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BOOK
REVIEW
An
intellectual among journalists
Byline by M J Akbar
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
 M
J Akbar is a legitimate wearer of several
hats. Each one has plumed feathers that keep
accumulating over time. As a scribe, he
kick-started the current affairs weekly Sunday
in the mid-1970s to launch modern magazine
journalism in India. In 1982, his Midas touch
was lent to another new venture, the newspaper
Telegraph aimed at "those who wanted to
change India rather than those who had merely
inherited it". In 1994, he founded
India's first global daily Asian Age and
remains its much-toasted editor-in-chief
today. As a historian, Akbar's two books on
Jawaharlal Nehru and militancy in Islam and
Christianity have received critical acclaim
and mass readership. As an astute
socio-political commentator, he has authored
best-selling books on Kashmir, religious
minorities and riots in India. As an
intellectual among journalists and one-time
member of India's parliament, he has also made
outstanding contributions to public life and
opinion.
Byline is his sixth full-length book, a
collection of short essays and op-eds composed
over the past decade. Such is the variety and
acuity of prose presented here that it is
bound to go into many reprints and editions,
like all M J Akbar products. So varied is the
landscape of themes in Byline that it
is impossible to categorize it under one
genre. Akbar's full range of interests, from
cinema to limerick to politics to cultural
tourism, finds space in this volume.
Journalism has permitted Akbar global travel.
His post-September 11, 2001, jaunts to the
United States capture the many moods of a
shaken superpower. Guardians of the West at
airports transform into Cassandras seeing
Muslim names on passports. Akbar wonders what
reaction is apt when his religion is ground
for discriminatory treatment. "Glare
back? Grovel? Rage? Try the sniffy
is-this-the-America-I-once-knew tactic?"
(p 5) Speaking in Arabic or wearing a Muslim
skullcap is dangerous, an invitation to tough
security. "Right now, Americans cannot
tell the difference between Islam and Osama
bin Laden." (p 17) Paradoxically, New
York seems to have grown into a kinder and
gentler place and the "sudden
intimacy-wavelength" is back on the
streets.
Akbar's sojourn in Turkey unveils little-known
trivia. Biblical Noah's ark landed on Mount
Ararat, making the primeval navigator a
"naturalized Turkish citizen". St
Paul, the missionary, came from Adana in
southern Turkey and Paris, the son of Priam in
Greek mythology was also a Turk. Even Homer,
the balladeer, was a Turk, living most of his
life in Izmir (Smyrna). Akbar has an uncanny
ability to relate India with whichever part he
is visiting through obscure facts. The
daughter of the last Ottoman Sultan married
into the family of the last Nizam of Hyderabad.
The wife of Napoleon's foreign minister,
Talleyrand, was an Indian from Calcutta (now
Kolkata). The Begum of Awadh sought and
received refuge in Kathmandu after defeat and
expulsion by the British. Bihari workmen in
Mauritius speaking pidgin Bhojpuri-French
arouse "volcanic emotions" in his
heart. Indians in post-apartheid South Africa
are wedging themselves above an emerging
African middle class by lapping up posh
residences.
In the Arab lands, Akbar dons Islamic
historian specs and comments on the
"fragrant memory" of Muslim rule
over Andalusia that lingers. Spain is "an
incessant part of popular consciousness"
here, just as the Spanish have constant
reminders that Arab Africa is only a few miles
of sea away. Nearly 4,000 Arabic words have
entered Spanish vocabulary and signboards on
Spanish highways are written in both Spanish
and Arabic, the latter using original
phonetics. A parallel influence of the
colonized tongue on the former master's
language is Goa, which "continues to live
in the Portuguese language". (p 152)
Japan startles Akbar with its insularity. No
foreign mobile phone works there and he sees
"invisible Japanese walls to shut off the
rest of the world's economy from their
market". (p 87) Pakistan appears to be
sinking in front of the author's eyes.
"When the civilians looted the country,
the army served as a bulwark of reassurance.
But if the army fails as well ... the
fundamentalists are waiting with an
answer." (p 120) Bangladesh under Sheikh
Hasina was, in contrast, empowering women with
jobs, credit and housing ownership, but the
social reform work has now run into rough
weather with an Islamist backlash under
Khaleda Zia. Kabul, Afghanistan's battered
capital, wears a transient look after the
Taliban's fall. "The present lives
uneasily between yesterday's and tomorrow's
wars." (p 130) When the next war will
start is anyone's guess.
France offers mild shocks. In the classroom,
cafe and coiffure, "a second French
Revolution is taking place. The French are
speaking English." (p 157) The British
may have lost their empire, but their lingo
still lords over the world. Scotland is
subject to a new invasion from the Bangladeshi
restaurant selling Indian food. Down south in
England, Indian cuisine is a chart-buster.
Akbar adventitiously notes the problem of new
confidence among British Asians that
translates easily into belligerence and
aggression.
Kashmir enthralls Akbar like no other place.
In this greenest of valleys, "time
becomes a pattern inside a kaleidoscope",
provided Pakistan gives it some respite. Since
1947, the Pakistan army's strategy has not
changed. "Send in troops, call them
freedom fighters and follow this up with a
formal war if the 'freedom-fighters' fail to
bring freedom." (p 202) Bitterness
against India or complaints against Allah will
not give Pakistan answers to its profuse
internal afflictions.
Moving to India proper, Akbar wonders what
economic liberalization is doing to the poor.
"Indifference to public spending has been
converted from an embarrassment into an
achievement" by World Bank devotees.
Change should not come at the expense of the
hungry and democracy has to be a "daily
business of incremental benefit" and
"an economic fact" that travels in a
positive direction for all classes in society.
Social inequalities in the name of caste are
no less degrading. Akbar quotes the heartless
lawgiver Manu, "a man of inferior caste
is not set free from slavery; for since that
is innate in him, who can take it from
him?" (p 211) Caste is a relationship
loaded with "implicit violence and
explicit cruelty". Gender violence and
"our biased and merciless male-centric
culture" (p 385) also come in for some
stick.
In one delightful exercise of counter-factual
history, Akbar speculates that Hindu-Muslim
amity could have survived on firmer footing
had revolutionary nationalist Subhas Chandra
Bose remained in Gandhi's Congress and led the
nation after independence. "Hinduism is
synonymous with humanism. That is its essence
and great liberating quality." (p 237)
Indian culture is "so open and flexible
that it permits every outside influence some
space with its cavernous folds." (p 318)
Akbar has stern words for those threatening
inclusive India. Gujarat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi ironically deserves an award
from Pakistan for trying to destroy the idea
of an India where every citizen is equal
irrespective of his or her faith.
On the lighter side, Akbar grieves multiple
declines in the gentleman's game of cricket.
If cricket between India and Pakistan is a
surrogate for war, Australia uses the sport as
an "undeclared part of its struggle for
independence from England". (p 290)
English fans continue to taunt Australia as
their "colony" populated by
"rejected felons". Money is a germ
that is sprouting greed in modern commercial
cricket, leading to match fixing and other
unimaginable crimes. "Cricket is money,
not national pride. If money can work over
ground, it can also work underground." (p
312)
Akbar's love for "our India" shines
through the book, though never the blind
"my-country-always-right" sort. It
is "destiny's draw whether you are born
into a generation of peace or a generation of
horror ... millions of us can be Indians. That
is a lottery worth winning." (p 333)
Humbugs who delight in putting India down are
given short shrift. "The instant
assumption that Indians mess it up all the
time invites suspicion." (p 172)
The book's final pages are dedicated to
memories of famous personalities and places
that are no more. "The present is a
flickering illusion, everything lies in the
past, for each fraction of time coverts the
previous fraction into the past." (p 367)
Akbar recalls a Calcutta that once understood
art, loved music and believed in books. With
the angel of death going about her business
cruelly, he pays homage to a growing list of
personal friends-cum-public figures departing
in untimely fashion. Every death leaves traces
of one's own mortality and impermanence.
Byline is no-holds-barred,
quintessential M J Akbar. Those who have only
read his scholastic works may be startled by
his rip-roaring sense of humor and facility
with puns. Those who love intellectual
journeys along unhindered thought chains must
buy a copy straightaway.
Byline by M J Akbar, Chronicle Books,
New Delhi, 2003. ISBN: 81-8028-003-9. Price:
450 Indian Rupees/US$9.50, 404 pages.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact [email protected]
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