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Book Review
Images of lingering grandeur
GLIMPSES OF INDIA (A Grand Photographic History of the Land of Antiquity, the Vast Empire of the East) — With full historical text by a corps of well-known writers: J.H. Furneaux — Editor; English Edition Publishers and Distributors (I) Pvt. Ltd., Main Office, 5/10, 11105, Jogani Industrial Complex, V.N. Purav Marg (near ATI), Chunabatti, Mumbai-400022. Rs. 3,000.
THOUGH THIS magnificent volume, illustrated with a large number of rare photographs, was published well over a century ago in 1896, the present re-publication is truly a great service because it returns the reader to the thought fixations of the British rulers of the time.
Written about four decades after the first national uprising in India in 1857 against the British rule — scoffed at as nothing more than a "Sepoy Mutiny" — which was successfully suppressed by the rulers, it is not surprising that the author, J.H. Furneaux who was a sub-editor in the then British-owned Times of India also regarded it as such, where his sympathies could easily be seen.
He writes with some pride about how the British had to face 30,000 mutineers with not more than 300 soldiers in Lucknow and acquitted themselves well. This was made possible because of the support their Scottish Highlanders got from the loyal Sikhs.
The massacre of the English at Kanpur (spelt as Cawnpore) is recalled with agony, which could be expected from an English writer of the time, enraged by the humiliation his countrymen had to suffer.
Furneaux, along with the then ruling class, had firmly believed that India was most fortunate at being ruled by the "benign British Government" as it thought of itself. British rule could well have been of the same kind which India had gone through earlier had the English who had come to India intermingled with the Indians and settled in and adopted the country as their homeland.
This did happen to some extent with the vibrant community of Anglo-Indians emerging to make India a country of a rich composite culture. Incidentally, he refers to them throughout as "Eurasians".
While admitting that the "English advanced through India, sword in hand", he writes that this was followed by order and good government. However, its industrial revolution and the accelerated progress of science and technology, not the least of which was the emergence of the steam ship, brought England much nearer to India than it had ever been before.
This did make the English rulers a class apart and infinitely superior to the "natives" in India. England had become their home to which they should return with as much booty as they could grab from India.
They just could not care less for the anguish of this mixed race of Anglo-Indians they had bred in India at being, left discarded and which was going to be portrayed later by John Masters in his Bhowani Junction.
The handing over of Bombay (now Mumbai) by the Portuguese to the British as a dowry for the marriage of Infanta Catharine to Charles II of England in 1662, recalled by Furneaux, is an instance of a brazen transaction relating to real estate in another country to which neither party could have any right.
His references to Warren Hastings recall the cruel treatment he meted out to Chait Singh, Raja of Benares (Varanasi as it is now known), for his inability to meet his demand for a payment of Rs. 5 lakhs (which should be not less than the equivalent of at least a hundred times that amount today) and how it provoked the bloody revenge from the Rajah's men.
Warren Hastings, however, could not get away with what he had done and the famous trial he had to face in the British Parliament, led by Edmund Burke, who made literary history by flaying him mercilessly for the right he claimed to exercise "arbitrary power" in India.
The author's writing on the cave paintings and sculptures spread throughout India is very thorough and he is lost in admiration over the skills of the sculptors and artists who have preserved them for posterity.
But for the reach of his imagination to the happenings in Indian history during its eventful centuries, the unsparing attention he has given in this regard to detail in his writing, his book would have been nothing more than just a king-sized tourist guide. It should, however, be pointed out that Furneaux does not mention "how" they worked in total darkness inside the caves.
The answer to this question did indeed come in the 1940s from the late Kalki (R. Krishnamurthy, editor of the weekly with the same name) celebrated Tamil writer of historical fiction. He wrote that the light was provided by the reflection of sunlight with the help of reflecting mirrors or metals erected "outside the caves".
The stately mansions built in the various cities of India by the British about which Furneaux has given an exhaustive account remain as an achievement in architectural splendour which could recall a ringing description of the Chola kings about their having visualised "as giants and finished as jewellers".
The references in the book to "the Government Workhouse (for the special benefit of distressed Europeans and Eurasians)" might take the reader's thoughts back to the British handling of the poor and the destitute in Victorian England which came for a blistering attack from Charles Dickens in his Oliver Twist.
The photographs of Madras (now Chennai) taken more than a century ago like that of sylvan Mowbray's Road shaded by its cluster of trees should fill the readers of today with pain over how over the years the trees have gone to leave the roads of the city to be baked by the sun.
It is perhaps expecting a little too much from Furneaux in his writing about Mylapore that he would have had an awareness of the great Thiruvalluvar who lived here and it was then known as Mylai.
Among the many achievements of the British is the construction of the Madras harbour since they were fully becoming alive to the inevitability of having a port to support and build up the country's foreign trade though it was wholly attuned to their own interests.
The mis-spelling of Pachaiyappa "Moodelliar" is an illustration of how the English writers of that time mutilated Indian names without making any effort to check their correctness. Not many perhaps know that later historians of the 20th century do not look at the reclaiming by the British of the gates of the Somnath Temple from the plunders of Mahmud of Ghazani of Afghanistan as a restoration of India's honour — in the same manner as Lord Ellenborough, who was then the Governor-General, did when he said as "an act of heroism." On the contrary he was ridiculed.
He even made himself a laughing stock when he stupidly boasted that a crime committed against India by the Afghan invader was avenged with the recovery of the gates because the image he was seeking to create for himself as a champion of the Hindus the outcome of which could only be the alienation of Muslim sentiment.
There is a long and admiring description of the grandeur of the Taj Mahal, though Furneaux who was writing at the end of the 19th century could not have foreseen the ravages it was going to suffer from the sulphur dioxide fumes emitted by the Mathura Refinery less than a hundred years later.
The book ends abruptly with fleeting glimpses of the jungles of Ceylon (Sri Lanka of today) and its "elephants, cheetahs, buffaloes, bears, wild pigs, smaller deer, partridges" and it mentions them as "wild game" — a description fully reflective of the crude European ecological vandalism of the time.
Though it had been written with the British imperialist perceptions which the writer shared, the reprinting of the book more than a century after it was written would remain as a treasure for the wealth of information it offers.
CVG
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