Reviews

[We shall be glad to review books in all Indian languages and in English, French, and German. Books for Review should reach the office at least SIX WEEKS in advance of the day of publication of the Journal.]

ENGLISH

The World Crisis and the Problem of Peace.–ByS. D. Chitale. [International Book Service, Poona.]

The world situation–political and economic–is at present so complicated that very few are in a position to get a clear and correct grasp of it. There are innumerable currents and cross-currents affecting it, and the forecasts made of the probable transformations that it might undergo in the near future are equally innumerable. A real understanding of the subject requires an acquaintance not only with the facts of contemporary history but also with the course of events that have made contemporary history what it actually is. The above book by Mr. S. D. Chitale goes a long way in giving a lucid exposition of the great historical movements of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries that are responsible for the present crisis and it also suggests remedies by which it could be faced successfully. The book may be strongly recommended for study by the general public who are anxious to get at truth with the minimum of effort.

The author has rightly regarded the advent of machinery as the beginning of the ills of the modern age. He shows how it introduced capitalism and the twin evils of imperialism and rivalry in armaments. He gives a graphic description of the gradual process by which under the influence of these factors England, Germany, France, and the United States extended their stay over almost every part of the globe and have thus inevitably created mutual ill-will, jealousy, and hatred finally culminating in the great war of 1914-18. The close interdependence of economics and politics is clearly brought out in this as well as in the subsequent parts of the survey.

He then proceeds to explain how the delegates to the Peace Conference conspired to defeat the aims of the War as enunciated by President Wilson and how the Treaty of Versailles came to be based on a spirit of revenge instead of a spirit of justice and fair play. In his view the impossible conditions imposed on Germany by the framers of the Treaty constitute the cause of all the difficulties through which the international world has been passing during the last fifteen years. This leads him to an examination of the problem of reparations and War debts and his conclusion is that world recovery is impossible until these are completely cancelled.

One has nothing but admiration for the ability with which the author has marshalled facts and figures in support of his thesis; one cannot however say the same thing about the suggestions he makes for bringing about universal peace. He proposes to substitute a ‘World Peace Committee’ for the present ‘League of Nations’ and believes, that his machinery would prove to be a more effective instrument of peace. He is here labouring under a misapprehension as he seems to think that the nations of the world are ready to adopt a policy

of universal peace, that they are tired of war, and that war will have no place in the future progress of mankind. This is contrary to facts and the realities of the situation. Force is still necessary in this imperfect world of ours and it is sheer folly not to recognise the need for it. Moreover it is the lack of ‘Will to Peace’ that is responsible for the weakness of the League of Nations and not its defective machinery. The setting up of a new organisation is not going to bring the millennium.

Banks and the Money Market.–ByB. Ramachandra Rau, M.A., Ph.D. [Lalchand and Sons, Calcutta.]

This book by the well-known writer on Indian Banking problems consists of two parts. The first part is a reprint of four lectures on Banks and the Money Market delivered by him in the winter session of 1930-31 to the Institute of Bankers, Calcutta. The second part contains a number of appendices into which are incorporated the articles contributed to magazines by the author from time to time since 1931. They deal with the question of Silver, the Gold Standard, and the different kinds of banking institutions now carrying on work in India. Through the lectures and articles deal with a number of miscellaneous topics it is possible to discover a few basic ideas underlying them all.

The Banking organisation in modern India is not a co-ordinated system. There are numerous institutions dealing with money. Some of them are of the traditional type and have a long past behind them. The individual indigenous banker, the village sowcar, and the Nidhis do a large share of banking business. There are the joint stock banks and the foreign exchange banks modeled on similar institutions of the West. Then there are the quasi-governmental organisations like the co-operative banks and the Imperial Bank. Over and above all these there is the Government of India itself which does a good deal of banking and exchange business at home as well as abroad. But all these do not fit themselves into a well-defined and closely integrated system. Each does its work and carries on its operations in its own way and there is a veritable anarchy prevailing in the banking world. It is to this that the learned author invites the attention of his readers. He draws a contrast between the chaos that is the inevitable consequence of such a condition of affairs and the orderliness that characterises the banking system in countries like England. He also gives a picture of an ideal banking system and the wide gulf that separates the actual in India from the ideal depicted.

The establishment of a central reserve bank with ultimate control over all the banking operations in the country thus becomes an immediate necessity. A study of the book will enable one to understand the nature of such a bank and how far the proposed reserve bank approaches the standard of the requirements of the country. Those who are interested in the place of the Imperial Bank of India or of the foreign exchange banks or of the Indian joint stock banks in an India dominated by the contemplated reserve bank will find much food for thought and reflection in the latter part of the book.

As the lectures were delivered in 1930-3.1, the descriptive portion of the Indian monetary and currency system is a little out of date. What is said of the Indian Gold Bullion standard on P. 31–34 will have to be read along with Appendix 11 (A) on the linking of the rupee to inconvertible sterling at 1sh.6d. ratio. To those who have a working knowledge of the basic principles of currency and banking the book will prove to be a valuable aid in the understanding of the more complicated issues with which the world in general and India in particular are at present faced.

M. VENKATARANGAIYA, M.A.

Rise of the Christian Power in India.–By Major B. D. Basu, I.M.S. Second Edition, with 4 maps and 58 plates (one in colours). [Ramananda Chatterjee, Calcutta, pp. viii+1011. Price Rs. 15.]

"The establishment of English power in India is an ugly one. It begins in feebleness and cowardice, it closes with a course of fraud and falsehood, of forgery and treason, as stupendous as ever lay at the foundation of a great Empire. My Lord Macaulay, in that brilliant passage which opens his biographical sketch of Clive, expresses his astonishment at the little interest which we take in the story. I do not know any stronger instance of the short-sightedness of clever men when they only recognise the moral sense as something to flavour a narrative, as you might flavour a pudding with all spice or with mace. Our own consciences will long, ere this, have given the answer. . . . It is the instinctive hypocrisy of shame which has kept us Englishmen aloof from the tale of the rise of our Indian Empire. I suppose that the son of a transported convict in Sydney, whose father has won a fortune for him, who is rising in station and consideration himself, who is received at Government House, subscribes to charities, sits in front pews at church, likes nothing less than to be reminded of the notorious robberies and burglaries by which his father won for himself a free passage to the Antipodes, and if they happen to be recorded in the Newgate Calendar, would only be the more careful to exclude that exciting work from his library. Is it not so with us? Is it not in human nature that we should dislike to be reminded of the crimes which Clive and Warren Hastings, and all that shameless generation which surrounded them, committed for our benefit? I thank God that, until the Whig essayist and cabinet minister, no man had yet had the hardihood to see the picturesqueness of this shameful story, to measure its capabilities as the subject of a brilliant article in a review."

So wrote John Malcolm Ludlow, the British historian, in Volume One of his British India, Its Races and Its History. Major Basu in his present monumental work has made a mistake in not including this passage in the first chapter. Instead, he has relegated it to the epilogue. Perhaps, there is ample justification for this procedure. Any one who cares to glance through the pages of Christian Power–such is the popular name of our present work, will be struck with the absolute frankness, authority, clarity, and utter want of malice which is characteristic of Major Basu’s researches into British Indian history.

Our author’s preface on the historical method is a brilliant exposition as to the criteria and methodology necessary for any good historian. It would have done credit to any professor of history at Oxford and Cambridge when he proposes to deliver his inaugural address on his accession to the Chair of History:

"The historian must not be only a mere chronicler of facts and events and make his mind simply the mirror of reality, but he should possess the qualifications of a philosopher and scientist. He should observe and record facts, and also try to explain them. Like a scientist he should attempt the classification, generalization and explanation of facts and endeavour to detect in past events the expression of general principles and laws. Like the scientist, the historian also should frame hypotheses and theories to explain events."

It would be difficult for any student of history to exaggerate the merits of The Rise of Christian Power in India as a piece of thorough historical research. Its bulk is its forte, because space lends to an interpretation of the development of John Company till the intervention of the British Crown a kind of catastrophic vehemence. To his indefatigable energy Major Basu has brought a rare type of judicious acumen, and this double set of facultative impulses have made the present work as indispensable to the serious student of British history in India, as to the politician and nationalist in our land. Every statement is fully documented. Every document is authentic. Every footnote is replete with ruthless thoroughness. There is no getting away from Major Basu’s arguments. There is no doubting his facts. Besides being a cataract of indictments against the misrule of John Company, Major Basu’s work presents in its true light the inner history of the mammoth organization represented by this company of merchant-adventurers. I have had occasion to examine numerous histories, but never have I come across a book possessing the splendid magnificence of The Rise of Christian Power in India.

The present work has a peculiar significance to our country at this great crisis in our national history. ‘Good government can never be a safe substitute for self-government’. By throwing the history of the fortunes of the British rule in India into its proper relief, Major Basu has shown us the real strength of the Churchillian argument for the suppression of our national aspirations. It is our wealth which England wants, not the credit that she is fitting us for self-government. There is no gainsaying this fact.

Major Basu’s work, in its present edition, is divided into ninety-seven chapters. Frankly, it is impossible for a reviewer to do justice to all his findings. But as one who had occasion to study the first edition while at the University, I can say without the least hesitation that Major Basu has amply earned the gratitude of all interested in the true interpretation of British Indian history. For, The Rise of Christian Power in India is more an interpretation than a dry-as-dust chronicle of facts usually met with in text-books. It is bound to rank with such famous works as Froude’s and Green’s interpretation of English history.

In the present edition, which was revised by Major Basu just before his death, numerous errors of the first five-volume edition have been rectified. Thus it has become a great gift to his memory. Every chapter grips the reader with the sincere veracity and ruthless logic of facts which Major Basu brought to bear upon his subject. Chapter XIX dealing with the Marquess Wellesley’s treatment of the Nabob of Arcot, Chapter XXII describing his dealings with the Peshwas, Chapter XLI dealing with the Vellore Mutiny, Chapter LXI which

immortalises Bharatpur, Chapter LXXXVIII which describes the annexation of Bharatpur, seem to me to be some of the finest achievements of Major Basu in the field of historical reconstruction and re-interpretation.

Alike with Freidrich List who became famous with his National System of Political Economy, Major Basu has shown the world that without a national approach to the study and interpretation of history, all the romance, however gruelling it might be, of the past of any country cannot be fully appreciated. What Jadunath Sarkar has done for the Mughal period, what Romesh Dutt has done for the history and life of India under the Crown, Major Basu has accomplished for the interpretation of the history of the East India Company. There is only one thing which can be said about The Rise of the Christian Power in India it is a peaen to the energy, shrewdness, and sincerity of Major Basu.

Mr. Ramananda Chatterjee, the Editor of The Modern Review, is to be congratulated for bringing out this remarkable production at such a small price of Rs. 15. No pains have been spared to enhance its usefulness both to the casual and the studious reader of Major Basu.

LANKA SUNDARAM, M.A., Ph.D. (Lond.)

The Great God Waste.–ByJohn Hodgson, with illustrations by Greta Tolson and Albert Daenens; [Author, Eggington, Bedfordshire, England.]

‘A study of certain phases of the present world-wide tendency–as exemplified by Capitalist, Communist and Fascist practices–to improverish and robotise the Individual,’ writes the author at the very beginning of the book as to the nature of its contents. He was a Scientific Engineer who was employed in various parts of the world in the firms of Warship Builders, Gold Minings, Diamond Digging Companies, Railway Roads; one who has seen life in the raw in many parts of the world, in Europe, in America, in Africa, in Canada, in Asia, and this book records his reactions to the many experiences he had undergone, and illustrates, with facts and figures, what he has heard, seen and observed in his much- travelled life. It makes a thrilling reading and his knowledge is deep and profound. He started his life, as he says, with the proud and fascinating knowledge of how to mould material environment for the benefit of mankind and ends his career by setting out to write a book depicting a world full of turmoil, confusion, repression, constraint and woeful misuse of both mechanical and human powers as the result of it. He is disillusioned about the advantages of modern mechanized life and civilisation and about the false methods of making and spending the wealth of the world.

John Hodgson is no economist with any set theory to cure the present ills of human society, and he does not propound any definite scheme of reform or reconstruction. He depicts the present chaos in vivid pen-pictures, and he takes care that he does not draw much from his own Imagination. He summarises, after a careful study and clear thinking on the present muddle in the world, the Old World Order and the New World Order (as represented by the U. S. S. R.) in three simple formulae: The Capitalist civilization stands for (1) Profit-motive system, (2) Exploitation of the weak, poor and the coloured, and (3) Collective effort without individual freedom. The objective of the New World Order is; (1) Production for Use, (2) No Exploitation, and (3) Intelligent participation of the individual in the creation and sharing of the wealth produced. ‘The Great God Waste’ is in every sense a notable contribution to The Way Out of the Chaos problem that is puzzling and worrying the present-day politicians, statesmen, economists, reformers and well-wishers of humanity. The illustrations are attractive and highly suggestive. Price is not quoted.

The World Chaos and the Way Out Series: Vol. 1, Economics and Finance, and Vol. 2 Science.–By Ernest Kirk. [The National Press, Bangalore, Price Re. 1 each.]

These two slender volumes on the most burning question of the day, The World Chaos and the Way Out, challenge attention; whether they carry conviction or not is quite a different matter. The author is an idealist and an independent thinker. He views the problems of the world from the standpoint of what he calls Life, and Life to him is Truth, Reality, God, whatever you may choose to call it. This idea is not in any way new to the world but its application to the problems of politics, economics, finance, art, religion and sociology, as attempted by Mr. Kirk, is quite interesting. It provokes thought and points the way out of the present muddle. Mr. Kirk does not accept any half-way measures, he does not believe in ‘hospital treatment’ for the existing ills of humanity but wants complete and radical cure. He argues with conviction that the root of the trouble is with the individual, and that ‘the individual problem is the world problem.’ He says: ‘So far as the present world chaos is concerned I submit that the main cause for its existence is to be found in Man himself. Being himself ‘at sea’ about the purpose and meaning of his own existence, his thoughts and feelings, his longings and desires, he naturally succeeds in throwing everything around him into confusion.’ He reiterates this fact again: ‘Letonce be realised and acknowledged that the basic cause of the muddle in the world around us is due to the muddle within man himself, his failure to face and solve his own problems.’ But the solution he offers, though true and intellectually acceptable and understandable, is a little difficult of practical and immediate application to humanity at large. The greater part of the present difficulty, to my mind, is not so much the failure to perceive what to do, as to how to do it. And even when one has come to know what to do and how to do it, the pace at which it has to be done remains a formidable problem. Economic and other social problems are invariably acute, largely because something has to be achieved in a given time and by a large multitude. That is why, I think, that although the individual is fundamental, to reduce social problems into individual problems is to restate them wrongly. There is yet another way of looking at the present impasse, in my opinion. Here again the time factor is the overriding consideration. Nations or large groups of communities have through historical circumstances developed certain habits of thought and life and the problems of each nation have to be solved within that context. By the time they develop another context or terminology, they may have ceased to exist. Thus it happens in India we have developed the individual approach to Reality, and those that insist that our problems cannot be solved unless we resort to another mental attitude often forget that the effort may either result in, or not survive, our destruction. Like-wise it often seems to me, those who advocate an individual approach to Reality for the people in the West ask them to take too much on themselves. Most social problems, if not all, are immediate problems, which must be solved somehow at once and cannot await prolonged consideration or perfect attainment. The vision of individual and universal happiness is and has always been before humanity, but it is the way of approach that has been different, difficult and arduous. These two brave little books are indeed pioneers and like all pioneers they are sent out on an adventurous career to do spade work. The books are excellently printed and got up and can he had from The National Press, Bangalore.

Hindu Heaven.–By Max Wylie. [Victor Golanez, London, Price 7sh. 6d.]

Hindu Heaven is rather an intriguing title for a modern work of fiction. It is not a description of the abode of the Hindu godsnor of the region where pious souls go after death. Hindu Heaven is not a location like the Christian. Hell but is a state of consciousness like the Buddhist Nirvana. Max Wylie’s Hindu Heaven is an entertaining novel dealing mainly with the life of the Christian Missionaries in India and incidentally with the method and policy of their educational institutions in this country. The chief characters in the story are American Presbyterian Christians, both Professors and Evangelists, with a sprinkling of a few Indian students to give colour to the story. The scene is laid in Lahore city, and some of the characters are easily identifiable, especially Shonti Chattopadya.

The author is a gifted writer and his literary style is quite fascinating. He has insight into life and is a keen observer of men and things. He says some harsh things about Christianity as preached and practised in India, and his gibes at the Missionaries and their mentality are at times a little too severe. He is equally severe with the character and conduct of Indian people and hits hard at their national weaknesses and exposes the hollowness of many of their cherished ideas and beliefs. There is truth in his criticisms and he is not malicious in any manner. He is, however, mistaken in many of his conclusions with regard to the political temper and tendencies of the people. He forgets that there is always another side to some of these questions, and the Indian view-point must certainly differ from the British or the American. His reading of the Congress situation at that time is one-sided and mainly got, I suppose,. from a reading of the Anglo-Indian papers, and his opinion of politicians like Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhagat Singh and others is rather superficial. Young Nehru does not hate the English–he has great admiration for English character and some of his best friends are Englishmen-but he hates the Government that is imposed on India by the Britishers. Max Wylie is impulsive, impetuous and hasty, and, though brilliant as a writer, he is not a sound psychologist. He is too sure of himself even where the world is new and strange to him. The book, however, is humorously written and many of the bitter things are said so honeyedly.

Bruno, Jack, Jim and Thomas are, undoubtedly, drawn from life, and the romantic attachment between the American Professor Bruno and the Hindu girl-student Shonti is beautifully depicted. I wonder how the Missionaries in India will welcome this book, but it is certain to create a mild sensation in the literary world of this Country and elsewhere!

G. VENKATACHALAM

SANSKRIT

MAHESWARA SUTRAS

These form the first fourteen sutras of the Ashtadhyayi of Panini. In his great motionless dance, Siva taught the nature of Brahman to Sanaka and his other disciples by Mounopadesa (silent initiation–not vocal) by wringing his Damaruka. When the Pramatha Ganas who were nearby watching the dance were not able to understand, they approached Sri Nandikeswara for an explanation thereof and he gave out his kasikas and thus threw light thereon. These sutras are ordinarily understood to form part of the Science of Grammar. Vyaghrapada took them to be such. But his son Upamanyu, with the help of Sri Nandikeswara’s kasikas found in them the science of knowledge of the Atman, and wrote a short commentary thereon. These were practically unearthed and treated in detail with parallel passages from the Bhagavat Gita, the Uttara Gita, the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras, the minor works of Sri Sankaracharya and other treatises on Advaitic literature with Telugu annotations thereon, for the benefit of a large number of persons unaware of Sanskrit by Aksharajna, a Sishya of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi of Tiruvannamalai, who has laid the entire Andhra world under very great obligations to him. The work under review has had the benefit of the careful editing of the Maharshi himself. The book is priced very cheap, annas eight only, so as to be within the easy reach of all. Copies can be had from Swami Niranjanananda, Sarvadhikari, Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai.