Book Review - Radial Spirits by Nandini Patwardhan

Radical Spirits: India's First Woman Doctor and Her American Champions by Nandini Patwardhan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since childhood Anandi Joshee nee Yamuna always had an inquisitive spark in her. This spark was fanned by her father who encouraged her to study. This glowing spark was then fuelled by her husband Gopal. He was her bulwark against social ostracism – for it was unthinkable in those days for a Brahmin woman to study. His support extended to letting her go to America on her own for medical studies. Schizophrenically,

One night, things came to a head. In the middle of tutoring, Anandi begged to be let out of the lesson and Gopal lost his temper. He beat her with a stick until she was black and blue.

However, it was her limitless drive and will-power that made her persist in studying medicine in a strange land with its freezing weather and a poor availability of vegetarian food. Another anchor was her American sponsor, Theodocia who lovingly cared for her a debilitating illness ravaged her the budding doctor. The book talks about her interpersonal relationships but fails to detail her clinical training. All we get to know are some details about her thesis

“Obstetrics among the Aryan Hindoos.” The thesis was an exposition of Hindu beliefs and practices covering everything from the earliest signs of pregnancy to diseases of the new-born. The thesis described the use of turmeric combined with sesame oil to cleanse a woman’s body immediately after the delivery, and to massage the new-born. Other ingredients mentioned for medicinal use were black mustard powder, orris root, honey, opium, asafoetida, long pepper and its root, dry ginger, and milk. The minerals used were iron, “copper sulph,” “zinc sulph,” and mercury. Anandi wrote about how the new mother was forbidden to drink milk or water that had not been previously boiled. The reason for this was based on the Ayurvedic knowledge of bacteriology: The ancients strongly believed that “the atmosphere is densely populated by germs of infinite variety and minuteness and can never be seen by the human eye. These can be destroyed by heat and fumes of certain resins, hence the boiling process.” Anandi’s thesis summarized diagnostic techniques available to the physician using the physical senses of touch, hearing, vision, taste, smell, and speech. Of these, the most interesting one was taste—not the patient’s or the physician’s, but that of red ants. It was used to detect excess sugar in the body: Taste will decide the constituents of the urinary secretion as the red ants are found to be very fond of sugar.

Despite the shortcomings, this inspiring book should be mandatory reading for aspiring Indian doctors, most of who are disgracing our noble profession and turning it into a business – with seats being purchased for undergraduate and postgraduate studies for tens of lakhs of rupees.
As an aside, despite all British claims for improving the lot of Indians during their Raj, here are the observation of the American ambassador Col. Hans Mattson

I said that India is better ruled now than ever before; but that is not saying much, for it ought to be ruled still better and more in the interest of the natives. The ruling class: India has civil service with a vengeance, the office-holding class being even more arrogant, proud and independent than the titled nobility. They rule the country with an iron hand, regard it simply as a field for gathering in enormous salaries, and after twenty-five years’ service they return to England with a grand India pension.

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Book Review - Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations

 

Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations by Arnold van de Laar
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Surprising that in a book detailing the “History of Surgery”, there is no historical background about tracheostomy – just incidents at the end of life of two American Presidents. It is fascinating that Hippocrates method of treating fistula-in-ano is still prevalent. The evolution of surgical tools from stones, bronze, then iron succeeded by steel scalpels to the electric Bovie, the gamma-knife and finally laser ablation is surely a reflection of human ingenuity. However, the frightening and incomprehensible practice of blood-letting as the standard treatment for all ills is viewed by today’s doctors aghast at the sanguineous ritual, much as our descendants will probably view our present day surgical techniques as primitive (COVID-19 and other novel pandemic-causing viruses permitting!!). A book that may be of vicarious interest to laypersons, this has nothing really new for doctors.

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Book Review - Mother India by Katherine Mayo

 

Mother India by Katherine Mayo
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Her scurrilous writing displays her blatant antipathy towards all things Indian – the country, the religion, the culture, the natives. So why did she set out to write this misandrous and sanctimonious piece of garbage. I struggled through it in the hope of finding something redeeming in her ‘research’. Indians in her perception are a teeming mass of scrawny, malnourished, lascivious pedophiles.

In the courts and alleys and bazaars many little bookstalls, where narrow-chested, near-sighted, anaemic young Bengali students, in native dress, brood over piles of fly-blown Russian pamphlets.

How this seething mass of sweaty stunted skeletal scarecrows managed to overthrow the mighty British Empire, she cannot explain. One gets the impression that, but for the benevolent British, Indians would have still been in the Stone Age. Did Indians really justify suttee through this convoluted logic?

"We husbands so often make our wives unhappy," said this frank witness, "that we might well fear they would poison us. Therefore did our wise ancestors make the penalty of widowhood so frightful - in order that the woman may not be tempted."

Were famines so bad?

pounded bones of the dead were mixed with flour and sold...Destitution at length reached such a pitch that men began to devour each other and the flesh of a son was preferred to his love.

or again

Weomen were scene to rost their Children...A man or woman noe sooner dead but they were Cutt in pieces to be eaten.

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Book Review - The McMahon Line: A Century of Discord

 

The McMahon Line: A Century of Discord by J.J. Singh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An authoritative, but not pedantic, account of the historical evolution of the McMahon Line on India’s north-eastern border. The history of Tibet in indeed comprehensive. But the book needed better graphics and clearer maps to clarify the mystifying geography of the mountainous region – Google maps was more valuable. For old maps I found this site to be very useful: https://www.davidrumsey.com/.
The book could also do with a good editor to remove not only linguistic eggcorns like "tow the line", but also irritatingly frequent repetitions or certain incidents and extracts. The ending was too verbose without any clear-cut strategic answers – the author also seems to have been lulled into complacence by the rousing reception he received during his visit to Beijing. Ironically, he accuses of his predecessors, bureaucrats and their political masters, including Nehru, of being seduced by the Hindi Chini Bhai Bha rhetoric and remaining in a state of denial and ignorance of the evil designs of the Chinese before the ’62 conflict.

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Book Review: River of Fire

 

River of Fire: Aag Ka Darya by Qurratulain Hyder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The idea of the book was wonderful but was marred somewhat by the execution. Being a historical novel I expected something along the lines of To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer or even Cloud Atlas.
There are too many characters and, except for the core group of Kamal, Gautam, Hari, Amir, Nirmala, Champa and Talat, they appear very superficial.
Moreover, which “River” is being talked about – Saryu/Ghaghra or Ganga? The “Fire” of the heading appears to be allegorical, but I could not figure what was being symbolized. I also found the spatial distortion between Shravasti and Bahraich disconcerting.
The book begins briskly during the period of the Gupt Dyansty but then gets bogged down in the middle as a gossipy interlude. It is more of an expansion of the author’s Ship of Sorrows. But I loved the poignant ending – especially (spoiler alert) Kamal’s disenchantment with post-partition India. Probably reflects the author’s own yearning for India after her self-imposed exile. Of course, the secular tone of the book appears so incomprehensible in the present day.

Back home in Bahraich a fat old mouse used to play such difficult Wagner pieces, running up and down the chords! … “It sounds odd, playing Wagner in Bahraich,” she remarked ironically

Wagner in Bahraich?
Bahraich?
I remember it as a one-horse, somnambulant, dusty town in the Sixties near the border of Nepal. The only redeeming feature was the availability of smuggled goods from China. The other event of note was my Uncle tearing around on his Enfield.

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Book Review: India's WAR by Srinath Raghvan

 

India's War: The Making of Modern South Asia 1939-1945 by Srinath Raghavan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A comprehensive and lucid account of pre-independence India’s contribution to World War II in the context of the following:

Strategic dimensions of war
International dimensions of war
Domestic politics
Socio-economic dimensions
The War itself

There is a lot one learns from the narrative, the most important being the dismissive attitude of Western leaders about the capacity of Indians to rule themselves. Churchill’s views are well known:

I hate Indians, they are beastly people with a beastly religion

Hitler too had a poor opinion of Indians

If the English give India back her liberty, within twenty years India will have lost her liberty again

The War made strange bed-fellows – the US, China, UK/India ganged up against the rampaging Japanese. Geopolitics changed and now the target of Japan, the US, India, England is a resurgent China.
John Connell mentions in Auchinleck: A Biography of Field-Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck

As long as a cat arches her back, spits and faces the dog in front of her, he will hesitate and sometimes go away: the moment she turns tail she is done for.

This prompts the author to add a flippant comment

Such were the zoological assumptions on which the defence of the Far East rested, Little wonder, it failed to survive contact with the enemy

The Japanese campaign is covered exhaustively, but the North African campaign stops at Tobruk and the decisive battle of El Alamein is described after many chapters – the thread of the narrative is lost.
The shrewd Jinnah comes across as an astute scheming politico, running circles around the Gandhi/Nehru Congress and British bureaucrats. The Chinese generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek

found Jinnah ‘dishonest’: ‘the British make use of people like this – but it’s not true that Hindus and Muslims can’t get on’

Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck, in a gloomy letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, wrote

Jinnah, in particular, was a ‘demagogue of the most dangerous type’. He had no love for his country and was the ‘perfect tool for the Axis’.

George Orwell contributed as a BBC announcer. Here is a surprisingly prejudiced aspect of the author of 1984 and Animal Farm

The failure of Cripps’ mission, in fact, brought out Orwell’s submerged prejudices. He noted with approval Wintringham’s observation that ‘in practice the majority of Indians are inferior to Europeans, and one can’t help feeling this and, after a while, acting accordingly.

And again

Yet Orwell held that Indian nationalism was racist and xenophobic. ‘Most Indians who are politically conscious hate Britain so much’, Orwell patronizingly claimed, ‘that they have ceased to bother about the consequences of an Axis victory.’

Here is a staccato account of the evacuation of Madras in anticipation of Japanese bombing:

Hundreds of tanks came out in procession. Thousands of small explosions occurred. Bomb trenches were dug. Visiting the beach after 6 pm was prohibited. Wild animals in the Zoo were shot. Chinese restaurants opened. Dancing halls proliferated. Talcum powder became costlier… Use of electricity was restricted

A fallout of wartime shortages

Another lasting culinary consequence of the war was the rava idli - a variant of the staple south Indian breakfast that substituted semolina for the increasingly scarce rice

Such scattered nuggets make the, at times, turgid reading with statistics, tables and graphs, entertaining.
The Civil Services, railways, roads, irrigation canals apart, the British managed to unite the subcontinent into a country. John Masters wistfully remarks on the surrender of the Japanese to the Indian Army

As the tanks burst away down the road to Rangoon … (they) took possession of a the empire we built … Twenty races, a dozen religions, a score of languages passed in those trucks and tanjks. When my great-great-grandfather first went to India there had been as many nations: now there was one - India

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