Customer Reviews

Snakes and Ladders

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As someone who has never loved reading serious, academic, historical studies, I found this book delightful. My "knowledge" of foreign cultures and history comes from traveling, from reading fiction, and from studying art. And when I wanted to learn more about India, a country of huge size and population, of countless religions and traditions, and of a mystifying political history, I couldn't even imagine attacking the tomes it would take to gain even a small understanding of this country. Though it may be "a slim confection of descriptive jottings and dinner party anecdotes," that's exactly the kind of book I was looking for. My approach may be that of a dilettante, but I know more now than I did before reading the book, and that's a start. And I thoroughly enjoyed the "dinner party anecdotes," which stay with me longer than pure scholarship would have

This book awes and shocks at the same time, which is perhaps the best way to summarize India today. Assuming there is such a thing as "India" beyond the state on the map. Mehta points out that most Indians are foreigners to other Indians (p.20)!

Here we get a panoramic introduction to the essence of this incredible assembly of over one billion people. Mehta jumps easily from history to politics, from religion to economics, from social life to art. This is where the majority is Hindu but Buddhism was born, as can be seen at such wonders as Sanchi, Ajanta and Ellora, but where some of the best known national symbols are the Taj Mahal (Muslim mausoleum), the Golden Temple of Amritsar (Sikh), the Jain temples of Rajasthan and Gujarat.

This is the country where the foremost independence leader, Mahatma Gandhi, invited the last colonail ruler, Lord Mountbatten, to become the first head of state of independent India, so as to show reconciliation with all! A country where women still suffer heavily from discrimination but where a woman (Indira) was the most powerful politician ever elected and another (Sonia, a foreigner and a Catholic) followed in her footsteps.

The book 'snakes and Ladders' is indeed a very nice book which introduces reader to various facets of Indian politics over the last fifty years. The choice of title is very appropriate as author tries to take a stalk of progress of India over the years and the factors that hinder the growth. It is not an easy job to write an objective book almost free of personal bias. The book can be said to be an outsider's view and yet the author understands India being an insider. Her discussions about dynasty in India- Late Pt. Nehru electing (or rather imposing) Indira Gandhi as Congress President and Indira's rule in later years are particularly appealing. She also discusses the incident of Nehru dismissing elected communist government in Kerala which showed the glimpses of dictatorship which followed a decade and half later. However, I feel the twentyone month emergency rule deserved a little more space in the book. Also the author could have included discussions about state formation process based on linguistics which still has some unresolved issues. In my view this would have made the book more comprehensive. I would strongly recommend this book to Indians or non-Indians who wish to understand today's India.

The author has not taken time to see things as they are. India's pristine past and poor present stands further aggravated with such a hotch potch of facts as the author has projected.The book does not captutre the real spirit of its time and theme

Gita Mehta's first book, Karma Cola, was an amusing attack on India's mystic hustlers, and the gullible western "seekers" who imagined that anybody calling himself a sadhu must have a dose of enlightenment up his sleeve. She has now presented us a personal account of India's history since independence which amounts to little more than a slim confection of descriptive jottings and dinner-party anecdotes.

Snakes and Ladders opens with a portrait of Mehta's family: when she was three weeks old, her father was manacled and dragged off to jail for his exploits as an anti-British freedom fighter. We then have a series of sketches of Indian life (rag-pickers, weavers, anti-Congress demonstrators and street booksellers), some of which are interesting enough. However, none of these passages ties together, and it would appear from the credits that they are mainly recycled journalism.

Curiously, since this is a personal memoir, there is no mention of the fact that the brave freedom fighter we encounter at the start of the book is himself now a senior politician, who recently called for India to be put under military dictatorship, and who is being investigated on corruption charges. The links between the different chapters are tenuous, and tend to rely either on portentous assertions ("And yet India progresses, a monumental juggernaut of contradictory realities"), in-flight magazine platitudes ("Hinduism is the religion practised by the majority of Indians . . . And of all the elements which have contributed to our diversity, nothing has so enriched the 'land of fabulous contrast' as religion") or vague, dangling interrogatives ("Can they bend the bars that keep India caged?

Any work of this type is bound to contain a few factual errors, but Snakes and Ladders has more than its fair share. The Bengal Famine is timed a year early, the annexation of Tibet nine years late. Tashkent is located in Russia, the politician Rajmohan Gandhi is called "Ram Mohan Gandhi". Ashoka's wheel at the centre of the Indian flag is mistaken for a spinning-wheel (a symbol that was dropped in 1947). And it is suggested that, "in one of the most imperious grands gestes of the 20th century", Mahatma Gandhi "insisted" that Mountbatten should remain as governor-general of free India; in fact, it was Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel who made the decision ­ Gandhi played no part in it.

It is baffling that a writer with Mehta's reputation should have turned out such a book. I am tempted to think it might be an elaborate spoof, a satirical sequel to Karma Cola, developing the theme that westerners will buy any old tripe providing it bears an Indian label

- Excerpts from Patrick French's Review on the Book in `Sunday Times'.

Interesting book by the author of the much better `Karma Kola'. A nice presentation of the India of the Western educated elites. Alas it doesn't tell us what the `natives' think, what moves them.