Monday, January 21, 2019



CHARLES SOBHRAJ

Charles Sobhraj—Inside the heart of the Bikini Killer by Raamesh Koirala; Published by Rupa ; Pages 204  ;Price Rs 500/-
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Literally the author goes inside the heart of Charles Sobhraj since he is a Heart surgeon and operated on him. And what a graphic account !.
Raamesh Koirala is a renowned cardiac surgeon in Nepal. He writes in leading newspapers and is known for his sharp views on current issues, mainly on public health and politics. He is a known literary figure in his home country with two popular books,Aama Ko Mutu and Kopila Ashram .
 A bit about Sobhraj to those uninitiated.
Charles Sobhraj was born in Vietnam in 1944 and  embarked on a life of crime in Europe in the 1960s. He is credited with over two dozen murders in the 1970s but was lucky  to escape jail  several times.He became known as  "The Serpent." Finally in 1976  he was caught in Goa by Zende He spent most of the following twenty years  locked up. He was convicted again in 2004 for an earlier murder.
Sobhraj was the son of an Indian father and a Vietnamese mother. He spent part of his childhood on the rough streets of Saigon, and after his mother married an officer in the French Army, he split his time between Indochina and France. Placed in a French boarding school, Sobhraj gave a taste of what was to come by attempting to run away a number of times.
It all began in the beginning of  1960s when  he was  arrested twice in Paris for auto theft. He  married a Parisian woman named Chantal Compagnon and tried  to reform himself, but before long he was bouncing around Europe with his young wife, engaging in crimes like robbery and smuggling. 
Sobhraj eventually linked up with Canadian Marie-AndrĂ©e Leclerc, who became his mistress and accomplice. During the 1970s, he assumed a series of identities as his crimes grew increasingly serious; according to some estimates, he murdered more than 20 people from 1972 to 1976. Sobhraj became known as the "Bikini Killer" after one of his victims was discovered wearing one.
For years, Sobhraj travelled around Europe and Asia, escaping custody in several countries. Handsome, charming and fluent in several languages, he was a skilled con artist who often targeted the young backpackers on what was known as the "Hippie Trail," which runs through Afghanistan and Nepal into Southeast Asia.
An improperly planned  attack in 1976 was  his undoing. He  attempted to poison some  French tourists in India, but administered wrong  doses and was caught  when police arrived to help. While Thailand wanted him extradited to face murder charges there, the Indian government decided to try Sobhraj and Leclerc for the murder of an Israeli tourist. Convicted on a lesser charge, Sobhraj was sentenced to seven years of hard labour, with time added on for drugging the French tourists. The Thai government was told that it would have to wait until after he finished his sentence before he would be able to be tried there.
In 1986, Sobhraj escaped from Tihar Jail in New Delhi after drugging guards during a party. Although he was captured less than a month later, it was believed to be yet another calculated move by the Serpent. With additional time tacked on for the escape, Sobhraj remained in prison in India as the 20-year statute of limitations on his crimes in Thailand ran out, allowing him to avoid what likely would have been the death penalty. Released in 1997, he returned to Paris and enjoyed a celebrity lifestyle.
Sobhraj's newfound freedom would only a few months  as he was arrested in Nepal in 2003. The following year, he was convicted of the 1975 murder of American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich. Sentenced to a life term, he allegedly attempted another prison escape in 2004, and unsuccessfully appealed to have his sentence overturned.
Sobhraj's problems mounted in 2014, when he was convicted in a Nepal court of the 1975 murder of Canadian tourist Laurent Carriere. The ruling was upheld by an appellate court in 2015. While in jail in Kathmandu, Sobhraj married Biswas, who is 44 years his junior and the daughter of his lawyer.
The book under review  is written by Raamesh Koirala, a cardio surgeon working in Nepal who found  himself in a dilemma when he is approached to treat Charles Sobhraj. As a doctor it is  his duty  to treat everyone equally, but his conscience worries if it morally right to provide treatment to such a ruthless killer who showed not a pang of regret. True to his profession Koirala opts  to treat Sobhraj. This is the beginning of striking  episodes that take place at the hospital. The doctor is fascinated by  Sobhraj and has a lot of unanswered questions about him and through his observation of the patient and by talking to him, the doctor finds answers. We are also taken through the ventures  that the doctor undertakes along with his friends.  Nepal comes out in all its beauty.
Charles Sobhraj, 73, underwent a five-hour surgery to repair the valves in his heart.
"It was a four-hour surgery but they had to extend it for another hour because they found that the other valve was also damaged. Right now they say that he's stable."
Raamesh Koirala -- one of three surgeons involved in the complicated procedure -- said Sobhraj would remain sedated for 24 hours.
"We cannot say he is out of danger for 24 hours and maybe longer. But the operation was normal," said the surgeon, who is a distant relative of Biswas,Shobraj’s wife.
 It is an interesting book for those who want to know more about Charles Sobhraj or his cases.It offers   glimpses of Charles Sobhraj sans  the glitz and trappings lent to his image by Media . It is not the cold, calculated ‘Bikini Killer’ we find here,  “but a balding man worried about his failing health; a man who requests the doctor to put off his surgery for a few days because he is afraid; a frail man who bursts into tears when he learns the operation has only a slim chance of success”.According to the Doctor Sobhraj recovered faster than anyone would have recovered.
 This book explores the ethical dilemmas and the choices we have to make to remain true to ourselves. It unfolds the skewed functions of the brutal brain of a serial killer who was not touched by a tinge of remorse.
 This is an unusual book, worth reading.
P.P.Ramachandran.
20/01/2019.

Saturday, January 12, 2019


SHASHI  THAROOR

“The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and His India” by  Shashi Tharoor;Published by Aleph; Pages 504;   Price Rs.799/-
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Shashi Tharoor’s latest  book  probes Modi’s failures  more  than his manifestly paradoxical personality and performance. Most of the 50 disjointed essays of the book harp on   Modi’s failures. In his introduction  Tharoor calls it an effort made by “a fair-minded Opposition MP looking back at the Modi years”.

 Many will agree with him when he writes: “The liberal mask has long since fallen off. The gap has widened. The result is another paradox: a prime minister of lofty ambition, laid low by underachievement.”
In the section ‘Moditva and Misgovernance’, Tharoor can scarcely be contradicted when he questions the PM’s empty claim about ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’. But one can ask : “But weren’t these and other examples of mis-governance true also of the previous Congress (UPA) government?” Tharoor is eloquently  silent on the shortcomings of his own party’s long period of  governance. This does make his  book  one-sided.
He  deplores every aspect of Modi’s  five year term. Government and the opposition see each other as sworn enemies  in  all  areas of politics and national life. Finding a lasting solution to the Kashmir issue and normalising India-Pakistan relations pose the greatest challenge. Tharoor’s own self-contradictions in his piece  ‘The India-Pakistan Yo-Yo’ are very clear. He disapproves of his party colleague  Mani Shankar Aiyar’s oft-repeated stand on “uninterruptible” talks with Islamabad “even if new terrorist strikes emanating from Pakistan were to occur”. He  also writes: “Insisting that Pakistan must change fundamentally before India can make peace with it is not particularly realistic. A creative Indian government must seize on whatever straws in the wind float its way from Pakistan to explore the prospects of peace.”
On the one hand, he “requires us to see the Pakistani military not just as the problem, but as a vital element of the solution”. But  he advocates that “we should open our doors and hearts to Pakistanis who have nothing to do with the military establishment”. In the same breath, he  endorses Modi’s manifestly  hawkish line: “Punish each incident of violence by freezing official talks or by surgical strikes” and “We must not be deluded into making concessions, whether on Kashmir or any other issue.”
Tharoor is aware  that “the two countries came extremely close to a definitive conclusion on a number of pending issues, including Kashmir when Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr. Manmohan Singh were India’s prime ministers and General Pervez Musharraf was Pakistan’s president.

 Narendra Modi is undoubtedly a paradoxical man.  He gives voice to a number of liberal ideas (such as the constitution being his Holy Book and Sab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikas), while at the same time tolerating  the most illiberal elements in Indian society, who are his  political supporters. Again, Modi is proud about his  effective governance but blatantly by his silence   condones the worst aspects of mis-governance—communal riots, lynchings, the violence of gau-rakshaks,etc.
Is Modi a  noble, selfless leader acting in the interests of  his countrymen or an autocratic, right-wing bigot who is interested only in power and converting plural India into a Hindu Rashtra? Or  a via-media ? Tharoor attempts to  answer  these  questions about a leader who is at once worshipped and attacked.
 The book is divided into five sections comprising fifty chapters. The first section takes a close look at Modi’s life and times. The other four sections look at key aspects of the way in which Modi’s government functions and the lasting and often deleterious impact it has had on Indian society, major institutions, the economy, foreign policy and our fundamental values. Shashi has painted a fascinating  portrait of a controversial person. The book is undeniably a thorough  account of India’s most complex Prime Minister .
 Tharoor’s Section  “The Modi-fication of India’’ contains 15 chapters. He raises valid concerns regarding dubious plans and sporadic attempts at historical distortion, rewriting and planting of questionable facts by elements within the Indian Right who treat history as a political project. However, he weakens his argument  by swallowing the  ideologically convenient accounts of India’s past offered by  Left-leaning historians in school and university texts.
 The Paradoxical Prime Minister is not backed up by research. It is a "Book of the Moment". Most points seem current affairs revisited. Chapters on communal violence, mob lynching and cow vigilantism are media narratives. He scarcely thinks it possible that  there can be another side of the working and challenges of genuine and law-abiding cow protection groups, and how they are striving to shield a way of life and cattle-based rural economies.
Cow protection was advocated by Mahatma  Gandhi and Dayanand Saraswati and others. Gandhi, in his writings in Young India had regarded cow protection as an essential part of Hinduism and the duty of all Hindus. Dayanand Saraswati, whom Tharoor credits with teaching “inclusive and self-interrogating Hinduism”, founded the first Gaurakshini Sabha of modern India in 1882.
The chapter on the Modi government’s alleged attempts to push Hindi meanders and does so with bits of media reporting. It lacks the context of Hindi’s evolution in national consciousness while trying to push in an alarmist subtext of insidious Hindi nationalism. In fact, it was more envisaged in the form of the link language, something Gandhi supported as an idea in his writings as well in his chairmanship of two sessions of Hindi Sahitya Sabhas.
Tharoor’s Section on Modi’s poor performance in governance has brief  chapters on a variety of subjects such as  Institutions, Parliament, matters of justice, cutting red-tape and  not laudable  state of  Swachh Bharat.
Dealing with economic subjects  Tharoor chooses issues like the dismal rate of job creation and dramatic measures like demonetisation to expose the Modi government’s key failures. He relies on data and analysis offered by different experts as well as official documents. There isn’t anything new here which one may not come across in the usual news and analysis cycle.
The Modi government’s failures in the conduct of international relations, particularly after the glow of initial promise in its engagement with big powers and its neighbours, is covered in the last section. Modi’s initial investment of personal energy in foreign affairs impresses Tharoor .He says elements of change, in foreign policy have largely led to setbacks, while elements of continuity with India’s traditional foreign policy positions have brought rewards for the current foreign policy establishment too.
The book cries out for a good editor.There is no thematic cohesiveness. Different chapters float like jetsam and flotsam. Sometimes the book seems like Rambles of an absent-minded Professor,
 When new marketing strategies for books veer from bizarre book trailers to courting controversy on social media, politician and former diplomat Shashi Tharoor chose to promote his latest title, The Paradoxical Prime Minister  Narendra Modi and his India, through a device made familiar by his Twitter forays: a long, mildly baffling word.
Floccinaucinihilipilification’ was intended to convey what Tharoor thought of the Central government. The word’s meaning: “It means having little or no value”.Other such words in the book are "Consigliore ;Atavism; Lachrymose; Shambolic ; Rodomontade" !

Tharoor has frequently been in the eye of a storm for making remarks that are shocking. He described  Modi as a scorpion sitting on a Shivalingam.
 Anyone interested in recent Indian politics and history should read this book.
P.P.Ramachandran.
13/01/2019.


SPY  CHRONICLES

The Spy Chronicles by  A.S.Dulat,Asad Durrani and Aditya Sinha; Published by  Harper Collins ; Pages 319 ;Price Rs.799/-
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There are more than a score  of books on India-Pakistan relations but the one under review is quite unusual being written by  former Research and Analysis Wing Chief AS Dulat and Lt Gen Asad Durrani, a former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence. Perhaps  the first time two men from rival spy agencies  worked closely to write a book. Two sworn enemies have come together.
This book is devised in the form of extensive dialogues on relations between India and Pakistan, as seen in the handling by these countries of the extremely sensitive issues of Kashmir, Balochistan and Afghanistan. 

 Dulat was head of R&AW from 1999 to 2000, and moved out of Atal Behari Vajpayee’s PMO in May 2004. General Assad Durrani headed ISI even earlier, from  1990 to 1991, and has been popular on the Track-2 circuit in the past decade.
With the arrival of Imran Khan  relations between New Delhi and Islamabad have reached a nadir. We are all familiar with  the fallout of the 2008 Mumbai attacks and more recent incidents such as the terror attacks in Pathankot and Uri and the surgical strikes on the LoC.
 Dulat and Durrani  held  meetings in different places during 2016-17 –  Istanbul, Kathmandu and Bangkok –  and discussed subjects like  Spying, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Terrorism,  Osama bin Laden and the inevitable Mr.Trump and the strategic developments in the States.
 The duo have spent decades protecting secrets and assets and this book does offer evidence of their penchant for secrecy.
We have a journalist Aditya Sinha who acts as a mediator for whom the book was a “journalistic assignment”. According to him  “This was a unique project. It has no great revelations, and it was more about perspective. It’s also a metaphor for the actual relationship between the two countries…Look, if the two spy chiefs can get together and talk, there’s the potential for what India and Pakistan can achieve if they do decide to talk.”
Durrani provides some interesting insights.   One is---- Pakistan “giving up (the) handle on the movement” it had created in Kashmir in the early 1990s and “letting the factions do what they bloody well wanted to”.
Two. His admission that after the 2008 Mumbai attacks that were blamed on Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, he had decided he would be available even to the Indian media to say that “whoever has done this, be it state-sponsored, ISI-sponsored, military-sponsored, should be caught hold of and punished”.
The two Intelligence Chiefs  believe  that the Pakistani military was part of the US raid that killed Al-Qaeda Chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. Such a monumental  raid could not have been carried out without  Pakistan aiding and abetting.
The book  has  created ripples in both countries, especially  in Pakistan, where the 77-year-old Durrani was summoned to the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi last month to explain his position on violating the military code of conduct and later had a formal court of inquiry instituted against him.
 Durrani has declared that the agenda for the book was inspired by what India’s former Vice President Hamid Ansari once said to him: “Yeh dewaangi kaab khatam hogi? (When will this madness end?)”.“We need to move forward, talk about things that are doable. There’s no point endlessly squabbling about things,” says Dulat. “This book is about looking at how even issues like Kashmir can be a bridge.”

 Durrani admits that his biggest failure as ISI chief was when the separatist movement in the Kashmir Valley started in 1990: “The biggest failure was that when the Kashmir uprising happened, we did not know how far it would go. These things usually run their course in six months or a year. When it became lasting, we wondered how to keep a handle on it. We didn’t want it to go out of control, which could lead to a war that neither side wanted. Could we micro-manage it? That was our challenge. ISI’s leverage on the Kashmir insurgency turned out less than successful.”
Durrani also doesn’t have a high opinion of the American CIA, having worked closely with them during the first Afghan War.
The ISI has a gained a larger-than-life image globally, courtesy its portrayal in the Western media following the American involvement in Afghanistan. The R&AW does not generate the same reputation  and is not seen to be as sinister as the ISI.
While Dulat maintains that the ISI is the better intelligence organisation because of its influence, Durrani feels that R&AW has an advantage because it has career intelligence officers, unlike the ISI, which has military officers. 
 Nevertheless, the issues dealt with here remain “live”, and are of high volatility and great public interest. If that weren’t so, the book will be of interest chiefly to historians. The manner of the conversation here suggests that the participants are well versed with the subjects they deal with even after their retirement. 
Extremely frank estimates are also offered of some CIA chiefs and of the US approach generally for South and West Asia. Issues such as India’s surgical strike, the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, the failed Agra talks and the changing matrix in Afghanistan have been examined most thoroughly. 
The role of the Pakistan military in taking over Pakistan, and the impact of this on Kashmir, is glossed over. Gen. Durrani says laconically that if the State in Pakistan had not intervened, other non-state actors would have filled the breach. This is frightening, but hardly simplistic. 
Dulat and Durrani both seem to think that making former J&K chief minister Farooq Abdullah the Centre’s interlocutor for Kashmir on Pakistan’s recommendation may be a great idea. 
In a sense, these former spy chiefs have a progressive worldview insofar as interactions among nations go.
Perhaps military men and politicians should follow what is written in the book in the interest of a calmer future.  It is a reasonable  account of how a healthy system of cooperation between the intelligence agencies and the government can help or hinder the formulation of domestic and foreign policies that benefit the public.
What comes across in the conversation is the warmth of their friendship. Both the Intelligence Chiefs have faith in people-to-people contacts. They share a passion for cricket, the Punjabi language and a common north Indian culture. They agree that it takes only 35 minutes to travel from Lahore to Delhi — a classic case of so near yet so far. Dulat’s breadth of experience with Kashmir is well recognised, and his dialogue with General Durrani about this sensitive issue forms the crucial part  of the book, with the duo discussing Musharraf’s ‘Four point initiatives’ and India’s lacklustre response to them, how the “back channels only soft pedalled” and how Pakistan views Kashmir as unreliable territory.
   Pakistan’s military barred the former intelligence chief  Durrani from leaving the country and ordered an investigation into whether he violated the military’s code of conduct by writing the book.Several Pakistani civilian leaders have questioned Mr. Durrani’s actions and statements attributed in the book. “It is shocking that on one hand Pakistan and India relations are at an all-time low and on the other hand, former spy chiefs of both the countries are teaming up to write a book,”.
 We have an unusual volume here where extremely well informed individuals have spoken with ease. Perhaps military men and politicians should follow what is written in the book in the interest of a calmer future.
P.P.Ramachandran.
6/1/2019.