Book Review – The Ocean of Churn

History is the art of researching facts well and building compelling narratives based on the said facts. Few modern scholars do this better than Sanjeev Sanyal. Asian histories have been rendered in a biased manner since time immemorial. As a famous saying that goes, until an animal has its own history, the history of the hunting will always glorify the hunter. If we take any history curriculum in Indian Education system, we can read leaps and bounds of Mughal Empire, the British regime, the Sultanates and such similar accounts.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to read the histories of Cholas, Pandyas, Pallavas in greater detail and their glories have been limited to few pages here and there. This book, one of a kind in its genre, breaks that stupor and gives us a riveting account of how the Indian Ocean has shaped the human history. Indian Ocean is itself a big mystery. It holds many unresolved or undiscovered history that is hidden deep into its core. Author Sanjeev Sanyal tried to uncover this in this vast researched and well-articulated book and succeeded in satiating his readers.

The book opens up by a fascinating tale of how the Pallava dynasty has traced an heir to their kingdom when the erstwhile King, Parameshwara Verman II died in 731 CE. A delegation of Brahmin scholars, which travelled across the Indian Ocean to the far ends of Cambodia and got back an heir that traced his roots to the Pallava dynasty from five long generations ago and reign of Nandi Verman II has started.

The Ocean of Churn begins its journey even before the formation of the Indian Ocean. It talks about the super continent called Gondwana that existed more than 270 Million years ago and the mighty Saraswati River and how it dried up due to the tectonic plate shifts, how the Himalaya has been formed, and how the races have been migrated from India to outside world. This book traces the history through the Ocean way. How people set up its civilization, how their trade hub got established, what was their commercial aspects, how they dealt with various traders inside and outside their territory and so on.

From Harappan times, Indians have been trading with the world in many ways. Maritime trading is the major aspect during those times when land routes were hardly discovered. The powerful Chola king, Rajendra Chola made a naval attack on the Sri Vijaya Kingdom of Sumatra by 1025 is one such example. Chola Empire was one of the powerful empires in the entire South Asia region during that time. There were a major geo-political-economic alliances or rivalries between Indians, Chinese and the Sri Vijaya Kingdom.

Kerala being the hub of the maritime trade have witnessed a vast amount of geo-political-economic tradeoffs. As a testimony to those, even today in Kerala, we have the world’s second Mosque and India’s first mosque (Cheraman Perumal Mosque) built by the king Cheraman Perumal by the orders of Mohammed the prophet himself in 629 AD. We also get to see the memorial of St. Thomas (doubting Thomas fame), a disciple of Jesus, who visited Kerala via sea route.

Overall, this book is a well-researched one. It starts right from the origin of India Ocean due to the tectonic plate shifts and ends right at the transformation of Bombay to Mumbai with the reclamation of land over the Ocean. This book is full of rich details of all kingdoms that throve around the Indian Ocean, Indian Coastline and several islands of the Indian Ocean that also had cultural trade ties with India and its kingdoms.

Book Review: 48 Laws of Power

A Moral, Cunning, Ruthless and Instructive, this piercing work distils three thousand years of the history of power into Forty Eight well explicated Laws. As attention grabbing in its design as it is in its content, this bold volume outlines the laws of power in their unvarnished essence, synthesizing the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun-Tzu, Carl Von Clausewitz, and other great thinkers.

Some Laws require prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), some stealth (“Law 3: Conceal your Intentions”), and some the total absence of Mercy (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”), but like it or not, all have applications in real-life situations. Illustrated through the tactics of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissenger, P T Barnum, and other famous figures who have wielded – or been victimized by – Power, these Laws will fascinate any reader interested in gaining, observing or defending against ultimate control.

The book takes each “Law” in turn and gives historical examples of those who follow the Law and fall to follow the Law. One will quickly see that the Laws of Power aren’t really Laws – they’re more like principles that will help in the art of gaining and exercising Power. Robert Greene uses the examples of Tesla and Edison to illustrate the several of the Laws. Tesla was the better inventor, but we’ve heard of Edison because Edison understood Power.

However, I do not agree with all of its ideas. This book contains examples of History from Sparta and Persia war, Chinese warriors, Scientists and Europe History. It does a brilliant job of explaining the logic and mindset of people who play such games to get power. If one want to understand why people play these games, this is a book well worth reading. It is interestingly written as well, with a lot of somewhat biased historical anecdotes to support each of the points.

My Belief is that real power comes from earning respect, and this is just a list of shortcuts that will easily fall apart under scrutiny. This book is useful for no other than it clues one in to how people tend to think; particularly those that are overly power hungry. For that reason alone, if one work in a competitive office environment, this book is worth reading just to understand the logic behind some of these games. Of course, playing these games yourself is highly likely to get one labeled as the office scumbag, so tread lightly on this stuff – use it to understand the behavior of others, not to try to gain power yourself.

Book Review: Land of seven Rivers

India spawns ideas as vigorously as it spawns diverse populations. This is the impression conveyed by the Land of Seven Rivers, a book that good-naturedly examines a huge range of India related topics, from mitochondrial DNA to modernist architecture. Writer Sanjeev Sanyal certainly begins with the shifts of Tectonic Plates that over millions of years nudged the subcontinent up against the Asian Mainland, goes on to examine the evidence for the origin of India’s populations, and so proceeds to the partition of 1947 and the subsequent absorbing of French and Portuguese enclaves.

He also covers the drying up of the once Legendary Saraswati River, the writing of the Kamasutra, the extraordinary rule of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, the anti-British revolt of 1857, and much more. He highlights particular locations, sometimes visiting them and reporting on their current condition. It is very easy to lose interest in a book based on facts and numbers. However, this did not happen while I was reading this book, maybe also because I took my time with this one. I had to let the history and geography of our land sink in and that helped me savor the book – page by page. This book is a fantastic attempt to talk to us simply about our heritage and of the times gone by.

It is an affiliate book that meanders, rather like the rivers it describes, through the familiar landscape of the history of the Indian sub-continent. One will pass through most of the landmarks such as the Harappans, the Vedas, Ashoka, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the various cities of Delhi, Mughals, the British and their Mapmakers, partition as well as the rise of a new India exemplified by the rapid growth of Gurgaon, a centre for the call-centre industry south of Delhi and characterized by gleaming office towers, metro stations, malls, luxury hotels and millions of jobs.  

This book is strong on unusual facts. I was astonished to read, for example, that the UK barrister, who mapped out the line of partition between India and Pakistan in 1947, in Delhi but without having time to inspect the situation on the ground, actually returned his fee of 2000 UK Pounds following the mass migration and killings that followed his work. Also of great interest is India’s estimated proportion of World GDP – a possible 33 percent in the first century AD, compared to 4 percent at Independence. The Roman Empire is estimated having 21 percent. The book positions itself very nicely between being a research based account and a leisurely stroll through Indian history.