JLF 2022 Part I

 JLF--it sure is an addiction.  I just can't seem to not attend the sessions and this year is no exception.  The fest this time is being held in hybrid mode, the first few days purely online and then the last five days in person in Jaipur with the sessions being streamed online.

I must confess, after having attended the fest many times in person, I do prefer attending the sessions from the comfort of my home where I have the liberty to mutli-task during a session which not be as interesting as I might have imagined it to be.

So, what are the sessions that I have caught so far?

Yesterday, I caught James Fox's The World According to Colour which proved to be a fascinating session with a lot of trivia on various colours, such as the blue butterfly does not have any blue pigment but is actually brown and its blue appearance is actually a result of scales that reflect the blue or that the Arabic word for green is the shortest line in the Quran.  This is definitely a book I want to pick up to dip into every now and then. Having lost track of time resulted in me catching the end of the conversation with Padma Kaimal on the Kailash temple of Kanchipuram--definitely a book to read before visiting the temple! Elif Shafak's session had me putting her book The Island of Missing Trees on my wish list.  I just hope it lives up to its promise.  

Today, I attended the talk by Marc David Baer whose book on the Ottomans deviates from classical approach of the likes of Bernard Lewis and others who saw the Ottomans through a rather Orientalist lens.  Instead, he presents them as constantly evolving and at its zenith as being a dynamic empire which fostered learning and inquiry and which was a force to reckon with not just on land but at sea too. The end of this session had me adding The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs to my wish list:)  Let's see how many more get added to my list over the next week!  

Definitely, time was well spent while attending the sessions.  The only thing that rankled is how in referring to Indians who challenge the Mughals, Dalrymple referred to them as Hindus!  Clearly the colonial gaze of identifying Indians by their religion rather than nationality continues--but more on that another day!

January 2022

A new year, new resolutions and hopefully plenty of new books.  Fortunately, despite living in a house struck by covid I did manage to read three books in January, not a bad start I would say.  Even better, all three were really good books.

I began the year with Catherine McCormack's Women in the Picture, which was a real eye opener.  She takes off from John Berger by examining how women in Western Art are depicted in the nude as they have no agency and that these were images produced by  men for men.  She then goes onto explain how art normalises problematic attitudes.  What made the book all the more interesting was how she looks at present day media and how it has been influenced by the canon and how certain artists are challenging these tropes.  Even more impressive is the fact that the book is a riveting yet easy read despite all the complex ideas it was dealing with.  Definitely a must read for anyone who is interested in art and culture of the Western world.

2022 saw me return to a French novel after a long time.  Our book club read was Our Lady of the Nile, and by chance the French version was available on amazon.in so I decided to read the book in its original.  This novel is set in Rwanda of the early 80's in a girls' boarding school.  Yet this is no school of innocents and the Hutu-Tutsi conflict overshadows the daily life culminating in a savage denouement.  What I found quite fascinating was how the antagonist Gloriosa reminded me so much of Jack in Lord of the Flies—clearly, even children are not exempt from the depravities humans are capable of.  Recommended if you want to gain an insight into the complexities of the Hutu-Tutsi strife.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman was the third book I read—-a book that I've been meaning to read for a long time, but finally picked up as I wanted to read it before watching the Netflix series.   Am so very glad I read the book first, as the series doesn't do real justice to the book.  This is an endearing novel that reminds one of the good there is amongst ordinary people and how human connections are so important in lifting one out of seemingly tight spots.  A book that bought many smiles to my face and left me feeling good and happy at the end.  Do read to instill faith in humanity (especially after a bleak book like Our Lady of the Nile).

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

 For a review of When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut please head over to the Good Reads page of this blog.  

Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History

Writing this review, makes me feel how David might have felt facing Goliath.  How can one, a layman, have the gumption to take on a world renowned scholar, an accepted expert of her field.  But then, perhaps like David, I know I am right, so here goes (by the way I am also tickled by the interesting reversal of appropriation of religious narratives here).

Banning a book is great for business, for there is always a perverse thrill in indulging in proscribed activities.  So when Anjali suggested we read Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History which was just off the banned list of books, my fellow book club members and I jumped at the opportunity, after all what could be so objectionable in a book on Hinduism.

We were ambitious and decided that it would be one of our summer readings, when the club takes a two month break.  When we met after our sojourn, we discovered that we had all been a tad bit errant and not tackled the mighty tome.  Realising that reading the mammoth book in one go was setting ourselves for failure, we decided that we would read a chapter from  The Hindus: An Alternative History alongside the novel of the month to ensure we completed the book.  As a result, we finished the book in a little more than two and a half years.  

At first, the book seemed fabulous, confirming what we have always known about Hinduism: the way it incorporated any new threat into the fold and the way it allowed each person to choose their own path to salvation.  Of course, every step of the way, Doniger did not shy away from showing how casteism and the patriarchy marginalised so many voices, which we all agreed was a huge failing of Hinduism.  Thus, for the first year of our readings of Doniger we wondered why there was such a hullabaloo about her book.

Then we reached chapter fifteen of the book where Doniger states that the "Orissan temples…may have escaped because they were too remote to attract Muslim attention" (Doniger, pg 443) which made me pause, for I vividly remember the cut off arms and defaced visages of the statues at the sun temple at Konarak.  How then did Doniger contend that these temples evaded any destruction.  

In Chapter sixteen, Doniger makes even more sweeping generalisations displaying a superficial and cavalier handling of history ignoring the complexities that make India.  She contends that with the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire India finally had "two moments when there are serious contenders for a centre" (Doniger, pg 446).  Evidently, this renowned Indologist is oblivious to the fact that at both such moments there were various strongholds in the subcontinent, most notably of course the Vijayanagara Empire.  It was here that I began to realise that Doniger does not have a nuanced understanding of Indian history and instead adheres to the myopic Delhi-centric view that has plagued historians of yore.  Guilty of the same, she claims that the Turks introduced polo into India (Doniger, pg 453), when the Manipuris had already been playing the game for centuries before.  She then goes on to claim that "Throughout India, Hindu dynasties responded to the entrance of Islam not only by building forts and massing horsemen but by asserting their power through extravagant architecture, most spectacularly at Hampi, Halebid and Badami" (Doniger, pg 468).  This assertion is a gross oversimplification of the complexities of royal architectural projects in India.  Furthermore, I would like to know what Muslim threat were the Chalukyas of the 5th-8th centuries responding to? 

Doniger's Orientalist perspective comes into sharp focus when talking about Indian architecture.  She writes:  "The mosque, whose serene calligraphic and geometric decoration contrasts with the perpetual motion of the figures depicted on the temple, makes a stand against what the early Muslim architects regarded as the chaos of India, creating enforced vacuums that India cannot rush into with all its animals and peoples and colours, and at the same time, providing a flattering frame to offset that very chaos" (Doniger, pg 469).  Firstly, has Doniger not seen the seen some of the most curvilinear, floral designs on these mosques which are themselves so full of motion.  Secondly, most of the craftsmen of these mosques were Indian and the so-called chaos of India was the norm for them.  Then again, this Indian chaos that Doniger sees as a profusion of animals, peoples and colours while foreign to Europeans and Americans, to Muslims of Central Asia and the Middle East would not have been so out of place.

Chapter nineteen is when I found the ultimate proof of Doniger's shoddy scholarship. She begins by glossing over Humayun's blinding of his brother by casting aspersions on Humayun's spirituality (Doniger, pg 531), not acknowledging the fact that Humayun resorted to this act only after a series of betrayals; blinding his brother was the action of a monarch!  She then comments on how Akbar after leaving Fatehpur Sikri moved his capital to Delhi (Doniger, pg 532)—when in fact he actually moved to Lahore.  The final nail in the coffin was when Doniger on page 536 writes that when Shah Jahan "built the great Jami masjid, the Friday mosque, in Delhi he included a rather miscellaneous arcade made of disparate columns from twenty-seven demolished Hindu temples. Despite the alleged aniconic nature of Islam, the pillars are still graced with figures, some of Hindu gods, a few of them still with their heads on."  Having visited the Jama Masjid many a time, I knew for sure that there were no such pillars in the Jama Masjid.  So what was Doniger referring to?  Could it be the Qutub Mosque at Mehrauli?  I then carefully reread Doniger's text and noted an endnote number. I quickly referred to the endnote number 44 and saw that she was referencing page 87 of Partha Mitter's Indian Art.  I immediately checked out the said page (very easily done since I had his book at home) to find that yes Mitter does state that columns from 27 demolished Hindu temples were used in the mosque—the Jami Masjid of Qutub ud Din Aibak: the Quwwat ul-Islam mosque at the Qutub complex, not Shah Jahan's Jama Masjid!  This is an error that no Indologist would make—so how does Doniger get away with it all?

After this chapter, my friends and I found ourselves losing interest in the book and having to force ourselves to trudge through it. The smarter ones of the group  just chucked the book out all together.  As a group, we now realised that we could not trust anything Doniger had to say, even about Ancient India.

So I wondered how could she have made such grave errors, which is when I chanced upon the lecture she delivered for the Charles Homer Haskins Prize in 2015 where she provided a brief of her various learning experiences (the video of the lecture is available on youtube).  Life at university for Doniger was quite an unstructured affair with minimal supervision.  She began as a student of Sanskrit at Radcliffe, followed by life as a graduate student at Harvard where she had no qualifying exams for her Phd.  Her year in India was spent travelling around the country instead of studying Sanskrit.  Given her huge mix-up regarding the Jama Masjid in Delhi referred to above, I do wonder about the nature of her travel.  Her Oxford DPhil was virtually unsupervised, as she would only meet up with her supervisor once a year, which I heard straight from the horse's mouth (if you have read Doniger's book, you will understand what an apt metaphor this is). I guess Doniger's academic laxity at university has resulted in this slipshod approach to scholarship as evident in her not paying careful heed to sources and misquoting from them, in her making broad sweeping generalisations and in being caught in a time warp when it comes to looking at Indian arts.  It probably also explains why when she discusses Hinduism during the Raj her primary reference is Kipling!!!

While writing this critique I stumbled upon Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism studies in America edited by Krishnan Ramaswamy which had many criticisms of Doniger.  Chapter seven of the book was particularly revealing as it showed that Doniger's knowledge and understanding of Sanskrit are flawed resulting in incorrect translations—and this was pointed out in detail from findings by Professor Michael Witzel of Harvard University.  

Mistranslations, misquotes, misunderstandings…clearly The Hindus: An Alternative History is a rather questionable book, which at best misinforms and at worst is calculated to mislead.  What is really sad is that most people would consider this volume the definitive work on Hinduism, when it is anything but. 

Apeirogon by Colum McCann

Apeirogon is at its heart a very intelligently crafted novel, which is also so very well written. Reading the book, I found myself alternating between feelings of despair in the sections which deal with  the tragic senseless deaths of the two daughters: Abir and Smadar and those of admiration for the elegance of McCann's writing and the seemingly random but yet so interesting facts he weaves into his narrative.  

On the surface, McCann's novel seems an attempt to present the complexities of the Israel-Palestine issue, while suggesting dialogue as the way out.

However, when chancing upon Susan Abulhawa's critique of the novel (click here to see Abulhawa's review), I realised that perhaps there is more to the book than meets the eye.  Is this indeed a book propelled by pro-Israeli forces?  Are the references to Steven Spielberg in the latter half of the book a result of a film deal between the writer and publisher? What to make of McCann's judicious selection of facts?  Needless to say questions like this brought to mind the age old question of who gets to tell the stories? Is it not possible for an outsider to present an authentic narrative? And what about freedom of expression?

So then, how does one approach a book like Apeirogon, which is so very well written and yet problematic. I guess, as a responsible reader one needs to be mindful of the writer's perspective so as to have a nuanced reading and yet let oneself be free to be transported by the words.

Recommended for when you want a well crafted novel.

The Jaipur Literature Festival 2021

Being the JLF junkie that I am, it was quite obvious that I was not going to miss the fest this year albeit in its virtual avatar.  I cleared my schedule ahead of time for the ten day extravaganza and studied the schedule carefully to strategise which events to attend.  Finally after a long wait, Friday, 19th February arrived and for all practical purposes I disappeared from the home front.  

Day one, in typical JLF style, highlighted the intersection of art and science, what normally are seen as opposed disciplines actually have a lot in common.  Blyth and Blatchford in the inaugural session pointed out the importance of imagination and creativity for both artists and scientists.  In fact, the very depiction of the universe, the way we imagine it has been shaped by the work of artists.  In a similar vein, Carlo Rovelli in the following talk explained how Nagarjuna's notions of interdependence gives us a way of looking at Quantum mechanics!

What draws me to JLF year after year is that it introduces me to writers and books that I normally would not consider.  Books that I really want to read after attending the session this year are Kishwar Desai's biography of Devika Rani based on a careful study of primary sources titled The Longest Kiss.  Another volume I want to read is Mehr Farooqi's Ghalib: A Wilderness at my Doorstep for a nuanced presentation of this most famous poet's life.  The session with S. Hareesh and Jayasree Kalathil on The Year of the Moustache convinced me that there was depth to the book Moustache and I must read it, as it was not the typical award circuit book.  What impressed me most was S. Hareesh's statement that writing a story is a fundamental part of democracy and therefore novels should be a safe space, an assumption that is so often brought into question in today's intolerant world.  Colum McCann's talk on his novel Apeirogon—based on a friendship between a Palestinian father and an Israeli father, both of whom lost their daughters in the senseless violence that afflicts the region—intrigued not just me but my friends too and so now it is our Book Club read for the month of April.  Rodaan Al-Galidi in his talk shed light on the twilight zone that refugees awaiting legalisation exist in for years on end, the subject of his book Two Blankets and Three Sheets.  In contrast, Doireann Ni Ghirofa drew one's attention to Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s keen: Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, again reiterating how little one is aware of literary traditions around the world.  Ben MacIntyre, a JLF regular, is such fun to listen to, his sessions all the more fascinating for the true life spy stories he shares with us.  This time I was kicked to have my question asked to the author (by the end of the festival some q/a sessions were being enabled) all about Killing Eve and its inspiration.  

Now more than any other this is really the time for history lovers, as such diverse approaches to the subject are emerging.  One of these is Yashaswini Chandra's The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback.  Julia Lovell's Maoism a Global History does what no one has done in one volume, to look at Maoism in its various forms across the globe.  Priya Atwal presents a refreshing perspective on Ranjit Singh's Durbar.  Camilla Townsend's talk about her Cundhill History prize winning work Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs made me realise how much I have to learn and explore—-the dilemma of every bookworm: so much to read and such little time.  A fan of Richard Eaton ever since I read his Sufis of Bijapur while in college, presented his latest book India in the Persianate Age, which relooks at the so called Hindu-Muslim clash of the medieval world which he attributes to the colonial construction of Indian history.  

While the session by Mehreen Chida Rizvi on Jahangir's paintings was pleasing to the eye, there was nothing new that was being presented—if you've read Ebba Koch you know what Rizvi has to say!

Though I am not much of a poetry reader by the end of the festival I was really inspired to explore some.  In particular, I can't wait to read Rupert Snell's translations of Bihari Satsai especially after he explained how rich and difficult these poems are to translate.  Mahmood Farooqi talking about his uncle the later SR Faruqi not only reminded me that I needed to read the latter's Mirror of Beauty but also had me wanting to read his translations of Mir.  The dohas of Abdur Rahim are also another work I want to explore, especially since I have been driving past his tomb ever since I can remember.

Apart from providing leads on what to read next, JLF has always been a place of learning for me.  While the session with Amita Baig and Tripurdaman Singh on The Taj Mahal highlighted the dilemmas that the city of Agra has faced because of the presence of theTaj, such as the shifting of traditional industries, which are often glossed over.  On the other hand, with Meelis Friedenthal one gained a glimpse of Estonia of yore where the upper class members of society were not Estonians.  The sessions by Kevin Barry and Mark Haddon were interesting but the highlight was the one with Colm Toibin for one truly felt in the presence of a literary master.

It was while attending the session on Phoolsunghi that the limitations of the online version of the festival really hit me—the absence of a q/a session with the speakers, especially since I had been waiting to ask Choubey a question regarding the novel.  

Also, the festival literally proved that money talks, for while each session was carefully monitored to ensure that time frames were not overshot, Bill Gates was allowed to speak at length, cutting into the following session. 

So at the end of the experience, which do I prefer….the physical JLF or the online one?  That is a tough choice.  While the virtual festival saved me a lot of time and money as no travel was involved and I no longer had a hassle of finding a seat at the venue; the in person experience of interacting with authors or browsing in the bookstore (though there was a virtual bookstore) was missing.  Moreover, the sessions were a bit shorter and most did not have a q/a which one did miss.  Given a choice next year what would I do, probably attend the virtual session for its convenience as I have attended the festival a number of times in person and am now after a year of Covid quite attuned to the virtual world.  

Ladakh a Wanderer's Spectacle by Nabarun Bhattacharya

The present pandemic has rendered most of us armchair travellers, attempting to slake our wanderlust by poring through a variety of travelogues.  I chanced upon this particular book in the library and am so glad I picked it up for it's not the traditional coffee table book. Yes, it does have gorgeous drool-worthy pictures of Ladakh which does make one feel all the more terrible to be stuck here in the dreary plains.  More than the pictures I found myself pulled in by the writer's account of a faith-healer's session.  At the end of the book I was swept by the realisation of how brutally frank the author has been about himself. It was with a heavy heart that I put the book down knowing that there would be no more, for Bhattacharya died before he could complete this book at the age of forty-seven.  I am so glad that the Niyogi Books decided to publish this book posthumously for it is a most worthy addition to the existing literature on Ladakh.