Mapping the Vote

Desai writes approvingly of Queen Victoria’s Proclamation (1858) that promised her Indian subjects just governance: ‘‘The Proclamation became something of a ‘Magna Carta of our rights and privileges’ in the eyes of the new educated middle class of Victorian India.’’

What follows is a fairly faultless, fairly bland exposition of Indian history as it has evolved in the past century and a half. As an introduction of India to a foreign audience, it would probably be unexceptionable. An Indian reader or an India buff would have wanted more of Desai’s own voice to emerge over the mere iteration of history.

There are some piquant points. Talking of the gradual disintegration of the Congress after 1969, Desai writes, ‘‘The fissiparous tendency of the Congress is in some ways typical of Indian society. The Hindu social structure is a honeycomb of divisions and subdivisions carefully ordered by hierarchical status yet constantly shifting and adapting in the light of new developments.’’

In trying to appreciate the philosophy, if that be the word, of the process of political coalition building, this is a good start. Perhaps in another book Desai will complete the journey.

Ahsan, a remarkably agreeable man whose achievements include being Benazir Bhutto’s interior minister and Majid Khan’s opening partner in the Aitcheson College cricket team, writes a different history. It’s not always convincing, but is still an impressive exhibition of the lawyer’s craft, of creating — perhaps inventing — a thesis to suit your position.

For Ahsan, 1857 is a conclusion, in a manner of speaking. In the century between Plassey and the Mutiny, he writes, ‘‘as the British set up trading posts in Bengal, Hindu traders, merchants and book-keepers were … the exclusive intermediaries of British trade in India’’.

‘‘To the feudal (Hindu or Muslim),’’ Ahsan continues, ‘‘the position of an account keeper or munshi was anathema.’’ As ‘‘new rentiers’’ like ‘‘Hindu Marwaris’’ climbed up the economic ladder, ‘‘the feudal landowners of Bengal, almost entirely Muslim, were out in the cold’’.

By the mid-19th century, the ‘‘partnership between the Indian merchant was fraying’’, however, and ‘‘Indian merchants and businesses were themselves becoming a force’’: ‘‘One hundred years after Plassey it was the turn of the Indian bourgeoisie to be left out in the cold.’’

While this was happening in ‘‘India’’, as Ahsan chooses to call it, in ‘‘Indus’’ — Sindh, Punjab, the Northwest Frontier — ‘‘the British now began to strengthen, and to depend upon, the landowners. In the Indus region, in fact, they themselves first installed the feudals, then began to empower and use them.’’

‘‘India’’ became capitalist competition; ‘‘Indus’’ became ‘‘prolific granary for the empire’’ and fertile recruiting ground for the army. This led to two different modes of social evolution. ‘‘The demarcation between democracy and praetorianism,’’ Ahsan argues, ‘‘was gradually becoming vivid.’’

In time, this made ‘‘India’’ India and ‘‘Indus’’ Pakistan; in still more time, it made one democratic and the other not so. Doff your hat to Ahsan — he’s one very smart advocate.