India Books

This book contained some of the inner thoughts of India I never knew about. My parents are from India and I,myself,have been to India a few times.The way the girl grew up is unreadable. This book is so good that words can not express my feelings. The way she grew up and worked herself up to her goal, which was to reach America. That was her goal and her destination. That is what I felt about this book.

"There is very little to eat. Very little to wear. Papa just doesn't get a job. He has no permanent job. Before the leak, he used to work on a boring machine. Now he cannot work on that machine.

"Carbide must be punished. Take them to the police station. Then hit them and then jail them--those Carbide fellows. I can't play. I am weak. My hands and legs ache when I run. I get breathless soon. If I run I fall down immediately."

So said Suresh, an eight-year old student from the city of Bhopal, India, in the aftermath of the December 2-3, 1984 leakage of 80,000 pounds of methyl isocyanate (MIC, an ingredient of the pesticide Sevin) from the Union Carbide plant that killed up to 10,000 overnight. Children have an uncanny sense of truth-telling.

So, too, does the Bhopal Reader, a remarkable and devastating compendium of primary and secondary sources on the disaster. It reprints the charge sheet, arrest warrant, and bail bond for then-Carbide Chair Warren Anderson. Although he was indeed taken to a police station, he was not jailed, and both Mr. Anderson and Union Carbide have been pronounced "absconders" by Indian courts for failing to this day to appear to face charges of culpable homicide, the equivalent of manslaughter in the US. "Those Carbide fellows" have never fully faced the consequences for their role in the disaster, while Suresh (if she survived) and her fellow Bhopal residents live every day with the consequences, which include contaminated water and soil and inadequate medical attention.

The book brings the issue very close to the present, as it also reprints the January 6, 2005 order from the Bhopal Chief Judicial Magistrate asking Dow Chemical (ticker: DOW), which acquired Union Carbide in 2001, to present the absconders. Ward Morehouse, one of the book's editors, is asking Dow the same question today at its annual meeting, appearing as a representative of socially responsible investment (SRI) firm Boston Common Asset Management to read a letter that the company has failed to respond to before now.

The book touches on shareholder activism as the latest in 20 years of activism asking Union Carbide to assume accountability for the disaster. Boston Common submitted a shareholder resolution asking Dow to address the legacy of the Bhopal disaster last year. When it did so again this year, Dow petitioned the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for permission to omit the resolution on technical grounds, according to Lauren Compere, chief administrative officer at Boston Common.

"The resolution was omitted this year because we essentially reversed the supporting statement and the resolve clause--that was it," Ms. Compere told SocialFunds.com. "The SEC ruled that we were asking about future liability which we have no business doing...."

This position of subverting corporate accountability is completely consistent with the tactics presented throughout the book, as Union Carbide and now Dow seek to do the absolute minimum in taking responsibility for the disaster. Through the course of the book, the reader feels a slow accretion of information that makes it impossible to comprehend the current position of Dow's refusal to accept accountability.

The book documents how the tragedy started years before the actual gas leak, as internal Union Carbide documents reveal how the Bhopal plant was inferior to its sister plant in the United States, and how the company was well aware of multiple safety breaches. The company was warned, both internally and externally, of the risk the plant posed to the surrounding population.

"Phosgene gas that was used by Hitler in his gas chambers, and that is used for the production of methyl isocyanate, is stored in a tank in this factory and if that leaks or explodes it will take one to one and half hour for the death of the entire population of the city," wrote Rajkumar Keswani in the October 1, 1982 edition of Rapat Weekly, two years before the disaster.

The book also reprints Union Carbide and Dow documents and explanations, but the companies' attempts to bolster their case against legal liability only serves to increase their moral liability in the reader's eyes (to borrow concepts advanced by SustainAbility in a recent report). One of the most devastating sections in a book filled with sections that brought this reviewer to tears is "Moral orientations to suffering," a 1995 essay by Delhi University professor Veena Das. The essay points out how the aftermath of the disaster essentially re-victimized the victims while absolving Union Carbide of its culpability.

In the end, the strength of the stories related in each of the sections cohere to become something much larger than a book, and more of a catalyst for readers to abandon complacency.

"I guess I am now expected to make my point, elaborate on the meaning of the stories, draw upon their interconnectedness and present a framework that holds them together," writes Satinath Sarangi, another of the book's editors, in an essay reprinted in the text. "That would, however, be straying away from why I really wanted to tell these stories."

"Why I really began telling these stories was to move you, dear reader, to action. Twenty years is much too long and we have had a lot of words," he continues. "No more interpretations, no more words--the point is to stop the medical disaster in Bhopal."

I originally published this review on SocialFunds.com.

Everyone remembers the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. Or at least most people do. Like all baby boomers remember about the JFK assassination or Neil Armstrong's landing on the moon. Exactly like the other two history altering events, news of the disaster hit the headlines all over the world. All those who read, saw or heard about it heaved a sigh of despair. In brief, for the benefit of those who are challenged on their recall abilities, the Bhopal gas tragedy involved the release of Methyl Isocyanate gas from a pesticide manufacturing plant in Bhopal, Central India. Forty tonnes of the poisonous cloud, that was released from the factory settled over the low-lying areas of the city. Within minutes innocent people, living in surrounding shanties and squatter camps, were transported into a lethal gas chamber facing a holocaust. It happened around midnight on December the 2nd, 1984. By sunrise of the 3rd over 2000 people lay dead or dying in homes and on the streets.

Morehouse and Subramanium's book on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy is a well-researched study about the Union Carbide and the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. The book starts with the history of Union Carbide, a company that came to colonial India in 1905. The company started the manufacture of "Eveready Flashlight Batteries" in 1926. "Eveready" and portable lighting became synonymous and was remembered with fondness in households across the cities, towns of villages of India. In 1969 the by now huge multinational corporation started a plant in Bhopal, to manufacture pesticides. By 1983, the company had 14 plants in India manufacturing chemicals, pesticides, batteries and other products. In December 1984, Union Carbide brought permanent darkness to the lives of thousands of residents in Bhopal, maimed and injured several hundred thousands more. The events of that fateful night left a swath of destruction and desolation that has only been rivaled by the nuclear explosions at Hiroshima.

What Morehouse and Subramanium have done is to take us backstage to the events that happened at the plant before the release of the gas, and the response of the various agencies after the disaster. The authors help us get a clearer understanding of what led to the disaster, the chaos and confusion that secondarily led to failure of the relief organizations. Later they explore the tangled web of litigation that followed. The authors critically evaluate the plant and point out the defects in the design of the plant, as well as the failures in the safety devices that led to exothermic chain reaction that caused the accumulation of the large quantities of the poisonous gas, and its final release into the atmosphere.

According to the authors, and this has been substantiated by several other publications, besides the failure of the plant management several other factors compounded the tragedy. Relief measures were botched, disaster sirens not blown, orderly evacuation not planned all leading to chaos and confusion. Later, lack of experience in dealing with mass disasters or knowledge on how to treat the suffering significantly influenced the mortality and morbidity. Political considerations paralyzed the Governments relief efforts while well meaning volunteer efforts were perceived as threats to Governmental stability. The post disaster record keeping and documentation was conducted so haphazardly as to prove worthless. Even today we remain with inadequate scientific evaluation of the disaster to develop preventive scenarios.

In later chapters, the authors describe the jurisdictional battles, the attempts by Union Carbide's Corporate lawyers to disown the subsidiary, transfer the case to India and several other legal maneuverings. The last three chapters answer two important questions (a) Can it happens here in the US? Yes, of course it can happen here, it has happened here at a subliminal level but a major tragedy could strike any chemicals factory in say Thailand or New Jersey, any day. The other question gives very creative information on what can we do to prevent future Bhopal's from happening. The book was written with Subramanium covering the first set of chapters about the situation in India and Morehouse writing the latter half. However, the book reads very seamlessly and has an absorbing narrative. It is eminently readable and extremely thought provoking.

The book is a classic study about the cause and effect of environmental disasters. It is also a clarion call for action by concerned activist groups for legislation on the "Right To Know Laws" about hazardous chemicals that are manufactured, stored or utilized in a community. Despite the numerous reassurances from the chemical manufacturers, occurrence of another Bhopal like tragedy cannot be ruled out with certainty. The authors suggest, preventing a future environmental disaster from happening can only be done by concerned public action, effective legislation and efficient enforcement of safety regulations. As they describe it, the calamity in Bhopal could have been used as an opportunity to revamp the existing imperfections in the hazardous chemicals industry.

Unfortunately the legal maneuvering in the Bhopal case precluded the judiciary from giving the chemical industry a sound warning. Those in the know of the turn of events know that the legal settlement failed in this important aspect, adding insult to injury heaped upon the citizens of Bhopal. Ultimately, the judicial failure in censuring the chemical industry absolved it of responsibility in vaporizing a city. Moreover as it did not serve a punitive warning to Multi-national corporations, it condoned the view that it was okay to place corporate greed above interests of the people and, company bottom line above human dignity. This book eloquently reveals that man really is at the mercy of mammon.

I am not much of a reader but this book simply took my breath away, the author did an excellent work that a thousand writers working for a thousand years could not have possibly realized.

NOT REVIEW:
The book is not available in Bhutan or else in India, though it is said to contian some facts on political turmoil in Bhutan. The author happened to be the close friend of the Third King of Bhutan, so the contents will be invaluable to the reseachers and the Bhutanese historians.

Returning from my first visit to Bhutan in November, 1999, I searched for a book which genuinely captures the beauty and uniqueness of this Himalayan Buddhist kingdom and her people. The combination of Dompnier's stunning photography and thoughtful text are more than I had hoped to find. The format, choice and excellence of pictures and insightful text aptly convey a sense of this very special place. For anyone interested in the iconography of Tibetan Buddhism, learning about a people and culture unlike any other on this planet, or looking for photojournalism at its best about the Himalayas , I highly recommend this book. Personally, it serves me well to keep alive cherished memories of a place I know I will visit again.

BITTER SOIL contains four of Mahasweta Devi's most compelling stories--works which accent her political and economic humanism in ways which will surprise those who think of her as a feminist writer. Three of the stories are available elsewhere, but Ipsita Chanda's excellent translations give readers a fuller experience of the Bengali text's tone than the previous translations do. "Little Ones," which has appeared as "Children," recreates the experience of a kindhearted social worker overwhelmed by the devastation his government has wreaked on the Agaria, a small indigenous tribe. "Seeds," which Mahasweta herself has translated elsewhere as "Paddy Seeds," is even more supple and jagged in Ipsita Chanda's translation than in the author's own fine English. "Seeds" puts readers inside the mind of wily old Dulan Ganju as he slowly transforms from low-caste trickster to activist, avenging the murder of his son. "The Witch," which is also in Kalpana Bardhan's collection, is set near the same Hesadi village as "Seeds." It features the tribal Oraon midwife Sanichari as representative of the way village life should be, and the teacher, Mathur, as the "misfit" who quietly helps villagers abandon superstition. "Salt," which has not been translated previously, uses the trope of a rogue elephant to represent an economic and governmental system which exploits and destroys anyone who tries to work around its inequities. Mahasweta Devi is best known for her harrowing climactic symbols. In the works for which she is most famous in this country, these symbols generally involve rape of an innocent and heroic woman. In the stories in BITTER SOIL, iconography involving fertility and sexual violence applies to male and female protagonists alike. But it is not these multi-level, dread-inspiring icons which most impress me. Rather, it is the moments of subtle conversation, the quicksilver moments where understanding comes so fully in a single word that reasoning looks like intuition. Her primary interests are in the tribal (adivasi) cultures which she portrays in these stories. One warning for American audiences: Mahasweta Devi spares no one; her works were intended to move her Bengali readers to action. If they instead move American readers to pity or smugness, they fail. So pay special attention to the brief appearances of well-meaning bureaucrats and westernized intellectuals. They get an interesting mixture of appreciation and scorn.

Norma Levine's close association with Tai Situ, Rinpoche, one of the highest Tibetan lamas, is used to highlight her examination of the phenomena of ringsel (spontaneously appearing relics), rangjung ("self arisen" rock and bone artifacts), beyul- the "hidden lands" of refuge, the career of Padmasambhava, Tibet's great culture hero, and ter, the teachings hid by Padmasambhava in rock or in the mindstreams of his disciples. Levine takes care to handle these topics with dignified sensitivity, helping us to view these "miracles" as the physical manifestations of blessing/inspiration.

In London twenty-eight years old TV reporter Mia Bhagat remains in shock that her seemingly healthy father committed suicide. The Bengali expatriate uses her work to somewhat ignore her grief. While on an assignment, Mia meets Karna, an instructor at the Purification Journey Brotherhood where men learn how to conquer the female ego. He could have been the model for her father's painting of the Kumbh Mela Festival of the Pitcher.

Mia falls in love with Karna, but her mother orchestrates a marriage for her with cosmetics businessman Vik Ray. Following their nuptials, the pair moves to his home office in New Delhi where she hosts his galas while praying that her Karna will soon come for her.

Although the above description is like the Ganges River, there are several major tributaries not described above that add depth to this insightful look at modern day India through the comparisons between and the interrelationships of a strong cast. Somewhat confused, Mia holds the threads together. Readers will enjoy the focus on materialism vs. spiritualism and heritage vs. globalization that makes BLIND FAITH an interesting glimpse at a changing India.

Harriet Klausner

Ellen Oxfeld's study of the Chinese Hakka community that lives outside of Calcutta in the Dhapa district is a truly insightful and fascinating account of a little-known ethnic enclave. Members of the Hakka community primarily work as leather tanners, but also as beauticians. Immigrants to Calcutta from other Chinese communities work as dentists, restaurant owners, and shoe store owners. The common and fascinating thread between all of these professions is that they are viewed as impure since they deal with human and animal waste, and hence professions in which Hindus cannot participate. These communities are also fascinating because of their motivations for emigrating from their homelands; even though India does not traditionally appeal to immigrants the way the United States does, Calcutta provides unique opportunities for enterprise and has been home to Jewish, Armenian, and other communities throughout its history.

As a young girl who used to frequent Calcutta, I was always fascinated by the Chinese beauticians and shoe-store owners that I would see in my daily activities. Oxfeld's book is invaluable in offering concrete data not only about the history of the Hakka community in Calcutta and Toronto, but also in providing an analysis of leather-working, immigration, and maintaining one's ethnic identity in a foreign land.

A truly fascinating account of one of the world's most mysterious enclave communities, Oxfeld's book provides ethnographers, anthropologists, and lay-people a multi-layered analysis that is both well-written and easy to understand.