Cult of Masculinity
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The Book Review Volume XXXVI No. 6 June C o n t e n t s Salim Yusufji Catching Up With Gandhi by Graham Turner; Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle With India by Joseph Lelyveld; Timeless Inspirator: Reliving Gandhi conceptualised and edited by Raghunath Mashelkar 2 Malvika Maheshwari Playing the Nation Game: The Ambiguities of Nationalism in India by Benjamin Zachariah 5 Ankita Pandey Accommodating Diversity: Ideas and Institutional Practices edited by Gurpreet Mahajan 7 K.K. Kailash India’s 2009 Elections: Coalition Politics, Party Competition, and Congress Continuity edited by Paul Wallace and Ramashray Roy 9 Mark Schneider Undermining Local Democracy: Parallel governance in Contemporary South India by Lalita Chandrashekhar 11 Krishna Swamy Dara The Community of Rights: The Rights of Community by Daniel Fischlin and Martha Nandorfy 12 Faisal Devji Shi’a Islam in Colonial India: Religion, Community and Sectarianism by Justin Jones 13 Tahir Mahmood Islam in the World Today: A Handbook of Politics, Religion, Culture and Society edited by Werner Ende and Udo Sreinbach 14 Muhammed Haneefa The Malabar Muslims: A Different Perspective by L.R.S. Lakshmi 16 Rahul Mukherji The Eagle and the Elephant: Strategic Aspects of the US-India Economic Engagement by Raymond Vickery 18 Manjrika Sewak Conflict Society and Peacebuilding: Comparative Perspectives edited by Raffaele Marchetti and Nathalie Tocci 19 J. Devika Markets and Malthus: Population, Gender, and Health in Neo-liberal Times edited by Mohan Rao and Sarah Sexton 21 Anjali Arondekar Masculinity, Asceticism, Hinduism: Past and Present Imaginings of India by Chandrima Chakraborty 22 Book News 24 Chandan Gowda Bipolar Identity: Religion, Nation, and the Kannada Language Film by M.K. Raghavendra 26 Arshia Sattar Kshemendra: Three Satires from Ancient Kashmir translated by A.N.D. Haksar; Kama Sutra: A Guide to the Art of Pleasure by Vatsyayana. 28 Aasim Khan Lucknow Boy: A Memoir by Vinod Mehta 29 Kishalaya Bhattacharjee Looking Back into the Future: Identity and Insurgency in Northeast India by M.S. Prabhakara 30 B.G. Verghese Jashn-E-Khusrau: A Collection by Shakeel Hossain, Irfan Zuberi et. al. 31 Sucharita Sengupta The Writer’s Feast: Food and the Cultures of Representation edited by Supriya Chaudhuri and Rimi B. Chatterjee 32 Rakhshanda Jalil Black Ice by Mahmudul Haque. Translated by Mahmud Rahman 33 Abdullah Khan Beautiful Country: Stories from Another India by Syeda Saiyidain Hameed and Gunjan Veda 34 Nita Berry Light House in the Storm: A Collection of 24 Short Stories by members of the Association of Writers and Illustrators for Children; Search for the Sacred Gem by Nilima Sinha 35 Editors Advisory Board Founder Members Editorial Advisory Board Romila Thapar Narayani Gupta Pulin Nayak Chandra Chari Uma Iyengar K.R. Narayanan S. Gopal Nikhil Chakravartty Raja Ramanna Mrinal Pande Indira Chandrasekhar Ashok Vajpeyi Consultant Editor Adnan Farooqui Meenakshi Mukherjee K.N. 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Published by Chandra Chari for The Book Review Literary Trust, 239 Vasant Enclave, New Delhi 110057. Printed at National Printers, B-56, Naraina Industrial Area Phase-II, New Delhi 110028 The Book Review / June 2012 / 1 Gandhi As Journey, Traveller, And Baggage Salim Yusufji CATCHING UP WITH GANDHI By Graham Turner Penguin Books, Delhi, 2010, pp. 329, `350.00 GREAT SOUL: MAHATMA GANDHI AND HIS STRUGGLE WITH INDIA By Joseph Lelyveld Harper Collins, Delhi, 2011, pp. 425, `699.00 TIMELESS INSPIRATOR: RELIVING GANDHI Conceptualised and edited by Raghunath Mashelkar Sakal Publications, Delhi, 2010, pp. 370, `490.00 raham Turner, a British journalist, ked Turner promptly spreads the libel. In fact, comes to the Mahatma after cutting the Mahar Regiment is neither dedicated to Ghis biographer’s teeth on a life of the occupation of sweeping nor has custody of Queen Elizabeth, ‘based on intimate conversa- the sanitary arrangements on Republic Day. It tions with many of her family and friends.’ consists of trained soldiers and no more than Conversations with another friend, Rajmohan the usual regimental complement of tradesmen Gandhi, yielded the present venture: a journey —cooks, barbers, washer-men and sweepers. in Mahatma Gandhi’s footsteps, ‘standing At least two chiefs of the Indian Army have together? As for evidence, Turner speculates on where he stood, seeing something of what he come from the Mahars. Lesson: Turner is at whether Gandhi desisted from topping his saw, talking to some of the people who knew his most reliable when in the company of his class at school out of a sense of noblesse oblige him,’ in India, England and South Africa. Jeeves. —‘given his family’s elevated status, he may Turner’s grasp of P.G.Wodehouse is of an Echoes of Wodehouse, though, are not the have felt that striving too hard would have order that enables him to recall the precise only extraneous factor in evidence. Like the been bad form.’ Moreover those genes meant context in which the Gandhi motif surfaced in Attenborough movie, the book opens and that ‘he constantly surprised his opponents by Right Ho, Jeeves but he makes no claims to closes with Gandhi’s death. Salman Rushdie the stylishness of his behavior.’ Likewise, learning on his immediate subject, admitting had slammed that device, accusing Atten- Rajmohan Gandhi, descendant alike of the that at the outset he ‘did not even know he borough of pandering to a morbid strain of Mahatma and C. Rajagopalachari, ‘is—so to [Gandhi] had spent twenty-one of his most Christian sentiment, of life presented as a speak—of the blood royal by two different formative years in South Africa’. This is where waiting on death and murder as a moral tri- inheritances.’ Turner’s preferred mode of research, intimate umph for the victim. Its reuse here is an This outlook holds up better on English conversations with family and friends, comes equally questionable aesthetic choice, though ground, as when Turner carefully distinguishes into its own. His guides along the journey— the particular resonance that Christ’s example Gandhi’s Inner Temple training for Law from Rajmohan Gandhi in India and England, Ela did have with Gandhi is one of the running the mere Middle Temple—of inferior archi- Gandhi in South Africa—keep up the supplies themes of the book. Here is Rajmohan Gandhi tecture, antiquity and, it follows, intake. The of erudition and ensure that doors everywhere citing an admonitory letter from Rajaji to pace set by the ‘wealthier if not aristocratic fly open for him. The result is a book without Gandhi: ‘He wants to reach him at his deep- pupils’ at the Inner Temple may have inspired footnotes or a bibliography that yet secures a est, so he invokes Jesus.’ The invocation work- Gandhi to splash out on his Bond Street most privileged access to Gandhi’s life. ‘Behold ed, arresting Gandhi’s slide into a dangerous evening suit, chimneypot hat, those lessons in the lilies of the field’, Wodehouse might have involvement with the educated and accomp- dancing—lurid and baffling gestures from one murmured, and Turner would concur, playing lished Saraladevi Chaudhurani. Gandhi’s love intent on a teetotal, celibate and vegetarian up his modest Bertie Wooster to Rajmohan of Christ is, of course, well documented and existence, painted by his own hand into a Gandhi’s Jeeves. the book is replete with instances of his corner. Gandhi’s later disbarment from legal The limpid and absorbing prose of this pleasure in hymns, the New Testament and the practice—in 1923, for sedition—was not book conceals, as with the best of Wodehouse, company of his missionary friends. revoked by the Inner Temple till 1988 (or a good deal of craft. Turner’s flip choice of On a more quixotic note, Turner shows a 1983, as it becomes a hundred pages later). title—worthy of a Drones Club raconteur— surprisingly abject regard for the putative Entirely in pompous character, that. And it covers a many-threaded narrative combining virtues of birth and inheritance. It emerges may be why—in another of Turner’s finds— biography, travelogue, interviews and a vivid that ‘Gandhi had the genes of a ruling class in when Gandhi returned to England in 1931, his account of what it is like to be a descendant of his veins,’ a statement all the more feudal in passport gave out his occupation as ‘farmer’. Gandhi. But his dependence on word-of- singling out veins for the proper conveyance of Rehabilitating Gandhi with his own flesh mouth also makes Turner a peculiarly suscep- genes. Can this be an infection caught on the and blood is one of the original contributions tible and credulous reporter. When a dalit Queen Elizabeth project? An attempt to ex- of this book. Seen through the eyes of his informant in Delhi claims that, post-Indepen- plain affinities between the Mahatma and his grandchildren he comes across as an attentive dence, the Mahar Regiment of the Indian high-minded grandchildren? Or an effect of the and benign figure, quite the opposite of how Army has continued to be employed in sweep- transferred affection, even obeisance, that he was with his sons (‘the ultimate control ing up after the Republic Day Parade, a shoc- Rajmohan Gandhi attracts on their travels freak,’ in Turner’s crisp summation).