M J Akbar (Set Of 5 Books): Doolally Sahib And The Black Zamindar (Hardback) | A Mirror To Power (Hardback) | India The Siege Within (Paperback) | The Shade Of Swords (Paperback) | Kashmir : Behind The Vale

1. Doolally Sahib And The Black Zamindar :-

Doolally Sahib and the Black Zamindar is a chronicle of racial relations between Indians and their last foreign invaders, sometimes infuriating but always compelling.

In July 1765 Robert Clive, in a letter to Sir Francis Sykes, compared Gomorrah favourably to Calcutta, then capital of British India. He wrote: ‘I will pronounce Calcutta to be one of the most wicked places in the Universe.’

Drawing upon the letters, memoirs and journals of traders, travellers, bureaucrats, officials, officers and the occasional bishop, Doolally Sahib and the Black Zamindar is a chronicle of racial relations between Indians and their last foreign invaders, sometimes infuriating but always compelling. A multitude of vignettes, combined with insight and analysis, reveal the deeply ingrained conviction of ‘white superiority’ that shaped this history. How deep this conviction was is best illustrated by the fact that the British abandoned a large community of their own children because they were born of Indian mothers. The British took pride in being outsiders, even as their exploitative revenue policy turned periodic drought and famine into horrific catastrophes, killing impoverished Indians in millions.

There were also marvellous and heart-warming exceptions in this extraordinary panorama, people who transcended racial prejudice and served as a reminder of what might have been had the British made India a second home and merged with its culture instead of treating it as a fortune-hunter’s turf.

The power was indisputable-the British had lost just one out of 18 wars between 1757 and 1857. Defeated repeatedly on the battlefield, Indians found innovative and amusing ways of giving expression to resentment in household skirmishes, social mores and economic subversion. When Indians tried to imitate the sahibs, they turned into caricatures; when they absorbed the best that the British brought with them, the confluence was positive and productive. But for the most part, subject and ruler lived parallel lives.

From the celebrated writer of the bestselling Gandhi’s Hinduism, the Struggle Against Jinnah’s Islam comes this extensively researched and utterly engrossing book, which is easy to pick up and difficult to put down.

2. A Mirror To Power :-

A Mirror to Power takes a sharp look across the wide horizon of the past decade, a time when reputations were wrecked on a high-velocity rollercoaster and events became a jamboree instead of a procession. This tumbledown history of corruption, terrorism, justice delayed, rights denied and governance betrayed still left enough gaps for celebration of laughter in areas outside politics. The cast is extraordinary: from the founding fathers of our partitioned subcontinent to those shaping its future today. This book is especially distinctive because of M.J. Akbar’s unerring eye for underlying causes and potential consequences that bookend current events and a prose style that conveys serious thought in lucid sentences and succinct paragraphs. The pieces are on subjects as diverse as politics, cricket, cinema stars, the lost art of reading and the joys of trash, besides long, elegant essays on the history of a community seen through the genius of its poets and the trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar. This is an indispensable introduction to what promises to be an Indian century.

3. India The Siege Within :-

India: The Siege Within succeeds in explaining the resilient achievements of India’s secular democracy as well as its vulnerability and failures. M.J. Akbar discusses the origins and nature of the strains on Indian unity which have deep roots in history. Taking 1947 as his springboard, he provides a full historical, political and cultural survey of the main pressure points, and brings his analysis up to date to include the removal of Farooq Abdullah in Kashmir, an account of his meeting with Bhindranwale, the army operation at the Golden Temple, the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi, and their implications for the future. Rising fundamentalism, separatism, the consequences of Partition, unease in Kashmir on every side it seems that India’s democratic unity is continually at risk.

4. The Shade Of Swords :-

M.J. Akbar writes the first cohesive history of jihad. From the Prophet Muhammad to the presence of British and American troops in Afghanistan, and more recently in Iraq. Akbar shows how jihad’s origins lie in the earliest consciousness of Muslims, how it thrives on complex notions of persecution, victory and sacrifice. Jihad pervades the mind and soul of Islam. This book reveals its strength and significance, and this jihad has come to Iraq in a new, Shia dimension.

5. Kashmir : Behind The Vale :-

Kashmir lies at the edge of India’s borders and at the heart of India’s consciousness. It is not geography that is the issue; Kashmir also guards the frontiers of ideology. If there was a glow of hope in the deepening shadows of a bitter Partition, then it was Kashmir, whose people consciously rejected the false patriotism of fundamentalism and made common cause with secular India instead of theocratic Pakistan. Kashmir was, as Sheikh Abdullah said and Jawaharlal Nehru believed, a stabilising force for India. Why has that harmony disintegrated? Why has the promise been stained by the blood of rebellion? M.J. Akbar, the celebrated author of India: The Siege Within, Nehru: The Making of India, Riot After Riot and The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity delves deep into the past for the roots of Kashmiriyat, the identity and culture that has blossomed within the ring of mountains for thousands of years. He records Kashmir’s struggle in the century to first free itself from feudal oppression and then enter the world of modern India in 1947. Placing the mistakes and triumphs of those early, formative years in the perspective of history, the author goes on to explain how the 1980s have opened the way for Kashmir’s hitherto marginalized secessionists. Both victory and defeat have their lessons; to forget either is to destablize the future. Kashmir and the mother country are inextricably linked. India cannot afford to be defeated in her Kashmir.