India : A History Book Review

The Maharashtra State Board did a shabby job of teaching me history. It was probably because the curriculum changed when I was in class 8 and we missed out on learning about medieval India. I did pick up "The Discovery of India" by Nehru at one point but I was a little demotivated by his meanderings about the Harappan civilization. It seemed like a layperson's account of Indian history with semi-autobiographical notes rather than a historian's approach to the subject. Nehru talks about travelling to Harappa or meeting RC Banerjee and makes some remarks about Harappa which just sound like opinion rather than fact. I am not the best judge of the quality of the book overall and my father does praise it a lot. Latter parts of the book are likely much better.

I also tried reading a book by Dr. Bhandarkar of the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute and I was immensely pleased by the scientific approach that his book took to the history of Maharashtra. Bhandarkar's book talks about the difficulties of placing events in Indian history and then tells us how the Chinese maintain an impeccable chronological record. So the dates assigned to many events in Maharashtra's ancient history are based on the timing of Huan Tsang and other Chinese travellers' journeys to India. Having read these two books around the same time, I just didn't find "The Discovery of India" compelling enough.

This weekend I decided to learn more about Indian history and scanned just about all the books in that particular section of the Santa Clara City Library. I found a book with photographs from the "Raj" and loved it. It had these pictures of a time long gone, from Maharajas and princes to snake charmers. One of my favourites was a picture of students at Grant Medical College standing in a circle observing a professor dissecting a cadaver.

I also found "India : A History" by John Keay and I have been reading it incessantly ever since. Nehru couldn't have known some of these facts when he wrote his book while he was imprisoned in the Ahmednagar prison. John Keay's opinions seem not unlike those of most educated Indians. I daresay even an Indian couldn't have done a better job. So far I have read the chapters about Harappa, the Vedic Age and Invasions by the Turks and Mongols.

Having grown up in Pune, one always hears descriptions of Shivaji and the Marathas in such superlative terms that the significance of the Maratha achievement fails to make an impact. The fact that Pune was the capital of the Maratha empire that controlled 70% of the landmass on the Indian subcontinent is an incredible achievement. What makes it more noteworthy is the fact that for many 100s of years India was ruled by Islamic invaders who weren't indigenous people. For instance Babur was born in Samarkand in Central Asia. Muhammed of Ghori who defeated Prithviraj Chauhan after having lost to him more than 10 times also ruled the throne of Delhi but was a native of present-day Afghanistan.

ADDENDUM: Actually I take that back. Whether Babur or Muhammed of Ghori were really Indian is a question that can't be answered. Pune is farther away from Delhi when compared to Samarkand and Afghanistan. The only distinguishing feature between the Turks & Mughals when compared to natives in what is today Northern India is religion. Genetically Punjabis are probably closer to Afghanis than South Indians. If you don't understand me never mind. Point I am trying to make here is that nationality or kinship is hard to define. Today the Mughals seem foreign because that's how borders are defined today, but for the 1300s they didn't venture too far from their homelands.