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By:

Shoumojit Banerjee

27 August 2024 at 9:57:52 am

The Road to Europe’s Apocalypse

Vladimir Dedijer’s long-neglected The Road to Sarajevo remains one of the finest guides to the assassination that changed the course of the twentieth century. Later this month, on July 28th, the world will quietly pass the 112th anniversary of one of history’s defining moments. On that day in 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Within days, Europe’s elaborate alliance system would lurch into motion. By August, the Continent, which had largely been at peace for nearly a century since...

The Road to Europe’s Apocalypse

Vladimir Dedijer’s long-neglected The Road to Sarajevo remains one of the finest guides to the assassination that changed the course of the twentieth century. Later this month, on July 28th, the world will quietly pass the 112th anniversary of one of history’s defining moments. On that day in 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Within days, Europe’s elaborate alliance system would lurch into motion. By August, the Continent, which had largely been at peace for nearly a century since Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, was engulfed in the ‘war to end all wars.’ The First World War would claim more than 20 million lives, bring about the downfall of four empires, redraw maps from the Baltic to the Levant, and sow the seeds of Bolshevism, fascism and, lead ultimately to an even deadlier World War within the next two decades. The catastrophe that led to the First World War began with seven young conspirators waiting to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand – the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne - on the streets of Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. Few episodes in modern history have generated so vast a literature from so small a stage. By 1939 itself, as Europe stood on the brink of World War Two, nearly 3,000 books and pamphlets had already appeared on Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. Among this formidable library stands one unjustly neglected masterpiece. Yugoslav author-politician Vladimir Dedijer’s Road to Sarajevo, published in 1966. It deserves to stand beside other great ‘origin’ classics of WW1, namely Luigi Albertini’s monumental The Origins of the War of 1914 (1942-43); Barbara Tuchman’s riveting narrative history The Guns of August (1962) and Christopher Clark’s celebrated The Sleepwalkers (2012). If Albertini reconstructed the tangled diplomacy that led to the Great War, Tuchman recreated the drama and Clark the intricacies of the European system, Dedijer illuminated something that few authors could ever possess on the subject -the historical and political psychology of Bosnia and its peculiar political turbulence. Tangled Geopolitics As a Bosnian Serb by birth and a Partisan fighter under Tito during the Second World War, Dedijer, later to become one of the former Yugoslavia’s foremost historians, brought to the origins of the First World War not merely archival diligence but an intimate understanding of the land, its people and the tangled skein of its many ethnic nationalisms. What distinguishes Road to Sarajevo from the shelves groaning with WW1 books is the balance of its historical imagination. Dedijer understood that Sarajevo was simultaneously a provincial Bosnian town and the fault line of European geopolitics. He neither elevates the 19-year-old Gavrilio Princip – the student activist and Franz Ferdinand’s assassin - into a nationalist martyr nor reduces him to a terrorist in search of notoriety. Princip emerges as a product of a peculiar political ecology born from the cauldron of Habsburg rule, South Slav nationalism, youthful idealism and the febrile atmosphere created by the Balkan Wars. Few historians have so convincingly captured the tension between individual agency and the larger historical forces that converged on June 28, 1914. Conspiracy Theories One of the book’s great pleasures lies in its treatment of the extraordinary historiography surrounding the assassination. Dedijer is less interested in peddling yet another grand theory than in forensically dissecting the countless theories that others invented. The result being that The Road to Sarajevo reads like a controlled Umberto Eco novel – a febrile, yet historically grounded thriller populated by diplomats, spies, policemen, Freemasons, revolutionaries and ambitious politicians - each cast in successive generations as the hidden puppeteer pulling the strings on that fateful day in Sarajevo. Almost immediately after the Archduke’s assassination, the hunt for invisible hands began. The American historian Sidney B. Fay, whose landmark The Origins of the World War (1928) overturned the simplistic Versailles thesis that Germany alone bore responsibility for the conflict, accused Serbia of failing to warn Vienna despite prior knowledge of the conspiracy. Bernadotte E. Schmitt’s meticulous two-volume The Coming of the War, 1914 (1930) reconstructed the July Crisis with exemplary scholarship while Pierre Renouvin, himself a decorated veteran of the Great War, subjected the diplomatic record to equally rigorous scrutiny in Les Origines immédiates de la guerre (1925). Dedijer catalogues these competing claims with enviable detachment. Few crimes in modern history have attracted so many imaginary accomplices. Alfred von Wegerer, the German authority on the Sarajevo assassination, writing in 1937, suspected a Bolshevik hand behind the deed. His argument rested largely on testimony extracted from Karl Radek - the brilliant, caustic Polish-born Bolshevik intellectual - during Stalin’s infamous Moscow show trials. Leon Trotsky, who had visited Serbia several times before 1914 and knew some members of the revolutionary circles surrounding Princip, inevitably found himself drawn into the speculation, though he had consistently opposed individual acts of terrorism as a revolutionary method. Others found darker conspirators. Father Anton Puntigam, the Jesuit priest who administered the last rites to Franz Ferdinand, believed that international Freemasonry had engineered the assassination. Count Ottokar Czernin, later Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister and one of the Archduke’s closest associates, claimed Franz Ferdinand himself had confided that Freemasons intended to murder him. Under Nazi rule, such allegations acquired an unmistakably antisemitic colouring. Hitler’s party paper - Völkischer Beobachter - described Princip as both a Jew and a Freemason - a grotesque fabrication entirely in keeping with the conspiratorial obsessions of the Third Reich. Wickham Steed, the influential British journalist and historian, suggested remarkable negligence on the part of Sarajevo’s security arrangements while others hinted that the Hungarian Prime Minister, Count István Tisza, had maintained secret contacts with Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević - better known by his nom de guerre ‘Apis’ - the formidable chief of Serbian military intelligence and guiding spirit behind the clandestine Black Hand organisation. Franz Ferdinand’s own family entered the debate. His eldest son, Max Hohenberg, accused the German secret service of complicity. The charge proved inconvenient after Hitler annexed Austria in 1938; Max and his younger brother soon found themselves imprisoned at Dachau. In one of history’s stranger ironies, Hitler himself later blamed British intelligence for the 1914 assassination while justifying his invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941. A.J.P. Taylor, in his delightful review of Dedijer’s book for The New Yorker in 1966, observed that almost everybody eventually found themselves accused. Serbia, Russia, Germany, Britain, Hungary, the Bolsheviks and even American anarchists - all appeared, at one time or another, in the dock for Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. Taylor’s own description of Dedijer remains one of the finest appreciations of the man: “He is a Yugoslav, not a Serb nationalist, and is not committed either to Pasic, the Serbian prime minister, or to Apis, the head of the Black Hand (though he was once dandled on Apis’s knee as a little boy).” Few historians have enjoyed quite such a colourful connection to their subject. Perhaps that explains the book’s extraordinary confidence. Dedijer neither sensationalises nor dismisses these theories. He simply lays them before the reader, examines their evidentiary foundations and wryly allows most of them to collapse under their own improbability. Every generation invents the conspiracy it deserves. Just as the assassination of Julius Caesar generated tales of omens and prophecies, and the murder of John F. Kennedy continues to nourish an endless conspiracy industry, Sarajevo has repeatedly become a screen onto which successive political eras have projected their own anxieties. But the book is perhaps even more vital - and rewarding - beyond the assassination itself. Behind Princip’s pistol stood decades of imperial rivalry, the slow retreat of Ottoman power, the ambitions unleashed by Italian and German unification, and the unresolved ‘Eastern Question’ that had vexed European statesmen since the Congress of Vienna. More signally, Dedijer anticipated a truth that later events would painfully confirm. The collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the brutality it unleashed demonstrated that the region’s history was a bottled djinn of unresolved grievances. Once uncorked, the questions of identity, sovereignty and historical grievance that animated Princip’s generation resurfaced, in a far more violent form, during the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. There are books that answer historical questions. There are rarer books that teach readers how history itself is constructed. The Road to Sarajevo belongs firmly in the latter category. More than sixty years after its publication, this rich, humane and intellectually honest work deserves to find a new generation of readers.

Caste-based Census Sparks Nationwide Debate

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

Caste-based Census

Caste-based identities continue to dominate rural India, directly or indirectly shaping electoral outcomes. Many major elections are influenced by specific caste groups. After the Bihar government released the first phase of its caste-based socio-economic survey, the caste census became a hot topic. The results, backed by evidence, showed improvements in the living standards and social status of marginalised communities, both in cities and villages. With parties like the JDU and NCP backing a caste census, there is growing momentum for the government to conduct one. However, every story has two sides—joy and sorrow. Even Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, raised concerns about the caste census.

Rahul Gandhi accused the BJP of being “anti-Bahujan.” The clear meaning is that his father and forefather refused to execute a caste-based census, which might have far-reaching effects and even permanently fracture India’s social fabric. This may be negative for caste-based beneficiaries. The last caste census in India was conducted in 1931 by the British government. Those times were different from the present scenario. The data was made public and became the basis for the Mandal Commission Reports and reservation policies for Other Backward Classes. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has clarified that the caste-based population count data will not be used for core politics. But the agenda for politics is always twisted and expanded.

The Central Government also joined the legal debate by filing an affidavit with the Supreme Court, leaving the matter unresolved. India’s partition, rooted in the divide-and-rule strategy, is frequently cited as a cautionary tale. Including caste in official census data could further deepen social divides. This issue has become a political pressure point, with various states pushing the Centre for action. Although the Constitution uses the term “class” instead of “caste,” the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that caste is a relevant, and at times, sole or dominant criterion for defining a backward class.

After the release of caste-based census data in Bihar, discussions around conducting similar censuses have gained momentum in states like Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand. Karnataka, which has already conducted its own caste census, may release its data soon as well.

Notably, all these states are governed by anti-BJP parties. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also announced that Congress-ruled states have committed to carrying out caste censuses. Meanwhile, the BJP has remained silent on the matter, creating a significant roadblock.

Caste-based censuses focus on proportional representation in areas like jobs and education, with the argument that this will aid in targeted planning for the disadvantaged. However, the situation remains unclear, much like a foggy winter morning. The BJP’s stance on caste-based censuses and reservations seems different, as they fear the caste-based calculations could fragment their traditional Hindu voter base—an underlying concern for the party.

Professor Sanjay Kumar from The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, says, “Let alone the BJP; no party can openly oppose it; it is not free from danger. BJP gets a large number of votes from the OBC community, their population across the country would be around 52%. Another downside is that the caste-based censuses could disrupt the balance of socio-economic zones. Data theft is a common issue in government systems, and people may feel disconnected from their actual rights.

The moot question is that if the financial status of an ST/SC/OBC or Dalit citizen moves up by a few notches, will his social status change automatically? The lifestyle of any class will only change when the income of a particular class is changed. The actual source of income is employment. The reality is that only metro cities have enough place and space for workers. Aside from the GIDC and IT sectors, less than 30% of industries have their own designated vacancy periods. After a decade, the Jamnagar and Rajkot Corporations have opened their doors to newcomers alongside experienced staff. However, age and caste bias often operate behind the scenes. It’s important to recognise that poverty is also widespread among many upper-caste individuals, and their needs cannot be overlooked. In the overall interests of the nation, terms like SC/ST/OBC, Dalits, etc. must be deleted from the nation’s vocabulary. Every citizen should have only one classification, that of being an ‘Indian’, in the spirit of the constitution.

Last year, when the Bihar government decided to conduct a caste survey in the state, the BJP was also Nitish Kumar’s partner in the state government, and it supported it. Political expert and former professor of Tata Institute of Social Science, Pushpendra Kumar, says, “It is not that the BJP does not talk about caste. It tries to reveal the caste of the Prime Minister as well. For caste politics, the BJP also tried hard to raise the issue of Pasmanda Muslims.”

(The writer is a management professional based in Ahmedabad. Views personal.)

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