Goodreads Review: Twilight Falls on Liberalism

Twilight Falls on Liberalism by Rudrangshu Mukherjee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have the privilege of studying at the university where Professor Mukherjee is the Chancellor and Professor of History. I have attended some of his classes and been impressed by his command of the subject and style of delivery, and wanted to know how far his expertise was translated on to his writing. This was a major reason for my picking up this book, as also was my interest in the subject, and I must say that it was a worthy read.

Professor Mukherjee starts the book - closer to a long essay at 133 pages of a pocketbook - with introducing the current socio-political atmosphere around the world and the manner in which the ideology of liberalism is under attack from various fundamentalist and totalitarian forces. Then, true to his historian's method, he goes back to study the conception and growth of the idea of liberalism from its 18th century Enlightenment roots and its changing scope over the ages in keeping with contemporary world economy and polity. He touches upon the fundamental contradictions within the ideology and the paradox of its birth from the same roots that gave rise to totalitarian tendencies. He moves forward to discuss some of the critiques of liberalism and continues the chronological study of 20th-century eclipsing of the ideology through the rise of dictatorships across Europe. He traces the cyclical pattern of rising and diminishing popularity of the ideology through the century before closing with the 21st century socio-political attitude towards liberal ideals as displayed by the three major world events of the last several years - the election of Donald Trump in the US, Brexit, and the rise of right-wing governance in India with the coming of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister.

The major drawback in the book is the lack of analysis or at least historically moulded informed guesses as to the reasons behind the rising tide of totalitarian tendencies across the world. While Professor Mukherjee has touched briefly upon the economic meltdown of 2008 and the growing threat of Islamist fundamentalism as possible reasons for the decline of liberal beliefs, these interconnections could have been explored at greater length, providing a more nuanced understanding of contemporary world politics for the reader. This would have been particularly helpful for the lay reader since Professor Mukherjee's ability to explain complex philosophical and political ideas in lucid language makes this book intellectually available to a wide range of readers. That apart, this is a most interesting book by way of introduction to the political ideology of liberalism and is sure to get the reader enthused about learning more on the subject. 

View all my reviews

Goodread Review: An Era of Darkness

An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India by Shashi Tharoor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As Indians we are taught about the British Empire in school as a significant part of our course. We are given a broad out line of the events that saw the arrival and entrenchment of the British East India Company as a powerful trading and eventually ruling power in India, the takeover of Indian rule by the British Crown, the growth of national consciousness among natives and the nationalist struggle for freedom leading up to Independence and Partition in 1947. The trajectory of our colonial history is read and reread by students in school and even in college for those who choose to take up History, to the point where a sense of weariness and boredom sets in, and one gets desensitized and tired of its repetitiveness. This is essentially because the facts are often laid out in textbooks in a very dry and empirical manner, with the intention to impart data, not provoke emotional responses. It is hardly surprising, then, that a great many youngsters grimace at the thought of reading up on our colonial history once they are no longer compelled to do so by teachers and examinations.

Shashi Tharoor's book remedies this very shortcoming in this marvelous book of his. Written in the aftermath of his 2015 debate speech in Cambridge University that went viral and thrilled the country into sitting up and thinking back on the inglorious British Raj with anger, the book is 300 pages of un-putdownable prose filled to the brim with information and eloquent arguments. The speech that sparked off this project was in support of a debate motion about whether Great Britain owed its former colonies reparations. Tharoor argued that the answer to that is an unqualified yes, and An Era of Darkness carries on this very argument. A group of Imperial apologists continue to hold to this day that the British Raj was in fact a blessing in disguise for the backward and disorganized Indians. Tharoor decimates this argument piece by painstaking piece, taking up almost every so-called English blessing to India - democracy, rule of law, a sense of nationhood, and of course the railway - to show that these were in fact often unintentional byproducts of a system of commerce and governance that was built primarily to fulfill the need and more often the greed of the mother nation - Great Britain. He makes extensive use of figures and quotations from contemporaries to display the extent of British rapacity and callous disregard of the well being of natives while ensuring continuing domination by the Empire, leading to the decimation of indigenous industry and agricultural produce, loss of traditional socio-political systems, and even the occurrence of horrifying famines. He traces back many of the contemporary problems that India faces to having roots in colonial oppression, most significantly the communal issues in India and widespread shortage of national resources. Ultimately, he zeroes in on the English language, the game of cricket and the drinking of tea as the only lasting legacies of value from the Raj; a careful reading of the narrative so far describing the extent of damage done to the national character and condition by the British during their imperial days would make it evident how piteously inadequate and almost ironic such a legacy is.

An Era of Darkness imbues life and soul in a subject that often runs the risk of growing stale to the Indian of the 21st century. Tharoor of course is a gifted storyteller; the book is a joy to read as much for the lilting flow of language as it is for the cogent argumentation it presents. It will be worth a read by anyone who has an interest in History, and even the professional scholar should be impressed by the extent of research and substantiation of arguments with relevant data that has gone into the book - unless of course it is one of those scholars who expect all 'academic work' to be cut and dried and tear-inducing!

The book should be read by Indians as a reminder of our legacy and all its horrors, but perhaps more importantly, by the inhabitants of that erstwhile coloniser, Great Britain, to make them aware of the role their ancestors played in reducing one of the oldest and grandest and richest civilizations of the world to such lowly depths of poverty and backwardness. It is important that they realise the inhumanity of imperialism, lest they start considering it a favourable and even glorious feat, as a section of Britain is wont to do today.

View all my reviews

How I Came to Write a Paper on The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard

I took up History for my undergraduate studies because I love the subject. But in the last two and half years I have not written almost anything related to my subject, despite Baba urging me time and again to do so, and even supplying me with ideas about what I could write on. Hopefully I will  get around to working on one or two of them before I wrap up my formal education in History. Today though, I want to post something rather special and very dear to me. 

Term papers and regular written assignments should be a part of every academic curriculum. It isn't in my college though, particularly in our department, adding to an ever-growing list of complaints that many of us have against the department. But I don't want to gripe today. We did finally get a chance to try our hands at writing a term paper this semester for one of our papers on Modern Europe. The paper spans the time period between 1789 and 1848, a time of epoch making changes that the historian Eric Hobsbawm so rightly termed the Age of Revolutions. Our professor asked us to submit a paper on any event or aspect that would fall within the purview of our course.

The task was as daunting as it was thrilling. It was quite difficult narrowing down on any one topic from a period as intense and diverse as this. On top of that there were constraints of practicality - as an undergraduate student trying her hands at her first term paper with limited access to source material, and more importantly, time, there was only so much that could be done. Many of us came up with grandiose paper ideas in the initial excitement of the task and our race to impress the professor with originality, but these were quickly dashed when the paucity of time and resources as well as expertise dawned on us. 

How I came about writing on this topic is itself a funny story. This was in fact the first paper idea that had sprung to my mind; I have a distinctly easier time working with literature-oriented ideas, so this is hardly surprising. But my seniors warned me that the professor had a reputation for actively disliking the use of literature as source. I reluctantly gave up my plan and set about planning a paper with a rather convoluted theme involving deep history, environment and colonialism. I did not understand the idea very clearly - it was suggested by a senior - and went on postponing the work. So imagine my delight when the professor made a casual remark in class one day about how nobody in my batch seemed interested in working on literary topics. I literally jumped up from my seat with my hand in the air, and within five minutes it was fixed; I was going to work on Brigadier Gerard after all. Talk about lucky breaks!

For the next three days I worked harder than I had in the previous two years combined, and by the fourth day I was done, and in the nick of time too.I am rarely completely satisfied with my writings, but this one is an exception. I feel this is one of the best essays I have ever written. I was so pleased when I went through it, I realised that it did not matter to me whether or not the professor liked the paper and graded it well. He did in fact like it though, and while I generally find self aggrandizement distasteful, for one I will say that getting the highest marks in class was well deserved.

I hope some people will enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Baba has to be thanked of course, not merely because I consulted him constantly while writing the paper, but also because my love for literature as well as my inheritance of books comes from him. 

Also, it is Baba who suggested I put this one up on the blog. Thank God he is constantly after me about keeping this blog alive!

 History Through the Lens of Literature:

The Napoleonic Era as portrayed in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard

There is much debate among scholars over the appropriateness of treating literature as a historical source. Historians of the realist imperialist school of thought refuse to accept literature as a valid source, while liberal post-modernists are more open to the idea. However, sometimes the best practice may be to draw one’s own conclusions about such matters. For that, making a study of a famous piece of literature in terms of its historical validity is a useful step.   

Napoleon Bonaparte once commented “what a novel my life is”. Indeed, the Napoleonic era continued to colour the brightest minds of the world throughout the nineteenth century. The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a wonderful example of Napoleon’s impact on literature. Based at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, these are tales of adventure as narrated by the protagonist Etienne Gerard, now an old man living in Paris, about his days in the Emperor’s army. Across seventeen short stories, Conan Doyle, claimed by many to be the greatest storyteller in English literature, brought to life a period of great turmoil and flux making use of one of the most quintessential aspects of war: the soldier who tells tales to the enthralled civilians back home.  The tales work as a reflection of real battles fought by Napoleon’s army across Europe. Etienne Gerard, a Hussar in the Grande Armée during the Napoleonic Wars, originally from Gascony like Dumas’s d’Artagnan, spent the most glorious days of his soldiering life with the Hussars of Conflans. The young and dashing Gerard was the bravest soldier and the most gallant gentleman in all of France, or so he believed. The most outstanding quality about Gerard was his vanity, but his courage made a close second. Brigadier Gerard is probably the most loveable character created by Conan Doyle, and his astonishing conceit and remarkable thick headedness is not only forgivable but even enjoyable for the reader who savours a jolly good yarn based in one of the most exciting periods of human history.

The concern of this paper, however, remains the validity of the book in terms of its historical accuracy and content. And this is evident in almost every individual story in varying degrees. We learn about how Brigadier Gerard came to be a part of the Hussars in the story ‘How the Brigadier Joined the Hussars of Conflans’. The war having come to a halt in Germany but raging fiercely in Spain, Napoleon sent Gerard from the Hussars of Chamberan to serve ‘as senior captain to the Hussars of Conflans, which were at that time the 5th Army Corps under Marshal Lannes’¹ as reinforcement for the army in the Pyrenees. Here, Conan Doyle gives a very realistic picture of the second siege of Saragossa under Marshal Lannes, Napoleon’s personal friend about whom the Emperor commented that he had found the man a pygmy and left him a giant! The siege of Saragossa was symbolic of conditions throughout Spain. Doyle’s description of the city filled with hordes of Spaniard ‘soldiers, peasants, priests – all filled with the most furious hatred of the French, and the most savage determination to perish before they would surrender’ and the difficulties that the French soldiers faced in overpowering the city² is as accurate as any historian’s. Napoleon’s peninsular conquest is considered by many scholars as one of the early signs indicating his eventual downfall. As Gunther Rotherberg points out, the great general failed to take into account the potential of a popular resistance supported by the armed forces with a secure supply route, while also being deluded about the precarious food supplies for his own army and the difficulty in movement and communication in Spain³. Ultimately, Napoleon’s ‘Spanish Ulcer’ played a significant role in his inevitable demise.

The same story also brings to light other factors of interest to the historian. In describing his adventures, Brigadier Gerard made repeated mention of the reputation of the Spaniards as cruel and prone to torture and mutilation. It is significant that of all the various reconnaissance missions that the brigadier carried out, this was the only one where he was given a vial of poison which he could use in case of capture. The Spanish reputation was borne out when Gerard found Monsieur Hubert, the French soldier whose mission Gerard had been instructed to complete, crucified to the walls of a house. The stories based on the Emperor’s peninsular conquests bring out various aspects of war as a whole, particularly the dark and inhuman sides of it, the side that the protagonist remained blissfully unconcerned about in the most part, focusing rather on the glory and honour of war. In Spain Gerard met some opportunists of the lowest order, ‘bandits, who embody atavistic values that enlightened Europeans thought they had seen the last of, and which can be seen in Goya’s paintings, the Disasters of War.’ In Spain he met El Cuchillo or ‘The Knife’, an ordinary man whose inner monster had been awakened by war, who was now a notorious guerrilla chief who found pleasure in blank verse and torture, such as burying French soldiers alive.⁴ Characters and events remained close enough to the reality to be an honest reflection of the experience of the Grande Armée in its peninsular encounters.

Throughout his stories, Conan Doyle placed his brigadier in battles and events the accuracy of which would make the historian proud. In ‘How the Brigadier Took the Field Against the Marshall Millefleurs’ Gerard was seen taking orders from Marshal Massena after his 1810 offensive was stopped by the English army at the Lines of Torres Vedras, lines of forts built in secrecy on the order of the Duke of Wellington to defend Lisbon from French conquest. The Marshal’s frustration at having to retire from a failed conquest is likely to have been very close to what the real Marshal must have experienced.⁵ It was to Torres Vedras that Gerard was sent by Massena to ascertain the distribution of  Wellington’s troops in ‘The Crime of the Brigadier’, and in ‘How the Brigadier Saved the Army’, he saved the troops of General Clausel from annihilation by lighting up the signal beacon for the general to fall back upon the main army, while himself coming face to face with the infamous guerrilla chief named Manuelo,‘ The Smiler’, and just about escaping with his life.

The Brigadier Gerard stories are a fascinating study of the prevalent view of the French and the English of each other, particularly to a student of cultural history. What is interesting to remember is that the author himself was an Englishman, and yet his hero belonged to the opposing camp. Gerard was excessively vain and conceited, a perception that Christopher Coker calls ‘a stock trope for a Frenchman in English literature, particularly in the late nineteenth century’⁶, and yet the Englishmen found in him a greatly loveable hero. Throughout his adventures, Gerard displayed admiration towards the English in various ways, particularly to individuals who he found honourable and came to consider as friends. In ‘How the Brigadier Held the King’ Gerard was rescued from the murderous El Cuchillo by ‘Milor the Hon. Sir Russell, Bart.’ with whom he struck up an easy camaraderie, a camaraderie that turned to partnership in the adventure of trying to capture Marshal Millefleurs, where the Bart had come with the same orders from Wellington as Gerard had from Massena: to hang the troublesome marshal. His disposition towards the English continued to stay unchanged even when he was captured by Wellington and sent as a prisoner to Dartmoor, from where he broke out and tried to escape before being recaptured and informed that he was in fact to be released and sent back to France in exchange of a Colonel Mason (How the King Held the Brigadier). The brigadier was particularly appreciative of the Englishman’s ‘sportsmanship’ even though his complete inability to understand English customs made him a source of extreme irritation to the English; in ‘The Brigadier in England’ he injured his English hosts while playing cricket and boxing through his misinterpretation of the rules of the games, and in ‘The Crime of the Brigadier’ he inadvertently destroyed a traditional English fox-hunt by killing the fox, earning for himself ‘a deep, steady and unchangeable hatred’ from Wellington’s army! And yet he earned the begrudging respect of several Englishmen for his heightened sense of honour.⁷ In the study of war, literature can sometimes be the best instrument to bring out the nuanced and contradictory interplay of human emotions between opposing camps, usually through the interaction of individuals.

The Brigadier Gerard stories are surprisingly accurate in the placing of some of Napoleon’s greatest Marshals. One learns about the various charismatic leaders from Gerard’s eloquently expressed admiration for them. There is repeated mention of Marshal Massena, ‘a thin, sour little fellow’ who was not a favourite with his men or his officials for he was a miser, who ‘clutched on to his positions as he did to his strong box, and it took a very clever man to loosen him from either.’⁸ Of Marshal Ney’s bravery in the Russian conquests Gerard said with great respect ‘one man above all rose greater as the danger thickened, and won a higher name amidst disaster than he had done when he led our van to victory’, calling him ‘Ney, the red-maned Lion’.⁹ Of Marshal Lannes he spoke highly in context of the siege of Saragossa. And yet despite the ample praise for their courage, there is sneaking criticism where it is due, worthy of any self-respecting historian. About the failed attack on the Lines of Torres Vardes, the brigadier made no bones about admitting that internal feud between Napoleon’s marshals led to missed opportunities. In his words, ‘Ney hated Massena, and Massena hated Junot, and Soult hated them all.’¹⁰ Of others one finds scattered references throughout the stories: Murat and Berthier and Mortier and Grouchy to name a few.

With the Emperor himself the brigadier had few encounters, but they were enough to set in stone his love and loyalty for Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte was a charismatic leader who had the power to draw the allegiance of the French not merely to the state but to him personally, through the Imperial Catechism, creating an almost cult status among his followers. He issued grandiloquent statements before and after battles, paying little heed to the truth and often fudging facts and figures to suit his conveniences. In the words of Gregory Fremont Barnes, ‘Napoleon was an unashamed self-publicist whose power rested on his extraordinary capacity to captivate his soldiers with his undoubted charisma and to win the hearts of the French people at large by feeding them on that heady diet whose appeal the revolutionary generation could scarcely resist: la Gloire - glory achieved on the battlefield’¹¹This feeling of absolute loyalty is evident in Brigadier Gerard, who considered laying down his life for the Emperor a matter of great honour. Napoleon himself chose Gerard for certain mission because of his unquestioning loyalty, such as in ‘How the Brigadier Slew the Brothers of Ajaccio’, where the Emperor needed to assassinate in secret some men from his Corsican past who had come back to haunt him, and in ‘How the Brigadier was Tempted by the Devil’ where Napoleon decided to test the loyalty of his men before setting them on a very delicate and dangerous mission. And yet the unequivocal devotion of the soldier to the Emperor remained unfortunately lopsided in its depth of emotion. There is an evidence of Tolstoyean irony in Gerard’s stories, in his lifelong faith and service to an Emperor who had little respect for him.¹² Napoleon chose Gerard for some of the most sensitive missions because he perceived the latter to be simple minded despite his enormous courage, even awarding him the special medal of honour along with the dubious honour of calling him the man with the thickest head and the stoutest heart in his army.¹³ Napoleon was callous towards the suffering and losses his army faced for him, and remained unmoved by the fact that his conquests cost France the flower of a generation.

Napoleon’s Russian invasion of 1812 was the beginning of the end of the great French empire that he had envisioned. The invasion was riddled with various problems from the start. The most prominent were the lack of supply lines; nine large depots had been laid from Konigsberg to Warsaw, but available means of transportation could not keep up with the advancing army. Also, the massive size of the army and its frontage required the creation of new command structures and army groups. The technical limitations of the era prevented either problems from being resolved.¹⁴ Brigadier Gerard and his Hussars never went to Moscow, staying back at the communication lines of Borodino. In ‘How the Brigadier Rode to Minsk’, Gerard spoke in sorrow and resignation of the squalor and devastation he witnessed all around. Conan Doyle used a Tolstoyean eye to describe the long, black lines of retreating soldiers, snaking their way across the white plain.¹⁵ It was in Russia that the French army faced the ruthless Cossacks, who laughed at them in their misery and hung around them like wolves, ready to pounce at the slightest sign of weakness. This air of gloom makes this one of the saddest stories of the collection, with Gerard’s own despondency almost a signal to the imminent downfall of his beloved emperor.

It is a fitting end to the adventures of the brave brigadier that he would be given an important mission in that final hour, the Battle of Waterloo – a mission that he failed to carry out due to fateful turn of events – eventually bringing a close to his glorious days in the Grande Armée with a final valiant effort to protect his Emperor from capture at the hour of defeat by impersonating him to detract his English pursuers. Though history dictates that this effort had to be in vain, the brigadier earned what was possibly the greatest compliment of his life from his enemies; the Englishman failed to realise he was an imposter and exclaimed in admiration that the French Emperor was “such a horseman and such a swordsman I have never seen.”¹⁷ By the time of Waterloo, Napoleon was well past his prime. He was wearied from years of campaigning and a year of exile, and ill on the very day of the battle. Waterloo led to Napoleon's final downfall, restored the balance of power in Europe and ushered in an era of nearly four decades of peace on the Continent, unquestionably qualifying the battle as one of history's most decisive.¹⁶

The last of the Brigadier Gerard stories holds that poignant note marking the end of something great. In ‘How Etienne Gerard Said Good-Bye to His Master’, we read of an attempt by an old faithful servant of the Emperor, with Gerard’s help, to rescue Napoleon from his exile in St. Helena, only for Gerard to arrive at the moment of his master’s death. It is the last tale that the old soldier told his eager audience before going back to Gascony in his twilight years. This is the condition of many soldiers spanning age and space, veterans unable to let go of the past, civilians but ‘with an air and manner’, relics of a time long gone. In his closing chapter, Conan Doyle successfully brought to light the human cost of war, not merely in terms of those who die, but those who are forced to reintegrate into civilian society, a mere shadow of their battlefield selves.

 Like all works of literature, The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard was essentially written to provide hours of enjoyable reading to the lay person, not to serve as a tool for scholarship for the historian. The tales are not a fair and balanced exposition of the Napoleonic wars or the French society of the time. The chronology is not linear, and there are so many fictitious incidents that sieving out fact from fiction is a tedious exercise. One glaring shortcoming of the stories is that the human cost of the Napoleonic epic is completely ignored. In his blind devotion to his master, the brigadier overlooked the fact that Napoleon, having extinguished liberty by enslaving half of Europe and fraternity by declaring war on the other half, had only just paid lip service to equality, even in his army.¹⁷ The stories are fundamentally action packed adventures of one soldier and not a representation of the army as a whole.

However, a student of history may yet do well to pay some attention to such works of literature in one’s studies. As has been adequately illustrated in this paper, Brigadier Gerard is an excellent example of all that literature has to offer to history, if only one knows how to extract reality from the generous coating of imagination that is any good work of fiction.  

GoodReads Review: My Name is Red

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The rating reflects more on my personal lack of interest for the subject than the quality of the book itself. Based at the end of the 16th century in Istanbul, My Name is Red is a murder mystery, a love story, and a picturesque account of life in the capital city of the Ottoman Empire. But essentially it is a story about art. It is the story of miniature painting, the Islamic art of embellishment, and the increasing influence of the Western artistic ideas on miniature artists.

The story develops around a group of miniature artists in the royal workshop of Istanbul who are commissioned by an ambitious old ambassador to create a 'secret' book for the Sultan influenced by the Western style of painting, considered sinful by Islam. The inner turmoil of the miniaturists egged on by a popular orthodox Muslim preacher who is against all paintings, storytelling and coffeehouses leads to the murder of one artist by another, soon to be followed by a second murder. The book wonderfully depicts the rising influence of Western thought in the Ottoman empire that eventually leads to a loss of identity for them as a whole, and particularly the miniature form of art. There are several parallel themes that run in tandem, a particularly evident one being that of motherhood and the love for progeny. Shekure, the main female character of the novel has two sons, Orhan and Shevket. Interestingly the author took these names from his own family; his mother and older brother are called Shekure and Shevket. My Name is Red is a brief introduction to the philosophical outlook of the Turkish people, with their overwhelming awe for their Sultan and their constant preoccupation with Islam at every aspect of life.

The book will serve as an art lover's paradise with its focus on painting and embellishment. It is an enlightening introduction to the world of miniature painting, and the description of the miniaturists at work are vivid. One gets a glimpse into the lives of miniature artists right from their apprenticeship which began when they were mere children, the lengthy and strenuous training that they underwent, often coupled with harsh punishments from their masters, before becoming masters themselves, and their inexorable loss of eyesight with age due to the extreme strain the fine painting put on their eyes. The relationship between masters and apprentices is explored, and the various aspects - that of student, son, friend and even lover - are brought to the forefront. There are extensive and minute word pictures of different works of art that are sure to delight all art enthusiasts. Unfortunately, this was the very aspect of the book that I found exceedingly tedious. I enjoy looking at works of art as much as the next person, but repeated descriptions in intricate details tire me out and take away from my reading experience. I would recommend this book only to those who are keen on reading about art for its own sake; otherwise you are likely to be as exasperated as I became halfway into the book. 

View all my reviews

Young Historians' Symposium 2016

Everybody living in India who has not been living under a rock for the past few weeks knows that a great debate has been raging about anti-nationalism and sedition, which had its birthplace in JNU university with the arrest of their Student’s Union president Kanhaiya Kumar. Unsurprisingly, students at Jadavpur University have stood up in solidarity with those demanding the release of Kanhaiya Kumar, and as a result the campus has been rife with discord and disharmony. In fact, students have become so preoccupied with the issue at hand that another landmark event has been nearly overshadowed. The department of history organized the first student’s seminar held over two days. This is remarkable not only because it was the brainchild of undergraduate students and organized by themselves, but also because I overheard out head of the Department comment that such a large-scale seminar is not even organized by the department of history in JNU, the most elite university of the country.

It gives me immense pleasure to claim that the Young Historians’ Symposium – as the seminar has been named by common consensus – was a success, and the response was remarkable given that it was the first time such a seminar was being organized by the department. Held over the 16th and 17th of February, we had paper presentations by students from various departments and institutions, and a debate to end with on the last day. Though it was nowhere near a full house, the audience that was present was still significant, especially since attendance was not compulsory. The kind of hard work and preparation put in by the participants was commendable. But I will come to this in a bit. For me, the success of the seminar brings pleasure on a deeper level. It is a sign of the enthusiasm and dedication of the students of the department, and the loyalty and love we have for our department despite the endless barrage of complaints and frustrations each one of us vents about it every day. The Economics department has been organizing their own students’ seminar for a number of years now, and the International Relations department also has numerous seminars each year. So it is good and right that the department of history should catch up in this regard, not least because it is a matter of departmental prestige and pride.

I remember the first day we heard about the seminar. It must have been some time in October, or was it November? My friends and I were lazing about, as we do, after classes ended, when I suddenly got a call from a senior asking us to join a delegation from the department that was headed to the vice-chancellor’s office for a meeting. We had no idea what this was about, but the prospect sounded exciting, and ever since Hok kolorob visiting the VC en masse has became a statement of protest, an expression of independence in the minds of many, so we joined the group without much ado. On the way we managed to squeeze some information out of those in the know: a departmental seminar was to be organized in February in Gandhi Bhavan, one of the auditorium halls in the university, and we were going to request (read coerce!) the VC into allowing us a waiver on the hall charges for the seminar. That sounded exciting, and I think mentally many of us prepared for a shouting match of sorts. That turned out to be completely unnecessary though, because the VC was happy to oblige. Mr. Suranjan Das, our present vice-chancellor, is himself a historian by qualification, and as soon as he heard our request he called up the exchequer and got us the required waiver. “Amar i department, eta kore dao” or something along those lines over the phone, and it was done. Thus the foundation was laid.

For much of the last months of 2015 and throughout early 2016, the seminar was on the top of a lot of peoples’ minds. The idea had first been proposed by some students of the third year, and naturally they were the most closely involved. Since my friends and I have quite a rapport with some of them, we used to hear first hand news about the progress made and the obstacles faced by them. As is the case in every group, some people work themselves weary, others sit and enjoy the fruit. Those in the former category happen to be my friends, so I often heard them fuming about the attitude of classmates and others involved, the tendency to upstage each other and the unfairness shown by those in power. Hearing them talk about their troubles, I often wondered why they bothered to take so much responsibility in the first place, especially since it was such a thankless task most of the time. But I suppose some people cannot help it; they just have to keep at it, no matter what.

Formal meetings about the seminar started taking place sometime in late October. Very few people from the first year were present. Nobody seemed interested in getting involved. The standard excuse was “We are just going to watch this year.” Be that as it may, a couple people, myself included, volunteered. In the first meeting the volunteers were appointed to specific committees. I was made part of the fund-raising committee. Somebody joked that I was now to be the official beggar of the class, chasing everyone for money for the seminar! There were about a dozen committees to begin with, ranging from abstract collection and report-writing to sponsorship and collaboration and food committees. More were added in later meetings – our HOD decided that a separate committee was required for serving tea during breaks! – and afterwards I was also made a member of the ‘flying squad’ to be in charge of the law and order situation during the seminar. Not that I had to do anything on the seminar days! But it was fun having my name on paper!

The bit that I remember most clearly about that first meeting was the debate over what the seminar was going to be called. This was after the professors had left. The students gathered around in a tight circle and suggestions started flowing. There was more fooling around than anything else, but the common consensus was that the name should not be a repetition of the seminar names used by any other department, and also state clearly that this was an initiative of the history department. ‘Young Historians’ was almost agreed upon, but ‘Meet’ was clichéd, and so were some of the other terms suggested. Eventually the gathering broke up and the discussion was carried on to the Facebook page started for the seminar. Travelling to Durgapur the next morning, the word ‘Symposium’ occurred to me. I suggested it on Facebook, and everybody liked it. So now I can claim with some pride that the seminar organized by the department has been named by me (though I try not to strut too much about it: this was a joint effort and my contribution was minuscule).

I will not be going into the details of every single meeting; though all of them are a perfect mixture of exciting and hilarious in my mind, it will be a tedious narrative for the readers. Suffice it to say that we met a number of times over the next couple of months, and though I did not have much to offer during the meetings myself, I found it interesting to keep updated on the progress made in terms of paper submission and collaboration with other universities and arrangement of sponsorship and things like that. The one down side of the seminar though was that the seniors became really busy with all the preparations and could spare almost no time at all to hang out with us. I enjoy spending time with them, and so I missed that.

And then, and then! Finally it was February the 16th. Actually, my friends and I had been all hyper for days before D-Day, planning out our attires to the minutest details (girls will be girls!). I must admit somewhat shamefacedly that on 16th I spent more time in front of the mirror dolling up than I usually do in a month. I was there at the venue by ten in the morning. A handful of the seniors had stayed back on campus the previous night to get things ready. It had been a busy night for them with little sleep, but my, did they look handsome that morning! Or maybe it was just me; all that departmental pride and loyalty was getting projected on the organizers. Anyway, we were soon inside the hall, and made ourselves comfortable in a nice shadowy corner. I had been given the responsibility to hand out food coupons to my classmates, but apart from that I had little to do, so I could very well concentrate on the seminar.

On the first day there were three technical sessions, on local and regional history, state and warfare in history and society and culture from pre-modernity to modernity. There were five speakers in each session chaired by various professors of our department and other universities too. From the first session, my favourite paper was one on the cultural and religious elements in the making of Vishnupur in 17th century Bengal by two students of our department. The speakers were eloquent and delivered well-researched papers, and even had pictures to display at the end of the session. The speaker who eventually went on to win the Best Paper Presentation award was also from this session, a student from the Department of Sociology from Presidency University, who spoke the connections of the goddess Kali and the naming of the city ‘Kolkata’. Another very interesting paper was also delivered by a student from the same department, titled ‘The evolution of wrong: on the question of moral turpitude among the peoples of Bengal’. Though this paper was, unsurprisingly, more on the lines of a sociological discourse on gender roles in terms of the creation of various taboos in the Bengali society, it was a well thought-out presentation and very interesting.

The next session, following a tea break where we were provided with food packets from the cake shop Mio Amore (a sponsorship that involved a lot of running from pillar to post, or so I hear), was the one on military history, and I must confess that I was not paying a lot attention during this. But the one paper that I listened to and found interesting was on non-state armed groups and their potential as state builders. The final session of the day was after yet another break, and this one was important for us, because we had a classmate presenting a paper in this session. Anwit Shahi from first year presented a paper titled ‘Protestant ideologies and statecraft – Ashoka’s Buddhism and Henry VIII’s Anglicanism’. He was wonderful, and this also happened to be the paper most understandable to the students of UG1 since the subject was close to what we have already studied. Apart from Anwit, there was also Anupam Da from the second year who presented a paper on cricket in colonial India, which was a hit among sports enthusiasts.

That was where the first day ended. We went home tired but happy, though some of us got caught up in the protest that had been organized in solidarity with JNU that evening. Anyway, on to the next day. There were two technical sessions on the 17th, the first on environment, economy and society, and the next on women’s studies. I got caught up with some work at home that day, and so I arrived late and missed out on the sessions. I did not however miss the lunch box provided that day. This again calls for praise to the seniors, some of whom themselves handled the entire arrangements right from shopping for rations to distributing the boxes for nearly three hundred people. Post lunch, there was the debate – Dialectic – and the motion proposed by the house was ‘Donald Trump is a product of American racism, just as Hitler was a product of German anti-semitism’. Two of my classmates – Manami Mondal and Annewesa Ghosh spoke against the motion, and both were very good. It was an interesting debate, and the coordinators did their job wonderfully. Eventually the majority of the audience as well as the judges seemed to be of the opinion that the arguments of the defender teams were stronger than the opposition. It was a fitting wrapping up of the seminar.

All those months of preparation and anticipation, and it was over in forty eight hours! But they were a wonderful forty eight hours, and already I cannot wait for the seminar to happen again next year. The students of the department hope to make this an annual event, as with the Economics department seminar. Next time round, I hope to be able to take a more active part in the business of organizing the seminar. This time, my participation had been token at best. The one regret that I have is not being able to present a paper this time. This was because of some miscommunication towards the beginning, as I was under the impression that members of any committee were not allowed to present papers. When I found out I could in fact present one, there were hardly seven days left until the deadline. So next time I am most definitely presenting a paper; and now that I have a year to decide and work on a topic, there will be no dearth of time.

The contribution of the third year students was phenomenal, as it was they who did practically everything, right from coming up with the idea of the seminar. Dipro da and Vishal da deserve a special mention – they looked after almost every aspect of the seminar. Of course were many others too, whom I would have mentioned by name if I knew them! As it is, the JU Young Historians’ Symposium is now a reality, and will, God willing, continue to take place every year and benefit students of every batch to come. To think that we were there at the start!...just suppose I come to attend one fifty years later?

Anwit being challenged with questions

Dialectic - Annewesa speaking

YHS 2016 professors and volunteers

Training to be Peer Guides

In every human being’s life, there are some ordinary, forgettable days, and some days that stand out because something unusual happens. And then there are days that get etched so deeply in one’s heart, that whenever one closes one’s eyes one gets transported back to those days, and relives it in its entirety. The details do not fade with time; if anything, they only become brighter and sharper, and one can think back to individual incidents that made the days as incredible as they were. It has just been two days, but I can safely claim that 28^th, 29^th and 30^th November were three such indelible days of my life, memories that I shall cherish forever.

All of this began sometime last week when our History teacher informed us about a peer guide training workshop for an international travelling exhibition organized by the Anne Frank House of Amsterdam in collaboration with the Seagull Foundation for the Arts in Bhowanipur, Kolkata. The workshop was voluntary, and interested students had to submit their names. It sounded quite interesting, and History being my favourite subject, I instantly put my name down for it. A few days later, we were informed that three of my classmates and I had been selected from school to attend the workshop, which was to be held on 28^th and 29^th of November, from 10 am to 5pm.

On Thursday, the four of us reached the venue from school. They were depending on me for directions because I had looked the place up on Google Maps, and fortunately for us, we managed to reach the place without getting hopelessly lost on the way!

The first thing that struck me when we reached the place was that it was an old-ish, ordinary house. I felt a little let down, but my spirits quickly revived when on entering we were ushered into a room full of books and paintings. It had a wonderful smell so characteristic of new books and fresh pages, that no book lover could possibly remain gloomy in such an ambience. There were chairs laid out for the students. There were four participating schools: La Martinere for Boys, Lakshmipat Singhania Academy, one boy from Calcutta International School, and the four of us from Modern High School for girls.

After all of us had settled down, we were welcomed by members of The Seagull Foundation, and introduced to the two ladies, Ms Priya Machado and Ms Louise (I never caught her surname!), who had come down from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam to organize the exhibition, and to Mr. Aaron Peterer, who was to conduct the training workshop. Aaron took over from there. The first thing he told us was that he was not a teacher, and we should address him as just Aaron, no Mr. Peterer or Sir. I mention this as though it was a seemingly insignificant incident, I kept feeling distinctly uncomfortable addressing someone years my senior by his first name, since by Indian custom I usually refer to someone his age as kaku (uncle) or at least dada (elder brother)!

Right from the beginning, the workshop was conducted in a very interactive manner. The first round was the introductory round, where Aaron divided us into groups according to our birth dates and made us share our names, their meanings and funny anecdotes about our names. It was while we were doing this that he reminded us of something very important, something that was the crux of the exhibition: whenever we come across a stranger, we can safely assume one commonality between each other, a name. No matter how different the other person is from you,she or he is bound to have a name, so why not concentrate on finding out more common threads between each other, rather than differences?

After that we were taken to the actual spot where the exhibition would be set up. Aaron showed us how to make the stands and set up the exhibition panels, and then we ourselves put up the exhibition. It felt wonderful, knowing that it was our own labour that would finally bring the exhibition to the visitors. The four of us Modernites worked swiftly and efficiently, and very soon we had set up all the panels in the last room. We were praised by Ms Machado and Louise for our work, and felt all proud and happy.

After we were done setting up the exhibition, we went back to our room. Then began the actual discussions about the subject matter of the exhibition. Aaron began by asking us the name of the exhibition, and it was extremely embarrassing because not one of us could recall it! The name was “Anne Frank- A History for Today”. That day, we concentrated mainly on Anne Frank’s life and the world war. We were shown a documentary film on Anne Frank’s life which showed us pictures from her childhood, her time in the Secret Annexe and the one video recording that there is of her: a chance video clip of her leaning out of her window overlooking a newly-wed couple whose video was actually being shot.

Afterwards we discussed the Second World War as the background of Anne’s story, and why her diary was considered to be one of the most important accounts of the lives of Jews during the Third Reich. We were then given a catalogue of the exhibition that contained details about the pictures used in the panels. Then, we were randomly grouped and asked to look at some of these pictures and select the favourite of the group among them. We had to prepare our own poster with the selected picture as the focal point, and think of questions we could ask regarding that picture. Later we realized that it was actually an exercise to introduce us to the methods used while guiding a group of visitors around an exhibition, but at that point none of us were too sure what to make of the whole exercise. We were given chart papers, colours and other art material to use for the posters. Aaron kept going around, inspecting each table. I say inspecting, but he was in no way strict or authoritarian. In fact, he seemed to be amused by our work. He kept hovering around my group’s table and smirking at our progress, and occasionally teasing us about our creative skills! He finally named us “the artists’ group”, because we were too busy drawing a border to the poster to actually come up with proper questions regarding the picture of our choice! The first day ended with our discussing the posters in front of the other groups, and Aaron asked us to arrive half an hour early the next day, which we Modernites were all too glad to do.

The next day we spent more time discussing the relevance of Anne Frank’s diary in today’s world, because that was the whole point of the exhibition. We discussed why Anne Frank should be called a history for today, and why our generation would do well to learn lessons from the past. We were shown another documentary called “Eye Witnesses”, where we saw the interviews of Anne’s father Otto Frank, and Miep Gies, one of the four of Otto Frank’s employees who had helped hide the Frank family and four other Jews in the Secret Annexe. Also, throughout the day we were given practical advice about being a good peer guide, and at one point were asked to make another poster and jot down all the qualities essential in a good guide. We were taught how to deal with “obnoxious students” who made it a point to disrupt the tour, and how to keep the audience engaged and interested. We also learnt that we should not simply lecture the audience about the panels in the exhibition, but rather ask them to participate by asking relevant questions and encouraging active discussions. Aaron told each one of us to mentally create a red thread with about fifteen to twenty five pictures in the entire exhibition to have a connecting line between the different panels, which would help us carry on guiding in case we lose thread at any point. He once again divided us into groups and asked us to practise guiding each other. By the time it was five in the evening, all of us were feeling quite confident about guiding. Just before dispersal, we were given certificates from the Anne Frank House for having successfully completed the training session.

The workshop had officially ended, but the exhibition was to be inaugurated on the next day, at five in the evening. All the Modern High girls volunteered to come. Out of us, the Anne Frank House representatives randomly chose me to read out a passage from the Diary for the inauguration ceremony. I was supposed to be there by four thirty, and accordingly I reached Bhowanipur around that time. Then, like the certifiable dolt that I am, I managed to lose my way and reached the house twenty minutes later! The Dutch embassy had already arrived for the inauguration, and Ms. Machado quickly showed me which passage I would have to read out. I practised a couple of times, and then went to look for my classmates, who I found guiding our school’s director Ms. Devi Kar around the exhibition. The inauguration started at around five thirty, and continued for about twenty minutes. I was called to read my part, and was greatly praised by many people. Then an elderly gentleman struck up a conversation with me. Among other things he asked me where he could buy a copy of Anne Frank’s diary in Kolkata to gift his grandchildren, and I gifted him an extra copy that I happened to have bought on the way to the Seagull Foundation that very evening! Afterwards there was a violin recital, and lots of tasty snacks. A boy from La Marts and I even had a glass of red wine each, much to the amusement of the adults present! The evening ended on a sweet note with me getting a picture clicked with Aaron, and one with Ms. Machado and Louise. The time had passed all too soon, and though I was happy, I felt more than a twinge of regret when I left the building for the last time.

This post will not be complete unless I dedicate a separate paragraph to Aaron Peterer. I have not attended many workshops, but instinctively I can feel that it will be difficult for anyone anywhere to conduct one as perfectly as Aaron did. Right at the outset he had made clear that he was not an official teacher of History, but in spite of that the two days with him gave me some of the finest History lessons I have ever attended. In fact, his training was second only to my father’s History classes, and that is saying a lot. The most wonderful thing about Aaron was how easily he made all of us feel comfortable dealing with him. He was cheerful and friendly, but not overly personal. He gave me the feeling that he was addressing me individually, and the wonderful thing was that all of my friends felt the same way. What better sign can there be of a fantastic teacher? He had this subtle way of instructing us without ever seeming to deliver lectures. And the best thing was, he taught us by example, and while listing the qualities of a perfect guide, many of us felt that we would have to add “like Aaron” at the end of our posters.

Aaron, if you are reading this somewhere, I would like to thank you with all my heart, and on behalf of all my friends, who no doubt feel the same way. The workshop would never have been a tenth as good as it was if you were not there to train us. Thank you, and God willing, may we get the opportunity to train under you many more times in future.

Aaron and I

Louise, Ms. Machado and I

The Silk Route and More

On Friday the 21^st I had a rather new experience. The class eleven History students of our school were taken to the iLEAD auditorium to watch a documentary film on the Silk Route by director Goutam Ghosh, which was followed by an interactive session with the director and others. Such things are quite common in the schools of metropolitan cities, but since my previous school has always been a very determined frog in the well, we were never taken to such events in our entire school lives.

Students from at least ten schools in Kolkata had come together to watch the screening of the first two episodes of Goutam Ghosh’s five episode documentary movie ‘Beyond the Himalayas’. In 1994, the director along with a number of other people had made an expedition following the Silk Route through Central Asia all the way to China. The movie traces their journey and their findings in five successive episodes. Theirs was the first Indian expedition through China. Other than the director himself, two other team members of the expedition, writer-director-actor Mr. Jagannath Guha, and historian Mr. Phalguni Matilal were present for the interactive session that followed the screening of the movie.

I have not watched many documentary films, so I was a little skeptical about how the movies were going to turn out. But I was pleasantly surprised, and enjoyed myself over the next few hours. The first episode sketches the route taken by the explorers, starting from Delhi, from where they were airlifted to Samarkand in Uzbekistan. From there started their car ride, tracing the entire Silk Route. Samarkand and Bukhara are two of the oldest inhabited cities of the world, and are known for the important positions that they occupy on the trade route to China. The movie has successfully captured the dusty grandeur of these two ancient cities, alive as they are with the history of millennia. Both cities throng with historical monuments, which portray predominantly Islamic architectural styles.

From Bukhara they travelled on to Fergana, which is the old capital of Babur’s kingdom in present-day Uzbekistan. Fergana is also claimed to be the Zoroastrian homeland by Zoroastrian literature. It was from Fergana that the travellers left Uzbekistan behind and crossed Kyrgyzstan to enter the Xinjiang region of China through Kashgar, where the oldest Indian handwritten manuscripts have been retrieved, and Hotan, which is famous for its jades. This is where the first episode ended.

The second episode deviated a little from the main theme, and followed the route taken by Hiuen Tsang to and from India. The episode was called On the Search for the Buddha, and it spoke of Hiuen Tsang’s journey to the birth land of the Buddha, his studies in the great Nalanda University, and his return to China to develop his own school of Buddhism there. It was shown as a journey to India by London-based producer Mr. Michael Haggiag, who was member of the original expedition, and his wife, after the expedition itself had ended. Mr. Haggiag and his wife visited Bodh Gaya and Nalanda, and it was through their eyes that the episode has mainly been depicted.

The movies as a whole were enlightening. There were so many new things that I came to know from them. For example, Hiuen Tsang is actually pronounced as ‘Xuanzang’ in Chinese. Also, the best among jades are not the ones which are a lush green, but those which are the palest and nearly white. The monks in a certain Buddhist temple in Xinjiang chant the original Sanskrit verses brought back by Hiuen Tsang as a tribute to the great traveler scholar. It was from the Chan school of Mahayana Buddhism that Zen Buddhism of Japan has been derived. The Taklamakan desert, through which the expedition journeyed, is a Persian saying that means “He who comes in does not get out”.  That now, is a really ominous name for you!

The movies were no doubt interesting, but it was the interactive session with Mr. Jagannath Guha that I enjoyed the most. Mr. Ghosh arrived late and was too stiff, and Mr. Matilal was a reticent sort, so it was Mr. Guha who did most of the talking. He shared with us many small anecdotes that had made the expedition so memorable for him. Someone from the audience asked him about how he got over the language barrier during their travels. He just shook his head and said, “But I didn’t!” He went on to tell us how body language was often the only means of communication between the natives and the travelers, and how they had at times had to resort to base tricks like bribing the policemen with cigarettes to get themselves out of fixes! While answering the queries of another member of the audience, he talked to us about how little awareness there was about India among the population of China, her largest neighbour. Of course, here he spoke of their experience of 1994, before the era of the internet. I suppose the conditions are much better now. According to him, the travelers were gaped at like extra terrestrial creatures. Some of the children on the road used to pull the hair on his arms in wonder, as they had never seen such a hirsute person before. Some old ladies rubbed his skin to see if his dark skin was painted. The ‘smarter’ ones asked the travelers whether they were from Africa!

While I was enjoying myself hugely during the event, it was highly evident that most people were not. The girls sitting behind me continued to chat and giggle among themselves throughout the entire program. After the short lunch break, I changed my seat in the hope of finding a little quieter seat somewhere. But soon, the girls sitting in the row a little way apart started fiddling with their mobiles and talking loudly. In fact, at one point a teacher of their school came up and took away their cell phones after reminding them none too gently that they had come to watch the movie, not play around with their phones. Some of my own classmates, as soon as the second episode got over, started sighing deeply and loudly expressing their thankfulness at the ‘boring’ show being finally over. I wonder why these people had opted for History in the first place when they are so fundamentally apathetic to anything outside the syllabus.

I returned from the show feeling satisfied, but I know many of them were just glad that the show had come to an end. In this context, I would like to mention a very common complaint among students about the bland and mechanized manner in which classroom teaching is done. I completely agree, newer and more interesting methods should be employed to enrich the learning experience. Having said that, I must also say that the students themselves have to be more receptive to new experiments in order to make the innovative ideas work. The primarily uninterested attitude that I saw among most of the students in the show explains why teachers and school authorities often show no interest in providing such educative and entertaining experiences for the students. Our school is trying, and so are so many others. It now rests on us students to make the best of the opportunities that we are being provided with.