Blogcritics Author: kanjisheik

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Book Review: The Last Mughal by William Darlymple

kanjisheik — Thu, 5 Jul 2007 17:07:59 EDT

Now this is one book that will pique your interest in history. Scottish travel writer and historian William Darlymple comes up with The Last Mughal, a groundbreaking work that poignantly portrays the events that occurred in and around Delhi during the Revolt of 1857. The Last Mughal is a refreshingly new perspective of the Revolt of 1857 and probably the first ever to present the viewpoints of ordinary people who lived during that tumultuous age.The Last Mughal is not a biography of the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, though he is one of the major characters; instead, it is an account of the Indo-Islamic civilisation which he represented. It also deals with the fall of Delhi in the face of the uninvited arrival of the mutinous Indian soldiers of the British Army, and then its destruction at the hands of the British invaders. At the end of the Revolt, Bahadur Shah Zafar was put on trial for treason, his beautiful capital was ransacked and destroyed, his palace [an architectural marvel] was detonated and a British barracks was constructed within it, and the composite Hindu-Islamic culture he stood for had been eliminated.Over the past four years, Darlymple tirelessly worked through many of the nearly 20,000 virtually unused Persian and Urdu documents relating to Delhi in 1857, known as the Mutiny Papers, found on the shelves of the National Archives of India. These documents allowed 1857 in Delhi to be seen for the first time from a properly Indian perspective and not just from the British sources it has been viewed through to date. Meanwhile, the Delhi Commissioner’s Office Archive contained the records of the reviled British administration, which describe the full scale of the viciousness and brutality they unleashed in the city after regaining it. Darlymple was also able to gain access to the Punjab Archive in Lahore, which contained the complete pre-Mutiny records of the British Residency in Delhi. And a visit to Rangoon yielded Bahadur Shah Zafar’s prison records.Using all these disparate sources, Darlymple succeeds in creating a masterpiece that challenges the existing theories about the Revolt. Instead of the single coherent mutiny or patriotic national war of independence beloved of Victorian or Indian nationalist historians, Darlymple says that there was in reality a chain of very different uprisings and acts of resistance that were determined by local and regional factors.Darlymple sets the stage by introducing the main characters and describing how people lived in Delhi in the 19th century. The city of Shahjahanabad becomes alive through his marvellous prose and we begin to get an idea of the problems that the people faced. Bahadur Shah Zafar was an emperor only in name when he succeeded his father, but he managed to create a court of great brilliance and fostered a literary renaissance. He was extremely talented -- an expert in calligraphy, versatile poet, architect, Sufi mystic, patron of painting and much more; but he was not an able king and had a tendency to be indecisive, his greatest failing.Darlymple suggests that the influx of Victorian Evangelists who tried to disrupt the Hindu- Islamic synthesis practiced by the successors of Akbar and regarded Indians as heathen natives who needed to be emancipated, was one of the major factors that led to resentment among Indian sepoys and civilians alike. This aggressive Christian sentiment in turn led to the rise of militant Islam- the jihadis who played a prominent role in the defence of Delhi till the end.Once the sepoys came to Delhi and declared Bahadur Shah Zafar to be their leader and emperor, the die was cast. Even though the unruly sepoys looted the city, killed every Englishman they could find and harassed courtiers, Zafar felt that this was a God-given opportunity to re-establish the Mughal Empire and so he made the critical decision that linked the fate of his dynasty and that of the city of Delhi to the Uprising. Zafar’s openness to the Uprising, though never whole-hearted and always ambivalent, transformed the whole nature of the rebellion- a simple army mutiny evolved into the biggest war any empire had ever faced in the 19th century.Ironically, it was the sepoys who were to blame for the failure of the Revolt in Delhi. Since the sepoys were not trained to command regiments and had no knowledge of battle strategies, their strikes almost inevitably failed. Although Bakht Khan’s arrival in Delhi almost led to the defeat of the British forces stationed nearby the city, political intrigues by his enemies among other regiments and the Mughal courtiers led to his departure from the city along with his regiments.In the end, as people began to see the writing of the wall, thousands of sepoys began a mass exodus from the city of Delhi. Meanwhile, Muslim jihadis kept pouring into the city for a battle to the death. If the Uprising in Delhi started as a contest between the English and a largely Hindu sepoy army drawn mainly from Awadh, it ended as a fight between a mixed rebel force, at least half of which were Muslim jihadis, taking on an army of British-paid Sikh and Muslim mercenaries from the North West Frontier and the Punjab.Upon victory, the British celebrated their triumph by letting loose a reign of terror on the fleeing insurgents and Delhi’s inhabitants. The Mughal princes who had participated in the Uprising surrendered unconditionally to a British officer, William Hodson, hoping that their lives would be spared. Hodson stripped them naked and immediately shot them in cold blood. Then he promptly proceeded to strip the corpses of their rings and amulets, which he pocketed. In the Kucha Chelan neighbourhood, Dalrymple says, about 1,400 residents were cut down: “After the British and their allies had tired of bayoneting the inhabitants, they marched forty survivors out to the Yamuna, lined them up before the walls of the Fort, and shot them.” Among them were some of the most distinguished poets and artists of Delhi.The victors made very little distinction between insurgents and civilians. George Wagentrieber wrote in the Delhi Gazette Extra: “Hanging is, I am happy to say, the order of the day here.” Believing that the rebels had sexually assaulted their women (this was proved false by a subsequent inquiry commission), the British officers did little to stop the raping of the women of Delhi. To escape the victors’ wrath, most of Delhi’s residents fled to the surrounding countryside, finding shelters in tombs and ruins and scavenging for food. Looters went house-to-house, seizing whatever they could, while Prize Agents stalked the city, confiscating native property and delivering it to Europeans.To punish the residents for having supported the Uprising, the British considered levelling the entire city. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Even so, great swathes of the city- especially around the Red Fort- were still cleared away. Many fine mosques, Sufi shrines, palaces and the houses of notables were demolished. Dalrymple quotes extensively from the melancholy descriptions written by Delhi’s literary elite and from accounts by the victors, who gleefully recorded the terrible vengeance they wreaked on the vanquished in what came to be known as the City of the Dead.Zafar was tried and convicted for hatching an international Muslim conspiracy against his English benefactors, and exiled to Burma. The charge was legally and factually absurd. Since Zafar had never renounced sovereignty over the Company, he could not possibly be guilty of treason. In fact, Dalrymple explains that, from a legal point of view, a good case could have been made that it was the East India Company who was the real rebel, guilty of revolt against a feudal superior to whom it had sworn allegiance for nearly a century.Equally groundless was the allegation that Zafar was behind an international Muslim conspiracy stretching from Constantinople to Delhi. “The Uprising in fact showed every sign of being initiated by upper-caste Hindu sepoys reacting against specifically military grievances perceived as a threat to their faith and dharma; it then spread rapidly through the country, attracting a fractured and diffuse collection of other groups alienated by aggressively insensitive and brutal British policies.”The British “bigoted and Islamophobic argument” reduced the complexity of the rebellion to an oversimplified and fictional picture of a “global Muslim conspiracy with an appealingly visible and captive hate figure at its centre.” Back in England, the Uprising and the aftermath of British bloodlust shocked the Parliament into assuming direct rule over India. Company rule was abolished, and Queen Victoria became the Empress of India.In the years after the Revolt, there began a rift between Hindus and Muslims that widened under the “divide and rule” policy adopted by the British and finally led to the Partition of India. Indian Muslims, themselves, got divided- the modernists, led by Sayyid Ahmed Khan, embraced Western learning while the extremists created a madrasa at Deoband that went back to Koranic basics and stripped out anything Hindu or European from the curriculum. And more than a century later, the Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan and Afghanistan were instrumental in the development of the Taliban, “the most retrograde Islamic regime in modern history”, and the Al Qaeda who committed the most powerful and destructive counter attack the West has ever encountered. Darlymple draws parallels between 1857 and the world post 9/11- an ongoing struggle between Western Evangelicals/Imperialists and Islamic jihadis.Darlymple portrays the Uprising as a human event of extraordinary, tragic and capricious outcomes, and shows us ordinary people whose fate it was to be accidentally caught up in this great upheaval.The Last Mughal is a beautiful elegy in prose of the composite Hindu-Muslim civilization of the Later Mughals. Darlymple has written a masterpiece - a scholarly work and yet a hugely enjoyable read, especially for people who have a keen interest in Indian history. I would definitely recommend it to any student who had to read about the Revolt of 1857. Books like this are required to make history interesting.

kanjisheik is just an ordinary whizkid trying to find his place in life. His idea of paradise is a house on a beach, with a HUGE collection of books. Check out his blog Chronicles of Kanjisheik for more articles. He also blogs at DesiCritics.

Book Review: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire by Arundhati Roy

kanjisheik — Tue, 3 Jul 2007 01:19:56 EDT

With The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Arundhati Roy proved that she could write nonfiction as well as fiction. Hell, that’s an understatement - the book was a brilliant collection of polished essays, in which she displayed her trademark intellectual rants and lucid reasoning. And with this second collection of essays, she goes one step further. An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire consists of 14 well constructed, passionate articles written between June 2002 and November 2004 -- some of which were delivered as speeches while others were published in newspapers -- in which Roy deconstructs the concepts of empire, neoliberal capitalism, corporate globalization, and state terrorism with a degree of both passion and erudition that is truly astounding.“Ahimsa” deals with the struggle of the Narmada Bachao Andolan to make its voice heard in India’s policy deciding bodies. In this world that is increasingly fixated on terrorism and other movements of violent resistance, it is increasingly difficult for the votaries of non-violence to be heard. She notes that “Any government’s condemnation of terror is credible only if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, closely argued, non violent dissent”. What Roy fears is that people will be forced to abandon modes of non violent resistance and commit violence in order to grab headlines in today’s "free media". Should such a thing come to pass, it would be a veritable deathblow to the theory of ahimsa that Mahatma Gandhi propounded and executed to great effect during the struggle for independence against British rule.Roy says in “Come September” that nationalism was the cause of genocides in the 20th century. Like a surgeon wielding a scalpel, she deftly shreds our most sacred doctrines. "Flags are bits of coloured cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead." She enumerates the innumerable crimes committed by the United States government against humanity right from Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the penchant for engineering coups and regime changes throughout South America, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and finally the staunch support to Israel in order to prevent an equitable solution to the issue of Palestine issue - all under the excuse of "championing the cause of freedom"! Arundhati Roy accurately points out that the real reason for the war against Iraq is to grab control of its oil resources. After an incisive analysis of the corporate globalization project and its end results, she concludes that just like Soviet–style communism, the American style market capitalism is doomed to failure - because it allowed too few people [“a handful of bankers and CEOs whom nobody elected”] to usurp too much power. “The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky” is Arundhati’s tribute to one of the world’s greatest and most radical intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, who showed us that nothing is what it seems to be in the free world. He showed us how phrases like "free speech", the "free market" and the "free world" have little, if anything, to do with freedom. And he analysed the penchant of the United States to commit crimes against humanity in the name of "justice", in the name of "righteousness", in the name of "freedom". Chomsky brought out the grisly truth behind the American Dream and the American Way of Life. The U.S.A. has successfully rewritten its grisly history in the massacre of millions of native Americans, and the kidnapping and enslaving of millions of Africans. And yet, it is amazing that Americans believe that theirs is a peaceful nation, a nation built on fundamental values! The sheer amount of research and analysis Chomsky did on the American invasion of IndoChina [Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia] in his book For Reasons of State is astounding. Arundhati praises Chomsky for revealing the “pitiless heart of the American war machine, completely isolated from the realities of war, blinded by ideology and willing to annihilate millions of human beings, civilians, soldiers, women, children, villages, whole cities, whole ecosystems- with scientifically honed methods of brutality”. The unsaid inference is that the United States has learnt nothing from its misadventure in Vietnam - and continues to make mistakes in Iraq, at the cost of millions of innocent Iraqi lives.In her speech at the World Social Forum 2003 titled “Confronting Empire”, Arundhati Roy identifies the many arms of the monster called the New American Empire - the U.S. government, organizations like the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, and the multinational corporations. Using India as an example, she elucidates how dangerous byproducts like jingoistic nationalism, religious bigotry, fascism, and terrorism are created by the corporate globalization project. Thus, empire is nothing but a “loyal confederation, this obscene accumulation of power, this greatly increased distance between those who make the decisions and those who have to suffer them”. Hence, if we are to tackle the spectre of Empire effectively, we must be prepared to lay siege to it. Roy says that America’s ugly past is out in the open; hence, this is the moment to convince the American public to rise up in defiance. As she concludes, “Remember this: we be many and they be few. They need us more than we do.”“Peace is War” deals with the importance of the "free media" in the corporate globalization project. Roy describes how neoliberal capitalists have managed to subvert democracy - by infiltrating the judiciary, the press and the parliament, and moulding them to their purpose. As she says, “Free elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities available on sale to the highest bidder”. Roy points out that six major companies own America’s main media outlets, a disconcerting fact; this is why the American mainstream media does not critically examine the reasons for invading Iraq: a majority of the U.S. corporate media is owned and managed by the same interests. She commends the efforts of New Media in showing what Old Media really is - an elaborate boardroom bulletin that reports and analyses the concerns of powerful people. The mainstream media practice “crisis reportage”, but Roy challenges journalists in New Media to become “peace correspondents instead of war correspondents,” and expose the “policies and processes that make ordinary things… such a distant dream for ordinary people”. In An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, Roy depicts the brutal barbaric destruction of a civilization by the American army. Agreed, Saddam Hussein was a dictator, but the fact is that the American and British governments supported him during his military excesses, against Iran and during the extermination of Kurds. It was only when he invaded Kuwait that he turned into a liability - a dog who wouldn’t obey his master anymore. And so, he deserved to be killed. The enormous level of double standards that the United States committed during the war is appalling. Bombing civilian areas is just one example. Western ‘embedded’ journalists are called heroes for doing their duty from the frontlines of war but Iraqi viewpoints were denounced. In fact, the Allies even bombed the Iraqi television station. And the most ironic thing is - while the American taxpayers end up footing the spiralling war costs, the MNC friends of Bush, Cheney et al, gain plump contracts for the "reconstruction" of Iraq. The American Empire is “a superpower’s self destructive impulse towards supremacy, global hegemony.” Roy commends those Americans who have opposed the war as the "true heroes", not the soldiers fighting in Iraq.In “Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy”, a talk originally in New York City, Roy suggests that some of her listeners might think it “bad manners” for an Indian citizen to come to New York to criticize the U.S. government, but “when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American empire? I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king”. In snappy, provocative prose, Roy argues that democracy “has become Empire’s euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism” and gives numerous examples from India, South Africa and the United States itself! She urges Americans to engage in civil disobedience in resistance to the war in Iraq because “the only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society.”“When the Saints Go Marching Out” was first broadcast on the BBC and reflects on what has happened in the lands of Martin Luther King, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Nelson Mandela after their times have passed. These three public figures were the representatives of three different struggles, the only common feature being the reliance on the mode of non-violent resistance. Yet, in today’s India, religious fundamentalism is on the rise; South Africa is still festering with the pre-apartheid problems of extreme economic and social disparity; the United States has lost all manner of legitimate authority by the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq - more importantly, the blacks, for whom Martin Luther King devoted his life, make up nearly one fifth of America’s armed forces and nearly one third of the U.S. army (though they account for only 12% of America’s population) by way of the poverty draft. Roy appeals to black Americans to follow the teachings of King and to take to the streets in protest of the war in Iraq.In a talk held at Raipur in October 2003, Arundhati Roy gave a tribute “In Memory of Shankar Guha Niyogi” to the leader of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha, who passed away twelve years earlier. Roy lauds him for defending people’s rights, whenever they have been in danger. Shankar Guha Niyogi launched the CMM in order to fight for the rights of workers at a time when the Indian government was busy undermining labour laws. She praises the CMM for its numerous positive contributions to society, like building Shaheed Hospital for the poor and starting several schools to educate the children of the workers. Hence, Roy considers him to be a pioneer in the struggle against the forces of neo-imperialism.“Do Turkeys Enjoy Thanksgiving?” deals with the contours and the elements of what Arundhati refers to as "New Imperialism". Unless countries surrender their resources willingly to the corpoates, either civil unrest will be fomented, or war will be waged. Roy explains the concept of New Racism, which is the cornerstone of New Imperialism, wonderfully using the allegory of the ‘pardoned turkey’ during Thanksgiving: “A few carefully bred turkeys-the local elites of various countries … wealthy immigrants, investment bankers … some singers, some writers- are given absolution… The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes…” Another instrument of New Imperialism is New Genocide which is facilitated by economic sanctions - the most notable case being Iraq, where more than half a million children have died during the last decade of sanctions. Since the Empire is so powerful, it is necessary that "local resistance movements should make international alliances in order to inflict real damage and force radical change”. She urges the WSF to lead the charge against the American Empire by rallies, non cooperation and economic boycotts.Arundhati Roy explores behind India’s glittering facade and uncovers some bitter truths in her article “How Deep Shall We Dig?” Some of the numerous problems facing us are terrorism in Kashmir and the Northeast, the rise of religious fundamentalism, POTA, targeting of minorities, incidents of starving or malnutrition. It is increasingly difficult for people to confront their own government. As Roy remarks, “The space for non violent civil disobedience has atrophied. After struggling for several years, several non violent peoples’ disobedience movements have come up against a wall and feel, quite rightly, the need to change direction.” Since the poor and the minorities are the most affected by the dual assault of communal fascism and neoliberalism, she urges them to take the lead in opposing the growing influence of Empire in India.“The Road to Harsud” is Roy’s blistering take on the contentious topic of Big Dams and the struggle by the poor people who haven’t been rehabilitated as yet, to make themselves heard. Harsud is a town in Madhya Pradesh which is slated to be submerged by the reservoir of Narmada Sagar Dam. What use is a dam if the drawbacks outweigh the potential benefits? Roy says that the dam will submerge more land than it will ever irrigate, will produce power that is even costlier than Enron, and will destroy a vast reservoir of biodiversity, wildlife, and medicinal plants. And yet, the government of Madhya Pradesh relentlessly plows ahead with its disastrous plan and in the process, has rendered more than 30,000 families homeless. And worst of all, in spite of repeated assurances by the government, the displaced people have not yet received adequate rehabilitative measures.Roy analyses the power ordinary people like us wield in today’s world in her essay “Public Power in the Age of Empire”. The world today is a deeply skewed reality. She says that both terrorism and the war on terror share the same excruciating logic- they make ordinary citizens pay for the actions of their government. And eventually, Roy concludes that “radical change cannot and will not be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by the people. By the public. A public who can link hands across national borders.” If we are to successfully confront the Empire, then we have to channel our energies into "concrete action". Arundhati speaks in detail about three dangers that threaten resistance movements across the world - the meeting point between mass movements and the mass media, the dangers of NGO-isation of resistance, and the confrontation between resistance movements and repressive states. “Peace and the New Corporate Liberation Theology” was a speech first delivered in Sydney on the occasion of Arundhati Roy winning the 2004 Sydney Peace Prize. She says that war in Iraq is a sign of things to come - a logical conclusion to the corporate globalization project. History, it seems, has turned full circle with the return of imperialism like a phoenix from the ashes. The corporate-military cabal has been busy at work, dispensing its unique brand of "justice" and "freedom" to the world at large. Roy concludes by saying that it is our duty to join the ‘war against Empire’ now or it will be too late.In conclusion, although the essays deal with various movements in different countries (the U.S., India, and South Africa, to name a few of the prominent examples Roy cites) the common chord running through each one is empire, which Roy defines as “a superpower’s self-destructive impulse toward supremacy, stranglehold, global hegemony.” Arundhati Roy draws parallels between various resistance movements and with her lucid analysis, she succeeds in elucidating the forces that work against ordinary people everywhere. But she also illustrates the great strength those ordinary people can muster if they can cooperate in opposing, for example, the building of a dam that will wipe out the homes and livelihoods of thousands of people. Despite its title, this book is not a guide to empire, rather it is a call to arms. Roy, thus, motivates those who may already be passively critical of U.S. policies to join the activists out in the streets. “History is giving you the chance,” she writes. “Seize the time.” And so we should. Before its too late. Before all that we treasure in this world and stand for is lost.

Book Review: Demons of Chitrakut by Ashok K. Banker

kanjisheik — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:14:49 EST

Demons of Chitrakut is the third part of Indian author Ashok K. Banker's Ramayana series, and continues Rama's epic tale beautifully. Rama weds Sita and returns to Ayodhya, after an encounter with Parashurama. Meanwhile, under the spell of Manthara's intrigues, Kaikeyi "persuades" Dasaratha to banish Rama and make Bharata the yuvaraja instead. The scene where Rama tells Sita that he has been exiled is probably the most touching moment of the book. Eventually, they walk out with Lakshmana by their side towards the forests of Dandaka, where they must stay in exile for 14 years. Rama's evolution into a great persona, who follows his dharma steadfastly, no matter what the obstacles may be, is almost palpable.Eventually, the Supanakha episode is played out. The mutilated rakshasi calls on her brother Khara and Dooshana to avenge her, and a 14,000-strong regiment of bloodthirsty rakshasas march from Janasthana to settle scores. After the heady action of the first two parts, Banker slows down and concentrates on the diverse threads in the storyline. Demons of Chitrakut is so interesting because he retells the incidents that we all know well in such a refreshingly new manner. Truly, this Ramayana is his very own.Each character is unique and hence stands out - devious Manthara, serving the dark lord Ravana, and manipulating Kaikeyi; helpless Dasaratha, who is forced to send Rama to the forest; wise Vibhishana, who wishes to create a righteous Lanka; Ravana trapped inside a rock, powerless; the girlish yet forthright queen Sumitra;the vulture king Jatayu, who comes to Rama's aid... Banker has the enviable ability to slip into the "skin" of the character, and it shows. The end result is truly a masterpiece. I feel that this Ramayana series will achieve the same exalted status that Valmiki's Ramayana, Kamban's Tamil epic, Sant Tulsidas's Ramacharitamanas, Ezhuthachan's Malayalam version, and lots of other Ramayanas retold by literary geniuses in their own vernaculars were able to attain.

Book Review: Siege of Mithila by Ashok K. Banker

kanjisheik — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 17:09:01 EST

Siege of Mithila, the second part of Ashok K Banker's marvellous Ramayana series, is as interesting, if not more than the first part, Prince of Ayodhya. And it begins just as eerily; this time however, it is Sita who has the nightmare!The guru-shishya relationship between Rishi Vishwamitra and the princes Rama and Lakshmana has been conceived brilliantly. The chapter in which they discuss how Ravana could be vanquished is extremely enlightening. Ravana's plans to invade Aryavarta form the crux of the book. The 10-headed rakshasa's character is enigmatic, and he promises to be one of the most interesting characters of the series. Meanwhile, in Ayodhya, Manthara continues her nefarious schemes to eliminate Rama. Banker weaves in another thread in his web, by visualising her as a stooge of the Dark Lord.Sita is a revelation - this Sita is no damsel in distress; instead, she is a warrior princess! Fiercely independent and courageous, she is probably the best thing in the book. Definitely someone Rama (or I, for that matter) would fall for! Sita believes that the rakshasas are preparing for an invasion, and so on an impulse she sets forth incognito with her trusted bodyguard Nakhudi towards the dreaded Southwoods to search for evidence. And who do they meet? None other than Rama and Lakshmana!The two princes, along with Rishi Vishwamitra, are heading towards Mithila to attend Sita's swayamvar. Since "Janaki Kumar" and "Nakhu Dev" are also travelling to the same destination, the all-knowing sage decides that they should go together. On the way, Rama rescues Ahalya from her condemned existence as a stone - one of the most magical chapters of the book. Vishwamitra reveals that Mithila will bear the brunt of Ravana's onslaught, and the book moves on rapidly to a momentous climax.Banker's writing is magical - before you know it, you are sucked into the world of his Ramayana where anything is possible. From Ayodhya to Mithila to even Lanka, Banker sets you off on beautiful flights of imagination. Truly, one roller-coaster of a ride. Ashok K. Banker rocks! And yes, Rama rocks, too.

Book Review: Prince of Ayodhya by Ashok K. Banker

kanjisheik — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 19:32:59 EST

Ashok K. Banker's six-book Ramayana series belongs to that rarefied category of books whose contents are as good as, if not better than, the blurbs. Let me tell you that this series is not a straightforward translation of the ancient Indian epic Ramayana [literally meaning "The Travels of Rama"]; it is a imaginative retelling by Banker. Prince of Ayodhya, the first book in the series, initally deals with the characters in the ruling circle of Ayodhya. Young prince Rama's life is altered when the Brahmarishi Vishwamitra comes to Ayodhya to ask Rama to come with him to his ashram and destroy the rakshasas who hamper the daily activities of the sages and brahmins there. And he and his brother Lakshmana are given the incredible gift of brahman shakti (divine force), and taught how to use dev-astras (divine weapons).What I love about Prince of Ayodhya is the way the characters have been described - each person has been fleshed out beautifully. Banker has obviously given a lot of thought to all the major characters, and has introduced several new ones too, thereby making the story even better. Each individual is complex and multifaceted, unlike the staid characters of the Ramayana TV series. Banker succeeds in portraying Rama as a normal human, just like you and me. This helps the reader "connect" and empathise with him, in a way that is never possible while reading the Valmiki or Kamba Ramayana. And Ravana is present from the first chapter itself, which adds to the excitement. Banker has dealt with the emotional aspects really well - the relationships between Dasaratha and his three wives, and especially the conflict between Kausalya and Kaikeyi, and the relationships between the four princes, especially Rama and Lakshmana, have been portrayed exquisitely. The battle sequences are incredible. The battle between Rama and Lakshmana, powered by the shakti of brahman, against the hybrids of Tataka is the climax of the book.Prince of Ayodhya entertains a lot. The plot never falters, the dialogues are perfect, everything gels together. I bought the book in June 2004, and must have read it 100 times. Trust me, this is one story you'll never get bored with, no matter how many Ramayanas you have read. If you have not read it as yet, then read it, and fall in love with it, as millions have all over the world.