“What does it mean to be a Filipino, and what is a meaningful basis for taking pride in the nation,” asks Gideon Lasco in the introduction to his new book, “The Philippines Is Not a Small Country” (Ateneo de Manila University Press, Quezon City, 2020, 234 pages). “What is our place in the world—and how should we envision a future we can all share?”
Lasco, 34, has demonstrated a gifted writing style, proven not only by a Palanca Award in the Essay in English but in his outspoken, highly opinionated column in the Inquirer, the pithily titled “Second Opinion.” But Lasco is also a medical doctor (Intarmed at the University of the Philippines College of Medicine), research fellow (Ateneo) and an anthropologist (PhD from the University of Amsterdam).
“The Philippines Is Not a Small Country” contains parts of essays Lasco wrote for the Inquirer over five years but he has built a narrative around those essays that is divided into seven digestible chapters.
In “Country,” Lasco deconstructs the Philippines to show how it “is as vast as it is beautiful.” In “Nation,” he talks about how the Philippines is “a young country” and how Filipinos need more empathy to deal with life. “Culture” talks about the social constructs that make up our unique worldview.
In “People,” he explores the spectrum of marginalized individuals who make up the population. “Technology” and “Modernity,” wired together, essentially comment on how both have changed Filipino society for good or ill. And the final chapter, “World,” literally discusses our place in the world, how the country is not apart but a part of the larger community.
Lasco’s writing is polished and impressive but “The Philippines Is Not a Small Country” is no rah-rah jingoist volume. It is a reflection of a flawed and complex people, how we became that way, and that, pointed in the right direction, the country has much to look forward to.
It’s good that he knows how to do it in such an accessible fashion. Lasco cuts up the narrative into interesting, often funny but also insightful bite-sized pieces. Take the sections where he discusses “Bawal Umihi Dito,” our obsession with height, Instagramming food, why nobody tells bedtime stories anymore.
In the final chapter, he has a beautiful essay that ends: “We begin to overcome the feeling of smallness that sets back our geopolitical imagination. What our past should give us is not an enmity for those who oppressed us but an empathy for those who experienced oppression. What our past should give us is neither a feeling of victimization nor entitlement but a dignity of a people that has suffered much—but has overcome more.”
But he’s been writing throughout all that intense studying. “I’ve been scribbling essays since high school as part of school papers; I managed to publish in the much-sought-after Young Blood column on both ends of my medical training.”
Lasco started contributing regularly to the Opinion section in 2015. In fact, he is already an author. “In 2016, I published a hiking guidebook titled ‘Dayhikes and Nature Walks from Manila,’ but this is my first book as a writer of national affairs.”
Additionally, his unique combination of disciplines (writer/medical doctor/anthropologist) gives him an advantage: “Being a doctor I think makes me sensitive to health issues, while being an anthropologist makes me conscious of the need to bring out not just my perspective, but those of the people I encounter.”
But to get to those seven chapters, Lasco didn’t sit in his room and reflect on the nature of nationhood—he went out there and traveled from province to province to experience what his fellow Filipinos are experiencing. It has not been all thrills and discoveries.
“I guess the saddest—if not the most shocking—thing is that some of the things I wrote in 2016 or 2017 could have been written today, almost word for word, especially as regards political issues like the drug war, corruption and our divisive politics. I hope that 10 years from now, when we look back, we would have made some progress, and that we need not defend fundamental matters like human rights.”
Insights
He wanted to compile his columns but also make a book agile enough to still be relevant. He broached the idea of Karina Bolasco, Ateneo Press director, at a 2018 conference in Hiroshima. He worked hard on the book and Ateneo Press continued to work on it through the COVID-19 pandemic.
There were insights that he came to possess from writing the book. “Acknowledging the complexity of the Filipino should always be the starting point for thinking, and writing, about them,” he said.
In his recent columns, Lasco has been outspoken about his criticism of how the government has been handling the different crises the Filipinos have faced. How then to solve those problems?
“It is indeed an impossible question but part of the answer is justice: We have not really held our leaders and their enablers accountable, allowing them to escape, lie low and then resurface to do more mischief. In my essay ‘Memory as resistance,’ I stress the importance of fine-grained memory because tyranny is not built by one man alone; it takes a village.”
He also emphasizes that we must not lose hope. “Some of our leaders’ actions and inaction can drive us to despair but we have Filipinos from all walks of life trying their best to do good in this difficult time: from entrepreneurs to medical front-liners.”
He has new books lined up: “a more academic book about the meanings of human stature, as well as an edited volume on drug use, the drug war and drug policy in the country. And I really hope I can write about my hikes.”
“The Philippines Is Not a Small Country” is an intelligent, accessible and actually funny book about what it means to be Filipino—even though it’s a complicated answer. Gideon Lasco makes it easy for you—but you still have to answer the question, as he did in the introduction: “I was especially mindful of young Filipinos, many of whom are unsure as to what the future brings, uncertain as to what to make of their national identity, and unclear as to how to critically engage with our nation’s problems. Ultimately, my earnest wish is that these essays will convey the fact that, indeed, the Philippines is not a small country, and despite the many challenges we face, our nation and its promise are larger than many of us imagine them to be.”
Available in paperback from the Ateneo de Manila University Press, Lazada and Shopee.
Nagorno-Karabakh: Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union
The EU welcomes the agreement reached on 10 October on a humanitarian ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The EU urges the sides to strictly abide by this agreement and calls on all actors, including external parties, to refrain from any actions that may lead to further casualties. In this respect, we note with extreme concern the reports of continued military activities, including against civilian targets, as well as civilian casualties and urge the sides to ensure full respect of the agreement on the ground.
The EU calls upon the sides to engage in substantive negotiations without delay under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, without preconditions and on the basis of the agreed upon principles.
The EU continues to support the work of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs in seeking a negotiated political solution to the conflict and will remain engaged in efforts towards lasting peace in the region.
Image Source : PTI Saanvi M Prajit, daughter of Wing Commander of Indian Air Force Prajit Babu and Manjma hailing from Ernakulam, who has been recognised by the Asia Book of Records and the India Book of Records, poses for a photograph, in Kochi.
Saanvi M. Prajit, a 10-year-old girl dished out 30 plus delicious food items including corn fritters, fried rice, uttapam, and chicken roast in less than one hour, earning her a place in record books.
The amazing feat by Saanvi, daughter of Wing Commander of Indian Air Force Prajit Babu and Manjma hailing from Ernakulam, has been recognised by the Asia Book of Records and the India Book of Records, her family said.
Her records have been established for the maximum number of dishes prepared by a child, they said.
Saanvi has cooked 33 food items in an hour which include idli, waffle, corn fritters, mushroom tikka, uttapam, paneer tikka, egg bulls eye, sandwich, papdi chaat, fried rice, chicken roast, pancake, appam, and many more.
The girl created the record on August 29 at the age of 10 years 06 months and 12 days.
“The Asia Book of Records authorities watched online the cookery event organised at her Visakhapatnam residence.
Besides, two gazetted officers were witness to the cooking of 33 items in an hour by Saanvi,” her mother Manjima told PTI.
Saanvi said she was able to achieve the feat with the support of her family, friends and well wishers.
The girl said she was inspired by her mother, a star chef and a Reality cookery show finalist.
Manjima said as a child, Saanvi has always been fascinated by the kitchen and took to cooking at a very early age alongside her mother and grandparents.
Saanvi also has participated in Children’s Cookery shows and has won recognition for her effort in the culinary field.
She also has a YouTube channel showcasing her attempts in cooking simple and tasty dishes.
The equality bills by their very name give one the impression that they are a step in the right direction.
Who doesn’t want equality? We all want to eliminate discrimination. Pointing out the bills’ shortcomings, therefore, should be looked at positively.
We have to admit that our society is not different to other western democracies. We live in a pluralistic and secular society where different voices and opinions want to be heard.
While the Church preaches absolute truths to safeguard the dignity of the human person and promote the common good, in a secular society truth becomes relative and subjective. Secular voices insist on privileging no religion – on silencing the voice of religion. Secularisation is unconsciously pervading our culture and dictating the way forward.
It is in the context of such an environment that we need to seriously debate the equality bills. By insisting that everyone is equal we seem to be emphasising the value of equality and giving less importance to the value of diversity.
In the book by George Carey and Andrew Carey, We Don’t Do God, it is stated: “By insisting on compliance on matters that are morally questionable in the eyes of some citizens, the state is moving beyond democracy to authoritarianism, thus creating an unhealthy culture”.
To tolerate does in no way mean to submit or deny one’s point of view. In order not to offend, very often, we feel refrained from speaking out about our views – from practising our religion in public.
Quoting from the editorial of the Daily Telegraph, the Careys point out that, in Britain, “The right to hold religious beliefs, and to act in keeping with one’s faith, is being set against the right not to offend – and is losing. This is a dispiriting trend in a free society”.
Our faith and Catholic doctrine enrich our society
Shall the equality bills, therefore, when they become law, bring about conflict between equality and diversity? Is the ‘supremacy clause’ going to be in conflict with one’s conscience?
Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights gives prominence to the right of freedom of thought, conscience and religion. It also gives one the right to manifest one’s religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
Due to the rapid transformation of our society, which is becoming more cosmopolitan and multicultural, we tend to downgrade our Christian tradition. Rather than looking with pride at our Christian roots and being grateful for all that the Church has been doing throughout the years, we try to belittle her impact.
The predominance of our Catholic religion on other faiths is not a question of privilege as some seem to think. It is a fact that our Catholic faith is part and parcel of our Maltese identity. Our Christian roots have grown and spread because of the strong faith of our forefathers. Why denounce or downplay our Christian foundation? Why curtail the Christian ethos of Church schools?
Unless we stand up and vehemently defend the right to publicly practise our religion, we shall one day find ourselves struggling to practise what we believe in. Religion is not a private affair. Quoting once more from the Careys: “For Christians, the whole life is indivisible. We cannot retreat to a privatised ghetto because the Gospel concerns the whole of life. There is no ‘privatised’ morality because the whole life is based on morality. Faith is necessarily public”.
Let not those in power fall into the trap of secularism. Let not politicians be shy to publicly proclaim their beliefs for, no, religion is not a private matter. We have churches in every town and village not as museum pieces or to dominate but as a witness and a reminder of our dependence on the Supernatural.
Our faith and Catholic doctrine enrich our society and they will continue doing so if we only allow them. Our Catholic schools with their religious character have been in the forefront to promote justice, inclusion and the common good.
Let us not in the name of equality and tolerance divest ourselves of our diversity and religious identity. Promoting Christian values and inculcating in our young ones a Christian ethos is not a privilege but a mission entrusted to those of us who profess the Catholic faith.
Independent journalism costs money. Support Times of Malta for the price of a coffee.
The equality bills by their very name give one the impression that they are a step in the right direction.
Who doesn’t want equality? We all want to eliminate discrimination. Pointing out the bills’ shortcomings, therefore, should be looked at positively.
We have to admit that our society is not different from other western democracies. We live in a pluralistic and secular society where different voices and opinions want to be heard.
While the Church preaches absolute truths to safeguard the dignity of the human person and promote the common good, in a secular society truth becomes relative and subjective. Secular voices insist on privileging no religion – on silencing the voice of religion. Secularisation is unconsciously pervading our culture and dictating the way forward.
It is in the context of such an environment that we need to seriously debate the equality bills. By insisting that everyone is equal we seem to be emphasising the value of equality and giving less importance to the value of diversity.
In the book by George Carey and Andrew Carey, We Don’t Do God, it is stated: “By insisting on compliance on matters that are morally questionable in the eyes of some citizens, the state is moving beyond democracy to authoritarianism, thus creating an unhealthy culture”.
To tolerate does in no way mean to submit or deny one’s point of view. In order not to offend, very often, we feel refrained from speaking out about our views – from practising our religion in public.
Quoting from the editorial of the Daily Telegraph, the Careys point out that, in Britain, “The right to hold religious beliefs, and to act in keeping with one’s faith, is being set against the right not to offend – and is losing. This is a dispiriting trend in a free society”.
Our faith and Catholic doctrine enrich our society
Shall the equality bills, therefore, when they become law, bring about conflict between equality and diversity? Is the ‘supremacy clause’ going to be in conflict with one’s conscience?
Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights gives prominence to the right of freedom of thought, conscience and religion. It also gives one the right to manifest one’s religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
Due to the rapid transformation of our society, which is becoming more cosmopolitan and multicultural, we tend to downgrade our Christian tradition. Rather than looking with pride at our Christian roots and being grateful for all that the Church has been doing throughout the years, we try to belittle her impact.
The predominance of our Catholic religion on other faiths is not a question of privilege as some seem to think. It is a fact that our Catholic faith is part and parcel of our Maltese identity. Our Christian roots have grown and spread because of the strong faith of our forefathers. Why denounce or downplay our Christian foundation? Why curtail the Christian ethos of Church schools?
Unless we stand up and vehemently defend the right to publicly practise our religion, we shall one day find ourselves struggling to practise what we believe in. Religion is not a private affair. Quoting once more from the Careys: “For Christians, the whole life is indivisible. We cannot retreat to a privatised ghetto because the Gospel concerns the whole of life. There is no ‘privatised’ morality because the whole life is based on morality. Faith is necessarily public”.
Let not those in power fall into the trap of secularism. Let not politicians be shy to publicly proclaim their beliefs for, no, religion is not a private matter. We have churches in every town and village not as museum pieces or to dominate but as a witness and a reminder of our dependence on the Supernatural.
Our faith and Catholic doctrine enrich our society and they will continue doing so if we only allow them. Our Catholic schools with their religious character have been in the forefront to promote justice, inclusion and the common good.
Let us not in the name of equality and tolerance divest ourselves of our diversity and religious identity. Promoting Christian values and inculcating in our young ones a Christian ethos is not a privilege but a mission entrusted to those of us who profess the Catholic faith.
Independent journalism costs money. Support Times of Malta for the price of a coffee.
The most quietly damning line of all in Labours of Love, Madeleine Bunting’s new book on Britain’s collapsing care system, is probably the following. After interviewing Danish students who had just taken a module of a social work degree in the UK, Bunting writes: “They admitted they were puzzled by their UK studies, which had been dominated by bureaucratic procedures and risk management. They had returned to Denmark with relief.”
Not outrage, but bafflement. Numbed as we are by headlines about over-stretched nurses and overwhelming paperwork, it takes an outside eye to make us realise that our current set-up is strange but not inevitable. Those Nordic students were skipping back to a degree in “social pedagogy,” a qualification that has no direct UK equivalent but spans training in the arts and humanities in order to better look after young children, the sick and the elderly.
It’s a creative, nurturing approach that stands in contrast to Britain’s emaciated care system, according to Bunting’s book. Labours of Love weaves together her experience shadowing employees across the care sector – nurses, doctors, social workers, in-home carers, care home workers – with context on the funding of public services.
The picture that emerges is enough to make you want to cryogenically freeze yourself at the age of 65. It also illustrates the heartless way our society exploits the workers we paradoxically expect to be compassionate. This is a world where nurses are too busy to take a sip of water for six hours; where staffing on a hospital ward is routinely on dangerous “red levels”; where a form needed to prove a child’s disability is so complicated it reduces an A&E consultant to tears; and where carers are given just 15 minutes to visit an elderly person with dementia – often not enough time to get them dressed, let alone make a cup of tea.
An experienced journalist, Bunting has an unerring knack for finding the details and human faces that make up the bigger story. She introduces us to John, a healthcare assistant who leaves home at 6.15am every day to work a 7am to 7.30pm shift. A deeply caring man, he gets patients with terminal cancer to smile and he washes the hair of the dead. For this, market forces value him at £19k a year, a wage so miserably low that he’s forced to put in a Sunday shift stacking shelves at a supermarket on top of his exhausting week. You can kick a ball around for £250,000 a week, package up poor people’s mortgages to sell like casino chips and then retire on your bonuses, but do the most important work in humanity and your life is one long slog.
The artwork for ‘Labours of Love’(Granta Books)
As Bunting explains, part of the knotty problem we’re facing today is the decade of austerity that followed the financial crisis of 2008. The recruitment and retention of nurses has been damaged by below inflation pay increases from 2010 to 2018, with a shortfall of 108,000 nurses predicted by 2029. GPs are also struggling, with practice closures accelerating from 2013 despite government pledges to help. Outside the NHS, the picture is even worse: while healthcare funding has at least been ring-fenced, social care has not – and the pressures are ballooning along with our ageing population.
Bunting’s book reveals a grim pattern: inadequate funding means inadequate staffing means inadequate care, sparking scandals such as the neglect that killed hundreds at a Mid Staffordshire hospital in the 2000s – which in turn ushers in well-meaning but burdensome bureaucracy. Many nurses now spend more time on paperwork than they do with patients.
Bunting encapsulates the problem as the “marginalisation of relationships,” writing that: “The paperwork has become a way to avoid blame and manage risk. Sometimes, it is the main criteria by which care work is assessed and inspected, creating a cycle of behaviour which prioritises bureaucracy over people.” This reflects Bunting’s interview with Tom, a GP working at a practice in a poor area that still prioritises building relationships with patients. “We are very proud and committed to our model of care,” he says, “and feel it is not well understood. The focus is on what can be measured, such as data collection and targets. No one has found a way to measure continuity of care or its value, but we know it reduces hospital admissions.”
How could things be done differently? It’s a question that is touched on but not explored in depth. Bunting puts several benchmarks into comparison with other European countries, noting for example that the average hospital stay in France is 10 days, compared with seven in the UK; and that the ratio of nurses per 100,000 of the population is now almost half the level it is in Sweden, Germany and France. While understandably not within the scope of this book, it would be interesting to read more about how those health systems – which are a mix of public and private provision – balance market forces, tight government budgets and the humane, intangible side of care.
My own experience living in Switzerland – where everyone has to buy private insurance, but healthcare is heavily regulated by the government to ensure universal access – has been eye-opening. Used to the NHS, I found the process of browsing for a healthcare provider as if it was car insurance unsettling when I first moved here. Since then, I’ve got used to a level of care which feels slightly decadent. Even on the most basic healthcare insurance, after the birth of my child I spent five days in hospital recovering from an emergency C-section, which is considered normal here but contrasts to three to four days in the UK. Afterwards, the same midwife called on me at home every day while I needed it. My daughter has a designated paediatrician, which means the same doctor who advised me on my newborn’s sleep was there for every toddler bug and scrape, and chatted to my daughter about what she wanted to be when she grew up at her five-year health check. The Swiss system isn’t perfect and it’s easy to write this as someone who can afford the premiums, but for me this regulated, market-based approach has been the reverse of cold and impersonal; it has paid for an environment where professionals have the time to care.
The timing of Labours of Love is striking, as the pandemic prompts a wave of appreciation for nurses and doctors, while reminding us “of our physical vulnerability,” as Bunting writes in an author’s note. The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence, a series of essays written in the context of Covid-19, also calls for a fundamental overhaul of our attitude to care. Whether any of this translates into meaningful investment and reform to lift standards of care, and the living standards of caring professionals, is another question. But Labours of Love is an important and unsettling reminder that we can’t afford to wait for the next crisis, because the health system on which we all depend is itself in intensive care.
Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care by Madeleine Bunting is out now
… Research indicates that book ownership and books in the household … books, assisting students in selecting and writing their names in the book … and then reading the books with students. … are recording themselves reading books from the available …
The following account is concerned with Bengali printing before 1800, concentrating on the period after the Battle of Plassey in 1757 when the British East India Company established its control of the province.
Historical antecedents
Although some evidence indicates early native attempts to use Chinese xylographic methods of printing in India, the introduction of printing with movable metal types was a product of European colonizers and missionaries. The Jesuits established a press at the Portuguese colony of Goa in 1556 and subsequently printed also at other Portuguese centers. After beginning with works on Christian doctrine in Portuguese, in 1578 the Jesuits at Quilon printed a book in the Tamil language with Tamil characters. Other European centers in India also showed some interest in printing, and some Indians may have even taken it up. According to some records, Bhimjee Parekh with the aid of the British East India Company established a press at Bombay in 1674-75, but no books survive from it. Bartholomew Ziegenbalg, a Danish missionary [ born in Pulsnitz, Saxony] , established a press at Tranquebar about 1712, which printed with Tamil types. Somewhat later in Rome the Society for the Propagation of the Faith had Sanskrit (Deva Nagari) and Malabar (Tamil and Malayalam) fonts of type cast in 1771 and 1772.
The Portuguese in Bengal
After the Portuguese consolidated their trading and political settlements on the western coast of India, traders and missionaries branched out to other parts of the country. They lost little time in building up a link with Bengal, for its fame as a rich and pleasant land with a large population had spread even in previous centuries from the accounts of Arab and European travelers. Nuno da Cunha, governor from 1529-38, sent an expedition of five vessels to Chittagong (Porto Grande) in 1533. After 1581 a Portuguese trading vessel visited that seaport of Eastern Bengal every year.
Trading colonies and missionary outposts sprang up, including one at Nagori which was associated with the printing of the first three Bengali books.
Several records illustrate the interest of the Portuguese missionaries in Bengali books. On January 3, 1683, Father Marcos Antonio Santucci, the Superior of the Portuguese mission working among Bengali converts to Christianity, wrote from Nolua Cot to the Provincial of Goa: “The Fathers [Ignatius Gomes, Manoel Surayva, and himself] have not failed in their duty; they have learned the language well, have composed vocabularies, a grammar, a confessionary and prayers; they have translated the Christian Doctrine, etc. nothing of which existed until now.” Francisco Fernandes wrote from Sripur in East Bengal to his Jesuit superior in Goa about his compilation of a booklet expounding the fundamentals of the Christian doctrine and a book of catechisms. His fellow missionary, Dominic de Souza, appears to have translated those two books into Bengali. A little catechism in Bengali by Father Barbier was mentioned as early as 1723.
None of the books mentioned above is extant and it is not known whether or not they were printed. Shortly after them, however, some books were printed in Bengali outside India. The most remarkable of these were three books attributed to Father Manoel de Assumpsao, an Augustinian, who came to Bengal about 1734. As rector of the Mission of St. Nicolas of Tolentino he was attached to the Catholic church at Nagori near Bhowal in the district of Dacca about 1742. He wrote books “for the easier instruction of neophytes.”
A second book by Father Manoel was Compendio dos mysterios da fe, printed at Lisbon by Da Silva in 1743. Bengali on the versos, printed again in roman types, faced Portuguese on the rectos. This work is also known as the Cathecismo da doutrinaa ordenando por modo de dialogo em idiome bengalle e portuguez. It has become famous by its Bengali title, Crepar Xaxtrer Orth bhed (“The Meaning of the Gospel of Mercy”).
A third book, Vocabulario em idioma bengalla e portuguez dividido em duas partes, was printed by Da Silva at Lisbon in 1743. In two parts, it includes a Bengali-Portuguese and a Portuguese-Bengali vocabulary. A compendium of Bengali grammar precedes the latter. The book is printed entirely in roman types.
Two other Bengali books were composed by Bento de Selvestre (or De Souza), a one-time Catholic missionary who was converted to Protestantism. His translation of parts of the Book of Common Prayer and a catechism were published in London as Prarthanamala and Prasinottarmala. Both were printed in roman types.
This missionary publishing led to little perceptible development of indigenous literature. First, such religious and denominational publishing had little appeal to the general public. Second, the Bengalis of that time lacked the education and the type of social organization necessary to realize the potential benefit of printing on their language and literature. Finally, an atmosphere of futility and negation seemed to affect the Bengali literary climate.
Independent and competent observers like Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1749-1830) and William Carey (1761-1834), looking for Bengali books in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, recorded an appalling lack of them. Halhed, when
compiling his monumental Grammar of the Bengali Language, complained that despite his familiarity with the works of Bengali authors he could trace only six extant books in 1778. These included the great religious epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. All six, of course, were in manuscript. When later the great missionary, William Carey, an eminent scholar of Bengali and Sanskrit, visited Nabadwip, the cultural and religious center of Bengal, he could unearth after arduous search a mere forty handwritten Bengali works.
The East India Company
On this poverty-stricken literary and bibliographic scene, the stage was being set for more extensive Bengali book production. The factors promoting this advancement were mainly political. At the Battle of Plassey in 1757 the British East India Company gained control of the rich province of Bengal. By 1772, the Company had skillfully employed the sword, diplomacy, and intrigue to take over the rule of Bengal from her people, factious nobles, and weak Nawab. Subsequently, to consolidate its hold on the province, the Company promoted the Bengali language. This did not represent an intrinsic love for Bengali speech and literature. Instead it was aimed at destroying traditional patterns of authority through supplanting the Persian language which had been the official tongue since the days of the great Moguls. Nevertheless, as a result Bengali flourished.
Instrumental in the advancement of Bengali printing was the policy adopted by the Company of teaching Bengali to its employees. Notable English orientalists –Halhed, Carey, and Nathaniel Pitts Forster, for example, stoutly promoted the teaching of Bengali in its pure Sanskritized form. The Islamic languages, including Muslim Bengali, were under attack. The unrelenting efforts of the English champions of pure Bengali, backed by the whole administrative machinery of the East India Company, culminated in the passage of a statute in 1838 whereby the use of Arabic and Persian was prohibited in the law courts established under the jurisdiction of the Company.
Progress in the writing of non-Islamic indigenous languages, however, was rapid. After 1755, public notices in native vernaculars were posted in the Indian bazaars. Warren Hastings, Governor of Bengal in 1772 and Governor-General from 1773 to 1785, showed keen interest in training young English civilians, or “writers,” to do justice to their duties among the Indian subjects of the Company. The learning of Indic languages was an essential requirement and this was emphasized in the curriculum of the Fort William and Haileybury colleges. An active patron of such Indic scholars as Halhed, Wilkins, Gladwin, Jones, and others, Hastings insisted that they produce enough books in the Indic languages for such students.
The objective of encouraging European (and later Indian) scholars to study the Indic languages and to produce books in them was to be even further extended. William Wilberforce, the English philanthropist and politician, proposed in Parliament in 1793, during the governor-generalship of Lord Cornwallis in India, that the East India Company provide more and better facilities for the education of its native subjects. This induced European missionaries and enlightened gentlemen to establish printing presses. Though primarily established for the propagation of the Christian faith and producing a better class of European civilians in India, these presses aimed in part to improve the general educational level. Indirectly at first, they were ultimately instrumental in the development of the Bengali language and literature and in the general spread of education in Bengal.
Two great landmarks in the history of printing in Bengal were the establishment of the Serampore Mission in 1799 and the founding of Fort William College, with the object of “imparting knowledge of the vernaculars to young civilians,” by Lord Wellesley in 1800. In 1816, with the support of the Marquis of Hastings (then governor- general), Butterworth Bailey, William Carey, and others, the Calcutta Book Society was founded.
The Printing Press in Bengal
The first printing press in Bengal was that of a Mr. Andrews at Hooghly in 1778. Halhed’s grammar was printed here. Of this, we know but little more. In 1780, James Augustus Hickey founded the Bengal Gazette Press, publisher of the slanderous Bengal Gazette —known popularly as Hickey’s Gazette. In 1784, Francis Gladwin established the Calcutta Gazette Press, which published the official government gazette and did a good portion of the East India Company’s printing. A little later the government also set up its own printing press with the assistance —and for some time the supervision— of Charles Wilkins, father of Bengali type-founding. Other presses apparently established in the last decades of the eighteenth century were the Calcutta Chronicle Press, the Post Press, Ferris and Company, and Rozario and Company.
A period of censorship and restriction began in 1799. As a wartime measure, the Marquis of Wellesley severely curtailed the freedom of the press by imposing restrictions on printing and publishing at Calcutta and enforcing a cessation of printing outside that city.
This state of affairs continued until 1818 when the Marquis of Hastings restored the freedom of the press. Subsequently a greater number of printing presses were established, including some owned by Indians. By 1825-26, there were about forty presses in Calcutta alone. In addition to the major earlier presses already cited, these included Lavandier’s press at Bow Bazaar, Pearce’s press at Entally, and Ram Mohan Roy’s Unitarian Press on Dhurrumtollah. Baburam’s Sanskrit Yantra at Kidderpore, established at Kidderpore in 1806-7, specialized in the printing of Hindi and Sanskrit books in Deva Nagari types. Other presses were Munshi Hedayetullah’s Mohammadi Press at Mirzapore, the Hindustanee Press, and the College Press.
Early Bengali Letter Founders
The first types of the Bengali alphabet, as were those for most other Indian scripts, were cut abroad. The first printed Bengali alphabet appeared in a work of the Jesuit Fathers, Jean de Fontenay, Guy Tachard, Etienne Noel, and Claude de Beze. Bearing the title Observations physiques et mathematiques pour servir a l’histoire naturelle …, it was published at Paris in 1692. A second Bengali alphabet was included in a Latin work written by Georg Jacob Kehr, Aurenk Szeb, printed at Leipzig in 1725. This displayed the Bengali numerals from 1 to 11, as well as the Bengali consonants and a Bengali transliteration of the German name, Sergeant Wolfgang Meyer. These characters were copied by Johann Friedrich Fritz in his Orientalischer und occidentalischer Sprachmeister, printed at Leipzig in 1748.
A Hindustani grammar by Joannes Joshua Ketelaer appeared in Miscellane Oriental, published at Leyden in 1743. This reproduced almost the whole Bengali alphabet, calling it alphabetum grammaticum, including both consonants and vowels. Nothing is known about the casting of these types and they were based on none-too-good models of calligraphy.
English Founders of Bengali Type
In line with English interests in India, English type founders took up the problem of Bengali type. Among the founders engaged in this work was Joseph Jackson. Beginning as a rubber in the Caslon foundry in London, Jackson rose to the exalted position of cutter of punches, a skill learned on his own initiative in the face of the opposition of the Caslons. Establishing his own foundry, he manufactured various oriental types. An inventory of 1773 listed Hebrew, Persian, and Bengali types in his stock. Bengali was called “modern Sanskrit” and explained as “a corruption of the older characters of the Hindoos, the ancient inhabitants of Bengal.” According to Rowe Mores, Jackson received an order for Bengali type from Willem Bolts, the Dutch adventurer in the East India Company’s service, who was “Judge of the Mayor’s Court of Calcutta.”
As part of their program for popularizing the study of Oriental languages, the East India Company had commissioned Bolts to prepare a grammar of the Bengali language. But although Bolts, who was a man of great enterprise and ingenuity, had represented himself as a great orientalist, he ran into difficulties with the Company from 1766 to 1768 which culminated in his deportation from India. He was obviously all at sea regarding the cutting of types in the Bengali script.
Charles Wilkins and Halhed’s Grammar
The first significant stride in Bengali typography, printing, and publication was made in 1778 with the appearance of A Grammar of the Bengal Language by Halhed. This historic volume was printed in the press of a Mr. Andrews at Hooghly, a small town about fifteen miles from Calcutta. The tremendous typographical achievement was made possible by the strenuous and unremitting pioneer efforts of Charles Wilkins (1749? -1836), who was dubbed the Caxton of Bengal.
At about the age of twenty-one, Wilkins took service as a “writer” in the East India Company and sailed for Bengal. Like other English civilians in India, he diligently studied Sanskrit and Persian. In addition he experimented with the production of types for printing those languages. At this time Warren Hastings was Governor General. Despite his rather checkered career as an administrator, he was a patron of learning—both eastern and western. He had inspired Halhed to compose the treatise on Hindu law and theories of government, published as The Code of Gentoo Law. Encouraged by that success, Halhed had gone on to compile A Grammar of the Bengal Language.
When Halhed had his manuscript ready for printing, he discovered that there was no font of Bengali type available. Jackson’s Bengali font was incomplete and unsatisfactory. In this predicament he turned to Hastings and probably suggested Wilkins, fortunately posted at the Company’s Hooghly factory as a type founder. The result was Wilkins’ Bengali font. “The advice and even the solicitation of the Governor General prevailed upon Mr. Wilkins … to undertake a set of Bengal types. He did and his success has exceeded every satisfaction. In a country so remote from all connection with European artists, he has been obliged to charge himself with all the various occupations of the Metallurgist, the Engraver, the Founder and the Printer.”He surmounted all his obstacles so well, by dint of personal labor, that he was hailed as a man able to bring single-handed perfection to the kind of task which usually requires decades and the collaboration of many men.
In assessing the nature of Wilkins’ achievement, we must realize that, as contrasted to the smaller number of characters in a roman type font, the average Indian script has over six hundred letters, including vowel signs, combinations, etc. Work on such a font is more arduous and time-consuming and requires greater skill. Stocking a composing room is also more costly. According to Norman A. Ellis, “In hand type-setting a double case of Roman characters can do the job for book work, but up to seven cases of a similar size are needed for an Indian script.”
A Grammar of the Bengal Language was a full-sized work using copious extracts from the main Bengali books then extant. Wilkins had to solve most of the problems of Bengali typography to cut types for it. He continued his work in cutting Bengali types at Hooghly until 1786 and later at the Company’s press at Calcutta. This latter press advertised its capacity to print books in Bengali. Examples of Bengali books issuing from this press were Jonathan Duncan’s translation of The Regulations for the Administration of Justice in the Courts of Dewanee Adaulat in 1785 and N. B. Edmonstone’s Bengal Translation of Regulations for the Administration of Justice in the Fouzdarry or Criminal Courts in 1791.
M. Siddiq Khan (1910 – 1978) was the librarian of the Central Library of the University of Dhaka and the founder of the University’s Department of Library Science. In March 2004, the Government of Bangladesh posthumously awarded him the Independence Day Award, the country’s highest civil honor.
This is an excerpt of the article titled ‘The Early History of Bengali Printing’ which was originally published in The Library Quarterly in its January, 1962 issue.
A peep into a powerful treatise that people in the free market movement need to ponder over
THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | Few books have gripped me as did Thomas Piketty’s economics blockbuster, Capital in the Twenty First Century. Published in 2015, I took long to read it in large part because everyone was praising it; and I am always suspicious of popular things. But also the first time I opened it, its pages were littered with many equations that turned me off, mistaking the book to be filled with econometric abstractions that mean little in reality. But finally, the devil got into my head and I sat to reading it last year and been re-reading it (actually studying it) these last few weeks.
This is not a review of the book but an attempt to highlight its core message. It is a book that stands most economics teaching on its head. This is largely because Piketty, himself a professor of economics, is very critical of modern economics as is taught in schools. He thinks that in an attempt to construct economics as a science, economists have made economics mathematical. This has divorced it from other subjects like history, politics, sociology and anthropology that influence individual decision-making and public policy.
The most striking thing about it is the depth and extent of his research on income across time and geographic space – largely focusing on the USA and Western Europe. The book therefore makes little reference to other authors because Piketty relies largely (but not entirely) on primary research. Then there is the sweep of history, that unveils many assumptions about how Western societies developed. The breadth of perspective is breathtaking and the analytical depth impressive in terms of its intellectual neatness.
The central message of the book is that capitalism inherently creates income and wealth inequalities – but this can only be observed over the long term. He argues that this is largely because the rate of return on capital tends to grow at a faster rate than the rate of growth of the economy. This process tends to concentrate incomes and wealth to the top, thereby accentuating inequality over time. Now, some economists dispute this; but none of his critics has produced counter evidence. All the criticism I have read relies on theoretical abstractions, not history. But that is debate for another day.
Piketty’s point is that in the absence of major shocks – such as the two world wars of the 20th century, capital will keep growing and concentrating in a few hands. He shows this process in Britain and France from 1800 to 1914 (on the eve of the first world war), when the wealthiest 10% owned almost 90% of all the wealth in these countries. The shocks of the first and second world wars destroyed capital in massive ways and thereby created the first trend of equalising wealth and income. But since the end of the World War 11, there has not been any major war in the rich countries. So the process of concentration has been building up again.
Piketty shows that the USA has the highest income inequality of all the rich countries. One of the main reasons is that while the U.S. fought in both world wars, it did not suffer destruction of its capital because the wars were never fought on her soil. So it avoided this equalising opportunity. Yet USA used to be more egalitarian than Europe. Piketty argues that this was because of land abundance. Migrants had easy access to free land (capital or wealth) as it expanded westward. As expansion ended, this source of capital/wealth was exhausted, so the process of wealth and income concentration began.
On this basis, Piketty proceeds to expose a lot of myths we hold about modern liberal democratic capitalism. There is a belief that liberal democracies are built on economic and professional meritocracy. The institutions that ensure this are the market and education; the agents are entrepreneurs and human skill. Piketty shows that today, like in 1910, most wealth in the world, in some cases up to 90%, is actually inherited, not earned. And it is those with high incomes and wealth that send their children to the best schools and universities. This privilege reproduces itself thereby accentuating inequality.
For Piketty, the wealth and incomes of pioneering entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and Mark Zukerberg are actually small compared to the wealth that is inherited. Secondly, he argues, even innovative entrepreneurs like Gates stopped working at the companies they founded long ago, yet the rate of growth in their capital has increased in their absence. This means that they are not earning because of present effort or innovation but because of past contributions. He calls this kind of income rent. So today we have few entrepreneurs and many rentiers. He calls this “patrimonial capitalism” and its agents, a “patrimonial middle class.”
Why did modern society think liberal democratic capitalism was egalitarian, leading to the reward of merit as opposed to inherited advantages? Piketty argues that WW2 destroyed capital in Western Europe. Most people lost their capital and their children had little or nothing to inherit. Economic reconstruction led to unusually high rates of growth between 1945 and 1980. Rapid growth tends to reduce income and wealth inequalities.
Piketty’s concern is that concentration of income has political implications. The rich may eventually own the countries they live in or even “buy” others that need their capital. They may use their money to control politics and undermine democratic aspirations. They will increase their influence on parliaments, control the mass media and universities so that legislation and the production of knowledge reflect their particular interests. And their interests may conflict with the social good. This, Piketty argues, may make reform impossible; thereby making revolution inevitable.
What is his solution? Piketty calls for a tax on huge sums of capital and extremely high incomes. He believes this tax can only make sense if it is internationally organised, for this is the only way to stop the rich from hiding their money in offshore accounts. He even predicts that it is possible that without such a policy (heavy taxation of extremely high incomes, huge reserves of capital and a huge inheritance tax and tax on gifts, extreme concentration of income in a few hands may lead to political agitation for expropriation.
Even though he avoids mentioning Karl Marx, and I think this was a smart political as opposed to academic decision, Piketty makes similar warning as the father of communism. Perhaps he feared that quoting Marx a lot would pollute the air and obscure his message. His data, his analysis and his predictions need to be taken seriously.
Professor <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Amy Coney Barrett</a>, addressing law school graduates at <a href="/topics/notre-dame-university/">Notre Dame University</a> in 2006, delivered a stark admonition to the future lawyers<a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">: She</a> told them a law career was “but a means to an end.”
“That end is building the kingdom of God,” she said. “If you can keep in mind that your fundamental purpose in life is not to be a lawyer, but to know, love and serve God, you truly will be a different kind of lawyer.”
As confirmation hearings begin Monday for Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a>’s nomination to the Supreme Court, she will have to answer just how different a lawyer — and judge — her faith has made her.
To her detractors, she is a “Catholic judge.” To her supporters, she is a judge who is Catholic.
The difference between those views dominated her confirmation hearing three years ago, when she won a seat on the 7th <a href="/topics/us-circuit-court-of-appeals/">U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals</a>. The hearings this week are shaping up like a rerun, with Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a>’s faith the chief question before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“If you’re asking whether I take my faith seriously and am a faithful Catholic, I am, although I would stress that my personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear in my discharge of duties as a judge,” Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a> told senators in her October 2017 hearings.
That answer was unsatisfactory to Democrats, and they peppered Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a> with pointed questions.
Republicans said the questioning was so unseemly that it began to look as if they were applying a religious test for seeking a federal office, which the Constitution specifically prohibits.
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Democrats countered that the matter wasn’t about Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a>’s faith, but rather how much it affects her public life.
“The dogma lives loudly within you,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the committee.
The judge opened the door to the issue herself in 1998 with a law review article titled “Catholic judges in capital cases.”
She suggested that an “orthodox Catholic” who adhered to the church’s teaching against capital punishment should recuse from signing an execution order.
Her critics said she was putting faith above the law. Her backers said she was doing just the opposite: saying faith must give way when the law calls for an outcome.
In fact, she was charting a middle ground, where a judge could be faithful to her own beliefs while allowing someone else to carry out the law’s obligation.
“Judges cannot — nor should they try to — align our legal system with the Church’s moral teaching whenever the two diverge,” she concluded. “They should, however, conform their own behavior to the Church’s standard.”
In a speech last year to Hillsdale in D.C., the Washington campus of Hillsdale College, Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a> delved deeper into the matter by saying it was folly to think only Catholic jurists grapple with their moral codes and their duties to the law.
“That’s not a challenge just for religious people. That’s a challenge for everyone,” she said. “I think it’s a dangerous road to go down to say that only religious people would not be able to separate out moral convictions from their duty.”
During her 2017 confirmation hearing, she repeatedly declined to give personal opinions on matters such as same-sex marriage. She said it was irrelevant to how she would rule.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, told Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a> that he rejected that.
“I can’t tell you how many nominees have been before us in this panel for the bench, and virtually all say the same: I’m following the precedent, I’m following the law, I’m following the Constitution, don’t worry a thing about who I am, how I was raised, what my religion is, what my life experiences have been. Put it all aside,” he said. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
He said decisions in cases that reach upper courts are often close and that’s where personal beliefs come into play.
“I don’t think you can divorce yourself from life’s reality at that point. I am going to see things in a certain way based on what I’ve done, what I’ve seen, what I believe in my life, and I’m going to call it the appropriate interpretation of the law,” he said. “So I don’t buy this robot approach, that it’s just so easy, you push the law and the facts on one side and the opinion comes out the other side. Otherwise, every opinion would be a majority or a unanimous decision.”
Mr. Durbin, like all but a couple of other Democrats at the time, voted against Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a>’s confirmation.
Traci Lovitt, who met Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a> when they clerked at the Supreme Court in 1998, said Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a> did keep her faith separate.
“She was not one to bring her religion to work,” Ms. Lovitt said. “I think that is a good sign of how she thinks about these things. She has a personal life and her faith, and she has these difficult legal questions she has to deal with.”
<strong>Family attacked</strong>
Expect Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a>’s seven children to feature prominently in the confirmation hearings, just as they did during the White House announcement of her nomination.
Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a> grew up in New Orleans as one of seven children. Her husband, Jesse, was an only child. They decided they wanted seven children, including two adopted from Haiti.
Those adoptions sparked some of the ugliest criticism of the nomination fight so far. Left-wing activists demanded that the Barretts be investigated for “colonialism” or chided them, with no apparent evidence, for not being sensitive enough to transracial adoptions.
Megan Edwards, Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a>’s sister, said the Barretts chose to adopt from Haiti because the country is close enough to visit to immerse their children in the culture.
News outlets, meanwhile, have invested heavily in coverage of People of Praise, a charismatic Christian organization where Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a> was once listed as a “handmaid.” The Associated Press said that meant she was a high-ranking woman in the community.
The judge’s critics have questioned what role the organization may play in her legal approach.
Ms. Edwards pushed back on those attacks. “I do feel protective. I hear something, and I definitely feel like I want people to know the sister I know and say that is not true,” she told The Washington Times.
Judge <a href="/topics/amy-coney-barrett/">Barrett</a> would be the fifth woman to sit on the <a href="/topics/us-circuit-court-of-appeals/">high court</a> and the first with school-age children.
She drives a minivan to and from her courthouse.
When the parents travel on work trips, they bring one of their children with them and try to work in visits with family, who are spread across the country, to maintain close relationships.
“I honestly don’t know how she does it. Despite her schedule, she has made an effort to — even with her own children — to gift an experience to them,” Ms. Edwards said.
Part of how she does it is discipline. She wakes up at 4:30 every morning to get to a fitness class.
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