Book Review: Red Sorghum, by Mo Yan

Ever since Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012, I’ve been planning to read Red Sorghum, one of his most famous works set in the time of the Japanese occupation and the Second World War. Since I knew that Mo Yan is a member of the Cultural Affairs Department of the People’s Liberation Army, I expected another Mikhail Sholokhov. I turned out to be totally wrong. Those who have read Sholokhov would know that Sholokhov paints good and bad (read that the good communists and the bad Czarists and petty bourgeois) in black and white. Mo Yan, on the other hand, at least in Red Sorghum, is a uniquely talented story teller who delights in portraying life in vivid contrasts, terrific joie de vivre suddenly being replaced by excruciating pain, delightful surprises being taken over by extreme sorrow. The setting for his novel, the Northeast Gaomi Township, is a place of extreme beauty, the land of sorghum, which the locals use to make wine. Sorghum is a life giver and entertainer – everyone in the Northeast Gaomi Township drinks sorghum wine. The narrator’s grandfather, Yu Zhan’ao, is a bandit who managed to marry Dai Fenglin, a pretty woman after killing her rich husband and father-in-law, all with her silent acquiescence. You see, Dai Fenglin’s husband had leprosy and her father had married her off to the leper just to get a black mule for himself. Yu Zhan’ao’s execution of the murders and his subsequent marriage to Dai Fenglin would not be out of place in a Bollywood blockbuster.

There are so many characters who are so exciting, so out of the ordinary that one feels a novel could have been written around each of them. There’s Arhat Liu, a man who loved his mules so much that he broke their legs, after they had been confiscated by the Japanese, and was skinned alive for his pains. There’s Nine Dreams Cao, an honest and upright magistrate who does not hesitate to use beatings to extract confessions and still does not always get it right. There’s Spotted Neck, a bandit whom Yu Zhan’ao admires and later kills. There’s Black Eye who heads the Iron Society, which believes in the power of black magic and whose soldiers charge at armed enemy soldiers chanting “Amalai” and achieve a certain degree of success, only to be mowed down later.

It’s not just the people who are so unique and interesting. The funerals one attends when reading the Red Sorghum are out of the world. In the midst of so much fighting and poverty, so much money and symbolism is invested in funerals. Dogs. I still can’t decide if Mo Yan likes or hates dogs. The narrator’s family keeps dogs, more as guard dogs than anything else. After a Japanese massacre when dead bodies are piled up on the outskirts of the Northeast Gaomi Township, dogs feast on the corpses. The narrator’s family go out of the way to chase the dogs away, using up most of their precious ammunition. The dogs on their part go back to their primitive traits and form gangs to eat the corpses and attack those trying to chase them away. The fighting is fierce and deadly and some humans die. The narrator’s father, Douguan, loses one of his balls. Toward the end when the Jiao Gao are desperately looking for a way to fight off hunger, cold and the Japanese, Pocky Chen suggests a way out, one which harnesses the dogs in the vicinity.

I always thought that a ride in a sedan chair carried by four bearers would be as comfortable as a ride can get. Oh no! For Mo Yan, the inside of the sedan, which carries Dai Fenglin to her husband’s home is like a coffin. The walls oozed grease and there were flies inside. The sedan bearers, when they want to have fun, tease the bride sitting inside and rock the sedan so violently that the bride throws up!

I’ve heard of feet binding practised in the China of yore, but I never really thought anyone would find a small foot (the result of many years of painful binding which cracks the bones and causes the toes to turn under) attractive. Mo Yan tells that the five feet four inch Dai Fenglin had toes which were three inch golden lotuses. When she walked, swinging her arms freely, her body swayed like a willow in the wind. When she was being carried in a sedan to her husband’s home, one of her tiny feet poked out of the sedan and the sight of that incomparably delicate, lovely thing nearly drove the soul out of the bearers’ bodies.

As I read Red Sorghum, I waited in vain for that rare reference to the Chinese Communist Party, which would show the Party as the defender of the common man and a force for good. I waited in vain. In the few confrontations between local Red guards and the poor farmers, the Reds don’t come out looking so good. There is a stray mention of the back-yard furnace campaign during the Great Leap Forward in 1958 which apparently resulted in the family’s wok being confiscated. Toward the end, the narrator visits Northeast Gaomi Township and finds that the place has been planted with hybrid Sorghum which he loathes. ‘Hybrid sorghum never seems to ripen, Its grey-green eyes seem never to be fully opened. I stand in front of Second Grandma’s grave and look out at those ugly bastards that occupy the domain of the red sorghum. They assume the name of sorghum, but are bereft of tall, straight stalks; they assume the name of sorghum, but are devoid of the dazzling sorghum colour. Lacking the soul and bearing of sorghum, they pollute the pure air of Northeast Gaomi Township with their dark, gloomy, ambiguous faces.’

Is hybrid sorghum used as a metaphor for change, I wondered? Is Mo Yan trying to suggest that the Communist Party has not made things better? After a great of thought, I have come to the conclusion that Mo Yan is not trying to say anything of that sort. Red sorghum has been replaced with hybrid sorghum. The narrator liked red sorghum. He does not like hybrid sorghum. Period.

Here’s an interesting article which suggests that writers like Mo Yan carefully criticise lower ranking Party officials once in a while, but never question those at the top, who are apparently unaware of the bad things that happen at the village level. Maybe that’s a fair comment, but Mo Yan is one helluva writer who, going by Red Sorghum, deserved the Nobel.

Book Review: “India’s Biggest Cover-Up” by Anuj Dhar

Until I read Anuj Dhar’s India’s Biggest Cover-Up, I had only a vague idea of the controversy surrounding Subhas Chandra Bose’s death allegedly in a plane crash in Taiwan. I knew that there was some opposition from Bose's supporters towards bringing Netaji’s ashes back from Japan since they believe the ashes do not belong to Netaji, but assumed that everyone, including the Indian government, is trying to find out the truth. Well, I am no longer such a simpleton.

Former journalist Dhar who now heads a non-profit organisation called Mission Netaji believes that Netaji did not die in a plane crash in Taiwan or anywhere else. Rather, Dhar, like many other fans of Netaji thinks that as World War II drew to a close, Bose tried to make his way to the Soviet Union in order to obtain assistance from Stalin’s regime for his goal of freeing India from British rule through force of arms. Dhar theorises that Netaji wanted people to believe he died in a plane crash, so that there would be no one looking for him as he hunted for another ally to replace the Japanese. Dhar claims that the Japanese helped Bose in his plan by passing off the ashes of a Japanese man who died of a heart attack around that time, as that of Bose. Bose divulged his real plan to only one person, his trusted aide Lieutenant Colonel Habibur Rahman Khan, who later claimed that he was with Bose as their plane crashed immediately after taking off from Matsyama airport in Taihoku, Taiwan (then called Formosa). Habibur Rahman Khan gave out that Bose was badly burned in the crash and did not stay alive for long and that the Japanese cremated him. Dhar says that Habibur Rahman lied thus because he was instructed to do so by Netaji.

Dhar does not claim that he knows exactly what happened to Netaji. However, he is convinced that the Indian government is hiding a lot, citing a number of feeble excuses. The Soviet government wasn’t of great help either. Dhar isn’t the sort of armchair theorist who comes up with a hypothesis without sufficient backing. India’s Biggest Cover-Up is around 400 pages long, excluding its end notes, and all of it is filled with facts. Dhar pokes holes in various statements made by the Indian government and commissions of enquiry such as the Shah Nawaz Khan committee and the Khosla Commission. Dhar speaks approvingly of the Mukherjee Commission’s findings which concluded that Bose did not die in an air crash in Taiwan.

Dhar examines at length two men, Shaulmari Sadhu and Bhagwanji who claimed to be Bose in independent India. Though Dhar dismisses Shaulmari Sadhu’s claims, he seems to suggest that Bhagwanji could have been Bose, who having spent some time in a Soviet gulag, was allowed to return to India.

Since Dhar doesn’t make any conjecture as to what exactly could have happened to Bose, I propose to put forth a few, submitting along with my theories, that caveat that I am strictly an armchair theorist who has not done much research on this subject. Therefore, the theories that follow should be taken with a barrel of salt.

Dhar is convinced that the Japanese assisted Bose in his subterfuge, that they played along as Bose faked his death and most probably arranged his transportation to the Soviet Union through Manchuria. I would like to question this belief. First let’s look at a few facts. Atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and August 9th, 1945. On August 15th 1945, Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies and this day is commemorated as Victory Over Japan Day even now. Immediately after the surrender was announced, Americans, Briton Chinese, Koreans Filipinos and many other nationalities burst into celebration. The Japanese were devastated and many Japanese soldiers committed suicide. Many PoWs were executed by the Japanese by way of revenge.

Bose is alleged to have died in an air crash on August 18th, three days after Japan announced its surrender! If Dhar’s theory is correct, even after surrendering to the Allies, the Japanese cared enough about Bose and the Indian struggle for independence, that they put in a lot of effort to help Bose escape to the Soviet Union. Remember, there was no love lost between Japan and the Soviets. The Japanese has clashed with the Russians in 1904-1905, and won. Between 1932 and 1939, there were a series of border clashes between the Soviet Union and Japan along the Mongolian – Manchurian border. In 1939, just before war broke out in Europe, Marshall Zhukov’s forces handed the Kwantung army a decisive defeat in Mongolia. Stalin had promised the other Allies that Soviet Union would attack Japan three months after the war in Europe ended. Therefore, on 9 August, exactly three months after Nazi Germany’s surrender (on 8 May 1945), the Soviets invaded Japanese held Manchuria.

The Khosla Commission took the view that the Japanese did not hold Bose in high esteem, that they were only using him for their ends, that if the Japanese had won, they would have ruled India as a colony, just like the British. Dhar refutes all of that. In this respect, I agree with the Khosla Commission. According to Dhar, Bose had Nazi Germans eat out of his hands. Dhar also claims that the Japanese had deep respect for Bose and that if they had defeated the British, they would have given independence to India. I feel Dhar gets it totally wrong out here. I believe that the Japanese were using Bose and the INA just as Netaji was using the Japanese. Once they surrendered and the Second World War was over, the Japanese would have very little incentive in helping Bose escape to the Soviet Union which had just invaded Manchuria!

So my theory goes like this: A day or two before the Japanese surrender or maybe just afterwards, British and American agents would have established contact with the Japanese secret service, the Kempeitai. The Japanese would have offered or the Brits would have asked for Bose to be handed over. Rather than arrest Bose and haul him back to India where he was a hero, someone clever would have come up with a plan. The Japanese would have been asked to offer Bose an escape to the Soviet Union. Further, Bose would have been asked to cooperate in faking his own death, so that nobody would be looking for him. Bose, exhausted by his long struggle and left without many options, would have agreed, asking Habibur Rahman to keep his secret and to spread the word that he died in an air crash. Isolated from his INA soldiers and other friends, Bose may have been executed as punishment for the trouble he caused to Imperial Britain and her allies.

Look at it this way. The Imperial Japanese knew that after their surrender, there would be hell to pay. Why would they then go out of their way to further antagonise the Allies by helping Bose escape to the Soviet Union when they would get brownie points for handing him over? Unless, they were saints, which we know they weren’t.

Why did independent India show so much reluctance in digging for the truth regarding Bose? It is tempting to conjecture that the Brits involved Nehru and other top Congress leaders in their decision to eliminate Bose. After all, if Bose returned alive, he would be a rival to Nehru, wouldn’t he? British officials would know that if Nehru or other Congress leaders were kept in the loop, they could be counted on to suppress the truth from Bose’s supporters and his countless fans in India. Let me remind you, I am just theorising.

Since Bose never made it to the Soviet Union, the Soviets might have eventually guessed how Bose met his end. They might have used that information to blackmail Nehru or Indira Gandhi or at least to exert some sort of control over them. I am saying this in order to explain why the Soviets never cooperated in the search for the truth about Bose.

The second theory I would put forth is that maybe the Japanese actually helped Bose fake his death and escape to the Soviet Union. Stalin would have quickly found out that Bose was not an ideal communist who could be relied on to deliver India to the Reds. The un-pliable Bose would have been kept under lock and key for some years, before he was either killed or even allowed to return to India. I believe, this theory would find favour with Dhar, though he doesn’t say so in as many words.

A third theory would go like this. After the Japanese surrender, the Brits persuaded the Japanese to send Bose over to the Soviets, after faking his death, so that his Indian supporters would not ask too many questions. The Soviets were expected to hand over Bose in exchange for something the Soviets wanted or maybe execute him for war crimes with little publicity. After all, the Soviets and the Brits were allies and the Soviets would not have had much sympathy for anyone who sided with the Japanese. Maybe the Soviets obliged the Brits or maybe they changed their minds and didn’t follow the plan. Maybe the Soviets tested Bose for communist leanings and when they found none, imprisoned him or killed him. The problem with this theory is that relations between the Soviets and the USA/UK broke down almost immediately after the Second World War was over and the Brits would not have wanted Bose to fall into Soviet hands even if the Soviets had promised to hand him over or execute him.

I fully agree with Dhar that India should do more to unearth the mystery surrounding Bose’s death. I hope that the truth will finally emerge one of these days.

PS: Could the publishers ensure that a detailed index is added to this very interesting book for the next edition?

Book Review: Eaten By The Japanese - The Memoir of an Unknown Indian Prisoner of War by John Baptist Crasta

John Baptist Crasta, the author of this amazing book, was British Indian soldier who fought in the Second World War in the Malayan theatre, was taken prisoner by the Japanese, endured horrific atrocities, but survived to tell his fascinating tale. On his return to Bombay, John Crasta continued to serve in the army until his retirement. He married Christine, a Mangalorean girl in 1947 and they had four children, one of whom Richard Crasta went on to join the Indian Administrative Service and later migrated to the United States and became a full-time writer, publishing books such as The Revised Kamasutra, Impressing the Whites; Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex, and What We All Need.

John Crasta’s story-telling (as edited by his son Richard Crasta) is succinct and to the point. Eaten By The Japanese does not go much beyond one hundred pages and that includes essays by the author’s son Richard Crasta on his relationship with his father, the problems he faced in getting this book published and the reception it faced. After being taken prisoner by the Japanese, John Crasta had to make a choice – whether to join the Indian National Army which was being set up by leaders like Captain Mohan Singh and Rash Behari Bose or to stay loyal to his oath. We are told that coercion and even torture were used to force Indian PoWs to join the Indian National Army. Despite that, many like John Crasta refused to join up. Did John Crasta’s religion have anything to do with his decision? I wondered. This question is not specifically addressed in this memoir, but the fact that out of a total of sixty five thousand prisoners, only twenty five thousand volunteered for the INA sort of suggests otherwise. John Crasta says that the average Indian jawan did not wish to be unfaithful to the British after having served them for many years. One gets the impression that those who signed up to the INA did so more to escape the brutal treatment at the hands of the Japanese than anything else.

I found it unbelievable when I read that some of the PoWs who refused to join the INA were tortured. John Crasta says that a camp called Separation Camp was created where non-volunteers, especially officers who didn’t volunteer, were put to extreme hardship. Many died. Subedars Sher Singh and Fateh Khan were in charge of Separation Camp. ‘High ranking officers who refused to have anything to do with the INA were thrown into it without clothing or food, made to carry heavy loads on their heads, and to double up on the slightest sign of slackness. They would be beaten by sweepers, the infamous Nimboo having been put in charge of them. They would be caned, beaten and kicked. Various other devices of torture, perhaps copied from the Germans, were introduced. Many people died in that camp. Others were removed to a hospital, only to die a slow death. Some others, not being able to ber the hardships, agreed to “sign” and were released.’

The Japanese tortured the prisoners – beat them for no reason, overworked them, gave them little food and drink, provided little or no medical care even for those seriously ill. I found John Crasta’s descriptions of being transported by a cargo steamer from Singapore to Sourabaya in Java and from Sourabaya to Rabaru in New Britain via Palau to be the most horrendous of the various horrible things described in this book – the extremely cramped conditions, the lack of food, the pitiful amount of water, the disease outbreaks, the beatings and the inevitable deaths – except for the cannibalism of course.

The Japanese practised cannibalism. John Crasta tells us of a specific instance when two men of the 13th Pioneer Company, Budhu Mistry and Giana Mistry, who had complained of illness, were given injections by the Japanese which killed them both within a couple of hours. They were buried immediately but the same evening the Japanese ordered the bodies to be dug out, had the arms, thigh muscles and livers cut out from the corpses, cooked and ate it. Well, those men who were eaten were atleast dead. There were many instances of live men having flesh gouged out of their bodies and thrown away to die in agony, even as their flesh was cooked and consumed.

Reading a kindle edition of the book, I was forced many times to switch off the kindle and put it away, only to come back to it almost immediately afterwards. I finished the entire book in one sitting. How does one reconcile Japanese treatment of PoWs during the Second World War with modern day Japan, which though it is yet to apologise for its behaviour in as comprehensive a manner as the Germans, is a very peaceful nation which is at the forefront of technological innovation and is in many respects a model nation? In his essays on Rediscovering his Father and the Political Incorrectness of Truth which follows the main novel, Richard Crasta quotes Pico Iyer who is married to a Japanese woman and lives in Japan. Iyer says that ‘in Japan today, Indians are the lowest of the low.’ Why should it be so hard for the Japanese to issue an apology to all the Indians who were abused and manipulated, and to their children and descendants? Crasta wonders. I guess the first step would be for the Indian government to seek such an apology. As far as I know, the Indian government hasn’t sought one.

After the war, Indian public sentiment was understandably on the side of those who joined the INA. The British didn’t dare punish the mutineers. After independence, those Indian soldiers who fought on the side of the Japanese were feted and rewarded while those like John Crasta were consigned to the dung heap of anonymity. The sympathy and support for INA soldiers is so prevalent even now that John Crasta’s son Richard Crasta found it very difficult to find takers for his father’s story. Crasta tells us (quite rightly in my opinion) that if for any reason the Japanese had conquered India, they would most likely have treated Indians as slaves – such was their contempt for Indians. It is interesting to note that when after independence Nehru asked General Cariappa to get the Indian army to absorb the former INA men, he refused saying it would be the end of the army in India since the soldiers who refused to fight on the Japanese side considered the INA soldiers to be turncoats.

Richard Crasta’s essays on Rediscovering his Father and the Political Incorrectness of Truth beautifully captures his relationship with his father. As a young man, Richard Crasta had little respect for the humble soldier John Crasta who insisted on cycling everywhere, wearing clothes which were not exactly haute couture. This attitude changed as he grew older and started to appreciate the extent of pain experienced by his father as a Japanese PoW. When Richard Crasta took a lot of trouble to have his father’s manuscript printed as a book, it was as much a form of atonement for his previous indifference and disrespect as it was to help his father tell his extra-ordinary story.

An excellent read, especially for those interested in the Indian National Army and the Japanese treatment of prisoners of war.

Book Review: Rivals by Bill Emmott

Bill Emmott, a former editor of the Economist, has written various books, most of them on Japan. In ‘Rivals’, Emmott examines and analyses Japan, China and India, the power struggle between these three powers, their relationships with the west and tries to predict how they will shape up in the future.

Emmott raises scores of issues and pokes around in the most unlikely of places as he surveys the huge Asian landmass for the benefit of his readers. Is India likely to overtake China? Which of the three countries – Japan, China and India - will come off best in the struggle for pole position in Asia? Twice Emmott quotes a senior official at India’s External Affairs Ministry who told him ‘both of us (India and China) think that the future belongs to us. We can’t both be right.’ Does Emmott agree with this faceless bureaucrat? Was the US right in giving nuclear technology to India, though India is not a signatory to the NPT? Why does Japan refuse to make a proper apology for its war crimes during the Second World War? Should it do so?

Emmott picks out five flash points and danger zones in Asia where trouble may erupt, leading to involvement of world powers and a massive shake up of the world order. Surprisingly Kashmir doesn’t figure in this list, though Pakistan and North Korea do. Emmott’s analysis of North Korea is especially excellent and one gets to know facts about North Korea that aren’t easily available in the public domain for a lay person.

Through out the book, one finds various mentions of the War Crimes Trial held in Tokyo after the Second World War. Emmott, very rightly in my opinion, calls the trials a farce since it was more to punish Japan for using war as an instrument of foreign policy (something that Britain and other western powers routinely did) and having the temerity to attack the west (and western colonies), rather than for actual war crimes by Japanese soldiers. Emmott quotes with approval in more than one place the dissenting judgement given by Justice Radhabinod Pal, India’s nominee Judge.

‘Rivals’ is written in a manner not much different from articles carried in the Economist. There is no hyperbole or rhetoric or melodrama and statistics pop out of every page. At times Emmott presents facts (the contrast between the elegant and modern interiors of Reliance’s office at Maker Chambers IV in Mumbai and its rather dirty surroundings) and talks of his experiences in Asia (having a champagne and caviar dinner with communist politicians in Kolkata) in order to buttress his arguments. I was reminded a lot of Paul Kennedy’s ‘Rise and Fall of Great Powers’ as I slowly made my way through ‘Rivals’.

What I liked most about Rivals is that Emmott is very sympathetic to the point of view of each of Japan, China and India, without losing his objectivity. For example, while explaining that India is aggrieved by China having a seat on the UN’s security council, he says that “it feels especially odd to India that China became a founding P5 member when its colonial invader, Japan, was defeated, but India did not, though it dispatched its own colonial master at the same time, peacefully, as the UN Charter would prefer, rather than in war.”

Towards the end of the book and in some cases, even before that, Emmott starts setting out his various conclusions to each of the issues he raised initially. Emmott also makes various recommendations, addressed to the US and to the rising powers of Japan, China and India. All of Emmott’s conclusions and recommendations made a lot of sense to me. I sincerely hope that the powers-be listen to all or at least some of them. Rather than disclose what the extremely knowledgeable Emmott’s conclusions are, I’ll leave it to you to read this excellent book to find out for yourself!

Short Story: The Trade Unionist’s Son

'I will have nothing to do with trade unions when I grow up,’ Bimal told his father with tears in his eyes.

The dramatic declaration only elicited a chuckle from Chittaranjan who fondly patted Bimal on the back and told him, ‘that’s fine. When you grow up, you can go into business and make more money than you know what to do with.’

‘And I won’t give you any!’ Bimal added in between his sobs.

‘My boy Bimal is going to be a big businessman and make a lot of money,’ Chittaranjan told his wife who was standing nearby. However, Chittaranjan’s wife shared her son’s resentment of his father and she refused to play along.

‘Don’t worry. He is only ten years old. Soon he will realise that there is no point in asking his father for anything. He might as well learn to fend for himself. Just like me.’ The last bit was added after a thoughtful phrase.

‘Come on. Don’t be so nasty. What do you lack?’ Chittaranjan asked his wife who gave a toss of her head and went back to her work. As for Bimal, he stalked out of the house, muttering curses about a father who could not buy him a bicycle, something which all his classmates seemed to have. Bimal knew exactly why his father could not afford to buy him the bicycle, despite being a supervisor at the jute factory. His mother’s railings against his father made it difficult for either Bimal or his younger sister to not know that Chittaranjan’s trade union activities had brought them all to the brink of destitution. If only his father had not been a unionist, he would not have been suspended from his job so many times, he would not have his salary withheld for such long stretches and he might even have managed a few promotions.

The worst sin committed by his father in his mother’s eyes was that he was agitating for the rights of workmen in his factory, even though he was a supervisor and was meant to keep the workmen in line.

Bimal never forgot how important it was to have nothing to do with trade unions. After he finished school and scored a very high rank in the IIT entrance exams, he opted for the IIT in Mumbai, rather than the equally good one at Kharagpur, just to make sure he was as far away from the corrupting influences of trade unions that permeated the state of West Bengal.

Every term break, he went home to be with his parents, more out of necessity than choice. He would have liked to travel around India rather than spend his vacations in Howrah, but he just didn’t have the money for it. However, he made it a point to behave like a tourist while he was with his parents. He pretended to not remember the names of any of his school friends, especially the ones who were around in Howrah, and whom he could have visited. When his father talked of his union activities which still took up a huge chunk of Chittaranjan’s waking hours, he listened with a very disinterested air, as though he were listening to a report on sub-Saharan Africa on the BBC.

As soon as he passed out of the IIT with a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering, he was snapped up by a Japanese car maker for its factory in south India. Bimal called up his parents to tell them the good news.

‘Son, I’m so happy,’ his father told him. ‘But I wish you had found a job in our state.’

‘Thanks to the unions, we Bengalis are forced to work else where,’ Bimal observed quietly.

Chittaranjan quickly changed the topic. ‘Who cares? Your starting salary is going to be much higher than what I earn after almost thirty years of service!’

‘I wouldn’t have achieved this if it hadn’t been for you and mother,’ Bimal had the grace to say, though he didn’t mean any of it. If his father hadn’t fooled around with unions, he would be earning a lot more than what he did now.

After working for three years in Chennai, Bimal persuaded his employer to sponsor him for an MBA at the Asian Institute of Management in Manila. Being an engineer was good fun, but management was where the big bucks lay. After his MBA, Bimal was given a two-year posting in Japan.

‘Why don’t you ask them to post you in India?’ his mother wondered over the phone.

‘Do you seriously expect me to prefer India to Japan?’ Bimal asked his mother incredulously. ‘In any event, I’ll visit you people once or twice a year, irrespective of whether I am in Japan or in Chennai.

Next time you come home, we’ll get you married,’ his mother told him gaily. Bimal promised himself that it would be a while before he went home.

Japan was a revelation to Bimal. Until he went to Tokyo, Bimal thought that Calcutta, Howrah and Mumbai were the most crowded places in the world. Tokyo showed him how even a clean and modern city could be so incredibly congested.

The people were unbelievably polite, but the food was horrible, so much different from what he was used to. Why can’t they cook the fish? Bimal wondered again and again when faced with a sushi or a sashimi.

The people were all law-abiding, but some of the rules seemed to be quite draconian to him. He was required to carry his passport with him at all times. This was a nuisance. Bimal knew how painful it would be if he were to lose his passport and had to approach the Indian embassy for a duplicate. He was relived when he found out that as a long term visitor, he was expected to register himself as an alien and obtain a Gaijin card. The Gaijin card too had to be carried with him always, but Bimal was sure that replacing the Gaijin card would be easier than obtaining a duplicate Indian passport.

Bimal made his way to the city hall, wondering how he would figure out where the foreigners’ registration desk was, since all the signs were in Japanese. He needn’t have bothered. A middle-aged man, most probably a bureaucrat, came up to him and asked him very politely in very bad English if wanted to register for the Gaijin card. It was plain sailing after that.

After a month in Tokyo, the trouble began. Bimal had another month to move out of the apartment arranged by his employer and find a place of his own. He was told by the first agency he rang that they had nothing suitable for him. They were very apologetic about it, the apology taking a few minutes of his time. The second agency was a little bit more curt, but they too did not have anything suitable for him. Could they take down his details and call him when they found something appropriate? Oh no! They could not. They were very unlikely to find anything suitable for someone like him. Bimal spoke to five agents with varying degrees of politeness before one agreed to find an apartment for him.

‘Why should I have so much trouble finding an apartment,’ Bimal asked a few Japanese colleagues who shrugged their shoulders.

‘You ain’t one of them man,’ an American in his department told him, when they were out of earshot of every one else.

Bimal was shocked. This was horrible. Why should Japanese landlords mind renting out to an Indian? There didn’t seem to be any answers on offer, until his agent told him very politely that all Asians, other than the Japanese, are very dirty. They cooked everything they ate in oil, didn’t they, which did not help keep the kitchen clean, did it? It took the agent almost three weeks to show Bimal an acceptable flat, though it was a basic affair with peeling paint in a predominantly Korean locality.

After his ordeal in finding a flat, Bimal tried to settle down in his job. He had to spend another twenty months in Japan before he could go back to Chennai and there was no point in moping about. He was learning so many things at his work place which more than compensated for the flat-hunting ordeal.

Even though Bimal’s neighbourhood was not at all posh, his ethnic Korean neighbours were very friendly towards him. Soon Bimal found himself reading up on the history of Koreans in Japan. Many of them had lived there for two or more generations, their parents and grandparents having migrated to Japan when Korea was a Japanese colony. A large chunk of the Koreans who came to work in Japan during the Second World War had actually been conscript labour. Even though they were all now eligible to become Japanese citizens, and many of them had accepted Japanese nationality and taken on Japanese names, they continued to face a lot of discrimination in all spheres.

Bimal found a Korean maid to clean his apartment and wash his dishes every morning. Soo was always cheerful and friendly and soon Bimal found himself looking forward to her visits in the mornings before he went to work. All said and done, Soo was the only local person other than a colleague whom Bimal had befriended in the last two months. Soo’s English was very rudimentary, but eventually Bimal worked out that she was taking classes in English in the hope of eventually working for a good hotel.

‘What sort of job will you get in a hotel?’

‘Oh! I be maid.’ Soo giggled.

‘Is it easy to get such a job once you learn enough English?’

‘No. Not easy. And I, Korean.’

Bimal was incensed. ‘You Koreans ought to form a union and fight this sort of discrimination you know,’ he said.

Soo was silent.

‘I could show you people how to start a union,’ Bimal added.

Noriko Calderon's Case - Is the Japanese Immigration Department Unduly Harsh?

Arlan Cruz Calderon and his wife Sarah Calderon illegally migrated to Japan in the early 1990s from their home in the Philippines. Their daughter Noriko was born in Japan. Arlan got himself a job with a construction company and Noriko went to school like any other Japanese girl, until the Calderons were detected in 2006 had deportation proceedings initiated against them.

The Calderons fought the immigration department’s deportation ruling till the last minute. Finally, the inevitable could no longer be avoided. The Calderon’s were asked to leave Japan and under Japanese law they cannot return for five years.

Daughter Noriko, however, was given a choice. She could leave Japan for the Philippines with her parents or she could stay back though she is not a Japanese national. Being born in Japan does not confer automatic citizenship, unless at least one parent is a Japanese national.

Thirteen year old Noriko opted to stay back in Japan and on 15 April 2009, the Calderons arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila.

The Calderons’ lawyers collected around 2,000 signatures in support of the Calderons right to stay back. It was argued that Arlan has a stable job and that Noriko can speak only Japanese. The immigration department refused to budge.

The Japanese immigration department’s decision has been attacked by many as cruel and harsh on the Calderons. But is it? Consider this:

1. Noriko is not being forced to stay back. She has the option of going back to Philippines with her parents.

2. Should an illegal immigrant(s) get favourable treatment solely because s/he has a child?

3. Is going back to Philippines the end of the world? Philippines may not be a developed country, but surely people do get by over there.

There is no doubt that Japanese immigration law is very harsh compared to that of other developed countries. In the US, any child born in the US is entitled to US citizenship, irrespective of the status of the child’s parents. This used to be the case in the UK till 1983. Currently, any child born in the UK (even to illegal immigrants) can become a British citizen if the child lives in the UK until the age of 10.

By contrast, Japan does not have any form of amnesty for illegal immigrants. Being born in Japan does not confer citizenship, unless at least one parent is a Japanese national. Therefore, one finds many Japanese residents of foreign descent and nationality, especially Koreans, who have lived in Japan for many generations. Of course, Japan is not the only developed country with such harsh laws.

Swiss immigration laws are almost as harsh. Being born in Switzerland does not entitled one to Swiss nationality at any point. There are many foreign nationals who have lived in Switzerland for their entire lifetimes, who are unable to get Swiss citizenship. Theoretically, anyone who has lived in Switzerland for a dozen years and can speak one of the four Swiss languages can apply for Swiss nationality. A decision is made by the local Canton on the basis of how well the applicant has integrated into Swiss life. Many applicants are rejected. As a result, there are third generation Swiss residents who do not have Swiss nationality. In 2004, a bill was introduced which sought to give automatic Swiss nationality to individuals who have lived in Switzerland for three generations and an easier naturalisation process for the second generation. The bill was rejected, mainly as a result of opposition from the German speaking parts of Switzerland.

Of course, there are very rich countries whose immigration laws are much harsher than Switzerland or Japan. I am referring to the Sheikdoms in the middle-east, like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but I wouldn't call them developed countries.

There is no doubt in my mind that Japan’s immigration laws are harsh. However, I don’t think the Japanese immigration department is being unduly harsh on the Calderons or on Noriko.