Book Review: Land of the Seven Rivers, a Brief History of Indias Geography

Writer: Sanjeev Sanyal

Publisher: Penguin Books
Pages: 331

Sanjeev Sanyals history of geography of India begins at the very beginning: the origin of humans.
Sanyal drops the first bomb when he tells us that everyone who is not African comes from one small
group that left Africa. No matter how varied we are, we all share a small gene pool, and no matter how
alike Africans look, their genes have more variations than the rest of us combined.

After meandering with Indian people for several millennia, he reaches 10
th
century BC, and tells us that
the population of the Indian subcontinent has been genetically stable since then. The implication is on
the much-touted Aryan invasion theory. When the remains of Mohenjodaro were found, the British had
refused to believe such a sophisticated civilization could be Indian. Instead they put forth a theory,
arbitrarily, that India had been invaded by Aryans who founded that city. The theory, despite lacking
evidence, held sway for long. Proof of genetic composition is perhaps decisive (until further questions
are raised) that the invasion never happened. None of the data that Sanyal uses was even available to a
previous generation of writers.

I was glad to learn that Hindus had always been avid seafarers, evidence of their trade with Romans,
Greeks, and Mediterranean people have been found since early times. This is also the reason Hindu
civilization flourished in eastern countries like Indonesia, Java, Sumatra, vestiges of which remain in
Angkor Vat in Cambodia, among others. But later Hindus got the notion that crossing the sea was a
deadly sin. Since the twelfth century, they gave up seafaring to the Jews, Christians, and Muslims who
had settled on the coasts during years of trade. Perhaps this is an example of how society is cyclical.
After their apogee of exploration and cultural colonization (there is no other word for it), Hindus had
nowhere to go but downwards.

The Hindu apogee also consisted of the height of Buddhist scholarship in famous universities like
Nalanda and Taxila. Indeed, it is ironic that central India, where Buddha attained enlightenment and
preached, is almost devoid of Buddhists today. Sanyal tells us how flourishing Buddhist cultures in
modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan were destroyed by zealous Muslim invaders. The last of them,
Babur, captured Delhi despite being vastly outnumbered. In gunpowder, for the first time India faced a
world that had outstripped it in technology.

Sanyal focuses the next chapter completely on Delhi, and really, I could have done without the clichd
rise and fall of Mughal Empire. Sanyal does a great favor by including non-north Indian civilizations like
Vijaynagar of Karnataka and Manipur of North East, but not nearly enough.

We reach the age of colonizers, when it gets better. A fraud writer, who wrote about men with heads
of dogs and other such novelties around the world, took Europe by storm. He also stated that the world
was round, which inspired the original European explorations. The book supported the myth that India
was ruled by a Christian king Prester John, and that is who Vasco de Gama came searching for. Initially
he believed he found it when he came across Christian settlements of age-old traders in Goa.

At the same time the Spanish landed in America. This led to a quarrel between the two nations about
who should have exploration rights around the world. Talk about colonial arrogance! The Pope, sitting in
his room at the Vatican city (or wherever) divided up the rights to the world into two parts. But soon the
Spanish and Portuguese would land in each others territory and other European nations would join the
race, making a mockery of the Popes division. In those early times, Europeans mapped India as a long
East-to-West coast! Though they later learnt to mark ports correctly, it was a long time before this
mistake was corrected!

Sometimes Sanyal meanders. The history of lions in the subcontinent, for example. He tells us lions
originated in Asia before India joined Asia, and stayed away from the subcontinent for long due to its
wetness, but now India is the only country where lions and tigers coexist. Fascinating, but tangential to
the plot. One of the interesting tidbits is that foreigners have accused ancient Hindus of writing only one
history book: Rajatarangini, a genealogy of Kashmiri kings. In Hindus defense Sanyal puts up the
Vamshavali tradition of Nepal. Good to hear!

In rare instances, Sanyal serves the purpose of Hindu rightists: putting India first whether or not it
deserves to be. Okay, the Indian subcontinent is where mathematics originated, but the million-year old
piece of shapeless land (that later became Asia) called Gondwana has nothing to do with the Gond
people of India, as Sanyal claims. Humans were just apes then. Similarly, he limits the reference of
Lumbini to Indo-Nepal border. Categorically stating Nepal would have worked better in his favor. Little
glitches, but they matter.
Sanyal begins with the Western accusation that Indians are not conscious of their history and
nationhood, and ends by proclaiming them wrong. I am not so convinced. Gupta kings put up their own
pillars beside Ashokas, modeling themselves after the Mauryan giant. Mughals and many others did the
same. Sanyal thinks this reflects their historical consciousness. Maybe, but royalty is just a miniscule part
of the population. Even until modern times, there are people who do not know the name of the country
they live in, let alone their historical connection to it.
As for consciousness of nationhood, political borders as we know them today are a fairly modern
concept. Yes, our classical literature contains kingdoms, but again, it mattered only to the royalty. Most
people identified with their ethnic group, and did not bother which king ruled them. Did Indian people
think of themselves as Indian before India was unified under British rule? With more than 1,000
kingdoms, I seriously doubt it. Sanyal mentions how the earliest British expansionists were aided by
Bengali traders, who just wanted to use the British to decimate their rivals. I think that is fairly
representative: most people just cared about regional politics, they did not identify with the rest of the
subcontinent. At some point, most kingdoms tried to leverage the British to their advantage, and only
Nepal succeeded in carving a niche for itself. If Sanyal was right, Nepalis too should have identified with
India, but that did not happen.
Sanyal has given a wide framework on Indian history, within which all other historical events can fit. I
would love to read a similar work on world history: that will tell me when people crossed the Bering
Strait and entered the Americas. And on Nepali history: all I remember is Gopals and Mahishpals settled
in the Kathmandu valley, and then came the Newa people and the Shahs. What about the movement of
peoples all over the country, not just kingdoms?
Newton's groundbreaking discoveries about gravity are attributed to an apple that fell on his head. But
Newton himself credited his scholarship to the fact that he "stood on the shoulders of giants." What he
meant was that the scholarship of earlier scientists like Copernicus and Galileo had laid the ground, and
he built upon them. Such is the work of Sanjeev Sanyal, who stands on the shoulders of giants. He brings
together insights from several gigantic fields to form a smooth synthesis of the history of India.