Humayun: A Reappraisal

Abstract

The Hindu magazine of Sunday, March 12, 2023 carried a fascinating interview with Austrian historian Ebba Koch (EK), the author of The Planetary King: Humayun Padshah, Inventor and Visionary on the Mughal Throne. After reading the interview, I was tempted to re-read the book Mediaeval India by Stanley Lane-Poole (SL-P) that I had first come across in 1967-68, while preparing for the civil services examination. Having done that, I was struck by how two historians – one covering a thousand-year span encompassing several dynasties and rulers and another focusing on one king – can come up with two completely contrasting depictions of the same person.

Humayun (1508-1556)

Humayun is the regal name of Mirza Nasir-ud-Din Muhammad, the son of Babar who succeeded him in 1530 as the second Mughal king of India. He ruled from 1530 to 1540 and again from 1555 to 1556. Humayun was never the undisputed monarch for he had to contend with opposition from his brother Kamran in Afghanistan, Bahadur Shah in Gujarat and Sher Shah Suri in Bihar. Sher Shah Suri defeated him at Chausa and Kannauj in 1539 and 1540. Humayun went into exile, wandering through Sind to reach Iran in 1544. With the help of the Shah of Iran, he reconquered Kandahar in 1545 and Kabul finally in 1550. Civil wars among the descendants of Sher Shah enabled Humayun to capture Lahore in early 1555 and, after defeating the governor of the Punjab at Sirhind, he recovered Delhi and Agra in July 1555. The next year, Humayun was fatally injured when he fell down the staircase of his library. His tomb in Delhi, built by Akbar several years after his death, is the first of the great Mughal architectural masterpieces; it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1993.

Stanley Lane-Poole’s Account

Book III of Medieval India deals with the Moghul Empire (1326-1764). Chapter IX “The Ebb of the Tide” (pages 163-177) devoted to Humayun comes between Chapter VIII “The Coming of the Moghuls” (pages 141-162) about the Emperor Babar and Chapter X “The United Empire” on Akbar, Chapter XI on “Akbar’s Reforms” and Chapter XII on “The Great Moghul” (pages 178-244).

Humayun’s Personality

Chapter IX opens with the doting father’s Babar’s praise for Humayun. SL-P then introduces Humayun to his readers thus:

“The young prince was indeed a gallant and loveable fellow, courteous, witty, and accomplished as his father, warm-hearted and emotional, almost quixotic in his notions of honour and magnanimity, personally brave – as indeed were all the princes of his house – and capable of great energy on occasions. But he lacked character and resolution. He was incapable of sustained effort, and after a moment of triumph would bury himself in his harim and dream away the precious hours in the opium-eater’s paradise whilst his enemies were thundering at the gate. Naturally kind, he forgave when he should have punished; light-hearted and sociable, he revelled at the table when he ought to have been in the saddle. His character attracts but never dominates. In private life he might have been a delightful companion and a staunch friend; his virtues were Christian, and his whole life was that of a gentleman. But as a king he was a failure. His name means ‘fortunate’ and never was an unlucky sovereign more miscalled.”

Humayun, the Comeback Kid that quite wasn’t

In his twenty-six years of rule, Humayun was at the helm of affairs only during the first ten and the last one year. He was in exile during the rest of the time. SL-P gives a rather unflattering account of the repeated military failures of Humayun in all the three theatres of war. Humayun finally recaptured Delhi and Agra in 1555 to get down to the task of organising the recovered kingdom. But there was a tragedy waiting. In the words of SL-P,

“It seemed as if his luck had turned at last. But nothing ever went well for long with this unfortunate monarch. Scarcely had he enjoyed his throne at Delhi for six months when he slipped down the polished steps of his palace, and died in his forty-ninth year (Jan.23, 1556). His end was of a piece with his character. If there was a possibility of falling, Humayun was not the man to miss it. He tumbled through life, and he tumbled out of it.”

For SL-P, that summed up Humayun’s life which was the ebb of the tide – the title of the chapter!

Ebba Koch’s Interview

Ziya Us Salam of the Hindu sets the right tone for the interview with these words:

“Neither mourned, nor remembered by millions, Humayun is almost the forgotten Mughal emperor. Sandwiched between Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty, and Akbar, the greatest Mughal emperor, Humayun cuts a forlorn figure. Deeply interested in astronomy and astrology, he was a man of many oddities, and deserves more than the cursory attention that has been his fate in school textbooks.”

A few of the leading questions by Ziya and answers by EK:

Q: The period from 1530 to 1556 is almost like a vacuum in time for students of history with Humayun being mentioned only fleetingly. How does one talk of a man who lost his empire yet managed to come back to power?

A: “Humayun is not considered a great warrior even though historians have studied his battles and increasingly rehabilitated him as a general. But if we combine this aspect of the monarch with his intellectual persona, it implies enlarging the world of Timurid-Mughal princes and including within an extraordinary group of educated and gifted savants who were also diplomats, mathematicians, astronomers, astrologers and generals. Humayun did not conform to the established notions of kingship, he was a free thinker and broke social conventions. The originality of his thinking and his inventions made it difficult for future generations to understand him and thus they preferred to ignore Humayun.”

Q: Has there been a monarch in Indian history to rival Humayun’s love for astronomy and astrology?

A: “I can’t think of any ruler with Humayun’s knowledge and interest in astronomy and astrology. Humayun had the best scientists to advise him. The scholar Muslih al-Din al-Lari from Shiraz was at Humayun’s court in the 1530s; he wrote on cosmological concepts which would have been of interest to the padshah. A special favourite of Humayun’s was Maulana Nur al-Din Tarkhan from Jam in Khurasan, who was distinguished for his knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, and the use of the astrolabe. Abu’l Fazl mentions the Hindu astronomer or astrologer Maulana Chand, who had ‘great skill in and knowledge of the astrolabe and the details of the star catalogues and casting horoscopes’...”

“Other scholars such as Shaikh Abu’l Qasim Astrabadi and Maulana Ilyas al-Ardabili, with whom Humayun studied astronomy and mathematics, joined his court in Kabul. Humayun himself wrote scientific treatises and is credited with a mathematical text for his on Akbar. Jahangir was proud to own a manuscript by his grandfather which contained an ‘introduction to the science of astronomy and some other unusual matters, most of which he had experimented with, found to be true, and recorded therein’. When Humayun returned to India, he planned to construct an observatory.”

(Astrolabe is “an instrument used to make astronomical measurements, typically of the altitudes of celestial bodies, and in navigation for calculating latitude, before the development of the sextant.”)

Q: Will Mughal history be complete without Humayun?

A: “Humayun is the most intriguing and thought-provoking ruler of the dynasty and if we engage with his personality and ideas, it will shed a new light on the potential of these extraordinary rulers.”

1903 to 2023

SL-P’s classic was first published in 1903 while EK’s book has just been published in the fall of 2022. Hundred and twenty years is a long enough time gap for the traditions and style of writing history to have changed.

SL-P starts he preface to his book with the caveat that “History is always continuous; there can be no ‘fresh start’ and each new period carries on much of what preceded it. In India, as ever in the East, change is so gradual as to be almost imperceptible.” He then goes on to say that “The history of the Mohammedan Period is therefore necessarily more a chronicle of kings and courts, and conquests than of organic or national growth.” To an extent this explains, but does not excuse, his perfunctory disposal of Humayun in 15 pages as compared to Babar and Akbar who get 22 and 67 pages respectively. In contrast, EK’s book is 384 pages long and has 273 photographs.   

The publisher’s blurb describes EK’s book as a “a seminal inquiry into Humayun’s personality and his remarkable cultural achievements” that “restores the second Mughal emperor to his rightful place.” About the book itself, this is what the publisher says:

“Humayun, the son of Babur and the second Mughal ruler, reigned in Agra from 1530 to 1540 and then in Delhi from 1555 to 1556. Until now, his numerous achievements, including winning back the throne of Hindustan, have not been well recorded. Humayun neither wrote an autobiography nor had a historian to glorify him; the eccentric accounts of his historian Khwandamir elude general comprehension.”

“The Planetary King follows Humayun’s travels and campaigns during the political and social disturbances of the early sixteenth century. It delves into Humayun’s extraordinary social and intellectual life; demystifies his magico-scientific world view, draws attention to his deep involvement with literature, poetry, painting, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, occultism and extraordinary inventions; and offers a new analysis of Humayun’s mausoleum as the posthumous sum of his visions and dreams.”

Summing Up

Let me also begin with a caveat. I have not read The Planetary King as it is yet to be widely and affordably available in India. My comments are based on the author’s interview published in the Hindu. Having said that, I would hasten to add that I know enough about the book and its conclusions to compare and contrast it with that of SL-P. In life, no historian’s verdict about a person or an event is final or fatal.

As more scholars undertake further and deeper studies, new perspectives and insights will surely emerge. We only need to have the broadmindedness to grant that the historians in question – SL-P and EK in this case – did not have a personal agenda to be either dismissive or hagiographic about Humayun. All writing about history – past or present – can then be enlightening and uplifting. As the Tamil poet Maruthakasi wrote sixty-five years ago, “அன்னவரெல்லாம் எங்கள் முன்னவர் என உணர”! [Appreciate that all those (historical characters) were our predecessors]. To rephrase what Einstein said of Mahatma Gandhi, generations to come must readily believe that “…such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”

S. Krishna Kumar

30^th March, 2023

Bengaluru

Blog # 60   

PGW, New and Fresh – Part I

Abstract

I re-read Something New by P G Wodehouse (PGW) for the umpteenth time recently. With a little digging, I found out that this novel had been first published in the USA on 3^rd September 1915 and published in the UK as Something Fresh on 16^th September 1915. Though there are some differences between the two, it is basically the same story. For the record, Lord Emsworth, Blandings Castle and its staff are introduced for the first time in this book. They would feature more prominently in PGW’s later novels and short stories.

Savouring Something New in its Kindle avatar last month, I was left in awe and admiration of PGW’s extraordinary ability to conjure up vivid word pictures of not just characters and situations but also locations and the processes at work. Secondly, PGW surprises you every now and then with his keen sense of observation and generalisation. He does this self-deprecatingly, almost as though it would embarrass him to be called an arm-chair philosopher.

In this blog, I use a few passages from the novel to share my appreciation of the master.

The Storyline

The lead characters Ashe Marson and Joan Valentine are fellow-tenants at a lodge on Arundell Street, Leicester Square in London who discover that they are both writers for the Mammoth Publishing Company. Soon, they end up at the Blandings Castle in disguise, Ashe as the valet of the America millionaire Preston Peters and Joan as the maid of his daughter Aline Peters who are the guests of Lord Emsworth at Blandings Castle. Aline is engaged to Freddie Threepwood, the younger son of Lord Emsworth. Just prior to this, Lord Emsworth visits Preston Peters in London to view his collection of scarabs and absent-mindedly pockets a prize exhibit. Peters thinks Emsworth has pinched his prize scarab while the latter thinks that it was a gift. The rest of the complicated story is how Ashe and Joan compete and collaborate to restore the scarab to Peters. In the course of the narrative, we get to meet other Blandings Castle characters like Beach the Butler, Rupert Baxter and even a sister of Lord Emsworth, Lady Ann Warblington. At the conclusion, all the loose ends are tied up with Aline Peters eloping with her true love Horace thus breaking her engagement to Freddie Threepwood and everyone is happy.

Setting the Scene

Most PGW novels start with a delightful description of the place where the story opens. Something New is no exception and begins thus:

“The sunshine of a fair Spring morning fell graciously on London town. Out in Piccadilly, its heartening warmth seemed to infuse into traffic and pedestrians alike a novel jauntiness, so that bus drivers jested and even the lips of chauffeurs uncurled into not unkindly smiles. Policemen whistled at their posts, clerks on the way to work; beggars approached the task of trying to persuade perfect strangers to bear the burden of their maintenance with that optimistic vim which makes all the difference. It was one of those happy mornings.”

You just have to read the text and you straightaway visualise the scene of vehicular traffic and pedestrians passing by. PGW then takes you right down to the building complex where the action is about to begin.

“In shape, Arundell Street is exactly like one of those flat stone jars in which Italian wine of the cheaper sort is stored. The narrow neck that leads off Leicester Square opens abruptly into a small court. Hotels occupy two sides of this; the third is at present given up to rooming houses for the impecunious. These are always going to be pulled down in the name of progress to make room for another hotel, but they never do meet with that fate; and as they stand now so will they in all probability stand for generations to come.”

Even hundred years after those lines were written, readers can identify many similar properties in various parts of the world. Such is the power of PGW’s light-handed prose!      

Introducing the Characters

Though most of the novels of PGW have a love interest, that may not be the focus of the plot. Something New is a love story too, but with plenty of side action. PGW is never in a rush to introduce his main protagonists all at once.  He unveils them in stages, revealing one aspect of their personality at a time. Readers enjoy this layered construction of the characters and are able to identify with their trials and tribulations.

The male lead Ashe Marson is described as “a tall, well-built, fit-looking young man, with a clear eye and a strong chin;” But his counterpart Joan Valentine is seen only through Ashe’s eyes: “The Spring sunshine played on her bright blue eyes, fixed on his flannelled and sweatered person with a fascinated amusement.”

Their first encounter begins awkwardly. Having laughed at him for the contortions he goes through while exercising, she drops in to apologise, only to discover that they are both hard-up writers working for the same publisher – “comrades in misfortune – fellow serfs” as Ashe describes it. During this interaction, Ashe observes that “She carried herself in an unconventional situation with an unstudied self-confidence that he could not sufficiently admire.” Discovering that Ashe is a loose end career-wise, she urges him to be adventurous and try something new. “You are absolutely wonderful!’” said Ashe. You are a human correspondence course in efficiency…. You would galvanize a jellyfish.” Joan demurs “I’m not setting myself up as a shining example; but I do like action and hate stagnation.”      

Good looks are important to PGW but they are not everything. His male and female leads have character and spirit. We see that clearly in the space of these few pages.

This being the debut novel of Clarence, the Earl of Emsworth, it would be unfair not to look at how PGW introduces him. Here are a few paras from the early chapters, not necessarily in the sequential order.

“The Earl of Emsworth was so constituted that no man or thing really had the power to trouble him deeply.”

“He was as completely happy as only a fluffy-minded old man with excellent health and a large income can be.”

“Worrying indeed, seemed to be the twentieth-century speciality. Lord Emsworth never worried. Nature had equipped him with a mind so admirably constructed for withstanding the disagreeableness of life that if an unpleasant thought entered it, it passed out again a moment later. Except for a few of life’s fundamental facts, such as that is check book was in the right-hand top drawer of his desk; that the Honorable Freddie Threepwood was a young idiot who required perpetual restraint; and that when in doubt about anything he had merely to apply to his secretary Rupert Baxter – except for these basic things, he never remembered anything for more than a few minutes.”

“His was a life that lacked, perhaps, the sublime emotions which raise man to the level of the gods; but undeniably it was an extremely happy man. He never experienced the thrill of ambition fulfilled; but, on the other hand, he never knew the agony of ambition frustrated. His name, when he dies, would not live forever in England’s annals; he was spared the pain of worrying about this by the fact that he had no desire to live forever in England’s annals. He was possibly as nearly contented as a human being could be in this century of alarms and excursions.”

Among the readers of PGW, the popular perception of Emsworth is that of an eccentric Lord browbeaten by his family and staff, who escapes from them by raising a prize-winning sow, the Empress of Blandings. But PGW paints a far more nuanced and empathetic portrait. Emsworth is not a fat-head as he was called at Eton but one who was so “constituted” by nature that nothing disagreeable entered it to bother him. The last para above is PGW’s generic defence of the unambitious, happy person who just wants to be left alone to his simple pleasures. All of us have met many such people in real life. It is to PGW’s credit that he gives you a caricature of a character like Lord Emsworth but subtly encourages you to look beyond the obvious and admire people of such genial temperament.                     

Wanted Column Applicants and the Selection Process

Most of us are familiar with Wanted Columns in newspapers, particularly the Sunday editions. This was till recently the default mode through which potential employers sought out promising employees. These days, campus hiring and outsourcing of human resources have diminished the usefulness of this mechanism but I still believe that a lot of recruitment in the less organised sectors happens through the screening of those who apply for job ads in the Wanted Columns.

Even those who have not had the experience of responding to Wanted Columns will have friends and family who will have gone through the grind. To that extent, this is a global practice that people can relate to. Nobody can describe it better than PGW in the following words:

“The Wanted Column of the morning newspaper is a sort of dredger, which churns up strange creatures from the mud of London’s underworld. Only in response to the dredger’s operations do they come to the surface in such numbers as to be noticeable, for as a rule they are of solitary habit and shun company; but when they do come, they bring with them something of the horror of the depths.

It is the saddest spectacle in the world – that of the crowd collected by a Wanted advertisement. They are so palpably not wanted by anyone for any purpose whatsoever; yet every time they gather together with a sort of hopeful hopelessness. What they were originally – the units of these collections – Heaven knows. Fate has battered out of them every trace of individuality. Each now is exactly like his neighbour – no worse, no better.”

At a superficial level, it may appear that PGW is unsympathetic or callous. But writing this over a century ago, has he not captured for eternity the pathos of this iniquitous process? After letting us know that applicants are being interviewed by an anonymous person sitting behind the door with Mr. Boole inscribed on its ground glass in the gloomy offices of Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole, PGW describes the charade thus:

“That they (“these derelicts”) were failing was plain. Scarcely had one scarred victim of London unkindness passed through before the bell would ring; the office boy, who, in the intervals of frowning sternly on the throng, as much as to say that he would stand no nonsense, would cry, “Next!” and another dull-eyed wreck would drift through, to be followed a moment later by yet another. The one fact at present ascertainable concerning the unknown searcher for reckless young me of good appearance was that he appeared to be possessed of considerable decision of character, a man who did not take long to make up his mind. He was rejecting applicants now at the rate of two a minute.”

PGW completes the picture by describing the office in these words:

“The room assigned by the firm to their Mr, Boole for his personal use was a small and dingy compartment, redolent of that atmosphere of desolation which lawyers alone know how to achieve. It gave the impression of not having been swept since the foundation of the firm in 1786. There was one small window, covered with grime. It was one of those windows you see only in lawyers’ offices. Possibly some reckless Mainprice or hare-brained Boole had opened it in a fit of mad excitement induced by the news of the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, and had been instantly expelled from the firm. Since then, no one had dared to tamper with it.”

Anyone who has been to the offices of senior advocates in any major city of India or anywhere in the world would recognise the setting and would admit that no one could have given a better word-sketch of these premises than PGW. The way he brings in chronology to give us an idea of the antiquity of the building is just amazing – an uneventful year like 1786 juxtaposed with the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. While on this, PGW also gives you a comic insight into how the law firm might have dealt with a partner who had dared to open a window and let in some fresh air! This is the same genius that lets PGW use the winners of horse races to jog the memory of Galahad and Uncle Fred to remember the year of the events in their lives!

Conclusion

At over two thousand, this blog has overshot my self-imposed word limit and I have discussed only five out of the eleven chapters of the book. So, the rest of Something New will spill over to Part II or even Part III. Such is the seductive power of PGW’s sparkling prose that you want to savour it like champagne rather than gulp it down like beer!

S. Krishna Kumar

24^th March 2023

Bengaluru Blog # 59       

I have since published Parts II and III of this blog. For the sake of convenience, I am giving the links to these blogs here below: https://kaykay46.wordpress.com/2023/04/14/pgw-new-and-fresh-part-ii/ and https://kaykay46.wordpress.com/2023/04/29/pgw-new-and-fresh-part-iii/. My thanks to Ashok Bhatia for the suggestion.

S. Krishna Kumar

7th May 2023  

A Perfect Evening

The Occasion

Abhijit Sengupta, a ‘Bangali chhokra’ and Ambika Gopalakrishnan, a ‘Madrasi chhokri’ had fallen head over heels in love with each other while pursuing their MA in Delhi University. During courtship, it is not known how often he declared “Karun Pyaar Ko Namaskaram” and she responded “Mujhe Tumse Pyaram”, as in the old Kishore-Asha duet. They got married on 11^th March, 1973 in New Delhi, just months after Abhijit had joined the IAS and was allotted to the then state of Mysore. Yesterday, was their Golden Wedding Anniversary. Poile is now the widely-respected author and playwright. He has managed to live down his Stephanian nickname of Gabby to become good old Abhijit. To celebrate the landmark anniversary, they had invited a few friends over for dinner at Garden Grove, Bangalore Club.

The Setting

Garden Grove turned out to be a compact alcove of a lawn running round the rear of the Club, with easy access from the parking lot there. Like me, a few other guests also discovered its existence only yesterday. The fact that the Grove was linear in shape meant that as the guests came in, a natural flow was automatically created. Poile looked gorgeous in her red-pink saree as she stood at the entrance welcoming the arriving invitees. A relaxed Abhijit was further ahead interacting with guests. Their daughter Anasuya had surprised them by flying in that morning from London. Ever her ebullient self, she was the undesignated MC of the night. She was also busy taking polaroid pictures of the guests which her friend Gita was helping to stick in an album where the guests could leave their comments. An outdoor bar had been set up and short-eats were in steady supply from the club side. The weather on the Bangalore spring night was made-to-order and all of us felt comfortable in whatever light/warm clothing we had chosen to wear. Guests stood around in small groups and chatted. Others sat around circular tables on which tree twigs and flower pieces kept falling gently through the night.

Our Friendship

Vilasini and I have been good friends of Poile and Abhijit for over fifty years. Abhijit succeeded me as Deputy Secretary (Budget & Resources) in June 1977 when I moved to Bellary as Deputy Commissioner. I was more than happy to pass on whatever ‘know-how’ I had picked up on the job. I moved to Delhi in 1981 and Abhijit soon followed. We were neighbours in Pandara Road. Alo and Aditya were the same age as our sons Arun and Deepak. Everyone celebrated everyone else’s birthday and it was fun to see the children grow up together. When I did my MPA at Harvard University in 1984-85, Abhijit was at Ottawa for his Masters under the Pearson Fellowship. Our families met at Boston for a few days. In 2007-08, Abhijit was Secretary (Culture) in Delhi and I was Adviser to the Governor of Karnataka. At his request, I chaired a few meetings in his presence that helped iron out long-pending issues and paved the way for opening the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore in early 2009. During this long association, we had got to know Poile’s parents also quite well. Her mother and my mother had an Ernakulam connection that they would discuss when they met. Early on, we noticed that Poile had become fluent in Bengali. I am afraid that I have to record that even to this day, Abhijit cannot go beyond “Ganga snanm aachhaa?” on Deepavali mornings!      

The Guests

They included service colleagues of Abhijit as well as leading lights from the theatre and arts world. Everyone was happy to see the familiar faces of old friends after intervening years of the pandemic. Bipul and Teresa Bhattacharya were there as also Sunder and Lizzie Thomas. I was happy to catch up with V Balasubramanian (Balu) after a very long time. Sisir and Malati Das were there. It was nice to exchange a few words with Sisir whose irrepressible humour is still intact. Poppy and Vinay Kumar had come as also Lakshmi Venkatachalam, Sridharan, Upendra Tripathy, Lukose Vallathrai and ISN Prasad. Shoba Nambisan was there with her sister Asha. Uma-Mahadevan and her husband Dasgupta made a brief appearance before rushing off coincidentally to another Sengupta wedding anniversary, a silver this time!

Conversation among colleagues was free-wheeling. Sunder and I talked about a recent Noam Chomsky interview where he rubbishes Chat GPT as ‘hitech plagiarism’ that is a threat rather to than a tool of education. Balu told me about the good response to his book which will see a Kannada version soon and about his talk to probationers at Mussoorie on “Ethics for Administrators”.  It was good to know that Sridharan is back in Bangalore after his term as the first Chairman of the National Financial reporting Authority set up in 2018. Sridharan complimented ISN on preparing fourteen budgets of the Government of Karnataka, beating the record of Mr. Vithal in the undivided Andhra Pradesh. ISN shared the success story of the rural gram panchayat library project in Karnataka that had been led by Uma-Mahadevan. She thanked ISN for his support and said that even common people in remote villages are now coming forward to donate books to these libraries.

ISN said that contrary to widely-prevalent perception, Ministers are not averse to bureaucrats recording their views and suggestions clearly on the file, whereafter in the Cabinet, they decide to go ahead with whatever they want to do. We discussed how the higher judiciary which is quick to pull up senior officers for dereliction of duty is hesitant to lock horns with the political executive even against flagrant violations of fundamental rights. We noted how Legislature Committees go after bureaucrats even when they know that it is a Minister who was responsible for a wrong decision.

My mind went back to the 1970s when some of us younger officers would meet in the Cubbon Part office of the Chief Electoral Officer and discuss a book or issues of current interest. One matter that is still fresh in my recollection from then is the decision of Justice Krishna Iyer on 24^th June, 1975 to grant a conditional stay to Indira Gandhi who had been unseated as the Prime Minister of India by the Allahabad High Court, twelve days earlier. It felt good to be transported back to a different space and time where we could discuss issues without getting bogged down by personalities. Or bugged by the traffic woes of Bangalore. Balu who used coordinate the meetings in those days promised that he would revive such discussions in the new ARI premises. I am sure that at the other tables too, the chit chat would have been as relaxed and friendly.

The Speeches

Going first, Bipul said how the Sengupta family of which every member was devoted to one or the other ‘elevated’ art form, deserved a collective Doctorate for their outstanding achievements. This sentiment was echoed by Malati Das who knew Abhijit and Poile from their college days. She pointed out how, as a “Made For Each Other” couple, the two had worked to build each other’s strengths and collaborated on their books and plays. Upendra Tripathy thanked Abhijit and Poile for having taken extraordinary care of him as a probationer and built him up with the right values. Kirthana Kumar acknowledged the debt she owed to Poile as playwright and Abhijit as director and urged everyone to read Poile’s books. Arundati Raja recalled the happy days when they were busy with the production of their plays and their children virtually grew up backstage. Ashish spoke about how, through the play A Map of the World, Abhijit had drawn him and his wife Munira back to the theatre. He also acknowledged that Poile and Abhijit had done babysitting for their son Mikhail who is now a theatre actor based in London.

Overall

It is rarely that the Golden Wedding Anniversary of a Perfect Couple ends up as a tribute to a Perfect Family. It is rarer still that the celebration planned by the couple with a select list of guests and a lovely location succeeds beyond expectations to become a memorable instance of “the feast of reason and the flow of soul”.

Thank you, Poile, Abhijit, Alo and Aditya (in absentia)! I am booking a place for Vilasini and myself at the celebration of all your future landmark wedding anniversaries!

S. Krishna Kumar

12^th March 2023

Bengaluru

Blog # 58

Pitching In

Synopsis

Australia won the third cricket test against India at Indore by nine wickets a few days ago. The five-day match ended in less than half the allotted time. It is widely believed that India deliberately prepared a turning track for this match so as to bolster their chances of making it to the WTC finals in June 2023. However, they were beaten in their own game by the Aussie spinners. “Apne Hi Jaal Mein Phasat Jaat” as Kishore Kumar sings memorably in Padosan! In such manipulated games, can one team be said to have won and the other lost, fair and square? The answer may well be that it was the game of cricket that lost out! Let me ‘pitch in’ with some ideas on how ICC can attempt to remedy the current unsatisfactory situation.

“Day 4 Pitch on Day 1”

At the toss, commentator Sanjay Manjrekar pointed out that we may well have a day 4 pitch on day 1. This turned out to be very prescient as dust was kicking up from the very first over and there was uneven bounce as well. 14 wickets fell on the first day, 16 on the second day and the match was over well before lunch on the third day. Is this fair to the game and to the fans? Consider these facts. Only 189 overs were bowled in the match, which is but 42% of a possible maximum of 450. Together, spinners on both sides bowled 87% of the overs and got 87% of the wickets. India opened its bowling in both innings with Ashwin and Jadeja. Green and Siraj did not get to bowl a single over in the second innings. Does all this not make a mockery of test match cricket?   

Extant ICC Rules and Regulations

The ICC website lists its rules and regulations. In matters relating to the size of the cricket field and the dimensions of the pitch, the regulations, going back in some cases to the Code of 1744, are very specific. However, as far as pitches are concerned, the regulatory stance of ICC appears to be one of post-match reporting and rating rather than a proactive laying down of standards. Pitches and outfields are marked after the match by the Match Referee and the rating is given to the ICC. The ratings are Very Good, Good, Average, Below Average, Poor or Unfit. ICC shares the ratings with the Host Cricket Board for their future guidance.

The Indore Pitch  

The Indore pitch has been rated ‘poor’ by the ICC and India has been handed three demerit points. Chris Broad, the ICC  Match Referee said “The pitch, which was very dry, did not provide a balance between bat and ball, favouring spinners from the start. The fifth ball of the match broke through the pitch surface and continued to occasionally break the surface providing little or no seam movement and there was excessive and uneven bounce throughout the match.” Interestingly, the pitches for the earlier two tests at Nagpur and New Delhi had been rated as ‘average’.

Defending the Indefensible

Captain Rohit Sharma has stoutly defended the preparation of pitches in India. “When the series starts, we decide what kind of pitches we’ve got to play on. This was everyone’s call to play on such pitches. I don’t think we are putting pressure on our own batters”, “Honestly speaking, these are the kind of pitches we want to play on. This is our strength, so when you’re playing at your home, you always play to your strength, not worry about what people outside are talking about” and “When we win, everything looks good. Nobody talks about batting. When we lose, these things come out.” are some of his statements reported in the media.  

The batting coach of India, Vikram Rathour has reportedly said “With the WTC points at stake, there is pressure to win home games. So, there is nothing wrong in preparing such wickets and making best use of home conditions to win. But these pitches are also a double-edged sword.”

Sunil Gavaskar is critical of the ‘poor’ rating given to the Indore pitch and feels that the rating of ‘Below Average’ given to the Gabba for the match between Australia and South Africa in December 2022 would have been more appropriate.

Mark Taylor disagrees pointing out that at the Gabba, the groundman got it wrong and left too much grass which didn’t favour either side. “I don’t think there was any skulduggery going on at the Gabba. I think with Indore, I hope I can say the same thing there, but what happened there, the pitch was so poorly prepared it actually made the game a bit more of a lottery, which didn’t favour India at all,” Taylor said. “It probably brought Australia’s spin bowlers into the game a lot more than they (India) thought it was going to.”         

Revamping the Regulations

It is seen that Home Boards tend to prepare the pitches according to the strength of their teams. Given this and given the paramount need to make test matches a fair contest between bat and ball, should the ICC not tighten the regulations? Here are some suggestions:

1.      Instead of a mere post-mortem of the pitch and outfield after the test match, ICC must lay down the minimum standards for preparing the pitch. This must cover parameters like moisture and smoothness on day 1, the permissible levels of wear and tear on subsequent days, etc. The Home Board can certainly take the call as to whether black or red soil will be used, the extent of grass cover, etc. But within that a test match pitch must be guaranteed to last for five days, if required with normal day-to-day deterioration as the match progresses;

2.      The toss must be preceded by a joint inspection by the two captains, referees and the ICC match referee to certify that the pitch, prima facie, appears to conform to the ICC standards as outlined above. Without this, the toss must not be proceeded with;

3.      This pre-match certification must be combined with the existing post -match rating system. The rating should be widely shared on the websites of ICC and the Host Board in the interest of greater transparency and improved credibility of all concerned.

4.      Shifting of test match venues must be disallowed. Venues for test matches with touring teams must be proposed well in advance and frozen, keeping in view the normal local climate/weather conditions at that time of the year. The shifting of the third test from Dharamsala to Indore on the excuse that the harsh winter meant insufficient ‘grass density’ there did not convince many people. The two teams could well have inspected the pitch and factored in the grass cover or lack of it while picking their playing elevens. That may have led to a more even contest than the one we got to witness in Indore.

Hands-on versus Hands-off Approach

Cricket, in all its three formats, has become a high-stakes sport all over the world. It is time that the ICC revisits its stance on some of the under-regulated aspects of the game in the interest of cricket itself. A few Home Boards may bristle at some of the suggestions made above. But in a multi-billion $ international sport, there must be little scope for narrow national interests to come in the way of global and orderly regulation of the game. We can and must move towards an ICC-mandated dispensation that guarantees fairer outcomes in test matches, particularly and takes gambling on the pitch out of the equation. Cricket is a professional and competitive sport. It is unprofessional for Home Boards, captains, coaches and players to think that they have a right to tilt pitch preparation in their own favour and that this is acceptable since every country does it. It is time for ICC to step in, persuade member Boards to ditch the “Hamam mein sab nange hain” attitude and bring a fairer order amidst all the chaos.

I conclude with a line from the dialogue of the film Singham:  

Galat kya hai yeh jaanne se koi farak nahi padta …

Galat ko sahi karne se farak padta hai!

S. Krishna Kumar

Bengaluru

5^th March 2023

Blog # 57