"Forgotten Civilizations: The Rediscovery of India’s Lost History" by Rupa Gupta and Gautam Gupta

The following review is also published in Deccan Herald, on 23 January 2022 [edited].

The Briton, the Buddha and the Bhagavat-Geeta

The British rule in India has invited abundant research on examining the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. While volumes of studies have invested their aims in the criticism of the British ideology (political, social, economic and cultural), there are a few works that have critically examined the same from the vantage point of contributors of the West. Forgotten Civilizations: The Rediscovery of India's Lost History is one such work that has shed light on the contributions made by British colonial officers to the historical and cultural heritage of the Indian subcontinent. The book is a well-articulated compilation of fifteen narratives that stand out as interesting exceptions accounting the history of cultural symbols, ancient scripts and ornate architecture. The co-authors, Rupa Gupta and Gautam Gupta, have brought together interdisciplinary perspectives on the British colonial rule in India.

Art of Reading and Translation Forgotten Civilizations focuses on the translations of many texts that bear testimony to the spread of India's glory. The immersive reading of the ancient texts which were mostly written in Sanskrit proved to see resemblances in Greek and Latin. In William Jones's words, the antiquity of Sanskrit language "is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either". The study of the old texts, to mention a few - William Jones's translation of Kalidasa's Shakuntala (Sacontalá or The Fatal Ring), Jayadeva's Geet Govind, Hitopadesa and Manusmriti (seven volumes); The Bhagavat-Geeta, Or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon in Eighteen Lectures translated by Sir Charles Wilkins; Nathaniel Halhed's translation of Upanisad and Mahabharata (unfinished translation); and Mitākṣarā  and Dāyabhāga (legal commentaries on Hindu laws of inheritance) translated by Henry Colebrooke - have all invited the West to look at the subcontinent as one of the oldest civilisations. These works stand as exceptions for they have not only contributed to restoring India's literature but also as independent discourses that have consciously prevented the European prejudices from seeping into their works.

Restoring the Architecture in Bricks and Words While on the one hand there were texts attracting serious reading and unbiased interpretations and translations; on the other hand, was the study of buildings and monuments. The tales of James Prinsep, Thomas and William Daniells, James Fergusson, Sir Alexander Cunningham and Sir John Hubert Marshall usually surface in introducing the subcontinent as one of the oldest civilisations, rich in history, science and culture. The extensive ink-sketches of ancient buildings, temples, mosques and minarets have added weightage to the fact that India's cultural heritage was built by minds that expressed tradition and individual talent. James Prinsep's Benares Illustrated is an apt example, where a collection of seventeen of his drawings introduced Benares to the Western world making the holy city garner its recognition and fame across the globe. The credit of decoding the long-forgotten scripts of Brahmi and Kharoshti (ancient writing systems) also goes to Prinsep. Similarly, Fergusson attempted to learn India's past through "the imperishable records in the rocks, or on sculptures and carvings", which gave him more details of monuments and the faith and feelings that they represented. Some colonial explorers did make appeals to the colonial government requesting their intervention in restoring and protecting the heritage buildings of India. This gave much exposure to the ornate structures and thus began the recognition and appreciation of Indian art.

Study of Buddhism Brain Hodgson, an English officer, is known to have been a collector of original documents on Buddhism that had up to that time been ever gathered. His supply of materials to the Asiatic Society of Bengal proved to be beneficial to scholars and helped them in their investigations and research on the study of Buddhism. Famous works such as The Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal by Dr. Rajendra Lal Mitra and Introduction à l’histoire du Bouddhisme Indien (“Legends of Indian Buddhism”) by Eugène Burnouf were based on the manuscripts presented by Hodgson. The contribution of Hodgson demands thorough appreciation as a collector and as an author. He was the largest and the most munificent collector of ancient texts and vernacular tracts that have served as a vital source for research matter to his contemporaries and for the future researchers. Quite interestingly, Forgotten Civilizations provides snippets on how colonial officers like Hodgson proposed the establishment of vernacular colleges for local schoolmasters. This, however, was not implemented and Macaulay’s arguments influenced the government to choose English as a medium for education. 

The writers have situated the study mainly in the eighteenth century, drawing on sociology, history and political science that has aided in examining the important social and cultural events that took place in the set time frame. The book is a comprehensive account of those important few who were responsible for popularising oriental studies in Europe and helped restructure perceptions about India to the rest of the world. The structure of the book appeals to the general readers and the lucid writing style in narrating the history grips the attention of the readers.

"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

Humankind: Diverting Energy from Biceps to Neurons

Sapiens is a popular science book that was first published in 2011 in the Hebrew language, and was later published in English in 2014. The time from then has simply added more gravitas to this magnificent work of art. Harari makes an empirical approach to tracing the history of 'humankind'. Spread across four parts, the book provides a sound understanding of the transition from cognitive to agricultural to religious to scientific revolution. The elaborate discourse on the historiography of the evolution of humankind is immensely multi and interdisciplinary.

The Cognitive Revolution Foraging in new spaces, humans began their journey from being the lowest in the food chain. The ability to use and transform language for the purposes of communication and memories, humans have become unique in their physical and biological structure, which has catapulted them in only close to 2.5 million years to becoming the apex predator in the food chain. We have modified ourselves greatly as different regions and seasons demanded. We then created 'culture' and credited ourselves with ethics and morality.

The Agricultural Revolution The time and efforts that the sapiens invested in manipulating the lives of a few animals and plant species changed the course of human events that were to follow. The very act of one's capability to grow varieties of grains and rear selected animals for meat truly became a revolution in the way humans lived. Harari refers to this juncture as "History's Biggest Fraud", for agriculture required a lot more commitment and hard work from people, yet today, it has become one of the significant aspects in terms of building blocks of any nation. This was the beginning of the barter system, which eventually metamorphosed into 'money'. It is imperative for one to also notice how the 'trap' of agriculture paved way for 'private property' and the appropriation of materialistic wealth.

The Religious Revolution The birth of the nation of 'unification' of humankind began with a shared system of myths and beliefs that someone superior is present and is always watching our actions. The laws of religion assert that the result of human caprice is ordained by an absolute and indisputable authority. The agricultural needs in a manner paved way for the Gods to be created in humans' minds. Much of mythology is in fact a legal contract in which humans make a bargain with the imagined deity and make promises of devotion in exchange for mastery over plants and animals. The discourse of Sapiens also traces the history of how 'polytheistic' religions gradually got erased and how monotheistic religions started to prevail in the guise of civilisation.

The Scientific Revolution The current phase of humankind is the attempt to achieve success in the Gilgamesh Project, a quest towards attaining immortality. The many expeditions into far away lands and many conquests led the empty maps to be filled with not just the coordinates of latitudes and longitudes but also with 'knowledge' of the lands and environment. Science and Empires grew together. Today, science has progressed farther than humans could have imagined, and this has fueled capitalism to rise to the brim. In order for this to come to realisation, humans digitised data. Now, we speak in the language of 0 and 1, the binary coordinates.

Overall, the discourse provides a deeper insight into not just understanding the growth of humankind on this planet but also what human beings have made of themselves. Harari's Sapiens is a profound and a gripping narrative. It invites a variety of readers belonging to different disciplines of study such as anthropology, history, humanities and sciences. The book makes a really good read, especially given the pandemic situation, it offers different perspectives to see ourselves in a better light, and also mull over the imaginary constraints that we have built for ourselves over these centuries.

"The Liberal Virus" by Samir Amin

In a webinar conducted on "Negotiating Postcolonial Spaces", I was introduced to Samir Amin's The Liberal Virus.

Amin theorizes a strong argument on the need for the periphery ('poor' nations) to de-link from the world economy, in order to create autocentric development and rejecting the imperialism of the Triad (United States, Europe and Japan) inherent to Modernisation Theory. Amin explains the impingement of the American model on the rest of the world, and outlines its economic and political consequences. He argues how the American hegemonic system retards the growth of both citizenship and class consciousness and aborts any political crystallization. He calls this the "low-intensity democracy", and emphasizes on the fact that democratization is an ongoing process, rather than a rigid formula designed to support the logic of capital accumulation.

It is interestingly informative when Amin examines the fundamental problem, that has risen to be known as a 'liberal virus', is in fact analogous with self-destruction. It is important to understand his explanation on the distinction between the imaginary market and real capitalism. He attempts to shatter the translucent veil that the 'market' brings to the common person the opportunity for liberty. He affirms that the concept of equity has been realised as central to European liberalism. His strong critique on the production of market ideology in relation to politics and economics provides a balanced introduction to and understanding of the evolution of 'ideology', 'American hegemony' and the idea of 'liberalism' which otherwise is portrayed as 'reform' by the dominant classes.

"Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide" by William H. Coles

The following review is also published in onlinebookclub.org, on 27 December 2019 [written as per the guidelines of host platform].

The function of fictional stories is to entertain through drama - which involves conflict, action and resolution. An effective fictional story will enlighten its readers as well. William Coles's Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide is a must handbook for creative story writers. The book provides enough guidelines that cater to adding meaning and momentum to a story, and chart out criteria for an engaged reader's story.

Coles has invested ample thought in delineating the multifarious elements that make a creative piece. Having elaborated on the many elements (or jargons), he has conveyed to the readers and learners an understanding of how even the most trivial aspect demands good attention while constructing a story. There is a fine differentiation done in explaining, through examples, how plots or characters or scenes are not discovered and described, rather they are imagined and created for attaining a maximally effective story.

The book is structured in a two-part engagement, where the first part - "The Literary Story in Fiction" - gives a great deal of information in terms of narration, character-sketch, constructing a humorous plot, conflicts in dialogues, and avoiding cliched and misleading metaphors. While the second part - "Creating a Literary Fictional Story" - makes use of the detailed analyses done in part one and instructs the readers into the proper praxis of creative writing.

Coles explains how it is important to make a creative literary piece into a living entity. The story must have real-world truth and credibility. The author is required to have an in-depth understanding of humanity and must learn the broadest worldview for effective plot, characterization and opportunities for including irony and enlightenment. It is important for one to note, as an amateur writer, how one forgets to learn what exactly makes a creative piece a living entity. One of Coles's elaboration of an example befits this particular line of thought, where the writer has to structure the story to demonstrate what it means to be human through character-based plotting and make the story significant.

Overall, Creating Literary Stories serves as an apt guidebook for writers who are trying their hand at creative writing. This practical guidebook comes with series of analyses of popular scenes from best fiction and drama, which help the readers learn by way of looking into many examples and understanding how they affect the entire narration. As an index to a creative writer, this book deserves three out of four stars.

"India in Chaos, Only Judiciary can Save" by K.C. Agarwal

The following review is also published in onlinebookclub.org, on 30 November 2019 [written as per the guidelines of the host platform].

India in Chaos, Only Judiciary can Save appears much like a timely publication. Given the perplexity that the general public expresses in terms of grappling with the judiciary, this book comes across as a guideline to many who are at least making their debut in understanding one of the core entities that define democracy.

In an elaborate fashion of three-part engagement, Agarwal delineates the perpetual failures of our government with a sincere attempt to provide certain guidelines in abiding the basic law and to ensure smooth functioning of the judiciary. The book serves as an index which charts various disparities that emerge in the system of courts which interprets and applies law. It is here that one must note the ambiguities and absurdities that get conveyed, unintentionally though, through the several interpretations of the codes of law.

Agarwal's argument runs parallel to the ills of an only monetary profit-oriented society or economy. He argues that the scams and the financial mismanagement have led to a regressive economy which in turn has inflicted colossal inflation and the common man is forced to bear the brunt. The book reveals many such stands where Agarwal has charged directly at the incapability of the guardians in creating means and avenues to counter the impediments which hinder development.

The first two parts of the book become an attempt to briefly historicise the many mismanagements and misrepresentations of the conduct of the government. While, the third part provides a well-thought proposal which demands the interested readers and thinkers to probe into several fields right from the grassroots. The multifarious areas addressed closely are the optimum use of resources, improvements in education sector, water and disaster management, population control, building of city centres and improving the environment at large.

India in Chaos, though it serves as a beginner's guide into understanding how judiciary's role becomes indispensable, Agarwal ends up discussing isolated perspectives in terms of restricting to a particular discipline of study. It is here that a reader belonging to a different discipline would find the one-sided engagement problematic. It is perhaps difficult for one to follow what development is in today's demands of the many. Agarwal's work would have gained more weight if there was an engagement with how most terms are perceived today and whether they ought to be redefined. There is an absence of investigation of the univocal meanings or interpretations that get associated with terms and examining how these meanings then get consolidated as well-established norms which are ought to be followed.

In all the other aspects of a debut learning of the role of judiciary, Agarwal's India in Chaos contributes much in terms of research. However, the constant emphasis of a mere opinion under the guise of an argument appears jarring and at times seems like the writer is conveniently dismissing the varying voices and thereby unconsciously and unintentionally adding to the further marginalisation of the other. Having made the aforementioned comment, India in Chaos is given three out of four stars.