INDIA, THROUGH TIME
Roll up for the magical history tour.
John Keay’s India: A History, (Atlantic Monthly Press; pp. 559; $32.59) is a book of startling ambition, a trip down five millennia that begins with an enigma and ends with a mystery. The enigma is the prehistoric Indus valley civilization of Harappa about which little is known today and the mystery is modern India, a hodgepodge of a country that is equal parts myth and reality. It is a story that has been told before but rarely with such charm and far-ranging scholarship. Keay mergers the disciplines of anthropology, archeology and mythology and the result is a book that brings alive some of the larger-than-life characters that strode over the Indian landscape. Examples of human foibles, betrayals and grand failures as well as those of nobility, courage and dazzling successes, bounce off Keay’s pages like sunlight.
In the process, Keay does the reader a rare service--he takes us behind the scenes of history-making and makes us realize the fluid, subjective, imperfect and perilously human process that it is. Even as he demolishes many of the myths that surround the Indian subcontinent, he demolishes the myth of history as a monolithic, unaltering phenomenon. From the debate over the precise date of the battle described in the epic Mahabharata, to the establishment of a definite date for the birth of Buddha, to the contemplation of whether the Aryan entry into India took the form of an invasion or a gradual migration (most likely between 1500 BC and 1300 BC), Keay invites us to witness the process of history-building. Indian history is notoriously hard to pin down. The script of the ancient Harappans, who built the world’s first planned cities, remains undeciphered by scholars. The source of much of our information about early Indian culture--the Vedas--obfuscates as much as it reveals. For at least five centuries, the 10,000 verses of the Rig Veda were memorized passed down orally, leaving them vulnerable to human error. And the very splendor of India’s architectural marvels--with their religious and cultural underpinnings--have diverted scholarly attention from its socio-political history.
The majesty of these monuments also obscured the savagery of the dynasties that built them. The fratricide among the Great Mughals gives new meaning to the term ‘family dysfunction’ and makes the bickering House of Windsor look like an assembly of Buddhist monks. Shah Jahan, who commissioned the Taj Mahal, the world’s most famous memorial to romantic love, fought in battle against his father and oversaw the death of his brother and several cousins. Later, each one of his four sons would fight against him. Captured by his son Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan spent the rest of his days as a prisoner in Agra’s fort.
Unlike many modern historians, Keay doesn’t seem to have an ax to grind or an ideological battle to wage. The book is surpassingly even-handed, although a simple retelling of the facts unwittingly lays to rest some of the self-serving claims made by contemporary Indian fundamentalists. Keay takes pains to explain, for instance, that even at the height of the Muslim invasions of India, ordinary Hindus and Muslims existed quite peacefully. The Muslim invasions were not characterized by the forced conversions and brutal repression seen elsewhere and Hindu rebellions, while existent, were not frequent. While Muslim sultans and emperors did destroy Hindu temples and disproportionately taxed the native citizenry, the Islamic rulers also assimilated into Hindu culture. The great Mughal architecture, for instance, is a synthesis of Islamic and Indian styles. In fact, religious identities as a source of political conflict, “are not much in evidence in pre-Islamic India, were often exaggerated thereafter, and only became paramount during the last decades of British rule. Historically, it was Europe, not India, which consistently made religion grounds for war,” Keay writes.
Indeed, if Keay is tough on any of the participants in the latter-day Indian drama, it is the British. From British insensitivity to local customs and conditions--which fueled the resentments that peaked in the historic Indian Mutiny of 1857--to the economic exploitation that drained India’s raw materials and put a choke-hold on her fledging industries, Keay heaps scorn on British colonialism. Describing the 1919 bloodbath in Amritsar, he writes, “On an April afternoon in Amritsar, in a few minutes of vindictive folly, the moral pretence for British rule had been riddled into transparency.”
Once this moral pretence was exposed, the momentum toward freedom which culminated with Independence in 1947, became unstoppable. Two million Indians enthusiastically served overseas during World War I. A few decades later, many Indian intellectuals decried World War II as a battle between two imperialistic powers and withheld their support of the British endeavor.
The weak link in Keay’s comprehensive book is the section on contemporary India. While one can sympathize with the author’s desire to get his burgeoning manuscript to his publisher, the chapters on present-day India lack the detail and depth of the previous chapters. The ongoing crisis of Kashmir--which has defined post-Independence India--is not given the attention it deserves. And the section on Indira Gandhi, perhaps the most dominating figure in Indian politics of the second half of the 20th century, does not offer any fresh insights into her devolution from the scion of one of India’s most democratic-minded families, into an undemocratic autocrat. Gandhi’s 1975 declaration of Emergency or martial law--a defining event for a generation of Indians--is dismissed in three hurried paragraphs.
Perhaps most surprising, there is no mention of the grassroots, leftist movements--such as the guerrilla Naxalite movement of the 1960s and 1970s--that have threatened the government ever since Independence.
But these are minor quibbles. Keay’s panoramic vision and multi-disciplinary approach serves the function of all great historical writing--it illuminates the present. Thus, we understand how the centuries-old evolution of the caste system, still dominates Indian politics today. We understand that the divide-and-rule policies of British colonizers made the partitioning of India and the bloodbath that followed, historically inevitable. We realize how the trauma and scars of that partition continues to haunt modern India. And when Keay, describing the indigenous Harappans and the migratory Aryans, writes, “India’s history as currently understood must be seen as beginning with two woefully unconnected cultures,” it helps us understand the ethnic and religious smorgasbord that is India today.
--Boston Globe, April 2, 2000
