The best of 2019 from a voracious and eclectic reader's bookshelf

Though the author of Hindutva, savarkar was "hardly a practicing Hindu in the religious sense"

I tend to be rather eclectic in the books I read. So the ones I’m likely to recommend won’t just be varied and different but, possibly, surprising and, even, idiosyncratic. In a very real sense my eclecticism is enhanced — and not just made possible — by the fact that I get sent a lot of books to review or to interview their authors. I dip into many of them but read only a few. 

One of the books that caught my fancy and which I spent a very happy weekend reading is Udayan Mukherjee’s second book. Let me first, however, tell you something about him. Not so long ago he was the pride of CNBC and, arguably, India’s foremost business affairs anchor. Today he has metamorphosed into a novelist. The transformation began last year with his first book, a novel called Dark Circles. The new one is a detective story set in Kumaon and ,not surprisingly, called A Death in the Himalayas. 

Only someone who loves the hills can bring them to life as Udayan does. It’s an odd comment to make about a detective story — which succeeds quite magnificently as one — to say that a lot of its strength lies in its descriptions. Consider this: “She could see the faint silhouette of the Himalayan peaks — crude dark protrusions which the sun would kiss to splendour in under an hour.” I intend to plagiarise that haunting phrase one day!

Now, if you are an aficionado of detective fiction you’ll know that whenever the murderer is revealed it always seems like magic. By that I mean it takes you completely by surprise. That’s as true of Hercule Poirot as it is of Miss Marple and I won’t bother with the rest because, frankly, they’re of a lesser order.

Well, it’s also true of Neville Wadia, Udayan’s detective. He’s a retired police officer with a very winning manner and a chatty, if not also enchanting, wife. You can’t help but like him. However, there’s a trick. Though he’s been a crack policeman you never think he’s going to reveal the murderer and uncover his secret story.

Yet when Neville Wadia does precisely that you suddenly realise there were obvious clues embedded in the tale you’ve just read which you did not heed or may not have even fully registered.  Yet they were there. Now, I suspect that’s precisely what Udayan intended. If they had been planted more obviously he would have given the game away. But it’s not easy to do it unobtrusively and beguile one into believing the finger is pointing in another direction. 

The second book that lingers powerfully in my memory is very different. This is Rajdeep Sardesai’s account of how Modi secured a second term. Called 2019: How Modi Won India, it has a powerful chapter on the Indian media. Rajdeep is at his most pungent when he analyses how the last election was covered.

“I have never quite seen an Indian election where the mainstream media narrative, with rare exceptions, was so blatantly and horribly one-sided.” In particular, television news created “a ‘mahaul’ (ambience) in which Modi was seemingly invincible and the opposition cripplingly inept”. However, I would go further. Instead of watchdogs that should growl at the authorities, even if occasionally mistakenly, most of our television news channel behaved like guard dogs, who seek to protect, or pet dogs, who just wish to be liked.

Nothing illustrates this better than the way Mr Modi is interviewed on television. It’s done with obvious deference which leaves little opportunity to challenge or, even, cross-question. Instead of focussing on a few well-researched subjects which are pursued with diligence, each question changes the issue. There’s no follow-up. Consequently, a multitude of subjects is raised without any meaningful achievement. Equally importantly, the Prime Minister is permitted to answer at exorbitant length, often rambling, and frequently changing the subject and getting away with it. 

I agree with Rajdeep’s conclusion, though I would have put it more forcefully: “The space for a free and independent media that offers democracy its much-needed oxygen is rapidly shrinking.” Unfortunately, Rajdeep doesn’t ask and, therefore, doesn’t answer the question: Why has this happened? Is it fear of retribution? Are editors enamoured of Mr Modi? Or are proprietors to blame?

The other three books I want to draw to your attention have one thing in common. They’re all biographies and I have to admit I’m rather partial to this genre. I like reading about people I know of but not enough about. It satisfies my curiosity. If, in addition, the book reveals aspects of the person under consideration that I was not aware of, or details that are enriching and intriguing, then it can be quite captivating. I would say that’s true of the three I’m going to recommend.

The first is a detailed account of the lives and loves of the Mountbattens. Of both there have been biographies aplenty — both official and intrusive —  but none have delved so deeply into their numerous sexual affairs. This one does.

Called The Mountbattens: Their Lives & Loves, its author Andrew Lownie seems to present a catalogue of their sexual encounters. There are chapters where you’ll feel they did nothing but pop in and out of bed, although never together and rarely their own. For the prurient it’s fascinating. For the rest of us it’s eye-popping.

If you like this sort of stuff, the book has gripping details of the libel case Lady Mountbatten lost. I won’t spoil it by giving you the details but I will add that she initiated proceedings in the mistaken belief the newspaper concerned could not validate its story of her affair, only to find it could.

The other chapter that hits you like a slap in the face is about Mountbatten’s homosexual liaisons with teenagers, probably below the legal age of consent. Lownie spares no details. Even though this is pure sensationalism I have to concede it is irresistible. It completely overshadows the rest of the book which, in many respects, offers fairly solid and substantial accounts of his naval career as well as his term as Chief of Defence Staff. 

 The only bit I found unsatisfactory was the account of Mountbatten’s vice-royalty and governor-generalship. It felt sketchy, incomplete and, occasionally, inaccurate. But I guess that would always be the case for an Indian reader.

Now you might think V K Krishna Menon — whose biography is the second I’ve chosen to write about — is almost the opposite of the Mountbattens but the truth is they were close friends. Menon wrote frequently to both and they thought highly of him. This is revealed by Jairam Ramesh in his book A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon. But what captured my attention is something else: a story connected to General Thimayya’s resignation in 1959, a cause célèbre of the time.

Ramesh’s book reveals that, as serving army chief, General Thimayya regularly met then British High Commissioner Malcolm Macdonald (who was also his neighbour) and revealed details of his disagreements with Prime Minister Nehru and Defence Minister Menon. All of this was conveyed to London and Macdonald’s reports to the British foreign office are part of his papers at Durham University which Ramesh has accessed. 

Macdonald reports Thimayya told him Menon “was perhaps trying deliberately to make himself the master of the armed forces so that he might one day have their support in the achievement of his political ambition to take Mr. Nehru’s place either after, or even before, Mr. Nehru’s withdrawal from public life”.

Frankly, this is astonishing and deeply disturbing. First, you have a serving army chief criticising the Defence Minister to the British High Commissioner and doing so openly, not subtly, and pretty comprehensively. Then, even worse, the army chief clearly suggests the Defence Minister has Bonapartist ambitions which could threaten the Prime Minister’s position. In simple language that amounts to a putsch!

It’s almost embarrassing to characterise what Thimayya as army chief seems to have done. This is the sort of conversation one normally reads of in spy novels when informants brief their handlers. From an army chief it’s unforgiveable. But that’s not how Ramesh writes of it.

He euphemistically calls it “highly unusual”. He goes no further than stating this “call(s) into question the General’s judgement”. It was only under pressure in an interview to The Wire that Jairam accepted this was, in fact, “inexcusable” and “sackable”.

The final biography is Vaibhav Purandare’s fascinating work on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. I approached it as someone who only knows of the subject as the “Father of Hindutva” and the first proponent of the two-nation theory. At the time he was not a man I looked up to. But this book sheds lights on aspects of his personality that suggest a more attractive side. I guess even the worst of us has redeeming qualities. 

Called Savarkar: The True Story of the Father of Hindutva, it reveals he was not a cow worshipper. “If the cow’s mother to anyone at all, it’s the bullock,” Savarkar wrote in his Marathi journal Kirloskar. “Not the Hindus. If Hindutva is to sustain itself on cows’ legs it will go crashing down at the slightest hint of a crisis.”

Purandare writes that Savarkar “abhorred the idea of consuming the animal’s urine and, in some cases, cow dung. Such consumption, he believed, may have actually started … as a form of punishment.” The cow, no doubt, was useful “but its worship made no sense … it was time to abandon the ‘native practice’ of ‘gau-poojan’ because it was nothing short of ‘buddhi hatya’ or ‘murder of the intellect’.”

The book tells you that Savarkar was not a vegetarian. He “loved his fish … and disliked all his fellow Brahmins who looked askance at those who relish non-vegetarian food”. 

If you find this surprising — as I did — Purandare has a lot more to shake up preconceived notions about Savarkar. Though the author of Hindutva he was “hardly a practicing Hindu in the religious sense. He followed no rituals and thought God, if indeed God existed, wasn’t really in the habit of responding to prayer”. 

On one occasion, when informed of a sadhu who boasted of crawling on his stomach from Allahabad to Haridwar, Savarkar was scornful: “He sarcastically asked who had been closer to God, considering almost all religions said that God was in the heavens above — someone who was attempting to build an airplane or fly in it or someone desperate to turn himself into a maggot.”

I don’t know if historians will praise this book but Savarkar’s followers will certainly squirm. That can’t be all that bad, can it? And then there are the little nuggets you can toss around a dinner table. For one, Savarkar was close to Lata Mangeshkar, who “was once so moved by his thinking … she voiced her desire to give up singing altogether”. For another, the prosecutor who sent him to the Andamans in 1910 was a certain M R Jardine, father of the famous Douglas of Bodyline fame. Finally, for such a “great” man he had a very small neck. It “was only 13.5 — that of a school boy”!

Business Standard’s favourites in 2019

Me: Elton John Official Autobiography 

Author: Elton John

Publisher: Macmillan 

Price: Rs 999

Pages: 384 pages

A funny, honest and moving story of the most enduringly successful singer—songwriter of all time.

Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography – Herself Alone

Author: Charles Moore 

Publisher: Knopf 

Price: Rs 899

Pages: 896 pages

The final volume in a three-part biography describes the last period in office of a woman who dominated in an age of male power.

Permanent Record

Author: Edward Snowden 

Publisher: Macmillan 

Price: Rs 699

Pages: 352 pages

The extraordinary account of how Snowden helped make the system that he eventually exposed, thus becoming the Internet’s conscience and one of the USA’s most wanted men.

The Economists’ Hour: How the False Prophets of Free Markets Fractured Our Society

Author: Binyamin Appelbaum

Publisher: Picador 

Price: Rs 699

Pages: 448 pages

An accessible and authoritative discourse on the impact of the once—dominant free—market economics.

The Absent Dialogue: Politicians, Bureaucrats, and the Military in India 

Author: Anit Mukherjee  

Publisher: Oxford University Press 

Price: Rs 1,100

Pages: 336 pages

A volume that discusses civil—military relations in India and how they have hampered military effectiveness.

Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems

Author: Esther Duflo and Abhijit V Banerjee

Publisher: Juggernaut 

Price: Rs 699

Pages: 416 pages

The 2019 winners of the Nobel Prize for economics make a persuasive case for intelligent interventions to create a society built on compassion and respect.

A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations

Author: Pico Iyer 

Publisher: Penguin Viking 

Price: Rs 499

Pages: 288 pages

A playful and profound glimpse into Japanese culture. 

Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India

Author: K S Komireddi

Publisher: Context 

Price: Rs 599

Pages: 224 pages

This short history of the modern Indian nation is also a scathing critique of the rise of Hindu bigotry in the name of nationalism. 

Ascetic Games: Sadhus, Akharas and the Making of the Hindu Vote

Author: Dhirendra K Jha                                         

Publisher: Context

Price: Rs 599

Pages: 216 pages

An investigative deep dive into the highly secretive world of India’s sadhus. 

The Rise of Goliath

Author: A K Bhattacharya

Publisher:  Penguin Portfolio

Price: Rs 699

Pages: 360 pages

An account of India’s history, shaped by disruptions such as the Partition, the Emergency and the economic reforms of 1990s.