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Literary Review
Secular narratives
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Unlike recent state-sponsored history books, these two are rational, open-ended and embrace the full breadth of India's multicultural past, says PARTHO DATTA.
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THE last few years have seen an efflorescence of history textbooks on India, especially Modern India. This is really heartening, since of the many ways to counter the determined efforts of Murli Manohar Joshi to foist a "Hindu" version of India's past on students, using the full might of state power, is to write more history books. Books that are rational, open ended and which embrace the full breadth of India's multicultural past.
When Sumit Sarkar published his path-breaking textbook on modern India in 1983, he helped lift the deadweight of the old clichéd guides. Sarkar's book, still going strong and unlikely to be superseded, has been joined by others. The range of titles includes those by professional historians like Bipan Chandra , Ayesha Jalal and Sugata Bose, Tirthankar Roy, Burton Stein and Hermann Kulke, as well as books by amateurs John Keay and Abraham Eraly. Barring the amateurs, whose books are very readable if uneven, all the historians have written excellent secular narratives which grapple with the enormous professional output on Indian history in the last 20 years as well as the changing political climate of present-day India.
Happily, the two books by the Metcalfes and Robb can unhesitatingly be included in the distinguished list mentioned above. While individually different, both books exhibit certain broad general patterns.
Historiographically, the two books under review and some of those mentioned above show some distinct similarities. For example, when did "Modern India" really begin? In textbooks the classification "Modern India" always coincided with the beginning of British rule. But historians had grave doubts whether this was appropriate, and if "Colonial" India was not a better term for that period. Sumit Sarkar for instance thought "Modern" India began only from 1885 when a modicum of modern institutions had taken root within the colonial state and among Indians. However, with new research and the impact of European historiography, where for instance "Modern Europe" is said to begin in the 16th-18th Centuries, the way to look at Indian history has also been reconfigured. The Metcalfes argue that India too experienced decisive "modern" transformations around this period with the opening of global sea passages, monetisation, increase in trade, population growth and the creation of new centralised states.
On the other hand, the arbitrary decision of historians to abandon Modern India after 1947 to political scientists has increasingly been criticised. Jalal and Bose began the welcome trend of bringing the story right up to the 1990s and this has been taken up by the Metcalfes substantially — but by Robb only tangentially. Certainly a case for continuity can be made for the decades following Independence, since decolonisation, some argue, led only to cosmetic changes in the basic structure of state institutions like the bureaucracy and the army. The post-1947 chapters in both books, however, tend to be a not very satisfactory broad summary of political events. Sunil Khilnani still remains the best guide to contemporary India.
Students of Modern India will rejoice that the 18th Century finds pride of place in these books. This topic is now popular with examiners and is threatening to replace the well-entrenched "decline of the Mughal empire". In the accounts by the Metcalfes and Robb, early colonialism seems a mutually adjusting process between the alien East India Company and the local elites in which the latter gradually gave way. The long accepted picture of a disruptive, exploitative and marauding colonial state is subtly pushed into the background. Continuities with pre-colonial India are emphasised.
Undergraduate teachers and students are unlikely to accept revisions of this kind in a hurry. Economic historians of modern India have long had an ideological stake in topics like "reindustrialisation" and "commercialisation". Generations of Indian students have learnt how these processes led to the impoverishment of India. One can only foresee parties on both sides of the debate taking sullen and intransigent stands and the conflict about "what really happened" is likely to escalate in the near future.
Of late, the attempts to give Indian history a communal colour have led to heated debates among historians. The debate has been justified as an overdue and legitimate one, among professional practitioners of the historian's craft. The truth is that a communal and majoritarian view long latent in Indian society has been empowered by victory at the polls; it has little to do with genuine debate or historical methodology. However the political challenge has to be met and both these books do so splendidly.
I suspect the Metcalfes deliberately begin with a short section on the Delhi Sultanate to tackle this question. Their account of the early Islamic state and popular misconceptions about religious conversion is so persuasively written that these few introductory pages could serve as an excellent model for secular history writing and should be circulated widely. Robb too is innovative and although he self-confessedly aims his book at a general audience unfamiliar with India, his book is accessible in new ways for even the lay Indian reader.
A Concise History of India, Barbara and Thomas Metcalfe, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p.321.
A History of India, Peter Robb, Palgrave, Basingtoke, 2002, p.344.
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