The Sceptical Patriot (Book Review)

Sceptical Sidin

As school going kids, we all must have experienced the frantic search for an India-fact, to beat the next friend who was getting dangerously close to the title of the school's raconteur of India’s greatness. Our school textbooks also seemed to relish in presenting an India-centric past glory with the teachers and the school acting as petri dishes for ‘myth viruses’ to pullulate, and propagate into the minds of the average unsuspecting and naïve kid who is eager to believe in the greatness of the Nation he belongs to. School grounds were fertile premises for whetting up internal ‘Patriotism’, on a daily basis, with the regular collective rendition of the opening prayer, and the National Anthem that would culminate the morning affair. This well programmed exercise repeated throughout one’s growing years, coupled with accumulation of several facts (supposedly) about the Nation’s greatness, entrenches a deep sense of patriotic fervor, which then becomes the background to an irrational aversion to objectively examining the truth of such India-facts. With that being said, ‘The Sceptical Patriot’ must be labeled as a bold attempt by Sidin Vadukut, at a personal level, especially when it entailed nailing the dagger of an honest investigation through the soft mass that ‘India-facts’ have come to occupy in most of us. 

‘The Sceptical Patriot’ picks up some very popular India facts to investigate through; facts that can easily be considered as occupying a permanent resident space inside the mind of almost every Indian. However, the book’s strength lies only in the ‘India-facts’ that have been put under the lens. The book does not significantly move beyond that. This book could have made for a very interesting read because it was an honest attempt at debunking several popular myths about India. The topic of choice was definitely novel by any Indian standard and it should also be said that the need for a book like this was definitely strong. Sidin picked up some very popular India-facts to pore through, including my personal favourite, 'Sanskrit - The best computing language'. He did shatter through quite a few of the myths including the one about Indians forming a substantial chunk of the scientist population at NASA, all the while employing his typical sense of humour.

But the grand opportunity at Sidin's helm was trivialized and frittered away by a very digressive approach that, in one chapter, had Sidin talking about his trip to Edinburgh Castle when it was about debunking 'Takshashila’ as the world's first University. If a character came into the picture in Sidin's recounting of history, Sidin would go into presenting a summary of that character's biography, before anything else could progress. It would’ve been alright if Sidin had done that, if any aspect of that character's bio-data had any relevance or significance to the building up of the myth or the subject Sidin was investigating. Personal histories of only those characters who are central to the myth/fact have relevance and make for an interesting read, as was the case in the section on J.C. Bose & Marconi. But no, irrelevant biographies and digressing personal anecdotes kept repeating throughout all the chapters, almost as if guided by the clueless dictates of a formula that Sidin thought fit to apply ad infinitum. It was exasperating to read about some random ‘diary entry’ type recounting of Sidin’s past life that had to be there as an irritating pre-cursor to the myth debunking to begin. Sidin’s only evident justification for that method was - to talk about the situation that led him to be aware of a particular myth/fact. Again, all of that would have been alright, if the book was titled, ‘The Sceptical Sidin’ – as that would have made the entire format acceptable, possibly. ‘The Sceptical Patriot’, as a title, speaks to every Indian, but the content’s format kept the Indian reader away from participating in a discovery of sorts, because significant chunks of the book revolved around Sidin’s personal experiences. However, you should still consider reading it because it will settle for you, the truth or falsity of several ‘India-facts’ – which you may have come to believe in. Skip the parts about Sidin. 

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