R Nagaswamy Archaeologist, Historian and Public Intellectual A Tribute

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

The death of Dr R Nagaswamy, the doyen of Tamil Archaeologists and Epigraphists is a great loss to the world of medieval studies in general and Tamil History in particular. The importance of Nagaswamy lay in his fearless and at times extremely sophisticated exposure of the identity politics driven scholarship that clogs the academic space in  the region today. Partly the identity politics in the Tamil cultural sphere revolves around the contentious issues of Language Culture and  Heritage. Nagaswamy was the only scholar who could effectively challenge the fake racial narrative of Dravidianism because he was well versed both in Tamil and Sanskrit. Perhaps he was the last Historian who could read the inscriptions of Rajaraja I in the Rajarajesvara Temple straight off the wall and he could as easily read the Sanskrit inscriptions on the walls of the Chidambaram Temple. This linguistic facility to read the languages and scripts of Tamil Nadu made him reject the pieties of the antiquity of the Tamil language.

Nagaswamy was not convinced that the Harappan Script was the ancestor of the Tamil script and though a prominent IAS Officer advanced the claim of reading several pictographs on the Harappan seals as variants of Tamil phonemes, Nagaswamy took the politically dangerous road of opposing the bogus identity politics driven research which was expedient. This did not mean that he did not take the early Tamil classics seriously. It is worth recalling that the marine exploration off the coast of Nagapattinam of the ancient site of Puhar was launched when he was the Director of the Department of Archaeology. Unlike the situation today, fifty years backs Archaeology was still a rational discipline which was practiced within reason and respected the protocols of research and verification. 

Nagaswmay founded the journal Damilica which had acquired a world wide reputation. I remember reading this journal which was printed on map litho paper when I was pursuing my PhD at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Inscriptions which were of particular importance were edited and published. And sometimes, as in the case of the famous Jambai Brahmi Inscription differing interpretations were possible. Nagaswmay discovered and published the Puzhankuruchi Inscription and that was a landmark discovery. He started a series entitled Tamil Mavattu Kalvettukal, Tamil District Inscriptions and more than eight districts were fully covered in this new series begun by Nagaswamy. And after he left the office of Director State Department of Archaeology this series like Damilica fell by the wayside. Nagaswamy was keen to see that the McKenzie  Manuscripts were made available to the world of scholarship and he encouraged his Department to edit the volumes and after the study of Taylor in the late nineteenth century we have Nagaswamy's contribution. To say the he enriched the world of scholarship would not be an understatement.

Nagawamy spent the decades after he retired from service exploring the Saiva Agamas. Generally neglected as historical sources, Nagaswamy identified the Maukuta Agama as the possible inspiration for the great temple of Rajaraja I at Tanjavur. Unfortunately most scholars in Tamil Nadu today can neither read Tamil or Sanskrit and consequently the quality of scholarship has declined sharply. 

Towards the end of his life, Nagaswamy took upon himself the onerous task of exposing the Sanskrit basis of Tamil literary creations. Though historians like George Hart and David Shulman have argued that Tamil is deeply indebted to Sanskrit and vice versa, the pulavars generally prefer to see an autonomous origin of the Tamil Language and Script. In their imagination the Indus Valley looms large.

Nagaswamy was a true bhakta and wanted to see the wealth of Temples preserved and protected. The Tiruchendur Temple Incident happened during his time and I am not aware of what his stand was. And given the circumstances it would have been dangerous for him. However, Nagaswamy played an important role in helping India recover the Sriviliputtur Bronzes from UK and the repatriation was on the basis of his expert testimony given in the London Court. More importantly, the judgement has set a precedent based on which India under Prime MInister Narendar Modi has successfully repatriated more than 250 pieces of stolen art.

Nagaswamy was a true scholar and the world of medieval history stands impoverished with his death.

Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America: A Review

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

Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America

John McWhorter

Today USA is fast becoming an Orwellian dystopia where Mothers are called Birthing Persons and men win women's races by "identifying" as women. A College Women's  Swimming team faced this problem and the Twitter mob came out in strength yelling "Transphobic Bigots" which quickly sent the challengers scurrying for cover. Welcome to the Brave New World of Woke America. 

John McWhorter is a Professor of Linguistics teaching in an Ivy League University and is Black. Both these details are important as the book under discussion will be trashed by white liberals had it been written by a white person, worse he would have been called racist bigot by a lynch mob of raving wokes. The author prefers to call the new leaders of the emerging socio-political ideology in USA as Elect not woke as the term irritates them no end. Let it be remembered that the term woke first circulated in black communities as a catch all term for a person with a perceived heightened sense of racial justice, a social justice warrior in short. 

Is Wokeism a New Religion. The author argues that the new ideology has all the markings of a new religion or cult. Its Bible White Fragility and its priests a whole army of well educated "corporate" "wall street" millennials who imagine that their earrings in six figure salary is the outcome of "white privilege" and made to atone for their success by supporting the Black Lives Matter and other organizations that are in the forefront of this socio-political movement. Arguing that this movement is a religion with the Elect as the a Synod whose members are blessed with the great wisdom of sniffing out systemic racism wherever that ugly beast resides. American Universities, particularly the soft disciplines like the Social Sciences have already embraced the woke ideology without much critical discussion.  There can be no discussion as the Commissars of the New Left have already decreed that anyone questioning their statements or opinions is a racist and will face the consequences of his/her actions in the digital public square when the Twitter mob will be incited to "tar and feather" the offending person. 

The New cult of Wokeism has created a new crime Thought Crime. We had heard of Thought Crimes only in the dystopia of Orwell's 1984. No. Thought crimes are here and have consequences. The author has discussed a few instances in which journalists and writers, even teachers in schools and universities have faced serious punishment for expressing opinions or dissent against the ruling orthodoxy of the New Left. One unfortunate soul tweeted that All Lives Matter and that was enough to bring the enlightened ones out in all their fiendish hunger. The tweet wad disrespectful to George Floyd was the alleged reason for the collective howl of protest. And like in Orwell's 1984, a new language is slowly being fashioned to condition thought and police the boundaries of the thinkable. In the social practice of Wokeism, accusation is followed by condemnation and cancellation and no one wants to face that. USA is going through a nightmare of guilt and there is no hope of redemption in the Church of Wokedom, as the author repeatedly points. Being white marks you out for eternal damnation. The sins of Slavery rest on the shoulders of the whites as they have inherited country built on "systemic racism". 

The over politicisation of American society along racial lines is already eroding civil and constitutional liberties and rights. Though the writer does not discuss it, I would like to point out that the recent threat of the Department of Justice to investigate parents who show dissent about Critical Race Theory will be investigated as "domestic terrorists" under the Patriots Act. A chilling threat but one that the corporate media is quite comfortable with. During the Nazi era in Germany, neighbours were encouraged to spy on each other and we have the American Establishment openly aligning itself with those who want to use state apparatus to stamp down parental concern for a good education for their children.

Critical Race Theory as a pedagogic tool is unfit for a school curriculum as it is based on fake history and false science. Project 1619 which wants to project USA as being tainted by slavery from the very inception tries to argue that the American War of Independence was fought to preserve Slavery. Nothing is further form the truth. As a Historian, I can concede that by winning the war a new lease of life was given to Slavery but the purpose was not to protect the peculiar institution. As the author points out, it is futile to condemn Washington and Jefferson today as "slaveholders" as that was the moral standard of the day. This argument is not quite correct. There were quite a few eighteenth century philosophers and I can name Edmund Burke who had condemned the Atlantic Slave Trade. So the explanation for the institutionalization of Slavery has to be sought in the colonies themselves. 

This work is a sensible critique of a growing movement and it seems that the push back against woke thought has begun.

Sir Aurel Stein and the Treasures of the Silk Road The Dunhuang Cave and its Paintings PART II

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

Sir Aurel Stein and the Treasures of the Silk Road: The Dunhuang Caves

Part II

The Dunhuang Caves excavated by Sir Aurel Stein was the site of an ancient Buddhist Monastery dating back to the Tang Period which housed a secret ante chamber containing a wealth of manuscripts, silk scrolls, paintings and books. It is estimated that atleast 50,000 manuscripts and other culturally significant artefacts were removed from the cave by Aurel Stein and the British Museum together with the Victoria and Albert Museum contain these treasures. 

We have illustrated a typical painting here. The Dunhuang Cave itself was a spectacular creation which reminded Stein of the Ajanta Caves and he saw a remarkable similarity in the style employed in the paintings found in these tow places. The caves located at the very edge of the Gobi desert were patronized by the merchants who traded with the societies that lived along the oases and the Silk Road. Rich deposits of coins found amidst the ruins scattered all along the desert are testimonies to the commercial artery  that linked the Orient with the West. Dunhuang itself was at the intersection of the road from Tibet and throughout the Tang dynasty a strong military presence was maintained here. The presence of letters written in Tibetan discovered in a watch tower, a letter from a Tibetan soldier complaining about the harsh conditions in which the garrison lived, showed that for some time the Tibetans had ousted the Chinese. 

Throughout his explorations both in Kashgar and Khotan Stein found evidence of a rich culture which demonstrated the hold India exercised on the imagination of the ancient world. Aurel Stein coined the term Serndia to characterize the culture, Indian in origin and expressed in Greek and Chinese idiom. In fact in his monumental work on his Second Expedition he has traced this culture to the Kushanas, who though of Central Asian origin, adopted Indian culture and played an important role in transmitting it along the Silk Road to Central Asia and beyond.  Stein collected documents written on birch bark and paper making his collection the earliest known use of rag paper in history. The scripts derived from Ashokan Brahmi or Kharoshti are of course vital clues to the positive impact India has had on the region. 

Sir Aural Stein was the first archaeologist to cross the Taklimakan Desert and explore the Tarim Basin. Miran was a site in which Stein collected hundreds of Tibetan documents along with wooden tablets on which writing was present. From the large number of documents recovered he concluded that an entire archive located ion one of the higher floors had decayed and its collection of documents fell below, and the dry arid atmosphere of the desert had preserved them for over 2000 years. Serindia then covered the entire region from Kashgar across the Hindu Kush to the Tarim Basin.

The Dunhuang site was littered with the remains of statues of Buddha and Stein identified the Rawak Stupa as one of the oldest structures of the region which bore distinct resemblance to its Indian counterparts in Sarnath and Sanchi. 

We have illustrated one of the many manuscripts taken by Sir Aurel Stein.  The rich harvest of manuscripts from the region was not without its share of academic controversy. Knowing that manuscripts were in great demand, some enterprising Uighurs/Turks began forging books which they passed off as ancient  manuscripts. An eminent Orientalist in Calcutta was a victim of this hoax and it fell upon the shoulders of Aurel Stein to expose it.

The exquisite silk scrolls found by Stein during the course of his Second and Third expeditions are now in United Kingdom. The region from which these exquisite pieces of art came from falls under the political  jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China. Turkestan itself was hotly contested through much of its history between Russia, China and Tibet. For nearly seven hundred years the Turks ruled over the region putting an end to the Buddhist and 

other religions lie Christianity that once flourished here. Hence given the complex history of the region a simplistic national origin argument to justify a Chinese claim over the treasures of Central Asia cannot be realistically entertained. India has a far more tangible claim over the treasures as they were inspired by Indian cultural interactions and influence.  Aurel Stein himself recognized the extent of Indian cultural influence in this region when he coined the term, SerIndia.

Over the century and a quarter since Stein's expeditions to Central Asia a huge controversy has erupted over his legacy. That the expeditions to Central Asia were part of the Great Game is clear from the fact that throughout his travels he mapped surveyed and made detailed topographical and geographically based maps and in this task he was ably assisted by Ram Singh a surveyor sent by the Survey of India to assist him. The Chinese authorities were quite aware of what Sir Aurel Stein was doing but given the turbulent nature of China after the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, there was little China could do. And with the Russians breathing down heavily with the construction of the trans Caspian Railway, the Chinese felt that they had to keep the English in good humour and that was the same attitude that they displayed in Lhasa in 1911 when the Traety was signed with Sir Francis Younghusband. 

Basil Davidson in his book Turkestan Alive has recollected the numerous instances during his travels in the region when he heard Aurel Stein denounced as a "bandit" "thief" "vandal". True Sir Aurel Stein took possession of vast culturally significant treasure. However in hind sight we can safely say that but for his intervention much of the heritage may have been detroyed in the endemic civil wars that too palce during the Nationalist Period and during the Cultural Revolution. And in anycasr Turkestan is predominantly Muslim and so the Buddhist heritage has become alien to the region.

Aurel Stein is still remembered as a explorer and an intrepid adventurer following the footsteps of Alexander, a seventh century Buddhist monk and Marco Polo.

Sir Aurel Stein and the Treasures of the Silk Road: Can Communist China reclaim the Buddhist Artefacts Manuscripts and Scrolls

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

Sir Aurel Stein and the Great Game 

Part I

Sir Aurel Stein (1862 - 1943) is  not a name that will ring too many bells today. But in his day he was regarded as an explorer extraordinaire and an archaeologist in a league all by himself. His prodigious output in terms of scholarly studies like Serindia, Ancient Khotan, Ruins of Desert Cathay and his On the Tracks of Alexander were all regarded as classics in his day. Though a citizen of Hungary, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which was ranged against Britain during World War I, Aural Stein rose to become one of the most respected figures of the imperial British establishment both in India and England. Like Mortimer Durand and Percy Sykes, Aurel Stein too was a Knight Commander of the Indian Empire, a decoration specially created to honor those who rendered service to the Empire. What exactly did that service consist of?

The late nineteenth century witnessed the rivalry between the Russian Empire and the British Empire, a rivalry in which India was sucked in due to its proximity to Central Asia and Afghanistan in which Russia had begun to take active interest. The main theatre of this rivalry was actually the Straits of Bosporusa and the Straits of Dardanelles both in Ottoman territory. The Crimean War was fought only to preserve the Ottoman Empire as none of the other European powers could agree about what its territorial gains would be should the Ottoman Empire be partitioned. Indeed all three major European powers had conflicting and divergent interests and so the status quo was the only solution. On the Asian frontier the situation  was quite complicated, a bundle of political and military skirmishes, high and low level intrigue, arming tribal groups of whom the Afriddis are the most notorious, using nomadic peasants as information suppliers, to which Arthur Connoly  in an inspired moment called the Great Game. And Great Game it was as both Russia and India under the Raj believed that the Chinese part of Turkestan the Sinkiang of today, the Uighur territory, was open for political and economic hegemony. The British had supported a warlord, Yakub Beg, for a few years towards the close of the nineteenth century, but the Russians were not far behind.

The Great Game had one unexpected participant: Aurel Stein. He was born of Jewish parents but given the anti s Semitism of the Austro Hungarian Empire his family thought it prudent to have him baptized. Aurel Stein converted to the Anglican Religion as he lay dying in Kabul in 1943. In 1883, Stein took his PhD in Oriental languages and he was trained in both Sanskrit and Persian. After his doctorate he came to India and soon found  employment in the Punjab where he served as the Registrar of Punjab University. The first major academic project undertaken by Aurel Stein was the translation of Kalhana's Rajatarangini into English. With the help of a Kashmiri pundit, Govind Kaul, managed to appropriate a manuscript written in the Sharada script which formed the basis of the Three volume Translation of the Rajatarangini. Impressed by his erudite lecture in Sanskrit the Maharaja of Kashmir retained Aurel Stein to catalogue the Sanskrit Manuscripts preserved in the Temple attached to the Royal Court. 

 To be continued

Sir Percy Sykes: Explorer Spy Diplomat Persia and the Great Game

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

Persia in the Great Game: Sir Percy Sykes Explorer Soldier Spy

Anthony Wynn

Sir Percy Molesworth Sykes was a personality straight from the pages of a Rudyard Kipling novel. He combined the life of adventure for which T E Lawrence is famous for and a love for adventure which made Sir Richard Burton the cynosure of Victorian society. He traveled widely in Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia and as he traveled he explored the terrain  and sent detailed maps of the region to the Indian Army Intelligence Headquarters at Shimla. He lived and worked in dangerous times. Persia, an unstable patchwork of tribes and sectarian associations, was stirring intellectually to a new kind of political awakening. A movement aimed at transforming Persia into a Constitutional State was gathering momentum and by the first decade of the twentieth century had virtually rendered the Qajar Dynasty both powerless and seriously undermined. Percy Sykes was the Consul posted at Mashhad at a critical juncture and his long standing friendship with the Crown Prince made him a valuable source of political information for the English.

Percy Sykes was born in 1867 in Yorkshire and died in 1945. Educated in the well known Rugby School, Sykes joined the Sandhurst Military Academy and was posted in India. He was based in Sialkot with the 16th Lancers. Along with Francis Younghusband, Syskes too was seconded to the Indian Army and its Intelligence wing. And in this, Sykes was eminently successful as he was able to explore little known mountain passes, traverse the inhospitable Lut Desert, explore the migratory routes of Turkoman nomads as they crossed from Central Asia into Afghanistan and thence into Persia. As he wrote in his History of Exploration his guides in his exploration were the accounts of Alexander's conquests, particularly that of Arrian and the travels of Marco Polo. Sykes was a protégé of Sir Mortimer Durand whose biography he wrote in which he expressed admiration for the tireless manner in which he pursued British interests in Afghanistan which till today is institutionalised in the form of the Durand Line, the boundary between Afghanistan and India, now of course, the line dividing Pakistan from the Pashtun heartland of Afghanistan. Percy Sykes was well trained in Persian and so was able to acquire impressive intelligence.

Persia in the late nineteenth century was the target of two powerful and expansionist Empires: Britain and Russia. The Great Game as Rudyard Kipling called it was played out from the Pamirs, across the Taklamakan Desert, the snow capped peaks of the Hindu Kush to Tehran and Shriaz. An the Consul in Mashhad  and Kerman, Sykes kept a close watch on Russia. The construction of the Trans Caspian Railway had made it easier for the Russians to move its military rapidly and the tribes inhabiting the border areas were constantly in a state of what Ibn haldun called fitna, a state of political unrest. negotiations with tribal leaders on behalf of the Indian Government meant also dealing with the regime in Persia whose writ barely extended as far east as the Baluchi border. The increasing old of Russia over Tashkent meant that Indian trading interests suffered.

During his years of service, Sykes explored 3000 miles in the Himalayas and discovered no less than 40 passes that had strategic value. His detailed Reports which he submitted to the Legation in Tehran eventually found their way from the Foreign Office to the Royal Geographical Society. The task of communication was still filled with difficulties as the engineers sent to man the British Persian Telegraph Company were killed sometimes within days of reaching their posts.

Sir Percy Sykes was a keen observer of the landscape he surveyed. He noticed that the qanats that supplied water to the fields on the border between Baluchistan and Persia had been destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century and agriculture had not quite recovered since. He also was intrigued by the spectacular structures he saw in the region adjoining Persia and Baluchistan. 

The windmills that harnessed the violent desert winds were described vividly by Sykes and they were still functioning when he wrote about them. Huge parallel wall made of mud capture the wind and funnels it towards giant sails that drive timber shafts to which are attached grinding stones. Some of these structures are still extant and are now recognised as UNESCO world heritage sites.

The discovery of Oil in Persia and the transition from coal burning engines to oil powered ships in the Royal Navy added another element in the tense relationship between Persia and the British. With Germany beginning to take an interest in the region in order to use political Islam as an ideology to motivate anti British feeling among Muslims all over Asia men like Sykes had their hands full. At Kashgar Sykes helped Sir Aurel Stein smuggle 146 cartons and boxes of antiquities into India and till this day the Chinese have neither forgotten nor forgiven this vandalism of their cultural heritage.

This book is well written and is based o the personal papers correspondence and Reports of Percy Sykes. In 1915 he was knighted for his services, receiving the KCIE. He died in 1945. 

A Medieval Monarch of South India: Rajaraja I, the Splendid Monarch

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

Rajaraja Chola: Interplay Between an Imperial Regime and Productive Forces in Society

Raghavan Srinivasan

New Delhi: Leadstart

2021

Rajaraja I (985-1014) is the subject of the book under review and he is a difficult personality to pin down. Srinivasan has set out to write a biography of a medieval Tamil king and given the extremely limited and fragmented evidence, it is creditable that he has produced a book length narrative. The book is structured around the known events of his reign and are discussed around the themes enunciated by historians such as K A N Sastri, Burton Stein, R Champakalakshmi and others. The evidence extant from the period do not permit an indepth investigation into the Life and Times of Rajaraja I as the Chola monarch lacked a biographer and chronicler like Akbar had in his companion, Abul Fazal. Given this limiting condition, the author has done a reasonable enough job in presenting the political and economic lineaments of the reign of Rajaraja I, the Splendid Monarch as one historian has called him.

The Historian has to depend on Copper Plate Inscriptions as his source for reconstructing the history of the period. Politically the reign of Rajaraja, the Rajaesari, was responsible for rehabilitating the fortunes of the Dynasty that had taken a drastic turn for the worse following the Rashtrakuta invasion and the defeat and death of the heir apparent, Rajaditya in the Battle of Takolam in 949 AD. Rajaraja showed his political skill in ensuring the survival of both the State and the Dynasty by changing the pattern of Chola succession. This important change which imparted a firm institutional foundation to the Chola State has been ignored in the analysis proffered by Raghavan Srinivasan. 

Another important aspect that is argued in the book as per the current historiographical trend is an examination of Kingship as practiced during the Chola period. While there is a great deal of debate on this  issue, the writer has waded into an extremely contentious one by using the concept of Deva Raja to situate Chola kingship. God King in South East Asia, especially for the Khemer kings meant the apotheosis of king as god upon death. Unfortunately the interpretation advanced by  Nilakanta Sastri has gathered vehement traction and needs examination. First, Rajaraja or for that matter no Chola king, claimed the status of gods. The closest that Rajaraja came to divinity was when he claimed the title, siva-pada-shekara in his inscriptions in the Big Temple at Tanjavur. (South Indian Inscriptions vol II No 1 and 2). The Esalam Plates of Rajendra I also attest to the patronage extended to radical Saiva groups like the Kalamukhas and the Pasupatas, a link that we first encounter when the mahavrattins of the Kalamukha order are given custody of the pallippadai shrine of Arinjeya at Melpadi. The evidence that we have goes to prove quite conclusively that the Cholas did not claim divinity as a constituent element of the ideological apparatus of the state.

The very name of Rajaraja's magnificent temple at Tanjavur, the Rajarajes'vara Temple, built in his 25th regnal year encapsulates the enigma of Chola kingship. The double entendre' refers both to the name of the King and Deity and does not indicate an appropriation of divinity by the mortal king. The medieval European monarchs considered Kingship as a union of Two Bodies, the Body of Christ and that of Man, but the Chola conception was resolutely secular.

This book provides a good introduction to the political history of the period and the author has essentially followed the identification of places mentioned in the inscriptions as given by Sastri in his now classic history. The inscriptional rhetoric of taking the head of the king, as the author points out was merely rhetorical as defeated kings were never killed as was the practice under Islamic rulers. The  trade and commerce carried out by the guilds has been discussed, though the extent of coined currency being used in commercial transactions may by disputed.

This is a well written and interesting book and deserves to be read by all those interested in the past of South India.

The Cat who saved Books Reading and Redemption

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

The Cat Who Saved Books

Sosuke Natsuawa 

New York, Picador 2021

A young boy, Rintaro, finds his world falling apart when his grandfather, the owner of Natsuki Books died suddenly leaving him a second hand boo store filled with the Classics. Enter Tiger the Tabby and the boy discovers his inner strength and realizes the redemptive power of compassion, love and the quest for peace through the pursuit of knowledge and books. The book shop tucked in a corner of an unnamed city in Japan is a portal that opens up to a parallel universe in which Books are trapped and Tiger  the Orange Tabby wants Rintaro's help to save them. What follows in an allegorical tale, plainly told but redolent with wisdom and at time deeply moving in its intense description of greed, power and self love.

The Cat presents himself without ceremony, "The name is Tiger the tabby" he says with his triangular ears and piercing eyes. Books have been imprisoned declared that Cat and Rintaro Natsuki is tasked to rescue them and the Cat adds rather mysteriously that should he fail in the task he would be trapped in a timeless labyrinth. Aware of the tremendous power of books, Rintaro hold up the futility of hoarding knowledge as an end in itself and there by rescues the books hoarded in giant cavernous halls. The books saved from imprisonment by the power of truth that resides in one who truly loves them, A lesson learnt from his grandfather.

Labyrinth Two is far more complex and it concerns the appropriation of knowledge by those claiming to understand books and see to distort the meaning by imposing their misguided interpretations on the books they read. Is the author taking a swipe at the current fashion of Deconstruction which has taken the literary world by storm. There is no text only readers. And readers have no objective standards by which to judge the meaning of what they read. "The style is free from any individuality, expressions are deliberately kept to those in common usage--the passages are touched up to achieve the utmost plainness and simplicity." Interpretation is a supreme act of power and true meaning eludes the reader as interpretation is ultimately grounded in innate wisdom not the technicalities of language, grammar and rhetoric.

And finally Labyrinth Three is a metonym for the power and élan of the publishing industry which has grown so huge and gargantuan that it can claim to be the final arbiter of human knowledge, taste and political opinion. Publishing books and making huge profits is the only aim of  mega corporations and human well being is not promoted by men motivated by economic interests. Rintaro now faces an adversary who does not love books.

The Cat who saved books is a story that teaches empathy and compassion and above all the immense power books have in making the world what it is today. I enjoyed this book and strongly recommend this book. 

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks A REview

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

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks

David Rooney

New York; W W Norton and Company Inc, 2021.

"What is time then? If nobody asks me, I know; but if I were  desirous to explain to one that should ask me; plainly I do not know." St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.

The book under review by an internationally acclaimed Horologist  is a study of time from two rather distinct perspectives. The first part is a well researched study of early ventures into time-keeping in different parts of the world and his discussion of  the history of mechanical time keeping by investigating the construction of large mechanical clocks from the thirteenth century on wards is lucid and valuable. Inexplicably ne changes track and meanders into the impact of time and clock culture on modern civilization and goes on to claim that standardization of time led to exploitation, tyranny and oppression. Whether the mechanical clock with its relentless motion signaling the passage of time had anything to do with these rather unsavory developments is open to debate.

Human beings have always  found the movement of the stars  or rather the planets both mysterious and fascinating. The length of the noon day shadow seemed to vary according to the movements of the celestial bodies giving the first device of measuring time: the sun dial. The Chinese invented the clepsydra which sounded out the hours. And ancient Greece had its Tower of Winds which seems to have been an early observatory.

The tower of Winds has miraculously survived the tumultuous passage of time, though its exact function is still largely a matter of conjecture. With the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Latin texts as part of the great cultural shift that Historians call the Renaissance, mechanical means for time measurement were soon discovered and there was an early instance of civic competition when cities, states and communities started building clock towers all over in order to proclaim their status as free cities and progressive civic entities. The first mechanical clocks were introduced in 1275 and by 1600 nearly 200 clock towers existed all over Europe. 

The clock tower in the Italian city of Chioggia was characterized by a sophisticated mechanism consisting of intermeshing gear wheels driven by falling weights, an early attempt at the escape mechanism which lies at the heart of all mechanical time keeping. Apart from this clock, the designer of this device, Jacopo de Dondi constructed in Padua in 1344 a n astronomical clock which gave the relative position of the planets vis a vis the Earth, a planetarium in short. The other important step towards sophisticated time keeping is seen in the Salisbury Cathedral

One of the oldest clock towers still running on its own medieval design is the tower attached to the cathedral at Salisbury. Unfortunately sacked during the awful days of the attack on Church during the reign of Henry VIII, the tower and its clock survived destruction. The history of all these experiments in design and execution of time measurement is ably brought out in the book. 

The author has bought into the Foucauldian paradigm that science and the growth ( I will in a subsequent Book Blog Review Seb Falk's The Light Ages). The imposition of this interpretive element in this book is a distraction and it interrupts the otherwise well constructed narrative.

The author has tried to take a global approach to the issue of time keeping and its History and has adequately explored other cultures like Islam, India and China. One major drawback lies in the fact that time keeping is closely tied to Astronomy and therefore the transition from the Ptolemaic view to the Copernican view of the Universe is a sine quo non for a comprehensive investigation.

In the sixteenth  century the Roman Catholic Church made serious attempts to reform the Calendar as the celebration of Easter was seriously out of sync with the planetary motion. Apart from reforming the calendar steps were taken to measure the meridian and take correct readings of the sun as it passed over the spring equinox. Cathedrals in France and Italy were designed to function as Solar Observatories and the readings provided played an important role in reforming the Calendar, David Rooney has ignored this vital aspect and is a serious flaw.

Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast A Review

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Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast

Marjoleine Kars

New York: The New Press

2020

This years Cundill Prize has this surprise nomination. A book based on primary sources and one that by and large eschews the sordid pieties of identity politics and ideological posturing. Based on archival material found in the Hague and London, this book deals with the Slave Revolt in 1763 that convulsed the Dutch plantation of Berbice in South America. The entire narrative is derived from the Judicial proceedings instituted against the rebels who were captured after the rebellion had been militarily suppressed.

Extracting historically accurate information from evidence that was generated during the course of a highly charged trial in which the witnesses were facing charges that could lead to the imposition of the death penalty, is a challenging task in that the "re-enslaved had every incentive to lie distort and omit". The Slave who rebelled and risked his life for freedom from enslavement oppression and systemic violence according to the author was scripting his own history by acting out a praxis of negation of his existing social and political reality and striving to recreate an alternate society whose inchoate shape and contour is only fleetingly captured by the sources of the period. Dr Kars has situated the Slave Revolt in a framework that is partly Historical and partly Anthropological and thus a thick description of the events from a Geertzian perspective.

The records are all imperial records, regnant with the implied superiority of white rule and the illegitimacy of the cause of the rebels. The right to use extreme was assumed to be beyond debate and the testimonies gathered in large folios like the one illustrated below contain the records of over 900 witnesses. The rebels could not speak Dutch and 

so their statements had to be translated by an interpreter who in turn made sense of the statement and conveyed the meaning in contemporary Dutch. This  double translation affords opportunities for mistranslation and error. Ranajit Guha has drawn attention to this feature of Official Records in his pioneering paper, "The Prose of Counter Insurgency".

The Slave Revolt began in April 1763 and lasted a whole year. The slow communication across the Atlantic Ocean and the absence of adequate  military support resulted in an early collapse of the Dutch Administration headed by a young Governor Simon van Hoogenheim. The military contingent sent from Netherlands reached Surimane only in April 1764 and with the arrival of nearly 1000 well trained and armed soldiers, the Rebellion was all but over. Unlike the English East India Company which possessed a strong army, the Dutch Company did not have its own dedicated military and essentially outsourced defence and protection to mercenaries. The rule of trading companies like the VOC and the EIC which were both in transoceanic commerce and slaving required a reliable supply of armed men capable of inflicting extreme violence and in the post Hapsburg Low Countries, violence was privatized to maximize profit.

The Rebellion began in the with the rather ironic name, Goed Land Goed Fortun or Good Land and Good Fortune Plantation owned by Laurens Kunker and the rebel leader Cojii or Kofi was enslaved on that Plantation. The Slaves had a  number of grievances but the most important was their extreme anguish at the horrific punishments meted out to them by their Bomba and the Plantation Manager. The Plantation economy rested on a foundation of racial violence and fear that it engendered. Like Conrad's character, Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness the plantations all over the Atlantic world were populated by men driven by lust, power and an insatiable appetite for violence. It is no wonder then that the first thing that the rebels did was to murder the Planters, their families and in some cases the loyal slaves and the bomba.

The author is particularly good in teasing out strands of ideology and motives from the garbled accounts of the Rebellion provided by the rebels during their trial. The leadership for the movement was provided by the Amina a group of elite Africans from the Gold Coast. Coiiji and his "general" Accara were both from this ethnic group and so too was Atta, the man who deposed Coiiji and drove him to suicide. The leaders seem to have replicated the hierarchy on the Plantation while the overall ideological matrix was derived from West Africa. After the suicide of the rebel leader, nearly 5 human beings were killed so that their blood could by spread on the grave. By situating the events of the rebellion in a cultural context, the author has provided us insight into rebel culture and behaviour.

The Rebellion was crushed as the Dutch were able to muster a much larger force against the Rebels and also because the Amerindian tribes supported the colonial administration by cutting off all routes of escape. Does this make the indigenous people an accomplice of the enslavers. This question, a troubling one, confronts the reader. The author leaves us with little doubt about what she thinks. But we have to see the collaboration of Amerindians in colonial anti slave insurgency in the context of what they experienced at the hands of the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English and the French.

I enjoyed reading this book and though it is not in the same league as The Black Jacobins by C L R James it is an important contribution.

Imperial Nostalgia, Race and Class in EmpireLand: A look at current "intellectual" fashion in Britain

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

The cartoon by Low published more than sixty years ago sums up the state of play in Britain over its imperial past. Dragging statues of long dead slavers, writing trashy tomes about "Insurgent Empire" putting on an air of moral superiority by strutting about as enlightened or in the current usage "woke" activists on call to shore up the street mobs that validate the transition to a "post colonial" state of being are the latest excesses of the white academia both in Britain or USA. Shriller the noise of virtue signaling the greater the rewards in an a academic world where group think is more in demand than scholarship or independent thought. It is very nearly the end of Humanities as a field of knowledge and its displacement by Cultural Studies which claims to represent all the identify categories that are fashionable today. 

Imperial Nostalgia How the British Conquered themselves by Peter Mitchell, a journalist, is one of several boos that essays a bold analysis of cultural and intellectual climate in what is being recognized as the disruptive post-Brexit Era. It is amusing to read that the British are now reevaluating their post imperial standing in the world today. Having benefited by the plunder of Asia's wealth for over 250 years, we in Asia are only amused by the antics, both intellectual and academic, of those who claim that they are free of the taint of colonialism as they have embraced a vision of a pluralist, multi cultural,  inclusive Britain. Writing toxic polemic against Nigel Biggar, an Oxford academic, the author caricatures and misrepresents the highly nuanced and reasonable arguments of Biggar as if they represent an apologia for  an Imperial Past. It is only the victims of imperialism who have the right to assess it and  study it in much the same way as Germans cannot and ought not to study the Holocaust as any such study would either by compromised by political loyalty or directed towards an abject ideological goal. And this is really the heart of the matter. Imperial Nostalgia is mere chimera and is whipped up to re-inscribe  white Christian moral and intellectual hegemony. The non white human cannot represent himself.  He must be represented. And who better to do this than the white Liberal with Oxford and Cambridge pedigree. 

Akala, a British rapper has written an honest book, Natives Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire,  and is well worth reading. There is no great sense of wonder and bewilderment at the demise of the Empire and Akala looks at the social setting of Britain today which is multi racial, particularly after the process of decolonization that set in after the Suez Crisis of 1956. White privilege is a reality and knee jerk genuflection towards Wokery is likely to hide that reality. Racism as an ideology was not a mere idle by product Imperialism as Akala argues. Its roots go deep into European History. The imperial tradition and its concomitant theory of History whether in the works of J R Seeley or in the more practical exuberance of Cecil Rhodes was fashioned over a period of time and Poets, Writers, Journalists and Explorers were all complicit in this task. Akala is certainly worth reading.

EmpireLand How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnan Sanghera is a disappointing read.  It more or less traverses the same territory as Imperial Nostalgia but it also suggests that contemporary British society has become more sensitive to the presence of immigrants from the colonies. Can am Asian immigrant identify himself as a member of the British society. Gratuitous use of personal pronoun we us etc does not mean that the Asian immigrant is accepted as an equal member of White society. 

Sir Sidney Wadsworth ICS A Life in History and Memory

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

A Judge in Madras: Sir Sidney Wadsworth and the Indian Civil Service, 1913 - 47.

Caroline Keen

New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2021.

Sir Sidney Wadsworth, ICS retired to the Isle of Man after he retired in 1947 and spent some of his retired life writing his "memoirs" which in the classic western sense was to remain a personal record of service, reflection and memory. However, his grandson, Simon Wadsworth took upon himself the task of rescuing the manuscript from the archives and getting Caroline Keen to flesh out the life and career of Sidney Wadsworth within the broader context of both Indian History and the administrative and judicial institutions of the Madras Presidency , where Wadsworth spent his entire official career. The result is a book rich in detail and is a significant addition to the growing literature of "Colonial Life and Careers". 

Before discussing the book we must address a particularly gross and intellectually vapid trend in "Imperial" and "Post Colonial" studies. White scholars seem to think that by aligning themselves with Black Lives Matter and ranting against the excesses of colonialism they rid themselves of both the guilt of their inherited past and the privileges which their colour has bestowed by virtue of colonialism, conquest and domination. Historical analysis based on empirical evidence rooted in a methodology that foregrounds reconstruction of the past is certainly more humane and enriching than the  ideological virtue signaling as represented by Priyamvada Gopal's Insurgent Empire.

The book under review fortunately avoids this trap of sliding into the quagmire of post colonial "discourse" by remaining focused on the life and the times in which Wadsworth lived. It makes no attempt at providing a Balance Sheet for the British Empire nor does it meander into the dead dreary sand of the "Idea of India" exposition so beloved of later day imperialists. It is perhaps a given that a young man in the late nineteenth century sent to the Colonies as a covenanted officer of the Crown would carry a sense of awareness of the immense power he wielded and towards the end of his life become a tad bit embarrassed over it as he approached the twilight of his life. And this indeed was the case with Sidney Wadsworth. "He was conscious of his own importance; but that very consciousness, while it may have given rise to a certain superiority of manner, also led him to put his work first and make it the paramount interest in life" (240). 

Sidney Wadsworth was born in 1888 and died in 1976, a life long enough to see the High Noon of Empire and the fading twilight into which Britain had descended by the early 1970s. He was educated in Sorbonne, Paris and he qualified for appointment to the Indian Civil Service in 1912 and was assigned to work in the Madras Presidency.  This Presidency for some reason was considered less desirable than the other two Presidencies and the sprawling provisions and commissionaires of British India. Having learnt Tamil he arrived in Madras just before the outbreak of World War I in 1913. Wadsworth's first posting was as sub collector of Vellore where he was trained by Sir Norman Majoribanks, the Collector. As the designation implies the first responsibility of the "Collector" was revenue assessment and collection, the Jamabandhi as it was termed in English revenue parlance. World War I saw him work as an army censor and later he was the sub collector of Gudur in Nellore District. Fort Galeria built near Lake Pulicat by the VOC, the Dutch East India Company was not merely a trading post for innocent trade goods like Textiles and Rice but was also a notorious Slaving Port on the Coromandel Coast. The Dutch raided the coastal areas fr slaves whom they sent to Batavia. It is unfortunate that Caroline Keen, a trained Historian, has missed this vital fact.

After the war ended, Wadsworth was posted to the Board of Revenue. But soon he decided that he would like to serve on the Judiciary and went to London for six months in order to qualify for judicial appointment. He was admitted to the Middle Temple, the same one that Gandhi, the self styled "father of the Nation" had entered. Presiding over murder trials involving local women and medically challenged accused must have been quite instructive. As the district judge of Chingleput, Wadsworth has perforce to adjudicate disputes over water and water rights as the area was essentially irrigated by rain fed water stored in tanks and reservoirs. He succeeded in settling a serious dispute over the sharing of the Swarnamuki river waters by making the litigants agree to arbitration rather than judicial judgement and it is said that his decision is still in force in the region. After a stint  in Madura, Sidney Wadsworth was posted to Madurai and later became a Judge in the High Court of Madras. 

 As the High Court Justice he presided over the Sir Raja Annamali Chettiyar Case and several important cases. In 1947 he retired just after India became "Independent" and after the Partition of the country. 

This biography based on the personal memoirs of an ICS Officer in Madras during the years of British rule is an interesting book and an important one in that it provides us insight into the mind of an officer during the heyday of Empire.

The Great Game all Over Again: Durand Line and India's Diplomacy

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

The disgraceful exit of USA from its 20 year involvement in Afghanistan, has presented India with an unenviable plight. Having backed the Northern Alliance and having spent 3 billion US dollars in various social and economic projects for the improvement of the Afghan people, India stares at two distinct  possibilities. First, the possibility of increased militancy in Kashmir is something that the Indian Security Establishment will have to consider. Second, the rise of Taliban as the ruling political hegemon in Afghanistan raises the possibility of a revival of the internal strife, the Stasis, as Thucydides termed it. Given the complex ethnic mosaic of Afghanistan the civil war may lead to certain unforeseen outcomes. The disintegration of Afghanistan as a Nation State with the Tajik and Uzbeg territories joining their ethnic cohorts across the border. More likely the Durand Line will once more become the bone of contention between the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the state of Afghanistan.

Sir Mortimer Durand 

Lord George Curzon who had a deep and profound insight into the strategic requirements of the Indian frontier maintained that the Durand Line came close to being a "scientific frontier" for the Indian Empire. The Treaty of Gandamak, 1879 had established British control over the hyber Pass and the Amir of Afghanistan surrendered the right to conduct an independent foreign policy making the kingdom a satellite in the orbit of the British Indian Empire. As can be imagined this Treaty was highly umpopular with the Aghans and Sir Louis Cavagnari who was appointed Minister was assassinated in Kabul by an exited mob.

The response of the British was swift and ruthless. Three Armies were fielded against Afghanistan. General Roberts was to lead a force to Kabul, General Stewart was to occupy Kandahar and General Bright was to march to Jalalabad.  The forces of Amir Abdul Rehman were defeated and Afghanistan was forced to accept British demands and make territorial concessions. 

In November 1893 the Amir appended his signature to a one page document in English and he did not sign the accompanying map. Sir Mortimer Durand and his compatriot Sir Salter Sykes had succeeded in making the Amir sign away more than half the Pashtun territories of his Kingdom. Chitral, Bajour, Swat and Waziristan were essentially annexed and became the North West Frontier Province and till this day form part of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Kafiristan, an indigenous non Islamic territory was handed over to the Amir as concession and he promptly set about Islamizing the area. 

The Duran Line introduced a highly volatile element in the relationship between Afghanistan and the British Empire in India and after the War in 1919 Afghanistan was forced to accept the Durand Line as the border. The present Taliban rulers of Afghanistan have already said that they do not accept the Durand Line a nd have laid claim to the entire Pashtun speaking areas of Pakistan and this would also include Peshawar. The establishment of a unified Pashtun Homeland by combining the territories on both sides of the Durand Line is a possibility that India may have to confront. Iran has already stated that they do not recognize the Taliban and have asked it to gain democratic legitimacy. Herat, Kandahar, Mazar i Sharif and Kabul have all been part of Safavid territories before Ahmed Shah Abdali seized these cities. It is quite likely that Iran may seek to gain territory at the expense of a faltering and failing Afghan state.

India has to deal with this situation.  What will India do? It is time to enter the Great Game and the stakes are high. If played well India can achieve its long cherished goal of reclaiming the parts of Kashmir that are now occupied by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. And of of course Gilgit and Baltistan can also be regained. There are opportunities for India if the game is played well And dangers if  India does not seize the opportunities.

  

Woke,Inc : Inside America's Social Justice Scam A Review of Vivek Ramaswamy's expose

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

Woke,Inc Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam

Vivek Ramaswamy

Center Street, 2021

In Biden's and Kamala's America public discourse is around three ideological tenets: Systemic Racism, White Privilege and Equity. Together they constitute the foundations of Wokeism, a new political and cultural movement based on Identity Politics of Race Gender and Sexual Orientation. Vivek Ramaswamy has studied the ramifications of these ideological shibboleths  both in the larger context of American public life and the institutional carapace within which these ideologies are impacting both policies and culture. 

Vive Ramaswamy, is the son of Indian immigrants from South India and grew up in Ohio. He graduated from Harvard and went on to earn a JD from Yale University. He founded a Biotech Company, Roivant which raised venture capital funds of nearly a billion US dollars and remained a highly profitable venture. He was chose  to resign following the pronounced drift to Woke culture within the American Corporate World.

The book is a scathing indictment of Corporate America at least in its Woke avatar. This ideology argues Vivek is pernicious in that it robs the citizens not only of their money and wealth but their voice in the Public Square and their identity as well. The huge and unaccountable power in the hands of Corporate Mughals like Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg of FaceBook has led to distortions in the information available to the citizens for making informed political judgement. The manner in which all these three Mega Tech Companies censored dissenting views on the Origin of COVID 19 and blindsided any discussion on the possible origins of the Virus in the Wuhan Virology Lab suggests a degree of coordination in pushing forth a scripted line. And Vivek rightly compares this with the Soviet style censorship of the 1930s. The de-platforming of President Trump by Twitter constitutes a violation of fundamental rights of a citizen to express himself. The flip side of this is that if the State or the agencies of the State acted in such a dictatorial or high handed manner the Judiciary would have intervened. But these Mega Tech Companies are private  players protected by an Act of Congress that limit their liability. He, unlike other critics who want to use the Anti Trust Laws to break up and discipline these entities, suggests that it is better to make Corporate America aware of its obligations to its shareholders leaving stakeholder concerns to the politicians

Vivek Ramaswamy is a crusader and like every crusader is armed with moral indignation which bristles on every page. The very companies that promote Black Live Matter and its agenda in USA are often extremely callous in other parts of the world. Nike which retained Kaepernick as its "brand ambassador" was hailed as a hero for kneeling when the US National Anthem was played and the Company gave a large donation to the Black Lives Matter Inc. However the fact that Nike shoes are made by Uygar slave labour in Communist China is of little moment for the awakened "woe" souls of the liberal world. Self interest passes off as morality in the Brave New World of Wokedom. Jeff Bezos who had several minority employees fired for speaking about the terrible working conditions in Amazon facilities, gave a donation of 10 Million US dollars to the Black Lives Matter and ensured that there is no adverse reaction. There is obviously a disconnect between the professed objectives of Social Justice and the actual practices of the Corporates. The fixation with BLM seems to be so overwhelming that outward expressions of fealty covers up great malfeasance. Volkswagen  which was hailed as a game changer in conforming to the demands of rigorous environmental norms was exposed as a cheat which beat the tests by installing a software that generated fake results. Such examples can be multiplied but the basic argument is that Wokeism is only an ideological cover for corporate greed and an alibi for gross violations of law, regulations and even Constitutional mandates. The example of Unilever is most instructive. The UN has several times commended the organization for "fempowering" women, Unilever speak for Female Empowerment. Women working in a Tea estate in Kenya were attacked and several of them assaulted and around 11 of them even killed. Unilever which was hailed as a great liberal upholder of Women's Rights did not pay any compensation and when the affected party appealed to the UN, strategic  contributions to NGOs  ensured  suppression and soon the matter was forgotten. Vivek rightly says, the "cloak of wokeness hides wrongdoing". 

Woke Corporate America's sins seem to be many. Airbnb shared personal data with the Communist Party of China a major player in the woke world. McKinsey, an Accounting Firm, prepared a Report for the Saudi Government in which it identified 3 major critics of the regime who posted o Twitter. The result they were arrested. Authoritarian regimes like those of China and Saudi Arabia seem to have close ties with Corporates subscribing to Woke ideology.  And China as a consummate player in this game has learnt to co opt woke methods to serve its own ends. The reason for this support is not hard to find: the immense wealth of China makes it inviting and New York Times and Washington Post carry full page advertisements issued by China and this is one way of funneling money into the American Ideological Apparatus. 

Interspersed in the book are interesting insights into the evolution of corporate structures in USA. Corporations enjoyed the benefits of limited liability in return for a Social Contract based on maximizing profits to the shareholder and serving the Nation's needs. Over the years Corporates have been able to expand their footprint in USA by claiming to represent the stakeholders, a catchall phrase for citizens, professional groups, church goers etc. By claiming to represent stakeholders  corporate USA has moved to the dangerous territory in which it is virtually accountable to no one.

Vivek Ramaswamy has stated clearly and argued that unless USA wakes up, democratic space and freedom in USA will be eroded.

Netaji Bose Papers: The Legal issues and the Nehruvian Regime's Prevarications

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

Bose inspecting troops 

The declassified records of the Home Ministry, External Affairs Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office make sordid reading. Nehru and his dynastic successors were mortally afraid of Subash Chandra Bose and his legacy as he had the potential of absolutely destabilizing the Congress Regime had he perchance survived the Air Crash and returned to India. It would not be wrong to say that the Congress Government under Nehru and his successors were invested in the Air Crash Theory not just as a hope but as an insurance against the challenge from Netaji. This is made clear from the questions and controversies surrounding Netaji in the months following the defeat of Japan in August 1945. 

In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Japan in August 1945 Lord Wavell the Viceroy sought to have Netaji Bose declared or at least considered for prosecution for alleged "war crimes". It is not clear from the available records if the UN War Crimes Commission that was constituted by the victorious Allies considered the prosecution of Netaji. What is shocking, however, is the absolute nonchalance with which the possibility was treated by Nehru and his Government.  There is no evidence on hand to suggest that Nehru either protested such a characterization nor did he try to put the facts in a clear and unambiguous manner. Even during the Red Fort Trial the allegations around Netaji were not addressed. There is no doubt that the Imperial Japanese Army did commit war crimes against Indian citizens in Andamans, Singapore and Malaya. However, in the case of Andaman Islands even the British realised that Bose was only "nominally" in charge of the Islands.

The closest parallel we can make with another contemporary personality is Charles de Gaulle. Like de Gaulle, Bose escaped from his country during war time and sought the assistance of states which were opposed to the Government that existed in France. The only difference is that de Gaulle chose the side that emerged victorious and Netaji Bose ended up on the losing side. Charles de Gaulle was able to discredit Pierre Laval to such an extent that not only was the French Premier executed as a "war criminal" after a flawed trial, but also was able to get all the advantages of a victor, though France was a defeated, collaborationist state. 

The Secretary of State for India and the Colonies was reluctant to accept the reports of Bose's death in the crash of 18th August 1945 and this reluctance was taken as grounds to challenge the findings of both the Shah Nawaz Commission and the Justice Khosala Commission. And to the Nehruvian regime this was god sent. Any issue or question regarding Netaji Bose could be avoided or better still horribly confused by stirring it in the pot of the Air Crash theory. And later the repatriation of ashes back to India issue. And there was a constituency which played to the gallery and the charade continues thereby important questions about Netaji and his legacy are evaded.

R F Mudie in his letter to the Viceroy makes it clear that Bose cannot be treated as a  "war criminal" and he does not come within the "extended definition" which came into vogue and adopted by the United Nations. This letter is found in the Transfer of Power Documents and a photocopy is also found in the Netaji Papers. When it is so clear to a British Officer why was Nehru so reluctant to come clean on this issue.

During the course of the INA Trials at the Red Fort Delhi several facts were adduced regarding the torture and beatings to which Indian troops who were reluctant to join the INA were subjected to. And there is evidence to show such instances were not frequent. The INA was not complicit in any of the major war crimes committed by the Japanese forces in China and Southeast Asia. Joyce Lebra is clear on this. 

The controversy over the "war criminal" charge was allowed to fester only because it served the interests of the Nehru establishment and the Congress friendly regime sponsored "historians' lie Bipan Chandra and others have chosen to play along.

Netaji Bose Papers: The Controversy over the "Bharat Ratna"

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

The decision of the Government of India headed by Hon ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi to throw open the records of the Government of India relating to Subash Chandra Bose has evoked considerable interest. The records clearly show that at every step of the way Nehru strove hard to undermine the contributions of Bose and later appropriated them as part of the Congress legacy by inducing prominent lieutenants of the Netaji like Shah Nawaz Khan and Mohan Singh to defect to the Congress. Shah Nawaz rose to be a Minister in the Union Cabinet and presided over the first major Enquiry over the alleged death and disappearance of the great Patriot. 

Throughout the 17 years of Nehru's and the years of his daughter and grandson the Dynasty did not allow the contribution of Netaji to the Freedom Struggle to occupy its rightful place and after the Left took charge of the Ministry of Education after the split in the Congress in 1969, which saw Syed Nurul Hassan being crowned as the Czar of Higher Education, Netaji's stature in Indian History was deliberately slighted. One has only to read the badly crafted sentences in Bipan Chandra's Struggle for Freedom to realize the pathetic depths to which the leftist historians would go to diminish the stature of this towering figure. Throughout those long years Professor Samar Gupta kept raising questions about the disappearance of Netaji but little was done about honouring his memory. It was left to Hon ble Narendra Modi to build a suitable Museum to house the relics of the Indian National Army in New Delhi.

Why was the Nehruvian State hostile to Netaji? This questions goes right to the elephant lurking in the room. How did India get its Freedom. Dynasty friendly historians have chosen to silence the contribution of the INA and treat it as a mere embarrassing interlude in a Glorious Chapter headed by the great Troika--Gandhi, Nehru and Patel. Savarkar was brushed aside as the man who wrote "mercy petitions" thereby undermining his many years of sacrifice and suffering. Bose was made to "disappear" literally and metaphorically and so his legacy remained alien to Indian political life. The Forward Bloc founded by Bose tried to carry the torch but after the advent of the Communist Party of India, the Marxist Faction to prominence under Jyoti Basu swerved leftward leaving Bose behind. 

In 1991 when P V Narashima Rao was the Prime Minister and was running a minority Government with a deft combination of inducement (bribes JMM Bribery Case) and state coercion (the Jain Diary Case), a decision was made to award the Bharat Ratna to Subash Chandra Bose. He was tagged with Abdul Kalam Azad whose standing in India was certainly not of the same stature as Netaji Bose. A shrewd political gambit to link Bose with Azad hoping that it could be sold as "secular" recognition of two outstanding individuals. 

On October 10 1991 the Prime Minister wrote to R Venkataraman, the then President requesting the investiture of the Bharat Ratna on the two individuals, Bose and Azad, in recognition for "public service of the highest order" and "outstanding contribution to the freedom struggle". As far as the dynasty friendly historians were concerned, Bose ceased to struggle for Freedom once he was expelled from the Congress and as I have shown earlier the INA was reduced to an embarrassing footnote. So what exactly was being honoured in 1991--the Bose of the Congress Days or the great Netaji of the INA. 

On 3th February 1992, A K Narayanan, Joint Secretary Ministry of Home Affairs wrote to K N Bakshi the Indian Ambassador to Austria to contact Mrs Emilie Schenkl the widow of Netaji and Dr Mrs Anita Pfaff the daughter of the Great Patriot. On Feb 21 1992 Dr Anita Pfaff wrote to the Ambassador:

           "We are aware, however, the fact that in the past Netaji's achievements and contributions have not been recognized, particularly when it could be avoided comfortably". She went on to say that "Such an honour would have been appropriate in the 1950s."

A stinging rebuke from the daughter of the Patriot. And she went on to say "Whether his achievements were so minor that he had to stand in line for so long or so great that they would be remembered even after such a long time". Obviously the Bharat Ratna to Subash Bose who is a legend in India puts him at par with Nehru, Indira Gandhi Rajiv Gandhi and scores more and hence no patriot of India will ever like to see the legend diminished in this way. She concluded by saying that "One cannot honour Netaji today by awarding the Bharat Ratna.

The Bose Family did not accept the award and the insignia and Sanad as per the procedure are now in the Ministry of Home Affais.

 stinging 

Netaji Bose Papers An Investigation into the Funds of the Indian National Army and the Indian Independence League

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

The Netaji Bose Papers recently declassified by the Government of Hon ble Narendra Modi provides a wealth of details about how the Nehruvian Regime sought to appropriate the entire legacy of this great Patriot. And in so doing left itself open to the charge of mishandling sensitive political and diplomatic issues.

The INA under Subash Chandra Bose collected contributions towards the war effort from the Indian population in Singapore and Malaya. It is safe to assume that the fiscal levies were voluntary contributions though war time measures did warrant a degree of coercion. The Azad Hind Fauj and the Provisional Government headed by Subash Chandra Bose maintained distinct and separate identities. The funds collected by the Government were deposited with banks located in Singapore and Thailand. After the defeat of Japan and its surrender, the Allied Forces moved in and claimed INA assets as "enemy property" and Nehru, a trained lawyer thought it fit to allow negotiations with the Allied Command in Singapore to be carried out under the pretence that INA assets were "enemy property". Of course, the presence of Lord Mountbatten helped Nehru get the support he needed to push his policy through. Apparently a part of the funds were held in a personal account in the name of the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. 

The file F.23 generated by V M M Nair is mere 24 pages but if a historian reads it against the grain so the speak it reveals a great deal. The file begins with a Note from Nair stating that one Hardyal Singh of Singapore was keen to give the INA Gold in his custody back to the Government of India. The legal issue being that the Singapore authorities considered any asset belonging to the INA or the Government he headed as enemy property and Jawaharlal Nehru blithely walked into a trap. He conceded that Pakistan has a share in the INA Assets in the proportion 2: 1. How Nehru arrived at this strange conclusion that Pakistan was entitled to a share of the INA and Provisional Government Assets is utterly bewildering. This decision ranks alongside the other infamous decision taken by Nehru to refer to the Kashmir dispute to the United Nations. INA assets were seized as enemy property and a receiver was appointed to settle the claims, if any, of India. The claim of Pakistan did not arise as these were not National Property. Nehru was quite ignorant of law and legal precedence.

The file reveals that around Rs 10 lakhs were eventually transferred to the account of the Indian Mission in Siam now Thailand. The Ministry of Education thought it fit to use the Funds as seed capital to finance visits by Indian scholars to Thailand in pursuance of the then prevailing notions of Greater India and chose Dr R C Majumdar as its first nominee for the award. Nehru was aghast that the decision was taken without his consent and made his rebuke plain in a Note sent to one Humayun Kabir, then Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Education. R C Majumdar declined the offer and T N Ramachandran the Joint Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India was eventually nominated. The papers do not reveal if Shri T N Ramachandran availed of the fellowship.

Much of the Correspondence in the file is handled by Shah Nawaz Khan who in 1952 was a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport. This Shah Nawaz was instrumental in enabling the Indian National Congress appropriate the legacy of Subash Chandra Bose.  Curiously Shah Nawaz was Minister of Food in Shasti's Cabinet in 1965 when his son was a Captain in the Pakistani Army. This individual has had several walk on parts on the stage of Indian history at a crucial juncture. As the Chief defendant in the INA Trial at the Red Fort Shah Nawaz was defended by a galaxy of legal luminaries and though he was sentenced to death for treason, the sentence was commuted and he along with Major Dhillon and another Officer was cashiered from the Army. 

The Legal Defence mounted on behalf of Shah Nawaz was a classic instance of the Rule of Law serving political goals which were quietly given the go by once the Red Fort Trials ended. Shah Nawaz himself became a Member of Parliament and was elected four times in all and lost in 1967 and 1977. The grounds on which it was argued in the Red Fort Trials that the defendants had not committed treason was on the grounds the the Provisional Government of Azad Hind headed by Bose was a legally constituted Government with due international recognition and having all elements of sovereignty, territory, population, Army Judiciary etc. And as such they were soldiers fighting on behalf of their Government against an occupation force. This argument was politically an explosive one in that it threatened to blow the entire edifice of the Nehruvian claim that the legitimate government to which power was transferred was his, and that was essentially the basis of the political consensus of Post Transfer  of Power India. The arguments presented in the Red Fort Trials make clear the fact that the Government of Bose was indeed a legitimate one and INA was not a rebel force but the legal Army of duly recognized Government that had declared war on the Allies.

Shah Nawaz in 1956 was appointed to head a Three Man Commission of Inquiry to look into the death of Subash Chandra Bose. By this time, Shah Nawaz was domesticated within the power structure of the Nehruvian regime and he gave a Report which essentially validated the contentions of the regime. It is certainly likely that Bose had indeed perished in the Crash of 18th August 1945 and by making Shah Nawaz the anchor of the theory, Nehru succeeded in completely neutralizing the political legacy of Subash Chandra Bose. Forward Bloc and the Family was now reduced to merely disputing the factual claim of the Air Crash and the Legacy of Bose was stolen clean.

Thus this file a mere 24 pages long illuminates a sordid chapter in the history of contemporary India.