Book Review Pages
The Kathmandu Post Review of Books
Vol. 3, No. 18
Issue Coordinator: Dinesh Prasain
Martin Chautari for
CSRD and The Kathmandu Post
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Essay
Reviews
- Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India (Akhil Gupta)
- Nepal: A Himalayan Kingdom in Transition (Pradyumna P. Karan and Hiroshi Ishii)
- Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma (Amitav Ghosh)
Meals for the Mind
C. K. Lal
Books are said to nourish the mind. While good books are as rare to come across as fine cuisine, one still has to find sustenance in books that may not change the world but are potent enough to keep a person going. Francis Bacon has observed, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested." However, one must first take a bite before deciding what to do with the fare.
I love to read all kinds of memoirs. I believe most readers do so, because it gives them an opportunity to live one added life, that too in the company of people who have made their mark and left an imprint on the society. But a biography is a different kettle of fish. Perhaps the expression should be modified and I should rather say a different pot of khhichadi altogether. The specific example that I have taken this time is the biography of Aditya Vikram Birla, and he was a vegetarian.
By the time Aditya was born, Birlas were already a name in India. At eighteen, when he was due to leave for Massachusetts Institute of Technology with two of his cronies, his grand-father Ghanshyamdas, the legendary industrialist-friend of Mahatma Gandhi, sent him a not-to-do’ list. Among other instructions, it advised him not to dive, not to swim in the sea and never to study late in the night.
Biographer Minhaz Merchant thinks that the readers who have forked out three hundred and ninety-five Indian Rupees for the hard bound edition would be interested even in such minutia as, "The boys then caught a connecting Air-India flight to New York. They checked in at Hotel Lexington before flying, two days later, to Boston." When an author gets largest ever fee for a book from the sponsors of an authorized biography’, what else can one expect except an out and out hagiography? While this book may be important for those who subscribe to the view of Carlyle that biography is the only true history, the truth as depicted in this volume is hardly stranger than fiction. This book makes a bland reading, like consuming a mountain of Bhaat without accompanying side dishes. [Aditya Bikram Birla, A Biography by Minhaz Merchant, Viking Penguin India, 1997]
Reminiscences of Nancy Cooke De Herrera, the American lady who claims to have launched Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's multi-pronged marketing blitzkrieg makes more compelling reading. A much-married socialite of Beverly Hills with friends high in the glamour world, she seeks salvation in the company of the Beach Boys and the Beatles in the Valley of Saints, learns to levitate in Switzerland, goes in search of Shirdi Sai Baba, dines with Greta Garbo and Dr. Gayelord, poses with the royal family of Bhutan and travels to Lhasa with Tensing Norgay. When one does all that, there are stories to hear, however vain the narrator may be. The book has spiritual pretensions too, but it's the anecdotes that make it a fun-read. It's a vegetable curry masaala of a book, full of spice but not too hot. [Beyond Gurus by Nancy Cooke De Herrera, Rupa, New Delhi, 1994]
After the industrialist and the socialite, Akhtar Hameed Khan is a person that would not fit any single description. He has been a member of Indian Civil Service, a teacher at the Jamia Milia Islamia in India, a visiting professor at the Michigan State University, an innovator who created the famous Rural Development Academy of Comilla (now in Bangladesh) with Foundation Funds and Harvard advisors, and a social reformer who headed the legendary urban slum development of Karachi named Orangi Pilot Project. The man had donned so many hats over the years that by now he must be having a sizable collection of head-gear.
Not all, but quite a few of those caps come shinning through in a collection of essays. Recently, Akhtar Hameed Khan had expressed in a media interview that he had only one regret: to have left Patna. At eighty-two, one does get a bit reflective and start longing for one's roots. All around, his dreams lie shattered. The Biharis who made Pakistan possible have been rejected by Bangladesh and disowned by Pakistan. Maybe, at the back of his mind, Akhtar Hameed Khan carries a sense of guilt for having deserted the land of his forefathers for the promise of a rainbow at the end of the horizon. Now he has discovered Sheikh Saadi, "Have you arranged your earthly homes properly that you are flying to arrange things in the sky?"
This is one book that I would recommend without reservation to any one even remotely interested in development studies. Forget the prose and style, it's the substance of the book that is enriching. Like Daal at our daily meal, it's liquid, it's easy to digest and it's all protein. For those of you who have read about him in Himal, the full-serving would be hugely satisfying. [Akhtar Hameed Khan: Orangi Pilot Project, Reminiscences and Reflections, Oxford-Karachi, 1996]
What would be our daily meal without a selection of pickles--the tasty, tangy, sour and hot achar marinated in mustard oil and lime juice with loads of salt? Manohar Malgonkar's selection of Dropping Names is exactly such a fare. To read it on its own may prove to be a bit hard on the palate, but if you are reading it in bits and pieces along with more serious stuff, both become more enjoyable.
Before acquiring the status of a famous author, Malgonkar spent some time with the Indian Army. His prose is crisp, no non-sense and point-blank. There is more in this slim volume of less than two hundred pages than many other thicker tomes. From Paul Scot to V. S. Naipaul, from Vijay Raje to Sonia Gandhi, from Khuswant Singh to P. D. Malgavkar (Never heard of him? Check the India Office Library in London.), one gets to sample the idiosyncrasies of a galaxy of celebrities, some richer than famous, some more famous than the rich but all of them either rich or famous or both. By the way, I read this pack of pickled chilly-and-tomato in one sitting, going to the extent of reading by the candle light when load-shedding attempted to interfere with my indulgence. I intend to read it once again! [Dropping Names by Manohar Malgonkar, Lotus Roli Books, Delhi, 1996]
That was quite a feast I had during Dashai-Tihar vacations. I would have given an uncivilized belch, but then I bought Alvin and Heidi Toffler's War and Anti-War, Paul Kennedy's Preparing for the Twenty-First Century and Helga Drummond's Power. Appetite of the mind is strange--the more you partake, hungrier you get!
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Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India
Author: Akhil Gupta
Publisher: Durham, NC, USA: Duke University Press, 1998
Price: US$ 21.95
Ethnography of Worldly Farmers
Tatsuro Fujikura
In the farming village that Akhil Gupta describes in his Postcolonial Developments, the farmers use apparently non-Western notions, such as 'heat', 'wetness', and 'wind', to describe their agricultural practices. At the same time, the same farmers are avid users of such modern inputs as chemical fertilizers. In other words, the farmers whom Gupta describes are not unlike many farmers in contemporary Nepal. Part of what Gupta tries to do, and succeeds through his ethnographic description of a village in Uttar Pradesh, is to show that most farmers in South Asia and other 'developing countries' cannot simply be categorized either as 'modern' or 'non-modern'.
The mainstream development ideologues and the romantic environmentalists, in their different ways, tend to view such farmers as lagging behind in the ladder of 'modernization', or as representing an alternative ('indigenous') way of life outside modernity. Arguing against those views, Gupta maintains that what are often called 'traditional' or 'indigenous knowledge' ought to be reconceptualized as representing "culturally constituted recipes for dealing with the varying conditions and exigencies encountered in farming activities" in the present - in the particular condition of modernity that those farmers are engaged in. The ethnographic part of the book, which includes lengthy excerpts from interviews with farmers on various aspects of their agricultural practices, shows the villagers' actions as at once more complex and more sensible than the overarching pictures that some modernist or anti-modernist writers tend to present.
Gupta's aim, however, is not only to provide ethnographic descriptions, but to make a further and far-reaching theoretical point. Gupta argues that the "distinctiveness" of the situation he describes is that it lacks any "higher-order unity" that is able to coherently explain all the seemingly contradictory statements and actions observed in the field. I personally think it is not necessary to debate here the merits of his version of 'post-colonial theory'. (The book, by the way, includes useful summaries of the literature on post-colonial, ecological and cultural theories.) Rather, I would point out that Gupta's post-modernist claim of fundamental incoherence seem to be contradicted by his own analyses of political economy at the village, national, and global levels.
For those analyses, Gupta utilizes such notions as 'class' and 'structural positions' that seem, indeed to explain much of the phenomena that he describes. Indeed, I would argue that one of the very strength of this book is the authors very clear and informative (albeit sometimes disjointed) discussions on the dynamics of political economy from local, national to global levels. Gupta covers such wide ranging topics as technological, socio- economic and environmental changes brought about by the 'Green Revolution', populist policies of the Indian government under Indira Gandhi, various peasant movements, global political economy of food-grains after the Second World War, discourses and politics of environmentalism, 'sustainable development' and the Rio Earth Summit, and protests and resistance in India against multinational seed companies and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
In his discussion of the village political economy, Gupta also provides analytic- descriptions that tend to corroborate earlier insights on the transformations in rural South Asia. One example is the notion, advanced by Adrian Mayor among others, of the shift in the nature of local leadership in the post-Independence India from patronage to brokerage. Outcome of this shift is that "Village leaders no longer cultivated clients chiefly through the use of their own property - by leasing it to tenants, by employing an unchanging group of laborers and so forth (that is, by acting as a patron) but rather by facilitating the delivery of state programs and services (that is, by acting as a broker)." Another, related example involves the utility of the twin concepts of entitlement and enfranchisement proposed by Arjun Appadurai. Appadurai argued that changing dynamics in rural South Asia involved "a change which gives poorer persons a wider voice in the conduct of public life [i.e., enfranchisement], but fewer claims upon subsistence in local economic system [i.e., entitlement]." Gupta finds this process accompanying the decline of patronage and increasing proletarianization in the village he describes.
Possible shortcomings of the book include that it is too long (over 400 pages) and literally too heavy to carry around. More serious perhaps is the total lack of village women's or children's perspectives in the book. The descriptions of the village politics and agriculture derive almost totally from the author's interviews with male household heads. This lack severely limits the level of ethnographic complexity that the book is able =to attain.
However, the book contains enough insights and information about the conditions of agrarian life in northern India, seen from the village, national, and global contexts that makes this book extremely useful for those of us who want to understand better the conditions of rural life in Nepal or elsewhere, especially by providing us with regional, comparative and global perspectives.
(Fujikura is an anthropologist doing research in Nepal)
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Nepal: A Himalayan Kingdom in Transition
Authors: Pradyumna P. Karan and Hiroshi Ishii
Publisher: The United Nations University, 1996
Price: Rs. 560
A Study of 'Changing' Nepal
Abana Onta
Nepal: A Himalayan Kingdom in Transition analyses Nepal's efforts towards development since the 1950s. It examines issues such as environment and natural resources, land use, forests, agriculture, human resources, cultural patterns, demography and urbanization, tourism, industrial development and communication in the context of the mountainous terrain and landlocked character of Nepal.
The authors assert that Nepal is presently experiencing a period of major changes in its economy, society and environment. Since 1951 Nepal has achieved much in its quest for economic and social development, but much is left undone. Significant achievements in developing transport infrastructure since 1951 have not been accompanied by faster economic growth, reduction in the rate of population growth, increase in food production, and employment generation needed to alleviate poverty. Further, the authors emphasize the landlocked situation of Nepal and go on to say that its consequences are difficult to quantify.
The authors also review the five year plans and policies from the years between 1951 and 1995, and conclude that these plans have failed to fulfill their purpose. Four decades of planning have not only increased the development disparities between the eastern and the western regions of the country but also between the mountains and the tarai regions as a result of unequal investments in various geographic areas. Further, the urban-centred development approach has not only widened the spatial disparities between various areas, but also engendered a non-sustainable and fragile economic base.
The authors attribute Nepal's failure in development planning to several factors. For example, a weak and poorly developed organizational structure to formulate and implement the plans contributed to disappointing results. Top-down, donor-driven planning process devoid of concern for the local people, selection of development projects on an ad hoc basis, heavy dependence on external aid without regard to its socio-economic justification, or long-range sustainability are a few more examples of ill-planning in Nepal's development. The authors conclude that the planning process has taken place without genuine citizen participation and the development decisions have beeen largely made by feudal bureaucrats working under the influence of foreign aid regimes.
The authors do a good job in assessing the issues mentioned in the first paragraph. Each issue has been discussed from various perspectives including historical facts, planning and implementation aspects, emerging problems, and pragmatic suggestions. The book points out gender and urban-rural disparities, complex bureaucracy, lack of genuine community participation, corruption, lack of skilled manpower, and political uncertainty as hindrance to the development of Nepal.
The concluding chapter takes up three specific development challenges facing Nepal: sustainable development and conservation, integration of poverty alleviation programs with development strategies, and integration of population issues into mainstream development.
However the remedies they recommend are so commonplace among the prescriptions suggested by foreign scholars of Nepal that one can not find anything fresh in them. The authors seem to have failed to properly appreciate the information on local issues they had at their disposal while proceeding through the book. The authors, in the preceding chapters rightly point out the fact that development failures in Nepal are bound up with complex social, political, economic and cultural forces. After coming up with such an analysis, it is a pity that the authors revert to various "foreign development models" and perhaps unjustifiably see great hopes in them for Nepal's redemption. Had they ended the book with the same rigour with which they started it, the conclusion would have been better. In conclusion, the book will be useful to fresh college students in Nepal and neophyte Nepal hands abroad. (Abana Onta is an MA student at TU)
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Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma
Author: Amitav Ghosh
Publisher: Delhi: Ravi Dayal Publisher, 1998
Price: IRs. 125
Art and War
Manjushree Thapa
Amitav Ghosh is foremost a superb narrator. Whether writing novels like The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines or Calcutta Chromosome, or literary non-fiction like In an Antique Land, he is capable of moving forward several stories simultaneously, shifting gracefully from character to character, setting to setting, genre to genre, fiction to non-fiction, and past to present to future. His latest work, the travelogue Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma is marked by his usual narrative deftness, offering the reader the chance to read about many facets of Cambodia and Burma in the three short pieces within.
Dancing in Cambodia's title piece is perhaps the most skillfully crafted and most intensely felt, focusing ultimately on what it means to be able to perform a traditional dance in the war-torn Cambodia of the late 1980's. To place this question in historical context, Ghosh begins his narrative with the story of the 1906 arrival of King Sisowath in France, two years after the Cambodian ruler came to power and handed France final control over his nation. The dancers accompanying King Sisowath stunned the French; the painter Rodin was so infatuated with them that he marveled in gratitude at the "royal honour" they had displayed by dancing and posing for him. Through the story of King Sisowath's travels to France, Ghosh also sets the stage for the history of French colonialism which has torn Cambodia apart. The question of what it means to dance in present-day Cambodia cannot be answered without an examination of what national culture means.
Then the narrative cuts to 1993, to a meeting between Ghosh and Pol Pot's sister-in-law Chea Samy, a one-time dancer in King Sisowath's court who is currently working to revive traditional dance after the devastation of the 1950's and 60's struggles for independence and American saturation-bombing, the 1975 Khmer Rouge revolution, and the 1979 Vietnamese invasion. The meeting with Chea Samy takes place under telling circumstances. Ghosh's interpreter for the meeting is a woman in her thirties whose father, two brothers, and a sister were murdered by the Khmer Rouge. Facing the brother and sister-in-law of Pol Pot is not without considerable anguish for her; and yet she does it, and somehow nurtures within her the complex emotions of reconciliation: "I wanted to attack him when I first saw him.... But then I thought-it's not his fault. What has he ever done to me?"
Indeed, most people in present day Cambodia seem haunted by the proximity of those who belong to the "other side" and have, at some point, wreaked grief upon themselves and their families. Accepting this grief, and forgiving those who caused it, is part of what it takes to put on a traditional dance. One of the spectators describes his experience of gathering to watch the dance: 'We cried and laughed while we looked around to see who were the others who had survived. We would shout with joy: "You are still alive!" and then we would cry thinking of someone who had died.' To dance in Cambodia is to defy the inhumanity of war.
This first piece in Dancing so eloquently raises questions about the survival of humanity it can make the reader cry. Ghosh is very mindful of history, but he never weighs down his narrative with it; instead he adopts so light a touch that the delicacy of the whole piece brings to life the very fragility of art.
The remaining two pieces of the book are more journalistic in tone, and as such miss the shock and vibrancy of the first. Still, they are complex portraits of contemporary Asia told by a narrator who pursues difficult questions. "Stories in Stones" is a short portrait of a man who survived Khmer Rouge labour camps and decided, the day he saw Angkor Wat, to spend the rest of his life there. In Ghosh's hands, his story becomes one of the many carved into the stones of Angkor Wat.
"At Large in Burma" is a longer piece which wends its way through Burma's postcolonial era to arrive at the present situation with Aung San Suu Ki and the democracy movement. Ghosh's portrait of Suu Ki is personable; his hesitation to ask her intensely personal questions is refreshingly respectful, and (it is tempting to conclude) unique to an Asian narrator. Suu Ki comes across vividly in her imprisonment and defiance. But it is through Ghosh's portrait of a Karenni rebel that he reveals the complexity of Burma's current political instability, rife as it is with ethnic tension. The rebel Ko Sonny is of Indian origin, and his original name is Mahinder Singh. He is as much a vegetable farmer as a warrior, as much a philosopher as yet another Asian adrift in the strange displacing tides of our postmodern era. Ghosh's rendering of him gives a glimpse of the complex Asian futures to come.
Dancing in Cambodia is travel writing at its finest, with a narrator who takes the trouble to locate both his subject and his own narrative position in history, and who has the skill to write stories of war with the art they deserve.
(M. Thapa is writing her first novel)
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Recent Arrivals
Thumbnail Sketches of Recent Books
A Study in Nepali Economic History 1768-1846 by Mahesh C Regmi has been reprinted (1999, Adroit Publishers, Rs 720). Originally published in 1971, it was reprinted once in 1978 but has been out of print for over a decade. One of the most fundamental texts of Nepali history, this book, in the words of the author, "is essentially a description of the economic policies and programs followed by the Gorkhali rulers to mobilize human and material resources for territorial expansion." Reprinted almost 30 years after its first appearance, it would have been nice to see a new preface by Regmi, incorporating his comments on how his early emphasis on the "economic" seems too one-sided to him now (as can be gathered from his comments in his 1995 book Kings and Political Leaders of the Gorkhali Empire), and why his hope that this text will channel "Nepali historiography along new directions" has not been fulfilled.
Lumbini Chakra: Geometric Interpretation of the Archaelogical Remains (1998, Sashi Rimal) by Shankar Nath Rimal was written in response to a request by the Lumbini Development Trust regarding how the Mayadevi temple complex could be reconstructed and developed. Through various diagram-generating exercises, Rimal tries to prove that Lumbini did not grow on its own without formal planning, and shows how the remains that have been located at the birth-site of Gautam Buddha are related to each other in a geometric pattern. He suspects that "the planning process could have been initiated by the Emperor Ashoka." We should expect expert commentary on Rimal's attempt from archaelogists who have studied the site.
Bemousam ka Ragaharu by Lekhnath Bhandari is a mini book. The author calls it an ensemble of fifty-one word meanings, which are in fact satires; most of them are cheap, political, and trite. About a five-minute read, the book is nonetheless worth five rupees, its price.
Jivanka lagi Youn(1998, Udgam Publications, Rs.120) by Shreeramsingh Basnet explains the importance of sex in human life. It deals with themes such as menstruation, masturbation, homosexuality, menopause, pregnancy, etc. with frankness. It reads well and will be useful to readers of all ages. Since the talk of 'sex education' is looming large of late, the book can be a good reference source.
(Reviews provided by Martin Chautari)
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