Right to abortion, beyond Dubai’s glitter, Damodar Mauzo’s stories and more  

Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.

Welcome to this edition of  The Hindu on Books Newsletter.

With the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the landmark 1973  Roe v. Wade decision that had enshrined a woman’s right to abortion, we turn to a handful of books which trace the long history of the reproductive rights debate. In her book,  Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Gloria Steinem goes into the crux of the matter when she writes that the goal of women activists has always been to fight for “the right to have children in safety, as well as the right to decide when and whether to have children.” The fight will continue, she points out, as long as there are attempts to “re-criminalise or terrorise it [right to a woman’s body] out of existence.” How did  Roe become a political symbol for actors on the left and right of social movement struggles? Mary Ziegler, in her 2015 book,  After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate, gives an account of the cultural and political responses to the landmark 1973 ruling in the decade that followed, and it also explains why it is such a divisive issue.  Joshua Prager profiles Norma McCorvey and her battle to seek abortion in Texas in 1969, when it was banned in  The Family Roe.  The pseudonym picked for Norma was Jane Roe and that’s how the case came to be known as Roe v. Wade (after the defendant and district attorney Henry Wade in the case). Texas is one of the 13 states which will move quickly to re-issue bans on abortion after the overturning of  Roe. Are reproduction rights connected to politics? In her detailed examination in  Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India, Mytheli Sreenivas points out that from as early as the 1870s to the 1970s concerns about reproduction surfaced within a range of political questions – “around poverty and survival, migration and claims of sovereignty, normative heterosexuality and drives for development.” 

In reviews, we read the stories of Damodar Mauzo in translation, a veteran diplomat’s narrative on the complex undercurrents in West Asia, a book on India’s role in Bangladesh’s liberation and more. We also talk to Sudha G. Tilak about translating Karichan Kunju’s  Pasitha Manidam, said to be the first Tamil novel with openly gay characters. 

West Asia is a strategically critical region faced with confrontation and conflict amid growing economic prosperity.  In his latest book,  West Asia at War (HarperCollins), Talmiz Ahmad, a former ambassador, brings out the diverse political, religious, military, socio-economic and cultural forces shaping the region. In his review, Dammu Ravi says that Ahmad’s long diplomatic career with postings there and wide-angled view from headquarters gave him uncommon insights which he pieces together in this book that provide a rare non-Western narrative of complex undercurrents. “The massive oil revenues strengthened authoritarian regimes, whose economic control often conflated with peoples’ livelihood issues. With about 66% of 400 million Arabs redundantly poor and 10% controlling 61% of the wealth, the region is one of the most unequal in the world. Beyond the dazzle of Dubai, Doha and Riyadh, the author observes, is pervasive poverty, inequality and injustice that is alienating people and making them susceptible to fundamentalism, drugs, terrorism, extremism etc., further fuelling tensions within.” Ahmad also looks closely at the evolution of India’s policy towards West Asia. “India’s de-hyphenation of its relations between Palestine and Israel is pragmatic as well as in sync with the changing dynamics in the region. Closer ties with Israel also served to get the backing of the U.S. on several fronts. The strategic depth that our relations attained is attributed to Prime Minister Modi, who took a personal interest through frequent travels to the region to build solid economic partnerships as well as secure the interests of our strong resident community.”

Talmiz Ahmad’s  West Asia at War review: Beyond Dubai’s riches

Damodar Mauzo won the Jnanpith Award last year, prompting intense celebrations not only in his home State Goa but also in Maharashtra, where the 77-year-old litterateur is being hailed as an icon of potential reconciliation after a century of tensions, resentment and hostility between Konkani and Marathi intellectual cultures. The fact that he celebrates Goa’s richly pluralistic heritage in his writing is evident throughout  The Wait: And Other Stories (Vintage Books), translated by Xavier Cota. In his review, Vivek Menezes writes in the stories, there’s “his characteristic preternatural deftness in illuminating the inner lives of an extensive constellation of characters: insiders, newcomers, children and the elderly, labourers, middle-class strivers, the newly rich and so forth.” Menezes says that in every possible way, Mauzo is an exemplar of Goa’s fluid cultural identity, marked by an unabashed pluralistic universalism that persists despite threats and depredations.     

Review of ‘The Wait: And Other Stories’ by Damodar Mauzo: People like us