Book on Anne Frank betrayal pulled, two polemical plays, Myanmar blind spot and more

Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.

Publishers of The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation have decided to withdraw the book after experts critically evaluated the content and picked holes. The book, written by Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan, had contended that a Jewish man betrayed the hiding place of the Frank family, leading to their deportation to concentration camp. A team of World War II experts and historians discredited the research, saying there was not enough evidence for the “grave accusation”. The Dutch publishers, Ambo Anthos, issued an apology while recalling the book from stores. BBC reported that the book's investigating team had earlier said they stood by their research, saying they never claimed to have uncovered the complete truth: “Our theory is a theory and nothing more,” chief investigator Pieter van Twisk had told Dutch news agency ANP. There is a clamour from Jewish groups urging the English publishers, HarperCollins, to withdraw the book too. Anne Frank had written a diary about her two years in hiding before she died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945. Her posthumously published book, The Diary of Anne Frank, has sold millions of copies.

In reviews, we read a book by an Islam scholar were he implores Muslims to stop deifying received tradition, Saeed Naqvi’s satirical play, a new translation of Utpal Dutt’s trailblazing play, Barricade, in its 50th year, India’s Myanmar strategy, Tagore and Gandhi’s friendship despite differences, and more.

As Islam happens to be the second-largest religion in the world, the unyielding legalism that prevails in Muslim societies is one of the biggest instances of close-mindedness affecting humanity today and scholar Mustafa Akyol, of the US-based Cato Institute, makes this issue the central theme of his passionately written book Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance (Macmillan). In his review, A. Faizur Rahman writes that following in the footsteps of Fazlur Rahman Malik (1919-1988), the great Pakistani hermeneutist of the Koran, Akyol implores Muslims to stop deifying received tradition and undertake a critical study of their religious past. “He takes the reader through the intellectual twists and turns of Islamic history to call for a ‘theology of tolerance’ rooted in the non-judgmental idea of irja wherein the decision about a person’s belief or conduct is left to God.”

Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance review: Theology of tolerance

Eminent historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee delves into the deep bond between Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore in Tagore and Gandhi: Walking Alone, Walking Together (Aleph). In the development of their ideas, writes Mukherjee, it is possible to trace areas of convergence. Both arrived at the conclusion that the building of a new India would have to begin at the village level and that “swaraj would be vacuous unless people had the power to rule their own lives.” Both drew strength from the enduring qualities of Indian culture; both were influenced by western and eastern thinkers; Gandhi was greatly influenced by Leo Tolstoy, John Ruskin and the Jain mystic Raychandbhai. Mukherjee, says K.R.A. Narasiah in his review, emphasises that both of them thought India was a kind of civilisational sponge where many cultures and people met and fused.

Tagore & Gandhi: Walking Alone, Walking Together review: A vision of an inclusive India free from hatred and bigotry

The premise of Saeed Naqvi’s satirical play, The Muslim Vanishes (Penguin Random House), is explosive. What if India, with the second largest population in the world, were to wake up one day to find that all Muslims have disappeared? As absurdities of such a notion mount, the reviewer Sudhanva Deshpande writes that the main interconnection the author wants readers to see is the one between the three sides of the political triangle that has shaped Indian political and social life since Independence and Partition – the Hindu-Muslim relation; the Kashmir question; and India’s relationship with Pakistan. And then there is India’s deep-rooted caste pyramid that structures all aspects of life. The play, says Deshpande, works as polemical literature, but not as theatre. “There are too many characters, many of them popping up only to allow the author a certain point and then disappearing without a trace. The play fails to give its antagonists credible, powerful, believable voices.”