Home Is Elsewhere

Dyson’s contention is that the European encounter with the Indian subcontinent was different from the European encounter with the Arab world. She posits that the European discovery of Indian culture caused European thinkers to revise their ideas of the Orient, which until then had been overwhelmingly based on the Semitic civilisations. Whereas, the discovery of the Indo-European family of languages, of Hindu and Buddhist texts, of the secular literature of ancient India were tremendous discoveries for European scholars, which not only changed their intellectual horizon for good, but had a modernising impact.

Given this rational perspective, the pioneering and valuable work of Sir William Jones, Charles Wilkins and such like, who gave India back to Indians while documenting it for themselves, can be honoured without apology. Dyson thus serves an important emotional need in contemporary India among Macaulay’s children, to make sense of it all without dishonour.

Knowing how India used the colonist’s own tools of education and congregation to free herself, we have, in the 21st century, the historical luxury of time-past.

And so we can laugh at missionary Henry Martyn’s dismay when “pundits, soofis and mussulmauns” refuse to buy his doctrine, or wryly note the progress made by a stuffy young officer from disgust to delight in watching the “nautch.” We learn that “Nickee”, the famous dancing girl, performed at a party in Raja Ram Mohun Roy’s house.

And we make our own connections: “Freshly fresh and newly new”, the bazaar tune in Kipling’s polo story The Maltese Cat, was, you realise, a real 19th century air, Taza bu taza, naya bu naya.