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Journalism of Courage
Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River, Alice Albinia, John Murray, Rs 550
The life and culture of the Indus
One of the three great rivers of the northern subcontinent that gave this country its name flows mainly through Pakistan, instead. Empires of the Indus, Alice Albinia8217;s 350-page ode to the river, starts with the author, in her muggy, Delhi barsati, wondering about precisely that: that it is odd that so much of what made India India, so much of our history, is actually to be found on the banks of a river that isn8217;t technically ours any more. And then, in a manner typical of the book, we8217;re suddenly digressing to how Jinnah was really, really irritated when the leaders of this country chose to continue to call it 8220;India8221; after Partition.
And that8217;s really how the book is written, as a winding, jumbled skein of personal narrative, reportage and historical anecdote. Yet it manages to avoid being confused or jumpy 8212; mostly because of the continuity that following the Indus imposes on it, but also because the reader is discovering the author as well as the river as the book progresses; and not in an over-the-top spiritual-journey sort of way, or because of an over-intrusive narrative voice, either. Albinia doesn8217;t intend the book to be about herself, but she is in it anyway, and that gives a warm, personal quality even to passages that would otherwise be a dry recitation of centuries-old events.
At its best because much of what a reader learns is not something one may have known before 8212; ancient Kashmir was famous for its liberated women? There are remains of a strange and puzzling palaeolithic culture in Ladakh? At its weakest because, frankly, sometimes some of it can drag. The chapter that discusses the East India Company8217;s first encounters with Sindh, for example, could have benefited from more of an effort to link history with the present, something which the author manages with greater ease elsewhere. An instance of that: the timeless discussion on how difficult it is to vanquish guerrillas on the Afghan border, something that the Pakistan army, the Coalition of the Willing, Alexander and the British all failed to do.
For a book stuffed with so much such information, Empires of the Indus reads excellently. Actually, few recent books about Pakistan are as quietly revealing as this one, which claims not to be about Pakistan at all. Albinia8217;s 8220;aquatic obsession8221; takes her to the Kashmir Valley, Ladakh and Tibet as well, everywhere wondering 8212; sometimes wide-eyed, at other times knowingly 8212; about the past; but the sections about the Indus as the life-giving spine of Pakistan are what are most memorable.
