Books and Some History

Our blogging frequency has decreased the past couple of weeks, primarily because the kids (mainly Thomas and Mark) are in the middle of two weeks of final exams. For those from India, you know how grueling these exams can be for young students. I believe that this experience will be good for the kids in learning study habits for more demanding courses in the future. The good news is that they seem to be keeping up quite well with the other students.

Amy wrote below that we are reading much more on this trip that we had been at home (I hope that this change is permanent). In the following, I give brief reviews of the books I've read on this trip (in the order of reading):

• The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India: The Struggle for Control of the South Asian Military Economyby Randolf G. S. CooperThis book is based heavily on the author's PhD dissertation. The central thesis is that western historians have incorrectly ascribed Britain's conquest of most of north India (controlled at the time by the Marathas, based in Mumbai and Pune) in the early 1800s to superior western training, discipline, and technology; instead, the author argues that the reasons for the quick British victory involved a complicated interplay among access to weaponry, the use of mercinaries, and defections of European officers to the British (or East India Company's) side. He repeats this thesis (especially the first part about western historians) ad naseum throughout the book. I found the text interesting solely for the historical facts that it provided. Regarding the thesis, one unexplored facet of the events is that not all European officers left the Maratha army for the British side; the French officers largely remained with the Marathas in opposition to the British (these events were contemporaneous with the French revolution and the beginning of the Napoleanic wars). Given France's military history (parodied here), perhaps this latter factor should not be overlooked.
• The Alexandria Link
  by Steve BerryThis fast-paced thriller is based on the premise that the promised land from Abraham's time was actually in Saudi Arabia (this hypothesis does have some scholarly advocates), and furthermore, that the former holdings of the great library of Alexandria still exist today, maintained by a secret order of protectors. The library allegedly contains irrefutable evidence of the hypothesis about the ancient Jewish lands, and a protagonist spy and his ex-wife must protect the secret so that it does not destabilize the region further. A very fun read.
• A History of India, Vol. 2
  by Percival SpearThis book summarizes the history of India since the 16th century to (almost) the present. The author emphasizes that much of India was ruled by foreigners from the 12th or 13th centuries until its independence in 1947. The book begins in the 16th century with the establishment of the Mughal Empire by Babur (a Turk). Babur's grandson Akbar is perhaps the best known of the Mughal Emperors, as he expanded their territory and was known to be a patron of the arts and to exercise relatively more religious tolerance. Akbar's kingdom extended from Afghanistan to Bengal (Calcutta) and included all of north India and some of the south. The middle portion of the book focuses on the demise of the Mughals, primarily to the benefit of the British, whose imperialist policies and tactics exploited India for more than two centuries. The last part of the book addresses India's struggle for independence and the creation of Pakistan (and later Bangladesh). The partitioning of India was quite sad and, in hindsight, probably could and should have been avoided. The leading advocate for a separate Pakistan was Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He later become Pakistan's first Governor-General and sought to build a nation that was tolerant of different religions--perhaps even officially secular (some debate exists on this point). Unfortunately, he died shortly after Pakistan's founding, and the nation since then has been quite unstable, continuing to this day. Meanwhile, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru led India to establish a parliamentary democracy. Gandhi in particular was very disappointed in the partition, for he believed that people of all faiths could co-exist in an Indian democracy. This tolerance provoked a Hindu extremist to murder him in 1948. Nehru continued to lead India for several decades, and his support of scientific education and research led to the naming of the research institute where I now work.
• Shantaram
  by Gregory David Roberts
  This semi-autobiographical novel chronicles the experiences of an Australian prison escapee and former heroin addict in the Bombay (Mumbai) underworld. The book is masterfully written, and the main character's experiences are both amazing and terrifying. The middle part of the book tends to drag, particularly with Bombay mafia dons and slumlords waxing philosophic about the meaning of life. After reading the book, I learned that the author is now promoting his brand of New Age philosophy, and these segments of the book are clearly part of an ulterior agenda. Nevertheless, the book is well worth the time it takes to read its nearly 1,000 pages, but I must warn you that the book contains much profanity.
  
• Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire
  by Alex Von Tunzelmann
  Amy read this book before I did, and she recommends it highly. The book follows the lives of Dickie and Edwina Mountbatten in India. Dickie was the British Governor-General during partition. Apparently, Edwina and Jawaharlal Nehru had a long-term affair with the full knowledge of the Governor-General. The book does give some insights into the creation of India and Pakistan, and to me, the history clearly reveals that much of the animosity between India and Pakistan was a consequence of each side's believing that the British government favored the other. Of course, such fears from Pakistan were quite reasonable, given the closeness of relationship between the Governor-General's wife and the Indian prime minister. I found the book to contain too much gossip and too little history, but that's just my opinion.
• Other, more technical books
  I've also read a number of technically oriented books including Prof. CNR Rao's biography (Science as a Way of Life, 2nd edition, Prism, 2005) and his book Understanding Chemistry. I've also read much or all of Solar Energy by SP Sukhatme, Thermal Physics by Ralph Baierlein, and several other engineering or physics texts (but I know that no one cares about those, and perhaps none of the above, either. Frankly, I'm just happy that you made it this far).