HISTORY
The fabric of our lives
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`Ultimately, despite the hard work, Dalal's book remains the shadow of a brilliant idea.'
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I HAVE always considered writing for children a highly challenging exercise. Not fiction, for then one can be a child too and travel the whimsical and convoluted paths that lead into the world of fantasy. The real challenge lies in non-fiction. To take dry facts, the occasional anecdote and reams of information from sundry sources, and weave them together into a narrative that is both interesting and informative can be a daunting task. To do this for a generation of children obese on a diet of TV, video games and computer games compounds the challenge exponentially.
Hence, one has to laud Roshen Dalal's The Puffin History of India for Children: 1947 to the Present, the companion volume to her earlier book, The Puffin History of India for Children: 3000 BC - AD 1947.
There is another reason to rejoice at this book — it looks at a history that is still in the making; a history that has been lived by many who are still alive to remember and recount, who are there to question and counter what has been written about what happened during their lifetime. It is the history of the fabric of our nation, and how we are slowly but surely unravelling its delicately woven warp and weft. It is the history of India in the past 56 years, from the first steps of a newly independent nation to the hammering blows that brought the Babri Masjid down on December 6, 1992, to the Kargil war in 1999 to the gruesome riots in Gujarat in 2002. And no one needs to know more about it than the children who will carry this nation forward.
Social scientists, writers and educators watching the next generation from the sidelines bemoan the fact that these youngsters are stepping out into the world with their minds clad in next to nothing — no memory, no history. In this void, Dalal's book would seem like manna from heaven, with its linear narrative that takes the reader from "the day appointed by destiny" — August 15, 1947 — to the state of India under the leadership of Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee's NDA government.
The book is not short on quirky and interesting anecdotes. Dalal sprinkles them liberally, especially in the early pages of the book that cover the dawn of India's independence. After all, it is always fun (and funny) to know that the late Maharaja of Patiala could eat 25 quails at a time. Or that the Nawab of Junagadh, who founded the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary, arranged the marriage of one of his favourite dogs by declaring a state holiday and inviting 1,50,000 guests. Or that the Maharaja of Gwalior had his food brought to him in a toy train that ran from the kitchen to the dining room.
Neither is Dalal's voluminous, 440-page book short on history. Almost the entire first half of the book is devoted to the painstaking process of bringing 11 provinces, 565 states and other territories together to create two independent nations, India and Pakistan. This section alone should be prescribed reading for all those arm-chair right-wingers who are quick to suggest war and ethnic cleansing as a quick-fix solution for all of India's problems.
For a generation that knows next to nothing about the angst caused by Partition except through such maudlin and venom-spewing films like Sunny Deol's "Gadar", this makes for essential reading. As a young India watches placidly and silently as our constitutional rights are thrown out of the window, either when innocent bystanders are knocked off in fake encounters, or when the Press is gagged for daring to exercise its right to freedom of speech, this book would seem to offer the beginnings of a remedy. That knowledge will lead to enlightenment, and enlightenment to action.
That hope is slender at best, more so, because Dalal lets this "historic" opportunity slip between her fingers. For the most part, her prosaic text leaves out emotion, colour and even drama to give a dull, stentorian, albeit accurate, account of the events that shaped India in the last 50 years. To add to the misery of the reader (I'm assuming it is a child who has been prodded by her parent or teacher to give the book a shot), there isn't a single colour picture, photo or even illustration in the entire book.
Despite the abundance of available visual material, be it the memorable photographs of Homai Vyarawala, the rich archives of the Press Information Bureau (PIB), or the photo libraries of our newspapers, Puffin has failed miserably. There is not a single photograph to bring alive the colourful history that Dalal has so painstakingly put down. We are left, instead, with Arun Pottirayil's black and white sketches that do little or nothing to alleviate a tedium of encyclopaedic proportions.
Ultimately, despite the hard work, Dalal's book remains the shadow of a brilliant idea. Emerging from this dreary landscape of black and white — the text, the illustrations, for heaven's sake, even the maps — one is still left thirsty for those drops of history that will entice a young generation to step out into the world, not cocky with ignorance, but confident that they know about the past they have left behind, and how it has shaped the future that they are looking towards.
The Puffin History of India for Children, Volume 2: 1947 to the Present, Roshen Dalal, illustrations by Arun Pottirayil, p.440, Rs. 299.
ARTI JAIMAN
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