(This article forms a part of The Hindu on Books newsletter which brings you book reviews, reading recommendations, interviews with authors and more. Subscribe here.)
Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.
Who is going to win the Nobel Prize in Literature this year? The prize, to be announced on Thursday (October 5), has had its share of controversies, and lots of misses – famously, Leo Tolstoy did not win the Prize despite the fact that he was very much around and his great books which are relevant to this day including War and Peace and Anna Karenina had already been published, when the first Prize was handed out in 1901; Jean Paul Sartre refused to accept the Prize in 1964, saying he always declined official distinctions and did not want to be “institutionalised”; American writer Philip Roth was overlooked. This year, the daily literary website, Literary Hub, listed the bookies’ odds for the Literature Nobel last week, placing Chinese experimental writer Can Xue at the top (she is on the Nobel hopefuls list every year) and others like Kenya’s Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, French writer Michel Houellebecq, Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson, Japanese writer and perennially on the list too, Haruki Murakami, novelist and poet Jon Fosse, Russian writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya et al. Salman Rushdie too must be a contender. But as Nobel prediction history shows, anyone can win – and a totally unexpected voice too (think American poet Louise Glück in 2020 or Bob Dylan in 2016). Last year, the Prize went to French memoirist and auto-fiction writer Annie Ernaux “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”
In reviews, we read an excerpt from I am an Ordinary Man, edited by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Ritu Menon’s book on eight writers and their ideas on India, Karen Armstrong’s tome on the power of the natural world and more. We have an essay for International Translation Day which was observed on September 30, and an interview with Rajeev Bhargava on his new book.
Books of the week
Mahatma Gandhi statue depicting historic Dandi March at Gyarah Murti (11 Statues), Sardar Patel Marg in New Delhi, India. | Photo Credit: NAVEEN0301
If Restless as Mercury: My Life as a Young Man contained the story of Gandhi, in his words, from his childhood to 1914, the sequel, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: I am an Ordinary Man (Aleph), takes it forward right up to the last day of his life. Edited by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, it considers an intense phase of Gandhi’s life with several movements in the run-up to Independence and Partition. In 1930, Gandhi threw one of the biggest challenges to the British Raj with his launch of the salt satyagraha. His unique protest against the Salt Laws by walking with fellow workers to Dandi changed the course of the freedom struggle. As Gandhi writes, “Next to air and water, salt was perhaps the greatest necessity of life. It was the only condiment of the poor. There was no article like salt outside water taxing which can hurt the starving millions, the sick, the maimed, and the utterly helpless. The tax constituted, therefore, the most inhuman poll tax that the ingenuity of man could devise. The salt law-breaking satyagrahi would walk to a coast where the salt lay, bend down and scoop it up. Those unable to go to a shore could break the law by selling or buying untaxed salt. My intention was to start the movement only through the inmates of the Ashram, unknown to fame.”
Karen Armstrong’s timely treatise, Sacred Nature (Bodley Head), is a call to reconnect with nature to rekindle our sense of the sacred. “Our all-absorbing technological living has alienated us from nature,” laments Armstrong. “Even in a place of extreme natural beauty we talk on our mobiles or scroll through social media: we are present, yet fundamentally absent.” Unless nature finds an intimate place in our minds and hearts, humans will continue to remain isolated from it, she says. In his review, Sudhirendar Sharma writes that through the reading of ancient texts and scriptures, Armstrong reminds us that myths introduced our forbearers to deeper truths by directing their attention to the eternal and universal. “Pulling central themes from the world’s religious traditions – from gratitude to compassion, non-violence to sacrifice – Armstrong offers practical steps to develop a new mindset to rekindle the sense of the sacred. In such times of climate change when icecaps are melting, wildfires are raging and floods are rampant, there is no time for partying anymore.”
When Gandhi visited Jallianwala Bagh after the massacre of 1919, he stayed at Saraladebi Chaudhurani’s home who was deeply influenced by him. Tagore’s niece had been a staunch supporter of a “martial Hinduism” but, following Gandhi’s steps, took up the cause of swadeshi, much to her husband Rambhuja Chaudhury’s chagrin “for what he thought of as Gandhi’s weak-kneed non-violence.” In India on Their Minds (Women Unlimited), Ritu Menon gathers the thoughts and writings of eight women – Nayantara Sahgal, Qurratulain Hyder, Rashid Jahan, Ismat Chughtai, Attia Hossain, Kamlaben Patel, Lakshmi Sahgal and Saraladebi – who witnessed, and participated in, the events leading up to the Independence of India. In various forms, novel, memoir, short story, essay, these women observed the birth of a nation and Partition, and recorded the moments and the aftermath. Reading their different stories, tied by their connection to India, makes this book a wonderful addition to Independence/Partition literature.
Spotlight
A govinda troupe forms a human pyramid outside Mahim Dargah as a mark of respect during the Janmashtami Festival in Mumbai. | Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI
In his new book, Reimagining Indian Secularism (Seagull Books), Rajeev Bhargava argues secularism should not be seen as a project only for minorities. Pointing out that the present majoritarian crisis is a blip, he says that India’s broader, historical pluralism will not be easy to dislodge. In an interview with V.S. Sambandan, Prof. Bhargava says it is important to not disconnect the inter-religious from the intra-religious. “If you make defending minority rights (preventing inter-religious domination) as the main issue, secularism is seen as a project only for minorities and not for the Hindus. [Combatting] intra-religious domination is as important. The caste system thwarting individual autonomy, one caste dominating another within the Hindu order has to end. Those fighting against inter-and intra-religious domination should come together. By reducing secularism solely to the defence of minority rights, specifically of Muslims and Christians, a lot of Hindus feel ‘secularism is not for us’ and/or ‘it has worked against us’, which is not the case. Secularism is as much to protect Hindus from their own fanatics, extremists, caste groups and orthodoxies. It needs reimagination. Inclusive secularism should also address caste and gender domination.”
In her essay for International Translation Day (September 30), Swati Daftuar writes that more translators are entering the field today than ever before. The buzz around translations picked up ever since the 2022 International Booker Prize went to Geetanjali Shree for Tomb of Sand, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell. Daftuar finds a pattern in the translator ecosystem – a sense of community – with every translator connecting her to the next. “The power of community, and the very real ways in which it affects and shapes an emerging translator’s career today can’t be stressed enough. Not only does it offer support and encouragement, it can also open very real and career-changing doors.” That said, translation is difficult, challenging work, and what primarily seems to drive translators is passion for the job. “No translator lives off their literary assignments,” says author and translator Arunava Sinha who both teaches and mentors young translators. “They are coming out of everywhere, and with an enthusiasm for books in their mother tongue.”
Browser
- Patrick Olivelle’s Ashoka (HarperCollins) is the first book in the Indian Lives series, edited and curated by Ramachandra Guha. Based primarily on the inscriptions of the last great Mauryan emperor, Olivelle constructs a fascination biography of Ashoka. Forthcoming volumes include books on Sheikh Abdullah, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Jayaprakash Narayan, Kasturba Gandhi and the Buddha.
- From November 2018 to February 2020, trade unionist and human rights lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj was at Pune’s Yerwada Jail in its high security wing. In her new book, From Phansi Yard (Juggernaut), she recounts life in jail, weaving lively portraits of fellow prisoners and their children, reflecting on absurd rules, caste hierarchies, fistfights and friendships.
- The Running Grave (Hachette) is the latest – and seventh – book in the Private Detective Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith, a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling. In this, Strike is contacted by a father whose son has joined a religious cult in the Norfolk countryside. In order to rescue will, Strike’s business partner Robin Ellacott decides to infiltrate the cult, totally unprepared for the lurking dangers.
- The 14 short stories in Life Was Here Somewhere: Stories (Speaking Tiger), Ajeet Cour blurs the lines between fiction and memoir, painting vignettes of life in Delhi, Chandigarh and the villages of Punjab. Translated from the original Punjabi by the author, these stories are deeply moving.
