'Explorations in connected history'

Under the rubric that is the title of this review, Sanjay Subrahmanyam has brought together his scholarly research articles in two books and they provide an opportunity to scholars of "early modern" history to study in an integrated manner his rich contributions.

The author has spelt out his approach to the study of the "early modern" period by following "connected histories", where issues are looked at by keeping in mind "space flexibility".

The author says "we can sense some of this connectedness when one looks to the travel accounts written in the period, not merely the well-thumbed travelogues of European males and later their memsahibs, but also those written by visitors from the Ottoman domains or Samarqand to Delhi, or voyagers going from Patna to Isfahan".

Subrahmanyam's work clearly establishes his claim that his sources of historiography of the "early modern" period are varied and cut across geographical barriers.

He demolishes the myth of a "Hindu" Vijayanagara (the mid-fourteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries) resisting "Muslim" opponents because the myth was of course a complex production, one that was partly put out by the later ideologues of the empire in decline, but also partly on account of the intervention of the Portuguese, who, in their search for help against the "Moorish" rulers of peninsular India, thought that the "Gentile" kings of Vijayanagara were their natural friends.

The making of the history of South Asia of 500 years was the result of "openness" and connectedness and thus the construction of pure Hindu India by the Sangh Parivar by looking at only indigenous and geographically limiting factors is a fraud.

The author, having spelt out his approach in his first chapter "On the Window that was India", pursues his research on the "connectedness" in chapters "Indian Views of the Portuguese in Asia, 1500-1700"; "Persianization and Mercantilism in the Bay of Bengal History, 1400-1700"; "Violence, Grievance, and Memory in Early Modern South Asia, Sixteenth-Century Millenarianism from the Tagus to the Ganges"; "European Chronicles and the Mughals"; etc.

These chapters in From the Tagus to the Ganges establish the author's thesis of the openness of South Asia. It is not only the Portuguese who wrote about South Asia, in Shahjahan's time the Padshah Nama of 'Abd al-Hamid Lahori also shows the evil effects of this Firangi presence.

Further, "the spread of Iranians and Persianized elites was an important characteristic of Bay of Bengal history in the years 1400 to 1700, thus this spread was accompanied by a partial Persianization of comportments and of conceptions of statecraft (including the attitude towards trade), and that it can be linked without too great a difficulty to the rise of sort of 'mercantilist' ideology in states of the Bay of Bengal."

The author does not say that there was no violence or wars or proselytising during this period, because human historical experiences have a dialectical journey of positives and negatives.

Mughals and Franks, comprising eight chapters, follows the same approach. The author quotes Jesuit Xavier's views on Akbar: "King died more or less alone, he only took the name of God a few times, nor did he die in keeping with the custom of the Gentiles.

As one never knew under what religion he lived ... he made place for all the religions and took none of them for the truth, though his usual habit was to worship God and the Sun."

The author has warned that the account of early modern South Asian society by Europeans should be confirmed by independent and heterogeneous sources because "this is surely a matter of the prestige that a European text continued to hold in the eyes of Sir Jadunath, and many others including the neo-colonial historians of the Sangh Parivar".

It is a very important note of caution given by the author that European sources and the writings on the Persianisation of politics in the Indian subcontinent deserve to be studied and compared, keeping in mind the context of that age.

The note of warning given by him is known to every historian writing on South Asia but the timing is important because Indians are involved in a big struggle around the politics of history of the forces of Hindutva, and eminent scholars like Romila Thapar, R S Sharma, Irfan Habib, Satish Chandra et al. are put on the defensive by the sectarian historiography of the Parivar.

While the author's project "has been conceived as a partial response to the challenge posed by the intellectual project of a reflection on the ongoing encounters between South Asia and Europe at the time of the Mughals", our historians are engaged in a struggle to rescue Mughal historiography from Hindu fanatics masquerading as historians.

It is a pity that Subrahmanyam's rich contribution would end up in libraries while Indian history becomes a victim of politics, an appendage in the larger project of Hindutva.

From the Tagus to the Ganges

Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Oxford University Press
Price: Rs 575
Pages: 264

Mughals and Franks

Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Oxford University Press
Price: Rs 575
Pages: 232