India: A History

This book is definitely not a light read and the language can also be a difficult to follow for a lay reader. A reader with a decent understanding of Indian history will be able to follow the book, but harder for those not attuned to Indian history. Whats good about it is that it is comprehensive and detailed.

A brilliant compilation of India and its deep history

A very readable history of such an ancient and great civilization. Usually these kinds complete histories can be so stifling and boring — lists of dates and battles and kings. — but this book keep you interested and keeps you coming back for more. John Keay is a fascinating story teller. But this is not a story, it is real history, made quite interesting by his excellent writing.

I should explain that I only read the second half of this book, from about 1600 when the British became involved. I bought it because I wanted to know more about the British East India Company, and also wanted an overview of the history since partition.For these purposes the book was great.On Amazon.co.uk many reviews refer to the book being hard work to read, and many American reviews describe it as dry.I found it neither, although it did take me thirty or forty pages to tune into the author's style, which is really high-grade journalism, not to question his scholarship. It reads like an articulate lecture by someone who thoroughly understands his subject.One reviewer said you need some prior knowledge. Perhaps you do. I came to the book with knowledge of post-independence India being only what I had gleaned from newspapers over the years, but that was enough. I had also many years ago read Gandhi's autobiography, which is a book that sticks in the mind.Regarding the East India Company and the development of British rule, Keay dispels any notion of the British as avuncular colonists. When push came to shove they were decisive and at times brutal. We Brits like to appear as nice imperialists. Effective yes; nice, not unless it was convenient.Having said that the Brits and Indians appear to have had a certain mutual regard.The story since independence is complex and fast-moving and I felt Keay told the story with conviction. He doesn't burden his text with footnotes, jargon or prevarication and plonks his opinion down on the page, which is just as well given how much he has to tell.He has a tendency to try and see the positive in authoritarian actions by different rulers, for example Indira Gandhi and Bhutto. Gandhi instituted a rule of emergency but according to Keay she did it temporarily in order to sort out a raft of administrative disasters, which she did before returning the country to democracy.I enjoyed what I read of this book very much and would recommend it.

This is all what the author had to say about the Kala Pani Jail made by the british to hold indian revolutionaries. 600+ pages and all he could say about kala pani was an indirect reference."By late 1943 he was installed on Indian soil as the head of state in Azad Hind(‘Free India’) and commander-in-chief of the Indian National Army (INA), atwenty-thousand-strong force recruited from Indian prisoners of war in Japanesehands. Azad Hind comprised just the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal,they being the only Indian territory under Japanese occupation. Previously theAndamans had served as a British detention centre for those convicted ofpolitical crimes. Ironically, after an odyssey of some twenty thousand kilometres,Bose had ended up exactly where he would have been sent had he never fledIndia."Next up is the bengal famine. This is what the author had to say about it. Not once did he mention Churchill and how this famine was compounded and to a great extent induced by his actions which ultimately let to the death of 2-4 million indians in bengal."In 1943, like an uninvited guest from the past, famine had swept through largeparts of lower Bengal. Scarcity during this bleakest period of the war had beenexpected. Rice imports from Burma had ceased with that country’s occupationby the Japanese; domestic food-grains were in great demand for the militarybuild-up in eastern India; and hoarding had resulted. Additionally, rail freightwas being commandeered by the armed forces while Bengal’s riverine shippinghad been largely requisitioned for fear of its use by Japanese infiltrators. Yet theshortfall in food-grains was not great, and with foresight, rationing, betterdistribution and vigorous action against black-market hoarding, it should neverhave come to famine. It was a failure of personnel as much as anything. When inJuly the walking dead began straggling into Calcutta to expire on the streets,Linlithgow was looking forward to England, leaving India, as he rashly put it, ‘inpretty good shape’. Bengal, too, had just had a change of government; thereturning Muslim League ministry was shaky and inexperienced. Worst of all,the British governor of the province, to whom ample powers were reserved forjust such a crisis, was supine and very sick.Between July and November the famine raged almost unchecked. When inOctober the just-installed Wavell visited the affected areas, he acknowledged‘one of the worst disasters that has befallen any people under British rule’. Hewas not exaggerating. Famine fatalities are notoriously unreliable; in this casethe totals range from two million to four million. But even if the lower figure isaccepted, the famine still killed more Indians than did two world wars, the entireIndependence struggle, plus the communal holocaust which accompaniedPartition. ‘Direct British rule had begun with a Bengal famine in 1770; it wasnow drawing to a close with a comparable calamity."

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