{"id":2480,"date":"2015-03-16T18:13:03","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T01:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/?p=2480"},"modified":"2015-03-16T18:36:07","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T01:36:07","slug":"alex-von-tunzelmann-indian-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2015\/03\/alex-von-tunzelmann-indian-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex von Tunzelmann – Indian Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE TWO NATIONS. ONE WAS A vast, mighty and magnificent empire, brilliantly organized and culturally unified, which dominated a massive swathe of the earth. The other was an undeveloped, semi-feudal realm, riven by religious factionalism and barely able to feed its illiterate, diseased and stinking masses. The first nation was India. The second was England.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is how Alex von\u00a0Tunzelmann’s\u00a0Indian Summer<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>begins. The book looks at the last few years of the Freedom movement in India from an impartial viewpoint, in many ways reminding me of\u00a0Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’\u00a0Freedom at Midnight<\/em><\/a>. But I always found\u00a0Freedom<\/em>\u00a0a little white-washed, too eager to steer clear of controversy, and also covering a very narrow period\u00a0of India’s freedom movement.\u00a0Specifically the last few years before we attained independence\u00a0in August 1947 and the horrors it unleashed, culminating in the death of MK Gandhi in 1948. That is why I usually read it along with\u00a0The Proudest Day<\/a>, which goes back a little further. Von Tunzelmann\u00a0mentions that\u00a0<\/em>the writers Lapierre and Collins were Mountbatten’s official biographers, which automatically makes me\u00a0suspicious\u00a0about the gentlemen’s lack of bias and their facts.<\/p>\n

\"825690\"<\/p>\n

Indian Summer<\/em>\u00a0takes a more relaxed, holistic\u00a0route that begins with the flow of the British into India and establishes how the Raj came about, in broad strokes. But the meat of the\u00a0story deals\u00a0with\u00a0the trajectory of the principals concerned – MK Gandhi, MA Jinnah, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, including all of their early life stories. The book therefore\u00a0becomes not just about 1947, but\u00a0about these protagonists, and how their lives and motivations intertwine over the years, the narrative concluding not with the summer of ’47, as the name of the book would imply, but instead with the demise of the longest-lived one among them, Mountbatten. [ref]And I did not know that Mountbatten died in a bomb explosion in his fishing boat, the explosive planted\u00a0by IRA terrorists. [\/ref]\n

The writer is not kind towards most\u00a0of the people she talks about. Mountbatten’s early career makes him sound like the air-headed protagonist of a PG Wodehouse novel – he apparently shoots a British general in the leg accidentally, and causes much mayhem during training exercises for D-Day during World War II. His career in the navy is marked with multiple submarines destroyed, but the magic of being associated with the British aristocracy miraculously sees him through his follies. The list of titles after his name ( KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS) sounds incredulous even as you read about his exploits.<\/p>\n

Jawaharlal Nehru comes across as much more grounded, despite being from an upper class family and being subject to a deification from the population of India even in the early Congress years of the 1930s that sounds\u00a0borderline insane. There are also stories of Nehru where he jumps into crowds and starts\u00a0getting into scraps every time he loses his temper, and he does that a lot, especially in his\u00a0later years.<\/p>\n

Songs were composed in his honour; fantastic stories were told of his valour and bravery. A woman in Madras created a line of toiletries called the \u2018Nehru Specialities\u2019, and sent samples to him. His vanity was slightly offended by the \u2018most disagreeable picture of mine\u2019 branded on all the bottles, but otherwise he found them amusing and distributed the samples of Nehru Brilliantine, Nehru Pomade, and Nehru Lime Juice & Glycerine among his friends. Pamphleteers and orators called him \u2018Bharat Bhushan\u2019 (\u2018Jewel of India\u2019) and \u2018Tyagamurti\u2019 (\u2018O, Embodiment of Sacrifice\u2019) \u2013 nicknames which were gleefully picked up by his family. \u2018When Bhai [Brother] came down to breakfast we bowed deeply and asked how the Jewel of India had slept, or if the Embodiment of Sacrifice would like some bacon and eggs,\u2019 remembered Betty. The reaction of the chosen one to all this acclaim was characteristically self-deprecating. \u2018It went to my head, intoxicated me a little, and gave me confidence and strength. I became (I imagine so, for it is a difficult task to look at oneself from outside) just a little bit autocratic in my ways, just a shade dictatorial.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Von Tunzelmann however reserves an abundance of barbs for the future Father of the Nation.<\/p>\n

Nehru saw social and economic hardship as a cause of suffering, and therefore wanted to end it; Gandhi saw hardship as noble and righteous, and therefore wanted to spread the blessings of poverty and humility to all people.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

On 15 January 1934, a colossal earthquake hit Bihar, a rural province on the Gangetic plain beneath the Himalayas of Nepal. The devastated area stretched from Allahabad to Darjeeling, and from Kathmandu to Patna. The death toll was estimated at 20,000. \u00a0Gandhi visited Bihar in March, and spoke to the bereaved, destitute and homeless people. The earthquake, he told them, \u2018is a chastisement for your sins\u2019. And the particular sin that he had in mind was the enforcement of Untouchability. Even Gandhi\u2019s closest supporters were horrified. The victims of the earthquake had included poor as well as rich; Untouchables, Muslims and Buddhists as well as caste-Hindus. But Gandhi was explicitly blaming the victims, appropriating a terrible disaster to promote his own religious ideas. Nehru, who had been helping the relief effort in Bihar, read Gandhi\u2019s remarks \u2018with a great shock\u2019. But the most effective refutation came from Rabindranath Tagore, long one of the Mahatma\u2019s greatest advocates. Tagore argued caustically that this supposedly \u2018divine\u2019 justice, if such it was, constituted the least just form of punishment imaginable.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Gandhi\u2019s position on non-violence was absolute. Aggression could never be returned. He did not believe that women should resist rape, but preferred that they should \u2018defeat\u2019 their assailants by remaining passive and silent. Correspondingly, he did not believe that the victims of war should resist attackers by physical force, but rather ought to offer satyagraha<\/em> \u2013 that is, non-compliance with the invaders. \u2018If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, war against Germany to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race would be completely justified,\u2019 he wrote. \u2018But I do not believe in any war.\u2019 He advised the British to give up the fight against Hitler and Mussolini: \u2018Let them take possession of your beautiful island \u2026 allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.\u2019 Furthermore, in one of his most controversial arguments, Gandhi advised the Jews in Germany to offer passive resistance to the Nazi regime \u2013 and to give up their own lives as sacrifices.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Almost everyone on the Mission regarded Gandhi as the biggest culprit in holding up negotiations. Sir Francis Fearon Turnbull, a civil servant, was impressed with Gandhi\u2019s clever drafting and legal mind, but not in the least with his attitude. \u2018The nasty old man has grasped that he can get what he asks for\u2019, he wrote, \u2018& so goes on asking for more & more.\u2019 Wavell, the Viceroy, agreed. \u2018Gandhi was the wrecker\u2019, he wrote to the King. Even Lord Pethick-Lawrence, the new Secretary of State for India noted for his mild manners and cruelly nicknamed \u2018Pathetic-Lawrence\u2019 on account of them, became exasperated by the Mahatma. He \u2018let fly in a way I have never heard him before\u2019, wrote Turnbull. \u2018Said he was coming to believe Gandhi did not care whether 2 or 3 million people died & would rather that they should than that he should compromise.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Since I am allowed one Watchmen\u00a0<\/em>reference every few posts, I can safely mention that to me, Gandhi comes across as\u00a0the Rorschach of the Indian political movement. [ref]That makes Dr Manhattan = Indian Nationalism, who destroyed\u00a0Rorschach when he\u00a0got in the way of progress . Stretching this analogy further, Louis Mountbatten = Ozymandias (“I already did it, 10 months too early.”). Nehru is Nite Owl, haunted and ineffectual, but coming into his own with time. Oh dear, I hate myself.\u00a0[\/ref] His inability to compromise and his unyielding moral compass – not to mention his controversial “experiments” – \u00a0are\u00a0all things\u00a0that draws controversial discussions across living rooms. I am personally willing to be objective about him, just because what he did was so significant and completely unconventional, especially in an era of imperialism, fascism, ethnic genocide, the atomic bomb and\u00a0two World Wars. [ref]\n

A\u00a0Hipster Hitler webcomic exists. Maybe we need a Hipster Gandhi webcomic too? It will be easy to monetize as well.<\/p>\n