Europe’s India

Title: Europe’s India – Words, People, Empires 1500 – 1800

Author: Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2017 (First)

ISBN: 9780674972261

Pages: 394

Cultural contacts between Europe and India commenced on a large scale with the invasion of Alexander of Macedon in 326 BCE. A great deal of trade and literary exchange ensued. With the decline of the Roman Empire in the mid-first millennium CE, all contacts were frozen and remained subdued for another millennium. A fresh wave of energy was imparted to mutual relations with the arrival of Vasco da Gama in Malabar in the year 1498. This time, the engagement was destined to be more drawn out and with lasting consequences for both that still continues. Like two people meeting for the first time, European and Indian scholars, soldiers and administrators noted down the peculiarities of the other out of curiosity, particularly in religion and social mores. By the seventeenth century, things were more familiar between the two and copies and manuscripts of Indian books and religious literature arrived in Europe. The next century saw the establishment of colonialism, with the British setting up regimes with powers of taxation and defence. With absolute sovereignty reaching their hands after Plassey, Orientalism was born that cast its disdainful glance on India. This book envelops the three centuries from 1500 to 1800 in which the relationship solidified into one between a master and his slave. The author adds a concluding chapter to tell the other side of the story, that is, how India viewed Europe during this period. Sanjay Subrahmanyam is an Indian historian who specializes in the early modern period. He works in over ten European and Asian languages and draws on sources from a dazzling array of archives. He holds the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles which he joined in 2004.

The initial approach of the Europeans to comprehend India followed a three-pronged path – historical, philological and ethnographic. Traces of the emergence of multiple images of India in European eyes over three centuries came about through a variety of actors and their perspectives. The Portuguese expressed interest in botany, medicine, navigation and cartography. The Portuguese physician Garcia da Orta published a ‘Colloquies on the Simples, drugs and pharmaceutical products of India’ in Goa in 1563. Its Latin version was released as ‘Aromatum et Simplicium’ in 1567. Even though the author does not hazard a guess in this regard, it can be rightfully surmised that this book worked as the harbinger for the much celebrated tome ‘Hortus Malabaricus’ that came out a full century later as a product of Dutch scholarship.

A much larger stream of observations was going on the religious front. The Portuguese had quite early discerned that the gentiles in India were different from those of Africa and the New World who didn’t possess textual sources to base their faith. Early commentators viewed Indian religion with full-blown contempt. Manucci notes that “their (Indian) religion is nothing but a confused mixture of absurdities and coarse imaginings, unworthy even of the rational man; much less has it the least trace of Divinity as its author “(p.126). The Europeans were equally confused at the multitudes of castes and sects that divided Indian society. It was the Portuguese who first used the term ‘casta’ to refer to the social order in India. Based on this fact, the author hints that caste is a modern phenomenon produced by the historical encounter between India and the Western colonial rule, which is simply outrageous. Does the author imply that caste-based oppression in India began only in the 1700s? After 1650, a consensus emerged among European scholars that there was indeed a religion in India that overarched the castes, though a single name was not given. Subrahmanyam plays spoilsport at this point by not elaborating further on this very interesting point to focus on the time at which the appellation of ‘Hinduism’ came to enfold it. The eclecticism of Indians were noted by the Europeans with a tinge of wonder as we see in a text that the Indians ‘believe that God, for his own purposes, has not only tolerated, but has revealed a mode of worship suited to the people and the climate they inhabit’ (p.276). The greatest peculiarity was that it didn’t demand converts from other faiths.

A good part of the book is dedicated, in effect, to a review of texts produced in Europe, representing the distinct eras under discussion. The review of Picart’s ‘Ceremonies et coutumes’ is exasperating, and the other narratives on James Fraser, Pollier, Walker and others don’t impart a good reading experience. The slow but steady growth of British knowledge of India is neatly catalogued. The earliest collection of Persian manuscripts was that of William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Though Britain was comparatively late in the fray, the gap was filled in no time because of the political dominance enjoyed by the English East India Company, especially in the eighteenth century.

Subrahmanyam’s mastery over many languages is amply and elegantly witnessed in the work. A good many French quotes and book titles in Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch languages are reproduced. Unfortunately, most readers are not conversant in those tongues and we can only guess at the meaning of those lengthy titles which seem to be a characteristic feature of books in that period. The painstaking research that has gone into the making of this book is literally mindboggling. The author mentions nearly a hundred reference works, but a concise list at the end as a section of bibliography would’ve found better use for serious readers who want to follow through from where the author has left off. A comprehensive collection of notes and a very good index add much value to the book. Probably because the author’s erudition is not readily amenable to easy reading, the readers struggle to tide over many parts of the book. This explains the downgrading by a notch from its deserving 3-star. A lot of portraits and landscape paintings of the period enhances visual detail to the narrative.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star