Reviews

The Political Career of C. Rajagopalachari: 1937 - 1954. A Moralist in Politics: By A. R. H. Copley. Macmillan & Co., Ltd., Patulios Road, Madras-2.

It is not clear if in this book Copley has attempted biography or history. His incomplete portrait of Rajaji illustrates the complex and unsatisfying contribution of foreign scholars to modern and contemporary Indian history, which is being largely reduced to a matter of footnotes. He confesses to three limitations: he is “a self-taught Indian historian,” the subject is new to him because he teaches “other areas of history,” which we do not know, and his handwriting is illegible. But, like most of those marauding foreign scholars, he is dauntless and descends twice on India, helped by the University of Kent and generous Indian foundations like the Social Science Research Council and the Jawaharlal Nehru University, besides the generous British Council, and blessed by Indian historians who, it is hoped, will have no regrets.

One comic aspect of the effort of the Copleys and other foreign historians is that, while the India Office Library, which contains the loot of India, is guarded permanently for them in London, thanks to Britain’s persistence, Pakistan's intransigence and India’s helplessness, they have also at their disposal the resources of Indian libraries to produce somewhat biased versions of Indian history. The best documented books on moments of history like Gandhi’s Campaigns, the Cripp’s Mission, Partition, or what is called “Transfer of Power” are British, American, Canadian or Australian efforts. Indian historians seem to have no ambition, no guts, no funds.

In a canvas limited to the official career of Rajaji, from 1937 to 1954, it is not even the torso that is presented. In this period, he was both authoritarian and Machiavellian according to Copley· It was as a politician in opposition that Rajaji gave of his best, scintillating at times and ultimately attaining the ripeness of a political Rishi. If he had not lived as long as he did, he would have remained nearer to Copley’s portrait, which is full of warts. It seems to be the modern historian’s habit often to present history in patches, built around some individual.

Nor does Copley help a synthetic view by dividing each period of Rajaji in power, 1937-1939 and 1946-1954, into the politics of power, the politics of communalism, and the politics of principles, an arbitrary division to which, whatever its convenience, a subtle and protean personality like Rajaji could, not have conformed. It becomes an analysis, without sufficient depth, of his relations with Gandhi, with Nehru, with Satyamurti and others. Copley’s attempt to dispose of complex matters in a card-index manner is a case of mixing the wood and the trees and not seeing the course of causation in history. Copley seems to be mentally confined to the Kentish coast, not near enough to Cambridge.

While historians repeat themselves more than history does, history does outpace historians like Copley as is shown in the Epilogue, and in the Postscript, written in the days of Janata rule, he thinks that where Rajaji had failed, Desai triumphed. Yet where is Desai now, and what is history, as written by the Copleys?

–M. CHALAPATHI RAU

To Room Nineteen: By Doris Lessing (Jonathan Cape Ltd., London) B. I. Publications, 359, D. N. Road, Bombay-23. Price: Rs.89-10.

The last story of the eighteen ones gathered up in this very finely printed and well got-up volume gains the title. But the story strikes one as more of a morbid stuff especially when the woman concerned seeks her end in a suicide. Her choice of the particular number of a room for providing herself the solitude for engaging her mind in thoughts not usually of a cherishable kind seems the sole aim of the writer. The end seems not so much the point in the story as the mental involvements in which the woman finds herself to the dismay of her husband.

As a matter of fact, most of the stories here would defeat any reader curious to know of something tangible for his mental satisfaction at the close of the reading. On the other hand you come across a lot of sidelights of the life lived in some of the Western countries where sex is not much of a matter for subdued reflection or sacredness. Few readers with an Indian outlook may not feel uplifted by any of the concepts of married life portrayed here.

Still if anybody would ask of the reviewer which of the entire lot he at all liked, he could point out the one with the title “Woman.” The apparent discomfort caused to two men, a German and an English Captain, about their identical experiences with a woman makes the whole thing very lively. Even in that story an intelligent reader can be more diverted by the conversation between the two men than by any other striking quality in the narration or the development of the story.

–K. CHANDRASEKHARAN

Magnus and Muses: By M. Chalapathi Rau. The Academic Press, Gurgaon, Haryana - 122001. Price: Rs. 60.

It will not be difficult to collect any groups of articles from the pen of a seasoned and effective writer like M. Chalapathi Rau, whose range of subjects can be extending from politics to poetry. Nearly four decades and more his pen has been active not only as a leader-writer of the National Herald but also as contributor to various other important special issues of celebrat­ed journals. Brilliance may look a very feeble description for his constantly coruscating reflections and portraits of men and public affairs. Only a careful and well-attuned mind is required to select from the many writings of his and present them as one of integrated reading.

Here in this volume certainly some effort is made to bring together some of Chalapathi Rau’s intimate pictures of well-known personalities and events with an inside knowledge that alone lends greater significance to them. The substance has been divided under five headings or sections as “Memoirs”, “History.” “Literature and Language”, “Astronomy and All That” and “In the Lighter Side.” On the whole from the grave to the gay these writings draw the eager reader for a substantial fare without making the keenness of his appetite grow less in the consumption.

To choose anyone as in a way superior or more engaging than the rest would appear a vain effort. For almost all of them have pointedness in the observation and perspicacity is the expression.

–K. CHANDRASEKHARAN

The Condensed Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna: (M’s own English version). Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Madras-4. Price: (Subsidised Edition) Rs. 5 only.

This English version of the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by “M” (Mahendranath Gupta) is the author’s own condensed rendering of his original voluminous work in Bengali, and we are grateful to Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras, and its President, Swami Tapasyananda, for making it available after a long interval, during which period its reappearance was eagerly awaited by all lovers of Sri Ramakrishna literature. It is not a literal or “sentence-by-sentence” translation as the previous one by Swami Nikhilananda was, but fulfils the two-fold purpose of condensation and translation in itself, comprehending the theme of the original in its entirety and presenting its substance through all its representative chapters in lucid diction. The reader’s heart would be filled with prayerful gratitude to Providence for having chosen “M” (Known also as  Master Mahashay) for this great task in popularising the Great Master’s teachings through publication of authentic records of conversations with appropriate clarifications. “The Recorder of the Gospel,” says Swami Tapasyananda in his introduction to the present edition, “was as unique as his book itself.” The erstwhile “Professor of Sciences and Arts” found his real vocation in his spiritual ministry to mankind through spreading the Gospel, “even as the great Vyasa in olden times reached the peak of his spiritual ministry when he took to recording the life and teachings of Sri Krishna.”

Almost the very first serious question found discussed in the book is that of worship of God as formless and with form. Appearing even in its opening sections, the question recurs quite often and persists throughout in some form or other. The persistence is significant, because it is discussion on such issues that reveals the truly representative character of the work as a whole and of the great Master’s own objectivity of approach. “The highest learning is that by which we know God,” and the Supreme Being is both personal and impersonal. He who has true knowledge “ceases to have anything to do with talk or controversy.” “The bee buzzes so long as it does not settle down on the flower and begin to drink of the honey.” In the supreme state of Realisation the non-dualist and the dualist are perfectly reconciled and all controversy is stilled. “When the Divine Mother wipes out your ego in Samadhi, Brahman is realised.” The book gives several glimpses into that state of Samadhi, which contains the key to the bliss of realisation. Step by step the way to this consummation, which is at once God-realisation and self-realisation, is chalked out and the need for assiduous practice stressed at every turn. The glory of God-vision and the ecstasy of God-love are presented side by side with the transcendental purity of the Absolute and the ineffable uniqueness of the Self.

Here, in the condensed Gospel, we have both a highly suggestive theoretical treatise and an unfailing guide-book of spiritual prac­tice for the common householder.

–Prof. K. SESHADRI

Jaina Literature in Tamil: By (the late) Prof. A. Chakravarti. Introduction and Footnotes by Dr. K. V. Ramesh. Published by Bharatiya Jnan Pith, Connaught Place, New Delhi-1. Price: Rs. 20.

The question as to when exactly Jainism entered the Tamil country is a matter of mere academic interest. On the evidence of certain Jaina works, it has been inferred that the Jaina faith entered the Chola and Pandya kingdoms around the third century B. C. But no one will deny the fact that the Jainas made lasting contributions in the fields of literature, art and architecture in Tamilnadu. The Tamils seem to have accepted Jainism more as a way of life than as a religion and many Jaina scholars were, in spite of their Sanskrit names, Tamilian converts to Jainism. Rulers like Mahendravarma Pallava and Pandya Nedumaran were originally Jains, though later they were converted to the Saiva faith.

Prof. Chakrawarti was a pious Jaina sravaka and a great scholar in Tamil besides being well-versed in the various schools of western philosophy. He edited a number of Tamil works by Jaina scholars, particularly the classic “Nilakesi” and also brought out an edition of the Tirukkural by Tiruvalluvar who, he was convinced, was also a Jain. The present masterly treatise was originally published in 1941 by the Jaina Siddhanta Bhavana at Arrah in Bihar and this second edition has been brought out by the Bharatiya Jnan Pith.

The author traces the original migration to South India of thousands of Jaina monks on account of a famine in the North. One of the earliest Jaina literary giants was the teacher Kunda­kundacharya who is held in high veneration by Jainas all over India. He was also known as Elacharya and according to the Jaina tradition, presided over the Dravida Sangha (about the first century B. C.) at Pataliputra identified with the modern Tiruppap­puliyur. Prof. Chakravatti, who holds that even the author of the Tolkappiyam was a Jaina, advances copious arguments to prove that Kundakundacharya was none other than Tiruvalluvar, the author of the “Tirukkural.” His conclusion that it is a work based throughout on the doctrine of Ahimsa may not be tenable as no religion in the world supports Himsa or killing. He also refers to a commentary on the Kural (not extant now) by Nacchinarkini­yar who is also put down as a Jaina by the Jaina tradition. It is common knowledge that the best commentary on the Tirukkural is by Parimelalagar who was a Vaishnavite Brahmin from Kanchipuram.

It is noteworthy that none of the five Mahakavyas of the Sangam period was by a Hindu author. Two of them, Valayapati and Kundalakesi, have not been traced so far, but of the other three, Silappadhikaram and Chintamani are by Jaina authors and the Manimekalai by a Buddhist. The author gives an eminently readable narration of the story of the Silappadhikaram to highlight his points. A similar summary of the thirteen ilambakams or chapters of the Tamil classic Jivaka Chintamani is also furnished.

The author next takes up for examination Yasodhara, Chudamani, Udayanan Kathai, Nagakumara Kovyam and Nilakesi which are the five minor Kavyas composed by Jaina authors. The other works takes up for scrutiny include the Merumandira Puranam, Sripuranam, and Yapparungalakkarikai, a work on Tamil prosody by Amritasagara, and Neminatham, a work on Tamil grammar by Gunavirapandita. The most popular grammar in Tamii, the Nannul, by Bavanandimuni is also a Jaina work. The contribution by Jainas to Tamil lexicography by the compilation of several Nighantus has also been significant.

The second part of the book comprises 85 Jaina epigraphs in Tamil transliterated into Roman script and translated into English. Dr. K. V. Ramesh of the Archaelogical Survey of India, Mysore, has done a thorough job of editing the work with an introduction, footnotes, appendix and a detailed index, thus making it highly useful to scholars and students alike. The Bharatiya Jnan Pith deserves the gratitude of all lovers of Tamil literature.

–T. S. PARTHASARATHY

Spiritual Heritage of India: By Swami Prabhavananda. Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Madras-4. Price: Rs. 10.

This first Indian edition of Swami Prabhavananda’s classic on India’s Spiritual Heritage is welcome for more reasons than one. In the first place, it is one of the few works on the subject that cover so much within the two covers of a book, leaving no important detail untouched. Second, unlike most books on the theme which deal with the superficial diversities of Indian life, this one underlines their basic unity in certain fundamental conceptions and gives the key to the mystery of the phenomenally long life of the Indian peoples. The author has lived the spiritual heritage for over fifty years and he speaks from a position of vantage.

In his introduction, he points out that unlike in the West, in India, philosophy and religion have never been different from each other. Religion is philosophy in practice, philosophy is the rationale of religion. He discusses the charge that Indian philosophy is pessimistic and has no difficulty in pointing out that !be Indian approach is the most positive in as much as it places his destiny in man’s own hands and gives him a scheme to work out his weal in a graded path of idealism. Further, to the Indian mind, all knowledge is one: psychology, ethics and sociology are provinces of philosophy which, by the way, is not mere mental speculation but authentic verifiable experience couched in the terms of the intellect.

The Vedas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Upanishads, Epics, Gita, Smritis and Puranas are dealt with succinctly. While on the subject of the Tantras, the author speaks of four forms of worship and meditation. “The highest is Brahma-sadbhava–meditating on the identity of the inner Self of man with Brahman as he exists in all and all exist in him. The second in this scale is constant meditation on the chosen ideal of God within one’s heart. The third is Japa, repetition of the Mantra (the word corresponding to the chosen ideal of God) and prayer. And the last and lowest is external worship of an image or a symbol.”

The citation from Sri Ramakrishna’s description of the Chakras, centres of energy, is highly interesting.

Chapters on Jainism, Buddhism and the Six Systems of Thought are not text-centred but reflect the spirit behind the formulations of Vision, Thought and Darshanas. There is a separate section on the great exponents of Vedanta, beginning with Gaudapada and ending with Sri Ramakrishna. He concludes the section with the striking call of Swami Vivekananda: “Criticise no one, for all doctrines and creeds have some good in them. Show by your lives that religion does not mean words, or names, or sects, but that it means spiritual realisation. Only those who have can understand who have perceived the reality. Only those who have attained spirituality can communicate to others, can be great teachers of mankind. They alone are the powers of light.”

To read this book is to take one more step towards God.

–M. P. PANDIT

Gift from the Sea (New edition with an Afterword): By Anne Morrow Lindberg. B. I. Publications, 359, Dr. D. N. Road, Bombay-23. Price: Rs. 42-25.

First published in 1955, Gift from the Sea became an instant best-seller. Mrs. Lindberg’s book had come as a whiff of hope and beauty to millions of women negotiating their uneasy and perilous passage to middle age, and given them a new strength and a new certitude. The dawn-fresh and all forgetful youth left behind, one is not yet ancient enough to be free of the noisy responsibilities of housewifery. Self-pity often claws at you, and frustration furrows your brow. You become a willing prisoner of your odd predicament and wallow in its cheerless futilities.

But need it necessarily be so? “No” is Mrs. Lindberg’s emphatic answer. She takes a walk on the beach, finds a shell and starts thinking. Each of us wants to live in harmony with the outer life, yet we don’t know exactly how. There must be divers roads to the inner harmony, and one of them surely is the “simplification of life.” It is not, however, easily achieved in our days of complex living. After all these years of toil and accumulation we cannot run away from everything, can we? Perhaps we can at least prune many of the externals–what Thoreau aptly called surplusage–and try now and then to cultivate solitude and oneness with Nature:

“The primitive, physical, functional pattern of the morning of life, the active years before forty or fifty, is outlived. But there is still the afternoon opening up, which one can spend not in the feverish pace of the morning but in having time at last for those intellectual, cultural, and spiritual activities that were pushed aside in the heat of the race.”

This is how we could and should usher in a renaissance in our middle age. And this is rather like the argonauts that leave their shells for the open seas on their own after the oysters are hatched: “Patience, Faith, Openness, is what the sea has to teach. Simplicity, Solitude, Intermittency....”

Twenty-five years almost after its first publication, this admirable book remains relevant and pointedly contemporaneous. In our time of increased noise and invasion of privacy, our need for peace is even greater, and this fine little book does teach us to grow old with dignity and make of our lives islands of contentment and acceptance and joy.

–Dr. PREMA NANDAKUMAR

Candles and Roses: By Romen Basu. Sterling Publishers, Safdarganj Enclave, New Delhi-16. Price: Rs. 40.

In this novel the art of modern fiction writing is in its full swing. That is, the story goes on smoothly without much of incidents, which would reveal the inventiveness of the writer of fiction. On the other hand, in elegant English and with necessary interpositions of fine description, the narrative goes on with no hindrance of flagging interest. The apparent pointlessness of the many dialogues are calculated more to express the mind of the author upon vital values of life than to advance any particular progress of the story. The art, perhaps, of the author consists in his insinuating himself into the reader without his knowing it. The deftness is there to enrich the purpose of writing.

There is no complication in the plot. It is all the adventure of an Indian, Bengali youth, who, though married to an Indian wife of lesser intellectual capabilities, gains the normality of outlook to assess the worth of the Indian ideals, after his somewhat sexy pursuits with a French girl of no mean order of understanding. The characterisation of the main three persons round whom the novel revolves has come out very well and the whole novel does not tire the reader’s patience despite its lack of grip.

The volume is beautifully printed and the book may easily be a worth-while addition to the growing Indo-Anglian fictional writing.

–“SAHRIDAYA”

Islands: By John Fowles and Fay Godwin (Jonathan Cape, Thirty Bedford Square, London) B. I. Publications, Promotion Department, 359, Dr. D. N. Road, Bombay-23. Price: Rs 80-20.

“Islands” is both a book and album–book of text and album of pictures (Photographs). Reading the text and viewing the pictures would equally be delightful. The prose in the text is poetic in flavour, for the author John Fowles is a creative literary craftsman–a novelist. The photographs by Fay Godwin are deed poems in light and shade; all of them are landscapes reflecting the soft glow of the changing moods of atmosphere in the Scillies islands in which the author and the photographer roamed. The author in his text writes more than the islands. Some of his observations are psychological. He observes:

“Like Crusoe, I never knew who I really was, what I lacked (what the psycho-analytical theorists of artistic making call the “creative gap”), until I had wandered in its solitudes and emptiness. Eventually it let me feel it was mine: which is the other great siren charm of islands–that they will not belong to any legal owner, but offer to become a part of all who tread and love them.”

In this lovely little volume, word and picture vie with each other in displaying their charm–the auditory-cum-semantic charm of the word and the visual charm of the picture. One should never try to read the text while viewing the pictures or view the pictures while reading the text. The two activities ought to proceed separate. Reading should be reading alone and viewing viewing alone. Then alone one can do full Justice both to reading and viewing. Linguistic barriers stand in the way in reading while nothing of that sort exists in viewing, for a picture is universal language. By the way, at one place the author states:

“In terms of consciousness and self-consciousness, every individual human is an island, in spite of Donne’s famous preaching to the contrary. It is the boundedness of the smaller island encompassable in a glance, walkable in one day, that relates to the human body closer than any other geographical conformation of land.”

Yet, indeed the island is more fascinating than the land, for the former is finite while the latter infinite. It is not easy, if not impossible, to enjoy the infinite whereas it is not difficult to enjoy the finite which is within our reach, in contrast to the infinite which is beyond our reach.

This exquisite little volume is well-produced–well in printing, well in get-up and well in reproducing the photographs. One can rest content with exclusively reading the text without viewing the photographs in the same way as one can, with exclusively viewing the .photographs without reading the text. But when one does both the activities one becomes more than “resting content!”

–SANJIVA DEV

What I Saw – The Human Book of Nonsense Verse: By Harindranath Chattopadhyaya Price: Rs. 3-50.

What I Saw- The Bird Book of Nonsense Verse: By Harindranath Cbattopadhyaya. Price: Rs. 3-50.

India Book House Education Trust, Bombay-39.

We heartily welcome these two books of nonsense verse, packed with sense and fun, and reinforced by wholly admirable illustrations in colour by Mario and Rita Ganguli. Slender books of thirty and odd pages each, brought out attractively, with a verse and illustration per page, they are suitable for children and their parents and teachers who may share moments of fun and rapport with them. We heartily recommend these books to parents and teachers for their wards. Incidentally these verses add a new dimension to their author Harindranath Chattopadhyaya.
–B

KANNADA

Mrityunjaya– a novel: By Niranjana. Published by Tejaswini Niranjana, Kathaa Saahitya, 515, 7th Main, 5th Block, Jayanagar South, Bangalore-41. Price: Rs. 15.

This is a novel in Kannada by Sri Niranjana, who is renowned as a progressive and eminent story-teller and novelist in the realm of modern Kannada letters. The story of the novel goes far to ancient Egypt and as the author says in his preface that just a small sentence, viz, “A Greek tradition reports a great revolt in Egypt in which the slaves captured a province” found in “Our Oriental Heritage” of Will Durant kindled his imagination and led to the building up in minute detail of a story of revolt distant in time and place and foreign to the author. We have no means to compare it to the original as the work is based on flimsy material and is itself a bold and original build-up. It must be said to the credit of the novelist that his novel is an unprecedented act of imagination and the very first work of its kind in Kannada fiction. Perhaps it has no precedent in modern Indian literature, to the best of our knowledge. The author has taken great pains to delve deep into Egyptian history, legend, life and manners of the people and has succeeded in creating the proper atmosphere of rich local colour. The names of places and persons like Menepta are genuinely Egyptian. The story is well-knit and moving, although it is a tour de force. It is full of significance as an example of ancient conflict between the oppresser and the oppressed. “Mrityunjaya” may be considered as a novel exceptional merit though a product of pure imagination but in popularity among the readers of fiction is doubtful

–R. S. MUGALI

SANSKRIT-ENGLISH

Dakshinaamurti stotra of Sri Sankaracharya with Suresvaraacharya’s “Maanasollaasa” and Pranavavaartika and Dakhinaamurty Upanishad: Texts and translation in English by Alladi Mahadeva Sastry. The Personal Bookshop, 10, Congress Buildings, Madras-6. Price: Rs. 25.

In ten Sanskrit verses in Saardulavikridita metre written in praise of Sri Dakshinamurty, the Guru of Gurus, Sri Sankara has summed up the essence of Advaita Philosophy. This Stotra is so popular that even to this day all students of Vedanta recite this Stotra every day before they begin their study. In the tenth stanza a devotee who recites this and reflects and meditates upon the teachings contained in this, is promised attainment of that Divine state which is endowed with the grandeur of the Universal Self. Suresvaraacharya one of the direct disciples of Sri Sankara wrote a Vaartikaa named “Maanasollaasa” on this. It elucidates the meaning of the original, supplements it wherever necessary and counters the arguments of non-Advaitic schools.

Suresvara’s “Pranavavaartikaa” otherwise known as “Panchikarana Vaartikaa” also, deals with the cosmogony and contemplation of Brahman by means of the Pranava. The Upanishad describes the Mantras and prayers related to the God Dakshinamurty. All these four valuable texts are presented to us in this one volume in Devanaagari script. All these are translated into English by late Mahadeva Sastry. Wherever necessary he has added elucidatory notes also. In a long introduction covering about fifty pages he treats “briefly of the origin, methods and fundamental tenets of the several systems referred to” in the text “so that the reader may have a comprehensive view of the whole range of Indian philosophy.” In all thirty-five topics are dealt with in this introduction. The list of contents given at the beginning of the text also is indicative of the subjects discussed in each verse and the commentary thereon. This precious work is out of print for a long time. Our thanks go to the Publishers who made this work now available to us.
–B. KUTUMBA RAO

TELUGU

Triveni Sangamam (Stories): by Isukapalli Lakshminarasimha Sastri. Navya Bharati, Gaganmahal Road, Hyderabad-29. Price: Rs. 12.

The import of the nine stories collected in this volume is social criticism. The title story is the poorest of the lot, with a kind of situation familiar to film-goers: a man bound for the Triveni Sangamarn is black-mailed and made to part with some cash by a small group of rogues in the fancy-dress of policemen in collusion with a good-looking damsel apparently in distress. There is very little social criticism in this. The best ones are “Garibi Hatao” and “Bonded Labour.” The first one is the portrayal of a politician, who sincerely believes that he is a superior being because he trades in high-sounding slogans and can sway audiences. He has contempt for hard work and looks down upon honest men eking out their living. The story ends with his disillusionment. The longest story is entitled “Diety” and deals with two sisters in contrast. The elder one is jealous, suspicious and possessive; the younger one is self-effacing and works for the good of the elder sister and her family. This long-drawn-out story with all the vicissitudes of a family life from youth to old age has many contrived situations, and lacks form. The stories “Man in Disguise” and “The Luck of a Woman” fail as psychological delineations; considered as criticism of pseudo-sadhus and flirtatious young women respectively, the two stories lack thematic thrust.

–R. S.