The Story of India

by Michael Wood

‘But there have been scary moments,’ I reply. ‘The emergency of Indira Gandhi, the Sikh rebellion, Ayodhia. Look at Gujarat in 2002.’

  But still it worked. Democracy has taken real root. And perhaps India’s economic isolation till the 1990s – Nehru’s socialist experiment – played its part. It may have held back the material and social advancement of the Indian people, but it preserved the older ways longer than otherwise could have taken place had there been a headlong rush to modernity and consumerism. When India joined the global market in the 1990s they didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

  ‘And after all, in the 2004 election,’ I say, ‘didn’t the Indian people go back to a version of Nehru’s model?’

  Ravi laughs:

  Look, when Sonia Gandhi, the widow of Rajiv Gandhi, Nehru’s grandson, who like his mother and grandfather had been prime minister, stood down as PM-in-waiting after the 2004 election, you saw the unlikely situation of an Italian Catholic woman as prime minister-elect, giving way to a Sikh who swears the oath to a Muslim president, in a majority Hindu nation. Now I ask you, where else on Earth could that happen?

  BY WAY OF AN ENDING

  Our last shooting day is in Delhi. At sunset, as the May heat slackens, I climb the minaret at the great congregational mosque, the Jama Masjid, to look down over the teeming streets of the old city. Our journey has taken us tens of thousands of miles and we have seen the marks of waves of Indian history over tens of thousands of years. Great civilizations, it seems to me, develop responses over time, rather like a cultural immune system that enables them to absorb the shocks and wounds of history, and to utilize its gifts. The history of India is a tale of incredible drama, of great inventions and phenomenal creativity, and of the biggest ideas. To observe the story of India is to see the story of the human race itself in our imperfect efforts, as the Hindu scriptures put it, to gain worldly wealth, virtue and love, and eventually, if we are lucky, to achieve enlightenment.

  From the top of the minaret, looking towards the sunset, I can clearly see the darkening profile of The Ridge, where the British, in the steaming summer of 1857, hung on grimly before exacting their terrible revenge on the city. To the east, lit up by the last light, is the Red Fort, where Independence was declared. Below us evening crowds stream down Chandni Chowk, the great bazaar street, after Friday prayers. Seeing this seething, exhilerating vision of humanity, a last thought comes to mind. The subcontinent is the most populous area of the world, the most rich and complex linguistically and genetically. Nowhere else can you see so clearly, as we approach what may be the most challenging decades humanity has ever faced, what the big story of human history really is. How we all started off as brothers and sisters, spread out across the world, created societies, achieved power and domination, erected our fences of imagined difference – language, ethnicity and religion – but now, in the end, must – and surely shall? – come back together again.

  FURTHER READING

  There’s a last ritual at the end of a long filming project – emptying the rucksack for that very last time when you get back home. Spread over the floor is all the traveller’s clutter: the mosquito net, the old copies of India Today, pilgrim guidebooks, framed pictures and postcards of Hindu gods, chewed-up maps, and cheap dhotis. But with me the biggest pile is always the books: all those irresistible purchases from Wheelers of Allahabad, Motilal Banarsidas in the Chowk in Varanasi, or the unmissable bookshops in Delhi’s Khan Market. These books (for research but most of all for pleasure), lying on the floor amid the train tickets and cheap posters, and the brown paper packet of cloth from the Madurai tailors’ bazaar, draw the eye like familiar friends and recall the delight with which one turned to them on distant shores or mountain tops, in crowded pilgrims lodges, or on late night station platforms. Reflecting on that, it seems to me that not only is there no need in a book of this kind to provide an academic bibliography, it is even undesirable. It is perhaps more helpful to list some books that gave me pleasure and insight, books that I carried with me in my rucksack, and which the reader might wish to carry in his or her own.

  First, for a read on the road: The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature (ed. Amit Chaudhuri, 2002). This is a brilliant idea brilliantly executed, an indispensable introduction to modern Indian literature – and more. It includes a selection of translations from modern vernacular Indian literature, about which most of us, I daresay, are shamefully ignorant.

  Other sets of essays: Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West, The Vintage Book of Indian Writing 1947–1997 (1997), India in Mind (ed. Pankaj Mishra, 2005) and that author’s Temptations of the West (2006). Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian (2005) and his Identity and Violence (2006) are challenging and humane overviews of India’s Great Tradition and its modern dilemmas. Another great pleasure on these travels has been traditional poetry: pride of place goes to the late A.K. Ramanujan’s path-breaking translations of early Tamil poetry: The Interior Landscape (1967) and Poems of Love and War (1985). The Purananuru, a wonderful collection of ancient Tamil poems is now out in Penguin (ed. G. Hart and H. Heifetz, 2002). The two most famous ancient Tamil epics are also available in Penguin: Manimekhalai (tr. Alain Danieloux, 1996) and The Cilappatikaram the Tale of an Anklet (tr. R. Parthasarathy 1993). The Civakacintamani is untranslated: I used the edition of Book One by James Burgess (1865).

  Of the later Tamil devotional poetry (still alive in Tamil Nadu) an old favourite is Hymns of the Tamil Saivite Saints, by F. Kingsbury and G. Phillips (1921); see too Poems to Shiva by Indira Peterson (1991) and Songs of the Harsh Devotee by David Shulman (1990), a guru to all who discover Tamil through translation.

  A great Telugu collection of the 16th-century poet Dhurjati is For the Lord of Animals (ed. H. Heifetz and V. Rao, 1987); wonderful Telugu courtesan songs are in When God is a Custom (tr. A.K. Ramanujan, V. Rao and D. Shulman, 1994). A Kannada anthology Speaking of Siva by A.K. Ramanujan (1973) and his Songs for the Drowning (1993) is a great selection of the ninth-century hymns to Vishnu by Nammalvar. These devotional poems are still a living tradition all over India: the works of Kabir, Dadu, Mirabai, Guru Nanak and many others are easily available. In Bengal, Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda is memorably translated by B. Miller, Love Song of the Dark Lord (1977).

  On the southern oral tradition try A Poem at the Right Moment by V. Rao and D. Shulman (1997), and on oral folktales, Folktales of India by A.K. Ramanujan (Penguin, 1994). Many of the great texts of Indian history are easily available in translation: the Rig Veda for example by Wendy Doniger (Penguin, 1981), the Ramayana in Rama the Steadfast by J. and M. Brockington (Penguin, 2006). A fascinating series of essays on the diversity of the tradition is P. Richmann’s Many Ramayanas (1991).

  Modern retellings of the old stories are legion, but Gods Demons and Others by the novelist R.K. Narayan (1965 and later eds) is a good railway journey read, along with his longer retellings of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The Kamasutra is published in Oxford World’s Classics by Wendy Doniger and Sudhir Kakar (2002). Babur’s Autobiography is published by Penguin (ed Dilip Hero, 2007). Among recent reflections on Indian history is Pankaj Mishra’s brilliant An End to Suffering (2004) about the Buddha, and on the rediscovery, there is Charles Allen’s engaging The Buddha and the Sahibs (2002).

  General questions of the psychology of Indian culture are treated in many works of Sudhir Kakar, on healing traditions, political and religious violence, and sexuality. His most recent came to my hands too late to use: S. Kakar The Indians (2006). The British story too is too vast to go into here: for a judicious recent overview, Lawrence James The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (1997), and for the British in the wider context, John Keay A History of India (2000). On the Freedom Struggle and Partition there is a vast literature, but a good start is Stanley Wolpert’s biographies of Jinnah (1984), Nehru (1996) and Gandhi (2001) and his recent book on Partition Shameful Flight (2006), as well as H. Seervai’s Partition of India (1994). See too Shashi Tharoor’s Nehru (2003)
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  For a broad sweep view of post Independence India, R. Guha’s India After Gandhi (2007), and for the idea itself, Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (2003), and Irfan Habib India – Studies in the History of an Idea (2004).

  Lastly, a few guidebooks and travellers’ tales. My old copy of Diana Eck’s Benaras: City of Light (1983) is falling apart after a dozen visits to that great city, and still its pleasures are nowhere near exhausted. The Last Bungalow by A.K. Mehrotra (Penguin 2007) is a new anthology on Allahabad’s rich modern and mythic history. There are many books on the seven cities of Delhi; Wiliam Dalrymple’s City of Djinns follows wittily and effortlessly in that great tradition. On Agra and the Taj, Ebba Koch’s The Complete Taj Mahal (2006) is indispensable and authoritative along with her Mughal Architecture (2002). On Mumbai: Maximum City by Suketu Mehta (2004). On Lucknow, among many books by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones are Lucknow Then and Now (2003) and A Fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, The British, and the City of Lucknow (1985), to be found with other works in her Lucknow Omnibus (2001). There is a growing interest in the South now: for example, see Temple Towns of Tamil Nadu (ed George Michell, Marg, 1993). I have contributed to a recent study of one great southern religious centre: Chidambaram (ed. V. Nanda, Marg, 2004) and my Smile of Murugan is reissued as A South Indian Journey (Penguin, 2007). Lastly, Mark Tully, No Full Stops in India (1994) is the view of a supremely knowledgable outsider and William Dalrymple’s Age of Kali is an engaging read by the doyen of modern British writers on India.

  The tropical shores of Kerala around Cochin, landing place for traders and migrants for thousands of years, starting with the first human beings out of Africa.

  Rites to Agni, god of fire. An ancient endogamous clan, the nambudiri Brahmins are famous for a meticulous performance of some of humanity’s oldest rituals; One of which may go back before human speech.

  Teaching mantras to the next generation.

  The huts are destroyed at the end in an act of purification.

  The oldest religion? Terracotta of the mother goddess from Mohenjo-Daro from c.2000 BC with an elaborate headdress. Similar figures are found in the Indus valley from the 7th millennium BC.

  Seals from the Indus, tiny masterpieces of glyptic art. A ‘unicorn’ standing in front of an altar. The unknown system of writing may be an early relative of the Dravidian languages spoken in south India.

  An Indian hump-backed bull with huge dewlaps.

  Harappa’s huge medieval walls and ancient revetments were quarried by Victorian railway contractors. All that remained was below the surface of the ground.

  A noble or royal burial at Gonur Tepe, c.2000 BC. What language the people spoke is unknown, but it may have been related to the Indo-Aryan ancestors of Sanskrit.

  The battle of Kurukshetra from the Mahabharata: the greatest story ever told. Passed down over many centuries in all Indian languages, the Mahabharata became the story of India itself.

  The bodhi tree at Bodhgaya, supposed to be descended from the one under which the Buddha sat and attained enlightenment. The tale has an ancient pedigree: images of a holy man sitting lotus-fashion under a pipal exist on Indus valley seals.

  The legend of the Buddha descending from heaven (after visiting his dead mother) at Sankasya, now a small place in Uttar Pradesh. The event was later commememorated by the emperor Ashoka.

  Ashoka, subject of novels, histories, cartoons, and even a recent Bollywood film since his career was rediscovered in the 20th century.

  The Sravanabelgola mela in 2006 when millions of Jains from all over the world gathered to pour great vats of milk, paste, saffron and vermilion over the giant statue of Bahuballi.

  Sanchi, the greatest surviving stupa of thousands originally built by Ashoka, rebuilt in the 1st century BC. What connection the place had with the Buddha’s life is unknown, though Ashoka was viceroy in the nearby town of Vidisa.

  ‘There are many famous markets in India’, wrote a Greek sailor in the 1st century AD ‘and the time for sailing there is July.’

  The harvesting of pepper trees in Kerala from a medieval manuscript.

  The Peutinger Table, a map of the Roman world, showing (bottom right) the port of Muziris on the Kerala backwaters with its ‘temple of Augustus’.

  Madurai temple in the chief city of what has been called the ‘last classical civilization’. The building is mainly 16th century, but a temple to the goddess already existed here in the late Iron Age.

  This casket found under Kanishka’s great stupa contained a small reliquary with ashes of the Buddha.

  Gold coin of Kanishka with typical central Asian coat and riding boots, and perhaps a hint of a rugged personality?

  Krishna is mentioned as the god of the Mathura region by the Greek Megasthenes in c.300 BC.

  An 18th-century image of the marriage of Rama and Sita: ideal husband and ideal wife, but like all the greatest stories, shot through with a dark strain of tragedy which religious interpretations have never quite been able to iron out.

  The TV Ramayana produced in the late 1980s had a tremendous effect on the popular culture and communal politics in India. In the countryside whole villages gathered to watch it on a single, battery-powered TV set.

  The Gupta gold coinage often stresses the kings’ attachment to Vishnu, of whom Rama is one avatar.

  Eroticism played a central role in Indian art, sacred and secular: the earliest great text, The Kama Sutra was probably composed in the 4th century AD.

  The splendour of Indian medieval architecture, the courtyard of the Brihadishvara Temple in Tanjore.

  Rajaraja the Great and his guru Karuvur Devar: one of the Cholan paintings hidden inside the temple’s shrine ambulatory.

  The great temple of 1010 inside its medieval moat with the sacred Sivaganga tank which contains a small shrine already famous in the 7th century.

  Inside the inner sanctum of the great temple: incredibly privileged access granted by the priests allowed these extraordinary images to be taken of the beautiful ceremonies at the Shiva lingam, dedicated by Rajaraja himself in 1010.

  Babur, entering a walled garden where he and his court will drink wine and listen to music and poetry.

  Panipat mosque, a ‘Kabul garden’ in the plain north of Delhi overlooking the site of the battle that founded the Mughal Empire.

  Akbar the Great: ‘In the past, to our shame, we forced many Hindus to adopt the faith of our ancestors. Now it has become clear to me that in our troubled world, so full of contradictions, it cannot be wisdom to assert the unique truth of one faith over another. The wise person makes justice his guide and learns from all. Perhaps in this way the door may be opened again, whose key has been lost.’

  The Golden Temple at Amritsar. Despite initial conflicts with the Sikhs, Akbar granted them land on which to build their great shrine.

  Jahan and Mumtaz.

  Jahan’s eternal monument to the memory of Mumtaz: the Taj Mahal. New theories have elucidated the symbolic language of its architecture.

  British East India Company agent with hookah. In the early phase of ‘John Company’ many got rid of the red jacket and went native in clothes and in mind.

  British ships sailing up the Hooghly to Calcutta.

  Clive receiving the diwan of Bengal in 1765, the moment the British moved from trade to real power.

  One of Felix Beato’s photographs of the devastation wrought in the Mutiny and its aftermath.

  The first session of the Congress Party in Bombay, 1885. In the middle is the lone Briton, A.O. Hume, the rebel in the Raj.

  Gandhi – Churchill’s ‘half-naked fakir’.

  Nehru and Gandhi are blessed by Rama in a painting from the period of the freedom movement. To Nehru’s discomfort Gandhi had promised to bring back the ‘rule of Rama’.

  Mumbai, Maximum City: embodiment of India’s growth.

  Index

  The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or ph
rase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

  Abdullah’s Castle 141

  aboriginals 14, 56

  Achilles 57

  Adichanallur 127, 128

  Aditya 211

  Afghan Nuristan 51

  Afghanistan 22, 27–8, 34, 50–2, 54–5, 71, 106, 109, 139, 140–5, 147–8, 150, 159, 164, 166, 168, 202–4, 225–8, 263

  Afghans 64, 113, 158, 172, 184, 201–3, 222, 237–39, 261, 265

  Africa 8, 13, 15

  Agesilas 157

  Agni 17, 19, 49, 58

  Agra 161, 185, 229, 249–50, 253–5, 260, 267

  Ahuramazda 146

  Aishwarya 80

  Ajanta 186, 191, 221

  Ajivikism 81

  Ajmer 260

  Akbar 107, 113, 151, 158, 232, 236–50, 255, 258, 262–4, 266–7, 275, 279, 285, 289

  al-Biruni, Abu al-Rayhan 179–80, 208–9, 278

  al-Masudi, Al 204, 206

  Alam Shah 273

  Alexander the Great 14, 32, 36, 39, 51, 64, 73, 82–4, 86, 95, 99–100, 109, 141, 147, 150, 205, 233

  Alexandria 36, 136, 141

  Ali, Ihsan 158, 159

  All India Radio 270

  Allahabad 21, 183, 187, 192, 267–9, 275

  Ambedkar, B.R. 79–80

  Amber, rajah of 251

  Americas 8

  Amritsar 83, 280