Empires of the Indus

Empires of the Indus

Author: Alice Albinia
Publisher: John Murray Publishers
Pages: 314

Empires of the Indus is the story of a journey from the confluence of the river Indus in the Arabian Sea to its source in Tibet through three nations (India, Pakistan and Afghanistan) and an occupied territory (Tibet). Along the journey, the historical details of the territory as well as ethnic minorities (to whom the author appears to have a special affinity) is also narrated in a compact and easy way. The travel was done in 2005 when the author was only 29. In a sense, this may be said to be an epic journey by a solitary female journalist travelling through often lawless regions and where women are generally considered inferior. May be because of the misogynist sentiments harboured by the inhabitants, all doors will be spontaneously opened for a daring and charming white woman! These people who cover their own womenfolk in purdah would do anything for a lady who dares to ask for what she needs! We find people eager to accompany her as guides in urban Karachi, hilly Swat valley where the writ of Taliban runs supreme, in Kargil and in occupied Tibet where the source of the river is finally found.

The journey begins from the delta of Indus near Karachi. The author makes friends with the sewage cleaners of Karachi, the Sheedis (descendants of negro slaves brought along with Arab Muslim invasionists in 8^th century), the Mohana boat people, Kalash tribals and Tibetans. The sources and references indicate that the material is well researched and scientifically chosen. There is an interesting anecdote in which the Sheedis of Pakistan believe that Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore in the late 18^th century was also a Sheedi. This confirms a lingering doubt a tourist might have after visiting Darya Daulat Ganj (Tipu’s summer palace in Srirangapatna near Mysore) where portraits of the Sultan are exhibited even though against Islamic law which prevents the portrayal of a living being. The sultan is shown as an unusually black person when compared to the other Muslim nobles in his court. I had wondered about this after visiting the site in 2009, and now in the backdrop of the Sheedi theory, perhaps it is now clear.

The author, being one of the ahl-al-kitab (people of the book) gets free access to Islamic holy places. She says, “Early Islam was influenced by the holy scriptures – and prophets – of Judaism and Christianity, and the ahl-al-kitab have advantages in Muslim polities. As believers in one God they might go to paradise; if they are women they can marry Muslims; they can certainly go to each other’s worship-places”.

Regarding Jinnah, several pages are dedicated. “He (Jinnah) had not packed away a single silk sock from his mansion in Bombay or his colonial bungalow in Delhi (fondly imagining weekend retreats to India with his equally naïve sister Fatima). Until the very last moment he seems to have had in mind a vague cohabitation of dominion states; he even seems to have convinced himself that the nation he had won for Muslims would be a realm where religion didn’t matter. ‘You are free’ he said three days before independence in a speech that has become the mantra of Pakistan’s embattled secularists (and conversely is excluded from editions of Jinnah’s speeches by the pious), ‘you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques….you may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state”. And what a hue and cry was raised against L K Advani’s speech terming Jinnah as a secularist!

The book also shows in details the hate propaganda circulating sometimes officially in India and Pakistan against each other. She quotes a social studies text book in Pakistan which says, “Muslims and Hindus are completely different in their way of life, eating habits and dress. We worship in mosques. Our mosques are open, spacious, clean and well-lit. Hindus worship inside their temples. These temples are extremely narrow, enclosed and dark”. See the venom in these words! Children are taught in an official text book that “we” worship in mosques! No wonder Pakistan has become and most dangerous country in the world with all forms of religious terrrorism in every nook and corner of the country where even the Army headquarters is not safe.

The unnatural sexual preferences of a large section of the society in the deeply religious areas of Pakistan are also noted in passing. It seems that Islam’s much fabled separation of the sexes was purchased at the cost of sodomy. Even emperors were no different – Emperor Babur’s mother had to virtually push him into the room of his newly wed bride from the clutches of a slave boy who was his lover. Similar was the case of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, who was portrayed as kissing the feet of the sleeping Ayaz, his negro slave-lover. In fact, the romance between Mahmud and Ayaz became an iconic theme in Persian culture!

However, the book loses relevance at some points where the author has relied solely on facts based hearsay. In page 270, it is shown that, “How completely it (the river Indus) exists at one remove from the Indian mainstream was illustrated clearly when L K Advani, India’s right-wing Home minister, visited Ladakh in the late 1990s. ‘What is the river here?’ he asked his hosts, who told him that it was the Senge Tsampo – using the local Tibetan name for the river; the Sindhu, they added, using the Sanskrit appellation. ‘The what?’ Advani asked; then somebody explained: the Indus”. It really requires a substantially large pinch of salt to accept this story about a man who had spent the prime of his youth on the shores of the same river and the same province which bears its name ‘Sindh’.

Altogether, a good work, eminently readable and touches on some aspects of the cultural psyche which still connects us to river which gave us our name.

Overall rating: 3 Star