Land of Seven Rivers: Book Review

Sanjeev Sanyal’s history of the “geography of India” begins at the very beginning: the origin of humans. He drops the first bomb when he tells us that everyone who is not African comes from one small group that left Africa. No matter how varied we are, we all share a small gene pool, and no matter how alike Africans look, their genes have more variations than the rest of us combined.

After meandering with Indian people for several millennia, Sanyal reaches 10^th century BC, and tells us that the population of the Indian subcontinent has been genetically stable since then. The implication is on the much-touted Aryan invasion theory. When Mohenjodaro and Harappa were found, the British refused to believe such a sophisticated civilization could be Indian. Instead, they put forth a theory, arbitrarily, that India had been invaded by Aryans who founded that city. The theory, despite lacking evidence, held sway for long. Proof of genetic composition is decisive (until further questions) that the invasion never happened.

I was glad to learn that Hindus had always been avid seafarers; evidences of their trade with Europeans have been found since early times. This is also the reason Hindu civilization flourished in southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Java, Sumatra, vestiges of which remain in Angkor Wat and Bali, among others. But later, Hindus got the notion that crossing the sea was a deadly sin. Since the twelfth century, they gave up seafaring to Jews, Christians, and Muslims who had settled on the coasts for trade. Perhaps this is an example of cyclical nature of society. After their apogee of exploration and cultural colonization (there is no other word for it), Hindus had nowhere to go but downwards.

The Hindu apogee also consisted of the height of Buddhist scholarship in famous universities like Nalanda and Taxila. Indeed, it is ironic that central India, where the Buddha attained enlightenment and preached, is almost devoid of Buddhists today. Sanyal tells us how flourishing Buddhist cultures in modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan were destroyed by zealous Muslim invaders. The last of them, Babur, captured Delhi despite being vastly outnumbered. With gunpowder, for the first time India faced a world that had outstripped it in technology.

Sanyal focuses the next chapter completely on Delhi, and really, I could do without the clichéd “rise and fall of Mughal Empire.” Sanyal does a favor by including non-north Indian civilizations like Vijaynagar of Karnataka and Manipur of the Northeast, but not nearly enough.

We reach the age of colonizers, and it gets better. A fraud writer, who wrote about “men with heads of dogs” and other such novelties around the world, took Europe by storm. He also stated that the world was round, which inspired the original European explorations. The book supported the myth that India was ruled by a Christian king, “Prester John,” and that was who Vasco de Gama came searching for. Initially, he believed he found it when he came across Christian settlements of traders in Goa.

At the same time, the Spanish landed in America. This led to a quarrel between the two nations about who should have exploration rights around the world. Talk about colonial arrogance! The Pope, sitting in his room at the Vatican City (or wherever), divided up the rights to the world into two parts. But soon the Spanish and Portuguese would land in each other’s territory and other European nations would join the race, making a mockery of the Pope’s division. In those early times, Europeans mapped India as a long East-to-West coast! Though they later learnt to mark ports correctly, it was long before this mistake was corrected!

Sometimes Sanyal meanders. The history of lions in the subcontinent, for example. He tells us lions originated in Asia before India joined Asia, and stayed away from the subcontinent for long, but now India is the only country where lions and tigers coexist. Fascinating, but tangential to the plot. A feel-good tidbit he includes is that foreigners have accused ancient Hindus of writing only one history book: Rajatarangini, a genealogy of Kashmiri kings. In Hindus’ defense, Sanyal puts up the Vamshavali tradition of Nepal.

In rare instances, Sanyal serves the purpose of Hindu rightists: putting India first, whether or not it deserves to be. Okay, the Indian subcontinent is where mathematics originated, but the million-year-old piece of shapeless land (that later became Asia) called Gondwanaland has nothing to do with the Gond people of India, as Sanyal claims. Humans were just apes then. Similarly, he limits the reference of Lumbini to “Indo-Nepal border.” Categorically stating Nepal would have worked better in his favor. Little glitches, but they matter.

Sanyal begins with the Western accusation that Indians are not conscious of their history and nationhood, and ends by proclaiming them wrong. I am not so convinced. Gupta kings put up their own pillars beside Ashoka’s, modeling themselves after the Mauryan giant. Mughals and many others did the same. Sanyal thinks this reflects their historical consciousness. Maybe, but royalty is just a miniscule part of the population. Even now there are people who do not know the name of the country they live in, let alone their historical connection to it.

As for consciousness of nationhood, did Indian people think of themselves as Indian before India was unified under British rule? With more than 1,000 kingdoms, I doubt it. Sanyal mentions how the earliest British expansionists were aided by Bengali traders who wanted to use the British to decimate their rivals. I think that is fairly representative: most people just cared about regional politics, they did not identify with the rest of the subcontinent. Most kingdoms of the subcontinent were guilty of trying to leverage the British against local rivals at some point. Each wanted to carve out an independent identity, and only Nepal succeeded. By Sanyal’s logic, Nepalis too should have identified with India, but that did not happen.

Besides, Sanyal admits that earliest British soldiers were Indian mercenaries. If they were conscious of their nationhood, they would not have sided with the British for money. But then, this is neither unique to India nor “bad.” Political borders as we know them today are a fairly modern concept, before that people all over the world identified with their ethnic group.

Sanyal has given a wide framework on Indian history within which all other events can fit. I would love to read a similar work on world history: that will tell me when people crossed the Bering Strait and entered the Americas. And on Nepali history: all I remember is Gopals and Mahishpals settled in the Kathmandu Valley, and then came the Newa people and the Shahs. What about the movement of peoples all over the country, not just kingdoms?

Newton's discoveries about gravity are attributed to an apple that fell on his head. But Newton himself credited it to "standing on the shoulders of giants." What he meant was that scholarship of earlier scientists like Copernicus and Galileo had laid the ground, and he built upon them. Such is the work of Sanjeev Sanyal who stands on the shoulders of giants. Some data that Sanyal uses wasn’t even available to a previous generation. He brings together insights from several gigantic fields to form a smooth synthesis.

Published in Republica on March 21 (World Poetry Day) 2014, Page 11