Book Review: Indian Summer

A little gossipy but ultimately fairly engaging and entertaining, this book provides a historical overview of the Indian Independence movement and Partition, and more specifically, of the key players in this history: the inept Lord Mountbatten (Viceroy of India), his wife Edwina, Jawaharlal Nehra, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and Mahatma Gandhi. The scope of the book is pretty narrow: the author limits herself to mostly describing the dynamics and friendships between these characters: notably, the friendship between Edward (Dickie) Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru, the rumored love affair between Edwina and Nehru, and the soured relationship between Nehru and Jinnah.

This book purports to be unbiased, and has been heralded as such by many readers, but I found it to be just as biased as any other historical account. I thought it was too defensive of Lord Mountbatten who had essentially proven himself to be an ineffectual leader, though he may have been a kind-hearted, well-meaning person. It is impossible to judge the personality of historical characters. In the end, does it really matter if Mountbatten was generous or well-intentioned? All that really matters, and all we can judge him by today, are his actions. And his actions show that he was naive and let his personal relationships guide his actions, and certainly did not help Partition, even if he may not have made it worse.

Alex Von Tunzelmann is also full of praise for Nehru, who is really shown to do no wrong in the book, except maybe when it came to the issue of Kashmir. Nehru was no doubt a great and visionary leader, but just like everyone during that difficult time, he made some hot-headed decisions and ended up making some mistakes. The author's willingness to gloss over these made her a less credible historian in my eyes.

She also seems to be unnecessarily critical of Mahatma Gandhi. Don't get me wrong, I think criticisms of Gandhi are important, because the world looks for heroes, and the West has especially turned him into a symbol of good and a bastion of morality, when really, just like everyone else, he had shades of grey. I think Von Tunzelmann pointed out important contradictions in Gandhi's personality, and in his rigid morality that ultimately harmed those around him. Of course, just like most people, he had flaws, and he influenced the independence movement and the division of India like no man could. But the author does not do an adequate job of describing the mass following he had accumulated, of his power over people. I think ultimately what made Gandhi remarkable as a leader was that he had no desire for power, no desire to be a politician, even though power was at his feet the whole time. He could have been prime minister if he wanted but he chose not to be. This in itself makes him worth appreciating as a national hero.

In sum, this book reads like People Magazine, 1947 Edition, kind of gossipy and sensationalist. But I liked reading it, and learned some new things, like the friendship (affair?) between Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten, which I took mostly with a grain of salt, though it was interesting to read about a different version of history than the one I'd grown up with. In the end, I think that was where Indian Summer provided me with the most value, providing an alternative (but no less unbiased) version of the history I've read so much about.

I would only recommend it to someone with prior knowledge of the events of 1947, however, as it gets into the nitty-gritty details of the situation, which wouldn't be interesting to everyone.

Rape in India- Quick Hit

Priyanka Bhardwaj writes an damning article about rape and the overall patriarchal society in India. India is fast becoming an economic superpower, but the sub-par treatment and protection it offers its women places it firmly in the third world . This needs to stop; if there is change, it is not happening fast enough.

Bollywood goes Hollywood

Interesting article in the NYT today about how Bollywood movies have the potential to be appealing to American audiences. I have often thought about the possibilities of Hindi cinema, especially since it has graduated from the classic love and family drama in the 1990s to a grittier, more complex art today. The NYT article sums this up quite accurately:

It also helps that the definition of Bollywood has become more elastic. No longer a monolithic style that denotes stars, songs and melodrama, Bollywood has also come to encompass something else; over the last decade new filmmakers have tweaked the traditional form so that Hindi cinema also includes films without songs that are stark and rooted in contemporary Indian realities.

The movies from the 1990s were appealing to much of Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East for their family values and conservative clothing, but things are likely to change as the themes get more contemporary and the clothing becomes racier, shifting some of the fan-base to western audiences. In many ways, this shift mirrors the change that India itself is going through, as it slowly leaves behind the developing world and joins the ranks of economic superpowers.

Bollywood in the 1990s

Bollywood in the 2000s