The year that was–12 | 2024 in books: Love, hope and resistance—Part 2

READING books is about enlarging the imagination and opening out possibilities that one may not have considered or about affirming ideas that seem a bit out of place.Doing a review of books of the year is about cultivating a reflective space from which to think of the tumultuous world we live in from a space which is a bit removed from the din of the contemporary world.This act of reading or list-making is, however, about the world we live in. As Emily Dickinson put it:Tell all the truth but tell it slant—Success in Circuit lies…The Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind—.Ann Heberlien, Of Love and Tyranny.Heberlien’s account of the life and politics of Hannah Arendt has been translated from Swedish in 2021. While the authoritative biography of Arendt is by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, titled For Love of the World, Heberlein’s account focuses quite brilliantly on two thematics that dominated both Arendt’s life and her work, namely love and tyranny.Heberlien’s account of the relationship between Hannah and her teacher, Martin Heidegger is a caution on not judging a relationship based on outward appearances.Hannah was the student and Martin was the established and famous teacher. To the outward eye, the relationship was unbalanced. “Power is an underlying condition in all relationships. To love puts a person in a weak position. There is a temptation to exploit the other person’s devotion in order to gain the upper hand- after all, the person who loves most, who is most dependent, is always in the more vulnerable position..Book review: Prof. Upendra Baxi’s life of law.“As a result, it is easy, too easy, perhaps to conclude that Hannah was subordinate and that Martin held the balance of power in their relationship. In all likelihood the reality was more complex than that.”Hannah found her ‘love’ in Heinrich Blucher who she met in Germany and with whom she escaped the Nazis to land up in the United States and begin a new life.With Heinrich, she cultivated “another mode of being together”, based on their “shared passion for thinking”. The love between them was based on building a common world together, while maintaining their separateness. Though Hannah struggled to accept Henrich’s sexual infidelities, she reasoned that “fidelity was about continuity, about loyalty and reliability … it was about being faithful to what is true, genuine and important. Hannah managed to reason her way to an understanding of fidelity that could accommodate Heinrich’s infidelity.”.Heberlien’s account of the relationship between Hannah and her teacher, Martin Heidegger is a caution on not judging a relationship based on outward appearances..When Heinrich passed away, one of those who spoke at his funeral quoted Plato’s Apology of Socrates: “But now it is time to go away, I to die and you to live. Which of us goes to a better thing is unclear to everyone except to God.”The idea of love as building a life based on being together and death as creating a void in one’s life is poignantly captured by Arendt in her letter to Mary Macarthy when she writes that growing old is the “gradual (or rather sudden) transformation of a world with familiar faces ( no matter foe or friend) into a kind of desert, populated by strange faces”.The idea of love for Arendt as much as it was embodied in her relationships with Heidegger and Blucher was also about her capacity for friendships as seen in her long friendships with Karl Jaspers, Walter Benjamin, W.H. Auden and Mary McCarthy. She was “fluent in the language of friendship”.Walter Benjamin, even before he committed suicide, was devastated by the Germans entering his apartment and confiscating “his books and the texts he had been working on”. Heberlien observes, “Any thinking, writing person could understand his despair. A collection of books is far more than physical objects: it represents an entire world.“The books we read, with exclamation points scrawled in margins, underlined words and folded corners, form an intellectual universe that takes years, possibly even an entire lifetime to amass. How was Walter expected to start a new library from scratch?”Arendt went on to write an iconic tribute to Benjamin in her Men in Dark Times..Saurabh Kirpal’s new book offers a close examination of the 24-word equality provision in the Indian Constitution.Encompassing the question of love and friendship was Arendt’s amour mundi, which is a ‘love of the world’. A love of the world requires that one cultivate hope which is “the ability to imagine a future, a situation beyond the present”.“Only those who retain that ability— that hope— can survive evil and inhumanity”. Or, as Arendt’s friend, Benjamin put it, “It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.”.“Only those who retain that ability— that hope— can survive evil and inhumanity”. Or, as Arendt’s friend, Benjamin put it, “It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.”.Poorna Chandra Tejasvi, Carvalho.Poorna Chandra Tejasvi’s Carvalho is the story of a scientist who is posted in an insect research institute in a remote village in the Western Ghats region. The interactions of the scientist, Carvalho, with the local people such as Mandanna as well as the narrator, who is a farmer, and Prabhakar, who is a photographer, are captured beautifully.The relationships he forms etch a portrait of a society in transition. In a traditional society, one has the emergence of the scientific viewpoint, embodied by Carvalho. When asked whether he believes in God, Carvalho says that he cannot believe in anything without proof. Carvalho embodies the Nehruvian spirit of someone with the “scientific temper” and the “spirit of inquiry”.Carvalho, who is in search of a pre-historic lizard, finds help in the form of Mandanna, who is described as a “good for nothing”, but in Carvalho’s words is a “born naturalist” whose powers of observation cannot be bettered by anybody else.The fact that what are seen as polar opposites, namely science and tradition, have more commonalities than are supposed is explored by Tejasvi. The “spirit of inquiry” resides in village people like Mandanna, thereby asking questions about what is traditional and unchanging about village life. The story is told with a sense of humour and a spirit of humanism that has made Tejasvi one of the most popular writers in Kannada literature..The fact that what are seen as polar opposites, namely science and tradition, have more commonalities than are supposed is explored by Tejasvi..Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns.The Oppermanns is described by Joshua Cohen in the introduction as “one of the last masterpieces of German Jewish culture”, produced before the Nazis obliterated Jewish existence.Feuchtwanger wrote the novel in “real-time as the events he was writing about were still unfolding, and even while he was suffering the same tragedies as his characters: In 1933, his property in Berlin was seized; his books were purged from German libraries and burned”..The anti-Jewish sentiment is diagnosed by one of the characters as arising out of an “inferiority complex” due to which the protagonists of hate had “encased themselves in an armor of the cheapest nationalism”..The novel begins in a time just before the Nazis take power and evokes the way members of one well-off Jewish family and their friends respond (or fail to respond) to this rising threat. Life in Weimar Germany for the rich is portrayed as attending parties in which “they talked of nothing but the thousand little things that rich and idle people talk about”.There are points of uneasiness such as when the papers report that the “National Socialists wanted to throw a Jewish looking gentleman out of a moving train”, but other passengers came to his assistance and as the newspapers noted the Nazis were “arrested and faced with the punishment they deserved”. One of the protagonists who reads this heaves a sigh of relief and dismisses it as an “isolated case of violence”.Slowly, the social world of the Oppermanns is permeated by a rising anti-Jewish sentiment, which again is diagnosed by one of the characters as arising out of an “inferiority complex” due to which the protagonists of hate had “encased themselves in an armor of the cheapest nationalism”..Literature in the time of rising authoritarianism must speak to contemporary challenges and in that sense, the sensibility of Feuchtwanger is deeply relevant..The Jews, driven to the wall, continue to derive a sense of security from being a part of German culture and as one of the characters observes, “A nation that has concerned itself for centuries so intensively with books such as those they saw around them could never allow themselves to be deceived by the nonsense in Mein Kampf”. Each time the possibility of barbarism looms, the protagonists take refuge in German culture.“Berthold let his eyes roam over the long and lofty rows of books. All that was Germany.”“Gustav merely smiled at his friend’s pessimism. A people that had reached such a high point of technical and industrial development did not lapse into barbarism in twenty-four hours.”But accompanying this comfort in the humanistic values of German culture is a dawning realisation that “the present era was no time for poetry”. As the author notes, “On the thirtieth of January, the President of the republic appointed the author of the book called Mein Kampf to the post of German Chancellor.”.Nehru in the age of the RSS-BJP, ‘anti-communism’ and alignment of chakras.With the coming to power of the Nazis, history takes on a furious pace and the country of the past is strangulated. On the surface, nothing changes because the newspapers are not allowed to report “unpleasant facts”. Thus, “In a country of sixty-five million people, it had become possible to slaughter three thousand people, to cripple thirty thousand and to imprison one hundred thousand without trial and without reason, and yet preserve an outward aspect of peace and order.”This was because the “radio or the press” were not allowed to “report these events”.Feuchtwanger’s expectation of the novel was that it would “do something”. Unfortunately, it had no impact on foreign policy of the allied nations whatsoever. Cohen laments that the novels of Germany from that time period which are read today demand “interpretative resources and commitments of attention from the reader, nothing more. They do not demand that we break the laws or overthrow the government.”Cohen notes that Feuchtwanger’s demand that the novel “do something”, that the “arts provide the humane leadership that government lacked” is today becoming more salient. Literature in the time of rising authoritarianism must speak to contemporary challenges and in that sense, the sensibility of Feuchtwanger is deeply relevant..Irene Vallejo, Papyrus.Vallejo tells the story of the birth of writing and the importance of knowledge contained in paper and why libraries are such an important development in world history.Books are “extensions of memory” and the “only witnesses— imperfect, ambiguous, but irreplaceable— of the times and places living memory cannot reach”.Libraries “invent a homeland made of paper for the Stateless of every era” and allow for the “fantastical increase in the life expectancy of ideas”. The works of great authors travel through the centuries and “millions of people still yet unborn” can find themselves in the nuanced understandings of the human emotions of grief, revenge and love manifested in characters such as Antigone, Oedipus and Medea..Book review— Practices of the State: Muslims, Law and Violence in India.As Vallejo notes, these books, though written in the dim past, can speak to our innermost concerns, nurture our thoughts and even “inspire our rebellions”.The ability to read is an ability to connect with a tradition of thought. “In medieval Jewish society, a solemn ceremony marked the moment when a child started learning to read, when books made him part of a collective memory and a shared past.”Books can also be about allowing us to understand the viewpoint of the other. In Vallejo’s telling, Aeschylus’s play, The Persians is a very sympathetic account of the impact of war with the Greeks on Persian society.He writes about the “pain of widows and mothers” as well as “the anguish of those waiting for the army’s return”. Aeschylus himself taught the Persians in close combat and yet was “able to bring to the stage the sorrows of his defeated enemies”, without “mockery or hatred”.Herodotus, otherwise known as the father of history, also through his histories tried to understand the “enemy” and strove to “topple his Greek countrymen’s prejudices”, teaching them that “the line between civilization and barbarism is never a geographic border between countries, but a moral border within every people, and beyond that, within each individual”..The Great Library of Alexandria aimed to bring together in one place the knowledge of the ancient world. When it was destroyed, “The flames fed by the books scattered darkness in their wake.”.Herodotus’s history began with an “explanation of the point of view of the other, of the enemy, of those who are unknown to us”. As Vallejo observes, “Even twenty-five centuries later … this seems a profoundly revolutionary approach.”When libraries that contain thousands of books including the works of Herodotus and Aeshylus are destroyed, what is destroyed is a culture, a history and the expression of entire ways of understanding the world.Thus, the destruction of libraries represents a greater loss than that of a physical structure. The Great Library of Alexandria aimed to bring together in one place the knowledge of the ancient world. When it was destroyed, “The flames fed by the books scattered darkness in their wake.”As Susan Sontag put in the context of the ethnic cleansing of Sarajevo, “The attacker's goal” was to “sweep away the historic substance of a land and mount in its place an edifice made of lies, myth and legend”. As Vallejo concludes, “Those who destroy libraries and archives are advocating for a future with less diversity, less irony and less dissent.”.Humour and nostalgia: A review of Tales of Law and Laughter by Raju Z. Moray.The destruction of a library as the destruction of the memory of a people is today the story of Gaza. The fact that libraries, archives, museums and universities have been destroyed by Israel speaks to the same intent which is to destroy a people, their culture and their collective memory and history.In Arendt’s words, the reason why libraries and books are important is because the past “does not pull back but presses forward, and it is contrary to what one would expect, the future which drives us back into the past”..Antonio Scurati, Son of the Century.This polyphonic novel charts the rise of fascism in Italy through the words of Mussolini and his opponents, including the socialist, Matteotti who was killed by the fascist squads, as well as the communists and liberals.One gets a sense that the power which fascism exerted as an ideology flowed from its uncompromising challenge to the status quo and the promise of change. The early Mussolini attacked a moderate socialist, Bissolati, for going to pay respects to the king who had been shot at.Mussolini asked, “How many times Bissolati has gone to pay respects to a mason who fell from the scaffolding” and scathingly observed, “Why weep only for the king? Between an accident that strikes the king and one that injures the worker, the former should leave us indifferent. The king is by definition a useless citizen.”Fascism was the first to tap into the anger of the “seething hunger of the malnourished masses”, and to organise an “army of dissatisfied demoted failures” into fascist squads which took the law into their own hands.The essence of the fascist movement was its use of lawless and brutal violence by which it destroyed its enemies including the powerful socialist party which had established deep roots in Italian society. The institutions of socialism from newspaper offices to meeting halls to party headquarters were ruthlessly destroyed and socialist mayors, members of parliament and trade union leaders were assassinated..Book review: In Defense of Flogging.The success of fascism was to portray its violence as legitimate violence, exercised in defence of the nation, and the violence of its adversaries as against the nation. Thus, fascist violence was rendered necessary and legitimate and the deaths of fascist squad leaders who were murderers were transmuted into martyrs for the cause of the nation. What was the response of the liberals, the communists and the socialists to this, “counter-revolution without having had a revolution?” With the benefit of history, we can say that the threat posed by a fascism of the “truncheon” was not adequately comprehended by existing political parties. The overt turn to violence as a strategy in effect rendered all conventional political organising obsolete.As Mussolini put it, “They still and always will call us bandits, felons, savages, slave drivers, brigands, traitors… We don’t give a damn. Go ahead, you people, print your useless, offensive words. We respond by crushing you politically and syndically.”In the face of fascist violence, the socialists could not defend the rule of law and demand that the State perform its “institutional role as a guarantor of rights and freedom”..In the face of fascist violence, the socialists could not defend the rule of law and demand that the State perform its “institutional role as a guarantor of rights and freedom”..This was because the socialists and communists themselves had no faith in the liberal State. They too were also committed to the overthrow of the State. The socialist tools of action to replace the bourgeoisie State were the use of strikes (which evoked the fear of Bolshevism in liberals) and the communists were committed to violent revolution which was an even more frightening prospect for the liberals.The ideological commitments of the socialists and communists made the liberals and monarchists supporters of fascism. Fascism, in the eyes of liberals and monarchists, was a better bet, because at least it was for the nation as a whole compared to the class-based ideology of the socialists and communists devoted to making the proletariat the ruling class..Life of a communist woman: Review of Brinda Karat’s autobiography.The weakened liberal State, which had fewer and fewer defenders, finally gave in to fascist blackmail and surrendered State power to the fascists, resulting in the rule of the “son of the century’.Esi Edugyan, Washington Black.Edugyan, creates an imaginative account of slavery, told from the point of view of a slave in a Barbados plantation, namely, Washington Black. The novel portrays the cruelties of the sugar plantation for the slaves.It also draws attention to the hierarchies among the slaves, such as that between a plantation slave to a house slave as well as the solidarities amidst them.The most powerful thematic of the novel is the account of the unlikely friendship between Wash and the brother of the owner of the plantation, Titch, set amidst the cruelties of the sugar plantation.Titch is involved in the building of a flying contraption and recruits Washington as an assistant. Circumstances dictate that both are forced to take flight in the contraption and end up after a series of adventures in, of all places, Alaska.The novel is an imaginative romp across vast geographies and explores, in beautiful prose, the possibilities of friendships across the borders of race.

The year that was–12 | 2024 in books: Love, hope and resistance—Part 2

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