Music: Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” (Symphony No. 9)

This is my first attempt to review a piece of Western Classical music, so I am understandably nervous. Unlike rock music, where I consider my knowledge to be second to none, Western Classical music is a different matter altogether – especially when I have a family member whose knowledge and expertise far surpasses my own. I am talking about my father here. I better get this right, because if I don’t, he will never let me live it down. And don’t worry, gentle reader, I will not bore you with stories of the intricate details of E-flats and B-major notes, since that is beyond me. I will also not bore you with details of what different movements in a composition mean – these I understand, but they are not relevant to our point of discussion here. What, you ask, is the point of our discussion here? The point of discussion here is how Western Classical music has the unexpected power to move the listener in unforeseen ways. How it has the power to catch you off-guard, and rake up emotions and feelings you thought were long extinct. Allow me to explain.

The older I get, the more I am drawn to Western Classical music. Rock music (good rock music anyway) still appeals to the rebellious teenager in me. Give me a freeway in the Rocky Mountains (the Mumbai-Pune expressway will do just fine too), some great tunes, a cool, sunny day, and (hopefully) a beautiful woman by my side, and you could not ask for a happier camper than Yours Truly. But the older I get, the more my own mortality gets in the way – I know for a fact that I am not immortal, something I did not realize till about ten years ago. Someday at a time and place of his choosing, the Grim Reaper will walk up to me, tap me on the shoulder and say, “Let’s dance”. In the springtime, a middle-aged man’s thoughts turn to his own mortality and the nature of the legacy (if any) that he will leave behind.

So the older I get, my thoughts turn to more “spiritual” things, if that is the right word to use, without getting pretentious about it. And Western Classical music has that peculiar ability to move the listener in ways that sometimes cannot be anticipated. Some classical music pieces such as the one I am writing about have the ability to move people to tears, unexpectedly. And I am not an overtly emotional man. These are not tears of sadness, they are tears of contemplation, tears shed because someone (in this case the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak) has the ability to capture and interpret the human experience so beautifully through music. Without saying a word, using only the medium of music, he can suddenly capture what I am thinking and feeling at a particular moment. Truly amazing.

I have been listening to Western Classical music ever since I can remember. When I was very young, my father had those precious LPs that are still part of the family collection. I would not sell them for all the money in the world. They are part of my heritage and a family heirloom. I can remember listening to Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto at the age of four, and being mesmerized by the wonder and beauty of it all. It is a defining memory. I will write about the feelings that particular piece inspires in me in another blog.

So now that I have introduced you to this particular blog in my own inimitable, roundabout fashion, it is time to get to the point. Antonin Dvorak (pronounced “Vorjak”) was a Czech composer who was born in 1841. I will spare you the details of his life, since they are not particularly relevant and may bore you, gentle reader. Suffice to say that he was already moderately famous before he went to America in 1892 at the age of 51. America of course, is the new world in the “New World Symphony”. He had already composed the famous classical piece “Slavonic Dances”. In America, he landed in that great melting pot of cultures, New York City and took up a job as a teacher of composition and artistic director at the recently established New York National Conservatory of Music. He spent three years in America, and it changed him in ways he never expected. Coming from the comparatively cloistered, insulated Old World city of Prague, New York City in all its cosmopolitan glory must have taken him by surprise.

In New York, he must have met people from different social, economic, racial and ethnic backgrounds. He was exposed to American blues music, what in those days, they called “Negro spirituals”, songs such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. He also heard for the first time, the other-worldly yet hypnotic Native American chants. From this bewildering mosaic of musical styles, Dvorak fashioned the epic New World Symphony. The music captured the optimism of a young country, where the opportunities seemed limitless and where the constraints of Old World Europe did not apply. America was all about optimism and the freedom of the open road, where everything seemed possible if only one tried hard enough. The stifling conventions of Old Europe did not exist here. The New World Symphony reflects that.

But there is an underlying element of sadness here. We do not know Antonin Dvorak’s position on slavery or racial segregation. Although slavery had been abolished almost thirty years earlier at the end of the American Civil War in 1865, racial segregation was still strictly enforced, and the treatment of African-Americans and persons of other non-white races was still appalling. Dvorak must have had an opportunity to listen to those beautiful “Negro spirituals” with their yearnings for a just and better world in the after-life. He also must have had the opportunity to listen to the chants of the Native American tribes, whose last desperate attempts to save their own cultural heritage and civilization took place in the 1890s. Indeed, part of the symphony reflects Dvorak’s attempts to put American poet Longfellow’s epic poem “Hiawatha” to music. These songs and chants must have moved him immensely, because he incorporated them into his new composition.

What Dvorak paints then is a picture of America as a flawed paradise – a Garden of Eden, a land of plenty where the image of perfection is only skin-deep, and where tragedy and suffering lurk below the seemingly perfect surface. It is a compelling portrait that is happy and sad, realistic yet dreamy and yearning, optimistic yet somber, all at the same time. It is a masterpiece. America left a deep imprint on Dvorak. Listening to the New Word Symphony brings out these conflicting emotions and feelings in the discerning classical music aficionado.

Listening to the New World Symphony also reminds me of America – a country I love next ony to my own – India. The country is still young, it is still optimistic because it is not burdened by thousands of years of history. Everything is still new, and everything can still be looked at from a fresh perspective. It seems possible to make a fresh start to life, no matter how old one is. And there still is the promise of eternal youth and glory when you drive down the freeway in the Colorado Rockies on a sunny, summer day in an open-top convertible, with Dvorak’s New World Symphony blaring from the speakers on your car stereo.

History: Chandragupta Maurya - India's First Emperor

In my last few ancient history posts, I have written about Hannibal (the great Carthaginian general), Cyrus the Great, Darius I and Xerxes (the great Persian emperors of the Achaemenid Empire) and briefly about Alexander and Julius Caesar. What about Indian kings, someone asked me? What about our own glorious history and heritage? Why are you not writing about that? All very valid questions – and they are right. India’s ancient history is at least as glorious and noteworthy as that of the Persians, Greeks or Romans. After all, we have produced such great spiritual leaders and philosophers such as the Buddha, Mahavira and Shankaracharya as well as great emperors such as Bimbisara, Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka the Great and Vikramaditya.

H.G. Wells in his book “A Short History of the World” observed that Ashoka’s rule circa 250 B.C. was the true age of enlightenment. Ashoka was an enlightened ruler, especially after he embraced Buddhism. The Mauryan Empire that he ruled has been compared to the Athenian Golden Age under Pericles (circa 440 B.C). The difference is that Ashoka ruled over many more people, and his reign was compassionate and benign. The Mauryan Empire ruled by Ashoka was also far larger and richer than the Athens of two hundred years earlier.

Sadly, no magnificent ruins of Pataliputra remain to remind us of the Mauryan Empire’s greatness, like Persepolis or Pasargadae in Iran or the Parthenon in Greece. In addition, western historians (propagandists actually) such as Strabo, Plutarch and later Livy and Virgil painstakingly documented (and greatly exaggerated) the achievements of their own Greek and Roman monarchs. Alas, no such detailed accounts exist of the Indian empires of old. But that does not mean these empires did not exist. So I will try and recreate the splendor and glory of what was ancient India in this blog.

So apart from the ancient Indian epics the Mahabharata and Ramayana, what is a good starting point to begin understanding ancient Indian history? A difficult question. The Magadhan kings Bimbisara and Ajatashatru circa 500 B.C. could be a good starting point. But even more interesting (and easier to write about from my point of view, since more documentation exists) is Chandragupta Maurya. Why Chandragupta Maurya? Because he was the founder of the first Indian Empire – a huge empire that stretched from Burma to eastern Iran, from Central Asia to South India. This empire was quite as large as Alexander’s empire, as culturally diverse and as rich. Chandragupta also was a hero, a great administrator and only twenty years old when he created this empire. His empire also lasted two hundred years, while Alexander’s broke up within a few years of his death. Chandragupta Maurya lived in very interesting times – circa 340 to 298 B.C., when the Western world was undergoing a seismic geo-political shift. What seismic geo-political shift, you may ask, and why is he using such big words? I am using big words because major world events justify their use. Allow me to elaborate.

In 333 B.C. Alexander the Macedonian invaded Asia and took on the Achaemenid Persian Empire. He beat the Persians at Issus in what is modern-day Turkey. In 331 B.C. he beat them again at Gaugamela in what is modern-day Northern Iraq. The Persian Achaemenid dynasty had established the first world empire more than two hundred years earlier, under Cyrus the Great in 560 B.C. Unfortunately, their last king Darius III (not to be confused with Darius I who is also called Darius the Great) was a coward and fled the battlefield at both Issus and Gaugamela. Because of his cowardice, he lost to Alexander when he should have won. Alexander inherited a stable, rich, enormous world empire that stretched from Northern India to Greece. To give you a modern day comparison of the changes this brought about in the ancient world, imagine if the United States went to war with say, Venezuela tomorrow - and lost. The world was turned on its head. The old established world order was abruptly destroyed and new power equations suddenly emerged.

After beating the Persians and consolidating his hold over the Persian heartland of Iran, Alexander decided to pacify the troublesome Central Asian Scythian tribes to the north and east of Iran. He got hopelessly lost in the mountains of the Hindu Kush (modern-day northern Afghanistan) where many of his soldiers died of frostbite and starvation. He finally emerged in Northern Punjab on the Indus River, sometime in 326 B.C. Here his army was challenged by the local king, the brave Porus. Alexander and Porus fought a series of closely contested battles. Alexander was impressed with the military abilities of Porus’s small army.

With a modest army of twenty thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, Porus managed to beat off the much larger Macedonian army twice. The Macedonians were demoralized by the presence of war elephants (which they had never seen before) as well as the powerful Indian longbows. These longbows were six feet in length, and fired arrows that were capable of piercing even the thickest Macedonian body armor. Porus finally lost only because he was ambushed by the Macedonians on the Indus River. Porus (I will call him by his good Indian name Paurava – I am Indian and he was someone we can be proud of) was a giant of a man in both physical stature and courage – he was nearly seven feet tall. When his massive war elephant was brought down by the Macedonians, he dismounted and continued to fight. He continued fighting when his entire army was cut to pieces around him, and refused to give up, standing alone on the battlefield, sword and shield in hand, badly wounded and bleeding profusely. It is said that Alexander was impressed by Paurava’s bravery and that after the battle, they became friends.

Exhausted after a bitter winter in the Hindu Kush and so much fighting, Alexander’s army refused to press ahead into the rich and prosperous Indian Gangetic delta. Alexander was distraught but could do nothing about it. The reason the weary Macedonians were reluctant was because they heard that the king of the Nanda Empire (Dhana Nanda) awaited them across the Ganges, ready for battle, with a huge army - 100,000 infantry, 50,000 cavalry and over 300 war elephants.

The Macedonians were terrified of elephants which they saw for the first time in their battle against Paurava. They had no desire to fight and lose their lives in what was probably a lost cause - fulfilling Alexander’s desire for world dominion. They also had a healthy respect for the fighting abilities of the Indians, since they had fought against them in their battles with Paurava, as well as the Persians. A large Indian infantry and cavalry contingent had also formed part of the Ten Thousand Immortals – the elite bodyguard of the last Persian king Darius III. They had fought Alexander fiercely at both Issus and Gaugamela and had remained undefeated until Darius III decided to flee.

Why is he giving me so much of a background and when is he going to get to the damn point, you ask. Be patient, gentle reader! I am giving you such a detailed background because it has a great bearing on my story of Chandragupta Maurya – the founder of the Mauryan dynasty, and the first ruler of all India (and beyond).

And now to Chandragupta Maurya. His origins are shrouded in mystery. Who was he and like so many great men, how did he emerge from obscurity to create an empire that encompassed all of modern-day India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and eastern Iran? There are many different accounts. The one believed to be true is that he was a bastard son of the last king of the Nanda Empire (Dhana Nanda) and a palace maid whose name was Mura – therefore his name became Chandragupta Maurya. He was probably born in 340 B.C. He was a very intelligent, charismatic young man and as a child, had a hold over his playmates who treated him as if he were a young king. At a very young age, he attempted to usurp his father’s throne. He was exiled from Pataliputra and sent to Taxila on the north-western frontier of the Nanda Empire.

Here he met the famous Chanakya (also known as Kautilya), author of the world’s first comprehensive treatise on politics and statecraft, the “Arthashastra”. This was a fateful meeting. Chanakya spotted the young Chandragupta’s “empire-building” potential. He also realized that he could become powerful himself and Chandragupta was a willing instrument who would help him succeed. Chandragupta for his part, realized that Chanakya was a man who could help him take revenge against his father and gain control of the Nanda Empire.

The relationship between Chanakya and Chandragupta was similar to the one between Aristotle and the young Alexander. Chanakya was teaching at Taxila University in northwestern Punjab when Alexander arrived there. Worn out by his crossing of the Hindu Kush and his battles with Paurava, a weary Alexander stayed longer at Taxila than he had originally planned. This gave Chanakya the opportunity to introduce Chandragupta to Alexander. What an important and historical meeting that must have been!! Chandragupta tried to convince Alexander to go to war with his father Dhana Nanda, the ruler of the Nanda Empire. But he failed. Alexander’s army was exhausted, and they had no desire to fight Dhana Nanda’s army. Their attempt to conquer India had been unsuccessful. Since Chandragupta had been exiled and could not go back to his father’s kingdom, he decided to stay in Taxila with Chanakya.

History has it that Chandragupta quietly studied and learned the secrets of how Alexander had overrun the Persian Empire. The young man must have spoken at length to the Macedonians and understood their military strengths and strategies – the power and cohesion of the heavily armored Greek phalanx, the battle gear of the Macedonian Companion cavalry, the use of siege towers and engines, etc. All of this knowledge was to come in very useful later. This meeting between Alexander and Chandragupta probably took place in 325 B.C., right before Alexander finally gave up his dream of conquering India and headed west back to Babylon, where he died two years later, probably of malaria. Alexander’s death and lack of a successor caused a power vacuum in the Old Persian Empire.

When Alexander died in Babylon in 323 B.C., his Macedonian lieutenants gathered around him like vultures, all hoping to be anointed his successor. Legend has it that when Alexander was asked who the chosen successor to his empire was, he raised his head from his deathbed and whispered in his fevered voice “krateros” – which meant “to the strongest”. This story may or may not be true. What is true is that Alexander’s young empire, inherited from the Persians, fell apart just ten years after his conquest because of Alexander’s poor administrative skills and the lack of an appointed successor.

The power vacuum created by Alexander’s death meant a mad scramble for power among his lieutenants (“satrap” in Greek, “kshatrapavan” in old Persian). One of Alexander’s satraps Seleucus (known later as Seleucus Nicator or Seleucus the Victorious) wrested control of the eastern portion of the Alexander’s empire – from eastern Iran to the Indus River in the Punjab. Seleucus was a very capable and fascinating man in his own right and established the Seleucid Empire in Iran and Iraq, which was later overthrown by the second Persian Empire of the Parthians.

But back to Chandragupta!! By 325 B.C. Chandragupta had an able guide and mentor in Chanakya. Having failed to convince Alexander to invade India, Chandragupta and Chanakya resorted to an alternate plan. Together, they planned and schemed to take on Chandragupta’s father, Dhana Nanda, the king of the Nanda Empire. Chandragupta was still a teenager. He was resentful that his father had exiled him to Taxila. He considered himself the heir to the Nanda throne, though he was a bastard son. Over the next few years, Chandragupta planned meticulously. He built an army of his own. He also formed strong alliances with powerful enemies of the Nanda Empire, including Paurava’s successor, the Himalayan king Parvatka. Your enemy’s enemy is your friend, remember? One of the basic cornerstones of politics and statecraft. Guided by the clever Chanakya, Chandragupta finally put together a formidable army and a powerful alliance of his father’s enemies. Then he proceeded to go to war with his father – the ruler of the Nanda Empire. Here, unfortunately, historical accounts are hazy and unlike in Western history, there are no clear accounts of the battle that took place between Chandragupta and his father’s army.

What is known is that Chandragupta beat his father’s general Bhadrasala in a series of battles, the last one ending with the siege of the city of Kusumapura on the Indo-Gangetic plain. We also know that Chandragupta beat his father Dhana Nanda and killed him. He had gained his revenge. He then became king and ascended the throne at Pataliputra in eastern India (modern-day Bihar). He supplanted the old Nanda dynasty and founded one of his own - the Mauryan dynasty. This was in 320 B.C. Chandragupta was only twenty years old, and the ruler of a large, rich empire that stretched more than a thousand miles from east to west, and eight hundred miles north to south.

Chandragupta then proceeded to pick off the weaker states in southern India. By the time he was twenty two years old (about 318 B.C.), he was ruler of all India – the first ruler of India, our first Emperor. Chandragupta was an excellent administrator as well (most warriors are not). Crime was almost unheard of in the Mauryan Empire in his reign. The empire was prosperous, and Chandragupta’s penal system was harsh – evasion of taxes meant a death sentence and perjury was punished by maiming. The empire was divided into three provinces, each managed by a viceroy. A palace guard comprised of well-paid foreign mercenaries guarded the royal presence. This ensured that no disaffected local elements tried to kill him. Chanakya set up a secret police agency and an excellent intelligence network that protected the empire from enemies, within and outside the empire.

How prosperous and stable was the Mauryan Empire under Chandragupta? We have to rely on accounts from visiting Greeks here. Megasthenes, Seleucus’s ambassador to the Mauryan Empire had this to say about the power and opulence of Pataliputra, the capital of the Mauryan Empire and the royal palace there - “It has wonders which neither Persian Susa in all its glory nor the magnificence of Ekbatana can hope to vie; indeed, only the well-known vanity of the Persians could imagine such a comparison”.

At the time of Chandragupta Maurya, the city was surrounded by a wooden wall which had slots from which to shoot arrows. This wall had five hundred and seventy towers and sixty-four gates. Beyond the wall was a deep trench which was used for defense and as a sewage system. The city was mostly built of wood. This changed when Chandragupta’s grandson Ashoka the Great ascended the throne. He converted the city from a wooden one to a city of stone and granite (much like Augustus did with Rome two hundred and fifty years later).

The royal palace at Pataliputra is reported to have covered an area of four square miles. Ashoka also built universities and monasteries. Pataliputra was the largest, richest and most civilized city in the world in its time. No Greek or Persian city could match it. Sadly, very little of this great city remains to remind the modern visitor of its splendor and magnificence.

Chandragupta now turned his attention to the west in a bid to expand his empire. As a teenager, he had spent several years studying the military strategies and tactics of the Macedonians. This knowledge now proved to be very useful. He decided to take on Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Seleucid Empire, the man who had taken control of the eastern portion of the erstwhile Persian Empire. While Seleucus Nicator was a great empire-builder in his own right, he was no match for the young Indian conqueror.

Chandragupta went to war with Seleucus in 306 B.C., a man he must have met nearly twenty years before, when he was a young exile at Taxila. Chandragupta adapted Macedonian battle tactics to suit Indian conditions and comprehensively beat Seleucus in the field. Again, no accounts of the battle survive, so sadly no details are available. But it must have been one humdinger of a battle!! Seleucus was forced to cede huge territories east of the Indus River to Chandragupta. All of modern-day Pakistan, Afghanistan and eastern Iran were handed over to Chandragupta as part of the peace treaty after Seleucus lost.

Chandragupta now ruled over the largest empire in the world – from Burma (Myanmar) in the East, to Iran in the West, from Sri Lanka in the South to Uzbekistan in the North. This empire was quite as large, rich and culturally diverse as the erstwhile Persian Empire conquered by Alexander the Macedonian.

Chandragupta Maurya abdicated his throne in favor of his son in 298 B.C., and died shortly after. He was only forty two years old.

Like most conquerors, Chandragupta was intelligent, ruthless, opportunistic and charismatic. But he was India’s first emperor, and founder of a great empire and a great lineage. His grandson Ashoka the Great expanded the boundaries of the Mauryan Empire even further, and became the greatest king in India’s history. Let nobody belittle India’s history and heritage. It is quite as great as the history of Greece or Rome. I hope this blog has in a small way brought alive the first man who united India under a single banner, the banner of the great Mauryan Empire – Chandragupta Maurya, India’s first emperor.

Economics - Physician, Heal Thyself !!

In the book “The Name of the Rose” (set in 14th century Italy ), a character makes a very interesting observation. He is part of a mob that is killing Jews in Italy because the Jews are supposedly exploiting poor Italian peasants. This is untrue. The fact of the matter (as revealed in in the book) is that economic opportunities are being taken away by the King and the representatives of a corrupt clergy, both of whom are exploiting the landless peasants and getting rich in the bargain. When asked why he is attacking Jews when they are innocent, the character says “When one’s true enemies are too strong, one has to find weaker enemies”. This is a truly profound observation.

Which now brings me to this particular rant. As usual, I will take some time to get to the point, because I will first lay out my facts and build my case. So bear with me, gentle reader. There was a very interesting headline in the Times of India some weeks ago, where the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh expressed "concern" about the high salaries being paid to the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of some Indian companies - he probably had Sunil Mittal and Mukesh Ambani in mind. Yes - it is true that some Indian CEOs are now paid very highly.

But why is that a "concern" that the Prime Minister needs to express? In a democratic country, the industrial private sector has a few social obligations to the government - they are:

(1) Paying taxes on profits generated

(2) Abiding by the regulations of the land - environmental laws, developmental laws, and so on.

(3) Not discriminating in their hiring and recruitment practices

So why this "concern" about rising CEO salaries in the private sector? And what business is this of the government? The answer is simple - it is not the government's business. CEO salaries should be dictated by market forces and more importantly, shareholders of the company in question - because CEOs are responsible for company performance to shareholders, who as the name implies, are owners of that company.

Dr. Manmohan Singh (a man who I do like) is playing to the so-called "social justice" gallery here. This is a legacy of the old "socialist" days where the Indian government felt an obligation to tell its citizens what to do, where to go, how much to earn, etc. It smacks of a "Big Brother" attitude that we don't need, an attitude that stunted our economic growth for fifty years - a huge tragedy. What if we had adopted the right economic policies in the 1970s instead of the 1990s?? We would have been a world economic power by now. The lives of a billion Indians would have been transformed.

The government's attitude assumes that we, as Indian citizens do not understand what is good for us and that we need a patronizing, condescending government to treat us like little children and tell us. In a democratic, progressive country, salaries that CEOs (or anyone else for that matter) earn is none of the government's business.

The Prime Minister would be better served by reviewing the pathetic condition of the public sector companies that are run by the government - basic infrastructure services such as water, electricity, law and order and so forth. Let us take a status check on these, shall we? Sixty years after independence, a majority of our citizens do not have access to clean drinking water. Sixty years after independence, a majority of our citizens are not assured of guaranteed, uninterrupted electricity. Sixty years after independence, the roads of my home city Mumbai (a city I will always love) resemble cratered lakes every time it rains. Sixty years after independence, wide swathes of India are lawless and in certain parts of North India one feels like one has stumbled onto the sets of an old Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, since no law and order worth the name exists. Large areas of the country are controlled by extreme left-wing "Naxalites", a group similar to the Maoists in Nepal, who set up parallel governments and terrorise the locals.

Remedying the above mentioned things is what the government should be focusing on, not because they are doing us a favor, but because it is their job. On the issue of governmental reform, all we get from the Prime Minister is useless hand-wringing and vague hopes that things will get better in the future. As an economist, the Prime Minister should look at the average Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) from the public sector units run by the government (many of which are monopolies, inefficient and corruptly run) and compare that to the average ROCE earned by India's private sector, which is growing more confident by the day and is at last living up to its potential of becoming a world beater. He will know the answer.

Do not kill the golden goose that is delivering the nation a 9% GDP growth rate, Mr. Prime Minister!! Focus instead on governmental reform and accountability. That is why we have voted you into power. Tell us that you are taking concrete steps to provide us with safe drinking water, uninterrupted electricity, good road and rail infrastructure and an efficient law and order system. Tell us you will provide every Indian child the opportunity to get a decent high school education. Tell us you will open up the retail and insurance sectors to foreign investment. This will generate millions of jobs in rural areas, answer forever the question of why the nation's economic growth is not "all-inclusive" and add at least a percentage point to the nation's GDP growth rate. Tell us that these are your priorities, not how much private sector CEOs are making.

Why are you targeting the private sector, Mr. Prime Minister? Could it be because your true enemies – the corrupt unaccountable Indian bureaucracy, are too powerful for you to take on? Is it because you need weaker enemies? Diagnose and treat the ailment that is destroying the Indian body politic - corruption, lack of accountability and the sheer wastefulness of the governmental sector. Physician, heal thyself!! I am angry, and if you are an Indian citizen, you should be angry too. We have been shafted by our politicians and bureaucrats for far too long.

History - Hannibal Ad Portas !!!

“Hannibal ad portas” !! (Hannibal at the gates !!). The Roman Empire was arguably the most powerful empire in the Western world in the centuries before Christ. However, there was one man that made the Romans quake in their sandals. His name was Hannibal Barca, son of Hamilcar Barca and the city of Carthage on the North African coast in what is modern-day Tunisia. Even centuries after his death, Hannibal’s name continued to inspire fear across the Roman Empire.

This piece is not so much about the Carthaginian Empire (which was a great power in the Mediterranean for several centuries before the birth of Christ) but about Hannibal, an enigmatic, quiet, intense man who many believe was the greatest military strategist of all time. Hannibal remains a mysterious figure in history. He had none of the flamboyance or megalomania of an Alexander, Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte (by the time he died of malaria in Babylon in 323 B.C. at the age of thirty-two, Alexander was convinced that he was a god.). He was also monogamous and faithful to his only love, the Spanish princess Imilce, daughter of an Iberian (Spanish) chieftain. This of course was rare among ancient monarchs and emperors. Both Alexander and Julius Caesar were pederasts (an unpleasant fact many history books prefer not to tell you about) and bisexual. You may remember the old ribald ditty the Roman legions sang about Julius Caesar when returning home from the conquest of Gaul:

“Home the bald whoremonger we bring,
Romans, lock your wives away”.

Hannibal did not have the gift of oratory that Alexander and Julius Caesar possessed. Julius Caesar’s ribald platform oratory on the eve of battle was legendary. Before the conquest of Gaul (France), Caesar stood on a tree stump with a half-eaten radish in his hand and addressed the Roman legions. Did he try to motivate them with tales of the glory and power of Rome? No, contrary to what historians such as Livy say, he did not. He made obscene gestures with the radish and told the legions about the riches of Gaul and the beauty of the Gaulish women, and how they were theirs for the taking. “Tell me that does not motivate you”, he told his troops as he threw the remains of the radish to the ground, “you damned fornicating dogs, you !!" How the legions roared their approval!!

But I digress. As far as personality went, Hannibal was much more like Cyrus the Great, the ancient founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire – a quiet, dignified, natural leader of men. He slept on the plain earth, ate hard soldier’s bread and drank brackish water with the lowest of his foot-soldiers. He treated them like his comrades and shared in their hardships, which made them love him even more. In battle, he put himself at the head of his infantry, where the danger to his own life was the greatest. A noteworthy feature of Hannibal’s army was that it was multi-cultural and multi-ethnic comprising of North Africans, Spaniards, Celts and indeed Italians. He commanded a group of mercenaries from across Southern Europe and North Africa, and they were loyal to him to the end.

Apart from being a military genius, Hannibal spoke several languages, including Greek and Latin, understood Roman culture, history and their gods, and most importantly, the Roman mind. He knew how the mind of the enemy worked and that was why he was so successful for so long. He was a scholar and a master of philosophical discourse. Late in life, during a philosophical discourse on the duties of a general by a Greek philosopher named Pharmio, Hannibal was asked his opinion. Hannibal stood up and said, "I have seen during my life many an old fool; but this one beats them all." But much about the man remains unknown. What is known is the fact that he crossed the Alps via North Africa and Spain in winter with an army that included African war elephants– surely the most audacious and inventive war strategy of all time.

Before we talk about Hannibal, we must understand where he came from. Hannibal Barca was born into a powerful family of nobles in Carthage (part of modern-day Tunisia). Carthage was the principal city of the Carthaginian or Punic Empire, on the shores of the Mediterranean in North Africa. “Punic” is derived from the word “Phoenician”. The word “Carthage” comes from the old Phoenician word “kard hadast” which meant “New City”. Carthage was founded by Phoenician seafarers sometime around 820 B.C. However, it became an important city sometime around 575 B.C., when the nearby Phoenician sea capital Tyre fell to Babylonian monarch Nebuchadnezzar. The location of the city at the tip of North Africa on the shores of the Mediterranean along with its proximity to Sicily, Spain, the North African coast as well as the African continent meant that it was an important city.

Between 575 B.C. and 265 B.C, the city grew in power and importance, bringing it into inevitable conflict with a growing force across the Mediterranean – the nascent Roman Empire. Carthage’s growing power and influence especially in Sicily and Southern Europe meant rivalry with Rome. Carthage with its navy was a sea power, while Rome with its large disciplined infantry was a land power. Inevitably, Rome’s ambitions of expansion meant that it started eying Carthage’s provinces in Southern Europe – in Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica in Spain. I will not bore you with dates, but there were three wars fought between Rome and Carthage, the three “Punic Wars”. The first one between 264 B.C and 241 B.C, the second (and this is the one we will focus on because it involves Hannibal the Great) between 218 B.C. and 201 B.C, and the third and final one between 149 B.C. and 146 B.C.

Hannibal’s father Hamilcar Barca was a Carthaginian general in the first Punic War. Carthage lost that hard fought war, had to cede Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica to Rome, pay large sums of money to Rome as war reparations and sue for a humiliating peace. As a young boy, Hannibal learnt the stories of the first Punic War at his father’s knee. He swore that someday, he would help Carthage regain the empire it had lost to the Romans.

And here our story of Hannibal begins. Hannibal became Commander-In-Chief of the Carthaginian armed forces in 221 B.C. at the age of twenty-six, a few years after his father Hamilcar Barca died. He spent the next three years of his life consolidating Carthage’s possessions in Iberia (Spain), much to the alarm of the Romans. Hannibal realized that if Carthage was to be safe, he would have to take the war to Rome. Attack was the best form of defense. He also knew that the Roman navy had blockaded Carthage and that he would have to find another way to fight the Romans. He also knew that the Roman infantry was formidable, but their cavalry was weak. For three years, he trained his Iberian (Spanish) infantry and elite Numidian (North African) cavalry.

Then he did the unthinkable – he crossed the Alps via Northern Spain and entered Italy. The Carthaginian army crossed the Alps in 218 B.C. For a long time, the Romans did not believe that this was possible, and dismissed it as a rumor. But it was not. Hannibal began his crossing of the Alps with 38,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 37 African war elephants, through unexplored routes. Along the way, he had to contend with war-like mountain tribes. He offered them two choices – join him or fight him. The ones that fought him lost. The ones that joined him became his allies in his battle against Rome. He had to face innumerable hardships on this epic journey. He was struck by snow-blindness and lost an eye. His North African and Iberian allies were not used to the cold in the Alps and many of them died. Of the 37 war elephants that started the journey, only 12 survived the crossing of the Alps.

But cross them he did, landing in what is now the city of Turin in modern-day Italy. The Romans did not know what to make of this, and sent out several armies to battle Hannibal. Without going into too much detail about the battles fought, it is enough to know that with a much smaller force at his disposal than the Romans had, Hannibal won every time. At Trebea, Trasimene and many other places in Italy, Hannibal overwhelmingly defeated much larger Roman armies.

One battle in particular, deserves mention – the Battle of Cannae in 216 B.C, where the elite of the Roman army was comprehensively destroyed. Hannibal was camped with his army of about 40,000 men on the banks of the Aufidus River in southern Italy. He had his back to the river with no apparent means of escape. Here he was challenged in battle by the Roman generals Varro and Lucius Paullus and a huge Roman army numbering more than 100,000 men. On the face of it, Hannibal’s position was indefensible – a much larger army in front of him and a fast-flowing river behind him. However, Hannibal’s military genius came to the fore again. As he faced off with the confident Romans, he placed his weakest, light-armed infantry in the centre in a crescent formation, with his formidable Numidian cavalry out on the flanks. As the Romans charged, the disciplined Roman legions broke through the weak Carthaginian center – just as he had planned. The Romans broke through the Carthaginian center and found themselves in the Aufidus River. In the meanwhile, the powerful Numidian cavalry circled around the back of the Roman legions and caught them in the rear. It was a masterstroke. The Roman legions were either driven into the river and drowned, or fell like ninepins in the face of the charge of the heavily armored Numidian horse. By the end of the day, 70,000 Romans were killed or captured. It was the single greatest loss the Romans had ever faced. The strongest Roman army ever fielded lay dead or wounded on the banks of the Aufidus River.

And here, at his most triumphant, is where Hannibal made probably made his only mistake. The Roman armies were destroyed, the Roman Empire in a state of panic. He was viewed as invincible. Hannibal marched up to the gates of Rome after Cannae, but he did not enter the city. Why? One reason could have been because he did not have the necessary siege engines and towers that he would have needed to besiege the city. Nobody knows for sure. Whatever the reason, Hannibal lost his one chance to occupy and conquer Rome. As time went by, the Romans got an opportunity to regroup and train new armies. The size of Hannibal’s army remained the same, and though he was victorious, he lost men in his battles with the Romans, and he was unable to replenish his supply of soldiers. Though he continued beating the Romans on the battlefield (when they agreed to give battle and not retreat) and captured the Italian cities of Capua, Sagentum and Tarentum, the tide was turning against Hannibal. His pleas for more troops from his parent city Carthage fell on deaf ears. Politicians and members of the ruling oligarchy in Carthage were resentful and jealous of his success and refused to send him the aid and resources he needed to deliver the killer blow.

His last opportunity came in 207 B.C. when the ruling Carthaginian oligarchy finally consented to send an army from Iberia (Spain) commanded by Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal, a very good cavalry commander in his own right. The Romans were terrified at the prospect of another Carthaginian army in Italy. However, by this time, the Romans had a war hero of their own – the great Scipio Africanus, a young general who grew up studying Hannibal’s war strategies and applying them on the battlefield himself. Scipio had the highest regard and admiration for Hannibal.

When Hasdrubal rode out of Spain and met Scipio Africanus in battle at Metaurus, he was defeated by the Romans who used the same “enveloping” tactics employed so successfully by Hannibal at Cannae and elsewhere. Hasdrubal knew all was lost and made one final charge. He died in glory, but was defeated and beheaded by the Romans. It was the beginning of the end for Hannibal.

Hannibal’s attempts at defeating the Romans in battle were successful, but his goal of destroying the Roman Empire remained unfulfilled. He was recalled to Africa by the Carthaginian oligarchy, and fought his final battle at Zama in North Africa in 203 B.C. Most of his veterans of the Italian war were dead. He was left with an inexperienced army, and this time he was facing a rejuvenated Roman army that had a much stronger cavalry contingent, marshaled by the one man who had studied and understood his own battle tactics – Scipio Africanus. The battle was hard-fought and at one point, it looked like Hannibal would prevail yet again. But luck favored the Romans and Scipio. Hannibal lost.

And thus the second Punic War ended, with Rome as the victor. Many expected Scipio Africanus to raze Carthage to the ground, but he did not. Instead, he laid down reasonable surrender and war reparation terms. Hannibal returned to Carthage and began rebuilding the city. He was so effective that fourteen years after Carthage’s surrender in the second Punic War, Carthage was becoming a power to be reckoned with once again. The Romans were getting nervous again. Carthage was pressured into exiling Hannibal. He spent the last few years of his life traveling from court to court across West Asia. He debated the finer points of philosophy in Syria and helped Antiochus build an army to fight the Romans. He helped King Artaxes I of Armenia design and build a new capital city. He became a man without a country. But the Romans kept pursuing him relentlessly. The end came in 183 B.C. at Libyssa on the shores of the Sea of Marmarra in modern-day Turkey.

History has it that the young Roman centurion and soldiers who were ordered to capture Hannibal alive and send him to Rome in chains were in complete awe of their legendary foe and could not bring themselves to arrest him. The centurion responsible for his arrest was struck speechless in the presence of this sturdy, battle-scarred old oak of a man who in his youth had brought the mighty Roman Empire to its knees and almost destroyed it. In the end, it did not matter. Hannibal was not one to be taken prisoner. He consumed poison and so for one last time, eluded his arch-enemy. He was sixty four years old. Ironically, his nemesis Scipio Africanus died in the same year.

What would have happened if after the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal had stormed the gates of Rome? Should he have done it? Why didn’t he? Would he have won? The fate of the Western world was changed because of that one decision.

Hannibal’s death brought about the end of Carthage’s dominance. The vengeance exacted by the Romans within fifty years of Hannibal’s death was terrible. The Romans tricked Carthage into a Third Punic War, attacked the enfeebled city and put it to the sword. Of Carthage’s 700,000 inhabitants, only 50,000 were left alive and even they were enslaved. It was the largest massacre of civilians until the Second World War. Interestingly, the one man who had consistently opposed the destruction of Carthage was Scipio Africanus – the only Roman to ever defeat Hannibal in the field.

But the Romans never forgot the one man who defied them for sixteen years and almost accomplished the unthinkable – the destruction of the Roman Empire. Hannibal came close, very close, and like most lovers of ancient history, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if after the battle of Cannae, the victorious Hannibal had taken the high road to Rome at the head of his Numidian cavalry and Iberian infantry. The history of the known world may have been changed forever.

The ruins of Carthage still stand at the northern tip of Tunisia. Today, it is a pleasant suburb of the city of Tunis. But this unremarkable suburb was once the first capital and Queen of the Mediterranean. On a clear day, you can still see the Sicilian coastline in the distance, the gateway to the Roman Empire, where as a young boy standing beside his father, Hannibal must have looked out across the purple waters of the Mediterranean and dreamt of conquest and revenge. “Hannibal ad portas!!”