Glimpses of World History: Part 1

I have been reading "Glimpses of World History". Running over thousand pages, the book is a collection of about two hundred letters written by Jawaharlal Nehru to his daughter Indira Gandhi. Nehru was incarcerated at that time by the British Government and Indira was in her early teens. The letters provide us with a panoramic view of world history, starting from the civilization of Harappa-Mahenjo daro and concluding with the rise of Nazism in Germany. It will take more than a month to finish this monumental volume. The more you read, the more it becomes impossible, regardless of your political inclinations, not to get mesmerized by the sheer erudition of the man whom we were lucky to have as our first prime minister. He was not a historian by profession, and surely had no access to a library inside a prison. Yet "Glimpses of World History" is rated as arguably one of the best popular history books of all time.

Let me share a couple of amazing facts that I came to know while perusing the book.

India was exposed to Christianity way before Western Europe accepted it. At around late 1st century AC, several Christian missionaries arrived at south India via the sea route. They were welcomed by the natives and lot of people got converted. This was at a time when Christianity was a proscribed religion even within the Roman empire. Descendants of these early Christians have survived to this day in India.

Marco Polo, the great traveler from Venice, along with his father and uncle spent more than fifteen years at the court of Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan in China in 13th century AC. Marco, who was a favorite of the Emperor, wanted to go home but it was difficult to get Khan's permission. At last there came an opportunity. The Mongol ruler of Persia (modern day Iran), who was also Kublai's cousin, lost his wife and wished to remarry some girl from his own clan. So he requested Kublai to send him a prospective bride. Kublai chose a beautiful Mongol princes and agreed to let the three Polos escort her safely to Persia. The Polos were supposed to return to Venice after discharging this final duty. They took the sea route and came to south India. The Polos were avid travelers, and they, along with the princes, seemed to have no major concern regarding the impending wedding. Having spent quite some time touring south India, the trio and the princes finally arrived at Persia two years after they had started.

If you are a true romantic at heart, dare to imagine: A beautiful princes, a young Marco Polo, embarking on a voyage, touring an exotic land, for as long as two years! Try to think about the romantic potential of the saga! Can it ever be possible that the princes will eventually marry some old King whom she has never seen?

Of course not!

Great! So Marco gets the girl??

Errrr no. Actually the prospective bridegroom (King of Persia) dies before the party can reach his kingdom. So the King's son, younger and more attractive than his father, marries the princes. Marco heads off towards Venice with his father and uncle.

To set the record straight, there is no historical evidence of a romance between Marco Polo and the Princess.

Hopeless Marco!!

PS: As the title suggests, I plan to write at least one more post based on this book.

India After Gandhi

I have started reading "India After Gandhi" by Ramchandra Guha, and am slowly getting addicted to it. The book documents the political history of India from 1947 to the present day. Though it will take more than a month to finish a 900 page volume, I hope to stick around till the end. Here are some excerpts.

...throughout the sixty years since India became independent, there has been speculation about how long it would stay united, or maintain the institutions and processes of democracy. With every death of a prime minister has been predicted the replacement of democracy by military rule; in every failure of the monsoon has been anticipated countrywide famine; in every new secessionist movement has been seen the disappearance of India as a single entity......The heart hoped that India would survive, but the head worried it wouldn't. The place was.....far too diverse to persist as a nation, and much too poor to endure as a democracy.....

....On my way to work, I had to pass through Rajpath, the road whose name and location signal the exercise of state power. For about a mile, Rajpath runs along flat land; on either side are specious grounds meant to accommodate the thousands of spectators who come for the annual republic day parade.......By the time I had moved to New Delhi the British had long departed. India was now a free and sovereign republic - but not, it seemed, an altogether happy one. Signs of discord were everywhere. Notably, on Rajpath, the grounds meant to be empty except on ceremonial days has become a village of tents, each with colorful placards hung outside it. One tent might be inhabited by peasants from the Uttarakhand Himalaya, seeking a separate province; a second by farmers from Maharashtra, fighting for a higher price for their produce; a third by the residents of the southern Konkan coast, urging that their language be given official recognition by inclusion in the Eighth Schedule of the constitution of India. The people within these tents and the causes they upheld were ever changing. The hill peasants might be replaced by industrial workers protesting retrenchment; the Maharashtra farmers by Tibetan refugees asking for Indian citizenship; the Konkani-speakers by Hindu monks demanding a ban on cow slaughter.....I wished I had the time to walk on Rajpath every day from January 1 to December 31, chronicling the appearance and disappearance of the tents and their residents. That would be the story of India as told from a single street, and in a single year.....However, this too, is a story, above all, of social conflicts; of how these arise, how they are expressed, and how they are sought to be resolved.......

The forces that divide India are many. This book pays due attention to them. But there are also forces that have kept India together, that have helped transcend or contain the cleavages of class and culture, that - so far at least - have nullified the many predictions that India would not stay united and not stay democratic. These moderating influences are far less visible; it is one aim of this book to make them more so....Suffice it to say that they have included individuals as well as institutions.