Book Review: The Dancing Girls of Lahore by Louise Brown

I have not come across a more in depth narration of the living conditions of the inhabitants of the Shahi mohallah of Lahore. The writer stays at Iqbal’s (a professor of National College of Arts) place in the Shahi mohallah and closes observes the lives of the people around her. Brown writes about her interaction with Maha and her daughters. Maha’s miseries and her financial conditions are brought to surface. When Maha was young she earned better than what she earned when she started approaching her middle age. Her daughters are now her only hope. Her marriage with Adnan is also troublesome.

Living in this part of Lahore, Maha also discovers the lives of the transgender community. She befriends some of them and observes their bonds and relationships within the community they live. Furthermore, the author describes the life around the eateries, cinema, streets and shops. She also adds the rituals of the month of Moharram when business in the mohallah is the lowest in the year. The class system and the hierarchies within the Shahi Mohallah are complex and Brown has explaines them in simple words. The use of drugs, rape, violence and money is elaborately discussed. Young girls in the area also do business in the other parts of Lahore. Some of them visit defence for dance parties and earn their living. Others, not all of them visit the gulf states and earn money.

Throughout the book the exploitation of woman is clearly highlighted by the author. Women who live in the mohallah cannot exit the vicious circle as they have many mouths to feed and they are the breadwinners for their families. It is saddening to know that daughters are considered gold, as they ensure the smooth living conditions by selling their bodies. The daughters when meet the standards of the mohallah sell their bodies and sustain their lives. Young girls are preferred for the business and are always in great demand. It would have been more helpful if the author had suggested some reforms for the denizens of the area. She has just written about a basic problem, without suggesting few solutions.

Unfortunately, the people living in the Shahi Mohallah will continue to suffer until drastic reforms are introduced to stop the exploitation of women which started many centuries ago. Readers should surely read this book as it presents a heartbreaking story of thousands of women who have become prey to the horrible exploitative system.

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Book Review: Lest We Forget: Gujarat 2002 Edited by Amrita Kumar and Prashun Bhaumik

Gujrat saw genocide and economic massacre in 2002. This happened when the BJP had gained marked popularity throughout many areas of India. This includes UP, Uttaranchal, Manipur and Punjab. Gujarat a BJP stronghold in the elections was yet to experience the worst. 

On 26 Feb 2002 the election results were announced and on the 27^th of the same month Godhra was set ablaze. Later the rest of Gujarat was engulfed in this fire. The impact of September 11 attacks on the Muslims living in India, the socio-political dimensions leading to the crises situation in Gujarat, questions of state support to extremist elements in India and the debate of secularism vs Hindu fundamentalism, are discussed in this book. 

The atrocities in India, which really shocked the world is uncovered in great detail in this book.

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Book Review: Night Train to Turkistan by Stuart Stevens

With three companions Stuart Stevens sets on a mission to retrace the renowned journey undertaken by Peter Fleming and Ella Maillart across Chinese Turkistan in 1934. In this journey by Stuart he is accompanied by a triathlete, a Kung Fu expert and a female rower. This group travels by bus, donkey cart, truck and bicycle and aeroplane. During this journey they face numerous challenges. Many of the challenges are political but the physical challenges are also worth reading. The harsh climate, landscape and remoteness during their journey is really interesting to read.

The author at many instances relates his own journey with Fleming’s and tries to draw various comparisons between both of them. Taklamakan desert, Buddhist caves, explorers who visited the caves, trading routes, different ethnicities, physical infrastructure, social conflicts, hotel facilities and the Chinese bureaucracy are under discussion in the book. Sometimes the book also seems to present a reflection in the form of a critique of the daily life in China.

In my opinion this is a good book for travelers who intend to learn from various experiences in life. Traveling with a group and not finding everything in perfect shape is obviously not very pleasing. Instead, keeping the group intact and learning from the harsh realities on the ground makes the traveler stronger minded for any future adventures.

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Book Review: Readings in Liberalism by Detmar Doering

Detmar Doering, the Director of Liberal Institute in the introduction of the book argues that liberalism represents the finest of western tradition and the greatest of what constitutes modernity. He has very smartly summarized the main ideas discussed in this book. He writes that there is no complete definition of liberalism. One reason that he suggests is that politics continuously brings new challenges that require new liberal answers.

This book is an attempt to show the diversity within the tradition of liberalism. Texts included in this volume span the period from the 17^th century writings of John Locke, through liberalism’s peak in the 19^th century (represented here by Frederic Bastiat, for example), to contemporary authors such as Popper, Gray and Nozick. 

Various topics are under discussion in the book. John Stuart Mill’s thought on education, David Hume on justice, Wilhelm von Humboldt on the purpose of man, John Prince Smith on the free- are some of the examples. Names such as Adam Smith and the American thinker William Leggett are also present. The philosophical positions of various thinkers are presented. They have one thing in common. All of them help to establish the liberal idea of freedom.

John Locke’s work on the individual’s rights that predate the state, Hume’s political thought on the assumption that freedom and justice appear only with the cultural development that draws its dynamism from the individual’s striving for benefit are also mentioned in the book. This position, in turn, is taken to an extreme by Ludwig von Mises, who admits only the individual and his capability for economic calculation, thus rejecting any ideas of natural rights that predate the state. In the final analysis, all three arrive at the same conclusion, that the protection of property is one of the most liberal constitutional state’s most important tasks.

While Mill and Ortega y Gasset discern possible danger to freedom even in democracy, Leggett considers democracy to be freedom’s essential philosophical basis.  But all these approaches have one thing in common: They support liberalism’s idea of freedom. They support the idea that all power must be tied to the freedom of the individual. They both serve the struggle against every open form of totalitarianism and reinforce the warning against the creeping dismantling of freedom taking place through well-meaning state interventionism. Many approaches become apparent that all lead to the same goal. This goal is the open and liberal society that is based on the ideal of the freedom of the individual and on the principles of the constitutional state and the free market economy. Consideration of the bases of such a society (the present collection is intended to provide food for thought in this regard) is always a relevant task. As Friedrich August von Hayek once stated, “The guiding principle that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as it was in the 19^th century.”

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Book Review: The Golden Days of Greece by Olivia Coolidge

Olivia Coolidge has written this simple yet interesting book on the glorious days of ancient Greece. This book is divided on seventeen chapters. Greece was a small rocky country. Greeks had been great sailors. They ate raisins. Olives, bread, goat’s milk cheese, fish and vegetables. They drank wine mixed with water. The Greeks gave names to their Gods. Zeus was the god of the sky and the father of all. Poseidon was his brother and was the god of sea. Apollo was god of the sun and Artemis was his twin sister.

Greeks were a group of wandering people who entered from the north, where it joins the rest of Europe. The first group arrived in 1900 B.C. they were called Achaeans. The Dorians arrived seven hundred years later. Dorians learned to use iron, which was more common than tin. When the Dorians with their iron swords swept over Greece about 1200 B.C., they came by land and sea from the North. Some lucky cities like Athens were never conquered. After burning others, the Dorians wandered on. In yet other places, mostly in the Peloponnese, which is the southern part of Greece, they settled down.

Greeks knew that life was hard for many, and they were content if they had good health, good children, good neighbors, and good luck. They wanted to be citizens whose memory was kept alive, even after death, by their own people. They did not think that great wealth made men happy, and they were not impressed by kings. In the fourth chapter on the Olympic Games the author writes that Olympic games were held in honor of Zeus in the territory of Elis, a city of the Peloponnese. These Olympic festivals came after every four years, and the period between one and the next was called an Olympiad. The Greeks did not allow boys to be naughty and it was important that a child should be never out of sight.

Most famous of the Dorians who settled in Peloponnese were the ones who lived in Sparta. The Spartans, as the Dorians liked to call themselves, were few in number. The Spartans liked sports useful in war such as the brutal boxing. Every Spartan owned a certain number of farms. Then people who lived on them were called a man’s Helots and were almost his slaves. A great deal of time was spent in keeping fit. Spartans did not trade or use money, so that there was no business to be done. Their clothes and armor were made by their women, their Helots, and other subjects who paid them tribute. It was really no wonder that the Spartans became the best soldiers in Greece. The Athenians, who were so proud of their own city, liked the Spartans for doing their duty.

In 490 B.C., the Persian King Darius sent a fleet to conquer some of the islands and then go on the attack the Athenians. The Athenians sent to the Spartans for help.  By the battle of Marathon, the Athenians saved themselves without Spartan help. A few years later King Darius of Persia died. He was succeeded by his son Xerxes. King Xerxes had a huge empire. Xerxes led his army to the narrow channel which divides Asia Minor from Europe in the northeast corner of the Aegean. Herodotos, the historian says that Xerxes made offerings and prayers for his efforts preparation for the war. The Spartans joined to fight against the Persians under Leonidas. The fighting broke out. Spartans fought till the last man. Some of the other Greeks surrendered but not the Spartans. When Aristodemos returned back to Sparta, nobody would speak to him for the rest of his life ashe was the only one who came home alive.

Just before the Persian attack the Athenians had discovered silver mines in their land. Their leader Themistocles advised them to put the money into building warships. The Greeks and the Persians fought. Many of the Persians fought bravely. Xerxes’s fleet was shattered and he decided to go back to Asia He divided his army and left many of his men to winter in Northern Greece. The Athenians had beaten the Persians by sea. It was now the turn of the Spartans to beat them on land. Aristodemos was the bravest on the Spartan side and he died on the field. Spartans refused any reward for Aristodemos as they did not believe in forgiving his mistakes of the past.

After the defeat of the Persian army Sparta and Athens went in different directions. Athenians became head of a great fleet to which other cities or islands gave ships or money. The league against Persia had in twenty years become the Athenian Empire. The Athenian assembly was an assembly of all the citizens.  The Assembly passed laws but for daily business they had a council of 500. They were not elected. They were simply chosen from all the citizens. It stayed in office for one year and was divided into ten groups of fifty. The president of the group of fifty which was in office was the President of Athens. The Athenians had no income tax but the rich people undertook unpaid jobs for their city. Further in chapter eight the Athenian ruler Pericles is discussed. His rise to power and reforms are discussed.

In Athens many of the slaves were prisoners of war. This included Persians, Ethiopians and Indians. Other captives were Greeks from other cities and Egyptians. Parthenon and Dionysus were discussed in separate chapters. Greek Gods, theatre, arts, sculptures, drama and poets are also discussed.

In the twelfth chapter life and death of Socrates is discussed. He was born in the year 469 in Athens and gave people a new way of understanding and questioning things. Many people objected to this. He was tried and then he had to drink the cup of poison.  His work, however, did not die as Plato’s writings made the name Socrates famous forever.

In chapter thirteen Plato is discussed. Plato was born in 429 B.C. He was thirty by the time Socrates died. People admired Plato for his qualities. He was strong and athletic. Taught by Socrates, Plato found that before he could think of being a statesman or a poet, he had to know more about truth. Plato turned away from Politics for a time and he began to write about Socrates. He wrote the speech of Socrates at his trail as far as he remembered it. Then he wrote talks which Socrates had, or might have had, with other people. Plato was trying to show the world what Socrates had been like, but to do so he put much of himself into these dialogues. Plato’s school was called academy.

The next two chapters discussed Xenophon and the strong king Philip. Philip was the youngest brother of Perdiccas and Alexander. He gained a Greek education, and a chance to study under two Theban generals who were the greatest military leaders of their times. Philip spent three years in Thebes and returned to Macedonia to start taming the wild tribesmen and forming an army drilled in the tactics of the great Thebans. In 359, when Philip was twenty-three years old, Perdiccas died. Macedonians rallied around Philip as they needed a strong leader.

Philip was athletic, handsome, and a fine rider. The victory of Chaeronea made Philip master of Greece. Philip was willing to be friends if the Athenians were willing to be become his allied, actually his subjects. Philip was forming a league of states to force internal peace and military union upon the Spartans, as he was facing refusal by the Spartans to enter their land. Philip had now announced a great campaign against Persia. The time was perfect as Artaxerxes III had just been murdered and the empire was in confusion.  Troops were raised from all the states when Philip was celebrating his daughter’s marriage to hone of his neighbors who was the king of Epirus.  Philip chose to walk alone in the wedding procession when he was struck down by one of his nobles who had a grudge against him. He was forty-six and so perished the strongest man that Greece had ever seen.

The second last chapter is regarding Alexander, Philip’s son. Alexander was twenty years old when has father was murdered, the only son of queen Olympias. Aristotle tutored Alexander. Aristotle himself had come to Plato’s Academy when he was seventeen and he had proved himself the best in Plato’s Academy.  Alexander later captured Egypt. He governed the people of the east with his Macedonian generals and also included Persian nobles. Victory followed him wherever he went. In 323 he was back from India in Babylon, preparing for the attack on Arabia when he fell sick of a fever along with the battle wounds. He died in the palace of the kings of Babylon on June 13, 323 B.C. He was only thirty-two years old.

The death of Alexander without an heir created confusion. Although his wife Roxana was expecting a child but an infant was useless in a time of serious confusion. Alexander’s generals carved up his empire. Egyptian, Macedonian and Asiatic areas of separate kingdoms came in place. Later Romans captured Greece.  The thoughts of the Greeks combined with the laws of the Romans have given us many of our own traditions. The beliefs and ideas of the Greeks still shape our world.

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