 "Book Review")
The Other Mohan in Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire
Author: Amrita Shah
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: xxiv+412
Price: Rs 699
This is a difficult work to describe, leave alone classify. Take the title. It suggests that the author’s great-grandfather (the titular character) had possibly a consequence comparable to that of the Mohan, Mahatma Gandhi, as far as the British Empire was concerned. It doesn’t take the reader long to discover the presumptuousness of it, since Mohanlal Killawala was nothing of that ilk; he was a mere blip in the Empire in the Indian Ocean and does not merit even a footnote.
For the record, the said
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