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An Indian sonata
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From 1965, John Keay has been observing the variety and diversity of India, portraying it in his books with a good-humoured and sympathetic attitude. S RAMACHANDER talks to the "freelance historian" on how he set foot on the path to the Orient.
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K. BALU
AS an unabashed admirer of the inheritances of the colonial era, it delights me no end to observe a recent genre of serious Indophile authors, such as the likes of Mark Tully and William Dalrymple who take a fond, but sufficiently balanced and scholarly, view of the unique and complex relationship. Indeed, they see this episode in history as a distinctly enriching two-way legacy, and describe it in a style that goes far beyond the poverty-heat-and-dust travelogue peppered with personal anecdotes or comments of pure whimsy. A serious contender to leadership in this class is John Keay (pronounced simply `K') who was in the city for the William Lambton commemorative recently.
I telephoned him as soon as I saw his name on an invitation and left a warning message that I was a voice from the distant past, our first and only contact having been in 1974. John promptly returned my call and agreed to my suggestion of a very Dakshin lunch. We chatted enthusiastically about much that had happened to both of us and our common friends and interests over nearly three decades, while John attacked the vegetables and at my suggestion made his debut with idiappams. As I saw him eat deftly with his fingers as if to the manner born, I asked him about how his love affair with India started, his interest in writing history of the special genre that he has made his own, and also what it was like to make a living as a freelancer. Later the same evening I listened to him talk most engagingly at Madras Club about his books and about the story of the first ever survey of the subcontinent, covered in his book, The Great Arc, which brought him to India on this occasion. What follows is an amalgamated impression of both meetings.
I had met John Keay, now a well-known author of over 20 books on various themes and justly famous for his India, A History, long before he became a celebrity. Ammu Mathew, a Physics professor, well-known producer of plays with the Madras Players and a dear, now much-missed friend, was in England doing some research while I was working in London, and she suggested that we visit John in Scotland over Easter. She was to be godmother to two of John's children and was therefore to him an equally cherished friend. The family lived in a sprawling estate with outbuildings then let out as guest accommodation, set in ruggedly beautiful Scottish countryside, about 70 miles from Glasgow. He still lives there, with his wife Julia and their four grown up children, now between 25 and 30, all on their various diverse careers but still finding time to wander in and out occasionally.
John's fascination with history of course goes back to reading the subject at Oxford but unlike many of his contemporaries who drifted to Fleet Street or the civil service, he chose to be what I suppose can only be described as a freelance historian, which he confesses to enjoying immensely. Writing is actually great fun, according to him and making a living on one's wits is not obviously the nerve wracking challenge that many writers have made it out to be. This must be (I tell myself) due to the emotional security and certainty that his living in Scotland with his family gives him, and no doubt the hardy highland ancestry. John is very conscious of being a Scotsman — not English, as he would point out if you make the usual mistake of saying English when you mean British! I wondered aloud if he too thought that the Scottish presence in the various professions and the missionary vocation during the Raj days was as clearly disproportionate as it seemed to me.
His explanation was quite simple. The harsh and barren land and the difficulties of making a living drove many a Scot to seek his fortune in far-flung outposts. I thought something similar happened with the Irish and the Welsh too, denied the prosperity of the "leafy shires of the south of England". No wonder many a Madras worthy could trace his command of the language to a Scottish Presbyterian or Irish Jesuit teacher!
John Keay's connection with India and Madras is a special one, as he knew Girish Karnad, a Rhodes scholar from India, at Oxford in the 1960s. They shared a floor due to the happenstance that rooms went according to alphabetical order of surnames! Although they had kept up only occasionally, the friends had met more often during Karnad's recent and very successful three years as head of the Nehru Centre in London, which John clearly felt was a great job well done. He seemed to think it was a loss to both countries that Girish could not carry on for a further term.
How long has John Keay known India? The answer is rather surprising. It really goes back to 1965 when he came to India and lived in Kashmir for six months, "living was cheap in those days" learning Urdu properly from a munshi and trying to make sense of the mysterious ways of Indian politics. It was neither transcendental meditation nor the hippy drug scene nor sheer escapism that drew him to Kashmir.
It was during those six months that, having had several false starts in assorted jobs in England, he decided writing was his metier. Later The Economist of London would send him to Delhi on assignments to cover the general elections, than which of course one could not have asked for a better introduction to Indian politics in the raw, nor an opportunity to travel the length and breadth of the country.
John's first book of reminiscences, Into India was published around 1973, and he went on to write India Discovered around 1980, continuing his fascination with the variety and diversity of the vast country, seeing it with a good-humoured and sympathetic eye. His more scholarly study, in a sense the beginning of a trilogy came with India A History, which has won him wide critical acclaim as one of the most balanced and comprehensive works on a challenging subject. Anything that deals with 5000 years in one volume has to be a synoptic work, says John modestly, for however much one might fill it with scholarly referencing one can but touch the surface. One therefore relies upon many sources. It involved a great deal of reading but the writing itself was not difficult, he adds. He is amused by the question most frequently asked of an author: "how long did it take you write it?" — as if it were some athletic achievement. Why did he become an independent writer of history? He did not particularly care for the narrow focus or the politics of academia although he does admit the funding for good quality research can be problematic. Nonetheless he has no regrets. Writing is fun and an enjoyable way of making a living, which is more than many could say about their careers. As with many historians, there is some regret at the lack of proper sources or documentation of history in India, but he feels this is rather less than he might have thought at one time.
Indeed in a later edition of his 1980 book on India, he corrects himself for having made hasty judgements about India's early history. His connections with India go beyond writing and include a series of programmes for what was then the intellectual radio channel called the BBC Third Programme. He also produced a series based on India for TV, and has been in touch with historian S. Muthiah for a couple of decades.
The last of the India books, describes the extraordinary story of an incredible survey, carried out against all odds that mapped the 2600 kilometres of India from the south to the North and was later found to be accurate to an inch and a half.
It must have been a tough decision to be tucked away in the wilds of the remote village after a degree from Oxford but he obviously has a lot of the hardy Scot in him, as his occasional hints keep reminding us. Although no fan of the East India Company nor a specialist historian, he found it very rewarding to write a very detailed and fascinating history of The Honourable Company which can be read as a remarkable piece of economic and social history, of which there are not many sources yet. His interests wandered beyond the subcontinent to the colonial period in the Far East in The Last Post, which coincidentally came out about the time Hong Kong was handed over to China.
Perhaps less known in India are John's writings on Indonesia, which happened because there was funding for travel, as he says with a chuckle, and the Middle East. His most recent book, ominously titled Sowing the Wind, deals with — as he puts it — the earlier invasion of Arab lands by the Western powers. Whether it will reap a whirlwind of criticism or acclaim remains to be seen.
Looking at John's well travelled, trim frame and slight hint of a smile, I fancy that he is ready for either, and quite prepared in Kipling's phrase, to treat "the two impostors just the same".
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