‘Academic historians are suspicious of good writing’

Excerpts from an interview to Mini Kapoor:

• Popular history in India was a lonely field when you first came to it. Now it’s rather more populated.

It’s becoming more interesting, yes. But I still think there’s a long way to go. Look at the reputation that Indian writers of fiction in English enjoy now. It’s hard to think of any Indians writing nonfiction who enjoy a comparable reputation, like Amitav Ghosh or Arundhati Roy. There’s still a tremendous field in nonfiction for Indian writers.

And I say Indian writers rather than Indian historians. Because academic historians, when they see a bit of good writing, they tend to be a bit suspicious. They think you’re trying to disguise the weakness of your argument or research. There is a certain amount of resistance to good writing, presentation. That’s a pity.

• Given your period of study, how does the current interrogation of Empire affect your work?

I have never written directly about the 19th century British Raj, it just doesn’t appeal to me. I was asked to do a book on it. And I only did it on the condition that I could write about what I was interested in, the contribution of European scholarship to the study of Indian history (India Discovered).

There are some books I have written which are set within that context (The Great Arc, Explorers of the Western Himalayas) but they weren’t directly about British rule in India.

Unlike a lot of British writers I have no family connections with the Raj. I have no particular sympathy with the high period of Empire. The only period that interests me is the East India Company (The Honourable Company).

• And now you will concentrate on the 20th century.

First I have to write a history of China. After that I return to India. I want to write a 20th century history not just of India, but also Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka.

I have written two other 20th century histories — one of the Middle East (Sowing the Wind), the other of the Far East (Last Post). So this would complete a neat little Asian 20th century trilogy. It will be 2008 before I can start, and 2010 or 2011 before it comes out.

• What drew you to The Spice Route?

The appeal of the Spice Route to me was that it’s one of the two great ancient corridors of trade. And although the Silk Road has been written about quite a bit, I think this is the first overall history of the Spice Route. What intrigued me was how the Spice Route actually moved through history — having started off as a sort of amphibious route, involving many land and sea crossings, it became an all blue water, oceanic trade route.

In European history, we are always taught it was the Portuguese who revolutionised the whole of East-West trade by finding a way around Africa to the Indian Ocean. But in fact this process of the Spice Route becoming a more and more blue-water route had been going on, really, since the dawn of time. So, you get the first sailings round the Malacca Strait instead of across the Malay peninsula (400 AD).

Soon after that ships start sailing around Sri Lanka rather than offloading on the east coast of India and then reloading on the west cost. Arabia was sailed around even earlier, in 5th century BC. And so this amazing Spanish/Portuguese achievement in the late 15th century is less significant than the Spice Route becoming more and more maritime for centuries.

The other thing is, whereas originally all sorts of races and nation were involved, there was also a tendency towards monopolisation which got greater and greater. The Arabs virtually had a monopoly of it in what we call the Middle Ages in European history. But basically they did not tend to control the seas. This is a Portuguese idea.

• And The Great Arc, on the Trigonometrical Survey of India?

Surveyors became very important to exploration of the most inhospitable part of the Himalayas. Researching the work of these surveyors, I was intrigued about how you can measure the height of a mountain. Eventually I came across references to this thing called the Great Arc. I did a little research and managed to establish that it was this amazing measurement undertaken right at the very beginning of the 19th century, to measure the entire length of India.

What really made it a publishing proposition was the success of a book by Dava Sobel (Longitude). It got the publishers excited about what they called small histories.

• That book illustrated best your mode of history-telling, both dipping into archives and visiting the places of the narrative. Finding William Lambton’s grave, for instance, electrified The Great Arc.

I have always loved travelling, I was a political correspondent for a bit, then I was just a hippie. I have mostly written not just of times past, but also of places well away.

Finding Lambton’s … that was very exciting. I had no idea whether it still existed. I had seen a report in the records of the Survey of India in Dehradun that someone had visited this place called Hinganghat in about 1925 and had reported on Lambton’s grave having been moved. I thought it was worth going to have a look.

It was a Sunday in Hinganghat, and when people came out of church I asked if anyone knew of an old graveyard. There was a really charming teacher called Mr Sebastian who had a scooter and said, I’ll take you around.

After various sites, we found this one, where there were just three graves in what had now become a squatters’ colony. On one of the tombs you could just read Lambton’s name. It would be nice if someone put up a little plaque there.

• And, similarly, restored Everest House in Mussoorie?

I have been talking to people in INTACH about that, and they have a very elaborate scheme about turning that into a heritage centre. That would be wonderful.