Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India--by Shashi Tharoor

This book is an outcome of a debate at Oxford where Tharoor took part in May 2015 on the proposition 'Britain owes reparations to her former colonies'.

The power of  social media ensured that the snippets of the debate went viral with gushing support and appreciation galore for Tharoor.

and thus the idea of the book was born.

One wishes Tharoor had just stuck to the debate and not made a book out of it. Sound bytes in a glamorous clipped accent makes for better feeling of simplistic vacuous nationalistic pride than somber reading of 300 odd pages of how the Empire lorded over us filthy natives for over 200 odd years.

The book is a depressing read. It depresses me no end as to how India had been subjugated so easily and so thoroughly by the British with seemingly little effort.    Just a paltry 70000 Brits is all it took keep a country of 250 million natives in check in the late nineteenth century, a number which increased to 1.7 Lacs versus 300 million at the time of independence.

As Tharoor writes eloquently:

"It was an extraordinary combination of racial self-assurance, superior military technology, the mystique of modernity and the trappings of enlightenment progressivism-as well as, it must be said clearly, the cravenness, cupidity, opportunism and lack of organized resistance on the part of the vanquished-that sustained the Empire, along with the judicious application of brute force when necessary. The British in India were never more than 0.05 per cent of the population. The Empire, in Hobsbawm’s evocative words, was ‘so easily won, so narrowly based, so absurdly easily ruled thanks to the devotion of a few and the passivity of the many.’

Tharoor essentially lays bare the argument that there was anything altruistic in the British rule of India and 200 years of  Colonial rule simply devastated the country economically and morally. The British ruled over us for their own self-interest - much like any other country- and there was nothing special about them, and there is simply no grain of truth in the least in that notorious verse by Kipling of the ‘White man’s burden’ eulogizing the Englishman and his travails:

‘Take up the White Man’s Burden, Send forth the best ye breed

Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives’ need’,

 despite the ingratitude of the heathens they were ruling;

 the White Man had to bear his Burden despite ‘his old reward:

the blame of those ye better, / The hate of those ye guard’

All for the needs, as Kipling wrote, for the resentful ‘sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child’.

But I felt the thrust of the books argument was a no-brainer. I mean, the Brits ruled for their own self-interest, who would want to contest that? They ravaged the economy, broke the back of pre-industrial India, wreaked havoc on the thriving textile, ship building industry etc, forced huge swathes of fertile land to be used for cultivation of opium, ensured that there was a ready market for British goods while devastating centuries old Indian export market with high tariffs laid on goods…the list is endless. And of course the so called benefits of railways, english language, establishment of Schools and Universities etc were simply to enable them to subdue and lord over their subjects in a more effective fashion.

Isn’t this a no-brainer?

But Tharoor delves at length to thwart the notion of any redeeming benefits of the Empire on the Indian Sub-continent, and he crams loads and loads of data to make his point.

To be fair, there are a section of Indians and not just a few Englishmen who believe in the myth that the British rule was actually good for India. Tharoor especially goes to great lengths to demolish the arguments for the empire raised by Niall Fergusson in his book ‘Empire: how Britain made the world’.

So I guess the arguments set forth in the book forcefully by Tharoor deserves to be told. And it’s a fair book.

Having said that, I think there were two points that Tharoor could have dwelt on while discussing the Empire, which are slightly thorny issues, and maybe the reason why Tharoor the politician, has avoided them.

Firstly, would modern India have the boundaries we see today if it were not for the British rule? Would there have been a nationalistic movement and leaders of such mettle as a Gandhi to forge a united polity in the absence of an external enemy?

It is no one’s argument that India existed as a Civilizational entity for more than 3000 years. But were we ever a political entity, (apart from brief interludes of the Maurya, Gupta and Mughal Empires) in the sense that China was? Even during the century long subjugation of China starting in the 1850s, the European imperial powers dealt with the Qing dynasty, the unquestioned rulers of the Middle kingdom. Not so in India’s case.

So a closer look at whether the Indian polity that we see today would have remained the same without the ravages on its soil by the Imperial rule for over 200 years would have been an interesting debate.

Secondly, given that huge swathes of the globe were under Colonial rule beginning the nineteenth century, and India happened to be a ripe fruit waiting to be plucked, (given the lack of unity amongst warring princely states) how would the Country have fared if it was any other Colonial power in place instead of the Brits? What if it were the Japanese or the Nazi Germans?

The moot question being, given that India would have been colonized in any case, and if we had any choice in the matter, which Colonial power would have been better for the Indians?

The above points raised are contentious and I don’t blame Tharoor for not touching them.

Do read the book only if you are one of those who really believe, that the colonial rule had been good for the country in any manner whatsoever..

Else, avoid. Just stick to the sound bytes of the debate and feel good about it.

Age of Anger - Pankaj Mishra(2016)

The prologue of the book captures the essence of bewilderment felt by the modern man. The slow but all too certain steady march of mankind into everlasting prosperity and freedom riding on the back of liberal capitalism and democracy, Pankaj Mishra says, seems to have come to a grinding halt. The party is over. This is the Age of Anger.

The author paints a pretty picture of the hopeful period of the sepia tinted 80s and 90s,  which in retrospect appears to be an unbelievable period of stability and optimism, as the the world now seems to be slipping back into its default mode of being on the brink of chaos and mayhem.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and collapse of communism, the universal triumph of liberal capitalism and democracy seemed assured. Free markets and human rights appeared to be the right formula for the billions trying to overcome degrading poverty and political oppression; the words globalisation and Internet, inspired in the age of innocence, more hope than anxiety as they entered common speech.

The author sums up this hopeful period in history when the world seemed to be moving in the right direction:

"American advisers rushed to Moscow to facilitate Russia's makeover into a liberal democracy; China and India began to open their economies to trade and investment; new nation states and democracies blossomed across a broad swathe of Europe, Asia and Africa; the enlarged European Union came into being; peace was declared in Northern Ireland; Nelson Mandela ended his long Walk to freedom; the Dalai Lama appeared in Apple’s ‘Think Different’ advertisements; and it seemed only a matter of time before Tibet, too, would be free."

  

But the promised Utopian world that the author believed was just round the corner was simply a mirage which quickly faded, as Pankaj Mishra believes that today:

"Demagogues of all kinds, from Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to India’s Narendra Modi, France’s Marine Le Pen and America’s Donald Trump, have tapped into the simmering reservoirs of cynicism, boredom and discontent. China, though market-friendly, seems further from democracy than before, and closer to expansionist nationalism. The experiment with free market capitalism in Russia spawned a kleptocratic and messianic regime. It has brought to power explicitly anti-Semitic regimes in Poland and Hungary. A revolt against globalization and its beneficiaries has resulted in Britain’s departure from the European Union, sentencing the latter to deeper disarray, perhaps even death. Authoritarian leaders, anti-democratic backlashes and right-wing extremism define the politics of Austria, France and the United States as well as India, Israel, Thailand, the Philippines and Turkey.”

The root cause of the anger

So what changed? Why has the optimism and the belief in promised universal civilization-one harmonized by a combination of universal suffrage, broad educational opportunities, steady economic growth, and personal advancement - not apparently materialized?

Pankaj Mishra says that its actually nothing new. What the world is experiencing toady is a continuation of the chaos and turmoil the world experienced with its first brush with modernity way back in the eighteenth/nineteenth century Europe. The author states that the unprecedented political, economic and social disorder that accompanied the rise of the industrial capitalist economy in nineteenth-century Europe, and led to world wars, totalitarian regimes and genocide in the first half of the twentieth century, is now infecting much vaster regions and bigger populations. The rest of the world is now plunging deeper into the West’s own fateful experience of that modernity.

The apparent crisis that the World witnesses today had its roots in the age of enlightenment- the age of Voltaire and Rousseau- says Pankaj Mishra. Yes- true that the French Revolution had indeed introduced the world to revolutionary ideas of equality, fraternity and liberty. World politics thus long monopolized by absolutist elites, began to open up to commoners with talent and skill. The world was introduced to the earth-shaking idea that human beings could use their own reason to fundamentally reshape their circumstances. Intellectuals and artists rose as a class for the first time to lend a hand in the making of history, and locate the meaning of life in politics and art rather than traditional religion.

But the author says the new society, though free of irrational old hierarchies wasn’t meant to be democratic or bring in social equality. On the contrary, access to power and prestige still required money, property, connections and talents.These educated men of the Enlightenment who led the revolution with the post-religious notion that men make their own world - belonged to a tiny minority of the literate and secular-minded. The image of the new elite as summed up by Voltaire was: worldly, witty, freethinking, devoted to reason, and especially contemptuous of the Church.

The new society, was primarily meant- as Rousseau bluntly stated-to provide freedom and social mobility for the man of talent, and provide him the means, of ‘acquiring without obstacle and possessing with security’. Hierarchy would still mark the new society: the mass of the people would remain necessarily subordinate to the authentically enlightened at the top. A powerful ruler was thus  not only needed to check the power of churches, estates and corporations; he was required to repress the ignorant and superstitious mass of people who threatened civilization.

Voltaire, who the author characterizes as the one who represented the modern elite, had disdain for the common people- “the ignoble masses who respect only force and never think”.  “We have never claimed," Voltaire wrote, “to enlighten shoe-makers and servant girls.” What Voltaire wanted was hardly a revolution or even representative govt but a wise monarchy that would sideline aristocrats and clergy and create space for people like himself.

Mishra’s thesis is that our contemporary misery and hyper-nationalism can be traced to Rousseau’s romantic reaction to Voltaire’s Enlightenment -a callow elitism that produced Rousseau’s romantic search for old-fashioned community. Today's oppressive elite are Voltaire’s children and Trump and Brexit voters are Rousseau’s new peasant hordes, terrified of losing cultural continuity and clan comfort.

Democracy and Communism

The idea of a future rational and enlightened society in which all men are equal, however caught fire and had radically egalitarian implications. The program of reform by a tiny literate minority escalated into a ferocious assault on all social inequality, culminating in the public execution of  the French monarch and later his consort, Marie Antoinette.

The two concepts, ‘nationalism’ and ‘communism’, were invented to define the aspirations for fraternity and equality and ‘Democracy’ came into vogue around 1830s. Almost as soon as they came into circulation in the West, the ideas traveled, with varying interpretations, to Russia and further East. Western imperialism, spread of literacy and improved communications spread the ideas to the remotest corners of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The world plays ‘catch up’

Germany, Russia and Japan set out to catch up with Britain and France in the nineteenth century. Two world wars eventually resulted from nations desiring the same objects and preventing others from trying to appropriate them. But by 1945 the new nation states of Asia and Africa also started on their own bumpy road to modernity.

Non-Western men and women educated in Europe or in Western-style institutions despaired of their traditionalist elites as much as they resented European dominance over their societies. In this quest to give their peoples a fair chance at strength, equality and dignity in the white man’s world, China’s Mao Zedong and Turkey’s Ataturk as much as Iran’s Mohammad Mosaddeq followed the Western model of mass-mobilization, state-building and industrialization.

A world adrift

One aim united all these ideologically divergent regimes. Socialist as well as capitalist modernists envisaged an exponential increase in the number of people owning cars, houses, electronic goods and gadgets, and driving the tourist and luxury industry worldwide.A consumerist society, with the world moving to a slow but steady progress towards increasing equality.

By the 1970s, however, it had become clear that Western prescriptions were not working. On the contrary, the Colombian anthropologist Escobar put it, ‘instead of the kingdom of abundance promised by theorists and politicians in the 1950s, the discourse and strategy of development produced its opposite: massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppression.’ Truth dawned on the in-applicability of the communist mode and the growing awareness that the Western history of modernization is just one of several possible courses.

In 1992, a year after the Soviet Union imploded, The Economist editorialized ‘that there was no serious alternative to free-market capitalism as the way to organize economic life’. Today, however, the early post-Cold War consensus- that a global capitalist economy would alleviate ethnic and religious differences and usher in worldwide prosperity and peace-lies in tatters. The era of ‘free-market triumphalism’, The Economist now admits, ‘has come to a juddering halt’. But no plausible alternatives of political and economic organization are in sight.

In 2014 The Economist said that, on the basis of IMF data, emerging economies - or, most of the human population - might have to wait for three centuries in order to catch up with the West. In this assessment, the last decade of high growth was an ‘aberration’ and ‘billions of people will be poorer for a lot longer than they might have expected just a few years.'

The implications are sobering: the non-West not only finds itself replicating the West’s trauma on an infinitely larger scale and also that the non-West have no real prospects of catching up with the West.

But it is not just the Non-west that have been left disenchanted. For the American middle class, after a series of economic crises from the 1970s onward, the American Dream, seemed less and less credible. Jobs commensurate with their sense of dignity seemed hard to find.  Brought up by a culture of individualism to consider themselves unique, the middle class began to suffer from a sense of diminishment and they felt that the vast political and economic forces were working against them.

This is the how the support for Donald Trump’s white nationalism connects with middle-aged working-class men, who feel left behind in the race for prosperity.

The media hype of success stories of a few young graduates and dropouts turned billionaires overnight, and users of Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp briefly appeared to be toppling authoritarian regimes worldwide. But the drivers of Uber cars, toiling for abysmally low fares, represent the actual fate of many self-employed ‘entrepreneurs’. Today defeat, humiliation and resentment are more commonplace experiences than success and contentment.

The root cause of modern day troubles thus arises from the individual dissatisfaction with the actually available degree of freedom which becomes explosive as inequalities rise and no political redress appears to be in sight.

  

Katherine Boo in Behind the Beautiful Forever: (2012) talks of the stark inequality of Mumbai which brings its attendant problems:

“Mumbai was a place of festering grievance and ambient envy. Was there a soul in this enriching, unequal city who didn’t blame his dissatisfaction on someone else? Wealthy citizens accused the slum-dwellers of making the city filthy and unlivable, even as an oversupply of human capital kept the wages of their maids and chauffeurs low. Slum-dwellers complained about the obstacles the powerful erected to prevent them from sharing in new profit. Everyone, everywhere, complained about their neighbours.”

The author states that in the age of digitization today, individuals find themselves herded by capitalism and technology into a common present, where grossly unequal distributions of wealth and power have created humiliating new hierarchies. This proximity, is rendered more claustrophobic by digital communications, the improved capacity for envious and resentful comparison. An existential resentment of other people’s being, caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness, and as it lingers and deepens, poisons civil society and undermines political liberty, and is presently making for a global turn to authoritarianism and toxic forms of chauvinism. 

The age of anger

Mishra says that the people most disaffected are not the poorest of the poor, or members of the peasantry and the urban underclass. They are educated youth, often unemployed, rural-urban migrants, or others from the lower middle class: 

"Regardless of their national origins and locally attuned rhetoric, these disenfranchised men target those they regard as venal, callous and mendacious elites. Donald Trump led an upsurge of white nationalists enraged at being duped by globalized liberals. A similar loathing of London technocrats and cosmopolitans led to Brexit. Hindu nationalists,who tend to belong to lower middle classes with education and some experience of mobility, aim at ‘pseudo-secularist’ English-speaking Indians, accusing them of disdain for Hinduism and vernacular traditions. Chinese nationalists despise the small minority of their West-oriented technocratic compatriots. Radical Islamists spend much time parsing differences between who they decide are genuine Muslims and nominal ones, those who have surrendered to the hedonism and rootlessness of consumer society."

The book is thought provoking, but does not provide a suggested alternative. If not liberal democracy and free market capitalism then what model should one follow? 

Should it be Rousseau’s(who the author obviously admires) ideal society that world should adopt, which was  essentially the Spartan society: small, harsh, self-sufficient, fiercely patriotic and defiantly uncosmopolitan and uncommercial. In this society at least, the corrupting urge to promote oneself over others, and the deceiving of the poor by the rich could be counterpoised by the surrender of individuality to public service, and the desire to seek pride for community and country.

One hopes not. The root cause of the modern world is the ever widening chasm of inequality between the elites and the toiling masses. It is hoped that society evolves to address this pressing issue and humanity continues to move to a liberal world sans borders, where narrow parochialism and stark lines being drawn across different races, communities and cultures are wiped out slowly but surely.

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche by Henri Louis Mencken

Nietzche is dated. The book is dated. Written by Henri Louis Mencken in the early part of 20th century, the book feels like a product of a bygone era.

The Nietzsche philosophy had regular sexist,  racist undertones but the author doesn't question them, as the  book is from another era when casual racism and misogyny were rampant.

Nietzsche is a good read for those who still want find a reason to question the existence of religion. If not then the book will appear  a bit dated and feel stale.

Nietzsche of course has his place in the development of human thought.

Nietzsche’s questioned as to why all ideals, whether explicitly religious or not, presumes an afterlife that is better than the ‘here and now’.

In Nietzsche’s eyes, such a fabrication negates us from seeing the beauty of  life on Earth.

He condemned attempts to deny actual truth in the name of false realities, instead of accepting the real as it is.

Nietzsche accuses all the grand scientific, metaphysical and religious systems, of having systematically ‘despised’ the body and the senses in the interests of reason and rationality.

Hence Nietzsche says:  “I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of extraterrestrial hopes.”

Nietzsche came under the sway of Schopenhauer when young and he imbibed much of the what the eternal pessimist expounded. If Schopenhauer proclaimed on Will to Live , Nietzsche borrowed his ideas and padded it up in his Will to Power.

Schopenhauer  explained that the universe and everything in it is driven by a primordial will to live, which results in a desire in all living creatures to avoid death and to procreate. For Schopenhauer, this will is the most fundamental aspect of reality – more fundamental even than being.

Schopenhauer’s negation of the will was a saying "no" to life and to the world, which he judged to be a scene of pain and evil.

Schopenhauer saw this world as the product of a malignant Will.

Schopenhauer renounced life, he said the world is Hell, don’t seek happiness in it.

Nietzsche on the other hand affirmed life and espoused earthly values. He rejected Platonic/Christian ideals of the “other world” being more real than this one, and argued forcefully for living fully here.

Nietzsche's  formula for greatness in a human being was  ‘Amor fati’.

That is “ to want nothing to be other than as it is, neither in the future, nor in the past, nor in all eternity. Not merely to endure what happens of necessity, still less to hide it from oneself – but to love it…“

Blood Year- The unravelling of Western Counter Terrorism : David Kilcullen

This book is an absolute must read for anyone wanting to know what the mess in Iraq and Syria is all about. Published in 2016, it gives a birds eye view and an insight into the reasons for the unholy mess that led to the creation of the ISIS.

The author David Kilcullen had the benefit of a ringside view of events as they unfolded  as he served as  an intelligence officer with the Bush administration in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia and further with  the Obama administration, in many of the same places as an adviser and consultant to the U.S. Government.

As a Lt Col in Australian Army in September 2004, the Americans had put in a formal request for the author who penned the 'Disaggregation theory' - a theory put forth by Kilcullen to combat the global threat of Al Quaeda- to join the team writing strategic assessments for the  Pentagon.

Australia initially offered a general instead, while the Americans politely reiterated their request for the guy who had written the Disaggregation paper.

The strategy of Disaggregation sought to dismantle, or break up, the transnational links that allowed  Al Quaeda's  Jihad to function as a global entity- a theory which has now been laid to rest post the rise of ISIS.

2014 - called the Blood year by Kilcullen saw numerous events which can now be viewed as having changed the global landscape irretrievably.

In the summer of 2014, in less than 100 days after ISIS launched its blitzkrieg in Iraq, Libya’s government collapsed, civil war engulfed Yemen, a sometime small-town Iraqi preacher named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself caliph, the latest Israel–Palestine peace initiative failed in a welter of violence that left more than 2,200 people (mostly Palestinian civilians) dead, and the United States and its allies, including the United Kingdom and Australia, sent troops and planes back to Iraq.
Russia reignited Cold War tensions by formally annexing Crimea,  armed and sponsored Ukrainian rebels. Iran continued its push to become a nuclear threshold power, supported Assad in Syria, and yet became a de facto ally of the United States in Iraq.

The 'Global war on terror' says Kilcullen started unravelling the day George Bush took his decidedly unreasonable decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Invasion of Iraq went more or less as planned; but it was the post conflict period that was not well thought out by Bush and Co.

Rumsfeld kept the force that invaded Iraq  just over 200,000—sufficient to defeat Iraq’s regular military, but criminally inadequate to contain the chaos after the fall of Saddam, or counter the escalating insurgency once the lid came off his regime. After Saddam fell, Rumsfeld oversaw the disastrous de-Ba’athification edict and the disbanding of the Iraqi Army, two critical early missteps that put 400,000 fighting men—along with middle-class Iraqis out on the street with no future, homicidally intense grievances and all their weapons.

Kilcullen has likened President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq to Hitler’s invasion of Russia. In invading Iraq with the job still unfinished in Afghanistan, President Bush made precisely the same strategic error as Hitler did in invading the Soviet.
In December 2001, with the Battle of Tora Bora still raging on the Afghan–Pakistani border, US began transferring assets from Afghanistan, rebalancing for a future invasion of Iraq. The job was far from finished in Afghanistan: Bin Laden’s location was still unknown, and the effort to stand up a stable government to guard the country against a Taliban return had barely begun.

The Iraqi military was seen as so weak, the invasion was expected to be a pushover, and the lightning march to Baghdad in March–April 2003, along with the spectacular rout of Saddam’s elite Republican Guard, seemed to confirm this. Then things fell apart.

From March 2004 onward there was not one insurgency in Iraq, but at least six. On the Shia side were communitarian militias, Iranian proxies, and the Sadrists of the Mahdi Army. On the Sunni side were jihadists like Zarqawi of Al Quaeda of Iraq (AQI), secular Sunni nationalists, who rejected the transformation of Iraq into what they saw as an Iranian satellite, and former regime elements.

Truly tragic was the sectarian violence that spiked  post Saddams disposal.
Shi’a groups operated mainly defensively, protecting their communities against jihadists and Sunni nationalists, but this didn’t stop them kidnapping, torturing and killing Sunni civilians when they could. 
Whereas for Sunni groups  by provoking the Shi’a, they hoped to bring such heavy retaliatory violence down on the Sunni community that they would be backed into a corner, where groups like AQI would be all that stood between Sunnis and the Shi’a death squads, giving people no choice but to support such groups whatever they thought of its ideology.
So AQI went out of their way to provoke the most horrific violence against their own people. For example, fighters of AQI would kidnap young boys, torture them to death and dump the bodies—eyes gouged out, ears, little limbs and genitals hacked off, cigarette and blowtorch burns all over them or the tops of their heads sliced open and electric drills thrust into their brains—back on the street in front of their houses. This is a straight-up description given by the author of what the AQI did to the twelve-year-old brother of a translator who worked with him in Baghdad.

The goal was to trigger outrage and in retaliation some would get killed and the cycle of violence became self-sustaining.
Their goal was to provoke a sectarian conflict that would force Sunnis to close ranks in an AQI-led proto-state—which, by October 2006, they were already calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq.

To be fair to Bush, the violence appalled him and he tried to make amends. In November 2006  President Bush  pushed Vice President Cheney aside and took direct charge of the war himself, appointing General Petraeus to command in Iraq. He then launched the Surge—a wholehearted attempt to apply Petraeus’s counterinsurgency doctrine, along with more troops and a larger civilian effort on the ground to achieve greater political leverage and force an end to the conflict. This escalation of involvement was intended to protect the population, break AQI’s hold of fear over the Sunni community, stop the cycle of sectarian violence, force the Iraqi government to be more inclusive and less sectarian, and reduce civilian casualties.

By the time Obama took over in 2009 things had changed: AQI had been virtually destroyed, violence was down dramatically. For instance  in July 2007 (the first full month all Surge forces were in place) 2,693 civilians died; by January 2009 the figure was down to 372, an 86 per cent reduction.

This created the essential breathing space for Iraq’s self-serving politicians to resolve their differences, but they didn’t use that space to do so. Ultimately it was the presence of international troops, money and advisers that compelled Baghdad to act more inclusively.

President Obama was far less engaged than his predecessor had been—the phone calls to Maliki , the Iraqi PM and videoconferences with the force commander and ambassador ceased abruptly.

Obama, like most new American presidents, was putting domestic issues  ahead of foreign policy.

He was the opposite of President Bush, which of course was quite appropriate, since that’s exactly what he’d been elected to be. But President Obama’s aloofness let loose Prime Minister Maliki adrift, freeing him to pursue his personal agenda.

In fact one may even see Maliki to be largely responsible for the mess that is Iraq today.
Instead of working to unify and create and inclusive government, Maliki played his sectarian card to the hilt driving more and more Sunni's to the arms of the ISIS.

Maliki wasted no time after U.S. forces left in 2011: within days Maliki issued an arrest warrant against his Sunni vice president, and targeted other Sunni ministers, provoking protests by Sunnis that soon  spiraled out of control.
Maliki was bafflingly short sighted in his approach.  He was targeting moderate Sunni politicians: those who had rejected the insurgency, chosen to participate in the political process and were peacefully pursuing their interests through Iraq’s institutions. Likewise, he was harassing precisely those tribal leaders who’d turned against AQI and were merely seeking to protect their communities, rather than (like the Ba’athists) to reverse the outcome of 2003 or (like the jihadists) to drown the world in blood.

Maliki’s actions convinced many Sunnis of something AQI -which later metamorphosed into ISIS- had been unable to persuade them of in 2006: that peaceful politics would never work, that armed struggle was the only route to survival.

One more angle that led to the creation of ISIS was the role of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

When an uprising began against his brutal regime in Syria, Assad began to portray the resistance as composed entirely of jihadists, and himself as the lesser of two evils.  Assad released  jihadist prisoners from regime prisons at the start of the conflict and did little to target ISI, letting it gain control of contested areas and carve out a safe haven in Raqqa province.
For its part, ISI avoided confronting the regime, and a de facto truce emerged between the two, which lasted until late 2013.

In Syria too Obama failed to act when the violence went out of control and where President Bush was reckless, President Obama seemed feckless.

In January 2014, ISIS surged across the border from syria and launched an offensive that drove the government out of Fallujah, and Tikrit. ISIS was acting more like a conventional army than a guerrilla organization: instead of operating in small, clandestine cells, in plain clothes, by night, with civilian vehicles and light weapons, ISIS was running columns comprising dozens of technicals, trucks, artillery pieces, and captured armored vehicles.
It was moving openly, in large groups, by day, in uniform, fielding heavy weapons (mortars, rockets and heavy machine guns). Its tactics combined urban terrorism and clandestine reconnaissance with mobile columns, snipers, roadside bombs, suicide attackers and terrorist cells, showing a level of sophistication well beyond that of AQI in 2006–07. And as it captured territory, it was acquiring tanks, heavy armored vehicles, artillery and vast amounts of funding, and picking up recruits. ISIS was thinking and fighting like a state: it had emerged from the shadows.

Today the Islamic State has become a brand, an after-the-fact justification, a psychological crutch that let so called Jihadis across the world to  valorize their personal problems, self-dramatize as a martyr, and dignify their crimes and psychiatric struggles with a veneer of political purpose.

By giving such  lone disillusioned losers a program of action and a rallying point, ISIS—as a brand, an idea, or a methodology—was having a global impact wholly separate from its organizational structure or agenda.

For the author, the rise of ISIS signalled  a fully disaggregated terrorist movement, with an ideology insidiously attractive to alienated and damaged people likely to act on it, combined with omnipresent social media and communications tools that hadn’t even existed on 9/11, and enable such people to spread terrorist violence unconstrained by time, space, money or organizational infrastructure. Add in a do-it-yourself tactical toolkit of improvised weapons and random targets, and we are looking at an atomized, pervasive threat even harder to counter than the global insurgency it had replaced.

Super Economies- America, India, China & The Future of the World : Raghav Bahl(2015)

The title is misleading. With ‘Super Economies’ and ’Future of the World’ written on the cover, one expected a run down on Indian Economy's current status and how India intended to catch up with US and China.

But for Raghav Bahl, India is a de facto SuperEconomy already, with the final push just round the corner with Modi in power.

‘If the US is the stalwart SuperEconomy, Japan and Europe fading SuperEconomies, and China the scrappy challenger, India is the sleeper SuperEconomy. And now, with Narendra Modi’s election as prime minister, it is finally poised to awaken….

….. If he can deliver what he has promised, India’s future as a SuperEconomy is virtually assured’

And that’s that. There is no more discussion on the all important ‘How’ to become a SuperEconomy. 

I have never been able to understand this alacrity to bestow sobriquets of ‘SuperPower’ or SuperEconomy’ on India. With grinding poverty of over 350 million of our citizens, endemic unemployment, crumbling infrastructure et al, why focus on non issues?

Observe what Deng Xiapong said in 1978 when China had over 300 million  people mired in poverty:

‘Observe developments soberly, maintain our position, meet challenges calmly, hide our capabilities and bide our time, remain free of ambition, and never claim leadership”

Fast forward today three decades later, with just 20 million below poverty line and a 10 trillion dollar economy, the Chinese rightly feel the time has come. And the world has no choice but to sit up and notice.

Or observe Fareed Zakaria’s take on the present day state of Britain, the original Superpower:

‘On Monday, the Right Honorable David Cameron, prime minister of Great Britain, gave his first major speech after being reelected to his high office .........Confronting a world of challenges — including Greece’s possible exit from the Euro, a massive migration crisis on Europe’s shores, Ukraine’s perilous state, Russia’s continued intransigence, the advance of the Islamic State and the continuing chaos in the Middle East — Cameron chose to talk about . . . a plan to ensure that hospitals in the United Kingdom will be better staffed on weekends.’

Zakaria laments how parochial Britain has become and how the country  has resigned its position as a World power.

But isn’t it a realistic take by Cameron on the present day state of affairs? Why stretch yourself?

These shrill proclamations about being a Superpower or a SuperEconomy reminds me of a Margaret Thatcher quote:

'Power is like being a lady.... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't.'

The portion of the book which talks of  the ‘Future of the World’ given in the cover, is covered in flat last five pages of the book; And of course the 'future'  is nice and rosy with China playing ball with the benevolent democratic Superpowers of US and India.

Zakaria’s take on the book is most apt:

‘A refreshing, optimistic account of the future’.

It is optimistic alright. 

So the book is not about Economics. Period.So then what is the book about?

Well the book mostly ambles down the  history lane actually.

There are interesting tidbits on the analogies of the rise of US and India. And how as Democratic  powers, we should wield our moral authority, lecture on freedom and rule of law, and generally get China to tow our line.

The author's complete faith in India's 'Moral Superiority' over China, since we are a democracy and they, an Authoritarian regime, is almost Nehruvian in its idealism. Sample a few passages from the book:

As China’s arrogance grew, so too did India’s willingness to

forgo its historic policy of non-alignment and take a stand, much

to the delight of Western leaders ......India’s support was becoming increasingly important in managing China’s explosive rise. The rare-earth outburst helped define India’s evolving role as a global lynchpin—a dependable peacemaker belonging equally to Asia and to the borderless union of liberal democracies.

.......While much of the world drifts towards democracy—

up to 60 per cent of all nations, by Pei's count—China remains

firmly committed to a one-party, authoritarian state, limiting its

pool of potential allies to friendly but isolated socialist states like

Venezuela or Cuba. Even former Cold War allies like Romania

and Albania have turned their backs on China, setting their sights

instead on the West.

.....Democratic Delhi, by contrast, has adopted a much quieter

more ingratiating, and less self-serving approach to diplomacy

allowing it to foster long-term partnerships all over the world.

While China is looking for immediate gratification. India is playing a much longer game. 

....Reserved and respectful it inspires fear in no one, with the possible exception of arch-rival Pakistan. India's great advantage is that, barring certain perceptions in our immediate neighbourhood, it is not seen as a threatening power,....Its power has often been the power of its example. The world recognizes that it needs India to succeed.

Post the collapse of Arab Spring and witnessing the  current chaos reigning in Iraq and Afghanistan, one might conjecture that Democracy is not the 'one size that fits for all' miracle solution.  

Raghav Bahl harbors no such cynicism or doubts whatsoever. He sees India to be on top of the heap soon enough and as good Indians one shouldn't shake his faith.
Read the book for its good vignettes and anecdotes on Indian History.

Antidote: Oliver Burkeman (2011)

Positive thinking, Optimism, hankering over Self Esteem etc are all bunk, says Oliver Burkeman. 

They are no keys to everlasting happiness, he says. Sure they pep you up a bit and make you feel good ephemerally; but when the chips are really down and you are staring down the barrel, platitudes on Optimism and Positivity fall flat. And therafter, he says, it’s a downward spiral.

Burkeman suggests an alternate path to happiness in his ‘Antidote’; the book claiming to be a bracing detox for the self-help junkie’. It draws heavily from the Stoics, new age guru’s like Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts.
The path suggested is sometimes thought provoking; but is it something radical and off the clichéd path?

He starts off radically enough, with an alternative take on happiness:

Is happiness really a goal worth pursuing?

There are good reasons to believe that the whole notion of ‘seeking happiness’ is flawed to begin with. For one thing, who says happiness is a valid goal in the first place? Religions have never placed much explicit emphasis on it, at least as far as this world is concerned; philosophers have certainly not been unanimous in endorsing it, either. And any evolutionary psychologist will tell you that evolution has little interest in your being happy, beyond trying to make sure that you’re not so listless or miserable that you lose the will to reproduce.

Interesting.

But the Author doesn’t pursue this thought. Happiness is a worthwhile goal, he decides. And the book is all about an attempt to chalk out a path to happiness. 

Stoics

He starts with the Stoics take on happiness.                                                               


Live virtuously in accordance with reason, said the Stoics.

This will lead to inner tranquility - ‘a state of mind, marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy’.

And how do you achieve tranquility? Not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one’s circumstances.

One way to do this, was by turning towards negative emotions and experiences; not shunning them, but examining them closely instead.

The Stoics say it is not people, situations, or events that make us sad, anxious, or angry. These external ‘events’  are not ‘negative’ in itself – In fact, nothing outside your own mind can properly be described as negative or positive at all.

As Shakespeare had Hamlet say ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’.

The Stoics propose a radical methodology to deal with the possibility of things going wrong. Rather than struggling to avoid all thought of worst-case scenarios, they counsel: Just face it; stare it in the face.

They termed this methodology as ‘the premeditation of evils’.

By doing so, you will begin to savor things that you love. Thinking about the possibility of losing something you value shifts it from the backdrop of your life back to centre stage, where it can deliver pleasure once more.

Epictetus proposed that ‘Each time you kiss your child goodnight, you should specifically consider the possibility that he/she might die tomorrow.’

This, Epictetus says, will make you love your child all the more, while simultaneously reducing the shock should that awful eventuality ever come to pass.

But for all their rationality, the Stoics had their own idiosyncratic form of religious belief.
They held that the universe was God; that there was a grand plan, and that everything was happening for a reason.

‘Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul,’ says Marcus Aurelius. ‘Whatever happens at all, happens as it should.’

So when a Stoic asks you to live ‘according to reason’, it essentially meant acting in accordance with this ‘Universal Plan’.

If you however, are unwilling to accept that stuff happens for a reason or that there is a ‘Grand design’ behind it all, then things sort of come unhinged.

But not for Burkeman though. He has become a convert.

The author says that even if you cannot accept the Stoic notion of a ‘Grand Plan’, you could still accept that ‘Each one of us clearly has very little individual control over the universe.’

But then in his amplification, the author sinks further; from ‘little individual control’ to ‘no control’.

To quote: ’….We habitually act as if our control over the world were much greater than it really is. Even such personal matters as our health, our finances and our reputations are ultimately beyond our control; we can try to influence them, of course, but frequently things won’t go our way. And the behavior of other people is even further beyond our control.’

‘….In better times, it’s easy to forget how little we control: we can usually manage to convince ourselves that we attained the promotion at work or the new relationship, or the Nobel Prize, thanks solely to our own brilliance and effort. But unhappy times bring home the truth of the matter. Jobs are lost; plans go wrong; People die. If your strategy for happiness depends on bending circumstances to your will, this is terrible news’.

‘…Those things lie beyond the individual’s control; if you invest your happiness in them, you’re setting yourself up for a rude shock.’

Actually Burkeman lost me there. There is a contradiction in what he says.

The Stoics are consistent when they harp on ‘equanimity whatever be the circumstances’, because ‘it’s all part of a Grand Plan’ and things 'unfold the way they are for a reason.’ Akin to ‘Destiny’ or ‘Fate’ or ‘Karma’. No problem there.

But when Burkeman takes the high road and disagrees with the notion of a ‘Grand Design’, as he found the idea difficult to swallow as a ‘modern secular mind’, the entire philosophical edifice of the Stoics come crashing down.

If as Burkeman maintains ‘Stoically’, that individual efforts do not matter, then what is it that matters?

If there is no ‘Grand Design’ and stuff just happens, who decides what should happen?

If there is no Cosmic Agency out there, nobody to decide what is to happen in my life, what should unfold in my piffling existence on Earth, then why should anyone stop me from doing my two bit to improve my miserable existence?

Burkeman says individual effort matters little. But how do you decide that? How do you come to the conclusion that individual efforts do not matter? If there is no Cosmic Agency to decide how things should unfold, then who says my efforts do not matter?

Empirically speaking, it’s difficult to arrive at a definite conclusion. Burkeman may be right or he may be wrong. Individual efforts might or might not matter. But it makes more sense, in the absence of a ‘Cosmic Divinity’ or a ‘Heavenly Script Writer’(if you accept Burkeman’s postulate), to believe that what you do matters.

If there is really nothing out there, no Karma or destiny, all the more reason for you to chin up and do something about your life, isn’t it?

Maybe what you do is the only thing that matters or at best influences circumstances to your benefit.

Burkeman believes that your individual effort may come to naught and cause you grief if things don’t go your way. So he props up the Stoic theory to brace yourself against the pitfall of things going wrong.

Winning and losing, I believe, are simply the mundane ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ of life and I do not see this as a case to decry individual effort here.

You put in effort. You win; then good, if not buckle up and carry on I guess.

Non-Attachment

Burkeman narrates his experiences at the ‘Insight Meditation Centre’ in Massachusetts, where he practices the Buddhist ‘Vipassana’ variant of meditation.

This involves attempts to observe the mind; to learn to view passing thoughts and feelings as if one were a spectator and not a participant. The aim is to achieve a kind of Non-Attachment; the mind is seen to be akin to the sky: the sky does not cling to good or bad weather conditions, the sky just is. Similarly the mind just is, with all kinds of thoughts and emotions flitting on it.

But why Non-Attachment at all?

What purpose does it serve?

In the Author’s words- ‘It’s not clear why the rest of us should want to emulate him (Budddhist monks). Attachment,…is the only thing that motivates anyone to accomplish anything worthwhile in the first place. If you weren’t attached to things being a certain way, rather than another way- and to feeling certain emotions, rather than others - why would you ever attempt to thrive professionally, to better your material circumstances, to raise children, or to change the world?’

Burkeman, interestingly connects Non-Attachment to avoiding procrastination and sees it as a rigorous practical way of accomplishing worthwhile activities:

'You are probably already much too familiar with the truth that most anti-procrastination advice just doesn’t work, or at least not for very long. Motivational books, tapes and seminars might leave you feeling briefly excited, but that feeling soon fades. Ambitious lists of goals and systems of rewards seem like a great idea when you construct them, but feel stale the next morning; inspiring mottos on posters and coffee-mugs swiftly lose their ability to inspire.’

‘…..The problem with all these motivational tips and tricks is that they aren’t really about how to get things done at all. They’re about how to feel in the mood for getting things done. ‘If we get the right emotion, we can get ourselves to do anything!’

‘…..The problem is that feeling like acting and actually acting are two different things. A person mired deep in procrastination might claim he is unable to work, but what he really means is that he is unable to make himself feel like working.’

‘…..Most motivational techniques are really designed to change how you feel. They’re built, in other words, on a form of attachment - on strengthening your investment in a specific kind of emotion.’

‘Sometimes, that can help. But sometimes you simply can’t make yourself feel like acting. And in those situations motivational advice risks making things worse, by surreptitiously strengthening your belief that you need to feel motivated before you can act.
……The subtext is that if you can’t make yourself feel excited and pleased about getting down to work, then you can’t get down to work.’

‘Taking a Non-Attached stance towards procrastination, by contrast, starts from a different question: who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn’t that you don’t feel motivated; it’s that you imagine you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you’re procrastinating on as passing weather, you’ll realise that your reluctance about working isn’t something that needs to be eradicated, or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it, you can note the procrastinatory feelings, and act anyway.’

‘It is illuminating to note, here, how the daily rituals and working routines of prolific authors and artists - people who really do get a lot done - very rarely include techniques for ‘getting motivated’ or ‘feeling inspired’. Quite the opposite: they tend to emphasise the mechanics of the working process, focusing not on generating the right mood, but on accomplishing certain physical actions, regardless of mood.’

‘….Rituals provide a structure to work in, whether or not the feeling of motivation or inspiration happens to be present. They let people work alongside negative or positive emotions, instead of getting distracted by the effort of cultivating only positive ones.’
‘Inspiration is for amateurs’ the artist Chuck Close once famously observed. ‘The rest of us just show up and get to Work.’

So ‘Passion’, ‘Motivation’ and ‘Getting in to the mood’ etc are desirables to get going; but not mandatory.

Makes perfect sense. Just do it. Whatever it is that you want to do. And the world takes care of itself.

But where does that leave  Happiness? Does this attitude of ‘doing sans thinking’ leave room for your emotions? I think not.

Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle is quoted at length in the book. The basic premise of Tolle’s philosophy is akin to  Advaitic or Buddhist philosophy, i.e Quelling of the Ego.

‘When we identify with the inner chatter(of our mind)’,Tolle suggests, ‘when we come to think of it as ‘us’…..The sense of Self that we construct from identifying with our thoughts is what Tolle calls the ‘ego’. And by definition, living in the service of the ego can never make us happy.’

‘Why can the ego never bring happiness? Tolle’s argument here echoes the Stoics, who concluded that our judgments about the world are the source of our distress. But he takes things further, suggesting that these judgments, along with all our other thoughts, are what we take ourselves to be. We’re not only distressed by our thoughts; we imagine that we are those thoughts. The ego that results from this identification has a life of its own. It sustains itself through dissatisfaction – through the friction it creates against the present moment, by opposing itself to what’s happening, and by constantly projecting into the future, so that happiness is always some other time, never now.’

‘..The way out of this trap is not to stop thinking’ ‘…but to stop taking your thoughts to be you,to realise that ‘you are not your mind’.

So far so good.

Then Tolle sinks into Advaitic theory:

‘Sit like a cat at a mouse-hole, Tolle advises, ‘waiting to see what your next thought will be’. ‘When you listen to a thought,’ he  explains, ‘you are aware not only of the thought, but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence - your deeper self- behind or underneath the thought, as it were.’

The sceptic Burkeman does not buy this:
‘ …He(Tolle) seems to assume that when you stop identifying with your ego, you discover who you really are – that you discover your ‘deeper self’ or your ‘true Being’, which was hiding behind the fake self all along. But this kind of talk rightly makes more mainstream philosophers nervous. Just because you have succeeded in dismantling the conventional understanding of the self, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’ll find the ‘real’ one.’

Burkeman dismisses the core of Tolle’s philosophy but latches onto the underlying thought:
’….The optimism-focused, goal-fixated, positive-thinking approach to happiness is exactly the kind of thing the ego loves. Positive thinking is all about Identifying with your thoughts than disidentifying from them. And the ‘cult of optimism’ is about looking forward to a happy or successful future, thereby reinforcing the message that happiness belongs to some other time than now.

‘…Most humans are never fully present in the now, because ‘unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more ‘important’ than this one. But then
you miss your whole life, ‘which is never not now’.

What Eckhart Tolle expounds is ancient wisdom of the Orient.

But what if Eckhart’s theory of an ‘Inner Reality’ or ‘True Self’ is incorrect, and there is no underlying ‘Truth’? Are we simply a ‘bundle of perceptions’ as Hume puts it and is there no ‘deeper’,‘truer’ meaning to who or what we are?

Don’t know. No one does actually.

But to focus, in a limited sense, to the topic at hand of achieving happiness, it will be apparent that the core philosophy to happiness as suggested by philosophers down the ages, all hinge on some sort of ‘Inner Reality’. Whether it be the Stoics, Buddhists or Eckhart Tolle.

True, Burkeman derives important takeaways from each school of thought, maintaining his ‘modern sceptical mindset’. But is there something missing something here?

Is Happiness a Worthwhile Goal?

Burkeman got it right initially, to my mind. That ‘Evolution has little interest in your being happy’.

As a ‘Modern Secularist’, Burkeman would obviously be at ease with the Evolution theory. So why doesn’t he simply focus on cues provided by the Science of Evolution on Man’s true nature?

As a ‘Sceptic’, he should have focused on cold hard science facts instead of nebulous theories.


Consider what we know:

Man is today at the pinnacle of the evolutionary curve and have remained the dominant species for long. In that sense, ‘Man’ and not the ‘Lion’ as we romantically presume, is the true ‘the King of the Jungle’. Can any other species stop our march?

How have we maintained our dominance over other species?

We are dominant because Evolution has wired us differently.

Animals are wired to satisfy their ‘Physiological urges’ only. So an animal will be content to just eat, breed, sleep throughout its life; 

Just survive-that’s all.

Man is wired differently however.

Apart from Physiological urges, he has ‘Psychological urges’ too.

This ‘Psychological Wiring’ is what makes Man unique. It sets us apart from animals.

The base state of Man on account of this ‘Psychological wiring’ is ‘Restlessness’.

Man is a ‘Restless’ Animal.

Observe even a newly born baby and the truth is evident.

Man is born ‘Restless’ and remains so till the day he dies.

This is Man’s true nature. Of course the alternate theories expounded in the Orient, by Stoics or Guru’s like Eckhart Tolle talk of an ‘Inner Reality’ and do not see man as just another animal. 
But ‘Modern Secularists’ like Burkeman surely would see Man as just another animal trying to survive.

Unlike what the Buddha propounded- Desire is not the root cause of misery.

We are ‘Restless’ or ‘Miserable’ by nature, and hence we ‘desire’ to get rid of  ‘Restlessness’ or ‘Misery’.

And there is no ‘Nirvana’ or escaping being a ‘Restless human’ till the day you die.

What does ‘Restlessness’ make a Man do? Well, a Man seeks Peace. Till the day he dies. That is his nature. Period.

And Man will do anything to get rid of this ‘Restlessness’ or ‘Misery’.

Maybe create beautiful music, make great works of art, build bridges, fight wars, give to charity, become an Eckhart Tolle…

To paraphrase Schopenhauer:
“Pain(Restlessness) is its basic stimulus and reality(of life), and pleasure is merely a negative cessation of pain”.

Hence the crux:

There is no ‘Happiness’ or ‘Sadness’. Nature does not recognize ‘Happiness’ or ‘Sadness’. Only the ‘Restlessness’ in you, is the reality.

Religions which propagate 'eternal happiness' are talking of a state which is not ‘human’.

For one, it is not possible to be eternally happy (or sad for that matter). Secondly it is not desirable also.

I suspect the day we are able to rid ourselves of this ‘bug’ of ‘Restlessness’, we will lose our evolutionary edge or at the very least as Kant says:

‘Men might …. lead an Arcadian shepherd life in complete harmony, contentment, and mutual love; but in that case all their talents would have forever remained hidden in their germ.’

The Antidote is an interesting read. It provide practical insights for life; as to how to stride along the path where we eternally strive for peace and blissfulness.

Barack Obama : Dreams from my father

This book is impressive; considering that Obama was just 34 years old when it was published in 1995 and his Presidential dreams were far from the horizon. You get a glimpse into the man as he was before he put on political airs.

Obama clearly saw himself as a man of destiny. His unwillingness to settle, his idealism, search for inner meaning and quest for identity- all are impressive. But I doubt if he considered himself a Presidential hopeful in 1995 and hence the writing appears authentic.

The book was a result of an advance given by a publisher to  Obama when he gained some publicity as the first African-American President of the 'Harvard Law Review'.

It's  a long read at 442 pages and sometimes very self indulgent. But you press on as you know this man became the first African-American President of the United States of America.

The book covers Obama's life in three parts:

-His childhood brought up by his White grandparents;

-His community service at Chicago to uplift  lives of African-Americans;

-Return to roots to Kenya to understand his origins and identity.

The book could have been 300 pages slimmer I feel; just about 150 pages would have been fine; if Obama had  simply stuck to the main narrative. And make no mistake; the book is all about being 'Black in America'.

But Obama being Obama, sticks to detailed characterisations(even of peripheral characters like a co-passenger in a plane) and elaborate descriptions; which is nice sometimes, but then sometimes you just want to get a move on.

In his childhood, Obama is fed with glorified uplifting stories of his mysterious father, Barack Obama, Sr who has left his mother and moved back to Kenya. These stories leave a lasting impression and he has an ideal to look upto. His grandfather(mother's side)is the one who feeds him these stories. Sample one:

'And Gramps, suddenly thoughtful, would start nodding to himself  “It’s a fact, Bar (Barack),” he would say. “Your dad could handle just about any situation, and that made everybody like him. Remember the time when he had to sing at the International Music Festival? He’d agreed to sing some African songs, but when he arrived it turned out to be this big to—do, and the woman who performed just before him was a semi professional singer, a Hawaiian gal with a full band to back her up.
Anyone else would have stopped right there, you know, and
that there had been a mistake. But not Barack. He got up and started singing in front of this big crowd—which is no easy feat, let me tell you—and he wasn’t great, but he was so sure of himself that before you knew it he was getting as much applause as anybody.”
My grandfather would shake his head and get out of his chair to flip on the TV set. “Now there’s something you can learn from your dad,” he would tell me. “Confidence". The secret to a man's success."

But Obama also had a role model closer home- his Caucasian  mother, Ann Dunham. She taught him the one  fundamental truth that mattered:  'There is no substitute  to hard work'.

While in Indonesia with her second husband, worried that the Indonesian schooling was inadequate, she used to wake up at four in the morning to teach Obama for three hours before she went to work and drop him to school.

And Barack was only 9 years old at that time! Here's how Obama recounts it:

"Her initial efforts centered on education. Without the money to send  me to the International School, where most of Djakarta's foreign children went, she had arranged from the moment of our arrival to Supplement my Indonesian schooling with lessons from a US correspondence course.

Her efforts now redoubled. Five days a week, she came into my room at four in the morning, force fed me breakfast, and proceeded to teach me my English lessons for three hours before I left for school and she went to work. I offered stiff resistance to this regimen, but in response to every strategy I concocted, whether unconvincing (“My stomach hurts”) or indisputably true (my eyes kept closing every five minutes), she would patiently repeat her most powerful defense:
“This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

Being a black in America; what does it mean? Who was he? 

Obama was obsessed with these questions.
He thought folks who tried to focus on their 'individuality' and not be overtly concerned with their race and community to be missing the essential point: As a black you can't forget who you are; maybe for a white, but never for a black:

"That's how Joyce liked to talk. She was a good-looking woman, Joyce was with her green eyes and honey skin and pouty lips. We lived in the same dorm my freshman year, and all the brothers were after her.
One day I asked her if she was going to the Black Students' association meeting. She looked at me funny, then started shaking her head like a baby who doesn’t want what it sees on the spoon.
" I am not black,” Joyce said. “I’m multiracial." Then she started telling me about her father, who happened to be Italian and was the sweetest  man in the world; and her mother, who happened to be part African and part French and part Native American and part something  else.  “Why should I have to choose between them?” she asked me. Her voice  cracked, and I thought she was going to cry. “It’s not white people who are making me choose. Maybe it used to be that way, but now they're willing to treat me like a person. No—it’s black people who have to make everything racial. They’re the ones making me choose. They’re the ones who are telling me that l can’t be who l am. . . .”

They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce.They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people.It wasn’t a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective
Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white Culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don’t have to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America’s happy, faceless marketplace; and We're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the Woman in the elevator clutches her purse; not so much because we’re bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives -although that’s what we tell ourselves- but because we’re wearing a Brooks brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger.
"Don’t you know who I am? I’m an individual"

There are other such vignettes in the book. For all his attempts to find meaning being a black, Obama was simply not the average African-American you would find in America. His brilliance kept him apart and his success is not something that is easy to replicate.  His genes;a brilliant  Kenyan father and a competent mother gave him a head start most other people do not get.
But Obama carries out a fair amount of rumination on this aspect when he recounts the reaction of his fellow community action members  to the news that he was going to join Harvard Law school:

'The minute I told him the schools I'd applied—Harvard, Yale, Stanford—he had grinned and slapped me on the back. ‘
“I knew it!” he shouted.'
“Knew what?”
“That it was just a matter of time, Barack. Before you were outta here."
"Why'd you think that?”
Johnnie shook his head and laughed. “Damn, Barack. . . ’cause
You got options, that’s why. ’Cause you can leave. I mean, I know you’re a conscientious brother and all that, but when somebody’s got a choice between Harvard and Roseland, it’s only so long somebody’s gonna keep choosing  Roseland."... I just  hope you remember your friends when you put up in that fancy downtown"

.....For some reason Johnnie's laughter had made me defensive. I insisted that I would be coming back to the neighborhood. I told him that I didn't plan on  being dazzled by the wealth and power that Harvard represented, and that he shouldn't be either. Johnnie put up his hands in mock surrender.

" Hey you don‘t need to be telling me all this. l ain’t the one going
nowhere.”
I grew quiet, embarrassed by my outburst. “Yeah, well . , . I‘m just
saying that I’ll be back, that’s all. l don’t want you  or the leaders to
get the wrong idea."
Johnnie smiled gently. “Ain’t nobody's gonna get the wrong idea,Barack. Man, we’re just proud to see you succeed."

.....I lit a cigarette and tried to decipher that conversation
with Johnnie. Had he doubted my intentions? Or  was it just me that mistrusted myself? It seemed like l had gone over my decision at least a hundred times. I needed a break, that was for sure. l wanted to go to Kenya.....

And I had things to learn in law school. Things that would help me, bring about real change.....

.....Maybe Johnnie was right;
' maybe once you stripped away the rationalizations, it always came down to a simple matter of escape. An escape from poverty or boredom  or crime or the shackles of your skin. Maybe, by going to law school, I’d be repeating a pattern that had been set in motion centuries before, the moment white men, themselves spurred on by their own fears of inconsequence, had landed on Africa’s shores, bringing  with them their guns and blind hunger, to drag away the conquered in chains. That first encounter had redrawn the map of black life,
recentered its universe, created the very idea of escape.....

Another passage recounts, rather poignantly the resentment shown by Mary (on the news of Obama's departure), a lady who worked with him at community  service in Chicago :

'Only Mary seemed upset. After most of the ministers had left, she
helped Will, Johnnie, and me clean up. When I asked her if she
needed a ride, she started shaking her head.
“What is it with you men?" she said, looking at Will and myself“
Her voice trembled slightly as she pulled on her coat. “Why is it
you’re always in a hurry? Why is it that what you have isn’t ever good
enough?”

I started to say something, then thought about Mary’s two
daughters at home, the father that they would never know. Instead  I
walked her to the door and gave her a hug.'

In Kenya in search for his roots, Obama captures what it's like for a African-American to be in Africa for the first time:

'And all of this while a steady procession of black faces passed before your eyes.....
For a span of weeks or months, you could experience the freedom that comes from not feeling watched, the freedom of believing that your hair grows as it’s supposed to grow and that your rump sways the way a rump is supposed to sway. You could see a man talking to himself as
just plain crazy, or read about the criminal on the rent page of the
daily paper and ponder the corruption of the human heart, without having to think about whether the criminal or lunatic said something about your own fate. Here the world was black, and so you were just you; you could discover all those things that were unique to your life without living a lie or committing betrayal.

How tempting, I thought, to fly away with this moment intact. To
have this feeling of ease wrapped up as neatly as the young man was now wrapping Auma’s necklace, and take it back with me to America to slip on whenever my spirits flagged.

But of course that wasn’t possible. We finished out sodas. Money
changed hands. We left the marketplace. The moment slipped
away.'

The situation in Kenya, akin to any third world country, is easily comprehensible to Indians. The confusion that Obama recounts when he starts 'thinking' of money when in Kenya is simply a 'White man's/Westerners problem':

'The situation in Nairobi was tough and getting tougher.Clothes were mostly secondhand, a doctor’s visit reserved for the direst emergency. Almost all the family’s younger members were
unemployed, including the two or three who had managed, against
stiff competition, to graduate from one of Kenya’s universities. If
Jane or Zeituni ever fell ill, if their companies ever closed or laid
them off, there was no government safety net. There was only family, next of kin; people burdened by similar hardship.

Now I was family, I reminded myself; now I had responsibilities.
But what did that mean exactly? Back in the States, I’d been able to
translate such feelings into politics, organizing, a certain self-denial.
In Kenya, these strategies seemed hopelessly abstract, even self-indulgent. A commitment to black empowerment couldn’t help find
Bernard a job. A faith in participatory democracy couldn’t buy Jane a new set of sheets. For the first time in my life, I found myself thinking deeply about money: my own lack of it, the pursuit of it, the crude but undeniable peace it could buy. A part of me wished I could live up to the image that my new relatives imagined for me: A corporate Lawyer, an American businessman,  my hand poised on the spigot, ready to rain down like manna the largesse of the western world.'

The story of his father and grandfather is recounted in a great amount of detail and  Obama feels that he has at least partly answered a few questions.
It gets a little bit melodramatic though. The scene where Obama describes himself sitting amidst the graves of his father and grandfather and crying was total bollywood.

A few hundred pages slimmer and this book would have been one of my favorites. But of course it is the  President; and you have to give him his due.