RUSKIN  BOND

                                                                                                                                                               

Lone Fox Dancing  My Autobiography  by Ruskin Bond ;  Published by Speaking Tiger ; Pages 277 ‘ Price Rs.599/-

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“Bond”, My name is “James Bond” declares the Iconic creation of Ian Fleming. But for us Indians the name is “I am Ruskin Bond” the utterly butterly charming entertainer for over half a century. His 83^rd birthday puts him into a reflective mood and we have a marvellous  autobiography with a quaint title  “ Lone Fox Dancing”. Why a Fox?. He declares, " I got the idea for the title  from a poem that I wrote some years ago. The poem talks about a fox which  through its dance on a moonlit night, is expressing its joy and individuality. I found that apt for my life's description since through my writings, I have been expressing my individuality and joy too."

Much of Bond's work has been autobiographical in nature. What remains? . “I look at it as a record of my writing life -- which might be useful for other young writers -- as well as a record of my personal life -- my childhood in Jamnagar, Dehradun , Shimla , London and the Channel Islands where I spent a few years as a young man, and the 50 years or so that I have spent in Mussoorie."

He is the author of over a hundred novellas, short-story collections, non-fiction books and collections of poetry. Among them are The Room on the Roof, A Flight of Pigeons, The Night Train at Deoli, Time Stops at Shamli,  Rain in the Mountains and A Book of Simple Living. He annexed the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize , the Sahitya Akademi Award , the Padma Shri   and the Padma Bhushan . He lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.

 Ruskin Bond reveals us the roots of everything he has written. He begins with a dream and a gentle haunting, before taking us to an idyllic childhood in Jamnagar by the Arabian Sea—where he composed his first poem—and New Delhi in the early 1940s—where he found material for his first short story. It  ended with the separation of his parents  and the demise of his Daddy.  He recalls his boarding school days in Shimla and winter holidays in Dehradun, when he discovered great books and found his true calling. He spent four difficult years in England, from 1951 to 1955, and he writes poignantly of his loneliness there, even as he kept his promise to himself and produced a book—the classic novel of adolescence, The Room on the Roof. In the end  he is eloquent  about  his restlessness and settling down in the hills of Mussoorie, surrounded by generous trees, mist and sunshine, birdsong, elusive big cats, new friends and eccentrics—and a family that grew around him and made him its own. 

 Bond begins with his earliest memories; “of a little boy who ate a lot of kofta curry and was used to having his way.” The reader is introduced first to Osman, the khansama, and via his story to Jamnagar and the Bond family. And to the fact that young Ruskin was the result of a “torrid affair” between a 36-year-old man and an 18-year-old girl who probably got married because the child was on its way.

The senior Bond found a job as tutor to the prince of Jamnagar’s children and, in attending these classes, Bond junior learnt the useful art of reading things upside down. After his father, the most important person in his life during this phase was his ayah who was immortalised in his first “literary effort”. He compares her to a papaya. 

The family moved to Dehradun  where he is far from happy  with  a disapproving grandma, a mother who is out with another man, a strict school... ending with parents’ separation and Bond going away to be with his father. Bond  preferred life with his father and the happiest time was with him.

The  happy era collapsed when he is bundled off to Bishop Cotton school  in Shimla. His father, weakened by repeated bouts of malaria, died of hepatitis in two years. “And so the bottom had fallen out of my world.”. He goes home to his mother for the holidays to find that no one has come to receive him. The 10-year-old makes his way to his grandmother’s house only to find out that his mother has remarried: the same gentleman who led to his parents’ separation.

  Bond candidly admits that he did not try to reach out to his mother and stepfather and probably rebuffed their overtures.

Once he finished school, Bond went to England, “where all the writers I had admired had made their careers.” Bond’s account of his sojourn first in Jersey and later London keeps us mesmerized : whether it is his interactions with the legendary Diana Athill; his chance encounter with Graham Greene,  his one-sided love affair with a Vietnamese girl. “All I really wanted was my little room back again,” wrote Bond.

 Back in Dehra, he begins writing for magazines like The Illustrated Weekly of India and the reader meets a range of characters like Bibiji, his stepfather’s first wife; lawyer Suresh; journalist William Matheson. Here too he has a chance encounter with a literary eccentric G.V. Desani.

A stint in Delhi leads to an enchanting account of the city  sixty years ago. Working for the Council for Tibetan Relief (CARE) coincides with restoration with his mother and her family. Through CARE he lands in  Mussoorie and decides that if his dream of being a writer “was to become a reality, this was the time to do something about it.”

In the summer of 1963, an almost-thirty Bond returns to the hills, never to leave. The last part of the book is familiar territory for Bond’s readers—a combination of nature writing and stories of people—as we learn how he became the Bond that India loves. He talks about the arrival of Prem and then his family, who become his adopted family; of steering a magazine called Imprint through the Emergency; finding himself under arrest for publishing a story in Debonair; and of meeting Indira Gandhi; of storms and squirrels; of Maplewood and Ivy Cottage. And of, finally, becoming popular and being in demand. “I’m like a shopkeeper hoarding bags full of grains, only I hoard words. There are still people who buy words and I hope I can keep bringing a little sunshine and pleasure into their lives to the end of my day.

This is a magnificent book remarkably well written and overflowing with delightful anecdotes. It touches your heart and feel grateful  for the presence of such personalities  in our country. Bond is a “True God’s God Man” spreading joy and cheer.

An important part of the autobiography are the marvelous sheaf of photographs.

P.P.Ramachandran

27/08/2017

                                 

Democrats and Dissenters by Ramachandra Guha ; Published by Penguin Books ;Pages317;Price Rs.699/-

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 Ramachandra Guha is a celebrated writer who  has annexed several awards. To mention a few, his essay, "Prehistory of Community Forestry in India", was awarded the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society for Environmental History."A Corner of a Foreign Field" was awarded the Daily Telegraph  Cricket Society Book of the Year prize ; he bagged the R. K. Narayan Prize;  Ramnath Goenka Prize; Padma Bhushan and  Sahitya Akademi Award.

The book under review is the fourth in a series  exploring the creation and subsequent career of the Republic of India. The earlier volumes are “India after Gandhi”, “Makers of Modern India” and “Patriots and Partisans”. The  book  is divided into two parts: ”Politics and Society”, and “ Ideologies and Intellectuals”.

 Guha generally takes up one topic and explores it thoroughly enriching our knowledge and enlarging our reading pleasure. Since he is not “Committed” we get a rational picture. You may disagree with  him  but   he will succeed in provoking  you to think and partake in an interesting discussion. Undoubtedly his  is a voice of reason and sanity in contemporary India.

 As with his other books this one too   is the quintessence of outstanding scholarship but tremendously entertaining. Guha  covers a wide range of themes: from the varying national projects of India’s neighbours to political debates within India itself, from the responsibilities of writers to the complex relationship between democracy and violence. 

Guha swears by the Indian Constitution and calls himself a “constitutional democrat”. Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar constitute his Trinity. His canvas encompasses  the entire ambit of our  freedom movement.  Guha’s  temples of devotion are “Archives”. For a rare note, a handwritten letter, he has scoured institutions across the country and abroad—from the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library to the record rooms of Oxford University Press.This  ensures for the author unalloyed respect.

  According to Guha  during the threshold of freedom we  had the lucky leadership of true democrats but slowly it slipped Into reverting to the very instruments that held us in bondage. 

    Two pieces stand out: “Debating Democracy: Jayaprakash Narayan versus Jawaharlal Nehru”   Guha has excavated the  overlooked correspondence between Nehru and Narayan This is an object lesson in the tenets of  democracy as it prevailed in the nascent  years after Independence. The essay impresses the reader  “… such debates do not take place any more, at least not among full-time politicians. No politician now alive can think or write or speak in an original or even interesting fashion about the direction Indian society and politics is or should be taking. The discussion of what Narayan, in his letter to Nehru, had called ‘dispassionate political principles’ has now been left to the scholars.”

The most trenchant chapter is “Tribal Tragedies in Independent India”. Adivasis who have never been able to make themselves heard unlike Muslims and Dalits. They face a British-style “civilizing” mission from fellow Indians—- Maoist , Hindu and Christian groups, who treat them  as “cannon fodder”. Elected representatives supposedly  representing  Adivasis do not  have an understanding or knowledge of those they ought  to protect. They  do not  ensure these citizens are able to exercise the rights and freedoms guaranteed to them by law

 The Second part of the book “Ideologies and Intellectuals” deals with commanding persons. Guha offers  remarkable  insights into outstanding personalities  —Benedict Anderson , Dharmanand Kosambi, U.R. Ananthamurthy and Andre Beteille. Towering over all is the lone lady  among Guha’s pantheon Dharma Kumar.

Guha’s chapter “The Brilliance and Dogmatism of Eric Hobsbawm”  reveals the latent conflict in this   Marxist historian.  Benedict Anderson  acquired fame with his pioneering work , “Imagined Communities “ and Guha with his painstaking research reveals to us the thesis  of  Anderson as to  how nations emerged at a particular historical period, among the Europeans who conquered the New World, in Europe itself, and in the countries colonised by the Europeans. Anderson was sympathetic towards  nationalism .Deeply moving is the piece “The Life and Death of a Gandhian Buddhist” about a rare scholar whose personal story is awesome-- Dharmanand Kosambi, the father of well-known historian D.D. Kosambi. The piece on Andre Beteille, titled ‘The Wisest Man in India’ also commands our attention.

Dharma Kumar was India's leading economic historian and editor of the influential  “Indian Economic and Social History Review’ . She  edited the second volume of the Cambridge Economic History of India with essays by twenty two scholars. She was  a scholar, teacher and editor. She worked for ten years in the Reserve Bank of India. She worked  in the Delhi School of Economics until her retirement. I recall the wonderful tribute by the estimable A.G.Chandavarkar to Dharma Kumar in an article in E P W --entitled " The Dharma I knew". ( 8/12/2001)

 A fascinating  essay in the book is  titled “Arguments with Sen, Arguments about India. It is a critique of Amartya Sen’s book  “The Argumentative Indian”. Sen responded a year later in a long article proving the case for the ‘Argumentative Indian’!

The last piece in the book — ‘Where are the Conservative Intellectuals in India?’ — reviews  the intellectual terrain  of India as it has been since Independence. According to Guha : “Hindu conservatism tends to be revivalist, harking back to a pure past uncontaminated by foreign influences or alien faiths. Meanwhile, Hindu nationalism tends to be triumphalist, seeking to make other nations and other cultures in its own image. Both tendencies are inimical to reflection and self-criticism, those two crucial, even indispensable, elements of the intellectual’s craft”.

Guha has a role model in mind for any aspiring Indian conservative intellectual: C. Rajagopalachari — “a devout Hindu, albeit one who could see beyond the pieties and prejudices of his own caste and faith.

Guha peppers his historical accounts with personal anecdotes to an extent that even distant events that preceded him give a semblance of being personally lived. Guha is a historian of hope, a chronicler of compassion.

“Time Magazine” called Guha  “Indian Democracy’s pre-eminent chronicler”. Savour the work of this rare intellectual.

P.P.Ramachandran

20 / 08 / 2017

INDIRA   BY SAGARIKA GHOSE

                                                                                                                                      

Indira Gandhi by Sagarika Ghose ; Published by Juggernaut ; Pages  342 ; Price Rs.699/-

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Sagarika Ghose was approached by Juggernaut to prepare  a biography of Indira Gandhi, in the centenary year of her birth, 'to bring Indira alive for a new generation'. The Centenary is the appropriate moment to unravel the many layers that defined the former Prime Minister’s personality and create a portrait of her in the context of present-day realities.

Ghose is a  Rhodes Scholarship who  has worked in several papers and was prime time anchor  in CNN-IBN  She is the daughter of Bhaskar Ghose, erstwhile Director General of Doordarshan and wife of Rajdeep Sardesai. She has attracted almost  continuous abuse on social media. She is the author of two novels, "The Gin Drinkers"  and "Blind Faith". 

 She tucks  in  each chapter  a letter addressed to 'Dear Mrs Gandhi' posing ticklish questions none would have dared asked Smt.Gandhi, when she was alive. Two examples-- Why did you impose Emergency, could you not have handled the situation differently, and as suddenly why did you announce elections in 1977, what were the pressures? --Why did you allow Sanjay, your son, to become a hydra-headed monster? .Such a ploy is not exactly amusing and even turns distasteful !.

 Indira’s life is an amalgam of success and tragedy flowing from  fatal flaws in her character which make her truly Shakespearean. Ghose makes us take a relook on an enigmatic person, who has shaped independent India’s destiny, institutions, polity and world view, good, bad, ugly. People  deserve to know much more of an India under Indira, than just the three things commonly associated with her: India’s victory over Pakistan in the 1971 war, the Emergency and her assassination. The book attempts to paint a comprehensive picture of the otherwise enigmatic, often paradoxical, Indira. She was, after all, the living epitome of Goddess Durga, but privately she was meek, insecure and submissive.

 Ghose is outspoken and depicts both  inner strengths as well as weaknesses of Indira. Her contradictions were legendary----arrogant beyond belief but equally beyond belief was her contact with the masses .

 Indira Gandhi can either be praised or derided  depending on how you assess her. She is a Durga and a dictator, a socialist bereft of ideological slant. She at once a secularist and attracted to  religion. She created the Frankenstein’s monster  Bhindranwale, and destroyed him. She had a soft side, too!. Prior to supping with the enemy  Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, she personally supervised the interiors of his suite.

 Ghose covers all items in Gandhi’s life— the splendour of the Nehrus, the charisma of Jawaharlal, the ‘bewildered misery’ of Kamala, and the rise and fall of Indira. She  graphically brings out the mean pettiness that was ever-present in the Nehru household from Motilal’s time right up to Indira Gandhi’s regime, alongside the grandeur.The condescension with which Indira’s mother Kamala was treated by Nehru’s sisters, especially Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit,her imperious aunt who called her ‘ugly and stupid’. Indira, in turn, nursed a lifelong grudge against her aunt. The sadness of Indira Gandhi’s marriage has been well brought out by Ghose.

 Indira’s success sprang  came from a ‘subtle synthesis of aristocracy and populism’, which guaranteed for her more mass worship than even her father. Gandhi emerges as a redoubtable  leader and Machiavellian politician and also as a woman and an individual. Indira Gandhi is remembered as the Durga who won India its first decisive military victory in centuries and as the dictator who imposed the Emergency and tried to destroy institutions including her own party and the judiciary.

 We applauded her triumph over Pakistan in the 1971 war  and her audacious incorporation of Sikkim into the Indian. We are aware of the forced sterilisation drives during the Emergency initiated by Sanjay Gandhi, the razing of old settlements in Turkman Gate and the humiliation of public servants. We were totally in the know of the fear psychosis that gripped the country over 21 months of the Emergency. Ghose does not shirk from addressing the horrors of the Sikh pogrom of 1984-murder licensed by Rajiv Gandhi and his Congress henchmen.

 Her spectacular return to power after a devastating post Emergency defeat only made her cunningly harsh—peevish, intolerant and cagily suspicious of everyone.

We lived through the terrifying consequences of her fatal promotion of Bhindranwale and the violence that engulfed India for years thereafter. Indira Gandhi ended up undermining and destroying the very institutions that her father had so painstakingly nurtured. In  her earlier years she engineered the dismissal of the democratically elected communist government of Kerala  which became  a black mark on the record of Nehru.

  The problem is of unravelling the truth and myth, half truths and falsehoods. As far as possible, Ghose has put her facts fairly, highlighting Mrs Gandhi’s inner strengths as well as her weaknesses. Ghose does a compelling job of building her narrative and weaves in many charming quotes and anecdotes. There is also sharp analysis, especially in reaching the conclusion that while ‘secular India had been her life’s stated mission’, secular India was also Mrs Gandhi’s ‘greatest failure’.

  Sagarika has to be complimented on her impeccable selection of photographs,especially the one on the Cover Page with a brilliant photo by Raghu Rai,India's greatest photographer. 

Sagarika  has written an eminently readable biography but  deplorably  fallen a slave to enshrine in her book the despicable blabbering  of M.O.Mathai  and Ian Jack about the sexual pecadilloes of Indira Gandhi. Mathai has been given a burial and ought not to have been unearthed.

P.P.Ramachandran

13—08--2017

Technology  Laws  Decoded  by Ms Napinnai ;  Published by LexisNexis ; Pages  830 ;    Price Rs. 1595/-

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All of us are aware that Computers and Internet have become part and parcel of our lives and that every sphere of public activity is leaving us vulnerable in unexpected ways. Issues pertaining to Cyberspace have acquired extraordinary significance. Under the dynamic thrust of Prime Minister Modi, India is going digital and certainly legal issues are gaining greater importance over the years. With the proliferation of internet technology, new business avenues have started employing E-commerce and M-commerce. This has also resulted in a variety of new issues—such as cyber crimes, cyber warfares, etc. The common man is uninformed about the legal implications emanating from digital technologies, both positive and negative.

The author of the book under review Ms.Napinnai is an advocate at the Supreme Court of India as also the Bombay High Court. She handles litigations, both national and international, related to Constitutional, Criminal and Commercial laws. She contributed to the Law Commission in drafting the Indian legislation for establishing Commercial Courts in 2015.The author’s insight into the complicated Internet-dominated world is the result of the significant training given by her  to members of the Indian army, intelligence agencies, judicial and police officers as also business organisations.

The book under review covers various aspects of technology laws including cyber laws and various legislations on the subject. It is a thorough examination of  the current laws in India and other jurisdictions including in the USA, the  U.K, the  E.U, Singapore, Australia. etc. Citing international examples on the subjects discussed, the book offers different perspectives, enabling comprehension of the issues involved.

According to the author, ”Technology laws lay scattered through the larger fabric of law and the justice delivery system. As the Internet coalesced the world together so has this book brought together the various pieces of the legal jigsaw, created solely with a change in the domain to create a cohesive whole. While the Information Technology Act,2000,as amended in 2008, continues as the common thread linking all aspects of cyber laws, it is not the only source of law or legislation covering “ Cyber”. The IT Act brought about changes inter alia in the Indian Evidence Act and the Indian Penal Code, which starts off the first stage of scattering of the cyber jIgsaw beyond the IT Act. This book explores the intrinsic interplay of general laws and special enactments with the cyber domain."

The book also highlights the socio-political and the socio-legal aspects impacting policies, legislations and decisions pertaining to cyber. Procedural aspects of cyber and in particular jurisdiction and electronic evidence that have posed the most challenges are explored to help identify solutions.

 The individual is at the core of this book’s aim, for all of us are users of technology. Every single concept set out touches our lives in one way or the other. Given the opacity of law there are several perpetrators of illegal acts. Hence the book is written as a thematic rendition instead of the normal cut and dried section-wise legal writing format.

Chapter One is a detailed introduction to the emergence  of internet and cyber laws and conventions. It covers several topics such as Aadhar, digital currencies, crypto currencies, bitcoins and deals with the situation in several countries.

“ Technology and Crime” is the subject of the second chapter. Law is in a nascent stage with respect to cyber crime, whilst the cyber criminal is an evolved species. The primary challenge in combating cyber crimes is not only lack of sufficient enactments even against existing trends of crimes but also enforcement. There is a critical analysis of India’s weapons against cyber crimes. We are provided a comparative analysis of the law in Sri Lanka,  U S A  and Australia.

Intellectual Property Rights are discussed in Chapter Three. We have a new genre of jurisprudence which is unique with shades of resemblance to doppelganger in the real world. Cyberspace has created distinct forms of property which was not envisaged by the 100 year old  I P Laws. Contracts help perpetuate the  I P Rights owners commercial  claims to the content.

One chapter is devoted to technology and contracts. It focuses on interpretations and evolution of contracting principles from the real world to the digital world and adaptation of existing principles to the ever-expanding digital horizons.

Electronic evidence is the core of the fifth chapter. Electronic evidence is ephemeral and requires extreme care and caution in collation. Elaborate provisions have been included in the Indian Evidence Act to enable reliance electronic records. Courts have floundered  their way  through this electronic maze.

The final chapter is on “Jurisdictions”. There are no borders and no delineations in cyber space. segregations are based on notional shadow lines. in India conferment of jurisdiction is either under the Constitution or specific laws enacted by Legislatures.

The book is a beginning to create the larger picture of the forest, leaving the filling in of the trees to works that follow. The volume is not one-dimensional but is reflective of a deeper understanding of issues that judges, lawyers  and the common persons face on a daily basis.

An Appendix gives the text of the Information Technology Act, 2000, the book also gives Case Laws running into sixty pages.

 The book is a compelling read and a must-have guide to the academia, legal practitioners, members of the judiciary, revenue and law-enforcing agencies, to the laity interested in comprehending this new tool and the protocol of information dissemination and exchange.

P.P.Ramachandran.

 06  /  08  / 2017​