We know that, often, an incident, or a sequence of events can’t be written down and published as is. Because the subject is politically sensitive, or there aren’t enough verifiable facts. The author, then, uses a “novelised” and a fictionalised form. The emergency, imposed by Indira Gandhi, was one such period with a large cluster of events. It has become fashionable these days to talk about the advent of fascism in India, while forgetting what fascism really is. What lack of freedom of speech and expression, really are. But, I digress; right at the beginning.
Manohar Malgonkar wrote a story, a novel, based in Delhi, with the Emergency as the vicious backdrop. This novel is The Garland Keepers. Having read the Devil’s Wind (fictionalised biography of Nana Saheb) and Sea Hawk(which I reviewed recently) recently, this was my third Malgonkar.
The story is about a bank scam, run by the powerful and mighty, discovered by a cop. And then the usual murder of the cop leads to his friends getting together to trace the clues, protect their own, and expose the guilty. The murdered cop’s step sister plays a role, a bit of an aborted love interest type of role though. But, murder, you say? Yes, you know, the trucks which used to mysteriously appear from the fog in Delhi (or elsewhere in the country), with untraceable license plates, hit and disappear? That type. People say, this is the type of truck which hit the exact car in Pranab Mukherjee’s convoy when he expressed his desire to become the prime minister, while he was being coaxed to become the president instead.
Moti Bagh, in South Western Delhi, a residential colony for government employees, plays a part in the story based in Delhi of the mid / late 70s. And so do many other locations in Delhi; apart from the cluster of roads just after Safdarjung’s tomb, Ajmeri and Kashmere gates, West End, the Maidens hotel (an Oberoi property now), Connaught Place and so on. The novel refers to Basant Gaon, near Palam as well. Should you be from Delhi (not the 5 years in the city type), you will recognise the geography, and many of the locations which exist even now. There are other references to locales and people, though not by their known names. This will need you to be familiar with these characters and places during the 70s, or even the 80s. Sagar Apartments (on Tilak Marg), a mound on the Gurugram side of the 09-27 runway at Delhi airport, Dhirendra Brahmachari, Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay, his mistress Rukhsana Sultana, Arjun Dass, HKL Bhagat, CBI (the organization) , it’s then director D Sen etc. They are all there.
As the story twists around evidence collected by the investigating cop (now dead), there are a few paragraphs around Dhirendra Brahmachari’s receipt (evidently, as a gift) of a plane, without having to pay customs duty, as well. Similarly, there are references to Sanjay Gandhi’s version of Maruti. These help build the context, and give a flavor of the times.
Sanjay Gandhi, and the first Maruti prototype. Small, scooter tires, and obnoxious.
There is only one place where Malgonkar mixes up his city geography a bit, but that can be forgiven because he does a good job of capturing the feel, without going into too much detail. He sticks to the plot. One might say, the lack of description of the city areas doesn’t help the readers’ imagination. True, but the story is about intrigue, the wheels within wheels, the machine, imposition of dictatorship, the corruption (moral and otherwise) of the high and mighty, and complete subversion of democracy. It gives a view into how governmental posts are allotted, how power is brokered, how people are removed. From governmental posts, and from the earth. It also gives a view into how fear was driven into people’s minds, to comply.
The book starts with an incident involving a Kashmiri, who had joined the Pakistani army, out on patrol near what is today the Line of Control between Kashmir, and the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. His being “attractive”, drawing the attention of the CO and the rest of the patrol party and later desertion, form the first chapter
Malgonkar holds back revealing too much about the bank scam, and how it happened, till about 1/3rd of the way down. And reveals the pieces gradually in a tightly written, and fast moving story. It is only towards the end that the thread with the Kashmiri deserter is tied, thus revealing the connections.
The one thing that could have been better is tying up the different threads towards the end. It just gets a little jumbled, and the untangling gets hurried, abrupt and rather simplistic. The climax gets anticlimactic.
The villains of the piece are evident early on. What keeps the reading alive is the desire to know the connections of the dots. Clearly, this book (published in 1986) could not have been written or published for years after the emergency, and certainly not till Indira Gandhi was alive. Malgonkar would have landed up in jail under the MISA .
This is a good book to taken on a long flight, or a train journey and would make a good script for a movie.
Kanhoji Angre, it is said, never really lost a battle that he commanded. He started at the tender age of 13 and went on to build , arguably, the first Navy on our western coast. Manohar Malgonkar wrote about him in this book
This is a book, which is back in print after a good dix decades and a half. It had to be purchased, and read. If not anything else, as a tribute to one of the most successful generals in 18th century India. The byline of the title says “The life and Battles of Kanhoji Angre”.
Angre, almost, has been a forgotten general from that period of time. His name came to fore, for a short while, as the Indian Navy’s new insignia was unveiled.
The new insignia, (the lower image) with the gold and blue octagon, borrows from Angre’s seal. There was some usual political furore for a bit and then Angre was forgotten again.
Manohar Malgonkar was a man of many parts. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Maratha Light Infantry, was a hunter, story teller, civil servant, businessman, farmer, novelist, and also a journalist. He was urged by many including Parakrama S Jayasinghe (of Asian Publishing House) to write on Angre. He did, and Sea Hawk was published in 1959.
Republished in 2022
What I read is a re-publication (not a reprint) by Harper Collins.
If you do not know enough about Kanhoji Angre, you can start with reading on wiki, as long as you manage to sanitize the textual contemptuousness of the (clearly leftist) article author (s).
From the point of bringing out facts and anecdotes from the archives and records, Malgonkar does a superb job. We must consider that he wasn’t really a historian, though he has some historical works to his credit. Novels, are his form. Because of using archives and records, the narrative of his book tilts and sways with the tone of his source material. The narrative favours the British, in places, and that is natural too. The British were meticulous record keepers, in many cases with “fudged accuracy”.
The title of the book may lead you to believe that this is Kanhoji Angre’s biography, or that you might learn about the battles (from a military perspective). If so, you might be disappointed. Maybe about 20% of the book is really about Angre, but more about what was happening during his father’s time, and during the time that he was alive. Primarily along the coast line from Surat to (say) Mangalore.
If you want to read about what was happening in that area, and how was Angre placed in that milieu…this is the book to read. It is about what was happening with the Maratha kingdom, the reign of Aurangzeb, the Siddys of Janjira, the British East India Company operating from Bombay, the Portuguese, the Sawants of Wadi, and a little about the Dutch as well. This is the time that the Maratha kingdom traipsed through the reign of Shivaji, to his son Sambhaji, and then to Shahu (in Satara) and Sambhaji (of Kolhapur). This is the time when Balaji Vishwanath became the Peshwa for Shahu’s kingdom, followed by son Baji Rao.
Unfortunately, little has been written about our maritime history. Whether merchant or naval. It is known that Indian merchants used to reach as far as Bahrain, and all along the eastern coast of Africa for millennia. Vasco Da Gama, fell in with some of these merchants who guided him through to Kerala. On the eastern side, there is enough evidence and recorded history of merchant and naval sea faring all the way into the eastern most fringes of Indonesia, and upwards towards Vietnam. In fact, there are enough mentions in Mahabharata of the people of those regions, and they feature in Indian lullabies even today.
I digress. Now, this book is not a military history, and does not contain tactical naval move descriptions through the battles mentioned and described. If you are so inclined and interested, do visit the Naval Maritime museum at Fort Kochi which is a treasure trove of accounts, history and battle maps and has most parts of a room dedicated to Maratha Naval warfare.
What the book loses in terms of a historic treatise, Malgonkar salvages with tightly written anecdotes because he was a fine raconteur. There are many interesting bits of information that you will uncover, which might help you connect dots. For example, the title Sarkhel given to Angre (by Shahu), was for perpetuity, and to be carried through generations. Angres did carry it through. The interesting thing is that you will find Sarkhel as a surname in Bengal. I will let you connect those two dots.
Harper Collins has gone to sh*t
Now, coming to this particular edition / re-publication of the book. Harper Collins has inserted an introduction of six odd pages by one Shanta Gokhale. The introduction is a travesty on paper and ink. There is nothing new that one gets to know about the book or the author that the book itself doesn’t mention. Adding in quotes from the book itself doesn’t help much.
Harper Collins has used Pritish Nandy and some Girish Kuber to add in comment blurbs on the rear jacket. Nandy is from advertising, has no context of the subject and clearly, has not read the book before commenting. Kuber, I have not heard of, though that doesn’t take away from his mentioning that the book is “real-life fiction”. There could hardly be a more damning comment on the book.
Harper Collins’ own contribution is adding footnotes, from information available on the web. In some cases, they actually have scribed down a URL in the footnote.
Verdict
Should you read this book? Oh yeah, absolutely. If not anything else, for it to pique your interest which you can carry forward and learn more.
Must you buy it? Well, Harper Collins’ additions are annoying at the least. If you so wish, and your morals don’t hurt you, you can find a PDF version of the original edition, on the web.
Conches are still used all over Bhāratvarsha (India) across religious ceremonies, in temples and at homes. It also was a common tool for communication in battles and wars. Did you know that warriors often used to have names, and back histories attached to their conches?
Watch this short video to know more.
Let’s talk a little bit more, in addition to the video. Consider the following Shloka:
Narāyanam namaskrutya naram chaiva narottamam Devīm saraswatīm chaiva tato jayaudariyet
When Agni deva sought the help of Krishna and Arjuna for helping him consume Khandava forest, they said they did not bring their weapons. Then Agni had brought the weapons for both the warriors from Varuna deva. Those included Devadatta. That you now know, was Arjuna’s conch.
Drupado draupadeyashcha sarvashaha pruthivīpate Soubhadrashcha mahabahu shankhāndadhmu pruthak pruthak Loosely meaning, that Drupada, and Draupadi’s sons, all other kings, and also Subhadrā’s sons all had different conchs.
Book Review: The Ocean of Churn Title: The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History Author(s): Sanjeev Sanyal First Published: 2016
Alert: Political bias, long read, nationalistic tinge
The name of the book reminded me of the Churn of Oceans (Sagar Manthan, and the resulting Amrita Kumbha carried by Mohini), rather than the Ocean of Churn. But the book isn’t about our cultural tales, but more about history of the geographic zone that we inhabit. That is what the author does a good job of.
Had I tried to purchase this book after reading “Indian Railways: The Weaving of a National Tapestry”, some trepidation would have risen in my mind. After all Sanjeev Sanyal’s supervisor in the Economic Advisory Committee, Bibek Debroy, is one of the “authors” of the copy-paste drivel that I have referred to above. He is quoted on the back cover of Sanjeev’s book, saying “Sanjeev Sanyal tells us wonderful stories about the Indian Ocean. It is history, geography and commerce rolled into one. An excellent read”. Given Debroy’s clear lack of attention to detail, as displayed in his other book (reviewed here), his praising a book means little. He might not even have read the book.
Before starting to write, I wanted to check what other people said about the book. One Shiv Visvanathan, in the Hindu, perhaps because of his affiliations and where the review was printed, could not stop himself from taking ‘sinister’ jabs. He felt hurt by Sanjeev’s saying, of Marxism, “like some Victorian steam engine driven by the inescapable laws of Newton”. If Visvanathan came out of the box that communism has painted for him, he would comprehend Sanjeev’s explanation through Complexity and the need for additional detail would be obviated.
Sanjeev Sanyal is an economist, a Rhodes scholar, has worked on international development projects, been a banker and is currently the Principal Economic Advisor to the Ministry of Finance. Given the current dispensation at the helm, that automatically tarnishes Sanjeev as being a right-winger-saffron-tainted-patriarchal-cow-dung-loving-bigot. So, Visvanathan being keen on a debate between NCERT historians (?) and Sanjeev is to be expected.
Visvanathan calls Sanjeev an “amateur historian”; am guessing as opposed to “historians” like Ramchandra Guha, Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar and William Dalrymple. Not only do I agree, but I would go as far as saying Sanjeev Sanyal isn’t a historian at all. He appears, to me, as someone who researches with the tremendous tenacity of a quant-economist, to satisfy the immense curiosity, about our civilisation’s past, that he nurtures so lovingly. That maybe the reason why his book reads like a collection of lecture notes; not too detailed, yet providing enough flavour while covering a vast time period and geographic expanse. Each of the chapters in this book could easily turn into individual books in their own right. A book like this, isn’t meant to be academic; isn’t an R C Majumdar, a Jadunath Sarkar or a Suniti K Chatterjee, but is tuned to today’s world with people of short attention spans. Pop-history? Maybe. This book, I believe, is a wonderful base for someone who wants to read further and delve into a particular area by starting with the 17 pages of bibliography. Keeping with the tone with the book, my review flits from topic to topic as well.
Anyhow, I got down to reading the book three years after I bought it, between the loud announcements in planes, “mind your arms”, “gourmet coffee” on board, the fear of a P&W engine failure (for two airlines), not wanting to interact with staff for fear of being beaten up or abused (one of those two airlines) and playing with the phone during domestic flights in my last two months’ effort of seeing my own country.
Sanjeev’s writing style is lucid, flows well but the book is crammed with information deserving more than a casual read. He covers the subject, keeping India at the fulcrum, stretching all the way to Australia in the east, and definitely to the eastern sea board of Africa in the west, foraying northwards into the Red sea and across; anything which is connected to the Indian Ocean and the adjoining water bodies, perhaps naturally so, because the histories of these lands and their peoples have been interlinked through time. His story telling lithely dances between tribes in Africa, the Hindu (or Hindustani) influence across the shores of the Arab world, of course India and its maritime forays, the far east, the Mongol influence on China and its trade fleets, all the way from pre-historic times to 2015 into independent India.
India’s influence in South East Asia is palpable, even today. Not just in terms of religion and culture but even in terms of names of towns and cities, or even where people trace their routes to Ayodhya.
The book starts off when the land masses on our planet were moving about causing rift valleys somewhere, and some masses clashing into others; moves through possible human migrations across this entire geography into Indo-China, and all the way to Australia. DNA matches today show the possibility of the Australian aborigines having migrated from greater India long time ago. He picks up civilizational threads with the Mehrgarh (in Bolan Valley) around 6000 BCE and touches upon the lasting impact that the Saraswati valley civilization (Dholavira and Lothal) has had on this civilisation. He draws similarity of culture, and continuing patches of Indian-ness still existing in many parts of world from far-east to even as far as Bahrain. Maybe he could have touched upon the fact that Bahrain (or that area) was a transit port for merchandise when beads and fabric was being exported from India, till about some 2500 years ago.
Dholavira, only a part of which has been excavated must have been quite a city with its immaculate planning, civic amenities and flourishing trade.
He talks about the Chinese, and the Hindu influence across Indo China, Thailand, Vietnam, and as far as Bali. Today, we know of the vibrance of Hindu culture in Bali, the influence of Buddhism and Hinduism all the way to Japan.
Kollam in Mylapore festival in Chennai
There are two streams of thought which seems to permeate all across the book.
Matrilinearity of dynasties: Sanjeev talks, rightly, about matrilinear dynasties and families rather than Matriarchy, the latter being practiced rarely if at all. Earliest traces can be found perhaps in Mahabharat with Uloopi. The lineage traveling through women, has not been uncommon in the subcontinent or even eastwards of India.
Debunking of some myths which have been deliberately propagated, and have perhaps seeped into our collective understanding.
He does talk about the Aryan Invasion a bit. This remains one of the biggest weapons of the ‘other side’ because of its direct link to race theory.
Ashoka the great’s, greatness gets tarnished in the book and rightly so. The kindness of his heart, becoming a Buddhist and Kalinga war become somewhat out of sync temporally on closer inspection. Bottomline is that Ashoka abdicated from his dharma, his raj-dharma in fact, and might have been the cause of a long-drawn decline.
Of the recent times, he touches upon the patriot myth of Tipu Sultan who was after all a genocidal-converting maniac trying to protect his kingdom from the British. Nothing to do with love for this land.
There are a few more that I wish he had touched upon. The history, as we have been told, is rife with these. Three, of the many others, that that I can think of, right away, are:
Alexander (the great) getting walloped at India’s borders, hearing about the mighty Nanda of Magadh, running away, likely to die of poisoning (arrow injury near Lahore) and diarrhoea while crossing Baluchistan.
Akbar, and his fake greatness taking a jolt because he didn’t really (Sikandra, Fatehpur Sikri etc.), wasn’t secular at all and allegedly was a womanizing ruler (ref – Meena Bazar).
And that Mughals or invaders before or after them built nothing in this land. Not Qutab Minar, not the two Red Forts, not the two Jama Masjids, the large spectacular Baolis, Not Taj Mahal, not the Sikandra mausoleum, not Fatehpur Sikri and not even what is today Humayun’s tomb.
The book travels through the millennia, finally winding down around 2015. During this time, as he traverses quite a few times to the far east, he brings forth stories (often of valour and sacrifice) and incidents from what is today Indonesia, and particularly Bali.
He also peppers his narration with lesser known delights like that of SMS Emden which ran amok in the Indian Ocean during WWI destroying and crippling many vessels, and even launched 125 shells at Madras finally to be put to rest by HMAS Sydney.
He continues to come back to the topic of Indian soldiers having participated in missions all across except perhaps in the Americas. The level of participation in theatres of war is astounding. This from folk lore (before even cleanly recorded history) to the modern day when India continues to be one of the largest contributors to the UN Peace Keeping forces. Sanjeev speaks, through gritted teeth, about the support the British garnered from the Mahatma to have Indian soldiers fight their wars. One campaign of bravery that did get missed in the book is the battle of Haifa where the Indian regiments, comprising primarily the Jodhpur and Mysore Lancers and troops from Hyderabad, Patiala and Alwar attacked rear-guard the Ottoman troops resulting in the capture of Haifa and Acre. Israel remembers this wit gratitude, but all that we have to show for such a campaign is the Teen Murti statue in Delhi, and two insignificant memorials in Bangalore.
The book, as I mentioned above, talks about rise and fall. Whether it might be about Saraswati valley, the Indian kingdoms in the middle ages, the wealth in temples, the hunt for an effective spice route or even the colonial powers. His ability to show the demise of the kingdoms and the winding down of India’s maritime powers is fluent along with the growth of foreigners into Kerala. Rather interestingly, two reviewers refer to the declining maritime powers but could not find a reason mentioned by Sanjeev. This is rather amusing because Sanjeev has mentioned this clearly, of course based on circumstantial evidence. One doesn’t expect a fact-based writer to conjure imagined reasons. One ventures that either the reviewers have not read the book in detail, or have just copied each other’s reviews. The first is one Niranjan Rajadhyaksha whose review appeared in the Mint (16/08/16) followed by the one (referred above) four days later.
There are of course many pieces of work which talk about vicissitudes of kingdoms, but rarely do books talk about different sea faring empires from India. The Maratha empire, Kanhoji Angre and the Maratha navy for instance. The only public place where you can read about the exploits of the Maratha navy are at the museum at INS Dronacharya in Kochi., mull over this for a second – most books on history of our nation, and this region have been land-oriented. This one is an exception, and unique. In addition, his meticulous (and obviously) painstaking sincere research corralling logical constructs from genetic studies, archaeological finds, genetic studies, archived documents and local folk tales is stupendous. Sanjeev’s travel, either to write the book, or otherwise contributes greatly. It is evident that many of the places that he talks about, he has visited personally and that first-hand experience brings a level of sincerity.
There is only one thing that I believe could be have been different. Sanjeev gets emotional with what he writes in the last maybe 100 pages of the book which covers modern India, primarily before independence and some after. His outrage is understandable, but that makes him sectionally unpopular and will cause him trouble if the political dispensation at the helm were to change and him and his likes (Vikram Sampath, Hindol Sengupta etc.). But, these 100 pages are important. They talk about our freedom struggle and unashamedly about what type of people really contributed to our gaining independence. It brings to light a person who is almost forgotten, Sachindranath Sanyal. Few remember that this man was the fulcrum of revolutionary activity across the country, caused Rashbehari and Netaji to meet, arranged for their escapes and was sent to the Cellular Jail twice. Let that sink in, twice! There is little that you can find online about him, or even in print. I could find his autobiography “Bandi Jeevan (life in imprisonment)” only in Hindi and references to him in another book titled “The Banaras Conspiracy Case”. Of course, without much pre-work, I could not trace anything about him or his colleagues in Kashi in two of my trips. He, his friends, and the likes have been forgotten for all practical purposes. We choose to remember who we have been taught to remember.
As in case of faith and religion, rebirth of the fervor for independence revolved around Kashi. This image is at the prayer hall at Satya Loke (Lahiri Mahashay’s great grandson’s house). The image shows among others, Lahiri Mahashay and Mahavatar Babaji.
Towards the end of the book when he talks about this geography through the sixties and the nineties, he draws a parallel between Lee Kwan Yew and Nelson Mandela and what made them astute and great leaders of their nations, and capable of changing their destinies. This, I believe, is not an often cited and astute observation. What is stark, unfortunately, is the lack of a similar instance at our independence or even later where selfish interests might have damaged our destinies forever.
Though the book is about greatness (either earned, thrust upon or just marketed), valour, pride but also about failures, some of them deliberate. The very last line of the book, “Time devours the greatest of men and the mightiest of empires”, very Shelley’s Ozymandias like, is what stitches the book together. By the time one is done with the book, a tone of melancholy sets in.
There is plenty about the book that I have not covered. However, this book, or something similar deserves to be part of school syllabi for class VIII, and IX . Yes, that is a pipe dream. Meanwhile Sanjeev Sanyal continues to try and wake Kumbhakarna up.
All photographs (except top) are copyright the author.
FourTeaTwo 