Recently Read: India: A History, by John Keay

India: A History - John Keay

I picked up this book from BCL (more on BCL, and Churchgate in general, later) a couple of months back. I was actually looking for a different tome on Indian history, but a)I'd forgotten the author's name, and this title was similar, and b)well, it was at hand and available, staring at me from the recently-returned stack.

Its a big book. Obviously.

But its one heck of a book. Worth every page.
It traverses the entire history of the subcontinent, in time and space, from pre-Indus Valley to post-Independence, and from the marshes of Utkal to the deserts beyond Gandhar.
Its looking at the big picture. And given a canvas stretching 5.5 millenia and 4.5 million square km, its a REALLY. BIG. PICTURE.

I took my time going through it. Speed reading doesn't allow one to savour a book, though there are books that are page-turners or (as I call them)un-put-down-ables. But for what is at heart a history book, I found it was quite unputdownable too. It wasnt a fast paced thriller full of action the way something like the Da Vinci Code or something by Ludlum tends to be, but.. hey, you know what, it was ! The scale of things is obviously different, and there are WAY too many characters, but just as I was writing these past lines, I realized that it has its own action, flowing across pages, marking time not in seconds but in decades, but thrilling, nonetheless.

Coming back to the big picture, I realized one thing. What we are being taught in schools (well, on my board, atleast, and probably on the others) is just the size of a few postage stamps, and those, too, in black and white. Maybe three for the freedom struggle, and one for Shivaji's life, and one more for assorted this-and-that. I've nothing against these notables themselves, but honestly, if you look at the big picture, you realize its far more colourful and intricate.

And we need to see this big picture. We can show it to the world later. We, the people of India, need to see it, now. We need to understand how we have come to stand where we do today. The handful of episodes repeatedly stuffed down students' throats year after year do nothing to raise their interest, let alone their pride, in their country. It is, to be blunt about it, boring.

But I digress. I had not intended this to turn into social commentary. Maybe I'll turn to it in another post. As a book, its very good. Its well researched, and detailed just right. Academic intricacies are generally left out, and yet its not a simplistic narrative of happenings. Well presented timelines enable one to follow events, and excellent commentary sheds light on various aspects of these events. Despite being British, the author does not make excuses for Europe's role in the subcontinent, while being a non-Indian, he presents a refreshingly unbiased view of characters who we have only seen painted a glowing white(attachable halo included in pack) or coal black(horns and spike tail optional).

Enough blab. I'll throw out a few good bits...

Gandhar, from whence came Gandhari, wife of King Dhritrashtra, mother of the Kauravas, is modern day Kandahar, Afghanistan. (Didn't we already know that ? Yes, but I need to clear that before writing further)

The Ramayana was actually written after the Mahabharata. Ok, before assorted political parties and religious groups march to my door, allow me to elaborate. The events of what we call the Ramayana are mentioned briefly in the beginning of the Mahabharata, certainly. But (here I hop over into the unknown and back) it is one tiny section, hardly as elaborate as the epic that the Ramayana is. The author produces a number of arguments and proofs, but of those, one point makes it blatantly obvious to any common man. In the Mahabharata, the geographic descriptions are limited to the area around the Ganga-Yamuna. Indraprastha (capital of the Pandavas) was supposedly built outside the Kaurava kingdom centred at Hastinapur. Yet they are just a humdred km from each other, in the vicinity of Delhi. The farthest important location is probably Dwarka in Gujarat or Kandahar in Afghanistan. In the Ramayana, however, most of the subcontinent is importantly mentioned. From Ayodhya, again in the Ganga-Yamuna Doab (Panj-ab = land of five rivers :: Do-ab = land of two rivers), to Panchvati and Janasthana in Maharashtra, Kishkindha in Karnataka, and ofcourse, Lanka, modern-day Sri-Lanka. Evidently, the subcontinent of the Ramayana was much better known than that of the Mahabharata, which implies that the Vedic civilisation centred in the sacred Ganga-Yamuna Doab had had more time in-between to spread its tendrils around the place.

In Junagad, near Mount Girnar, on a granite block are inscribed the edicts of Ashoka. Below these, some five hundred years later, Rudradaman of the Western Satraps has had inscribed of his works for the people including repairs on an aqueduct supplying water. And this was all a good fifteen hundred years before the Nizam of Junagad hopped out of the place with his wives and dogs as the forces of Independent India rolled in.

The Parthians - neighbour to the Scythians of whom descended the aforementioned Rudradaman, - rulers of an empire stretching till the Mediterranean also came to rule the western borders, and were absorbed into India as the Pahalavas, for whom is named the Pahalvi script, and who, a thousand years later may have emerged as the Pallava kingdom of south India.

Babar, founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, was a descendant of Timurlane from his father, and of Genghis Khan from his mother. He had no interest in the lands of Hind, but actually wanted Samarkand. He gained and lost Samarkand, and gained it again ten years later, only to lose it within a year. He conquered Kandahar and Kabul in between simply to maintain a base. Only after losing Samarkand again did he turn to Punjab, demanding its throne as the heir of Timur, as Panjab had been conquered by Timur and kept as vassal before the general in charge proclaimed sovereignty. It was only then that Babar realized that the city states of the Gangetic plain were weak and feuding internally. In his memoirs, Babar calls the loss of Samarkand his greatest gift from God.

The name Rajput immediately brings visions of Rajasthan, while the Marathas are always associated with Maharashtra. Rajputana, the homeland of the Rajputs, is certainly Rajasthan, while Shivaji seeded the Maratha empire in Maharashtra. However, at various times, both of these held sway over large parts of India. Not as an empire, but as a loose confederacy of allied states. The Rajput Pratiharas extended their rule all the way till Bengal, while the Marathas only stopped their northward march after being heavily defeated in the Third Battle of Panipat.

The river Sindhu in Sanskrit translates to Hindhu in Old Persian (since they apparently skip their S's) which becomes the Indus in Greek. This is from the times when the Indus-Valley had trade links with the Greeks over land and sea. The Greeks referred to them as the people of the Indus, or Indoi (pronounced, I suppose, like the French, In-dwa). Which is how Europe came to refer to us as India.

So, technically, what is India is actually modern-day Pakistan ! Ironic...

When India and Pakistan were partitioned and given independance, Jinnah thought of the name India for his country, but rejected it as it was the name the Europeans had given, and assumed Nehru too would do the same, naming the place Hindustan or Bharat (which is one of our official names, and Hindustan, while not official, is also used). And to not share the national holiday, Pakistan gained independance on August 14th while India went with it 24 hrs later. However, at the last minute, Nehru decided to let the country be called India, as the world already knew us as India. Jinnah got mad!

There's a lot more, but I'd suggest you just read the book ! Its pretty awesome, even if I seem to go on and on about it. But then again, I wouldn't be talking about it here if I didnt't feel it worth raving about!

Cheers!