Why did I pick up this book?

I have never been interested in learning History and picked up this book to diversify my reading universe.

What is this book about?

An interesting book to understand behind the scenes highlights of India’s independence, partition and years post that via life stories of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Louis Mountbatten, Edwina Mountbatten and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

My review

This is a highly recommended read. Especially if you are a history buff. The writing is fast paced with balanced presentation of story/facts being and IMO does seem well researched too.

Tunzelmann tries her best to present the story from all perspectives. Considering highly volatile post-partition violence and chaos and politically sensitive Kashmir issue; Tunselmann manages to give a neutral third party perspective. This is the biggest USP of the book.

What did I find particularly interesting?

Life story of Jawaharlal Nehru, and in particular his romantic and emotional involvement with Edwina Mountbatten is particularly interesting and grips you — no less than a gripping web series.

Book paints an overall negative image of Gandhiji which though shocking and repulsive at first, seems accurate and balanced. Once you read more, you too may agree with it. Author does celebrate Gandhiji’s spiritual and moral compass, though highlights the impracticality of it as a political tool. Could India have gotten independence much earlier without Gandhi , Gandhi’s role in creation of Pakistan — exploration of these ideas leave you with a lot of food for thought.

Chapters on Kashmir are particularly fascinating and reveal the nature and depth of the Kashmir problem.

The book could very well be a fast paced movie. Infact, deaths of Gandhi, Nehru and Edwina moved me personally, as being a reader of this book — you become completely entrenched in their life stories.

What could have been better?

Too much focus on the story of Louis Mountbatten. I couldn't relate much to it, even though he was central to the plot he didn't really play a decisive role in India’s partition in my view. Further, his life journey (pre and post partition time) has been extensively detailed which was a bit long and difficult to follow. Maybe this plays better with international audiences.

Key takeaway — I am now convinced our history textbooks in schools are often deeply coloured and biased. They are ultimately more fiction around a few facts than actual facts.

The review ends here. I wish to leave you with some interesting extracts from the book.

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ON A WARM SUMMER NIGHT IN 1947, THE LARGEST EMPIRE THE world has ever seen did something no empire had done before. It gave up. The British Empire did not decline, it simply fell; and it fell proudly and majestically on to its own sword. It was not forced out by revolution, nor defeated by a greater rival in battle. Its leaders did not tire or weaken. Its culture was strong and vibrant. Recently it had been victorious in the century’s definitive war. When midnight struck in Delhi on the night of 14 August 1947, a new, free Indian nation was born. In London, the time was 8.30 p.m. The world’s capital could enjoy another hour or two of a warm summer evening before the sun literally and finally set on the British Empire.

The seventy-seven-year-old Mahatma, or ‘great soul’, was the most famous and the most popular Indian since Buddha. Regarded as little short of a saint among Christians as well as Hindus, he had been a staunch defender of the British Empire until the 1920s. Since then, he had campaigned for Indian self-rule. Many times it had been almost within his grasp: in 1922, 1931, 1942, 1946. Each time he had let it go. Now, finally, India was free, but that had nothing to do with Gandhi — and Gandhi would have nothing to do with it.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Gandhi and the younger Nehru was intense, fraught and semi-paternal. The two men had wildly different political and philosophical ideas, but a peculiarly potent sympathy with each other, both emotional and practical. Gandhi needed a link to the temporal world; Nehru needed a guru. It suited Gandhi well to groom this young radical, for he had found no serious political heir among his four sons.

Despite the many failures of his brahmacharya policy, Gandhi persisted in enforcing it at his ashrams, and broke up several marriages by persuading the women to renounce sex. It was a field in which he and Nehru could never be reconciled. Nehru wrote that Gandhi’s sex ban ‘can only lead to frustration, inhibition, neurosis, and all manner of physical and nervous ills’. As for Gandhi’s decree that birth control was a particular sin, for it allowed a person ‘to indulge his animal passions and escape the consequences of his acts’, Nehru considered it to be outrageous. ‘Personally I find this attitude unnatural and shocking, and if he is right, then I am a criminal on the verge of imbecility and nervous prostration.’ Nehru was aware that the gulf between Gandhi and himself was deep. Much of his autobiography chronicled their differences. And yet the two continued to be the closest of friends. ‘People who do not know Gandhiji personally and have only read his writings are apt to think that he is a priestly type, extremely puritanical, long-faced, Calvinistic, and a kill-joy,’ Nehru wrote. ‘He is the very opposite . . . His smile is delightful, his laughter infectious, and he radiates lightheartedness. There is something childlike about him which is full of charm.’

In Stalin’s famous words, one death is a tragedy; one million deaths is a statistic. In this case, it is not even a particularly good statistic. The very incomprehensibility of what a million horrible and violent deaths might mean, and the impossibility of producing an appropriate response, is perhaps the reason that the events following partition have yielded such a great and moving body of fictional literature and such an inadequate and flimsy factual history.

Exactly how far the alliance between Churchill and Jinnah went is hard to tell from the few remaining records. It has been rumoured that they had formed a secret pact several years before. Churchill, then Prime Minister, was said to have pledged to grant Jinnah Pakistan in return for Muslim League support of the Allied war effort. It is true that Jinnah repeatedly offered deals of this kind to the Viceroy, but there is scant evidence that he corresponded directly with Churchill on the matter. Of course, any such letters would have been very unlikely to survive: for not only would they show Jinnah conspiring to keep the British in India, but they might have opened Churchill to charges of treason

Jinnah is regarded as the father of Pakistan, Churchill must qualify as its uncle; and, therefore, as a pivotal figure in the resurgence of political Islam.

In April 1958, Nehru announced that he wanted to resign and return to private life, telling a press conference shortly afterwards that he felt ‘rather stale and flat’. For once, the roles were reversed, and Edwina told him to take a rest. He took a month’s holiday, trekking in the Kullu Valley, high in the Himalayas. ‘Tell me whether I should continue to write to you or not?’ wrote Edwina tentatively. ‘I shall well understand if you say “not a note for the next months”.’ Jawahar wrote back passionately. ‘How do you think I would fare if months passed without a letter from you?’ he asked. ‘Have you realized what your letters mean to me?’ Two months later, in July, the Economic Weekly published an anonymous article under the headline ‘After Nehru’, predicting that on his departure Congress would fragment into petty interests of caste, religion and region.

Book review of ‘The India Summer’ was originally published in RahulShares on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We all have insecurities. Some deal with it better than the others, or perhaps able to mask them well. Insecurity could very well be as common as the common flu.

Thought — What exactly is Insecurity? We have spoken about Envy previously, so how is insecurity different from envy?

Well, insecurity runs deeper in our psyche and probably is more common than envy. Insecurity is a lot more internal and self-induced whereas envy could be more outward looking and driven by external circumstances.

Google defines Insecurity as ‘uncertainty or anxiety about oneself; lack of confidence’. Insecurity is an uncertain feeling of anxiety driven by our fear of losing something and a lack of safety and security.

Its important to hold on that thought — A fear of losing something making us feel anxious and insecure. It impacts our self confidence adversely.

It could be a fear of losing money, fear of losing friendships, fear losing a sense of belongingness, fear of losing our social approval / status, fear of losing respect and fear of losing relationships. We can clearly see insecurity is nothing but a fear of losing

Insecurity shows up in different areas of our lives. Personally, I have been insecure about my looks and body structure and used to believe, well it’s just about this — If I just work on my body structure, I’ll feel much more self-assured. Though, it wasn’t just that. Insecurity continued showing up in different aspects — Money, relationships, body image issues, etc.

To give you an analogy: Its like cleaning and polishing the mirror — to look beautiful.

Some examples

• Insecurity over our looks: May we need to work more on our body, society should accept body positivity.
• Insecurity over our relationships –Maybe my partner needs to change.
• Insecurity over money — I should focus on earning more wealth.

We need to deal with insecurity at its root rather than just working / focus on its symptoms.

A question one could ask — We can only lose something, what we own. Do we really own anything at all in the true sense, to fear losing it? And, if everything is temporary — why do we harbor fears. 😊

Insightful realization — if we work on core problem of our fear of losing, all our insecurities slowly fade away. I have personally benefited from feeling more secure within through practice of some ideas described below.

1) Being aware — Insecurities are infectious and are passed on through generations of upbringing and core belief systems — It’s important we first become aware of our insecurities before we come to believe these as natural. Personally, a sense of insecurity about money ran deep for me which I realized came from years of upbringing. It was a deep insight to even become aware of it being an insecurity!

2) Accept all of yourself — Pause and spend time within for some introspection. Notice and reflect facets of yourself, you do not like. Send love to these dimensions and accept all of yourself — the good, the bad and the ugly.

3) Let go of past criticisms –Childhood criticisms can be the toughest to let go off. If a parent or other relatives criticized us while growing up, or if we were bullied, we’ve probably internalized this. We need to realize, criticisms though well intended, lot of times speak more about perception of criticizer rather than of the person being criticized. Your past criticisms do not define you.

4) Self-approval — Humans are social beings and we are conditioned to seek validation and part of a ‘social group’. We all want to fit in and be part of a group — a inner circle. Unfortunately, these lead to insecurity — a constant need for validation and fear of being rejected by the group. Break the shackles — we do not need approval from anyone, but yourself. Self-approval comes from following our core principles and beliefs and doing what we truly believe in. Develop deep conviction in your actions and shun seeking approval from society.

5) Embrace non-comparison — We spoke about this in our previous post on Envy and how the grass is not really greener on the other side.

The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.

Steven Furtick

One common term used in context of our insecurities today — FOMO being Fear of missing out! Well, can we invert and say JOMO — Joy of missing out 😊

Self-assurance is something we all need to work towards. Each day, one step at a time.

Insecurity — from Fear of missing out (FOMO) to Joy of missing out (JOMO) was originally published in RahulShares on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A for Awareness

The first step towards any change is awareness. So we start with that!

For me, there has been a slow realization that first step to joy is deep awareness of how you feel every single moment and staying true to that moment. Not doing anything special but just being aware, aware of our anger, irritation, frustration, sadness, jealousy or any negative emotion deeply and minutely can itself be uplifting.

Try it, right now!

Aware of how you feel can sound simple, but its deep work. Every moment, we feel a certain way, and most times we may feel nothing. Or so we think. It is actually us not being aware of the depth and quality of our energy and emotions. It’s okay to not have words and frankly it is quite impossible to express how you feel every moment. Its not about expression though. It is about experiencing yourself.

Lot of times we focus on your thoughts and its no surprise we get so lost! Our thoughts are faster than supersonic light and it is impossible to catch hold of it. So it’s easier to be aware of our feelings.

Binging on the new Netflix series , laughing to cat videos, scrolling the never ending social media feeds, watching movies, listening to music, enjoying delicious food, being with friends — all this can really be great sources for taking us to a wonder land and can give temporary relaxation and fun.

Lot of times, we pursue a lot of above activities to just distract ourselves from how we truly feel.

Do these activities really change how we feel in that particular moment? I believe no. At best, we can distance our awareness of how we feel. And reality does come back, just like a Monday after every weekend!!

If you are still reading, and want to know how to be more aware. I guess — everyone can find their own way and it is a journey of self discovery. Something that can work, is just being aware of our breath. Is it quick or slow , is it deep or shallow, is it rhythmic or irregular and this can actually guide us how as to how we are feeling. This is not some mumbo jumbo — lot of meditations are all about focusing on our breath.

Some Q&A:

1) Why should we be aware of how we feel? (Well, before we can be happy, shouldn’t we be aware of how we feel currently?!)

2) What changes once we are aware? Do we become the Buddah? :) (Well, actually no. But you take the first step.)

3) Can we change our feeling? Can we consciously choose to feel more happy? (Well, there are whole industries flourishing to help us feel happy. But let us start with the 1st step.)

More on this later. For now, lets just take a moment and breathe. :)

A for Awareness was originally published in RahulShares on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.