I found this series by Michael Wood on Indian history very well put together, except for some of the large swathes of history he has ignored or been unable to cover. Having said that, his interest in the country and the subcontinent in general is genuine and this is definitely heartening, in this day and age when most Americans only think of India as a large country on the other side of the world and “tech support”. I have only come across a few colleagues here in the United States who really appreciate the vast and diverse sub-continent with the interest and respect the region deserves. Most others think of it as just another country, a statistic in the context of their own country and their achievements. Having said that, what is interesting about Americans is not their strange ignorance but their ability to do business with just about anyone.
The Story of India is a project which has long been in the making. Michael Wood has apparently spent a good few years in India for producing this documentary, travelling around India and visiting sundry locations to get a complete flavour of the country, which is difficult to do given the diversity if not the vastness. Even for ordinary Indians like me who can reconcile five languages, multiple types of food and diverse living conditions and climates, it is difficult to fathom how complex India is and how complex Indian history is, with its antiquity, influences and the sheer number of people who have influenced its turns through fortune and misfortune and conquest and glory. The documentary starts aptly, at the very beginning.
“Beginnings” is the first part of the DVD series that deals with much of the prehistory of India, given to speculation and controversy even to this day. It covers the Indus Valley Civilization, sometimes more appropriately called the Indus-Saraswati Civilization or the Ghagra-Hakkar Civilization (although these terms may refer to different cultures or offshoots of the same fundamental people). The IVC is well known in historical circles these days, but Wood covers the history of the West’s quest to understand India’s history too, specifically the case of Sanskrit, the Vedas and pioneers such as William Jones and James Prinsep, who saw India as an antiquated country even by Greek and Latin standards, and whose literature and historical precedents they compared to that of the latter. Wood takes us through a fascinating chronicle of the rise and fall of the IVC, the possibility of climate change in ancient times, Rigvedic practices that are alive in southern India to this day, and the advent of the Iron Age kingdoms in India, better known to some of us as the Mahajanapadas. The many great Kings of the Mahajanapadas, historical and legendary kings of the Ikshvaku and Yadu races are not mentioned, perhaps for want of “historical” accuracy. The Indo-Greek Kingdoms (the Yavanas/Yonas) of the post-Buddhist era are also almost entirely ignored.
“The Power of Ideas”, the second part in the series, digs deeper and takes us on a journey through the spiritual and religious history of India, focusing primarily on post-Vedic Buddhism and the Jain religion. Little mention is made of the pioneering efforts of later sages such as Adi Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva. Little to no mention is made of the philosophical and spiritual writing of the time, especially stalwarts like Kalidasa, Banabhatta and Bhartrhari, whose poetry and plays form an integral part of any self-respecting Indian literature course in Indian colleges and universities, and whose mention would be essential in an Indian history course. The deep connection of religion with the sciences in traditional Indian thought, the exchange of Indian ideas with the Greeks and the Romans and Indian mathematics as derived from Indian religion – all these could also be highlighted more. The Power of Ideas drives home its idea of an India sprinkled with holy men with peaceful thoughts and paints Indian religion as one of peaceniks. It doesn’t show the aggressive, chauvinistic side of Hinduism, Shakti and Shiva worship which were necessary for martial kings and noblemen, the oppression of the Buddhists in the early previous millenium, and the double standards of Buddhist kings who waged war while being Buddhist or “secular” (although I hate to use this much-maligned term).
“Spice Routes and Silk Roads”, part three in the series, takes us on a wondrous journey through Central Asia and northern India, when kingdoms spanned the Silk Route and set up pioneering towns like Takshashila (Taxila), Suvastu (Swat) and Purushapura (Peshawar). It takes us back to a time when science was patronized, the arts were fostered under the Kushanas, Sanskrit was revived as the language of scholarship, advances in medicine were made and even exported to Greece (the Kushanas spoke Greek and Sanskrit and were of Yuechi origin, from China: their medicine came to the Arab world from the Ionian islands in Greece as Unani), Buddhism was prevalent in large parts of India and outsiders for the first time came to rule India arguably after one thousand years. Spice Routes and Silk Roads also takes a sympathetic view of Kanishka, one of my favourite Indian monarchs, the first real king after Ashoka who brought a large portion of India under his control from his base in Central Asia. The series refers to Kanishka as Kans (Kamsa) of Indian legend. To my mind, this seemed a tad implausible, especially as the Bhagavatapuranam, as with others puranas, was a product of the Gupta era or later, and saw the genesis of Kamsa as a king who confronted the divine Krishna. In any case, the cut has made it into the documentary, for better or for worse.
Episode 4 of the series is titled “Ages of Gold” and is a chronicle of the Gupta-Chola age where Indian indigenous civilization reached new heights of achievement in administration, the sciences, especially metallurgy and medicine and when trade flourished with the Romans, Berbers, Persians. The documentary mentions the Indianized kingdoms of Brahmadesa (Burma), Thailand, Kambuja (Cambodia) and Sumatra although you’ll agree that it would take a whole episode to cover Indianized kingdoms in this documentary. Curiously, Michael Wood covers the Ramayana under this episode, although it is purported to be as old as or older than the Mahabharata – at least Rama is said to belong to an earlier age in the cyclical time of Hindu myth – in the Tretayuga. Ideas that don’t get mention here are the consolidated Bhakti movement which distilled aspects of Vedic belief, the rise and fall of the Vijayanagar (although Wood does cover it at some level), the powerful Gurjara kings and the splendid Marathas. The disappearance of Buddhism and Jainism from the subcontinent is also not dealt with in more detail. Apostate philosophies like the Charvaka and the Tarka schools and India’s achievements in mathematics and the physical sciences during this time are not adequately chronicled. Having said all this, it is still interesting to watch Michael Wood narrating the whole thing because of how involved he is in the subject.
Episode 5 chronicles the rise of Islam in the subcontinent and takes a sympathetic view of Dara Shikoh, who alluded to the meeting of Vedic-Bhakti beliefs and Islam as “the meeting of two oceans”. Wood chronicles the slave kings, the coming of Babur, the splendid Mughals with inordinate attention to their architecture, but not enough attention to Islamist and fundamentalist rulers like Aurangzeb or others who were responsible for more than 80 million Indian lives in the 13th and 14th centuries. The unbeliever “Jizya” tax, the general lack of integration of Muslims into Indian society and the rampant profligate spending of the upper classes of this time in India resembles only the modern US in the scale of decadence and depravity, and Wood hints at this.
Episode 6 takes us through the colonial age when the British laid siege to most of India and competed with local princes and kings for power. The lack of a monarch, the decay in Indian resolve to unify and stand off against an external enemy, were all compounded by the trade equations and the presence of multiple colonial powers – the French, Dutch and Portugese were ignored in his presentation altogether, although the roots of the freedom movement are accurately chronicled as having begun from the deep south, after which it spread in 1857 to the scale we all know it took on today. The various acts and reforms and the acts of Christian missionaries are all ignored to make the documentary palatable to most Indians, while Jallianwallah Bagh is highlighted. Wood covers personal stories as well – two freedom fighters are interviewed. Wood leaves the documentary with the moment of India’s independence and the creation of India and Pakistan, and much to my chagrin doesn’t cover India’s rise to prominence in the past few decades – although this fact is mentioned more than once during the series.
I found the dearth of information about kings other than Ashoka, Chandragupta Vikramaditya II and Akbar a little worrying, because if anything, we seem to identify only these as the great monarchs of our history. It would be unjust to forget the other great kings in Indian history like Harshavardhana, Raja Raja Chola, Shashanka, Pulikeshi, Yashovarman, the Pala kings and that most ignored militarily successful kingdom in all Indian history – the Andhras. In this sense, Wood does justice to one of the aforementioned kings, Raja Raja Chola, although the others are mostly ignored. The development of India’s fine arts through the ages could also have been chronicled, and it would be nice if one could get a feel for life in the times through the documentary – but this also means using one’s own imagination lesser, which is never welcome! This documentary intended to be the one comprehensive and concise documentary which chronicled all of Indian history and considered its many facets. I think that the attempt itself is laudable and noteworthy, not to mention the many things in it that were new to me. The documentary is nicely embellished with excellent cinematography, editing and sound which all provide a sense of place to the idyllic and architecturally splendid spots covered in the documentary. Michael Wood’s fervid interest in India becomes the focal point of narration on more than one occasion, making it clear that this is indeed a labour of love. In summary, the documentary is worth a watch for most non-Indians on the subject of India and her history through the millenia, but would leave most Indians wanting for more.
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