Reviews

ENGLISH

Frontier Speaks: By Mohammad Yunus. [Publishers: Hind Kitabs Ltd. Bombay. Second Edition, July, 1947. Pp. 204. A map and two photographs. Price Rs. 4-8-0]

Mohammad Yunus, whom Jawaharlal Nehru in the Foreword refers to as ‘my young friend and comrade’ came under the influence of the Frontier Gandhi and shared with other patriotic Pathans the thirst for freedom and the travail of persecution. His book ‘Frontier Speaks’, first published in 1942, has been now reissued with an Epilogue. It throws much light on the unhappy vicissitudes of the Pathan State–Including the Tribal area and the N. W. F. Province–and the emergence therein of the Khudai Khidmatgars a genuinely non-violent Muslim nationalist organisation. From the first fifty-four pages of the book dealing with the tribes of the area, we can understand why Afghanistan evinced more than mere neighbourly interest in the future of the Province as part of Pakistan. Chapters III-VII are dominated by the personality of Abdul Ghaffar Khan. They make poignant reading now when the brave Pathans face the future divided, isolated, confused and perhaps dispirited and even disillusioned.

Abdul Ghaffar Khan, in the Preface, says, “At places Yunus’s judgment may sound harsh and uncharitable,” and Jawaharlal Nehru remarks, “His judgment of the past and the present may be over-weighted and liable to criticism,” but, as Nehru himself admits, “It is right that he should give expression to his own deeply felt convictions in his own words, for he shares those convictions with the vast majority of the people of the Frontier.” The book bears the stamp of sincerity on every page. It would have been more useful, however, for the general reader if Mr. Yunus had given more concrete and objective details of what he here leaves vague, such as the machinations of the Political Department, the racial and cultural ties of Afghan and Pathan tribes now, the reconstruction programmes of the Khudai Khidmatgars, etc.

Mr. Yunus has himself said, “Young that I am, I have not been able to curb the crudities of an emotional and youthful style.” We hope when the present turmoil subsides and the dove of Peace sits once again among the rocks, Mr. Yunus will give us a fuller and more compendious description of the life and work of his fellow countrymen, our brave brethren of the Frontier

 

N. Kasturi

Our Heritage and its Significance: By S. R. Sharma. [Publishers: Hind Kitabs Ltd., Bombay. 1947. Pp 199. Price Rs. 6-8-0]

This is a book that makes profitable reading for every citizen of India who desires to know his own deeper historical self. “The central purpose of this book, its governing motive, is to assist in this understanding wards, with a view to living forwards,” says Sri Sharma. He has a style that grips attention and he has used it to good effect in bringing out the essential harmony, vitality and continuity in Indian culture, from Harappa to Horyuji, from the Vedas to Vivekananda, from the Gita to Gandhiji. With the help of copious quotations and examples and a few illustrations, he has dilated on her ceaseless quest for Truth, Beauty and Goodness, and on her conception of philosophy as transmuting, rather than transcending, of life. He gives an interesting account of the achievements of India in the field of the exact sciences and of the pervasive influence of Dharma along the whole continent down the ages. His pages on ‘In the track of the Tourists’, ‘At Home and Abroad’, and ‘Prototypes of Democracy’ contain revealing flashes on some little known phases of Indian history. The book strengthens the outlook which one can gain by a study of Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘Discovery of India’. Sri Sharma pleads for the harmonisation of the ideologies of Russia and India. He draws attention to Tagore’s critical appreciation of the Russian experiment: “You are working in a great cause. Therefore, you must be great in your mind, great in your mercy, your understanding and your patience. I feel profound admiration for the greatness of the things you are trying to do; therefore, I cannot help expecting for it a motive force of love and an atmosphere of charitable understanding.” India, too, is in the throes of a Renaissance but, luckily, we are in the Gandhian era which provides that force and that atmosphere in ample measure.

N. Kasturi

Leaves in the August Wind: By N. S. Phadke. [Publishers: Hind Kitabs Ltd., Bombay. Price Rs. 3-12-0]

Despite Professor Phadke’s “All About This Book” which surely makes us expect a complicated plot and tense situations in his novelette, we feel some dissatisfaction after finishing the book of about 175 pages. We are told by the author himself that this is a translation of his own original Marathi story which had the misfortune of getting proscribed, under the belief that it would incite the public against the British Government at a time when war was being carried on.

However much one is prepared for stirring incidents against the ground of the memorable 1942 August days, when the ‘Quit India’ resolution was passed by the Congress, the story as developed here does not convince us by its happenings or by the situations introduced to shape the characters into really patriotic men and women. One would have liked the author to show us the inevitability of cruel Fate when the strands of life get enmeshed into a knot, or create wonders in realism by penetrating into the psychology of the youth of India pulsating with a new life, by bringing out the clash of new values and contradiction in ideologies.

The story here told in simple words is this: an educated girl, called Sakuntala, grows into womanhood under the fostering care of an understanding father, and the freedom of thought she enjoys in her home enables her to fix her affections on Padmakar, a young man after her own heart. The surge of nationalism in the wake of Gandhi’s leadership forces Padmakar to suppress every other aspiration, including the love for Sakuntala. He decides to devote all his time and attention to the service of his country. Sakuntala imagines want of reciprocity of love in Padmakar and agrees to marry another, who, by his breeding and associations, has no sympathies whatever for the new type of patriots, otherwise known as believers in direct action. The later development in the story falls flat upon the reader. The decision of Sakuntala’s husband to go to the front, the utter despondency into which Sakuntala falls, her meeting again with Padmakar in strange circumstances, the return of her own husband blinded of both his eyes as a result of his war service, and the finale where Sakuntala is left nursing her invalid husband while, in her heart of hearts, cherishing her love for Padmakar–all this does not chasten our spirit or enliven our hopes of a better future for the youth of this country.

But one is charmed by the easy narrative and engaging dialogues. This will find a place among the bedside books one would like to possess.

K. C.

The Subhas I knew: By Dilip Kumar Roy. [Nalanda Publications, Bombay]

There has been a lot of literature growing round Netaji and the I.N.A. but there is still a real need for a biography of Subhas. Subhas the man escapes the pen of many an able biographer, for he did not reveal himself fully to any one. No, not even to Sri Dilip Kumar, the author of this beautiful book. Subhas remains an enigma.

“The Subhas I knew,” is one of the best biographies written in English and can be compared with Bhagini Nivedita’s “The Master as I saw him”. It is written with a warmth and a charm which reveal to us a great deal of Subhas’s inner life. Subhas was not only a great man but a lofty soul; He could soar in the ethereal regions of the spirit and longed for peace. Sri Dilip Kumar thinks that there was frustration in Subhas’s life, and as we go through the pages of this biography we agree with Dilip Kumar. But was Subhas’s life a tragedy? It may be a tragedy of the flesh but certainly not of the spirit. It was perhaps a triumph. Did not Vivekananda roar “Onward! Onward! Ye Cubs of Lion?” and Subhas was a cub of a lion. It must be recognized that Activism is a different process of Yoga. It is a machine with its myriad moving wheels and not a battery which supplies energy from its store house like the Yoga of Passivism. He moved onward and ever onward, daring to do things which were superhuman, acting like a giant and organising like a master in the art of organisation. This has to be appreciated from an angle other than Sri Dilip Kumar’s. Here there is not a deep analysis of Subhas’s political career or real analysis of the I. N. A.

“…..my object in attempting this pen-portrait is to depict not all that I saw in him but only all that uplifted me, inspired me and helped me to get the better of my own weaknesses and vacillations”–this is the aim of the biographer, but he has surely done more than that. He has thrown light on an entirely neglected side of Subhas,–his mysticism. The author says, “All the same, I can, I think, claim with equal honesty that I do not feel I have limned Subhas, not as he actually was but as I wished him to have been,” and this is true of the first half of the book and some of the conversations so sincerely and movingly described. But I doubt whether the same can be said about his interpretations of Guruvad. It is a theory which can be accepted only by a chosen few.

But this does not in any way mar the intrinsic merit of the book. The comparison between Jawaharlal and Subhas is finely written and sums up their agreements and disagreements. Let me quote: “They were both aristocratic to their finger tips, generous, attractive, magnetic, authentic, ingenuous, unquestionably handsome, astonishingly healthy, incredibly energetic, naturally affectionate, essentially sincere, and last, though not least, utterly inaccessible to fear that makes us falter and cringe, and to meanness that makes us carp or bargain,” but the difference came because of the Pandit’s growing enthusiasm for “the oracle of Moscow”. The mystic in Subhas revolted when the great Kashmiri repeated the Communist Mantra about religion being ‘the opium of the soul’. “Jawaharlal never felt at home on the Indian soil. Subhas could have felt at home nowhere else.”

This is where Subhas scored over Jawaharlal. Jawaharlal has a fascination for western thoughts and modes. But one agrees with the author when he writes: “In our derelict times he is perhaps the one man in political India who, with his clear grasp of the trend of forces, specially in the sphere of international politics, gives us at any rate some sense of direction and, even in the thick of the misleading poison clouds of diplomacy, has so far successfully steered clear of the reefs of nationalism and the shoals of communalism.”

Subhas had a dream-weaving nature. He perhaps loved to be alone and took delight in facing the world single-handed. A friend of mine remarks that Subhas might have been a greater man if he had married. Possibly, because it would have filled a void in his heart. But Vivekananda, his master, had declared marriage to be an illusion, and Subhas disliked illusions of the senses and the mind.

He was a dreamer, a white rose of purity, a born patriot, a citadel of strength, a Yogi who became an architect of Free India.

N. C. Zamindar

TELUGU

Sri Aravinda Jivitamu: [Publisher: Chaturvedula Venkata Krishnayya Garu, Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram, Pondichery. Price Rs. 3-8-0]

This is a much needed biography of Sri Aurobindo. The work is suggestively divided into six ‘tarangas’ (billows) and Dr. C. R Reddy in his characteristically cryptic Introduction very rightly perceives in the life of Sri Aurobindo the vastness and the depth of the ocean

The first ‘taranga’ deals with the boyhood of Sri Aurobindo in England, his brilliant career at King’s College, Cambridge, and his success in the I.C.S. Examination. The second ‘taranga’ gives us glimpses of Sri Aurobindo while in the service of the ruler of Baroda. Sri Aurobindo, the extremist and the suspected revolutionary, is portrayed in the next section. Later, as the Editor of ‘Karmayogin’ and ‘Dharma’ he thinks aloud and becomes alive to the immense powers inherent in man. The fifth and sixth ‘tarangas’ are “devoted to his evolution of a Yogic philosophy and the facilities accorded for the development of the innate power in man in the well organised Ashram at Pondicherry.

Summaries of relevant articles and long extracts from the Sage’s writings are given, in smaller type, in the course of the narrative. Some of them are fresh translations from Bengali works like ‘Kara Kahini’ and journals like ‘Pravartak’. The author’s deep adoration for Sri Aurobindo and his ardent desire to propagate the message of the Saint, have enabled him to give us a lucid account couched in surpassingly beautiful prose.

S. Kameswara Rao

TAMIL

Rabindranath Tagore: Life and Poetry: By K. Chandrasekharan. [Publishers: Kumiri Malar, Mylapore, Madras. Price Rs. 2.]

Dr. Annie Besant used to say that, unless a people have vision, a nation perisheth. Poetry redeems life from bondage to the immediate present, and that nation which honours its poets saves the souls of its people from perishing by self-limitation. It is in this spirit that we welcome Sri K. Chandrasekharan’s new Tamil book on Tagore. Poetry is like the wind that blows. It knows no linguistic or territorial barriers. The theme of Tagore’s poetry is so essentially Indian, so much a part of our cultural heritage and our national make-up, that it is as universal as the Sun, and as familiar to us as our very self.

Sri Chandrasekharan has, by his biography of Tagore, brought the Poet nearer to us, and has made the man Tagore come within the range of our intellectual acquaintance. He has unravelled to us the source and fount of poetic inspiration. The Tamil public owes him a deep debt of gratitude for giving us a book which combines scholarship with beauty of expression.

V. A. Thiagarajan