An other history

Economist and urban planner Sanjeev Sanyal’s latest book questions the conventional narrative of the history of India.

In his travelogue, Following the Equator, the American master of prose Mark Twain said: The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. It is the spirit of this aphorism that makes Sanjeev Sanyal’s latest book, The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History, a pertinent one, where he ensues an alternate narrative of the conventional history.

Sanjeev, a renowned economist and urban planner, happens to be a “history buff,” who had been “collecting information” about maritime history for almost two decades. “I have lived my life around the Indian Ocean, and it was only natural as a history buff that I would collect information about the history, which I have been doing for almost 20 years now. I had never thought that I would write a book on it, but only after a close friend suggested, I started serious research and eventually worked on the book,” he says.

What makes Sanjeev’s book interesting to students, scholars and history enthusiasts is his questioning of the popular narrative of history. “Our history,” he says, “is very problematic. Bulk of it was written by historians from the West, and therefore if you read the conventional narrative, it seems that our history starts with Vasco da Gama (1497-98) as if we were waiting for him to appear at our shore. The history is essentially Europe-centric.”

But that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. According to him, although there were several Indian and South-East Asian historians adding to historical literature, most of them were concerned about their own country and didn’t internalise. “Another major problem is that most of Indian writers wrote an inland worldview, and didn’t pay much importance to the coastal identity. Therefore, you would find everything from the perspective of Delhi and there’s very little importance given to Kerala and Orissa,” adds Sanjeev. It is only to set the record straight that the author set out to write the book. “But soon it outgrew its intention,” he says.

Unlike most history books, Sanjeev consciously kept his book jargon free, without compromising on the facts. “The problem with historical writings is that quoting authority is given precedence over collecting evidence,” he claims. Before he started writing the book, he made it a point to visit all the important places necessary for collecting evidences. “Sometimes, I would take my family along. It would be a nice holiday laced with educational tour for my kids,” says the father of two.

Sanjeev has also peppered his latest book with a few facts about his own family that played a pivotal role in the Indian Freedom Struggle. His granduncle was the founder of Hindustan Republican Association, Sachindra Nath Sanyal. They were the first to arrange, albeit unsuccessfully, armed resistance against the British Empire, which eventually led to the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny in 1946. “When Chandrasekhar Azad was shot dead, he was actually on his way to our home in Allahabad,” he says.