PMOs, terror trials, presidents and coups

Here is a summary of book reviews by Business Standard writers in the past week

The all-consuming image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the looming 2024 general elections appear to have sparked an interest in understanding the workings of the highest office in the land and its previous occupants —also perhaps because so little information has trickled in over the past nine years.

One such attempt, recently reviewed in Business Standard by Aditi Phadnis is India’s Tipping Point: The View From 7 Race Course Road, which provides an inside view of the Prime Minister’s Office under P V Narasimha Rao. Written by S Narendra, who was spokesman for the government and the prime minister, it offers a tantalising picture of the turbulent years from 1991 to 1996.

Phadnis writes, however, that at many points “you can sense that Mr Narendra knows a lot more but is holding back”. But this is still an important book because “Mr Narendra not only enjoyed a close relationship with the prime minister but was also privy to the political pulls, pressures and decisions taken to manage contradictions”.

Those interested in similar books that have come out in the last year can also look at veteran journalist Sugata Srinivasaraju’s biography of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda – Furrows in a Field: The Unexplored Life of H.D. Deve Gowda – all the more so because elections have been announced in his home state of Karnataka, where he is still active, trying to ensure that his sons, their wives, and children get elected.

Though Srinivasaraju was not part of Gowda’s PMO, his book benefits from the presence of his subject and his phenomenal memory, which is feared in Karnataka as much by his friends as his foes.

Talking about the more recent past, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud highlighted last week the long-lasting repercussions of media trials, which make a person guilty in the eyes of the public even before they are convicted by a court. That brings us to the review in BS this past week of Mayur Suresh’s book Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi’s Courts by Delhi-based lawyer Jayant Tripathi.

Tripathi highlights the public perception of “terror” accused, who are more reviled and hated than “ordinary” accused. And despite repeated reiteration by the Supreme Court of the principles of 'bail not jail' and 'innocent until proven guilty', such rules may not be available to terror accused.

The book is a critical look at the labyrinthine legal system not as it is envisioned – as a moral force and philosophical theory – but as it is experienced by those who are its victims, in this case people accused of having committed acts of terror. “The book explores how, because normal criminal procedure and principles are not available to them, the lives of terror accused are almost entirely consumed with their interactions with the technicalities and language of the law, and their interpersonal interactions with the keepers and enforcers of the law in their effort to prove their innocence,” Tripathi writes.

Taking a step back from the workings of the Indian state, there were two reviews of books that dealt with the two nations that dominate the current global order — China and the USA.

Gunjan Singh’s review of the edited volume The Party Leads All: The Evolving Role of the Chinese Communist Party by grapples with Xi Jinping’s leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and a “push towards increasing centralisation and concentration of power within the top leadership and especially Xi Jinping”.

Much like contemporary accounts of the USSR, the foreign observer has had to depend on volumes like this one, which provide an insight into the workings of a country whose influence has spread across the world, and whose ‘plus one’ India hopes to become.

Says Singh: “To provide a nuanced understanding of the changes the book successfully juxtaposes the situation under the previous leaderships with that under Mr Xi. The major theme across the chapters is that there is a consistent reduction in the space for free thinking and criticism available to the Chinese people under him.”

Such centralisation of control, justified on the grounds of stamping out corruption, which the party sees as an existential threat, can have other repercussions, like for instance the power to decide “which issues civil society can focus on and how rich a private sector entrepreneur can get before he becomes a threat to the Party”.

Ashis Ray reviewed Current Intelligence by David Charlwood, which portrays the workings of one of the most influential organisations in recent years, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), told through a reading of presidential briefings over the past 75 years.

The book offers some crucial insights like the fact that the CIA had repeatedly warned of an imminent attack on the USA before 9/11. But, according to Ray, “there is conspicuously no reference to the CIA’s role in the US’s close ally Pakistan’s momentous defeat to India in surrendering East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in 1971”.

Similarly, though the book deals with the overthrow of governments in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954 and in Congo in 1960, Ray notes that “[t]here’s no mention, though, of the CIA-backed military coup against Chile’s socialist President Salvador Allende in 1973 and his consequent suicide. Heavy redaction of files renders the narrative somewhat incomplete.”