agog

The Lizard Cage, Karen Connelly,2005

This Canadian’s first novel is drawn from her experience living for two years on the Thailand Burma border. The cage is a fictional Burmese prison where the songbird, a songwriter singer, has been kept in solitary confinement in the teak box for seven years. His father died in prison while a political prisoner and his brother is a freedom fighter near the border. His mother sends him food and supplies, most of which are stolen by the guards. The songbird is reduced to catching and eating the small lizards that live in his cell, hence the name of the novel.

The novel is populated by a psychopathic, stupid guard who endangers everyone with his violence; by a humane guard who helps the songbird when he can and comes to know the songbird’s mother; and by a twelve year old orphan who has lived in the prison since his father, and employee at the prison, was killed by a truck when the boy was seven. Also figuring are other prison characters, the tiger, boss of the criminals, the fat corrupt cook, the huge silent Indian, and various other guards and inmates, and of course Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s symbol of democratic freedom.

The novel could be compared to the works of Alexander Solzenitzen on life in the Soviet Gulag; dark, soulless godless, places. Connelly’s songbird sees his imprisonment as an opportunity to meditate, fast, and seek enlightenment or Nirvana. The influences of Buddhism are everywhere in this novel as they are in Burmese life in spite of the repressive military dictatorship. The prison has an ancient tree that the inmates have turned into a Buddhist shrine.

The novel centers on a simple pen, originally intended to entrap the songbird and thus extend his prison sentence but instead becomes the mechanism changing the life of the orphan and allowing a poetic account of the cage to be smuggled to the world at large. The novel is well written and captivating.

A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth, 1993

Born in Calcutta, Bengali Seth was educated at Oxford and Stanford, even attended school in Nanjing.

This massive 1500 page novel, one of the longest ever published, is centered on four very different families in the early 50s just after Independence.

The mother of 19 year old Lata is determined to find a suitable boy to marry Lata, just as Lata is determined to make up her own mind in the matter. She is to choose among three suitors; Kabir, Haresh and Amit.

Amit is a British educated, published Bengali poet, belonging to a wealthy Anglicized Calcutta family headed by an influential judge. Brother Dipankar is drawn to the mystic, and beautiful and amoral sisters Meenakshi and Kakoli, continually exchange verse couplets in a match of wits. Meenakshi is married to Lata’s brother.

The Kapoor’s charming son Maan, falls hopelessly in love with a Muslim singer and courtesan.

Haresh is a somewhat crude but good hearted and ambitious shoe manufacturing executive determined to break into the Czech dominated Bata quality shoe company near Calcutta.

The novel covers the period’s inter-sectarian animosity, the status of lower caste peoples such as the jatav, land reform and the eclipse of the feudal princes and landlords, politics, and academic affairs.

An Equal Music, Vikram Seth, 1999

This novel has nothing to do with India or Indians. It is a tale of the inner life of an English string quartet, Maggiore. The leader of the quartet, Michael, a poor working class boy, plays a valuable violin on permanent loan to the quartet. We see the jealousies and frictions among the members of the quartet forced to travel and spent most of their time together. We see the inner workings of booking agents and arranging tours for a successful but far from famous group.

The central plot starts when Michael discovers a version of Beethoven’s String Trio in C Minor, op. 1, no. 3 arranged for a string quintet in a dusty music store in London. The piece has not been performed in recent history or recorded by a modern string group. He wants the group to perform the challenging work in Vienna and to record it, but he must play second violin to make it work. He wants to play first violin. The Beethoven piece turns out to be a part of Michael’s romantic history from when he was studying in Vienna ten years ago. The group breaks up after the recording.

The novel really succeeds in taking you into the inner workings of a string quartet and the world of concert performances. Of the experience of writing this novel Seth has said “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

Lost in Translation, Nicole Mones, 1998

Peking Man

This book is not to be confused with Sofia Coppola’s 2003 movie of the same name set in Tokyo. This novel, winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, focuses on the mystery of Peking Man, the homo erectus remains found in Beijing in the 1920’s. Jesuit theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was involved in the discovery, but was ordered by the church not to publish on the subject of evolution during his lifetime. Peking Man was lost during the Japanese occupation. The remains have never been found but the Chinese government formed a committee in 2005 to look for them officially.

In the novel an American archeologist has uncovered new information about the whereabouts of the remains he thinks were hidden by Teilhard de Chardin himself. He comes to China, hires an American woman living in Beijing, fluent in Chinese, as his interpreter and starts his search. The Chinese government assign two Chinese professors to accompany the Americans. Spies are everywhere. Their search takes them to the remote desserts of Northwest China. The interpreter becomes interested in the 23 year relationship between American Lucile Swan and Teilhard de Chardin whose voluninous letters to each other have just been published. Will they find the remains?

A Cup of Light, Nicole Mones, 2003

Southern Sung Celadon Cup

In this novel an American porcelain expert who speaks, reads, and writes, Chinese comes to Beijing to evaluate a newly uncovered collection of porcelain that may have belongs to the Imperial court. She is shocked to find 800 pieces of authentic looking porcelain worth maybe $150 million. Her expert colleague gets appendicitis and is left behind in Japan to recover so she must work alone.

She wears a visible hearing aid which she turns off when she wants to concentrate. Her special skill is a phenomenonally developed memory using imperial examination cubicles as a mnemonic device. She find several near perfect fakes but believes the collection to be largely authentic. One of the fakes is a Chenghua chicken cup. An original just sold at auction for $3.75 million.

Chenghua Chicken Cup

The big question for her is where did this large, previously unknown collection come from? There are sophisticated artwork smugglers (the penalty for getting caught is immediate execution), modern moguls, art dealers, and very talented modern day pot makers.

The heroin travels to Jingdezhen, center of porcelain production to the imperial court for a thousand years. During Mao’s time, huge factories turned out mass produced China to be exported to the world. Now Jingdezhen is reverting to its old cottage industry with small scale artisans producing high quality work. She has come looking for the notorious Master of the Ruffled Feather producer of some the finest fakes to reach museums in the West. The name comes from slight flourish in a painted feather which is the humerous signature of this forger. She is directed to an old master only to discover the notorious forger is his grandaughter, maybe 15. Her work has fooled experts around the world.

A Chinese Oregan software Billionaire and his wife are considering buying the entire collection. Is it authentic? If so, where has it been since leaving the forbidden city? Can it be smuggled out of China to Hong Kong? Of course, there is romance along the way.

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry, 1995

This novel by Bombay born Parsi Mistry won the Giller Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Winfried Holtby Prize, and the 1996 Los Angeles Times Award for fiction. Set in India during 1975-76 the time of Indira Gandhi’s massive corruption after she defied a court order to resign as prime minister by declaring a state of emergency. The daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi led India into its worst period threatening the very roots of democracy.

In this novel two untouchables of a sub caste condemned to leather tanning learn tailoring to escape their fate. When the local village tailor is forced out of business by mass-produced clothing, the tailors an uncle and nephew travel to Bombay to seek employment. They are hired by a Parsi widow determined to maintain an independent life by subcontracting to a woman selling designer women’s dresses for export.

The tailors rent sewing machines and move into a shantytown. Thugs recruiting slave workers for a pit mine abduct them. They escape. Greedy developers working with corrupt politicians destroy their shantytown. They help a beggar who turns out to be the king of beggars and he offers to protect, in return for money, the Parsi widow from her greedy landlord, who is trying to evict her. The nephew saves for a bride but when he returns to his village to arrange a marriage, he is abducted and forcibly sterilized under a population limit program gone horribly out of control with financial incentives, bribery, and quotas.

Rohinton Mistry

Overall a very sad book, perhaps the best novel depicting life for the powerless during this dark period of recent Indian history. Mistry, a marvelous storyteller, now lives in Canada. When he flies, he says he is always targeted for interrogation by security.

Three Books on Tzu Hsi, Empress of China 1861-1908

Empress Orchid, Anchee Min, 2004

All Photos for covers and author by Lei Q. Min

A fictional account based on extensive research of the early life of Orchid, known as Lady Yehonala or Tzu Hsi, the last Empress of China who ruled China for a 46 years beginning in 1861 when she is 26 years old.
In the novel, Tzu Hsi is chosen as a forth rank concubine to the Emporor when she comes to Beijing at age 16. Her life in the Forbidden City is miserable and she is ignored by the Emporer. She allies herself with an intelligent young Machivellian eunich, An-te-hai, and together they bribe and plot her way to the attention of the emporor. She gives birth to the Emporer’s only son, escapes assassination and other eunich conspiracies and emerges with her eunich ally as the powerful Dowager we have come to remember. Along the way she allies herself with her brother-in-law Prince Kung and falls in love with general Yung Lu, a love she must hide at all costs.

The Last Empress, Anchee Min, 2006

This novel picks up the story of Tzu Hsi after the Opium wars, at the start of her widow’s life. The novel presents all these events and turbulent times from the point of view of self educated, tough Tzu Hsi. An-te-hai is murdered with the permission of first wife Nuharoo. Her son grows up without wisdom and discipline. His cousin Prince Kung’s son leads him into drugs, pornography, and common brothels. He acquires venereal disease and then dies of smallpox at age 19.

Tung Chih was like those winter plum trees…Since birth, he had been bent and twisted into a showpiece…His schooling included everything but common sense. He was taught pride but not understanding, revenge but not compassion, and universal wisdon but not truth…How could he not have grown sideways.

Tzu Hsi and first wife Nuharoo adopt three year old Guang-hsu, son of Tzu Hsi’s mad sister and her younger brother-in-law. Tzu Hsi and Nuharoo remain regents and Tzu Hsi continues to rule China. During this period the most serious threats to China came from Britain who had annexed Burma, France who took control of Vietnam, and Meiji Japan, who invaded Korea and China and annexed the Ryuku Islands and Taiwan. Emporer Meiji’s life 1952-1912 largely overlaps that of Tzu Hsi but their rule had very different outcomes.

Guang-hsu was sickly and unable to father children. This is just as well since his mother was mad and he married his first cousin. He was also weak minded and fell under the influence of his tutor and a radical reformer, Kang Yu-wei, who naively wanted to reform China along the same lines as Meiji had done in Japan. When the hundred day reforms was put down and its leaders executed, Kang Yu-wei was rescued by the Japanese and he lived the rest of his life in Japan where he continued to spread false rumors throughout the Western and Japanese press about the evils within the Chinese court.

For the second time in her life at court Tzu Hsi was forced into exile away from the capital. Tzu Hsi was asked by conservatives at court to resume her regency in the face of mounting problems from foreign intrigue and the conservative backed Boxers rebellion.

Talented and loyal Li Hung-chang had to negotiate with Japan after the Japanese invasions and with all foreign powers after the Boxer rebellion and legation crisis. After each negotiation, China lost territory, natural resource rights, and increased her load of indemnities.

Tzu Hsi outlived weak Guang-hsu and presided over the selection of Puyi, grandson of general Yung Lu and son of Guang-hsu’s youngest brother as The Last Emperor ( subject of the 1987 movie by Bernardo Bertolucci) in 1908. Puyi was three years old. Tzu Hsi ordered that no woman should ever be named regent in China again. China became a Republic in 1911.

Two Years In The Forbidden City, Princess Der Ling, 1911

This Book is a non fiction account of life in the Forbidden City by the daughter of a Chinese diplomat, lord Yu Keng , Princess Der Ling, who was appointed first lady in waiting to Tzu Hsi from 1903 to 1905. It is available for reading online.

Der Ling and Empress Tzu Hsi

After her father served as Chinese Minister to France, Princess Der Ling returned to China with her family in 1903 . Her mother, sister, and she were ordered to the Forbidden City to serve Tzu Hsi, then in her late sixties, who was still curious about life and customs in Paris and the West. Tzu Hsi had seldom been able to meet with foreigners during her reign. Tzu Hsi finally met Sir Robert Hart, the Englishman who served as head customs official for China for more than 40 years and who was responsible for collecting as much as one third of all court revenues, in 1902. During Der Ling’s time at court Tzu Hsi occasionally met with foreigners and the wives of foreign officials.

Der Ling in Western Dress

The Empress Dowager ordered Der Ling to wear western clothes for a time so she could see and study western fashion while she served in her court. Princess Der Ling was fluent in French and English and served the mistrustful Tzu Hsi as informal interpreter during meetings with Western dignitaries. A fascinating look at life in the inner court and its intrigues as its moves from winter to summer residences.

A previously published work China Under the Empress Dowager, Sir Edmund Backhouse, Oxford Press 1910 was exposed in 1974 as a fraud with counterfeited documents. It is this and other accounts that have led Tzu Hsi to be viewed in China and the West as “…a mastermind of pure evil and intrigue.” (from a Communist Chinese textbook)

One of the ancient sages of China foretold that “China will be destroyed by a woman.” The prophesy is approaching fulfillment. (Dr. George Ernest Morrison London Times 1892-1912)

Tzu Tsi birth chart

The Last Chinese Chef, Nicole Mones, 2007

A novel combining the story of a family of chefs who last served in the imperial court with a mystery surrounding the death of an American food writer’ s husband, against whom a paternity suit has been filed in China. This work serves primarily as an introduction to Chinese culture through the cuisine. Each chapter begins with a quotation from a book written by the last Chinese chef:

As men we are the sum of our forbears, the great thinkers, great masters, great chefs. He (Plato) teaches them that food is the opposite of art, a routine undertaken to satisfy human need, no more — worse a form of flattery. We Chinese look, instead, to the Analects of Confucius, where it is written that there is “no objection to the finest food, nor the finest shredding.”

Traditional Beijing House

The chef’ s grandson, an American with a Jewish mother has returned to China to learn cooking and open a restaurant in his family’s traditional house in Beijing. He is entered into a contest to select the two best Chef’ s representing the cuisine of Beijing for the upcoming Olympic games.

On designing a menu for a banquet:

The hors d’oeuvres should amuse while they set the them of the meal and fix its style. Then the main courses. Start with something fried, light, gossamer thin, something to dazzle. Then a soup, rich and thick with seafood. After that an unexpected poultry. Then a light, healthful vegetable, to clarify, then a second soup, different from the first.

After this you reach the place where the menu goes beyond food to become a dance of the mind. This is where you play with the diner. Here we have dishes of artifice, dishes that come to the table as one thing and turn out to be something else. We might have dishes that flatter the diner’ s knowledge of painting, poetry, or opera. Or dishes that prompt the creation of poetry at the table. Many things can provoke the intellect, but only if they are fully imagined and boldly carried out.

To begin the final stage, the chef serves a roast duck. Then a third soup, again different. The last course is usually a whole fish. The fish must be so good that even though the diners are sated they fall upon it with delight.

Shanghai Style Feast

The Shadow of the Great Game The Untold Story of India’ s Partition, Narendra Singh Sarha, 2006

Written by a lifetime Indian diplomat and onetime aide-de-camp to Lord Mountbatten, this is the well researched account of the partition of India to create Pakistan in 1947. The book was the number one bestseller in India. The Great Game is the name used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia from about 1813 until 1907. The term was popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his work Kim. Sarila believes that the most important factor leading Britain to support the creation of Pakistan after WWII was their fear of Russian Soviet expansion into the Middle East and South Asia. Britain came to believe that the British dominion, Pakistan, envisioned by Muhammad Ali Jinnah would be a continuing ally, source of troops, base of operations, in their attempt to contain the Soviet Union. Congress Party president Jawaharlal Nehru, insisted on the non alignment and neutrality of an independent India.

Mahatma Gandhi

The great Mohandas Karamchand Mahatma Gandhi comes off here as an ineffective loose canon. He is reported to have said in June 1940 to the Viceroy of India Linlithgow, who thought he must be senile;

Let them (Nazis) take possession of your beautiful Island, if Hitler chooses to occupy your homes, vacate them, if he does not give you free passage out, allow yourself, man, woman, and child to be slaughtered.

The next day Gandhi wrote a letter to Linlithgow;

You are losing: if you persist it will only result in greater bloodshed. Hitler is not a bad man. If you call it off to-day he will follow suit. If you want to send me to Germany or anywhere else I am at your disposal.

At this time Gandhi said that he “…expected the Jews to pray for Hitler, who was not beyond redemption.” A biographer Robert Payne comments:

In the quiet of the ashram the greater quiet of the gas chambers was inconceivable; he did not have and could not have any imaginative conception of their plight, nor had he much conception of dictatorships.

Gandhi also wrote to Hitler in December 1941:

In the non-violent technique there is no such thing as defeat…I had intended to address a joint appeal both to you and Signor Mussolini

Gandhi had supported the British during the Boar War and during WWI but since had developed his ideas of satyagraha (non-violence) and Indian mass movement using traditional Hindu religious techniques such as fasting. He spent most of his time in his ashram. He became enormously popular in India and in the West but was unprepared for the realities of WWII. He remained ineffective and tragically outside of decision making through the key period.

In the meanwhile, and without Congress interference, the British to able to recruit as many soldiers as they could train, over 2.5 million throughout the war. During the war, India’ s role as a market for British goods declined, but the requirements for fighting manpower became the colonies chief value to Britain. 35% of Indian soldiers were Muslims and 50% of all soldiers came from one province the Punjab.

Nehru and Gandhi

Jawaharlal Nehru, pushed by his father, Motilal Nehru, to become President of the Congress Party, and named by Gandhi his legal successor, comes off here as a longwinded, indecisive, ineffective, naive, almost innocent politician. The entire Congress Party withdrew from the British created Federal government in 1939 after demanding a British promise of complete independence for India after the war.

Winston Churchill was notorious for his hatred of India and Gandhi. Throughout the war, British leaders had no intention of losing India as a colony. The British leaders perhaps foresaw a gradual transition over forty or fifty years, of India into a Commonwealth nation like Canada or Australia.

FDR saw WWII as demonstrating the need of Europe to divest themselves of their colonies immediately after the war. Since the US lost the Philippines to Japan early in the war, Churchill met this advocacy with some skepticism:

The concern of the Americans with the strategy of a world war was bringing them into touch with political issues on which they had strong opinions and little experience…states which have no overseas colonies or possessions are capable of rising to moods of great elevation and detachment about the affairs of those who have.

Britain had divided India into eleven administrative provinces. There were still 350 princely states in India with Hyderabad the size of France and Rajasthan even larger. Muslims made up a quarter of the population of India, about 90 million as a whole and were in the majority only in the British provinces; the NorthWest Frontier, Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan, and Bengal, with about 30 million. None of these provinces was in favor of partition.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a secular non practicing Muslim living in Bombay, a dandy lawyer married to a beautiful younger Parsi (the most westernized of Indians originating in Persia 1000 years ago and having their own religion and traditions) woman. Jinnah was so ignorant of Muslim traditions that he scheduled a lavish dinner for a visiting British dignitary during Ramadan, a period of Muslim fasting. Sarha characterizes Jinnah as a megalomaniac.

Jinnah’ s Muslim league was in decline, capturing only a quarter of the votes in all Muslim elections. He latched onto the idea of partition in a desperate attempt to gain personal power. Sarha discovered that Churchill and Jinnah carried out a secret correspondence over some years via a person living in the Churchill household. For Jinnah partition was a power play, for Churchill and the British authorities in India the idea that the princely states and provinces might choose to divide from India after the war was the old British strategy of divide and conquer. Churchill also made this concession to appease FDR. The Congress leaders refused to compromise their position of full independence and remained outside the process.

In July 1942, believing that the axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) would win the war, a furious Gandhi initiated a Quit India, ratified by the Congress in August, demanding that the British grant immediate independence to India and leave. The British reacted by arresting the leaders and putting down demonstrations and riots. Gandhi lost even the support of the Labour Party in Britain with this move:

If you persist in demands which are at this moment impossible to grant, you will cripple your cause and humble the influence of us who are your proud and faithful advocates.

To regain some support Gandhi initiated a fast in February 1943 from prison. Unimpressed, Churchill wired Linlithgow; I understand Gandhi has glucose in his water could you confirm? FDR conveyed to London the message that “Gandhi should not be allowed to die in prison.”

Sarha portrays Gandhi’s later life as pathetic and futile stating that the last great service Gandhi gave for India was in 1932 where he successfully opposed holding separate elections for the lower castes (separate elections were held for Muslims since 1907.) Today the lower castes make up 20% of the population and wield great political power.

Field Marshal Wavell

In 1943 a new viceroy was appointed, Field Marshal Wavell, an upper middle class military man with victories over the Italians in North Africa and stunning defeats against the Japanese in Singapore, Malaysia, and Burma. The vice royalty was considered by Churchill an honorable retreat for a man “eminently suited to run a provincial country club.” Wavell came to the job with extreme animosity toward the Congress party. He had suffered the defection of 50,000 Indian troops to revolutionary Subhash Chandra Bose, a Congress member, in Malaysia and sabotage of military facilities in the Congress Quit India campaign.

By 1944 Wavell came to the conclusion that the best way forward was to build up Jinnah and create a British dominion, Pakistan, where British forces could maintain bases including the ports at Karachi and Dacca and from which it could continue to recruit military forces.

After the war much had changed. An Indian scholar writes:

The growing role of strategic air power and the vital importance of Middle Eastern oil had transformed British policy in Asia. For over a century, British policy in the Gulf had largely been shaped by the strategic interests of her Indian Empire. This was no longer the case… By 1947, the tables had been turned – Britain’ s strategic interests in the Gulf and Middle East had become a major factor in her South Asia policy.

1945 brought a number of pressures and changes. The Labour Party won the election in Britain. The Americans dropped the Atom bomb on Japan ending the war and leading the Americans to increase pressure on Britain to eliminate their colonies. A major famine swept India due to both lack of resources and the growing incompetence of the British Raj; The British colonies were costing the government 2 billion pounds annually which the British had to borrow from America.

Labour believed they could work effectively with Nehru and Congress. Unfortunately Labour also appointed two pro-Jinnah cabinet members to key Indian positions, one a former aid to Linlithgow, the other a close associate of Churchil. Wavell remained viceroy. The official Labour policy was:
1 Britain must maintain bases of operation in India to counter the Soviets.
2 Partition is the only way to guarantee 1 since Congress will not promise to cooperate with Britain on foreign policy.
3 Partition must not be attributed to Britain.

Indian Partition Map

In February 1946 Wavell introduced his blueprint for Pakistan, shown in green on the map, dividing Punjab to pacify the Sikhs with Gurdaspur and Amristsar their holy city remaining in India, and dividing Bengal to pacify the Hindu majority in Calcutta. The provinces to remain in India are shown in orange. No provision was made for the fate of the princely states, uncolored on the map.

Nehru sent a typically longwinded letter to the British in January 1946 giving his position which is quite clear; the fate of India should be left to plebiscites in the provinces; Jinnah’ s support is shallow and could be overcome easily; Muslim majority provinces are unlikely to vote for partition; Indians are prepared to struggle against Britain for independence.; Nehru would prefer a negotiated settlement.

Muslim elections in India in 1946 showed Jinnah’ s Muslim league strong in Hindu dominant provinces and weak in the designated Pakistan provinces where the Muslims were already in control.

Jawaharlal Nehru with Sir Stafford Cripps

In March 1946 Labour Prime Minister Clement Richard Attlee sent a delegation headed by Sir Stafford Cripps to negotiate with Nehru and Congress with instructions to avoid Gandhi. Their goal was to get Congress to agree to a truncated Pakistan and enable the British to avoid blame and responsibility for the partition while assuring their military bases. The attention of this delegation made Congress leaders, promised control of a provisional government to oversee the transition to full independence, complacent while giving Jinnah the opening to launch direct violent action to force British acceptance of Pakistan. Attlee achieved his objective to:
1 put Congress leaders in charge of the interim government where they would be placated but blamed for any failure.
2 put on record the disadvantages of Pakistan scheme to later whittle away at Pakistan in later negotiations with Jinnah.
3 give the world the impression that Britain and Labour are trying to keep India united.

In July 1946 Jinnah opted out of the agreement and in August launched a violent attack against Hindus and Sikhs in Bengal and Bihar the only provinces controlled by the Muslim League. In the ensuring violence 5000 were killed and 20,000 injured. Wavell did not hold Jinnah responsible but used the violence to advance his views that Muslims and Hindus can’t coexist and partition is necessary.

Nehru assumed the position of prime minister of the provisional government and a new Congress leader emerges, Sardar Patel, a tough, practical politician. Patel advocated focusing Congress attention on the British, preventing the princely states from breaking with India and limiting the scope and damage of the Muslim League without direct confrontation. Wavell, in August 1946, believing that the British could hold out for no more than 18 months, submitted his plan for British withdrawal from Congress controlled provinces and the princely states. Wavell pressured Nehru into accepting Jinnah and the Muslim league into the interim government without Jinnah’ s agreeing to the principles of the government or promise calling off violent actions, thus enabling Jinnah to undermine the Nehru government from within.

The British had divided the NWFP province, designated to be part of the new Pakistan into two administrative parts, the settled Pathan regions including the cities, and the area of the nomadic Pathan tribes. The boundary with Afghanistan was drawn up in 1893, the Durand line, but the border has still not been accepted by Afghanistan. The British controlled the nomadic area through “subsidies”, a small cadre of tribal experts, and 10,000 troops. Their policy of control was always the less seen the better. The Amir of Kabul warned; “if at any time a foreign enemy appears on the boundaries of India these frontier tribes will be your worst enemy.” Over 30 major invasions of India have come through this area over the last 2000 years.

The NWFP considered Jinnah a pawn of the British and consistently supported the Congress party as long as they remained unseen. The naive Nehru decided to visit this province in October 1946. The tribes met him with hostility and demonstrations. Wavell said of the visit “Nehru’s visit more than anything else made partition inevitable.”

Lord Mountbatten

In March 1947 Louis Mountbatten, navy rear admiral and former supreme commander of southeast Asia was named viceroy. He has often been blamed for partition but like the good soldier he was, he was simply carrying out orders, if creatively. His charter:
1 fix responsibility for the division of India squarely on Indian shoulders.
2 persuade Congress leaders to give up NWFP and persuade Jinnah to accept a much smaller Pakistan.
3 Ensure that India remain a member of the British Commonwealth.

The Mountbattens and Gandhi

After meeting Nehru and V. P. Menon, Mountbatten decided to leave item 3 til last. Mountbatten, pretending to oppose partition, asked immediately to meet with Gandhi who had been ignored by previous viceroys. Gandhi became a regular source of information about Congress matters. Gandhi offered the suggestion that Jinnah be asked to form a new interim government. Mountbatten ignored Gandhi. Sarha points out that had Gandhi made this offer in 1928 and not in 1947 and Jinnah had become president of the Congress Party instead of Nehru, Jinnah, a more able and intelligent politician would have had his ambitions satisfied and the question of partition may never have arisen.

Mountbatten persuaded Jinnah that his strength lay with British support. Jinnah begs;

I do not care how little you give me as long as you give it to me completely…you must realize that the new Pakistan is almost certain to ask for Dominion status.

The British plan was that elected members of assemblies in each province be given a free choice of independence or affiliation with the new All-India Constituent Assembly. This presented a problem in NWFP, which would choose affiliation as its assembly stood. Olaf Caroe Britain’ s expert on tribal affairs had been appointed Raj Governor of NWFP. Mountbatten convinced Nehru to accept a new province wide referendum on the question since Congress may have lost its mandate since the last election.
Bengal, with its distinct culture and own language would certainly choose to be independent.
The deal as understood by go-between V. P. Menon was now;
1 the Wavell plan for a smaller Pakistan.
2 immediate transfer of power.
3 under the Act of 1935, the independent states would automatically become Commonwealth nations without Assembly action.
4 If India accepts the truncation of NWFP, Mountbatten will persuade the princes to join one or another state and not opt for independence.

This would mean 90% of princely territories would become part of India offsetting the loss of NWFP.

V. P. Menon had been born in the princely state of Cochin (now Kerala) and as the most able Indian tactician, draftsman, and negotiator, played a key role in total absorption of the princely states into India.
V. P. Menon became Mountbatten’ s closest adviser and believed that all territorial issues and boundaries should be resolved before independence to avoid instability and chaos after the hand-over. V. P. Menon raised this issue with Nehru in May 1947 and Nehru agreed.

Mountbatten revealed to Nehru the current British plan for the hand-over, which might have led to the Balkanization of India, should many provinces and princedoms choose independence from India. Faced with the original plan and the possibilities of Balkanization, Nehru was quick to understand the benefits of V. P. Menon’ s alternative to try to resolve all decisions and boundaries before the hand-over. Mountbatten then approached Gandhi with the plan saying it should be called Gandhi’ s plan. Gandhi agreed and intervened with the All-India Congress committee on June 14, 1947. His intervention was decisive.

Mountbatten with V. P. Menon’ s assistance then went one by one to the princely states threatening them with Muslim League inspired violence if they did not agree to join India or Pakistan. They succeeded without a single princedom choosing independence. Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir, a friend of Mountbatten surprised him by choosing to accede his kingdom to India, although a majority of the kingdom’s population was Muslim. This set off a series of events and wars between India and Pakistan that continue to this day.

Independence of India and Pakistan was celebrated on August 14, 1947.

Delhi Refugee Camp

Not covered in this book were the massive displacements, violence and deaths caused by partition. As of 1951, 7,226,000 Muslims went to Pakistan from India while 7,249,000 Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan. About 11.2 million or 78% of the population transfer took place in the west, with Punjab accounting for most of it. 5.3 million Muslims moved from India to West Punjab in Pakistan. 3.4 million Hindus and Sikhs moved from Pakistan to East Punjab in India. Elsewhere in the west 1.2 million moved in each direction to and from Sind. Deaths were estimated at 1 million but may have been as high as 1.5 million.

There have been three wars between India and Pakistan since independence. In 1971 a civil war in East Pakistan split the country apart to form the new nation of Bangladesh. India and Pakistan became nuclear powers in 1998 increasing the risks in future warfare between the two.

Two years after leaving India Wavell said in 1949:

There are two main material factors in the revolutionary change that has come over the strategical face of Asia. One is air power, the other is oil…The next great struggle for world power, if it takes place, may well be for the control of these oil reserves…This may be the battleground both of the material struggle for oil and air bases, and of the spiritual struggle of at least three great creeds – Christianity, Islam, Communism – and of the political theories of democracy and totalitarianism.

Around such lofty principals do people suffer, become refugees, and die.

The Communist’s Daughter, Dennis Bock, 2007

This novel is written as a series of disjointed memoirs intended for the daughter he has never met of Norman Bethune a battle field surgeon in China during the war against Japan in 1938 and 1939.

Norman Bethune is an actual historic figure, a Canadian doctor and communist member immortalized by Mao Tse-tung himself who published Bethune’ s memoirs detailing the last five months of his life after Bethune’ s death in China in 1939. Mao said of Bethune;

We must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him. With this spirit everyone can be very helpful to each other. A man’s ability may be great or small, but if he has this spirit, he is already noble-minded and pure, a man of moral integrity and above vulgar interests, a man who is of value to the people.

Bethune was born in 1890 of missionary parents and served in the No.2 Field Ambulance Medical Corps in France as a stretcher-bearer during WWI. His war ended when he was hit by shrapnel. He joined the communist party in 1935 and joined the Republican cause in Spain in 1936-7 as a field surgeon. In Spain he had an intimate relationship with beautiful Swedish born Kajsa von Rothman. They were suspected of spying although neither Rothman nor Bethune were arrested. Bethune left Spain under a cloud. Nothing is known of Rothman’s fate. In 1938 Bethune was in China assisting the communist army in the fight against Japan. He died of a cut received during surgery in 1939. His life has been the basis of at least three films, Dr Bethune was made in China in 1964.

Bethune spent much of his life treating battlefront injuries and developed many tools and techniques. Heroic statues of Bethune have been erected throughout China. Bethune College at York University, Toronto, and Dr Norman Bethune Collegiate Institute in Scarborough, Ontario, were named after him.

The novel portrays Bethune as driven man, incapable of sustaining relationships with woman or friendships with men. He is impatient with others yet seems always willing to teach and to jump in wherever he is needed. Written as his own memoirs for a daughter he has never met, a child by his lover in Spain Kajsa, Bethune emerges as a man who understands very little about himself. Reconstructing his life from his writing would be a challenge should the daughter ever receive the envelopes. In the end, the communist party at the highest level decides to hold the memoirs and decide whether they will be released after their victory in China.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid, 2007

A slender novel exploring the disillusion of a Pakistani Princeton graduate, newly hired New York master of the universe, in love with a wealthy beautiful New York socialite. Did 9-11 start his disillusionment; or was it the mental illness of his lover; or was it the Chilean publisher pointing out the similarities of his career situtation to that of the Christian Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire? The language is engrossing and perceptive as here where he ruminates on New York after 9-11

I had always thought of America as a nation that looked forward; for the first time I was struck by its determination to look back. Living in New York was suddenly like living in a film about the Second World War; I, a foreigner, found myself staring out at a set that ought to be viewed not in Technicolor but in grainy black and white.

Food Street Lahore

He quits his New York job and returns to Lahore. The novel is structured entirely as a monologue by the disillusioned Pakistani given in a Lahore restaurant to a complete stranger, a large silent foreigner, possibly an American spook, who may or may not come to grief at the end of the evening. Masterfully nuanced performance.

Moth Smoke, Hohsin Hamid, 2000

Moth Smoke, titled for the moth’s love of the flame, and written before the military coup d’état of general Pervez Musharraf in October 1999 and before the events of 9-11, was Hamid’s first novel. Set in Lahore at the time of Pakistan’s first nuclear test in May 1998, a time of fear and economic disruption, mixed with pride as Pakistan becomes the worlds first Muslim member of still small nuclear bomb club; the novel explores the effects of monumental corruption on two best childhood friends.

The boys’ fathers were in the military during the West Pakistan – Bangladesh fighting in 1971. One father dies and the other turns to corruption believing that one is either an exploiter or will become the exploited. The father builds a fortune through bribery and kickbacks from foreign corporate contracts then turns to money laundering to sustain and expand his fortune.

When his mother dies the friend’s son becomes an orphan raised by an uncle. The rich father assures the orphan attends the best schools in Pakistan where he associates with his son and other elite children. The orphan applies for college in the States but is unable to get financial aid so he attends college in Pakistan while all his circle of school friends leave for England or the States.

Lahore Country Club

The orphan studies for a doctorate in Pakistan under a radical professor choosing as dissertation subject Mohammad Unis micro credit financing. He drops out to accept a banking job arranged by his friend’s father. He grows increasingly resentful of his job as servant (pretty well paid) to the rich and corrupt and is fired just as his friend returns, sexy wife and child in tow, from a successful career in New York. From a “small fish in a big pond” he immediately becomes a part of the young social elite by virtue of his father’s wealth.

The novel is an account of the orphan’s decline and final destruction while his former friend continue to thrive through his family’s corrupt ways, carrying large sums of money to Switzerland and the Cayman Islands for laundering.

Lahore Charpoy

One of the most compelling sections explores the effects of air conditioning in separating the haves from the have nots in Lahore where summertime temperatures can reach 115 degrees (Just like Phoenix, although the homeless can go to the underutilized downtown public library during the day but only if they do not fall asleep). The orphan finally understands poverty when his power is disconnected for non payment and he is forced to live for the first time as an AC have not.

A street urchan, who knows that air conditioners throw off hot air into the streets is confused by the insistence of the rich that ACs produce cold air.

Manucci realized what all this had to mean. It meant people thought what he called hot air was cold air. So whenever he walked down the street past the back of a protruding AC, he would smile and say, “What cold air it makes. Wonderful.”

Pakistan has too little and notoriously unreliable electric power, not coincidentally because of bribes, kickbacks and shoddy foreign corporate contract work. The power problems are small inconvenience to the elite who use a little of their corrupt gains to buy personal power generators.

The novel changes voices from the orphan, to his friend, to his friend’s father, to his friend’s wife, so we get to see their various lives from their own viewpoint. At first jarring, this technique may be the only way to allow us to feel some empathy for the rationalizations used by each actor for justifying his otherwise reprehensible actions. Its a little like listening to Alfie (Michael Caine in the original movie) rationalize his actions. There are no heroes here.

Climbing the Mango Trees; A Memoir of a Childhood in India, Madhur Jaffrey, 2006

Madhur Jaffrey is an author of Indian cookbooks and an actress who is said to have been responsible for introducing James Ivory and Ismail Merchant. Jaffrey appeared in a number of their earlier films: “Shakespeare Wallah” (1965, won Berlin Film Festival’s Best Actress), “The Guru” (1969), Autobiography of a Princess, (1976) and Heat and Dust (1983) directed by Ivory. And also “The Perfect Murder” (1988) and Merchant’s “Cotton Mary” (1999, title role).

She also appeared in “Six Degrees of Separation” (1993) with Stockard Channing (”Le Divorce”), Mary Beth Hurt (”Slaves of New York”) and “Vanya on 42nd Street” (1994) with Julianne Moore (”Surviving Picasso”), Larry Pine (”Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures”), Wallace Shawn (”The Bostonians”).

Here, Jaffrey writes about her family of the Hindu subcaste Mathur Kayasthas, administrators of justice and recorders of events. Her family worked in Delhi as administrators for the Mogul rulers until the British brought the capital to Delhi when they went to work for the British. As a reward for their loyalty to the British in a time of Indian uprisings they were given a large parcel of land on the Yamuna River. The patriarch turned down a choice of land in New Delhi saying “Who wants to live in that jungle”. Jaffrey ruefully notes that property in New Delhi today is worth as much as property in London. Her family was so extensive that a picnic or celebration might be attended by 300 or more relatives. Her father headed a number of companies during her childhood.

To escape the heat of summer the family spent summers in the “hill stations” Dalhousie. After partition they often went to Simla. This was a custom started by the British.

Born is 1933 Jaffrey was 12 at the end of WWII and 14 at the time of India’s independence and partition (into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan). She notes that many Indians were killed in WWII (but seemingly no one known to her or her family). Millions were killed during partition and tens of millions were displaced from their homes. She notes that a number of her privileged Muslim classmates left for England or Pakistan. Delhi swelled from a million inhabitants to over ten million, mostly impoverished refugees. Jaffrey notes that all the taxis were now driven by Sikhs and restaurants started offering tandoori oven meats and breads, kabobs, lassie (a yogurt drink) and other Punjabi culinary delights. She left India to study acting a few years after partition and has lived in England and the United States since.

This book gives a good picture of what it is like to grow up privileged and insular. The India she describes is a picture book India of good times and good food taking place during the key years of the Congress party struggle for independence with Gandhi and Nehru risking imprisonment; of the British forcibly enlisting Indians to fight in Burma and Europe for the British in WWII; of the rise of the Muslim League and the tragic British partition of India as the British left India behind. Like privileged classes everywhere, her childhood memories contain very little of this life and death struggle, the poverty, the displacement, the terror of this time. Money and privilege buys an insulation from these larger realities. What did she really think of the tumultuous times of her childhood? We don’t know from this book.