India - A History

Title: India – A History

Author: John Keay

Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2007 (First published 2000)

ISBN: 9780007259281

Pages: 576

In fables and legends we come across the story of a magic pill, having the size of a small pea but containing the nourishing potential of a hundred feasts. Such stories are not amenable to rational thinking, but this book is a real case in point, in which the entire history of the Indian subcontinent from the pre-Harappan age to the ascent of Prime Minister Vajpayee is condensed in a brilliant saga told over 534 pages of absorbing narrative. As can be expected when the history of five millennia is being told, the author has to be very careful in not venturing too deep into the historical waters. John Keay is immensely successful in achieving his objective without omitting any important event or personality even while presenting almost all there is to it, in a nutshell. With a heart deeply sympathetic to the Indian spirit, Keay sails through centuries of rule and misrule by Hindu kings and Muslim sultans to reach the British period. Astonishingly for an Indophile, the author inspects the pre-Independence politics with a distinctly skeptic viewpoint that is also critical of the nationalist perspective. Barring a few minor glitches like failing to distinguish between the various hues of right-wing politics like that of the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS, the book is essentially free from factual errors. Wherever an event can be interpreted both ways, Keay’s locus is strictly anti-nationalist. Even though John Keay needs no introduction, it may be noted that he lives in Scotland and is the author of three acclaimed histories on India.

A delectably objective narrative of ancient India ending with the invasion of Alexander can be found in these pages. Keay’s work combines extensive research and wit, without losing sight of the relevance of incidents to present-day society. India always took pride in its culture, which was thought to be established on the soil from time immemorial. The realization came about during the British Raj and it is only natural to conceive a pride in one’s past in a bid to keep one’s head high above the high-tide line of oppression by foreign aggressors – both on the economical and cultural spheres. The remains of a great civilization were found in Harappa and Mohenjo Daro during the 20^th century. This confirmed what was till then only a hope of establishing the country’s heritage with something tangible to show off. The remains of the exquisite urban settlements tell eloquently of a people whose achievement could well contend for the title of the ‘cradle of civilizations’. Early archeologists thought the Harappan culture to be one of the mere outposts of the Sumerian, but later excavations have proved that the civilization was homemade, with remains of intermediate stages unearthed in sufficient numbers. The coming of the Aryans eclipsed these urban dwellers. By invasion or assimilation, Aryans obtained hegemony in society and Vedic literature dawned on the world. All this time, migration to the east continued, bringing more and more of the Ganga plains under cultivation. For hunter-gatherers, land is of marginal importance that could be brought under communal control for enjoyment by all. When agriculture predominated, as seen in the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata and the Puranas, individual property rights became essential. Local republics like the Gana Sanghas gave way to kingdoms. Buddhist texts describe the events in the Ganga valley in more detail. Alexander’s invasion, though it did not bring in any immediate revolutionary change, was instrumental in opening up India’s minds and geography to outside influence.

British historians first began the practice of dividing Indian history into the Hindu, Muslim and British periods, loosely based on chronology as the ancient, medieval and modern eras. Leftist historians take them to task for studying history on religious lines, but this book also follows this line. Keay has also followed the politically correct way; by employing delicate care not to aggrandize anything nationalist historians may find it worthwhile to cater to their constituency. Thus, Shivaji doesn’t get any credit for his strict policy not to desecrate mosques, the Koran and not to seize women (as conceded by Keay himself). But the hordes of sultans and bigoted Mughals who indulged in desecration and demolition of temples, rape and pillage of Hindu kingdoms and women and conversion as an instrument of state policy are condoned by construing such acts as ‘natural’ actions to collect booty from conquered territories, victor’s natural right to confiscate anything considered valuable by the vanquished and an attempt to swell the ranks of the minority who was ruling the land, respectively. In a clear reflection on the priorities of the Delhi sultans, Keay quotes Balban, who ruled from 1265 to 1287, regarding the circumstances which forced his hand in temporarily stopping the conquest of neighbouring Hindu kingdoms and to stay put in Delhi trying to ward off a likely Mongol raid. Balban says that, “if this anxiety as guardians and protectors of Mussulmans were removed, I would not stay one day in my capital, but would lead forth my army to capture treasures and valuables, elephants and horses and would never allow the Rais and Ranas [i.e., the rajputs and other Hindus] to repose in quiet at a distance” (p.248). We can’t expect modern-day ideals of equality or enlightenment from a bigotedly barbarous medieval sultan, but treating the vast majority of his subjects to a status not much above that of animals and never a moment of care about their welfare helps to explain the extreme backwardness of the country on all parameters of economic wellbeing when at last it stepped on to modernity. Vast amounts of treasure in gold, gems and jewelry were amassed as war booty and taken out of the country, impoverishing it for centuries to come. In fact, India has still not freed herself from the adverse impact of economic pillage that continued throughout the medieval era.

When he reaches the 20^th century, the author gives a version of events that is considerably at variance with the Congress-centric narrative common in India. While Indian children learn in their classrooms that Curzon’s partition of Bengal in 1905 was a deliberate ploy of ‘Divide and Rule’, implying that the division of Bengal into Hindu and Muslim majority areas was designed to drive a wedge between the two communities, Keay argues that Curzon made a division which was already there in the minds of the adherents of India’s two most numerous religions. He quotes a League leader who remarked that “we divide and you rule”, and buttresses this argument with what happened when elections to provisional assemblies were conducted in accordance with the provisions of the Government of India Act 1935. In the meanwhile, bowing to extensive agitation by Congress, Britain had annulled the partition of Bengal. In the combined province, Muslims constituted the majority which became painfully evident to Congressmen in Bengal when their party faced a rout at the hustings. Demand then arose from them for a separate electorate for Hindus on the lines of those granted to minorities. Keay concludes that this incident was the real reason for the spar between Subhash Chandra Bose who hailed from Bengal and Nehru’s official faction within the Congress. In the end, Gandhi intervened against Bose, whose only option then was to get out of the party. He conspired against the government’s war effort. Arrested and charged for sedition, Bose escaped narrowly from house arrest and allied with Hitler and Japan’s Tojo. Finding an easy puppet for legitimising its already planned invasion of India, Japan placed him on the forefront of the war in the guise of a hastily constituted Indian National Army (INA). They occupied the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and declared India’s independence there. Keay notes with irony that Bose ended up in those islands – which contained a penal colony that housed people convicted and transported – exactly where he would have gone, had he not fled India. He also finds fault with Congress’ totally uncooperative stand towards the British when they proclaimed India’s participation in the Second World War without consultation or consent of Indians. The Muslim League freely collaborated with the government. This might have helped them gain advantage over the Congress when the issue of partition of the country heated up after the war’s conclusion.

The book contains some assertions which may seem controversial. One is that the Pallavas of early Tamil Nadu were descendants of the Pahlavi/Parthian interlopers who reached India from Iran. It also clearly brings out the vast uncertainties in dates of kingdoms and societies as ancient India was not very enthusiastic in history writing. Even with this huge doubt on the chronology, we find a few Indians attributing impossibly antique time periods for the country’s earliest dynasties and origin of religious literature like the Vedas and epics. The book is a classic as far as its subject matter is concerned, and endowed with a large number of monochrome photographs, an extensive index, a comprehensive list of bibliography and enlightening footnotes collected at the end of the book. This book is written in an impeccable style celebrating the author’s extraordinary mastery over unlocking the beauty of English language. The size of letters is somewhat small, which may cause some difficulty to readers.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star