The Era of Xi

François Bougnon (2018), Inside the Mind of Xi Jinping, Cntxt, pp. 181

The rise of the Chinese President Xi Jinping is also about the rise of China and what it stands for today. The era of Xi (named after the fashion of giving generational titles to Chinese political leaders such as Mao and Deng) is remarkable for its unique combination of the old and the new.  Harnessing Mao’s teaching and a thousand-year old traditional culture, Xi’s ‘neoauthoritarianism’ is a school of thought shaping contemporary China with its emphasis on a strong state, the plank of anti-corruption and relaxed confidence in the ‘Chinese dream’.

Building a Chinese Dream

Xi has been able to articulate a vision of market economy with socialistic characteristics for China. This image of economic development encompasses attaining material needs for a better life along with pride in one’s country and culture. A careful pantheon of historical ideas has been chosen to represent this ideal. For example, legalism, a belief that advocates the use of law, governance and authority to modify the behaviour of people is widely admired for its efficiency as an institutional approach. Additionally, the rising inequality in China also requires a discourse that includes all classes in the Chinese dream. This is done by controlling the domestic media through party discipline while harnessing foreign media to propagate narratives about China to a wider audience. Furthermore, the celebration of Chinese grown technology firms such as Ali Baba, Xiaomi, Baidu and Huawei stand for pride in the Chinese capacity to find alternatives suitable for its own needs and temperament.

Along with the political transformation, Xi is also leaving behind an impressive personal legacy. After Mao, he is the only leader to have his name added in the Chinese Constitution. More recently, he gave himself an unlimited Presidential term. Although he writes a great deal about his thoughts on China, he rarely gives interview to the Western media, managing a persona of enigma.

To me, this book stands out for many reasons. First, it is concise and succinct in its analysis. Bougnon, the former Le Monde correspondent in Beijing, uses his journalistic experience to provide a well-researched background story and generously archives Francophile scholarly research on China. This is a valuable addition to the recent works published by writers working predominantly in English. An engaging political read for our times!

The Hawking Effect

Stephen Hawking (2018), Brief Answers to the Big Questions, John Murray, pp. 220

“Newton gave us answers. Hawking gave us questions.'

                     Kip S. Thorne, Memorial Service of Stephen Hawking

One year ago, to this day, on International Pi Day and Albert Einstein’s birthday, Stephen Hawking, internationally renowned cosmologist and former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University passed away. Arguably, the most celebrated and well-known living scientist of his time, Hawking broke frontiers in our understanding of the universe while blazing personal triumphs against a degenerative disorder. This volume of brief answers to the big questions is drawn from Hawking’s enormous and meticulously kept personal archives with a foreword by his on-screen alter ego Eddie Redmayne, introduction to his life and work by his long-term collaborator Kip Thorne of Caltech (US) and an afterword by his daughter Lucy. It is a volume celebrating his life, work and the inspiring person that Stephen Hawking was.

Questions and Answers

During his lifetime, Hawking was constantly queried by experts, world leaders, fellow scientists, business people and lay folk alike on everything from religion to science and the future of our planet. This book brings together ten such very big questions and Hawking’s responses to them. True to the eclectic nature of this exchange, only two out of the ten questions directly concern his discipline, cosmology. The rest include the stuff of science fiction like time travel and extra-terrestrial life to the future of humankind including prospects of colonizing space and being outsmarted by artificial intelligence. Stephen’s responses are detailed and scientific, his vision bold and daring, his spirit courageous and optimistic, his tone witty and self-deprecating. It also shows a remarkable openness to ideas, a child-like curiosity and a sense of wonder at everything around, profound respect and regard for the work of peers and intellectual forefathers, a constant awareness to privilege women (with his consistent use of the feminine pronoun throughout the book to refer to humankind), and silent pride in the achievements of humans over the last three centuries aided by science.

I went to the same college in Cambridge, Gonville & Caius, where Hawking was a fellow. I was at the King’s Parade (the iconic centre-town of Cambridge) with fellow Caians and people from all over the world as Cambridge bid adieu to its beloved professor. As to Caius and the rest of the world, his absence is not easily overcome. But we can take strength from his example and continue on the magnificent vision he shared with us.

Towards a Fellowship of Faith

Shashi Tharoor (2018), Why I am a Hindu?, Aleph, pp. 297

Works of polemic beginning with ‘Why I am (not) something’ makes for interesting reading because of the focus on a single side of the debate and the force of  arguments. The first of these and arguably the most well-known is Bertrand Russell’s Why I am not a Christian, a speech delivered for the National Secular Society, London which was later published as a pamphlet. So, I was much intrigued when the latest book of Indian Parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor came out last year, considering his brand of secularist Hinduism is increasingly portrayed to be irrelevant in contemporary India.

Tharoor makes his central argument in three parts. In the first, he sketches his personal version of Hinduism with its eclectic mix of beliefs and cosmopolitan view of the world. On the one hand, Tharoor questions several Hindu cultural traditions such as caste system and superstitions that have entrenched inequality among the Hindus over the centuries. He then explains his personal need to be a Hindu, with its emphasis on self-realisation rather than collective advancement, its doctrinal openness and flexibility of practice.

Political Hinduism

In the second part, Tharoor focuses on political Hinduism, which has endangered his personal HInduism. By tracing the ideology of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism through the doctrines of its proponents, the author demonstrates how the liberal and pluralistic ethos of Hinduism as a way of life is incompatible with the cultural nationalist version.

In the third and the last part, the author presents his arguments on how to take Hinduism back to its liberal fold. He argues that reclaiming the intellectual heterodoxy of Hinduism is the key to this project. Hindus were essentially henotheists, i.e., people who worshiped their gods whilst not denying the existence of other gods. For example, Hindus did not have dogma, prescriptive texts or even the need to believe in god to be accepted under its umbrella. This is why Hinduism is sometimes described as a ‘federation of philosophies’ or ‘fellowship of faith’. Reclaiming that version of Hinduism is not only relevant for liberal Hindus but also for inter-religious peace in a country such as India with immense religious diversity. Reform movement within religion may be an important strategy to retrieve other ways of thinking, of which textual work like this, may be the first step.

This book is well researched and duly annotated, catering to lay readers as well as individuals who are familiar with the religion. What makes it a compelling read is Tharoor’s personal conviction of his arguments and his plea to bring back freedom of thought and belief that enables Hindus and non-Hindus to live in peace. A timely intervention in these troubled times!

Future Gazing with Harari

Yuval Noah Harari (2018), 21 lessons for the 21^st century,  

Jonathan Cape, pp. 352

Yuval Noah Harari is an Oxford-educated historian to watch out for! Through his three books Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 lessons for the 21^st century, Harari makes sense of what this century is all about, with historical and contemporary evidence on the biggest forces sweeping our times. The merging of biotech with infotech, the global dimensions of our personal lives and inequality resulting from institutional complicity are the scenarios he examines the most through his work. He speaks of our times as one in which ‘the old stories have collapsed and new stories have not taken over’ and his attempt is to bring light to this liminal space.

The limits of the liberal story

At the heart of his argument is the perceived limit of the liberal story that dominated the political and economic ideologies of the twentieth century. As we shift authority from humans to algorithms, we are shifting the battle from one against exploitation to that against irrelevance. In this battle, ideas about ‘free will’ and freedom go for a toss and the common enemy becomes flawlessly rational and empirical evidence more compelling. An example is the nature of discrimination that we have historically fought (group prejudice that is based on social attitudes against minority groups which is malleable) to one that we might fight against algorithms (personal prejudice based on empirical evidence of incompetence that is not easily mutable). How is the protection and rights of the majority of us to be conceived in this unfolding age? And who is to lead us in thoughts and value models in the age of flux? Harari ominously warns that historically corporations were never ideal vehicles to launch social and political revolutions because of their focus on wealth maximization. The pre-eminence of corporate solutions to human problems has to be evaluated afresh and the resurgence of public-funded institutions such as universities is the need of the hour.  

The secular ideal

The resurrection of extreme ideologies such as the rise of the religious right and the extreme left is to be seen in this context. The path that Harari pursues is re-examining our commitment to what he refers to as the ‘secular ideal’. He charts out the tenets of this ideal based on commitment to truth based on evidence, compassion based on appreciation of suffering, equality based on suspicion of a priori hierarchies, freedom to think, investigate and experiment and courage to fight biases and oppression. This might seem like an idealist’s dream, but the author warns us with a grounded pragmatism that human history is not one long story blessed with a continuous evolving meaning. It is made up of disparate strands of episodes each with its own illuminating inferences. To think through our times is the first step of appropriating agency.

A superb companion to the new year!

Gene Machine

Venkataraman (Venki) Ramakrishnan (2018). Gene Machine, HarperCollins India, pp. 272

A great way to begin your book journey this year would be with this highly accessible memoir of a journey in science by the 2009 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and Cambridge Molecular Biologist Venki Ramakrishnan who uncovered the structure of ribosome. Arguably, the greatest discovery in structural biology since Watson and Crick decoded the double helix of DNA, unearthing the structure of ribosome had two important effects on research in biology. The first was to bring back to research focus the evolutionary link that RNA is and the second to point to the future where proteins dominate gene action.

This book is about Ramakrishnan’s personal journey from being a graduate student in Physics in the 1970s USA, who switched disciplines (Physics to Biology) and continents (US to the UK) and how it made him the dark horse in the race to uncover the central dogma of life. This book reads like a racy thriller at times bringing to light how scientific communities work through collaboration and competition through the generosity of strangers and animosity of colleagues to piece together a complex puzzle amidst the business and politics of science as it is done today.

Ramakrishnan writes with self-deprecating wry humour and acknowledges the importance of a number of teams of people who helped in solving the puzzle one clear insight at a time. This generous acknowledgement of people (often with photographs) make the work tender and human despite the dark sides of human ambition (including his own) that he portrays vividly and honestly. In the process, he raises some larger questions that is worth pondering about.

The first of these is about how conservative and conformist the prizes in science are today, behaving like clubs, acknowledging some types of ideas (and therefore people) over others, institutionalizing elitism that penalizes outsiders and young researchers. This discussion highlights how assumptions are made about the worthiness of a scientific contribution, the arbitrary rules that supports these assumptions, how science progresses through ‘fashionable ideas and big funding’ over small and meaningful group collaboration.

The second insight is about how scientific discovery essentially works in today’s world- with the old-school long and hard work, the role of luck, the cost of errors and the strength of genuine human solidarity beyond the acrimonious race to the finish.

This is a book that is intensely personal and immensely impersonal at the same time, written after critical reflection and with honesty and deep concern by a gifted scientist and writer. What better way to kick start a new year than the story of human suffering and success, personal victory and historic glory, private curiosity leading up to human quest to know beauty and truth? Happy 2019!

India through 50 Lives

Sunil Khilnani (2016), Incarnations, Allen Lane, pp. 636

This book is an excellent introduction to the history of India through the lives of 50 individuals who shaped its destiny. Based on the BBC Radio 4 Series, the book traces the period from ancient to modern India, from Buddha and Ashoka to Raj Kapoor and Dhirubhai Ambani to understand the transformation that the subcontinent has gone through and the ideas it offered the world. This is considering that biography as a modern genre is not popular or prolific in Asian history.

The great thing about such a portfolio view of history is that it goes for rich and rare details of the protagonists and puts a human face to the historical incidents. The prose is lively and you turn the page quite naturally to finish large chunks of the tome at one go.  The photos that accompany each piece is equally captivating from classic portraits and paintings to contemporary stills populating the album.

I found a couple of things not adding up for me. For instance, although 50 portraits are taken, the reason for selection is not explicitly mentioned. As a result, you do end up with an eclectic mix of the very celebrated figures like Gandhi and Buddha, the relatively unknown ones such as eighteenth-century artist Nainsukh and nineteenth-century photographer Deen Dayal with the very problematic individuals V.K. Krishna Menon, English Sanskritist William Jones and Ethiopian slave turned strategist Malik Ambar. I did not understand the justification of such inclusion at the expense of some other equally influential individuals. Second, although fields as varied as science, politics, cinema and business find place in the book, the absence of sports stars is inexplicable. And finally, nearly all the ‘experts’ who comment on each of the historic characters are based out of Western universities. This is particularly jarring because some of the best classicists and art historians are to be found within the country, although they may not be proficient in English. Considering the scale and financial scope of the project, such selectivity is not easily excused.

Even then, the book calls for a fascinating read to both Indophiles and neophytes attempting to understand the history and heritage of India. I’d finish the year off with a giant book (at 600+ pages) like this!

Beauty and the Universe

Frank Wilczek (2018), A Beautiful Question, Penguin Allen Lane, New Delhi, pp. 436

Does the world embody beautiful ideas? Is the world a work of art? Is the creator primarily an artist? These are the fundamental questions that Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek asks in his book A Beautiful Question. In this tour de force of physics’ quest to understand the creative principle of the universe, Wilczek takes us from Pythagoras to quantum mechanics to understand the fundamental concepts that explain the origin and existing conditions of the universe and the aesthetic appeal inherent in these ideas.

From Pythagoras to Quantum Physics

This book picks out some of the most important arguments from historical figures to support its basic thesis. In this journey, we cover geometry, physics, music and the arts in a veritable tour of renaissance. We begin with Pythagoras and his idea that ‘all things are numbers’, a principle that connects mind, matter and beauty. Then, we move to Platonic solids and the idea of symmetry as a principle of beauty. Brunelleschi and his projective geometry help us through to Newton and his novel method of scientific analysis. Here, we encounter dynamic laws of change as opposed to the statist ideals of Plato and Pythagoras. The tension between the ideal and the real is a constant theme that runs through the book. From Newton, we move to Maxwell (who is portrayed with a great deal of creative empathy) and his unification theory to culminate in quantum fulfilment. At the end of this rewarding journey, we do emphatically arrive at the conclusion that beauty is a fundamental principle in the forces that created and run the universe. The last chapter is a sober reminder that it is in this beautiful universe that all the pain and suffering exist too.

Wilczek helpfully simplifies the more complex portion of his arguments especially in the last part of the book that describes quantum physics and its evolution. I found it coming rather rapidly at me as compared to the more languorous description of Pythagoras and Plato in the beginning (caveat: I did science in college!). What worked for me was that I could come back to those parts along with their insightful illustrations and work it out till I understood the basic argument. Let me add that the illustrations are so integrally woven with the intellectual fabric of the book that it adds a touch of humanness to the historical figures and explains complex scientific experiments through interesting visual portrayal. I was particularly fascinated by a page from Issac Newton’s notebook reproducing the conjectures about his experiments in his own hand and young Maxwell ruminating with his colour top. Both in terms of its fundamental thesis and its production values, this is an exhaustive introduction to the aficionado. To the skeptical lay person, I’d say, go for it with an open mind with the confidence that this question is too interesting to give it a miss!

Gandhi’s Religion

JTF Jordens (1998). Gandhi’s Religion: A Homespun Shawl, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, pp. 340

As we celebrate Mahatma Gandhi’s sesquicentennial birth anniversary on 2 October this year, it is a great time to revisit his life and works. A quintessential introduction of his works would begin with his autobiography (The Story of my Experiments with Truth), personal portraits by his grandson Rajmohan Gandhi (The Good Boatman and Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire) and the two-volume biography by Ramachandra Guha (Gandhi before India and Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World). Furthermore, his entire oeuvre of 98 volumes is open for the patient scholar (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol 1-98). Gandhi’s faith seems to be somewhat of an enigma when compared to his political ideas because it evolved as a syncretic mix of various philosophical strands. More importantly, it evolved in the peculiar manner in which Gandhi’s ideas shaped up - through a curious back and forth between philosophy and practice. 

With a helpful introduction of the author and the context of the work by historian Ramachandra Guha, this book is an excellent tour-de-force of Gandhi’s religious ideas. Beginning as a non-committal youth in London, Gandhi’s first foray into religion as a young adult was through meeting with Theosophists and the vegetarianism movement. Following this experience, his years in South Africa as a lawyer and public activist made him question his own limited grasp of Hinduism, a religion into which he was born. Gandhi sought advice on religious philosophy from a practising Jain ascetic which had a profound impact on the way he interpreted Hinduism in his later years. Jainism which emphasised rational thinking, non-violent conduct and enlightenment of the self as highest ideals appealed to Gandhi’s sense of ethics and the way he conducted his politics. His eclectic reading and friendship across religious boundaries influenced him as he formulated his own ideas about God and the first principles of ethical conduct.  These experiments spanning diet, sex, health, prayer and manual labour became an enduring exploration of truth and meaning.

This book is divided into three parts each focusing on three different periods in Gandhi’s life- South Africa, initial years in India and religion in action during the national movement in India. Jordens relies on the extensive corpus of Gandhi’s own writing as collected in his works as well as the numerous letters in which he corresponded with his mentors, followers and adversaries. Relying on such first-hand account, Jordens deftly brings out the evolution of his thoughts and neatly summarises them at the end of each chapter and substantially in the last chapter. A great introduction to Gandhi and his experiments with religion!

View from the Left

EMS Namboodirippad (2010), History, Society and Land Relations, New Delhi: LeftWord books, pp. 239.

EMS Namboodirippad was the leader of the first democratically elected Communist government in the world when he became the first chief minister of Kerala in southern India in 1957. A political leader and a Marxist thinker of immense influence, his essays are a great introduction to his critical approach to understanding Indian society and history. This is one of the two books of his collected essays in English (the other being The Frontline Years), both published by LeftWord. For the student who is interested in Indian history and society, his work is valuable because EMS was that rare breed of practitioner-theoretician, who had at his disposal data and field observations of considerable scale. Furthermore, he chose to analyze them academically, making the sources of his data and the methodology employed transparent. This is especially evident in his examination of the question of land ownership and social classes, a problem still relevant in many developing countries today.

The core thesis

This book contains 14 essays and one interview. The essays thematically span Marxist analysis of history (3 essays), the question of caste, class and the Indian national question (6 essays) and a detailed examination of the feudal system and land relations in Kerala (3 essays). There are two odd essays- one on the Marxist interpretation of the separation of idealist and materialist philosophy in India and the other on the possible trajectories of evolution of the Indian judiciary.

The core thesis of EMS’ analysis is that he sees Asian societies as exception (along with Germanic, Slavonic and Ancient classical societies) to the linear evolution of history from primitive communism to slavery, feudalism and capitalism of the European kind that Marx argued. Relying on Marx’s Notes (1956-57), EMS contends that these societies underwent a different form of transition into ‘village societies’ that was crucial in deploying property relations differently and eschewing slavery and serfdom. For example, in these societies, the individuals are never fully separated from the society and are tied by bonds of kinship or locality. Furthermore, property claims in land is differentiated from that of labour. Therefore, a land lord is not merely a rent collecting agent (economic role), but the head of an inherited social system (caste and its variants). This duality of economic and social relations needs to be considered whilst analyzing political and social questions in the contexts of such societies.

Barring a few typographical errors, the book is an important contribution to critical historical thinking in India. The essays are thematically presented with a brief introduction. Although the articles are rooted in their historical circumstances, the analytical method and the questions that the author evoke remain relevant to this day. A timely revisit to the old questions!

Understanding the Age of Information

Neil Postman (1985), Amusing ourselves to death, Penguin books, New York, pp.184

Neil Postman’s classic manifesto on the influence of television on popular culture, written in the 1980s, speaks directly to our world today that is inundated with information. What is fascinating about this work is the uncanny precision with which the author imagines the future standing on the cusp of the internet revolution. The basic premise of his argument is that there are two alternatives possible for the us, as the next waves of technology wash us over- Orwellian dystopia or Huxleyan trivial future.

In his most famous book 1984, George Orwell vividly anticipated a new captive culture that was subjected to constant surveillance and control, resulting in a world imprisoned in externally-manifested oppression. On the other hand, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World imagined a new generation with an infinite appetite for distraction which was eventually reduced to passivity and egoism. As we reflect on the seven waves of digital revolution that has given us machine learning and internet-of-things (where even ordinary objects are imbued with a semblance of ‘intelligence’), we seem to be increasingly staring at a Huxleyan universe.

The great transformation

The book is divided into two parts. In the first section, Postman discusses the characteristics of the enormous revolution through which we are living. In the second part, the author examines various spheres of life that has metamorphosed, thanks to new media. Using an American centric vantage point, Postman analyzes the totalitarian manner in which television progressively transformed the way we understand and interpret information. The first two chapters give a sketch of how the new medium created a new metaphor (way of using language) and epistemology (way of knowing). In a trenchant comparison, he contrasts what visual medium has creatively destroyed that the typographic world of the printing press had given us earlier. His analysis prods us to think about how the internet has disrupted a world that was governed by visual media.

To begin with, the speed, quantity and quality of information has changed and so has the need for relevance, positionality and coherence. It seems that standard setting by experts and counsel from experience is increasingly irrelevant as the entire world is reduced to millions of data points and machines can decipher patterns that we cannot. Furthermore, democratization of the digital universe has ensured that we are not required to have eligibility of entry or membership or even purpose when we inhabit the internet world. The need for well-thought out exposition seems to be over and with it an appetite for public discourse. Consequently, appreciation of silence, ability for reasoned arguments and adherence to self-imposed restraint are becoming rare qualities. The fragmentation of information with no attention to sequencing, meaning, value and scale leads to the generation of an immense amount of information packs that momentarily invade our lives incoherently and chaotically. As a result, we become the product and consumers of the information age.

There are several ways to get introduced to the theme of how digital technology affects various facets of our life. It is important and urgent that we educate ourselves through the well-thought of arguments of others who know more than we do and have patiently examined these questions vigorously. Jaron Lanier’s (the father of virtual technology) You are not a Gadget is an excellent introduction to the philosophy of what it means to be ‘encapsulated’. Oxford Professor Victor Mayor-Schönberger’s (co-authored with Kenneth Cukier) Big Data gives a comprehensive description of the specific challenges and actionable points that we can take as we step into new realities. The books and articles of Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee present a mainstream perspective that excitedly anticipates the future in a digitally immersed world. Garry Kasparov’s part-memoir Deep Thinking evaluates how humans can thrive in an age of artificial intelligence. But a great primer is still Postman’s manifesto that helps us to understand when technology becomes a medium of culture and how it transforms our minds. In a style that is crisp with arguments that are cogent, Postman appeals to our reason and rationality and delivers his fare with wit and wisdom. An absolutely delightful and important book for our times!