India and Faraway Lands

Title: India and Faraway Lands – 5000 Years of Connected History

Author: Ashutosh Mehndiratta

Publisher: Amaryllis, 2023 (First)

ISBN: 9789355431844

Pages: 351

 

Have you ever wondered whether there existed a historical book that tells a little bit of all things covering all times and which is easy to read as well? And whether events that happened in India could be correlated with happenings elsewhere in the world? As suggested by the Butterfly Effect, chaotic systems can diverge by a huge amount in no time in response to a small change in initial conditions or stimuli from outside. In a similar way, events occurring at one end of the continent can influence those at the other end much more predominantly than we imagine. India was always vulnerable to happenings in faraway lands. It would be astonishing to know that the Indian national movement was influenced by the American Civil War (1861-65). The war hindered the movement of cotton from US fields to British markets, which then sought the material from India as an alternative that led to price rise and the development of a native textile industry. As you know, it was the local industrialists who bankrolled the national movement. This is just a sample of how the global events are so closely related to each other. If you miss the earlier event, you can still study the latter, but it loses its sense of origin and unanswered questions linger. It is precisely the niche of this wonderful book in finding the common thread of human history. It covers a period from the beginning of agriculture to the present both in India and the world and tells the story of our global past. Ashutosh Mehndiratta was born and raised in New Delhi. He is an MBA holder and has had a long career in the consulting and technology industry. It was his experience straddling between India and the West for almost three decades that sparked his interest in global history.

 

A great charm of this book is the author’s daringness to reformulate and re-apply the principles used to explain a historical phenomenon at a particular instant of time to other periods and we realize with a sudden surge of amazement that it suits perfectly well there also. As just one example, the author denominates the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) fought mainly between Britain and France as a world war in stature. In fact, he calls it World War Zero as 1 and 2 are already taken. As usual, France lost which changed the world map. It ceded Canada and its possessions in today’s USA to Britain. In India, the French were permitted to return to their posts but forbidden from maintaining any troops. This ended their Indian ambitions, which was much forcefully felt at home. Voltaire played down the loss of French territory in America as ‘a few acres of snow’, but deeply lamented the loss of India. French soldiers then turned mercenaries and joined the native princes.

 

We have seen western powers interfering in the domestic affairs of Asian and African states by playing one faction against the other. It is amusing to realize that some native Indian states also practiced this meddling in troubled waters of faraway lands. The excellent rapport which existed between Haider Ali’s Mysore state and the newly independent USA is a ripe case in point that is interestingly described in this book. Both states were united by their common enemy of Britain. Mysore was one of the first states to recognise the USA. In 1781, Pennsylvania legislature launched a battleship named ‘Hyder Ally’ to return the favour. Tipu Sultan had extensive links to the French. In 1787, Tipu dispatched a mission to the court of Louis XVI at Versailles seeking an alliance, proposing that 10,000 French soldiers be based at Mysore. His ardour was dampened after the British managed to rope in the Ottoman emperor into the game. He sent a letter to Tipu admonishing him in allying with France who was ‘the enemy of Islam’ as Napoleon had conquered Egypt. The newly formed US maintained a surprisingly open and warm relationship with British India and the native states. The book captures the vivid engagement with American adventurers and businessmen as part of their nation-making. American trade with India started to wither after the US lost their neutral position after the French-British rivalry was over with Napoleon’s defeat in 1815. In parallel, the machine-made products had weakened the world market for Indian products. As America’s focus shifted to continental expansion and domestic issues, India gradually faded away from its horizon for over a century until the onset of World War II when Roosevelt picked up the threads again.

 

The book includes some interesting tidbits you won’t find elsewhere. Have you ever wondered how Vasco da Gama, rounding an unknown continent and sailing uncharted waters, headed right to Calicut which was the leading spice emporium on the west coast of India? The Portuguese had arranged a spy named Pedro de Covilham who reached Calicut the previous year through Egypt and Arabia. He reported on the bustling spice trade there and informed about shipping routes from southeast Africa to India. He spoke fluent Arabic. Many more such anecdotes can be seen in the book. The author also traces the inspiration Gandhi had received in formulating his nonviolent creed from great scholars such as Tolstoy, Thoreau and John Ruskin and the circumstances that prompted them to write books which made them famous.

 

Even though the book is an excellent article of scholarship with an impressive reference list, one shortcoming needs to be pointed out. The book’s story on Islamic expansion seems to be taken from an Islamic hagiographic work. The Arab invasion of Sindh, which inaugurated a millennium of continuous invasions and heart-wrenching slavery for India, is ascribed to the capture of Arab ships and women by pirates off the coast of Sindh and this insignificant incident is hailed as a justifiable provocation for full-scale retaliation. The fall of Umayyad caliphate is pegged to their non-adherence to the fundamental Islamic tenet of equality as the Arabs enjoyed a superior social and administrative status and preferential treatment in the Umayyad regime. The author further accuses them to have deviated from the core essence of Islam with imperial magnificence and grandeur as compared to the ‘humble and austere lifestyle’ of the founders of Islam (p.192). Here, the book meekly repeats a pious but false Islamic narrative without critically examining it. This is all the more grating as we know that the Muslim kingdoms were at the forefront of facilitating slave trade through its entirety in capturing and selling black slaves to European and American merchants and white slaves for internal consumption in the Middle East and flourished on it. Where was the fabled equality then? And Saudi Arabia officially abolished slavery only in 1962 when it could no longer dodge the pressure from western powers. The author’s bias is prominent in the narrative of the crusades too where the readers get the impression that they were a series of unwarranted attacks on the Muslim world whereas they started as a spontaneous resentment at the ill-treatment of Christian holy places around Jerusalem. This book states that Pope Urban II delivered a rousing speech laced with ‘exaggerated accounts of the persecution of Christians’ for initiating the crusade. Similarly, the influence of Indian religious scholar Shah Waliullah on the violent Wahhabi ideology of Saudi Arabia remains unmentioned even though the cleric and the philosophy are described separately. It is now widely accepted that the Wahhabi ideology is the fountainhead of Islamic extremism in the world.

 

The book declares Shigurf Nama e-Vilayet (Wonderful tales of Europe) by Mirza Sheikh I’tessamuddin, a Bengali munshi who travelled to Britain from 1766 to 1769 as the first travelogue in an Indian language. In Kerala, the honour is traditionally assigned to Varthamana pusthakam (newsletter) by Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar which is a travelogue to Rome in 1790. Obviously, this should be news to Kerala historians. The book also includes an enigmatic comparison between India occupied by Britain and ancient Britain occupied by the Roman Empire in the early centuries of Common Era. The modernization drive of the ascendant power is similar in both places and the 1857 Rebellion has an exact parallel in the revolt of Boadicea who is compared to the Rani of Jhansi. Not long after withdrawing from Britain, the Roman Empire vanished and a similar fate also occurred to the empire in which the sun never set.

 

This book is a treasure-trove of knowledge each page of which is a condensed form of several decent-sized volumes that are accessible only to scholars. Rarely do we find such an effort in the world in general and in India in particular. It adopts a reverse chronological format as each chapter goes further and further backward in time than the previous one. Each chapter ends with a paragraph that raises questions on how the events presented in that chapter came about and serves as the key to the previous chapter thus providing a nice link between the two. The book is also gifted with a good bibliography and comprehensive index so that readers who want to pursue further are not lost along the way.

 

This spectacular result of several decades of research is highly recommended for all classes of readers.

 

Rating: 4 Star

 

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol 2

Title: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol 2

Author: Edward Gibbon

Publisher: Everyman’s Library, 1993 (First published 1781)

ISBN: 9781857150957

Pages: 592

 

This is the second volume of Gibbon’s great work published in 1781. This volume deals with Constantine, the emperor who accepted Christianity and firmly rooted it as the state religion in Europe which still continues and his successors for four generations till Valentinian I. This period is notable by the reign of Julian, who was a nephew of Constantine. Julian turned back to the cultural roots of Rome and Greece and reinstated the native religion for a brief period. The era handled in this book also describes the growing antagonism with the Persian Empire on the east and the barbarians on the north who were getting more belligerent after the term of each emperor. We also read about the most fundamental schism in Christianity that separated the followers of Arrian from the mainstream. The spiritual dissensions had overflowed to the streets and both sides were locked in pitched battles in many provinces of the empire. When the volume ends, we see faint traces of the Gothic threat on the empire’s northern border as the barbarians increasingly find assimilation in the Roman military. Enervation is setting in in the Roman society which increasingly turns to mercenary troops to fight its battles.

 

Like what he did in the first volume, Gibbon earmarks a considerable amount of space to highlight the specific case of Christianity and how it was different from other religions including Judaism, from which it diverged. It was initially a sect of people who separated themselves from the communion of mankind claiming exclusive possession of divine knowledge and disdained every form of worship except its own as impious and idolatrous. Roman policy viewed with distrust any association of people, however harmless. Christians regularly met in secret for their religious services. The number of martyrs was very inconsiderable. The Jews, on the other hand, were a nation while the Christians were a sect. Every Christian – newly converted – rejected the beliefs of his family, his city or province with contempt. With Constantine’s ascent to the purple, the roles of persecutor and patron were interchanged between Christianity and paganism.

 

Christians enjoyed great tolerance and prosperity most of the time. Gibbon notes with a touch of mischief that this was far more dangerous to their virtue than the severest trials of persecution. The pagan jurisprudence was also far more enlightened than we see even today in countries which follow religious law. The charge was communicated to the accused party well in advance. This allowed him to flee and return when the coast is clear again. Bribing the judge to obtain a false certificate of compliance was also feasible. But the fanatics among Christians denounced these avenues and craved to become martyrs in order to attain the joys of heaven. They abhorred life on earth and sought ways to step into the afterlife. Sometimes they rudely disturbed the festivals and profaned the temples of paganism with the design of exciting the idolaters to take revenge on them. They compelled the judges to give orders for their immediate execution.

 

We read from Gibbon’s examination of the Christian clergy that their moral precepts were far laxer than the present even though believers usually dream up a glorious past when everything was just about perfect. Paul of Samosata was one such corrupt bishop of Antioch. He extorted money from the rich and diverted it for personal use. He freely indulged in the pleasures of the table and received two young and beautiful women into the episcopal palace as the constant companions of his leisure moments. But public opinion was not supportive to this gesture and they did not buy into his probable argument that he had done it to test his vows of chastity. Evidently, Gandhians were still far away in the distant future. Fellow bishops ousted him with their own authority and Aurelian confirmed it. The whole body of the clergy was exempt from all public service, all municipal offices and all personal taxes which pressed on their fellow citizens with intolerable weight. The duties of their holy profession were accepted as a full discharge of their obligations to the republic. Seeing the novel ways of corruption in the clergy, Valentinian enforced an edict that forbade the clergy from receiving any gift, legacy or inheritance from their rich spiritual daughters. It also admonished them not to frequent the houses of widows and virgins. Christianity was moving towards its first schism around this time. In the course of their internal dissensions, the Christians have inflicted far greater severities on each other than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels.

 

Constantine proves the dictum that a lost member is one added enemy as far as religions are concerned. He was the first Roman emperor to leave paganism, but demolition of temples was already being celebrated as one of the auspicious events of his and his sons’ reigns. The terrors of a military force silenced the faint and unsupported murmurs of the Pagans. But the emperor was also the sovereign pontiff of paganism. Thus, the Christian emperors were invested with a more absolute authority over the religion which they had deserted over that which they professed. Zealous emperors used this pole position to further weaken the native religion. At the same time, Constantine persecuted heretic sects within Christianity with as much ruthlessness as the religion had itself suffered at the hands of his predecessors. He in fact believed that he is saving those from eternal damnation in hell.

 

The long line of Roman emperors after Constantine is dignified by his nephew Julian, who was named ‘the apostate’ by the Church as he renounced Christianity and went back to paganism. He was not the natural leader after Constantine’s death as his sons received the purple investiture. Julian was kept at an arm’s length from the capital city of Constantinople and left to deal with fierce barbarians who were getting more cumbersome and bolder with the passage of each decade. Julian was made the governor of Gaul threatened by German barbarians under the careful scrutiny of his cousin Constantius who was the emperor. Julian defeated the Alemanni tribes at the Battle of Strasbourg, a battle in which the Germans possessed the superiority of strength and stature, the Romans that of discipline and temper and won. When Constantius suddenly died at the time when Julian had raised the banner of rebellion, he was elevated to the throne with the open support of the army of Gaul. Julian was humane and philosophic. His decrees were always founded on the principles of justice and permitted toleration of all religions. But he encouraged the native temples incurring huge expenditure from the state treasury. The scarcest and most beautiful birds were transported from distant climates to bleed on the altars of the gods. And he repaired and decorated ancient temples. Julian was killed during his Persian invasion from an injury inflicted by an enemy soldier.

 

This volume includes an extensive survey of the bureaucracy, taxation and jurisprudence under Constantine. Many of its features Christianity would later emulate in its ecclesiastical administration. Constantine sent missionaries to different parts of the known world to spread the gospel. Gibbon comments that ‘the rays of the Gospel illuminated the coast of India’ (p. 276).as if the coast of India was plunged in darkness without it! As this volume ends, we find the empire engaged in an uneasy and precarious peace with its Persian neighbours and forceful subjugation of the barbarians on its north which was slowly getting slackened to the eventual detriment of Rome. As it stands, Volume 2 is a good stepping stone to move on to the later volumes.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star