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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.
Tributes are pouring in for historian Ranajit Guha who passed away last week, on the eve of turning 100 in May. His book, A Rule of Property for Bengali, first published in English in 1963, is an essay on the establishment of the Permanent Settlement in 1793, the first major administrative intervention by the British in Bengal. Under the Permanent Settlement, the British rulers fixed the revenue that landowners would have to pay. Guha discusses the impact of such colonial policies and its long-term impact, explaining how the Permanent Settlement, forced onto India by the most advanced capitalist power of the day – Britain – became instrumental in the development of a neo-feudal organisation on landed property and “in the absorption and reproduction of precapitalist elements in a colonial regime.” Among his other notable books are Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India and Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. “All mass struggles,” he said, “will tend inevitably to model themselves on the unfinished projects of Titu, Kanhu, Birsa…” Guha appreciated the Marxist current but rejected authoritarianism. It was necessary, he argued, to “listen to the small voices which are drowned in the noise of statist commands.” Not surprisingly, he is best known for being the founder of the Subaltern Studies series, running into several volumes, unravelling the past, “critiquing both colonial policies and nationalist historiographies”, to explain the present. Publisher Permanent Black brought together his historical and political writings in The Small Voice of History (2009). The 44 essays were put together by historian and political theorist Partha Chatterjee, who was also associated with Guha as a founder-member of the Subaltern Studies editorial board.
In reviews, we read Farahnaz Ispahani’s anthology of essays on religious extremism in the subcontinent, essays on problems and prospects of India’s agriculture sector, Alba de Cespedes’s ‘Forbidden Notebook’ and more. We also talk to Peter Frankopan about his new magnum opus on climate history.
Books of the week
The last decade or more has seen a rise in majoritarian communalism across large parts of the world, writes Farahnaz Ispahani in the introduction to Politics of Hate (HarperCollins). “The situation is particularly grim in South Asia, home to almost 2 billion people, which includes followers of every major and minor religious belief in the world. The rise in religious extremism in this religiously diverse subcontinent is often a function of politics.” She writes that Pakistan and India can both be cited as the prime examples of this phenomenon, though instances of communal majoritarianism undermining the rights and protections of minorities are also increasing in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Her edited volume includes chapters that cover the rise and the spread of religious extremism in each country, how each country’s state apparatus has viewed this rise, and the various legislations implemented within each country (the anti-conversion laws, anti-blasphemy laws, laws targeting foreign and local NGOs. In his review, Ziya Us Salam says it is an interesting anthology on religious extremism and identity politics with contributions from a wide range of people with their ear to the ground, including Husain Haqqani, Maya Mirchandani, Niranjan Sahoo and A. Faizur Rahman. In his essay, Rahman provides a deeper analysis of Muslimophobia, arguing that the main reason for it was not Islam but a sense of political insecurity born out of exaggerated fears of a Muslim demographic threat.
Review of Politics of Hate: Fear and aftermath
Distress in the Fields: Indian Agriculture after Liberalization (Tulika Books), edited by R. Ramakumar, attempts to understand the challenges facing Indian agriculture and the way out. The 16 essays cover six comprehensive themes in 500 pages: Land and Agrarian Relations, Investment and Expenditure; Agricultural Trade; Costs, Profits and Incomes; Credit and Insurance; and Agricultural Marketing and Food Security. The chapters are heavily data-driven, says the reviewer Santosh Mehrotra, which makes it a useful compendium of information for scholars and students alike. “Almost all the chapters focus inwards on the problems and prospects of India’s agriculture. Madhura Swaminathan writes with perspicacity about inequality in agriculture. S.L. Shetty, the veteran economist, traces the chequered history of agricultural investment, in which the private sector is overwhelmingly important, while the role of the public sector is increasingly becoming insignificant. A fascinating chapter by Sachin Sharma et al examines the debates around WTO and agricultural support in India. Awanish Kumar traces the history, issues and recent performance of agricultural insurance. Sukhpal Singh carefully assesses the regulatory aspects of agricultural marketing reforms with reference to contract farming.”
Review of Distress in the Fields — Indian Agriculture after Liberalization: A broken harvest
The Cuban Italian writer, Alba de Cespedes (1911-1997), was the daughter of the Cuban ambassador to Italy and granddaughter of a revolutionary hero who inspired Cuba’s first war for independence from Spain. She was writing in post-war Italy, a time of great change; two of her books were banned by the fascists and she had been arrested in 1943 for working with a resistance radio station. Forbidden Notebook (Quaderno Proibito) was first published in 1952, and has been translated into English for the first time by Ann Goldstein. The story revolves around the eponymous notebook that Valeria Cossati, a 43-year-old mother of two, purchases and hides before writing entries in it. Through the notebook, Cespedes explores a woman’s right in post-war Italy to “express herself in writing, to have a voice, and to hold opinions and secrets to distinguish herself from her family.” The reviewer, G. Sampath, writes that despite Cespedes’ radical political legacy, the diary entries have little to do with the grand march of history. “Far more intimate, it concerns womanhood, family, sexuality, friendship, relations between mother and daughter, husband and wife, and most of all, the warring factions of one’s own divided self.” This offering, translated by Goldstein, who is also Elena Ferrante’s translator, will be relished by Ferrante fans as well.
Review of Forbidden Notebook by Cuban-Italian author Alba de Cespedes, translated by Ann Goldstein
Spotlight
In his new book, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History (Bloomsbury), Peter Frankopan maps the role of climate in the history of Earth and civilization. Through the story of the rise and fall of kingdoms, empires and colonies, he argues that humanity’s current engagement with global warming isn’t new and the attempts at decoding the whims of climate processes, consequences of over-exploiting nature, controlling climate and ecological crises have been central to the concerns of thinkers and rulers for long. In an interview with Jacob Koshy, Frankopan says that people have always been worried about the weather, about climate and about climate change, but that the difference today is threefold. “First, there are more of us on this planet than ever before – not least in India, which is not only the most populous country on Earth, but has the highest number of inhabitants ever; second, the pace of climatic change is unusually fast; and third, we are playing a role in some of those changes because of how we live and behave. There have been many natural shifts in climate in the past; this time, we are involved in accelerating warming patterns.”
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- Abhishek Choudhary’s first part of a two-volume study, Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right (Picador) argues that Vajpayee was more critical to the project of Hinduising India than is commonly understood. He uncovers how Vajpayee’s early life lies at the heart of his political character: essentially conservative yet curious and conciliatory, detached yet quietly ambitious. Weaving previously unseen documents with interviews, Choudhary layers the biography with details of Vajpayee’s personal and political life.
- The Indian edition of David Hambling’s book, Swarm Troopers (Natraj Books), is out. It argues that advances in technology have set the stage for a major shift in how wars are fought and intelligence is gathered. Drones, cheap and plentiful, he says, are poised to support and, in some cases, supplant current weapons, at a fraction of the cost.
- It’s the start of the pandemic, and when her comfortable urban middle-class life threatens to imprison her, 36-year-old Malika must learn to overcome not just her unique predicament but also her innermost securities in Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s Soft Animal (Penguin).
- Christopher Paolini’s Fractal Noise (Tor) is the prequel that takes place 23 years before the events of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. A team of explorers has little time to figure out a mysterious abyss with perfect dimensions. Will they survive the mission that will take them to the very edge of existence?
