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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. There are two Prefaces in French political scientist and Indologist Christophe Jaffrelot’s new book, Gujarat Under Modi: The Blueprint for Today’s India (Westland Books) – and they tell a story. He visited Gujarat for the first time in February 2001, and till January 2020, he had dropped in to the State at least once a year. In late 2013, he submitted a manuscript so that it was published in time for the 2014 general elections. However, as he writes in Preface 2023, the legal advisers of publishers found the manuscript to be of “high risk” with its “unyielding view of Narendra Modi’s regime” in Gujarat as Chief Minister. They asked for so many cuts that he decided not to move forward. But in 2020, he thought he did not want to let the “book die”, as facts “were gradually fading away”. He wanted to archive what he had found in his 12 years of fieldwork in Gujarat. In 2001, Jaffrelot called Gujarat “a laboratory for Hindu nationalism” and in 2010, Howard Spodek called it “the Hindutva laboratory,” under Modi who governed the State from 2001 to 2014. In the Introduction, Jaffrelot writes that now he can “identify elements of continuity between the political model he [Modi] invented in Gujarat and the way he transposed them to the national level. To understand this model is particularly important because of its remarkable efficacy.” The book is divided into five parts, taking readers from Gujarat before Modi and how Congress politics also had a hand in the rise of Hindutva, to the ascent of Modi and what followed, from “de-institutionalising the rule of law”, the rise of “a new brand of crony capitalism”, “widening the urban-rural gap”, “relating to the people, the nationalist-populist way”, a “growing support of the ‘neo-middle class’” and how he took on “resisters, dissenters and victims.”
In reviews, and ahead of World Environment Day on June 5, we read Hannah Ritchie’s constructive plan of action to save the planet, historian Janaki Bakhle on Savarkar’s ideas and how he shaped the Hindutva blueprint, two books from the Women’s Prize for Fiction, 2024 shortlist and more.
Books of the week
Last week, an observatory in Delhi recorded temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius. Scientists in Antarctica noted a rise of 38.5 degrees Celsius above seasonal average this summer. Climate experts admit temperatures are moving into uncharted territory. Has the world crossed a tipping point? Hannah Ritchie’s Not the End of the World (Chatto and Windus) comes with a message of hope based on data: that it may still be possible to achieve a sustainable planet, says Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta in her review. Ritchie is a lead researcher at Our World in Data, an initiative to compile long-term evidence about the world’s most critical problems. In her book, she argues that the world has earlier found solutions to daunting environmental problems, and pushes for more policy action that can bring change.
In her new book, Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva (Princeton University Press), Janaki Bakhle examines Savarkar’s writings in Marathi, from political and historical works to poetry, essays, and speeches, and critically analyses how he shaped the ideals of Hindutva. In 1923, Savarkar demarcated Essentials of Hindutva under the pseudonym A. Mahratta. In his review, Ziya Us Salam says that “it was, as Bakhle writes, a ‘celebration of the Indian territorial nation’, and was to go on to become the blueprint for exclusionary Hindu nationalism that we often hear about today. This essay added the term Hindutva to Hindu right-wing ideology, and was the first attempt to distinguish between citizens and non-citizens on the basis of religion. To Savarkar only those whose ‘pitrabhumi’ (fatherland) and ‘punyabhumi’ (sacred land) were within the geographical confines of India were its natural inhabitants.”
Mothers, daughters and an absent father – this is the premise of Irish writer Anne Enright’s latest novel, The Wren, The Wren (Jonathan Cape), which has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, 2024. In her review, Sharmistha Jha points out that the story is told through the alternating narratives of Carmel and Nell, and it traces the lives of three generations of women who live in the shadow of a man who abandoned them. “The Wren, The Wren is a portrait of pompous poets and their misogyny. At the same time, it focuses on marriage, motherhood and the emotional life of women.”
Read a review of Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor (Faber), also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, 2024, in which she takes a deeper look at early motherhood, and the struggle it can be, the joys notwithstanding.
Spotlight
Egyptian author and sociolinguist Reem Bassiouney recently won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Literature, for Al Halwani: The Fatimid Trilogy. Bassiouney heads the Linguistics Department at The American University in Cairo and is editor of the Routledge Studies Series on Language and Identity. Apart from her work in sociolinguistics, Bassiouney is also known for her fiction, which includes her historical novel, Al-Qata’i: The Ibn Tulun Trilogy, translated from the Arabic by Roger Allen, and Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy, translated by Allen and winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Award. In an interview with Swati Daftuar, she says that being a sociolinguist really affects her writing “because I do not just search the historical period, I also search the social history and the development of language as well as language change.” She gives an example from her Ibn Tulun trilogy, where she traced language death in Egypt and how Coptic was replaced eventually by Arabic. “Multilingualism is also an essential part of Islamic medieval history which I emphasise,” she says. “I specialise in people and identity, and I write about people and identity in my work.” Asked how she navigates the complexities of modern Egyptian identity and what comes first, the story or the subject, Bassiouney says: “Each work has its own story and character. Sometimes I start with a compelling idea. Sometimes a character really interests me such as Badr, the Armenian in Al Halwani, or Ahmed Ibn Tulun in the Tulun Trilogy. Sometimes a place or a monument affects me and moves me such as Sultan Hassan Mosque in The Mamluk trilogy. But in all my novels I am concerned with people, their actions and feelings.”
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- Sovereign Atonement: Citizenship, Territory, and the State at the Bangladesh India Border (Cambridge University Press) by Md Azmeary Ferdoush focuses on the territorial exchange of the former border enclaves of Bangladesh and India, which took many years. After 1947, they existed as extra-territorial spaces till they were exchanged and merged with host states in 2015. He finds out the experience of citizens, looking into issues of identity, belonging, territory and sovereignty.
- Monika Halan’s new book, Let’s Talk Legacy: A Financial Planner for your Loved Ones (HarperCollins), lists the key aspects of an individual’s financial life, from banking, insurance, and real estate to stocks, taxes and wills. Designed in a workbook format, Halan says she has shared her personal system to record her financial life with readers, on how to not only plan but also keep a record of transactions.
- In Hari Kunzru’s new novel, Blue Ruin (Simon & Schuster), the protagonist, Jay, finds things going downhill after graduating from art school in London. He has shifted to the U.S., is undocumented, and delivers groceries for a living. When he runs into his former lover, Alice, and she invites him to stay with her, it sets in motion a reckoning decades in the making.
- Long Island (Picador), the sequel to Colm Tóibín’s acclaimed novel Brooklyn, revolves around Eilis and Tony who are married for 20 years and living a happy life in Brooklyn with their two children. When a stranger with an Irish accent knocks on their door, Eilis wonders whether she did the right thing by leaving Ireland in the first place.
Published - June 03, 2024 10:23 am IST
