Geneticist, submarine engineer, academic, communist, writer, rabble-rouser, propagandist, philanderer, soldier, Indophile—J.B.S. Haldane was much more than another of those lithe spirits that straddled the European, and later Indian, intellectual world of the mid-20th century. Though a passionate lover of India who finally worked in, became a citizen of, died and was buried in India, Indians know very little of him. A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J.B.S. Haldane seeks to fill that big void.
He was one of those Cambridge communists, and though the British intelligence kept a tab on him they concluded he was not spying for Stalin unlike Kim Philby or Guy Burgess. The book is an honest biography, though narrated not necessarily chronologically. Rather, each chapter is a biographical discussion of each phase of the intellectual colossus that without doubt Haldane was.
What also comes through the book is the eclecticism of the liberal British ruling class of the 20th century. Even during the height of the war, when Britain's great cities were being bombed day and night, they tolerated the communists and their anti-war propaganda. The Communist Party's mouthpiece, the Daily Worker—of which Haldane was the chairman of the editorial board—was proscribed only for a short period during the war. And, Haldane, the anti-war propagandist, was roped in by the military elite to help design the Royal Navy's submarines.
It was in the aftermath of the war that Haldane turned towards India. He joined the great P.C. Mahalanobis at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta, but soon fell out with him. It was then that Biju Patnaik, the industrialist-politician who was ruling Orissa, invited him. There is not much in the book to suggest whether the restless spirit found contentment in the small town that Bhubaneswar was at that time. The other flaw of the book is that it has no index.
A DOMINANT CHARACTER: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J.B.S. Haldane
Author: Samanth Subramanian
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 380, Price: Rs799