KULWANT ROY

History in the Making : The Visual Archives of Kulwant Roy; Published by Harper Collins ; Pages 336 ; Price Rs. 4999/-

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This is a magnificent coffee-table book

containing a priceless collection of photographs by Kulwant Roy from the 1930s to 1960s. The prints and negatives of these photographs remained forgotten in boxes for over twenty-five years after his death in 1984. The world must be thankful to their inheritor Aditya Arya, a photographer himself, for making it available. Arya, while cataloguing them, stumbled upon a rare and valuable visual archive, including many unpublished pictures, of a momentous era in India’s history. Some of these unusual pictures relate to Muslim League meetings, INA trials, the signing of the Indian Constitution, as well as significant post-Independence milestones such as the building of the Bhakra Nangal Dam.

 Indivar Kamtekar, eminent historian provides an illuminating text. 

 All those who wish to pierce the veil behind India’s ‘tryst with destiny’ must dip into this classic volume.

Author Adita Arya graduated in history from St.Stephen’s College, Delhi and plunged into professional photography. He has acquired expertise in the world of advertising and corporate photography.His works have been exhibited the world over and his photographs have been published by renowned global journals.

 He is the author of  " The Land of the Nagas ”, a photographic documentation of the Naga people and the first-ever exhaustive visual study of the masterpieces of Buddhist art at the Aichi monastery in Ladakh.

 Indivar Kamtekar is a name to reckon with in the field of teaching. He teaches modern history at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and has been a faculty member of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and a fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study at Shimla. For his doctoral thesis from Cambridge he selected the end of British rule in India.

Kulwant Roy was an Indian photographer, who was born in Lahore in 1914. As the head of the "Associated Press Photographs" he secured several iconic images of the Indian independence movement and the early years of the Republic of India. He joined the Royal Indian Air Force and specialised in aerial photography. After relinquishing his link with the RIAF, he moved to Delhi in 1940 and set up a studio, which later expanded into a full-fledged agency, in the Mori Gate district of Old Delhi. This area was to become an important centre of Press Photographs in the country. He followed Mahatma Gandhi , for a number of years, in his travels around India in a third-class train compartment; this endowed him with an insider status that meant that he was permitted to record many crucial events of and major participants in the independence movement, including Jinnah, Nehru and Patel—surely the dream of any photographer. Roy covered Jacqueline Kennedy's visit in 1962 to India and India's war with Pakistan in 1965.

To Kulwant Roy’s utter dismay, he noted that a new breed of aggressive young photojournalists acquired dominance. He heartily disliked this and hung up his camera and faded into obscurity. "No one knew him or his past," Arya said. Roy was a frequent visitor to Arya's parents' home in New Delhi, having known Arya's mother's family from Lahore. But by the time Arya was old enough to remember him, Roy was a poor and lonely man. "He never wanted me to be a photographer because of the hardships and the fact that one has to live a life a bit like a vagabond," Roy died of cancer, virtually penniless and with no children of his own and left Arya his photo collection. Arya is now dedicated to restoring Roy to what he sees as his proper place in the annals of Indian photojournalism. Roy sold many of his photographs to international news agencies during his lifetime and some of them are now found in archival collections, but they are rarely credited with his name. "For me making sure people know his name is as important as making 

sure they know his pictures," declared Arya.
 
 Arya believes that some of the images - for instance a picture of a loin-clothed Gandhi descending from a third-class rail car - could become as iconic as the vintage India photos taken by the celebrated Margaret Bourke-White and Cartier-Bresson. Again, Nehru's hand curled tenderly around grandson Rajiv's neck, Gandhi and Jinnah arguing in 1939, Nehru and Ghaffar Khan strolling in Shimla-these nuggets of history were captured through photographs by Kulwant Roy from 1940 to 1960.

Roy thoughtfully selected frames that attempt to capture moments of time that will make one pause, and revive hidden memory. This is an ultimate treasure trove for anyone, who loves photography. There are a wide range of rare exhibits from Roy's collection. He captured various moods, showing glimpses of political leaders in different facets of life. He, with his photographs, threw light on last years of British rule but didn't get the recognition. Moreover, he captured off-the-cuff moments of great leaders making them approachable figures.

Roy's photos depict rare glimpses of pre and post -Independence era and freedom fighters who have endured many years of conflict. We have rare photographs of the visit of Gandhi to meet Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan in the North East frontier province, visit of Sir Stafford Cripps to India in 1941, Simla Conference in 1945 , Muslim League meetings, fund raising by Gandhiji , building of Bhakra dam and visits of dignitaries.

The Nationalist movement is covered by tracing mainstream politics through portraits .Wonderful images of Mahatma Gandhi collecting money from a woman for Harijan fund, Mahatma Gandhi addressing members of INA at Harijan colony Delhi have been captured by Roy .

It is a mystery when a news photographer makes history from deadline to deadline, never really knowing when he might take a photograph that will determine how an entire era is remembered. Consider the famous photograph of Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at a Congress meeting in 1946. Gandhi, looking into the middle distance, is, as ever, talking mainly to himself; Nehru and Patel, one on either side, straining to listen in, Nehru looking intently at his mentor’s mouth, and Patel’s face showing the effort it took for him to lean over at an uncomfortable, forty-five-degree angle. Could Roy have dreamt when he took it that it would be the most memorable representation of those strained relationships? It was chosen as the basis for a commemorative stamp after Patel died.

Turning the pages of this majestic volume holds a lesson for us and that is that great men influenced history but they did not control it. Manmohan Singh in his Foreword has rightly written “..History in the Making takes us back in time to a momentous and inspirational chapter of our past. The images captured by photojournalist Kulwant Roy bring alive the years which saw the birth of an independent India. Kulwant Roy’s photographs are sources as well as products of India. I hope that more such visual archives are brought to light and given the recognition and importance they richly deserve”.

One tragic note. Roy travelled to Japan, Hong Kong, USA, Panama, Brazil and various European countries. The negatives and prints of photographs taken there were mailed back to his address in Delhi but were never delivered. A shattered man, he spent the next few years looking for the negatives and prints in garbage dumps and open spaces around Delhi.

We welcome such breath-taking books as also the India Photo Archive Foundation, which has been established to identify, preserve and document photographic legacies like the output of Kulwant Roy. It will contribute towards creating a culture of dialogue on diverse narratives of photographic archives which are landmarks of history.

P.P.Ramachandran.

9/8/2020.

LEGAL LUMINARIES

100 Legal Luminaries of India ; Published by LexisNexis; Pages 465 ; Price Rs 4500/-                                                                                      *********************  

 This is a magnificent Coffee Table book on 100 legal luminaries of India. It highlights the men behind the black robes—their personal desires, hobbies, pastime and the road map of success that distinguished them from the rest.

       

Behind the laudable project is a team comprising members who have experience in the legal field, journalism, research, content development, photography. Of course the team is fortunate to have as their Mentor, Lalit Bhasin, who is the President of the “ Society of Indian Law Firms”.

The volume is divided into four parts—it recounts the journeys of struggle and success of eminent counsel, law firms, in-house counsels and teachers of Law.

In each life-sketch of the luminaries what is succinctly furnished are the influences of their families and their own experiences as a child, parent, friend-  their remarkable success—how they captured “ heights of glory”. What makes them stand out is the boundless energy and zest for life which they display through their interests, lifestyles and hobbies ranging from music and theatre to travelling and trekking.

The first Section on “ Eminent Senior Counsels “ has 51 luminaries. Obviously in a brief review we cannot cover all and we select a few.

Abhishek Manu Singhvi, born with a silver spoon in his mouth believes in the motto—            “ Work hard, enjoy life and die with your boots on “. He holds the record for being the  youngest “ Senior” designated by the High Court at the age 34, the youngest Solicitor General at 37 and one of the youngest Vice-Presidents of the Supreme Court Bar Association at 39.

Fali Nariman is a celebrated constitutional jurist and an authority on international arbitration. He is noted for his humility, humour and eloquence. His integrity is impeccable. He resigned from the post of Additional Solicitor General in protest against the infamous Emergency. His son Rohinton Nariman is a sitting Judge in the Supreme Court of India.

 Indira Jaising is a pioneer in fighting on issues for women. A set of variegated cases argued by her include “ Rupen Deol, Mary Roys and the Landmark case of Githa Hariharan”. She always wanted to be in a profession that lent her opportunities to make critical difference to people’s lives. A Hindustani classical enthusiast, she sings and practices with her Guru, Shamsher Sing. Jaising is the first woman to be elected to the  U N Committee on elimination of discrimination against women and the first woman to become India’s Additional Solicitor General.

The present Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology, Shri.Ravi Shankar Prasad is the son of a highly distinguished Patna advocate. He argued and won in the case of a muslim prisoner incarcerated for 49 years without trial. He won for the victim freedom and a good monetary compensation. Prasad  was jailed during the Emergency and he used the time to study Hindu philosophy, Marxism and the classics. His wife Maya and Ravi share interest in Hindustani classical and Carnatic music.

Soli Sorabjee has unfailingly fought to uphold constitutional law as well as freedom of speech and expression. This octogenarian remains a strident voice of caution against injustice speaking up for tolerance and human rights. He has held several high international judicial posts. Of his four children Zia is a lawyer and two grandchildren are prospective lawyers. Soli is not all law. He is a lover of poetry and a Jazz buff. He plays the clarinet gifted to him by Benny Goodman and he started the Jazz Yatra in 1978.

Under the leadership of Dr.Lalit Bhasin, a Society of Indian Law Firms was established and it advises on matters of corporate law, taxation, contracts and intellectual property laws. The book has a section dedicated to 40 law firms. Dr.Lalit Bhasin has been a legend in the Indian legal firmament. He has annexed several awards but declared,  “I am the only second Indian to be made President of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association” His vision is to make India a hub of arbitration and mediation for international commercial disputes. Other law firms include, inter alia  those headed by Akil Hirani, Anand Phatak, R.N.Jhunjhunwala, Zia Mody.

There are four In-House Counsel members and ten Legal Educators. These ten highly respected teachers were the Gurus of the eminent lawyers appearing in the earlier parts of the book. A great tribute to the great masters.

This is an outstanding contribution to the legal history of Free India, The rich and opulent photographs of the luminaries, their families ( and their dogs too !) can match the best of the classics of Yosuf Karsh of Ottawa.

The book throws a flood of light on the luminaries and is compulsory reading for all lawyers, students of law and of Indian history. LexisNexis has covered itself in glory with this resplendent tribute to the best and brightest of those men  in black robes.

P.P.Ramachandran.

26/07/2020.

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SHAKESPEARE

Shakespeare by Bill Bryson ; Published by Harper Collins; Pages200; Price Rs 325/-

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An impressive series of biographies edited by James Atlas include “Muhammad” by Karen Armstrong, “Thomas Jefferson” by Christopher Hitchens and “Beethoven” by Edmund Morris. The latest in this series is “Shakespeare’ by Bill Bryson. Bryson, is of course the well known author of “A Short History Of Nearly Everything”, which book was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize, bagged the Aventis Prize for Science books in 2004 and was also awarded the Descartes Prize in 2005. Bryson’s last book was the semi-autobiographical hilarious “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”. 

 The book under review is a biography of William Shakespeare which will cause several eyebrows to be raised—Since there are thousands of books on the Bard of Avon—why one more?. Reading the volume will make one realise that biographies of Shakespeare have so far been based on a jungle of wild speculation based on negligible, unverified facts.

Bill Bryson has waded through the entire Shakespeare-iana, sifted and recorded episodes in his research with considerable wit and commendable vigour. The biography is at once a vivid, fast paced work that encompasses every facet of the Bard’s life and times.

Facts unavailable hitherto tumble out of this cornucopia and a few are culled out and given for the entertainment and education of the reader.

Scholars have counted every word Shakespeare wrote, logged every dib and jot. Shakespeare’s works contain 138,198 commas, 26,794 colons, and 15,785 question marks ; ears are spoken of 401 times in his plays ; his characters refer to ‘love’ 2,259 times but to ‘hate’ only 183 times; altogether he left us 888,647 words, made up of 31,959 speeches, spread over 118,406 lines.

Much is made of Shakespeare’s learning—he knew as much as a lawyer, doctor or statesman or accomplished professional of his age. He is supposed to have deduced the orbital motions of heavenly bodies well before any astronomer did. Shakespeare was made into a Committee of Talents. His vocabulary showed a more than usual interest in medicine, law, military affairs and natural history. He mentions 180 plants and employs 200 legal terms.

However ,Bryson proves that Shakespeare’s knowledge was not all that distinguished. He gets his geography wrong. He puts a sail- maker in Bergamo-- the most landlocked city in Italy. If he knew Venice had canals, he gave no hint of it in the plays he set there. Ancient Egyptians played billiards. Caesar’s Rome has clock –the first one ticked fourteen hundred years later. Whatever his other virtues Shakespeare was not conspicuously worldly.

Shakespeare’s real gift was as a phrasemaker. Many of his phrases have entered the common language. Among them : one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, bag and baggage, play fast and loose, go down the primrose path, be in a pickle, budge an inch, the milk of human kindness, more sinned against than sinning, remembrance of things past, beggar all description, cold comfort, more in sorrow than in anger, tower of strength, foregone conclusion.

If we take the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, then roughly one-tenth of all the most quotable utterances in English are from Shakespeare- –an impressive proportion, indeed.

Shakespeare’s plays might have been lost except for the efforts of his close friends John Hemminges and Henry Condell who brought out a folio edition of his complete works. It contained 18 plays. The great repository of the First Folio today is a modest building two blocks away from the Capitol Hill in Washington D.C—the Folger Shakespearean Library.

Mention must be made of the ludicrous attempt of P.T.Barnum of “ Barnum and Bailey Circus” fame –who tried shipping to U S A the birthplace of Shakespeare , placing it on wheels and sending it on a perpetual tour round the country—a prospect so alarming that money was swiftly raised in Britain, through a Committee headed by Charles Dickens-- to save the house as a museum

and shrine.

 This reviewer had a chance to pay homage to Shakespeare at his birth-place and was deeply moved by the impressive manner in which it is preserved for posterity.

Lytton Strachey wrote , “the first duty of a biographer is to preserve a becoming brevity which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant”. Strachey who evolved a new genre of biographical writing could not have had a better disciple than Bill Bryson. Bill Bryson’s book is a tour-de-force and worth reading and re-reading many times. It is pure nectar.

P.P.Ramachandran.

19/7/2020.

RAVI VARMA

Raja Ravi Varma - Painter of Colonial India by Rupika Chawla; Published by Mapin; Pages 360; Price Rs.3950/-

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The Governor of Maharashtra - Shri. K. Sankaranarayanan, releasing the book under review said, Raja Ravi Varma was a rare phenomenon to have happened to the world of art and it was he who brought Indian paintings on the world canvas, gave ‘face’ to many Gods and Goddesses in the Hindu pantheon. If there was ever a painter who could claim to have completely changed the way popular Indian imagination pictured its Gods, Goddesses, myths and legends, then it was that charismatic Keralite Raja Ravi Varma.

This book by Rupika Chawla is an account of the painter from a royal family in the background  of colonial India, and the impact of  this milieu on his profession as an aristocratic itinerant painter. This lavishly illustrated book is a great collection of paintings from royal and private collections and museums, and works hitherto unseen, along with previously undisclosed maps, letters, photographs and other archival material.

For this magnificent Coffee Table book Chawla has travelled all over the country for long many years, prising out the slightest of secrets. This book offers fresh insights especially into the way he painted and obtained from the diary of the Raja of Aundh (near Pune), in whose court the prince-painter spent a lot of time painting. The Raja was a very careful observer and questioner and asked genuine questions. To quote the author, “he writes about the way Raja Ravi Varma painted, the hours he painted and about the time and trouble he took to get emotion on the faces he made, reworking them several times... He also writes about the painter’s fascination for the nine yard sari because it showed the body so well.” Chawla portrays the times the painter lived in. She shows us how this modern man with a vision was able to use turn-of-the-century technological innovations such as electricity, the railways, newspapers and oleographs.

The author, who is the wife of the ex-Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla, is a conservator of paintings based in Delhi who has restored several Ravi Varma paintings at her studio in Delhi and also gives training in conservation. Together with artist A. Ramachandran she organized the seminal exhibition on Raja Ravi Varma in 1993 at the National Museum, Delhi, which brought about a strong revival of the artist and his work.

This well-researched book traces the sources used by Ravi Varma, examines the techniques and methodology of his paintings, and discusses their conservation and the problem of fakes and copies and is a goldmine for historians, collectors, curators and art lovers.

Rupika Chawla revealed how she was fascinated by the Kerala painter and spent over two decades tracing his life, locating lost paintings, and interviewing descendants of his family members, friends and acquaintances. This book provides a peek into the artist’s inner world, his muses, visits to different parts of the country and the influences in his work.

The author declared that very little was known about this painter. Who was he? How was he able to make the kind of paintings he made, what motivated him, what was his background, the times he lived in, who were the people he knew, his collectors, the value of his art - then and now, his technique and method of painting, the people who were influenced by him and the value of his art today. In her research, all these questions were answered, and much more. Her favorite paintings were the Mysore collection. They were among the last that Ravi Varma did. In terms of composition, they are complex, well executed and exquisitely beautiful, while also concentrating and expressing the drama that involves their narrative. Ravi Varma balanced tradition and modernity, combined business enterprise with his love of painting, understood the commercial value of art and was a forerunner in propagating art. With that in mind he started the oleograph press and wished to make a museum but died before he could manage that.

Raja Ravi Varma was born on April 29, 1848, in Kilimanoor, Kerala. He belonged to a family of scholars, poets and artists. Noted in his family were Vidwan Koil Tampuran, author of the famous Kathakali work Ravana Vijayam; Raja Raja Varma, who painted after the Tanjore style, and Uma Amba Bai Tampuratty who composed Parvati Swayamvaram, a work for the tullal dance. As a small boy, he filled the walls of his home with pictures of animals, acts and scenes from his daily life, which impressed his uncle, Raja Raja Varma as the signs of a blossoming genius. The uncle, not only gave the first drawing lessons to his nephew, but took a keen interest in his further training and education with the help of the ruling king, Ayilyam Thirunal. When he was only 14, Ravi Varma was sent to Thiruvananthapuram where he stayed in the Kilimanoor palace and was taught water painting by the palace painter Ramaswami Naidu. Here Varma’s talent was nurtured by the personal interest of the King who exposed him to the famous paintings of Italian painters. Ravi Varma had been using the indigenous paints made from leaves, flowers, tree bark and soil which his uncle Raja Raja Varma prepared for him. His first set of oil paints was brought from Madras after noticing a newspaper advertisement.

Rupika Chawla has done detection of an extraordinary type for this book on the life and times of Raja Ravi Varma, considered by many to be India’s first modern painter. She has given us the portrait of a man in full by doggedly following the most evanescent of clues across India, ferreting out unknown Ravi Varma paintings, digging into dispersed archives, studying scores of his work, tracing his scattered descendants in pursuit of bits of information or some forgotten and damaged Ravi Varma canvas - even making the slightest of links lead into fascinating revelations.

The readers are taken on a journey and we can almost visualise the painter prince’s life unfold before us and Chawla draws for us a picture of his artistic struggles. We also learn more about his models and muses. The author has effectively used the diaries of his younger brother C. Raja Raja Varma - they worked and travelled together on commissions.  A man ahead of his times, he was a marketing genius and shrewd entrepreneur. He set up the Ravi Varma Fine Arts Lithographic Press to make his art more accessible, to travel far beyond the circle of wealthy patrons. Not satisfied with the quality of the prints in India, he dispatched a man to Germany in 1893 to find an expert chromo-lithograph printer who could help them produce superior Indian-made oleographs. The young German Fritz Schleicher came to India and became the printer and manager of the oleograph and chromo-lithograph workshop. Chawla tracked down Schleicher’s grandson, Robert Sandhu, to garner fascinating details about the collaboration between Schleicher and the Varma brothers.

Till Ravi Varma arrived on the scene, Indian art was wondrous, metaphoric, symbolic, abstract, geometric and much more but never directly representational of the retinal reality. Most importantly, Hindu Gods were not perceived to be made in the image of man. They were portrayed by the depiction of their attributes in hundreds of different styles and manners. But the setting up of the Ravi Varma Press in 1894 in Bombay changed all that. Soon, from Simla to Trivandrum and from Calcutta to Bombay, every middle-class Hindu home in the 20th century was and is decorated with highly affordable prints of Ravi Varma’s “natural and realistic” renderings of Lakshmi, Saraswati, Rama, Sita and Hanuman, to name just a few. Moreover, Ravi Varma’s penchant for the dramatic pageant influenced popular theatre and films, thereby increasing the impact of his artifice manifold.

In the latter half of the 19th century, the medium of oil on-canvas itself was new to India and Ravi Varma’s chosen style of painting European realism (though outmoded in Europe by then) - was still unfamiliar and novel here. But once Ravi Varma had mastered both his technique and his style around the 1870s, there was no stopping him. His familial links with the Travancore ruling family ensured a network of connections that led to a spate of commissions ranging from tiny states like Pudukottai, Aundh and Bhavnagar to big ones like Mysore, Baroda and Hyderabad. He was much sought after not only for his portraits but also for his “thematic” paintings depicting pivotal scenes from Hindu myths and Sanskrit literature.

Paradoxically in contrast to his immense mass appeal and popular influence as India’s first painter of iconic images, the life and legacy of Ravi Varma had never been seriously studied till now. This volume, which admirably fills a gap, is not a heavy academic tome. In style and substance, it is hugely engaging, carrying its scholarship with a remarkable lightness of grace. Chawla’s chronicling of Ravi Varma’s life and works is full of anecdotes from secondary sources such as accounts of his patrons, colleagues and friends, the most important among these being the diaries kept by his beloved brother C. Raja Raja Varma, who was his pupil and partner in virtually all of the commissions and enterprises that Ravi Varma undertook.

What makes this book  significantly different is that it covers brilliantly social, cultural and political life in colonial India - especially that of the native princes and attempts to underline the newly emerging dynamic link between technology and a colonised society bound by moribund feudal values that was aspiring to modernity, freedom and democracy. So the “shortening of time and distances” by the coming of the Railways, the place of art “in the time of mechanical reproduction” and the double-edged politics of cultural nationalism all come into focus in this absorbing narrative of a painterly transience.

05/07/2020

GEORGE  SOROS

Soros --The Life and Times of a Messianic Millionnaire    by Michael .T.Kauffman ; Published by Alfred.A.Knopf ; Page 344; Price U S $ 27/50.

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Michael Kaufman spent forty years with New York Times in several capacities. He had predicted the collapse of communism in Poland in his book-“Mad Dreams ,Saving Graces”. He bagged the George Polk Award for foreign reporting as also a Guggenheim fellowship.

The book under review is the first biography of George Soros which was written with his collaboration. Soros, global financier and philanthropist is the founder and chairman of a network of foundations that promote, among other things, the creation of open, democratic societies based upon the rule of law, market economies, transparent and accountable governance, freedom of the press, and respect for human rights.

As of February 2018, Soros had a networth of $8 billion, having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations.

Soros is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of Pounds Sterling, which made him a profit of $1billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday U K currency crisis.

We follow Soros from his European dislocation to monumental success and phenomenal wealth. He was born a Jew in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930. His father was taken prisoner during World War I and eventually fled from captivity in Russia to reunite with his family in Budapest. Soros was thirteen years old when Hitler's Wehrmacht seized Hungary and began deporting the country's Jews to extermination camps. In 1946, as the Soviet Union was taking control of the country, Soros attended a conference in the West and defected. He emigrated in 1947 to England, supported himself by working as a railroad porter and a restaurant waiter, graduated in 1952 from the London School of Economics, and obtained an entry-level position with an investment bank. Ambition and opportunity drove him to the Mecca of capitalism—Wall Street where he adopted novel approaches and soon acquired the sobriquet,”The greatest money manager in the world ”. He established Quantum Fund which laid down the standards for hedge funds. The book is a fascinating account of how in a short period Soros accumulated wealth.

At the London School of Economics, Soros became acquainted with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas on open society had a profound influence on his intellectual development. Karl Popper in his monumental The Open Society and Its Enemies, maintained that societies can flourish only when they allow democratic governance, freedom of expression, a diverse range of opinion, and respect for individual rights.

Soros adapted Popper's ideas to develop his own theory of reflexivity," a set of ideas that explains the relationship between thought and reality, which he used to predict, among other things, the emergence of financial bubbles. Soros began to apply his theory to investing and concluded that he had more talent for trading than for philosophy. In 1967 he helped establish an offshore investment fund; and in 1973 he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the first hedge funds, through which he accumulated a vast fortune.

As his financial success mounted, Soros applied his wealth to philanthropic activities. He provided funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. This was followed by a foundation in Hungary to support culture and education and help the country’s transition to democracy.Soros also distributed funds to the underground Solidarity movement in Poland, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet physicist-dissident Andrei Sakharov. In 1982, Soros named his philanthropic organization the Open Society Fund, in honour of Karl Popper, and began granting scholarships to students from Eastern Europe.

The magnitude and geographical scope of his philanthropic commitments, coupled with the core principle of fostering open societies, has allowed Soros to transcend the limitations of many national governments and international institutions. Soros spent $50 million to help the citizens of Sarajevo endure the city’s siege during the Bosnian war, funding among other projects a water-filtration plant that allowed residents to avoid having to draw water from distribution points targeted by Serb snipers.Most recently, he has provided $50 million to support the Millennium Villages initiative, which seeks to lift some of the least developed villages in Africa out of poverty.

His network of philanthropic organizations dedicated to building open societies has expanded to include more than 60 countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Through his projects he became a key figure in the collapse of communism. The story of his philanthropy is as fascinating as that of his financial rise.

We have intimate portraits of Soros and his family. He would abruptly turn away from some pending multi-million dollar venture to address complex problems in his philanthropic foundations and then switch back to money matters shifting gears, without dropping a beat, a decimal place, or any hint of emotion. When he was asked what accounted for his extraordinary record, he claimed that self-criticism was the decisive factor. He would discover his mistakes swiftly and correct them before they caused too much harm.

If a fully involved life was to be measured by its mixture of ideas and action, then Soros would become the most broadly and deeply engaged citizen of the world.

Soros published several books and contributed essays on politics, society, and economics to major periodicals around the world. The book under review is an eye-opener to the making of a citizen of the world and offers hints on how to develop one’s personality and talents even as one acquires financial expertise.

P.P.Ramachandran.

28/06/2020.

FIDEL CASTRO

My Life by Fidel Castro with Ignacio Ramonet ; Published by Allen Lane ; Pages 724 ; Price Rs 850/--

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This is an unusual autobiography in the sense that it is not written by Fidel Castro but spoken by him in the form of answers to a galaxy of questions put to him on a number of occasions over a period beginning with  January 2003 and concluding in December 2005—lasting in all for a hundred hours.

                                 This book-interview is a hybrid genre at once old and new. It is old in that one of its first examples was Wilhelm Goethe’s “Conversations with Ackerman” which came out in 1835. It is contemporary as recent recording techniques have made such works popular. The bonafides of the interviewer are impeccable. Ignacio Ramonet is the long-time editor of the French magazine Le Monde Diplomatique, one of the founders of ATTAC International and a key player in organizing the World Social forum. He is also the Founder of the NGO Media Watch Global. He is a frequent contributor to many learned journals. The book under review appeared originally in Spanish and has been translated into English by Andrew Hurley.

                                      This is a book of contemporary history. It supplements Castro’s statements with detailed notes which clarify and furnish information on the historical, political and cultural figures mentioned by Castro and recalls History. There is a detailed  chronology from 1926 to 2007 with useful parallels in time and geography.

                                       Few men have known the glory of entering the pages of both history and legend in their lifetime. Fidel is one of them. He is the last sacred giant of international politics. He belongs to the generation of mythical leaders like Nelson Mandela, Ho Chi Minh, Jawaharlal Nehru and Che Guevara.

                                       He had an all-encompassing vision of globalisation, its consequences and ways of confronting them; his arguments of great modernity and cleverness made patent qualities that included---his sense of strategy, his uncanny ability to read a situation accurately and his quickness of analysis.

                                          Under his leadership Cuba with a tiny population of 11 million people has conducted a very powerful foreign policy, of far-reaching consequences—it has even stared down the United States, whose ten Presidents failed to dislodge Fidel or even jostle the revolution one bit off its path.

                                             It is on record that despite persistent attacks by the U S, Cuba has never responded with violence for fifty years; that  not a single act of violence  encouraged or sponsored by Cuba has occurred in U S A.

                                               Fidel Castro is the President of Cuba. In 1959 he led the revolution that led to the fall of Fulgencio Batista. He held the post of Prime Minister till 1976, when he became President of the Council of State as well as of the Council of Ministers. Castro became the First secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965 and heralded the transformation of Cuba into a one-party Socialist republic. As President he holds the supreme military rank of Comandante in the Cuban military. On 31st July 2006 Fidel Castro temporarily transferred duties to his  brother  Raoul Castro.

                                       Castro’s life began in a sugar plantation 80 years ago. He went on to graduate as a lawyer, led a failed revolution against the Batista regime. He was tried and imprisoned. He escaped to Mexico only to return to begin a guerrilla war. In 1959 when he was thirty two only he marched triumphantly to Havana. He soon became Prime Minister and has remained in power ever since—that is for over 50 years. He has survived ten American Presidents and 600 attempts on his life.

                                          In this book Castro describes his life from 1930, all the way up to the present day. He discusses every thing—his parents, his earliest influences, the beginnings of the revolution, his relationship with Che Guevara, the Bay of Pigs Fiasco, the October Missile Crisis, the Carter years, Cuban migration to USA. He tackles a number of controversial questions from human rights, freedom of the press, repression of homosexuals and the survival of death penalty.

                                            Ramonet comes out as a well prepared  inter- locutor  tackling the communist leader’s legacy. Castro’s comments on world events and personalities are highly thought provoking and very fascinating. Special mention must be made of the disenchantment with Khrushchev after he withdrew all the missiles without checking with Castro. The exchange of letters between Castro and Khrushchev are highly impressive. Castro has sound advice to give Hugo Chavez of Venezuela during a 2002 coup attempt.

                                               There is no doubt that Fidel Castro was the most charismatic leader of those days, always controversial and one who stood firm as a rock for more than half a century.  He was a hero and an inspiration to the world’s poor having maintained his independence fiercely against heavy odds.

                                             In his eighties he has now set out in great and amazing details his remarkable autobiography. During his recent illness he revealed to reporters that he was keeping alive to ensure that this book has been checked by him. Castro narrates graphically his experience of  harsh elementary school teachers, the early failures of revolution, their amazing against-all odds victory over Batista, the Cuban side of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the October Missile crisis, the positive role of Cuba in African independence movements and above all his relations with the high and mighty like Boris Yeltsin, Pope John Paul II, Saddam Hussein and his dealings with ten American Presidents from Eisenhower to George Bush. Castro proudly declares that life expectancy in Cuba is higher than in USA, half a million students study in Cuban universities ,  there are  seventy thousand doctors in Cuba, a large number of them assisting the poor in Africa.

                                       Fidel was a leader who lived modestly, austerely, in spartan conditions. There was no luxury about or around him. His furniture was sober; his food was frugal and healthy. His habits were those of a soldier-monk. He had not taken advantage of his position to enrich himself. Hewas a man of impressive physique, over six feet tall, athletic and robust. Brilliant and baroque he had a visceral need to communicate with the public.

                                         He was given the name Fidel after a man who was his Godfather. At school he was outstanding at basketball, football and baseball. Since 1956 he has never been unarmed. ”I once said that if Ulysses was captivated by the song of the Sirens, I was captivated by the Marxist denunciations”, he declared about his faith. He explained why he sported a beard. “If you multiply the fifteen minutes you spend on shaving every day by the number of days in a year, you’ll see that you devote almost 5500 minutes to shaving in one year. An eight-hour day of work consist of 480 minutes, so if you don’t shave you gain about ten days that you can devote to reading, to sport, or to what you really care for ”. He shares intimacies about personal matters such as the kindness of his strict father, his attempts to give up cigars, his great love for Ernest Hemingway, respect for Romain Rolland and his high regard for Che Guevara.

                                      Ignacio Ramonet has brought out an extraordinary biography of an extraordinary leader who lived in times of great turmoil and came out with grace and won world esteem.  This is an outstanding autobiography of one of the greatest leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries.

P.P.Ramachandran

21/06/2020.