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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.
Staying on course with the theme of the environment and global warming, and after last year’s non-fiction tome The Nutmeg’s Curse, Amitav Ghosh is back with The Living Mountain, a cautionary fable of how we have consistently exploited nature, leading to an environmental collapse. Recounted as a dream, it is a tale about Mahaparbat. Indigenous people live in its shelter, but the relentless assault on the mountain for commercial benefit leads to disaster for all. Written during the pandemic, and while the world faces a climate calamity, Ghosh explores how and why humankind has failed to understand nature, and what lies ahead.
In reviews, we read about the threat to democratic institutions in India today, a social history of tribal Nagaland and its Christian communities, a tribute to the martyrs of the 1971 war, Polo Oloixarac’s new satiric novel about writers, translations of Dalit writings from Bengal and more.
Books of the week
In India’s Undeclared Emergency: Constitutionalism and the Politics of Resistance (Context/Westland Books), Arvind Narrain says India is living through a starker period of anti-constitutionalism, where the threat to our democracy goes “beyond the ‘authoritarian’ or ‘sultanist’ features” that marked the Emergency. In his review, Suhrith Parthasarathy lists six distinct features prevalent in India today, mentioned by Narrain, which have helped inaugurate a new state. These include a unifying ideological commitment to Hindutva; the aid provided to the state’s project not merely by governmental machinery but also by civil society; the genuine popularity of the ruling regime and the power of a new and rampant mob, which has enabled hate to transform itself into physical violence, where news of lynching without consequence has become commonplace. But Undeclared Emergency, says Parthasarathy, goes beyond telling us what the state of the nation is. “Narrain also offers a series of prescriptions on what is to be done, to allow democracy, in Ambedkar’s words, to thrive both in form and in fact. For this reason, more than anything else, the book makes essential reading.”
Through education, health camps and other mission work, the Baptist churches stand witness to a remarkable transformation by which Naga tribals became an assertive community of the Christian faith. In Christianity and Politics in Tribal India: Baptist Missionaries and Naga Nationalism (Permanent Black), G. Kanato Chophy explains how Nagaland within a century of missionary contact became a predominantly Baptist State. The other stories he traces are the success of American Baptist missions of the 19th century in an area then under British rule, the role of the Baptist church in Nagaland today, particularly in the light of the fact that the Naga dispute is yet to be sorted out, and the impact Christianity has had on tribal life. Looking to the future, Chophy cites the example of Dimapur, the gateway to Nagaland and a melting pot, where Christians comprise Baptists, Catholics, Protestants and others. He argues that Naga Baptists, who are in a majority, “must perform the difficult task of harmonising their faith with emerging realities.” In his remarkable book, Chophy shines a light on the social history of a fascinating region cut off from mainland India.
Through the persona of Mona, Pola Oloixarac’s eponymous novel, translated by Adam Morris (Serpent’s Tail), renders ‘world literature’ as little more than a farcical export of American campus politics with its trademark obsessions of race, colour and diversity. At The Meeting, a literature festival in Sweden, which will culminate in the presentation of a prestigious prize, writers from Armenia, Iran, Israel, Macedonia, Peru, Algeria, South Korea, Albania are invited, but when the Armenian poet goes missing, no one can remember what exactly he looked like. As G. Sampath writes in his review, Mona herself, as a Peruvian, has enjoyed all the benefits of being cultural exotica on a North American campus. Under pressure to produce a ‘masterpiece’ as a follow-up to her sensational literary debut, Mona’s aim at a literary gathering is to escape the proceedings without drawing attention. At her best while skewering the pretensions of the literary world, Oloixarac has delivered a novel worth savouring for the satirical brilliance of its prose alone, says Sampath.
Debi Chatterjee and Sipra Mukherjee have translated a volume of Bengali Dalit writings (Under my Dark Skin Flows a Red River/Samya), representing various genres from poems, songs, polemical essays, short stories and extract from autobiographies and novels. It’s a timely and valuable collection, says the reviewer Debapriya Basu, but the translations “are at best, adequate”. Basu points at some of the complexities of reading the book. Taking on a statement made by Achintya Biswas – “The sufferings of Dalits cannot be comprehended by others.” — Basu says that non-Dalit readers must admit the truth of this claim. “Sipra Mukherjee articulates some of these tensions in the Translator’s Note, pointing out that the problematic position of the translators and the publisher (as indeed the reviewer’s) is ‘also to a degree negated by our gender since women and Shudras have occupied similar positions in most Hindu scriptures.’”
Spotlight
The Deeds of Gallantry (National Book Trust) is a documentation of Indian soldiers who fought in the Indo-Pakistan War in 1971, diligently captured by a team led by Amlesh Kumar Mishra, Director, History Division in the Ministry of Defence. Each chapter takes readers through selected battles providing the context and highlighting the sacrifices of the soldiers, many of whom were awarded the Param Vir Chakra/Maha Vir Chakra for their gallant deeds posthumously. The inevitability of India entering the war on December 3, 1971 was presupposed on the repeated transgressions by Pakistan on Indian territory in hot pursuit of the guerrilla outfit Mukti Bahini fighting for the liberation of Bangladesh. Pakistan’s emboldened pre-emptive strikes were premised on the expected support from the U.S. and China, a strategic miscalculation arrayed against the India-Russia Treaty of Friendship that proved to be a strong deterrent, writes Dammu Ravi in his review. “The difference in their approaches is revealing; while India prioritised to contain Pakistan on the west and annihilate it in the east, Pakistan sought to capture a substantial portion of Indian territory in the west to compensate for its anticipated losses in the east. Through this book, we get a sense of how the war was fought by the forces. It’s also a tribute to the bravehearts of the 1971 war.
Browser
- Drawing on more than a decade of research, Caroline Elkins implicates all sides of Britain’s political divide in the creation, execution, and cover-up of imperial violence in Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire (PRH). By demonstrating that violence was the most salient factor underwriting Britain’s empire, she sheds light on its role in shaping the world today.
- CLR James: A Life Beyond the Boundaries (Hachette) by John L. Williams traces the contextual threads of a remarkable life — Trinidadian, cricketer, Marxist, American activist, Brixton elder statesman — and weaves a vivid tapestry of C.L.R. James’ complex political thinking. With a unique understanding, and paying attention to details, Williams profiles an icon.
- Kochu, a young boy in Kerala, is caught kissing the neighbour’s son. All hell breaks loose, ending in Kochu taking his life. Years later, after discovering his suicide note, his elder sister, Achu, sets out to uncover the truth about their dysfunctional family in Megha Rao’s Teething: A Story Told in Verse (HarperCollins).
- In Daphne Palasi Andreades’ Brown Girls (Fourth Estate), the focus is on the lives of a group of young women of colour growing up in Queens, New York. Streets echo with many languages and the girls struggle to reconcile their immigrant backgrounds with American culture.
That is all for this week. We look forward to hearing from you, be it about this newsletter, our reading list, your literary queries or the book you are reading now. You can find us at www.thehindu.com/books and on Facebook and Twitter at @TheHinduBooks
