Keay's elegant book reaches the parts other histories ignore
In short, Keay is not a professional historian of India or anywhere else. In his own misleadingly modest words, he is only "an intermittent correspondent and political analyst". Yet if, as he puts it, he entered "gownless" into this project of writing India's history, he emerges from it crowned with astonishing success.
Keay says his history of India has a bias towards architecture and chronology. But the book contains other welcome tilts, one in favour of comprehensiveness and another in favour of charm in writing. Rather than being a history of India's beliefs, Keay's story is powerfully influenced by India's architecture, and sculpture over the ages. From inscriptions and figures in cold stone, and stone structures, he summons vivid scenes of conquest and treachery, warm tales of achievement. The bias in favour of chronology produces an ample treatment of India's older past. Arguing that affairs current are after all affairs unresolved, and that remaining centred on recent events is no more praiseworthy than, for example, Euro-centrism, Keay rejects the idea that "recency" should receive "a decided priority".
Among the striking aspects of this single-volume history are the accounts of periods and regions that in most surveys receive at best a passing mention. The Vedic and Epic phases, the Buddha and Mahavira, the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Mughals, the British, the Freedom Movement and Independent India-in most histories of India, this is the typical list of chapters. The action these histories describe generally takes place in northern India, in and around Delhi and Agra, Kannauj and Pataliputra.
Patiently and skilfully probing areas normally left unlit, John Keay has in fact given a history of India, rather than stories of select doers and their famous doings. The south, east and west of India, and different parts thereof, also come to life. Keay does justice to the 'lesser' dynasties, to regions that might have become nation-states or provided an alternative centre to the Indian state, to the quieter, darker centuries.
Meticulous Keay is, but far from being tedious in a text of almost 3,00,000 words, he comes up again and again with sparkling lines. Thus he speaks of the "filial free-for-alls" among the contenders for an emptying Mughal throne and writes that "at Fatehpur Sikri Akbar installed a veritable bazaar of disputing divines and presided over their heated debates with something of the relish he usually reserved for elephant fights". Not the least parts of this work are the superb pictures, clear maps and instructive tables and charts that amplify the text, and the carefully prepared index.
In addition to describing, connecting and explaining events, a historian must also judge them. When the events in question are innumerable and when, despite the flow of time, they continue to arouse strong emotions, these judgments cannot win universal approval. Grounds for disagreement will surely be identified, but there is not much that is prejudiced or predictable about Keay's judgments.
Some will mark Keay's preferences, inconsistencies or even inaccuracies in spelling Indian names, but options here being so many, and scope for tiny mistakes being so large, these should be easily forgiven and forgotten. Richly designed (to include neglected times and spaces, to enable edifice and sculpture to speak), richly built (with stone upon stone of detail), richly adorned (with maps, pictures, tables and pithy, elegant language), Keay's tome leaves a powerful impact on the reader's mind and will add solid value to shelf or table.