Venkatesa Suprabhatam: The Song that awakens the Lord

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Venkatesa Supbrabhatan: The Story of India's Most Popular Prayer

Benkatash Parthasarathy

New Delhi: Westland Publications, 2020

There is hardly anyone in South India who hasd not heard the lilting sould stirring Venkteasa Subprabhatam rendered and sung in the most melodious voice by M S Subhalakshmi. Composed in the fifteenth century byPrativadi Bhayankara Anna this song has now become the ubiquitous hymn for Vishnu in his upa avatara as Venkatesvara, the Lord of the Tirumula Hills. This book is an interesting account of the song and its cultural and religious context. The author has done a good job in tracing the theological and philosophical background of Vaishnavism in the post Ramanuja epoch (1017-1137). My Grandmother could recite the entire Suprabhatam and her day started with a prayer to Venktesvara of Timumala Tirupathi. And this book is a good introduction to those who have heard the song and wondered what it signified.

Sri Vaihnava religion is predicated upon the belief that Vishnu the Supreme and to be worthy of prapthi or Salvation the Grace of the Lord is important and the Grace can be acquired through prayer and meditation as well as by leading a worthy and sinless life. But the grace or benediction is entirely left to Vishnu/Perumal/ Mayon. He can grant it at his pleasure and hence the two famous Schools which sees Garce asa product of our effort and the other which recognizes only the will and pleasure of the Lord of Vaikunta. From a very early period, Tirumal Hills were associated with  the worship of Mayon or Vishnu and is one of the 108 divya desham of the Sri Vaihnava tradition. And in Tondaimandalam of the medeival Tamil region, Tirumala Hills remained as important in sanctity as Kanchipuram and Sriperunbadur, the birth palce of Ramanuja. The hymns of the Alzhwars are rich in poetic expressions of immense passion towards the Deity and the language in which this devation was expressed freely drew from the corpus of early bardic composition, especially from the akam genre of poems. Andal, the poet of Srivilliputtur about whom the great king of Vijayanagara wrote in his Amuktamaldaya is the mast note votary of of Passion though poetic imagery and metaphor. The composer of the Suprabhatam drew from this rich repetoire of philosophical and religious texts.

The interesting feature of the rituals performed in the temple is that it maintained the circardian rhythm of a human. The Lord wakes up in the morning to the melody of the Suprabhatam and all the rituals mimic the activities of a human. Thus the importance of Prasada or cooked food offered to the God as talligai. From the reign of Saluva Narashima, the sale of prasada became an important feaure of the activities of the temple. Throughout the Vijayanagara period, Temple ritual was carried out on the basis of the Vaikhanasa tradition, unlike the panchratra tradition in the other graet Sri Vaishnava shrine, Srirangam Devalaya of Ranganatha.

This book tries to explain in a simple manner the complex set of ideas and concepts that are buit into this famous poem an d even the reference to antaryami is beautifully explained.  I enjoyed reading this book. Though it was rather thin on the History, both intellectual and political, of the Sri vaishnava shrine, this book must be read by all those who beleive that the Grace of Venkatesva is necessary for their earthy and spiritual well being.

Zosa Szajkowski and the Theft of History: Identity, Historiography and the Holocaust

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The tragic history of Zoza Szajkowski (1911-1978) is many ways the story of a Historian, Chronicler or even a Memory Keeper who learnt or drew the wrong lessons from his own life experiences. The subject of a full lenght monographic study by Lisa Leff, Szajkowski, a Jew displaced from Europe who migrated to Paris as a young boy with his parents and siblings only to see all his close relatives die in the German concentration camps. The Holocaust took a terrible toll both in lives and in the capacity of the human mind to remember its horrors. And Zoza decided, for good or for evil, that the cultural treasures of Judaica in Europe are not safe and USA is the land that could protect Jewish Histrical artifacts particularly documents, manuscripts, organized archival material and memorobilia.  And to that end he embarked on a proffession of crime, stealing historical material from Libraries, Archives and Institutions and selling them to some of the most prestigous Universities such as Harvard, Columbia, Brandeis and several Jewish Institutions in Israel and New York.

The Holocaust offers a contranst between two distinct approaches to History. Raul Hilberg in his monumental, Destruction of the European Jews following the trend of Franz Nuemann appraoched the study of the systematic extermination of Jews and several other peoples and groups from the perpetrators set of institutions and in the course of 3 huge volumes succeeded in bringing the unspeakable into the light of History. The documents when placed in the right set of historical frameworks and stuctures speak eloquently. Indian histrorians, being ideologues rather than trained historins, seldom follow such an example and so we have drivel marinated in post colonial garbage masquerading as serious history. They must learn   a lesson from Raul Hilberg. Another approach is the collection of Testimonies of Eye Witnesses particularly of those who survived the extermination camps. Testimonies offered a set of sources that enabled the historian to prove the "Collective Guilt" imposed on the Germans after World War I. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners is a good example of the second approach. Here it is better to be a hedgehog rather than a fox. The War against the Jewish Population of Europe resulted in an almost total destruction of the collective and communal life lived by the Jews in Poland, Ukraine, Hungary and France. It is in the middle of this destructive war that Zosa Szajkowski decided that he could rescue Jewish Cultural Property and smuggle it to safety in the US.play his chosen role as the Saviour of Jewish Heritage. The Germans had looted Synaggues, Homes Libraries and Museums of books, manuscripts, records and documents. Zosa who arrived in Paris as a GI and with the ability to speak read write French Yiddish and German was tasked with the job of dealing with documents and cultural treasures left behind by the fleeing German Army. And seeing the horrors of the Holocaust he decided to appropriate the documents books and artifacts and sent them to US. Obviously the US Army and the Occupational Forces and their authorities winked, if not colluded with this dubious export of what Zosa thought were ownerless art and other objects of high cutural value.

After his return to USA he continued to make periodical visits to France and embarked on a serious career as an "archive thief". In 1961 he was caught red handed in Strausbourg but was allowed to escape. And in 1978 he was once again caught this time in New York Public Library and was handed over to the plice. Two days later he died by suicide taking all his secrets with him to the grave.

The life of Zosa obviously raises certain vital questions. Were the Institutions which bought the stolen documents complicit in the crime? Did he steal the documents as an act of defiance against the crimes committed against the Jews and wanted the memory of the Chosen People to be preserved? Does extreme identification with a religious or ethnic group innures the Historian to cerain ethical question about the purpose of writing History? Did Zosa in his own warped fashion anticipate the recrudesence of antisemitism in Europe and North America making exiles f the Jews nce again. Bth in USA and Europe there are definite signs of the revival of anti semeticism. The answers to these questions will never be known. The author has raised some of these questions in her fascinating study.

The post War confusion offered Zosa a number of opportunities to ransack and gather Jewish Cultural Material from Paris and other parts of France. To Zosa, a world that watched as he rationalized, silently as the European Jews were led to their death in German gas chambers will not hesitate to turn a blind eye should a similar ocassion arise and so the logic of Holocaust justified the unconventional route that he took. Be that as it may the rules governing the restitution of cultural property did not distinguish between Jewsa and other nationalities and there was every possiblity of the material belonging to dead Jews being returned back to the country of origin and this of course negated the whole tragedy of the Holocaust. While Raul Hilberg, the meticulous chronicler of the Sholah, was keen to answer the questin,how did Germany a modern western state transform itself into a murder organization, Zosa was not animated by large meta historical questions. His purpose was more immediate salvage as much as he could of the heritage still left and take it to USA which he felt was a safe zone. In a simialr manner, Leon Poliakov was intrumental in collectingGestapo records which came in useful as evidence in war crime trials which opened after the defeat of Germany.

This book makes a ood read. But there is the poignant tale of a dedicated scholars, historian, memory keeper going bad, horribly bad. Had USA treated him better coud the tale have been different. Who knows?