White Mughals Love and Betrayal in 18th Century India by William Dalrymple (2002)

Website of William Dalrymple

William Dalrymple is probably the leading non-academic historian focusing on India.  His White Mughals Love and Betrayal in 18th Century India won the highly prestigious Wolfson Prize in 2003 (awarded by the Wolfson foundation for best history book by a British subject).  As I am very interested in the 18th Century in Asia I was  eager to read this book.

British men, soldiers, East Indian Company officers in the thousands were sent to help rule India in the 18th Century.  Very few English women went along, at most the wives of the very elite.  Naturally this lead to extensive fraternization between Indian Women and British men.  Dalrymple focuses on relationships between high society Muslim India Women, mostly from the largely Muslim Hyderabad area and Englishmen. (The rulers were descended from the Mughals, hence the name.) 

In several cases the men converted to Muslim, often required for a marriage, and became experts on Indian culture, often adapting the life style of their wives.  As depicted by Dalrymple, some of the matches were based in deep love, while other wealthy officers set up private harems.  By and large Hindu women were forbidden to marry Englishmen while Islam had no such provision.

Dalrymple goes into a lot of fascinating detail about social customs, trade, the British East India Company, marriage in the period, interfaith relationships, child rearing and much more.  I was fascinated to learn that Muslim law of the period allowed abortions up to the fourth month and to learn about how this was done.  

There are things I found lacking in this book.  It gives little account of the day to day lives of the English, what did they eat for example.  One thing annoyed me a good bit.  Every woman mentioned by Dalrymple is described as incredibly beautiful.  To me this suggests the women were commodities and that their value came from how close they approximated British standards of beauty.  Clearly the lighter skinned a woman was, the more beautiful the English considered her.  Buying into this without comment is not acceptable,  to me at least.  In 18th Century society it was second and third sons who went to India in search of fortunes.  

India in the 18th Century is an incredibly deep and wide area of study.  This book gets my endorsement for all into the history of Colonial India.

TGIS is a revised post from April 11, 2018

Mel u

The Witch - A Short Story by Tarasankar Bandopadhyay - first published 1940 - translated from Bengali by Aruna Chakravarti - 2020-published in The Borderless Journal

The Witch - A Short Story by Tarasankar Bandopadhyay - first published 1940 - translated from Bengali  by Aruna Chakravarti - 2020-published in The Borderless Journal

You may read today’s story here

I was initially made aware of this very valuable edition to translations of pre-idependence Sub-Continent Short Stories by  Mitali Chakravarty,  in a Facebook Post

The Witch tells a harrowing story of how a young woman of the Dom caste went from being just a girl wanting to marry the boy she loved to becoming an old crone living alone in a very harsh landscape with deadly supernatural powers.  During the British Raj period Doms were legally classified as not just Untouchables but as members of a criminal caste.  Doms were even after Independence required to register with the police for special monitoring.  Of course Doms could not marry outside their castes.  

Bandopadhyay starts the story with a powerful description of the region.  

“No one knows who gave the tract of land its name. Or when it was given. Those facts have been lost and buried in the annals of history. But the name has survived to this day as a vibrant reminder of its past glory. Chhati Phataar Maath — the field of the bursting chest.

There is no water here. Nor a speck of shade. No trees. Only a few thorny bushes of seyakul and khairi. The land stretches to the horizon in a shimmering sheet at the end of which the clumps of trees that signify the existence of villages appear as a dark blur. Looking on it the heart grows heavy; the mind listless. Travellers walking from one end to another are apt to lose their lives, their chests bursting from thirst, by the side of some ancient water body dead and dry for centuries.

The number of deaths increase in the summer months. In this season it seems as though Chhati Phataar Maath springs into a new unholy life. Its tongue slavers for the taste of blood and it exercises all its powers to attain the dimensions of a mighty pestilence. Dust, dense as smoke, rises in swirls from the ground, higher and higher, till it meets the sky. Burning heat and the stench of death hit the unwary traveller’s senses. But he sees nothing for the thick pall hanging in the air renders Chhaati Phaatar Maath invisible to the human eye.”

Then we are introduced to the witch:

“To its east is a marshy tract which the locals call Daldalir Jalaa. Daldalir Jalaa had been a shallow bog of slime and rotting vegetation, the size of a lake, till the Sahas of Ramnagar bought theland, drained it and planted mango saplings.  In time these grew into fine trees. But alas! Forty years ago, an old witch with fearful powers of destruction took possession of the orchard and made her home there.

People are still afraid of going near her for her ruthlessness is well known. Children see her at a distance and run for safety. Yet everyone can describe her. Her matted hair, crooked limbs and, best of all, her eyes. Those eyes, they say, have not blinked in forty years.

Beneath one of the mango trees is an earthen hovel. It has only one room with a dawa, a veranda thatched with straw, jutting out of it. The witch sits here all day long her body still as a statue. Her unwavering gaze is fixed on Chhati Phataar Maath.”

I am quoting at length to show the highly cinematic skill of the author.

As the story line unravels we learn of her past.  We see how the caste strictures she was born with have filled her with hatred.  There are several very interesting episodes and plot lines.

The Witch took me into a very dark place.  The powerless, outcasts have often turned from main stream beliefs to the occult.  In some ways millions of Indians were powerless legally little more than human garbage.

The rule by the British Raj enforced this.  They used the caste structure to keep people down.

The Witch is a great short story.  It took me into a world far from my own.  It is exciting and more than a bit scary.

Tarasankar Bandopadhyay (1898-1971) was a renowned writer from Bengal. He penned 65 novels, 53 books of stories, 12 plays, 4 essay collections, 4 autobiographies, 2 travelogues and composed several songs. He was awarded the Rabindra Puraskar(1955), the Sahitya Akademi Award(1956), the Padma Shri(1962), the Jnanapith Award(1966) and the Padma Bhushan(1969) in India.

Anna Chakravarti (India) has been the principal of a prestigious women’s college of Delhi University for ten years. She is also a well-known academic, creative writer and translator with fourteen published books on record. Her novels, The Inheritors, Jorasanko, Daughters of Jorasanko, have sold widely and received rave reviews. Suralakshmi Villa is her fifteenth book. She has also received awards such as the Vaitalik Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Sarat Puraskar for her translations.

From The story link.  

I offer my thanks to  Mitali Chakravarty  for Publishing  this story

She is the founding editor of the Borderless Journal.

Mitali Chakravarty has been writing from the age of eight. She started her professional career as a journalist in The Times of India.  Her bylines have appeared in The Statesman, The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, The Pioneer, The Daily Star and more journals. Her poetry and prose have been published online and as part of numerous hardcopy anthologies. Some of her poetry has been translated to Nepali and German. Mitali also translates from Bengali and Hindi to English. She has published a humorous book of essays on living in China where she spent eight years, In the Land of Dragons . From borderlessjournal.COM 

I took a long look at The Borderless Journal.   It already has lots of Short stories i hope to read and much more in just a few months of publication .

Here is their  Mission Statement

“Borders were drawn through history dividing mankind into smaller more manageable divisions that could be ruled and led. Borderless is a celebration of the human spirit that soars exploring and developing links beyond all the borders that exist in today’s world. 

It is a literary journal to connect all writers and readers beyond the bonds of money, nationality, rituals and cultures… to a world of ideals. We look for any positive input — humour, poetry, prose. There are no boundaries to human imagination and thought and that is what we are set to explore”

Mel u

 

Abhagi’s Heaven - A Short Story by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay translated by Sahitya Akademi - first published Bengali in 1926 - translated in 2020 and published on Borderless

 

Abhagi’s Heaven - A Short Story by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay translated by Aruna Chakravarti  first published in Bengali in 1926 - translated in 2020 and published on Borderless

https://borderlessjournal.com/2020/10/14/abhagis-heaven/. Link to The story.

Saratchandra Chattopadhyay

Born September 15, 1876 - Debanandapur, Bandal, India

January 16, 1938 - Kolkata, India 

I was initially made aware of this very valuable edition to pre-idependence Short Stories by  Mitali Chakravarty,  in a Facebook Post.

As story opens a funeral procession for the wife of a very rich Brahmin is proceeding with her body toward her funeral pyre.  Chattopadhyay opening description made me feel I was back in Kolkata in 1926, part of the crowd marveling at the sumptous procession.  I share a bit to give you  an oppurtunity to time travel.

“Old Mukhopadhyay moshai*, grown extremely wealthy from a flourishing business in rice and paddy, had four sons and three daughters — all with children of their own. Sons-in-law, grandchildren, neighbours and servants filled the rooms in a measure that befitted not a house of death but of jubilation. Men, women and children from the entire village crowded at the gates in the hope of catching a glimpse of the splendid funeral procession which would accompany the dead woman to her final resting place. Her weeping daughters lined her parting with sindoor and covered her feet with alta*. Her daughters-in-law dressed her in a resplendent new sari and adorned her brow with sandal paste.  Then, wiping the last traces of dust from her feet with their sari ends, touched them reverently to their foreheads. Flowers, garlands and basil leaves, clouds of fragrant incense smoke and the resounding clamour and bustle turned the day of mourning into a joyous replica of the one, fifty years ago, when the mistress of the great house had first set out on her ceremonial journey to her husband’s home.”

Kangali, a woman from the Duley Caste, an untouchable, is enraptured by the procession. Per my Research   the Duley Caste, part of the Badgi or Bagris group of castes, were traditionally tenders of cattle or fishermen, now numbering about 200,000 members. Kengali wishes she could join in and throw a burning twig on pyre but she knows she cannot. She has deeply internalized the consequences of being an untouchable, seeing herself as a being of no worth, deserving of nothing.  There is deep sadness in this:

“She had been on her way to the weekly haat* with a few aubergines she had picked from the bushes outside her hut when the marvellous spectacle caught her eyes, leaving her spellbound. She forgot the aubergines bundled in a corner of her sari. Forgotten, too, were her hopes of selling them and coming home with a few coins. Brushing away the tears from her streaming eyes she followed the crowd to the cremation ghat that stood on a bank of the Garud river. Standing on a mound, a little way off, she looked on with eager eyes at the huge wooden logs, stacks of sandal wood, ghee, honey, camphor and incense that lay beside the bier. She dared not go any closer. She was an untouchable, a Duley by caste, and even her shadow was shunned by the others.”

Her son sees Kangali is distracted and chides her to get back to work.

I shall leave the close of this story for you to discover.  I read it three times.

I hope i can read more of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s stories.

Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay or Sarat Chandra Chatterjee (15 September 1876 – 16 January 1938), was a Bengali novelist and short story writer of the early 20th century. Most of his works deal with the contemporary social practices that prevailed in Bengal. He often addressed social ills with his writing and in that sense was a reformer in his heart.

Aruna Chakravarti (India) has been the principal of a prestigious women’s college of Delhi University for ten years. She is also a well-known academic, creative writer and translator with fourteen published books on record. Her novels, The Inheritors, Jorasanko, Daughters of Jorasanko, have sold widely and received rave reviews. Suralakshmi Villa is her fifteenth book. She has also received awards such as the Vaitalik Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Sarat Puraskar for her translations.

From The story link.  

I offer my thanks to  Mitali Chakravarty  for Publishing  this story

She is the founding editor of the Borderless Journal.

Mitali Chakravarty has been writing from the age of eight. She started her professional career as a journalist in The Times of India.  Her bylines have appeared in The Statesman, The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, The Pioneer, The Daily Star and more journals. Her poetry and prose have been published online and as part of numerous hardcopy anthologies. Some of her poetry has been translated to Nepali and German. Mitali also translates from Bengali and Hindi to English. She has published a humorous book of essays on living in China where she spent eight years, In the Land of Dragons . From borderlessjournal.COM 

I took a long look at The Borderless Journal.   It already has lots of Short stories i hope to read and much more in just a few months of publication .

Here is their  Mission Statement

“Borders were drawn through history dividing mankind into smaller more manageable divisions that could be ruled and led. Borderless is a celebration of the human spirit that soars exploring and developing links beyond all the borders that exist in today’s world. 

It is a literary journal to connect all writers and readers beyond the bonds of money, nationality, rituals and cultures… to a world of ideals. We look for any positive input — humour, poetry, prose. There are no boundaries to human imagination and thought and that is what we are set to explore”

Of doctors and doctors - A short Story by Neera Kashyap - 2020

 

Of doctors and doctors - A short Story by Neera Kashyap 

Published 2020 in Setu - a Bilingual monthly journal published from Pittsburgh, USA :: पिट्सबर्गअमेरिका से प्रकाशित द्वैभाषिक  

You may read today’s story here 

This is the third short story by the multi-talented Neera Kashrap I have had the very real pleasure of experiencing.

Today we feature a story dealing with a vital social issue concerning health care in Rural India.

In May of this year I made my very fortunate first venture into the work of Neera Kashyap.

I loved her “Leave, Gentle Spirit”, a fascinating story narrated by an American ethnographer living in a small village in the Himalayas. Her mission there is to develop an in-depth understanding of the culture, folkways, religious beliefs and customs of women in the village, she learned to speak Hindi, widely spoken in the area.  As much as possible she lives like the women she is researching..

“Leave, Gentle Spirit" is a wonderful work, deeply informed and wise.  It deals with cultural divisions and gives us a look at life within the Himilayan region.

Next I read her “The Silent Tree” in which we are shown how the death of a husband and father impacts those who survive.

I really liked “Of doctors and doctors” for its vivid cinematic presentation of the work day of Doctor Kamala in his clinic somewhere in rural India.  Doctor Kamath was educated at a very fine medical school but gave up his big city practice to help the poorer people in rural India.  He is appalled to discover how local doctors snd hospitals take advantage of people to way over charge them for dubious treatments. 

Kashnap made me feel like I was in the examination room. The whole family often sit in on the examination.  

I want to share enough of the exquisite prose of Kashnap to let you  see why I am so taken by her work.

“I cannot prescribe medicines till I have the test results", said Kamath ringing the buzzer for Swarup who sailed in with another patient complete with family, the one huddled next to the window lunging towards his desk. For a moment, Kamath looked at them unseeingly. His own medical fraternity, he thought. He had seen patient prescriptions where steroid injections were administered first, ending in no conclusive diagnosis, but in a list of medicines. A poor farmer with uncomplicated hypertension was being sent to a city cardiologist for regular ECGs. A private hospital nearby used ultrasound as a money-spinner, charging desperately poor people Rs 1000 for each unneeded scan.

The patient before him was a girl in her teens. She lay immobile in her father’s arms, eyes shut. The mother hung to her husband’s side, eyes wide with alarm. She held up the girl’s salwar to reveal two brown punctures on her lower leg, red swellings all around. Kamath had seen non-venomous snake bites which had mainly involved keeping the patient calm as he administered first aid. He took a closer look.

There was a discharge from one of the holes. He felt a swelling in the lymph nodes behind the girl’s knees. His sharp volley of questions revealed that she had stepped on a snake in the paddy field and got bitten; it was a snake – she had seen it, the mother urged. This happened 18 hours ago. When her swelling and dizziness increased, they took her to their local doctor.

“What doctor?” asked Kamath.

“Family doctor. In the village. He gave two injections and some tablets.” The mother emptied a small brown envelope, large multi-colored pills rolling out onto her palm.

Kamath felt the venom rise in his throat. He lowered the girl’s legs and turned her to her left. He snapped at Swarup to bring him soap solution and bandages, washed the wound and covered it loosely with sterile gauze. He gave the girl a tetanus shot in the arm; she did not flinch”

I look forward to following the work of Neera Kashrap for a long time.

The inadequacy of rural health care in India is now a significant social issue.

Neera Kashyap has worked on health, social and environmental communications. As an author, she has published a book of stories for young adults titled, ‘Daring to dream’ (Rupa & Co.,2003) and contributed to five prize-winning anthologies published by Children’s Book Trust. As a literary writer of short fiction, poetry, essays, story/book reviews and creative non-fiction, her work has appeared in two poetry anthologies published in the U.K. (Clarendon Publishing House and The Poet) and in several South Asian journals

Mel u

River of Fire by Qurratulain Hyder - 1998 - Translated from Urdu by the author.

The Masterwork of Modern Urdu Fiction.


Urdu is a living language which, according to estimates, is spoken by close to 100 million people around the world. It is the official language of Pakistan, a status which it shares with English. It is also spoken and understood in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Middle East, and many other countries around the world where Pakistani communities have settled.


Qurratulain Hyder’s River of Fire is considered by all the greatest work of the modern Urdu novel. 

Chronicling twenty five hundred years of life in India we are presented with a profound and sweeping collage of princes, paupers,philosophers and many points in between. Prior to completing this I read and loved two of her translated from Urdu short stories. Both short stories are historic fictions.

I am very glad I took the time to read River of Fire.  

My mind is not totally focused right now so I will share with you the quote from TLS on Amazon

“Qurratulain Hyder’s River of Fire encompasses the fates of four recurring characters over two and a half millennia. These characters become crisscrossed and strangely inseparable over different eras, forming and reforming their relationships in romance and war, in possession and dispossession. River of Fire interweaves parables, legends, dreams, diaries, and letters, forming a rich tapestry of history and human emotions and redefining Indian identity. But above all, it’s a unique pleasure to read Hyder’s singular prose style: “Lyrical and witty, occasionally idiosyncratic, it is always alluring and allusive: Flora Annie Steel and E. M. Forster encounter classical Urdu poets; Eliot and Virginia Woolf meet Faiz Ahmed Faiz” (The Times Literary Supplement).

I endorse this book for those wish to expand their knowledge of Indian literature

The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple -2019 - 520 pages

The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple -2019 - 520 pages


An autodidactic corner selection 


December 31, 1600.  The British East India company is granted a Royal Charter to engage in trade on the Indian Subcontinent.  The initial investors were wealthy London business persons with experience in international trade.  All would profit beyond their dreams.

The company at it apex controlled much of the Subcontinent,either directly or through puppet rulers and generated half the world’s international trade.  Among the  chief items of trade exported from India were cotton, silk, salt, spices, tea and opium.

Through the company, The British Empire in India developed.  

Dalrymple provides us details on The Dutch and Portugese trading companies founded before The British East India Company.

In The 18th century the company, now having a standing army of 260,000, twice the size of the British Army, takes political control of much of The Subcontinent. Dalrypmple goes into a lot of background about wars between the Mughal Empire, Princely States and the army of the BEC.  Both sides were cruel, killing women and children and prisoners of war.  Eventually superior battle tactics, weapons, organization and the ability to play different India political entities against each other allowed the BEC to prevail.  Dalrymple talks a lot about Indian princes, potentates, generals, and such.  I enjoyed learning one ruler of a large princely state collected Persian cats.

As the BEC became incredibly profitable it began to purchase the support of English politicians.

Dalrypmple explains that the BEC basically ruled India from 1757 to 1857, in 1858 the Crown took over rulership.creating the British Raj.

Dalrypmple’s book is must reading for anyone into Indian or British history.  Any reader of 19th century British literature will recall all the family fortunes made in India, the younger brothers hoping to come home rich and marry the girl they love, hoping her parents will accept him now that he is wealthy.  

The book is just so full of fascintating knowledge. We see that 
 Dalrymple is so right in telling us that The BEC conquest of India is greatest act of corporate violence in history. Not since Cortes was such richs brought back to Europe.  Dalrymple details the English figures who ran The BEC.  I was fascinated to learn Indian bankers coluded with The BEC to put puppet rulers in place to protect their income.  For sure i wish now to know more about The Seth Bankers.

I was very surprised to learn that large battalions composed of highly trained African slaves were part of BEC’s army.  I really want to know more about The Slave trade in India.  Dalrymple just kind of tantalizes us with this.  Dalrymple says Africa to India slave trade began when The Sierra Leone company was formed in 1592. (The Wikipedia article on The company tells a totally different story about the origins of this company.  I think we need more details to accept this as a fact.)

The is a fascinating work.  It is mostly a political  history of India in the period.  We learn next to nothing about the lives of ordinary Indians but a huge amount about their rulers.

For bio data and a list of The author’s other books, i refer you to

http://www.williamdalrymple.uk.com/

This is a wonderfully  written book.  

“Of Fists and Rubs" - A Short Story by Ismat Chughtai - Translation of "Mutthi Maalish," from Urdu (Lahore: Naya Idara, 1967). Translation copyright 2010 by Muhammad Umar Memon.

Today's Story

The Reading Life Guide to Getting Started in the Indian Short Story

My posts on Ismat Chughtai 

“Of Fists and Rubs" - A Short Story by Ismat Chughtai - 

Translation of  "Mutthi Maalish," from Urdu  (Lahore: Naya Idara, 1967). Translation copyright 2010 by Muhammad Umar Memon. 

Ismat Chughtai 

August 15, 1915 - Buduan, India

October 24, 1991 - Mumbai, India

It has been sevrn years since I posted on a story by Ismat Chughtai, time is getting away ftom me.  One of my priorities this month, as part of my limited participation in womenintranslationmonth# is to share with my readers translations of a few stories originally written in Urdu.  Ismat Chughtai is considered a pioneer writer on issues concerning the lives of Urdu women. 

(Urdu is spoken by close to 100 million people around the world. It is the official language of Pakistan, a status which it shares with English. It is also spoken and understood in parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Middle East, and many other countries around the world where Pakistani communities have settled. - 

from the BBC)

“Of Fists and Rubs” contains very disturbing descriptions of abortions preformed on women from the poorest elements of Indian Society, women with no access to any form of medical care.  I say this first as it is graphic enough to be disturbing.  

As the story opens a woman is waiting in a long line to cast her vote:

"Bai, O Bai! How are you?” The woman wrapped in a dirty-looking kashta bared her filthy, yellow teeth and grabbed my hand.

“Oh, it’s you, Ganga Bai . . .”

“No, Ratti Bai. Ganga Bai was the other one. She died, poor woman.”

“What a pity! Poor woman . . .” And my mind zoomed back five years. “Rubs or fists?” I asked.

"Rubs,” Ratti Bai winked. “I kept telling her not to, but why would she listen, the blasted woman. Who are you voting for, Bai?”

Of course I wondered what rubs or fists might refer to, evidently a common expression.

The woman, of a higher caste than Ratti, first encountered her and Ganga Bai, when she was in the hospital giving birth.  Both worked there, doing the lowest of jobs beneath that of nurses.  The two women seem to hate each other. Each calls the other a slut and a whore.  Each wait on the woman and lose no change to tear each other down.  The woman finds out both want to go home to their villages.  Both are married to abusive men, normal for them.  Both work on the side as near prostitutes.  One of the occupational hazards is pregnancy.

Now we learn the meaning of "rubs or fists".  They refer to alternative methods of back street abortions.

"Rubs” work perfectly during early pregnancy—like a doctor, absolutely first-class. The Bai makes the woman lie down flat on the floor, then holding herself with a rope suspended from the ceiling or to a club, she stands on the woman’s stomach and works it with her feet real well, until the “operation” is performed. Or she makes the woman stand against the wall and after combing her own hair she ties it tightly into a topknot. Then, after dousing it with a fistful of mustard oil, she bangs it against the woman’s legs like a ram. Certain young women used to hard labor don’t respond to this. Then it’s time for “fists.” After dipping her unscrubbed hands with their grimy nails in oil, she just pulls the throbbing life from the womb.

Most of the time the operation goes off without a hitch on the very first assault. If the performing Bai happens to be a novice, sometimes one of the hands is broken off, or the neck comes out dangling, or even a part of the woman’s own body that needed to stay inside spills out.

Not too many die from the “rubs,” but the woman generally falls prey to all kinds of disease. Different parts of her body swell up. Permanent wounds@ form and never heal, and if her time’s up, she dies. “Fists” are used sparingly, only when everything else fails. Those who survive aren’t able to walk. Some drag on for a few years and then croak."

We learn a lot about the lives of the two women, both in the hospital at work and back home in the village.  Debt bondage has caused many small farmers to no longer be able to support their families.  Their wives go to the big city where caste discrimination, sexual abuse and often an early death await them.

This is a very powerful story.

“Ismat Chughtai (Urdu: عصمتچغتائی) (August 1915 – 24 October 1991) was an eminent Urdu writer, known for her indomitable spirit and a fierce feminist ideology. She is considered  the grand dame of Urdu fiction, Along with Rashid Jahan, Wajeda Tabassum and Qurratulain Hyder, Ismat’s work stands for the birth of a revolutionary feminist politics and aesthetics in twentieth century Urdu literature. She explored feminine sexuality, middle-class gentility, and other evolving conflicts in the modern Muslim world. Her outspoken and controversial style of writing made her the passionate voice for the unheard, and she has become an inspiration for the younger generation of writers, readers and intellectuals.”  From Goodreads

Mel u

Late Victoria Holocausts by Mike Davis - 2002

Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis (2002, 470 pages)

Posted in Observation of Indian Independence Day, August 15

If you have any illusions that British rule in India had any positive side,Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis will totally relief you of that opinion.  I recently read a very good history of the Irish famines in which the author said in terms of sheer numbers it was not as bad as the famines in Russia and China in the 20th century but never mentioned  that there was a far worst famine in India famines  in the  1870s in which 60 million people died   I think what shocked me so much in this book was that it exposed the depth to which my view of history has been shaped by historians who see the process of "westerning" the world as progress.

 If I were to divide my five decades plus of near compulsive reading, one decade at least would have been devoted reading history but I was completely stunned by the revelations in this book.    Most people have no knowledge of these famines and those few who do, as Davis shows us, attribute them to bad weather.   Davis explains that very few of the great famines of modern  history were caused by a lack of food. It is caused by the poor not having the means to buy the available food.   (There was plenty of food to feed the Irish but social planners  thought giving out free food would encourage idleness. ).   Indian troops with English officers stood guard in front of huge granneries while millions starved.   Indian land was planted in cotton to be either shipped to the UK or sold in India.   This was part of the cause of the famines.  I know now Gandhi knew this.  Davis explains how El Nino weather patterns worked to limit the rainfall in India, China and Brazil.   He also talks of large scale famine deaths in the Philippines in the 1870s under Spanish rule (I live in the Philippines and have read many books on it history and this not in any of the standard histories..  The old ones were all written by Spanish clerics.)

Davis begins his book with a horrifying description of the famines.  I do not want to get into a "whose famine was worse" contest but my first impression was that that in India was worse than Ireland in terms of human suffering and in terms of the moronic and immoral way the country was administered by the British.   At the height of the famine Lord Lytton, ruler of Indian, and his staff were only concerned with not turning Indians into idlers by giving them free food.   When he did give free food to those in work houses, he gave less than was given in German concentration camps.   The rulers of Indian puppet states were all lackeys of the English and were often worse then them in terms of their indifference to human suffering.

Davis explains how much of the suffering was caused by the transition of India, China and Brazil from small subsistence farmer economies to capitalistic societies.   The famines had large scale social consequences.  The spawned the Boxer rebellion in China and created many religious cults.  Before around 1776 the average Indian peasant lived better than an English or European slum dweller or tenant farmer .   This began to shift as England took more and more of the resources of India.  

Davis expands history to explain how these famines brought in the poverty of the third world and contributed to their stagnation and decline.   Davis in one the most shocking parts of the book explains that from 1759 to 1947 when India was freed the per capita income stayed the same.   Before colonial masters took over, Indian and China had a good record in dealing with famines, better than Europe.   Under British rule in India there was a famine every four year, but in the previous two thousand years there was only one famine a century.

Davis shows how Indian was made to pay for the cost of the British army and when their planners tried to impose European systems of agricultural management the results were disastrous.

Davis backs up everything he says.    I was amazed by how much I did not know but even more amazed by how much of what I though I knew was wrong.    Davis also gave me lots of good reading ideas about Indian history.   He also talks extensively about famines in Africa and Brazil.

This a very serious book which destroys the myths prevalent in western societies about the causes of poverty in the third world.   I am quite sure that many western politicians including recent American presidents and presidential candidates subscribe to the idea that people in the third world are "poorer" than westerners because they are somehow lazy, decadent and in many cases non-Christian.   Davis also explains the terrible way China treated its people during the great leap forward period so he is not just a "left historian".

If you want to understand much of what is going on  the world today, this book is a good place to start.

My great thanks goes out to Max u for providing me with a gift card that allowed me to read this book.

Mike Davis
Named a Macarthur Fellow in 1998, he was also honored for distinguished achievement in nonfiction writing this past fall by the Lannan Literary Foundation. Professor Davis is the author of more than 20 books and more than 100 book chapters and essays in the scholarly and elite popular press. His scholarly interest span urban studies, the built environment, economic history and social movements. Perhaps his best know book, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles was named a best book in urban politics by the American Political Science Association and won the Isaac Deutscher Award from the London School of Economics and has been translated into eight languages

Mel u

Laajwanti by Rajinder Singh Bedi (1956) - translated from Urdu by Muhammad Umar Memon

A post in observation of Indian Independence Day

Rajinder Singh Bedi.

September 1, 1915 Sialkot, Punjab, British India

October 12, 1984 Mumbai, India

He had a prolific and successful career as a script writer in movies and was widely admired for his novels and short stories

From Words Without Borders

"Rajinder Singh Bedi was born in Sialkot in 1915. He first worked as a clerk in the postal department; later he joined the Lahore office of All India Radio and wrote many successful plays, having meanwhile established himself as a highly nuanced fiction writer with the publication of Daana-o-Daam, his first collection of short stories. On Partition he moved to India. After working for a short period as Station Director for Radio Kashmir, he joined the Mumbai film industry producing and writing scripts for a number of successful films. His Urdu novel Ek Chaadar Maili Si, translated into English as I Take This Woman, received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1965. Bedi, who died in 1984, is regarded as the second most prominent Urdu fiction writer after Sa’adat Hasan Manto."

Midnight August 15, 1947 bells rang all over the Indian Subcontinent celebrating the end of 190 years of British Rule.  In order to try to accommodate the Muslim and Hindi citizens, the largest groups, the country was partitioned into West and East Pakistan, meant to be Muslim, and India.  This final act by the English, in a long vicious history of exploration, lead to an estimated two million deaths and fourteen million refugees.  No accommodations were made for other segments such as the Sikhs.   Hundreds of thousands of women were raped by men of the other religion.  In the culture of the time, a raped woman should kill herself.  In any case, few married men would continue with them.  In part this should be seen as an excuse by young men to let out their hatred.  Eventually decent people on both sides began to try to convince everyone that raped and kidnapped women should be accepted back by their families.  The partition lead to one of the largest mass migrations in history.  (The Bangaldesh War of 1971, extimates of deaths are as high as two million can be clearly traced back to the Partition.) Women who lived close to the borders were very much in danger of rape and kidnapping.  Our story today deals how a married couple deal with this.

(From Stanford University, a good brief introduction to the Partition

https://exhibits.stanford.edu/1947-partition/about/1947-partition-of-india-pakistan)

Muhammad Umar Memon, recognized as a leading authority on Urdu literature, in his invaluable introduction to The Greatest Urdu Short Stories, tells us that Lajwanti by Rajinder Singh Bedi (1956) is one of the best literary accounts of the Partition.   (He acknowledges that Saadat Hasan Manto must be given priority in this area.  I have previously posted upon his work.)

As the story opens a committee has been formed designed to get people to accept back in the community women who had been raped or kidnapped by Muslims.  Conventional morality requires suicide to preserve honor.  

"There was one programme, though, which seemed to have escaped notice. It concerned the rehabilitation of abducted women. Its rallying cry was ‘Rehabilitate them in your hearts!’ It was bitterly opposed by Narain Bawa’s temple and the conservatives who lived in and around it."

We learn that Laajwanti was a kidnapped wife.

"Early in the morning when Babu Sundar Lal and his companions Rasaloo and Neki Ram used to make their rounds through the streets singing in unison, Touch the leaves of the laajwanti,/ they curl and wither away! Sundar Lal’s voice would fade. Walking along in silence he would think about Laajwanti—who knows where she might be? In what condition? What would she be thinking of him?  Would she ever come back?—and his feet would falter on the cobblestone pavement."

During their marriage he was abusive to her.  A true man was expected to beat his wife on occasion.  No beatings was seen as a lack of love for his wife and a lack of masculinity.  Her husband says if she ever returns he will open his heart to her.  An exchange of women between border areas begins.  At first the Hindus complain only old ugly women are being returned, some are refused.

A friend tells her husband that he has seen Laajawanti on a truck of returned women.  When they are united her husband begins at first to wonder why she seems healthy and happy.  

Conservative clerics cited passages from the Ramayana which support the idea that returned women should be rejected by their husbands, sons and even fathers.

When they are united her husband acts strange to her.  He no longer beats her. He sees her as a holy woman, she thinks he no longer loves her.

Just a simple story about two ordinary people whose lives were ruined by the Partition.

You can watch a video of the story, in English with Hindi subtitles, at the link below

https://youtu.be/FGGeTATTyUg

Oleander Bousweau