Book Review: The Blood Telegram – India’s Secret War in East Pakistan, by Gary J. Bass

The 1971 Bangladesh War which led to an independent Bangladesh was post-independence India’s finest hour. Coinciding with the Vietnam War, arguably America’s worst decade since the Second World War, events in Bangladesh gave the Americans an opportunity to do the ‘right’ thing, an opportunity which Nixon’s and Kissinger’s America did not fail to miss. Gary Bass, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, has written a meticulously researched book which lays out the innards of US policy making during those tumultuous days. It is well-known that Nixon (as advised by his National Security Advisor Kissinger) viewed the conflict strictly in terms of the cold war struggle with the Soviet Union. Behind such ruthlessness and cold manipulations lay Nixon’s affection and admiration for Yahya Khan, a man he compared to Lincoln, and his contempt for India, which he thought needed a good famine. Just as Lincoln had fought to maintain the USA’s unity, Nixon expected Yahya to fight to keep East Pakistan. Asking Yahya to deal with the Awami League leaders in Calcutta was, for Nixon, akin to expecting Lincoln to deal with Jefferson Davis.

Nixon thought the Indians were as much at fault as the Pakistanis. Time and again he threatened to cut off aid to India and he actually did so once the war started. The US threat carried some weight - despite so much animosity towards India, the US was giving India more aid than the rest of the world combined. Just before the war started, the US cut off 70% of the most crucial military aid – around USD 17 million – grounding India’s C119 transport planes and stopping all ammunition. Nixon also ended funding for a food program and stopped a loan amounting to USD 100 million.

However, the USA still had a few good men who wanted to do the right thing. One such man was Archer Blood, the American consul-general in Dacca (as the city was then known). A humanist, Blood sent cable after cable to his superiors pleading with them to act to restrain the Pakistani government from continuing with its suppression of democracy. He was ignored. At the cost of this career, Blood sent a “dissent cable” (permitted by law since the Vietnam War in order to encourage insiders to speak out) signed by 29 colleagues saying: “Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy.”

Bass, who went through many hundreds of hours of de-classified White House tapes and interviewed dozens of officials in India and the US to write the Blood Telegram, tells us that Archer Blood’s career did suffer. However, his cables were leaked to the press and did raise a hue and cry. Blood was not the only good American who helped the Bengali cause. Senator Edward Kennedy visited India, along with American experts on development and refugee relief who could attest to the malnourishment and misery underwent by the refugees. Travelling on transport provided by the Indian government (which laid out the red carpet), he visited many refugee camps. When he got back to the US, Ted Kennedy announced that he had seen the ‘the most appalling tide of human misery in modern times.' The Concert for Bangladesh organised by Ravi Shankar and George Harrison at Madison Square Garden four months before the start of the war added to the growing chorus against supporting Pakistan.

However, Nixon and Kissinger held their ground and after the war started going badly for Pakistan, resorting to extreme brinksmanship to prevent an Indian assault against West Pakistan after the surrender in the East. The US supported Pakistan not just because it felt India had strayed into the Soviet camp, but also because Nixon and Kissinger thought that Yahya Khan made the perfect courier for establishing ties with Zhou Enlai’s China. Discarding the option of using the Romanians or even the French to establish a link with Peking, Kissinger had Yahya carry messages to Peking and even spread a canard that Kissinger was laid up ill in Pakistan while on a visit so that he could fly to Peking and meet with Zhou Enlai. Kissinger was astounded by Zhou Enlai’s animosity and vituperative hatred towards India. Putting a match to such gunpowder came naturally to Kissinger. Pledging his support for Pakistan, Zhou Enlai suggested that the 1962 Chinese defeat of India could possibly be repeated. When the war finally started on 3 December 1971, the Chinese did not seriously threaten India. If they had, China would have opened itself to the possibility of attack from a million Soviet soldiers on its borders. In any event, the Indians had taken care to wait till the mountains were impassable with snow.

At the end of it all, one is left with no doubt that to the list of victims of US imperialism such as Vietam, Laos, Cambodia and Chile should be added Bangladesh. Also, that Kissinger should be tried for his role in such callous disregard of human rights, akin to any war criminal.

The Blood Telegram is interesting not only for the exposure of the politically incorrect dialogue (by today’s standards) which emerges from those White House tapes – the word ‘rape’ is used often, in the context of what India did to Pakistan, but also for snippets such as that Indian generals shared some of their Pakistani counterparts’ stereotypes about Bengali cowardice and were not very impressed with Bengali fighters. General Sam Manekshaw is quoted as saying, ‘you Bengalis run, you don’t fight.’

Despite India having excellent relations with most of the developing world, India received little or no support from countries outside the Iron Curtain. The entire Arab world, Iran and other Islamic countries sided with Pakistan, taking the line that maintaining Pakistan’s unity was of paramount importance. Yugoslavia was an exception as was (unsurprisingly) Israel, though Indian did not have diplomatic ties with Israel at that time. Iran and Jordan went to the extent of sending their US supplied fighter planes to Pakistan, on the secret understanding with Nixon-Kissinger that any loss would be replaced by the United States. Bass argues that such a move, just another example of cow-boy style behaviour from the Nixon-Kissinger duo, was in breach of US law, which forbade the US from giving military aid to Pakistan, either directly or indirectly.

When Nixon sent the USS Enterprise sailing towards the Bay of Bengal, he had no intention of ever resorting to force against India. US public opinion would not have accepted such action, Bass tells us. Unlike India’s aircraft carrier INS Vikrant which relied on a steam boiler, the USS Enterprise was nuclear powered and could sail around the world without refuelling. INS Vikrant was lucky if its boiler worked. Three months before the war, the Indian navy had declared INS Vikrant inoperable, since it had a crack in its boiler. However, the boiler was patched up and INS Vikrant took part in the blockade of Chittagong. Not only was the USS Enterprise five times the size of INS Vikrant, one of its escorts the Tripoli was bigger than INS Vikrant. Nevertheless, India did not fall for the US bluff and held its nerve.

The Soviet Union too was not very keen that India should get involved in a war with Pakistan over Bangladesh, but once the war started, it stood by India and kept vetoing Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire. The Indians knew that the Soviet Union would not apply its veto indefinitely. In the meantime, the General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire. 104 countries voted in favour and only 11 voted against it. Even Yugoslavia voted for the ceasefire. Thankfully for India, General Assembly resolutions aren’t binding. Finally on 13 December, the Soviets informed India that there would be no more vetos in the Security Council. By that time, India managed to squeeze out a surrender from Lt. General Niazi

Bass notes that, unlike in the case of Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger were able to deflect any blame for their behaviour during the Bangladesh War. Two years after the Bangladesh War, just after he became secretary of state, a Gallup Poll found that Kissinger was the most admired person in the US. Bass notes with sadness that when Mujib Ur Rehman was assassinated in August 1975 and military rule imposed in Bangladesh, India happily kept up normal ties with the new military ruler, despite having intervened in the name of democracy a few years earlier. On the whole, Bass seems to find Indians genuine and altruistic, while also scheming and manipulative, though he doesn’t say so in as many words.

Every time I read a book relating to Bangladesh, I keep asking myself a fundamental question - why aren’t India and Bangladesh better friends than they are? Why is it that within five years of the liberation of Bangladesh, in January 1976, Bangladesh re-established ties with Pakistan? Did the Pakistani army actually kill three million civilians during their crackdown on the liberation movement? To use an analogy, let’s assume that a Nazi Government had continued to be in power in defeated Germany after the Second World War. Would Israel have good relations with such a country? Why do so many Bangladeshis want to have, as good a relationship with Pakistan, as with India? Why are so many Bangladeshis friendlier towards Pakistan than towards India? Why is the Bangladesh National Party able to flourish in Bangladesh, even gaining power on a few occasions, despite being inimical towards India and friendlier towards Pakistan and despite being allied with the Jamaat-e-Islami which had collaborated with West Pakistan and opposed Bangladeshi independence? All these questions I had raised in this post dated March 2009.

The Blood telegram provides one important clue to the answers I’ve been looking for though it does not go out of the way to comment on the actual number of deaths which took place, other than saying that in June 1971, the USS State Department estimated that around two hundred thousand people had been killed. According to Bass, most of the victims of the Pakistani army were Hindus. Eighty or ninety percentage of the refugees were Hindus and the Pakistani army did everything possible to encourage the exodus. As Kenneth Keating, the US Ambassador to India explained to President Nixon, who couldn’t care less, the reason the refugees kept coming at the rate of 150,000 a day was ‘because they were killing the Hindus.’ According to Keating, at first the killings had been indiscriminate. After the Pakistani army got control of the large centres, the Pakistani army carried out a specific genocide against the Hindus. There was widespread rape, which again specifically targeted the Hindus. Hindu houses were marked with yellow H signs, in a manner eerily reminiscent of Nazi victimisation of the Jews.

The answer I have been looking for could be this. If Pakistani forces had indiscriminately killed Muslims and Hindus, Bangladesh’s collective consciousness would not permit good relations with Pakistan. However, except for the murder of some Muslim intellectuals, most of the victims of the Pakistani army were Hindus. Most of the relatives of those victims no longer live in Bangladesh (since they fled to India as refugees and never returned) and thus it is relatively easy for the current population of Bangladesh to accept Pakistan as just another fellow Islamic country.

On the question of whether three million Bengalis actually died at the hands of troops from West Pakistan, Sarmila Bose’s Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War seeks to provide some answers.

Book Review: Where The Rainbow Ends by Anurag Anand

Anurag Anand, author of exciting books such as the Legend of Amrapali and Of Tattoos and Taboos! has come up with yet another good un. Anand’s third novel, Where The Rainbow Ends, combines good story telling with a complex plot and a surprise ending that is tailor-made for conversion into a movie.

Rahul Singh, so very middle class that his middle name could be M, thinks he is so very lucky to have won the heart of rich brat Shalini. Things get even better when, thanks to Shalini’s father’s influence, Rahul gets the sort of job he would not have even dreamed of, considering his MBA from a second tier institution. Rahul and Shalini live well and party hard. Marriage isn’t a bed of roses and soon Shalini’s addiction to alcohol and her natural petulance push them into troubled waters. Myra comes along, but the birth of the child fails to save Rahul’s marriage. Rahul fights hard to win custody of Myra and he wins, but his is left almost penniless as a result. His fabulous job, the direct result of his father-in-law’s influence, is yanked off.

When Rahul is wallowing in the doldrums, Avantika comes along, draped in an air hostess’s costume, but actually an angel in disguise. Rahul starts to believe he has found a rainbow and Myra too. When Myra is diagnosed with aplastic anemia, it is Avantika who stands by the father-daughter duo, pledging not only moral support, but also her own hard cash. Then suddenly Avantika vanishes from their lives. The billion dollar question is, is Shalini to blame for Avantika’s disappearance? Rahul has reason to suspect Shalini since Shalini has launched a second attempt to regain custody of Myra, citing Rahul’s inability to afford the expensive treatment needed to treat Myra’s condition. Rahul makes a desperate attempt to trace Avantika, though Myra and her illness weigh him down.

India has a number of very good writers who are second to none in their ability to write well in English. However, many of them suffer from a singular handicap, namely, the inability to spin a good yarn. Anand is one of those who stand out from the crowd, with his remarkable ability to concoct a good tale in functional, unadorned English that can hold the reader’s attention till the end.

An excellent book, please read Where The Rainbow Ends to find out why Avantika disappeared and if Rahul is successful in finding her.

Book Review: The Spy Who Lost Her Head by Jane De Suza

What happens when a Jane Austenesque village damsel (albeit garishly dressed by Victorian or modern day standards) comes to Mumbai in the hope of landing herself a husband, but instead ends up holding the severed head of a murder victim? Well, in the hands of the very talented Jane De Suza, the damsel (who goes by the colourful name Gulabi) would have a series of adventures culminating in a grand finale where the vivacious Gulabi brings proceedings to a graceful closure.

Pretty soon after Gulabi reaches Mumbai, fourteen suitcases in tow, she finds her ideal man, an Engineer-MBA, soon rechristened Bemba (Bemba as in BE, MBA). Actually, she literally lands right on top of him and immediately starts wooing him with fried brinjals etc., a process made doubly easy since he’s her landlord. The nice and slim Tanya makes up the third resident in their home and we are told that though Gulabi and Tanya have very little in common, they get along very well. Actually, we see them get along exceedingly well, amidst many howls, screams, tantrums and mishaps.

Gulabi’s acquisition of the severed head - it actually belongs to one Sunder Raj, a journalist who made the mistake of exposing corruption in high places – doesn’t change Gulabi all that much. She continues wooing Bemba and is wooed in turn by many men.
In a book where everything is over the top, De Suza’s style of writing made me feel I was reading an adult version of something akin to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Tom and Jerry series of animated cartoons. Gulabi’s emphasis on Queen’s English and her total confidence in her looks and virtues makes her a lovable character, but I got the feeling all along that Gulabi was unlikely to crack the case with her skill and intuition, the way murder mysteries are usually resolved. I turned out to be wrong. As I waited for providence to dump (or shower) answers on Gulabi, De Suza poured some additional intelligence into Gulabi to make her a wee bit cleverer than I would have given her credit for initially and the resolution of the case did add to Gulabi’s glory.

De Suza’s writing, which at times reminded me of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, is partly small-town pidgin (when spoken by Gulabi), partly frivolous and when spoken by the narrator, it's 100% Queen’s English, elegant, prim and very proper. The Spy Who Lost Her Head is definitely not your traditional murder mystery where a serious detective grimly gets on with the task of solving the crime, as bullets fly around him or her. Nevertheless, I found it to be a good read, though I am usually a sucker for grim, serious, deadly, detective stories in which bullets rain down on the detective and bombs explode all around (without doing any real harm). Does Gulabi win Bemba? How exactly does she resolve the murder of a wronged journalist and send the culprit to face his just desserts? Do read this very readable book to find out for yourself.

Book Review: The Aryavarta Chronicles, Book 2: Kaurava by Krishna Udayasankar

Just over a year ago, when I finished reading Govinda, the first book from Krishna Udayasankar’s Aryavarta Chronicles, I knew that I would not be able to resist the rest of the Chronicles. A few days ago, Flipkart delivered Kaurava, Book 2 and I jumped right in, only to emerge with an expression and feelings akin to a man who has had the soup and starters at an excellent restaurant and can’t wait for the main courses to arrive.

Just as in Book 1, Govinda Shauri plays a key role in Kaurava, as the story develops and leads to the big war. The characters are all very much human and very much real and Udayasankar’s de-deified version of the Mahabharata is a delight to read. The tussle between the Firewrights and the Firstborns continues in Kaurava. We get to know more of folks such as Syoddhan (Duryoddhan), Dussasan, Vidura, Asvattama, Jayadrath, Vasusena, Shikandin, Dhrstyadymn (Dhrishtadyumna), Dharma Yudhisthir, Bhim, Partha (Arjun), Panchali etc. in mortal avatars, warts and all. As Udayasankar presses on with her tale, the most well-known bits of the Mahabharata are re-arranged and presented to the reader in believable and realistic hues, which only adds to the credibility of the narrative. I’m sure everyone has heard of how Yudhisthir was forced to play a game of dice with Duryoddhan by the wily Shakuni and cheated of his kingdom. In Udayasankar’s Chronicles, there is no cheating and it is Yudhisthir, a compulsive gambler, who pushes Duryoddhan to play for very high stakes.

Udayasankar goes into Yudhisthir’s persona in such detail and depth and with such ruthlessness than at times I felt she goes overboard. Udayasankar tells us that Yudhisthir was a man inebriated with morality, the satisfaction of being right and good, backed up by brothers who would obey him come hell or high water. Yudhisthir definitely wasn’t the last man in the world to fall in love with virtue and truth, treating them as an end in themselves. Many have accused famous saints like Gandhi of such obsession with truth and morality, bordering on narcissistic martyrdom. In all probability, Yudhisthir wasn’t the first either. A man who believes that it was his destiny to rule, Yudhisthir gambles with the hope that providence would allow him to win an empire with a throw of the die so that he might claim to deserve the title of Emperor. One doesn’t have a choice but to hate Udayasankar’s Dharma, so much so that when, towards the end of the book, Chief Virat of Matsya slaps Yudhisthir, one feels good about it. On the other hand, Duryoddhan comes across as a likeable and nice guy, the sort one could go out for a drink with. Unlike Yudhisthir, Duryoddhan does not enjoy the luxury of having obedient younger brothers, waiting to do his bidding.

But the best sculpted character in Udayasankar’s Kaurava is Panchali. Not only is she human and earthy, with a mind of her own, her values and ideas would easily fit into today’s world. Let down by her first love Govinda and her unworthy husbands, Panchali suffers at the hands of Dussasan after Yudhisthir gambles her away and none of her other husbands stand up for her. However she stoutly resists her violation and declares that Yudhisthir never had the right to gamble her away. Kind-hearted Duryoddhan offers her an escape route when he proclaims that Panchali could go free if one of Yudhisthir’s younger brothers would endorse her claim and agree that Yudhisthir never had the right to stake her. None of the four cowards come forward. Let me not give away more, other than say that Udayasankar’s handling of the game of dice episode is a masterpiece by itself. Udayasankar pours concrete over Panchali’s character as an independent woman with her description of Panchali’s encounter with Keechak.

Asvattama, Shikandin and Dhrstyadymn come across as likeable characters, and I found Udayasankar’s depiction of Asvattama to be particularly fascinating, partly because I knew very little about him till now. Dhritarashtra is not a one-dimensional blind man as the Chopra father-son duo had me believe till now. In Udayasankar’s hands, Dhritarashtra is not so nice and so very interesting.

There are folk who believe that Jesus Christ visited Kashmir. I am not sure if Udayasankar is one of them, but she does take Govinda to Greece where he imbibes Greek thought and contributes some ideas of his own. Krishna is supposed to have trained as a Firewright, as have many of the important characters and Udayasankar takes pains to show how many of the good guys are Firewrights, even as they side with the Firstborn and hunt down the few surviving Firewrights. The explanation about the role played by Firewrights and why they are hunted down by Govinda and others is woven throughout the book, sometimes at the expense of the main story. Towards the end, Govinda divulges a big secret regarding the tussle between the Firstborn and Firewrights and to me it came as an anti-climax.

Kaurava is a thriller, the pace of the book much quicker than that of Govinda. There are fights galore and plots and sub-plots. To use a Churchillian expression, they fight in the forests, on the beaches, on the seas, in their workshops and in the desert. I am not sure if the settings and descriptions for the various fights and battles in Kaurava have been “borrowed” from other sources or if Udayasankar made them up herself. In any event, they are excellent and if ever Udayasankar wants to re-invent herself as a scriptwriter for Hollywood war movies, she would have no problems at all.

The only negative I can think of (other than the excessive downgrading of Yudhisthir and the ending which I didn’t like all that much) is that I found at least a couple of typos and I don’t remember seeing any in Govinda, Book 1.

On the whole, Kaurava is an excellent book, a must read for everyone who has read Govinda. I will not be surprised if Udayasankar’s Mahabharata goes down in history as one of the best ever interpretations. I can’t wait for Book 3, which will hopefully have the big war, at least its commencement – I wish I could preorder it right away.

Book Review: 10 Judgements That Changed India, by Zia Mody

Zia Mody is one of the most well-known corporate lawyers in India. She is in Business Today’s Hall of Fame as one of India’s most powerful businesswomen.

What is less well-known is that before donning the mantle of a corporate lawyer, Zia Mody, the daughter of former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee, was a litigator practicing in the Bombay High Court. Mixing her well-honed drafting skills with an extensive knowledge of Indian constitutional law, Zia Mody has written a delightfully insightful book which, as its name suggests, dissects and analyses ten judgements which have had a significant impact on India. The foreword to this book has been written by Soli Sorabjee who says that ‘the Judiciary, at one time, was considered and projected to be the weakest branch of the state because it possessed neither power of the purse nor power of the sword. This myth has been demolished.’

10 Judgements That Changed India has ten chapters, each dealing with a judgement, though it actually covers a lot more than ten judgements since each chapter covers a number of judgements leading up to the title judgement and in many cases, follow on cases, which are equally important. Thus the chapter on the Maneka Gandhi case also covers the ADM Jabalpur case where the Supreme Court ruled that a detenu could not file a habeas corpus petition challenging the legality of his detention during an emergency. The chapter on the Shah Bano judgement also covers the Danial Latifi case which succeeded it. In Danial Latifi, the Supreme Court set right many of the flaws in the Shah Bano judgement, whilst taking care not to put its foot in the mouth, as it had in the Shah Bano case with its contemptuous tone and uncharitable comments and by unduly criticising Islamic law and practices.

Many a time when reading a judgement, I have felt that the judge made up his mind about the outcome and then justified the verdict with appropriate reasoning. Zia Mody says as much when she suggests that in Kesavananda Bharati and Golak Nath, ‘the decisions were the kind where judges primarily decided on the ends and then set out to discover the means to achieve those pre-determined ends.’ The Indian government was so angered by the Kesavananda Bharati judgement that when Chief Justice S. M. Sikri retired (the day after the judgement was pronounced), the government superseded three judges who had ruled against the government, who ranked immediately after C. J. Sikri and appointed Justice A. N. Ray, who had ruled in favour of the government, as the Chief Justice.

Interestingly, in some of the cases reviewed by Zia Mody, the petitioner did not get much relief from the court even though important and interesting questions of law were settled. For example, in the Maneka Gandhi case, the court did not pass any formal order and accepted the government’s assurance that Maneka Gandhi would get an adequate opportunity to be heard. The majority of the judges actually upheld the impounding of Maneka Gandhi’s passport and ordered that her passport should remain in the court’s custody in the meantime. Many a time, the ruling came about after ‘the Supreme court embarked on an inquiry not necessitated by the facts before it,’ as in the cases of Maneka Gandhi and Shah Bano.

Zia Mody’s humanity shines through when she says that courts acting alone cannot tackle the challenge of slum development and rehabilitation. They need the support of well-executed social welfare policies and economic development strategies. Zia Mody says that years after the ruling in Olga Tellis there has been a symbolic shift in the Supreme court’s approach towards the displacement of disadvantaged sections of society and their fundamental right to shelter. This has been especially so in the case filed by the Narmada Bachao Andolan which petitioned the Supreme Court seeking a restrain on the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River. Despite initially staying the construction of the dam, the Supreme Court allowed the dam’s height to be raised and allowed its phased construction at the expense of many tribals who were displaced. Zia Mody criticises the Supreme Court’s assertion that after rehabilitation the tribals would be in a better position than they were already in and they would have better amenities than which they enjoyed in their tribal hamlets, an assertion which Zia Mody rightly describes as ‘simplistic and myopic’. In Zia Mody’s view, the Supreme Court touched its lowest point in Almitra Patel v. Union of India where it ruled that ‘providing alternative accommodation to slum/pavement dwellers was comparable to rewarding a pickpocket and suggested that landgrabbers should be dealt with an iron fist.’

If the Bhopal gas leak was a tragedy on a monumental scale, its aftermath saw callousness on a similar footing. The Indian government decided to sue Union Carbide in a New York court, on behalf of the victims, claiming that Indian courts were inefficient. The Indian government’s suit was thrown out by the New York court. Back in India, the victims ended up with a meagre settlement at the hands of the Supreme Court in 1989, which also quashed all pending civil and criminal proceedings. The law school I went to devoted an entire paper on the Bhopal gas leak case and I still remember the shame and anger the entire class felt as we waded through reams of pages setting out the sordid affair in excruciating detail, especially the manner in which the Indian government and the Supreme Court let the victims down. Thankfully, a few years after the Supreme Court’s 1989 settlement order, the Supreme Court revived the criminal cases, though it wasted a golden opportunity to revise the compensation awarded. Zia Mody says that ‘the Bhopal debacle was not enough of a wake-up call for lawyers, judges, politicians, activists and the media. In fact, they appeared to have pressed the snooze button and gone on to repeat mistakes of the past.’ Zia Mody compares the Bhopal gas leak case with the 2010 BP oil in the Gulf of Mexico. ‘Within weeks of the incident, BP created a 20 billion dollar fund to deal with the accident.’ Zia Mody asks poignantly, ‘had the accident occurred in Indian waters, would BP have paid even half the compensation it eventually did?’

When Zia Mody’s narrative reaches the controversial waters of the Reservation Ocean, all of a sudden Zia Mody reveals a dry sense of humour. There are sub-headings such as “And Along Came The Mandal Commission”, “The Mandal Challenge”, “Off With The Creamy Layer” etc. There’s a nice and neat summary of the Indian caste system, the history of reservations in India, developments after India’s independence and then the grand arrival of the Mandal Commission. Zia Mody stays easy and neutral till the very end when she expresses her view on what she expects Indian policymakers to do regarding reservation. No, I’m not going to give this one away. Please read the eminently readable 10 Judgements That Changed India to find out for yourself.

As mentioned above, Zia Mody does not hesitate to call a spade a spade. When discussing custodial deaths, Zia Mody tells us that the judiciary’s approach to awarding compensation has been erratic and inconsistent. There was an instance in 1991 when the Supreme Court awarded Rs. 10,000 as compensation for public humiliation and loss of dignity and a case where the Calcutta High Court awarded Rs. 10 lakhs to a rape victim.

Of the ten chapters, the one on the independence of the judiciary is a masterpiece in its own right. In this Chapter, Zia Mody details the legal developments relating to appointments to the higher judiciary in a simple and concise manner, followed by her sensible and forthright comments. The First Judges Case is important not only for ruling that the executive had the final say in appointing judges, but also because the concept of public interest litigation took root in India on account of this case. In the Second Judges Case, the Supreme Court swung the other way and ruled that judicial appointments should be integrated, participatory and consultative. If there was a conflict, the judiciary would prevail. This was endorsed in the Third Judges Case, with a minor modification. Justice Bhagwati had lamented in the First Judges Case that the judicial appointment process was shrouded in mystery. Zia Mody shares this lament and tells us that the situation continues to be so even now, ‘only the identity of the high priests has been altered.’ Zia Mody clearly disagrees with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law, calling the decision a rush ‘into unchartered constitutional territory, arrogating to itself the unprecedented power of carrying out judicial appointments.’ She (rightly in my opinion) says that ‘the decisions, though well intentioned, have upset the balance of power as envisaged by our constitution.’

Zia Mody quotes Alexander Bickel to explain that the judiciary’s role is counter-majoritarian and anti-democratic. Unlike politicians, the judiciary is not answerable to the populace, yet it has the power to review decisions of the elected representatives and even overrule them. This counter majoritarian nature of the judiciary is tolerated on account of lack on alternatives, but when the judiciary usurps the power to appoint judges, such counter-majoritarian nature becomes particularly pronounced, Zia Mody tells us. Zia Mody endorses the proposals for creation of a National Judicial Commission which would have representatives from the executive and the judiciary and says that ‘such a commission seems to be the only solution to restore the system of checks and balances in judicial appointments and infuse transparency and accountability into the process.’ Zia Mody’s words have turned out to be prophetic. On 5 September 2013, the Rajya Sabha passed a Constitution Amendment Bill to create a Judicial Appointments Commission which will replace the existing collegium system of appointing judges to higher courts. I do wish Zia Mody had commented on the proposal to create an Indian Judicial Service, but she didn’t.

The Aruna Shanbaug case in which the Supreme Court elucidated its views on euthanasia is another chapter which examines very interesting questions of law, morality and public policy. In the course of its examination into the pros and cons of euthanasia, the Supreme Court screened a video recording of Aruna’s condition to be screened in to the courtroom. Support for such a practice, which clearly violated Aruna’s right to privacy, was found by the Supreme Court in the practices followed during the Nuremberg trials, where Nazi war criminals were tried! Not surprisingly, Zia Mody turns up her nose at such an exercise of (in)discretion by the Supreme Court. In this case, the Supreme Court took the very controversial view that whilst active euthanasia was wrong, passive euthanasia (allowing a person to die by not giving medicines or food) was not. Zia Mody tells us that the moral justification for allowing passive euthanasia, as opposed to active euthanasia, is not convincing. Zia Mody has a number of interesting arguments to buttress her position and rather than reproduce them here, I’ll leave it to you to read this wonderful book and find them for yourself.

Zia Mody (unsurprisingly) writes very well, her English simple, to the point and elegant too in the bargain. She uses her adjectives and adverbs in a low-key, understated manner, with devastating effect. When talking of the ADM Jabalpur case, she says ‘the Supreme Court had unhappily held’ that a detenu could not file a habeas corpus petition challenging the legality of his detention during an emergency. At times Zia Mody finds a ruling by the Supreme Court ‘disquieting,’ and sometimes it is ‘refreshingly progressive’. All in all, 10 Judgements That Changed India is an excellent book, a must-read for anyone interested in understanding India’s legal system and finding out how it reached its present state.

The reviewer is a corporate/banking lawyer who has never appeared in court and considers himself a layperson in constitutional law. Like a few hundred lawyers scatted all over the world, the reviewer had the privilege of starting his legal career under Zia Mody’s tutelage.