Three reviews from Syed Badrul Ahsan
No wisdom, but nuggets anyway . . .
4 December 2009, 17:00 PM
Edward Kennedy's death a few months ago was cause for the celebration, in a manner of speaking, of a dynasty that yet exercises a hold on the public imagination. It does not really matter that the dynasty, as it used to be, does not happen to be there any more. That the mystique of the Kennedys has become frayed over the years is no more in question. But, again, there is that certain reawakening of sensibilities, of memories, every time the Kennedys are mentioned. That explains the grandeur of Edward Kennedy's funeral. The fact that he was the only Kennedy brother to survive to ripe old age (he was seventy seven when he passed on) did little to stop the flow of a revival of popular interest in the clan. The Obamas and the Clintons and the Bushes and the Carters made sure, through their presence at Kennedy's memorial services in Boston, that the clan was remembered.
And now, in posthumous form, we have Kennedy's memoirs before us. True Compass ought to have come to us when Kennedy was alive; but, as he makes clear early on in the telling of the story, it was fast, oncoming cancer that came in the way. Or perhaps it was a sense in the veteran senator that death needed to be overtaken, in however slight a degree, by his narration of the tale of his life. Make no mistake about it: Kennedy's memoirs are no more profound than the way he had conducted his life right from his youth to his old age. For those ready to be peppered with wisdom by men whose political careers have spanned nearly half a century (Kennedy served in the United States Senate from 1962 till the end of his life), True Compass comes as a bit of a disappointment. But is that surprising? The Kennedys have never been known for their wisdom or acute intelligence. Glamour and wealth have been part of their lives. Yet Edward Kennedy was different from his brothers in that his legislative accomplishments were feats that neither President John Kennedy nor Senator Robert Kennedy, both of whom were driven by thoughts of occupying the White House, could match. Even so, these memoirs will likely leave the reader wondering: where are the philosophical insights one spots in long-serving politicians?
There are none. But there are other nuggets, those that give you a compact as well as complex picture of the evolution of a politician in our times. Ted Kennedy, as he was known, came to occupy his senate seat in 1962, the same that his brother John had held till he was elected to the presidency, when he was only thirty. His rival was the nephew of House Speaker John McCormack. In the course of the campaign, the young McCormack taunted Kennedy about his pedigree: 'If your name had been Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a joke.' The joke would eventually, and tragically, turn out to be a long ride into legislative experience. JFK's assassination would leave the clan shattered. Robert Kennedy was rendered psychologically immobile, as Ted states here. As for himself, he was presiding over the Senate on 22 November 1963 (part of tradition allowing junior senators to be in that position at times) when the news of the assassination was brought to him. Five years later, it was RFK's murder in Los Angeles, moments after he had won the California primary against Eugene McCarthy, that sent Edward Kennedy spinning into a new circle of shock. Suddenly, the baby of the family (Ted was the youngest of Joseph and Rose Kennedy's children) found himself in the position of family guardian. Two widows, Jackie and Ethel, with their children, claimed his attention. More tragedy was to come. Ted's son was to be diagnosed for cancer. His wife Joan, shattered by the two assassinations, was to succumb to drinking problems. The senator himself was nearly to lose his life in a plane crash.
No, do not go looking for gems of wisdom in True Compass. Focus, rather, on the moments Kennedy considers significant in life, those he thinks readers should know about. He is clear about his feelings where RFK's 1968 run for the presidency is concerned: he believed in 1968 that 1972 would have been a better time. Once Robert was dead, his camp followers approached Ted to take up the banner. Edward Kennedy wisely declined. But by early 1969, seeking a specific role for himself, he challenged the long-serving Senator Russell Long for the position of Democratic whip in the Senate. To everyone's surprise, he won. It would turn out to be a pyrrhic victory, seeing that he would lose it two years later --- a direct consequence of Chappaquidick.
Which of course brings up the death of Mary Jo Kopechne soon after Kennedy beat Long. With him at the wheel and Kopechne beside him, Kennedy drove his car into the river, clambered out of it, went home. Meanwhile, Kopechne died in the water. The senator goes to great lengths to give vent to his sorrow about the tragedy and makes no effort, absolutely none, to explain away Kopechne's death. It is obvious that Kennedy has been deeply scarred by the tragedy and yet there appear to be gaps in his narration of it. That it was a criminal act on his part to walk away from the scene of the disaster is a truth he does not acknowledge. It leaves the reader feeling pretty uncomfortable. The tragedy was to ruin Kennedy's chances for the White House. He aged, missed 1972 and then 1976. But then came 1980, when he challenged embattled President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination. It ended in disaster, for both men. Kennedy did not win the nomination, but he wounded Carter enough for the president to be trounced by Ronald Reagan in November of the year.
Wisdom may not be the fundamentals of True Compass. But it is a work which you cannot easily put away. You come away missing its author and his ebullience, despite the very deep flaws that marked his personal and political career.
. . . Voice from a lost era
YOU associate the early history of Pakistan with the life and times of Moulvi Tamizuddin Khan. There was his run-in with the executive branch of the government in the early 1950s, a conflict that could have had a lasting, positive impact on Pakistan's politics had Khan managed to stay the course. He almost did. It was Pakistan's system that did him in. Whatever. The fact remains that Tamizuddin Khan played a pivotal role during that period in trying to uphold constitutional politics in Pakistan. It was a process that proved to be short-lived, for the country had by then been taken over by a cabal of sinister men, led first by Governor General Ghulam Mohammad and then by his successor Iskandar Mirza, individuals determined to sideline politicians and ensure governance by bureaucracy. Ghulam Mohammad and Mirza, be it recalled, were both part of the bureaucracy and were therefore not expected to do any better. Along the way, they were joined by the military, whose spokesman General Ayub Khan was only too happy to keep the political classes at arm's length.
There is little need, at this point, for a new observation of the history of the Pakistan state. It is important, though, to try getting a sense of the politics Tamizuddin Khan pursued throughout his career, of the turmoils he went through in the last decade of his life. But even more critical is the tale of how he made his way to the centre of politics in pre-partition India. It is hard to forget that Khan came from the eastern part of Bengal. And like it, he was pursued by poverty, a condition he was able to overcome through sheer grit and purposefulness. In The Test of Time, his posthumous memoirs brought out by the Tamizuddin Khan Trust, Khan provides readers with detailed insights into the long, difficult trajectory his career took even as he pursued education as a young man in rural Bengal. Tamizuddin Khan, like so many of his generation, is not sure of the precise date of his birth. But, again like others, he is able to piece together the time when he was born from evidence he collects diligently, obviously through family oral tradition. He was born, as 'ascertained from unmistakable evidence', in March 1889. It was, as he takes care to inform readers, in an ancient village named Khankhanapur in the district of Faridpur that his birth took place. There is evident pride in his detailed analyses of the roots he springs from; and in the manner of individuals whose sense of values has always been pretty pronounced, Tamizuddin Khan speaks fondly of the men and women from whom his respect for tradition springs.
Tamizuddin Khan went through a rounded upbringing. And that meant, for him and for others of his generation, something more than formal education. Khan lists all the games he played in childhood --- hadudu, top spinning, gollachhut, tambarri, cricket, football, lathikhela and what have you. It was an era when the young sought to make an impression. As his career was to demonstrate so well, Tamizuddin Khan did make an impression. His interest in the arts, indeed in matters aesthetic, came to underline the course his career was eventually to take. He went into puthi reading, thus making it clear that his connection to his roots was what defined him as an individual. He derived pleasure from witnessing jatra and drama and listening to kavigaan and jarigaan. His interest in science was no less significant. He notes that it was while he was on his summer vacation in 1910 that Halley's Comet made an appearance. He notes that it 'was an awe-inspiring phenomenon invested with a solemn charm.'
Politics drew him to its periphery and then its centre. In this work, he dwells on the historical events, notably the partition of Bengal in 1905, that exercised the minds of Muslims in India. The years moved on and Khan found himself in the thick of political circumstances. Imprisonment came his way. And in the lives of India's Muslims, it was eventually a separate state that would decide their fate.
Moulvi Tamizuddin Khan's life and career came to an end on 10 August 1963. At the time, he was Speaker of the Pakistan National Assembly as constituted by the Ayub Khan regime following the adoption of a new constitution in 1962. Respect for him, for his politics, has never dimmed in the years since his passing. Or since the end of Pakistan in these parts.
. . . Names thrown your way
AMERICAN liberalism was what men like John Kenneth Galbraith personified, especially from the mid-1950s till the end of the 1960s. And of these liberals, one of the best known was Galbraith himself. With his tall, lanky figure, his boundless erudition and his ease with words, Galbraith came forth with ideas that endlessly tested the imaginations of men everywhere, but especially in America. The Affluent Society, The Anatomy of Power, Annals of An Abiding Liberal and A Theory of Price Control are some of the seminal works he remains noted for. His theories relating to the economy, his prognostications on how finance ought to be handled and his overall view of politics as a force for social good have generally been the themes that have inspired thinking among an entire generation of political philosophers. And, along the way, Galbraith has been a diplomat, one of the foremost that liberal America produced in the 1960s. As ambassador to Nehru's India, he did what no one else has been able to do since: he established a relationship of trust between Delhi and Washington.
It is not broad political or economic theory that Galbraith handles in this slim volume. On the contrary, it is easy reading because of the subject --- all the presidents and other individuals he has had occasion to interact with in his long career. Published a decade ago (and that was quite some years before his death), Name-Dropping is essentially an enumeration of the author's assessment of the individuals he comments on. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for Galbraith as also for so many others, was an inspirational figure at a time when the Great Depression laid America low and, later, when war of a magnitude yet unimagined loomed on the horizon. FDR's confidence was of the infectious kind. He never let his physical condition (he was a cripple from the waist down) come in the way of his exercise of leadership. Galbraith speaks of all these. And more. Even with Eleanor around as his powerful spouse, FDR carried on an affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd. In the 1960s, following the publication of a book carrying the details of the president's amorous life, Galbraith asks Alice Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, about the relationship. Longworth shoots back: 'It means nothing. Everyone knows that Franklin was paralysed from the waist down.'
Galbraith's admiration for Eleanor Roosevelt, especially after the latter began to play a more activist role in politics following her husband's death in April 1945, was as equal to, if not more than, the reverence in which he held FDR. And it was natural, then, for him to be allotted the task of convincing her into supporting John F. Kennedy for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1960. Mrs. Roosevelt was no admirer of the Kennedys, especially since Joseph P. Kennedy, FDR's ambassador to Britain, broke with the president over war policy in the early 1940s. Her hostility transferred to the young Kennedys. Galbraith argued that the sins of the fathers ought not to be visited on their sons. It did not work. In late 1959, though, Mrs. Roosevelt was persuaded by Galbraith to have JFK over on a television programme she was compering at the time. The result was satisfying for Galbraith. As he notes, '. . . both participants were interesting, even mildly eloquent.' Eleanor Roosevelt finally endorsed Kennedy for the White House in 1960, once the candidate had come into his own and had successfully created a public image for himself.
Galbraith drops other names. And with that he brings his sophisticated assessments of the people he studies as he courses along. Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Jackie Kennedy, Jawaharlal Nehru, Albert Speer are some of history's remarkable figures he shines the light on. And you journey back to an era that abounded in great ideas and, with the exception of perhaps Speer, great men.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star .
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments