Books: India Y5K


	May 1, 2000

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India Y5K

From 'the flood to the bomb', a riveting account of India down the ages

By Amit Roy

INDIA: A HISTORY
BY JOHN KEAY
HARPERCOLLINS
PRICE: Rs 495
PAGES: 576

Authorspeak

India Today issue dated May 1, 2000 John Keay regards himself as neither an academic nor a historian, more a person who has been fascinated by history since he read the subject as an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford. Yet, not since 1966 when Penguin published A History of India in two volumes, by Romila Thapar and Percival Spear respectively, has there been a comprehensive account such as India: A History.

Early in his book, Keay points out that the problem a historian faces is the lack of sources, quoting R.C. Majumdar, "Prior to the 13th century AD we possess no historical text of any kind." But Keay says, "Happily the situation has improved considerably over the past half-century." More information has been extracted from coins, architecture and monuments, random inscriptions, oral tradition, literary compositions and religious texts: "What follows, therefore, is both a history of India and to some extent a history of Indian history."

Since he has to deal with roughly 10 years of Indian history to a page, Keay has to maintain a rattling speed. In the time scale of Indian history he accords the British period the importance it deserves; or doesn't. "The British ruled India, briefly-for 150 years," he explains, "it did not make that much difference to India."

Valuable though this book is, it is ultimately an Englishman's interpretation of the big events that have shaped India. Being an Englishman often helps. He reveals, for example, that Jawaharlal Nehru's "tryst with destiny" speech echoed the "trysting hour" in Horatius, a much-loved poem of the man who had once savaged Indian scholarship-Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Keay's view on Jallianwala Bagh is clear: "On an April afternoon in Amritsar, in a few minutes of vindictive folly, the moral pretence for British rule had been riddled into transparency, and all hope of peaceful post-war collaboration blown away in the maelstrom of killing." Even so, not all Indians will agree with Keay's disapproving view of the 1998 nuclear tests. He quotes Arundhati Roy, who called Pokhran II "the final act of betrayal by a ruling class that has failed its people". Strong words from a robust book.

AUTHORSPEAK
AKHIL SHARMA
Bringing up Father

For someone who has spent a significant part of his 28 years in America, and studied at Harvard, Princeton and Stanford Universities, India may not seem a natural backdrop for stories or a novel. But Akhil Sharma knew he could not escape India. His short stories in The Atlantic and The New Yorker were based in India. And now his novel, An Obedient Father (Viking), is a family drama with political undertones set in Rajiv Gandhi's India.

It has been a hard road. "Humiliation" is the word he continually uses as he talks about his writing, which started with "the stories I wrote for my own vanity" while in high school. Hemingway was a big influence then: "From him I learnt to make my characters honest." But Sharma, who majored in public policy and English at Princeton, also knew that he had to find his own voice. The stories he had begun weaving in his high school years did find a place in literary magazines and eventually led him to Stanford. But his fellowship was so meagre that he couldn't afford furniture. Even the $15 he spent on mailing his story to five publishers was a luxury. Four rejected the piece immediately and The Atlantic published it two and a half years later. But it went on to win the Best American Short Story Award as well as the O. Henry Award for 1996. Hollywood, however, paid Sharma well when he spent two years writing scripts for Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. "But then nothing came out of my Hollywood stay," he sighs. He therefore went to Harvard and became an investment banker in New York.

While doing this, he wrote An Obedient Father. It's the story of Ram Karan, "an inspector for the Physical Education Department in the Delhi school system who supports his widowed daughter and eight-year-old granddaughter by collecting bribes for a Congress politician". On the eve of Rajiv's assassination, "one reckless act bares the lifetime of violence and sexual shame" behind Ram's public career and traps him in a comical but dangerous political campaign. "It is a surprisingly funny book," Sharma says. Surely he is going to have the last laugh.

-Arthur J. Pais

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