these days.

Fatima Bhutto’s book is a cautionary tale designed to give the more controversial members of the first family a makeover and an aura of respectability. The writer unveils an intimate family portrait by piecing together fragments of her father’s life scattered across continents. She has unearthed a time capsule of valuable memories and ample tender family moments are effectively used to burnish Murtaza Bhutto’s reputation.

This was probably necessitated by the fact that Zulfikar Bhutto’s death prompted his sons to form a resistance movement. Pakistanis know Murtaza as the founder of Al-Zulfikar (AZ), a militant organisation based in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, whose subversive activities against the state included hijacking, heists and dispatching hit men to target key figures in Pakistan. Failed attempts to seize the Pakistani embassy in Athens also made the list. The book admits AZ’s most daring attempt at confronting the regime by trying to blow General Zia’s plane, Pak One, out of the sky, and yet tries to shield the masterminds from taking the rap for the hijacking of a Pakistani airliner that resulted in the death of a young officer (page 237). It refers to nefarious activities against the Pakistani establishment as romantic but misguided efforts (page 243), but other than the hijacking (which Murtaza does not own any more) and attempted murder of General Zia (which he gleefully accepts), it avoids going into details. Accusing the Pakistan Army of doing unspeakable acts of violence in East Pakistan in 1971 and challenging their human rights record in the ongoing Swat operation, however, is given special attention.

It depicts Murtaza as a paragon of virtue who balked at his brother-in-law’s (Benazir’s husband’s) attempt to lure him as an accomplice in bribery yet whose organisation, according to Tariq M Ashraf’s article ‘Terrorism in Pakistan: Emerging Trends’, is said to have ushered in political terrorism in Pakistan. Strewn along the way are constant reminders showcasing Murtaza — the loving father, family man and principled politician. Yet, all the light-hearted moments — and there are plenty — or the brilliance of story telling cannot salvage his reputation.

While people who disagreed with her grandfather’s politics do find a voice within these pages, thereby lending a semblance of objectivity to her work, but nothing, not even Murtaza’s dangerous alliances, distracts her from the original intent of honouring her father’s memory. Her pen indicts her deceased aunt (ex-prime minister) and uncle (current president) for criminal behaviour and minces no words while criticising her aunt’s brief sojourns in government. She compiles a list of names responsible for her father’s murder, holds Benazir morally responsible for one brother’s death, at the same time assuming her guilt in the uncle’s ‘suicide’.

Pakistan seen through Fatima’s eyes is a lawless frontier used to settle old scores and exact vengeance where her feuding family provides most of the action. The portrait born of love stops just short of conferring sainthood on a man who may well have deserved ‘father of the year’ award and who, given his rap sheet, should have been convicted but in a proper courtroom and not dealt with on the streets of Karachi. Fatima admits that her father’s “…choices remarkable and dangerous, honourable and foolish are not mine but I lived them”, and goes on to lament that she has lived with an incomplete picture of a murdered man (page 437). That picture has now been completed with a little help from Harvard Class of 1976 alumni, party loyalists, letters and an old flame. This spruced up image bears little resemblance to the shadowy figure of lore. This time it is Murtaza the magna cum laude from Harvard, heir apparent to the throne who is supposed to capture the public’s imagination, not Murtaza — the fearsome don. One can be forgiven for being a little dazed by this abrupt transformation.