What the Europeans did in India is what this book is all about. The progress of colonization and the cruelty of the colonists are elucidated using quotes and anecdotes from the colonizers themselves. The book is small, handy, and easily readable.

Vasco da Gama and his men on landing at Calicut in 1498 knelt to pray in a temple thinking it was a church. One of them later wrote about the sacred threads worn by the priests across their upper bodies. The men also took home “some white earth which the Christians of this country are wont to sprinkle on the forehead…”

In 1500 Pedro Alvares Cabral arrived with six ships and bombarded Calicut. Then he left for Cochin, where the king allowed him to establish a factory. But the Zamorin’s fleet pursued him and he slunk away in the dead of night leaving behind 30 of his men. Ending up at Cannannore, he befriended the Raja. By then the Franciscan missionaries accompanying him had realized the difference between Hindus and Christians.

In 1502 Vasco da Gama returned. En route to Calicut the Portuguese encountered the Miri, a ship carrying pilgrims returning from Mecca. A Portuguese eyewitness described the chain of events: “We took a ship from Mecca in which were 380 men and many women and children, and we took from it fully 12,000 ducats, with goods worth at least another 10,000. And we burned the ship and all the people on board with gunpowder.” Another eyewitness recounted how the women offered their jewellery and held up their babies “that we may have pity on their innocence.” These are Portuguese accounts of Portuguese barbarity in a land where they came as traders looking for spices.

The Arab traders of Malabar resisted the Portuguese from the very beginning. The Zamorin ignored the Portuguese demand to expel them. (The Moplahs are said to be descended from 13 Arab merchants who settled on the River Beypore in the 9th century.) The Zamorin’s 32 ship fleet was destroyed by Portuguese guns. The ships were either sunk or set on fire and floated into Calicut harbour.

Next to arrive was Francisco de Almeida. His son was killed in a naval battle off the coast of Diu where the Zamorin’s ships teamed with an Egyptian fleet and successfully fought the Portuguese. But the betrayal of the Diu Governor precipitated the withdrawal of the Egyptians and the subsequent defeat of the Zamorin’s navy. Thereafter the Portuguese dominated the Arabian Sea coast. Alfonso de Albuquerque arrived next.

Goa derives its name from Govapuri at the mouth of the Mandovi River. In 1510 it was ruled by the Bijapur Sultan, Yusuf Adil Shah. Albuquerque easily captured it but fled when the Sultan’s army approached. The Portuguese massacred the Muslims before retreating to their ships. The fury of the monsoon prevented them from sailing. They ran out of food and were reduced to eating rats but did not surrender. Eventually they sailed away but returned on 25 November 1510, to capture Goa and put to death 6000 Muslims.

Albuquerque wrote to the King of Portugal, “I have decided that all the horses of Persia and Arabia should be in your hands, for two reasons: one being the heavy duties that they pay, and secondly, that the King of Vijayanagar and those of the Deccan may recognize that victory depends on you, for he who has the horses will defeat the other.”
Albuquerque, for all his cruelty, forbade the practice of sati in Goa.

In 1538 the first Bishop arrived in Goa. In 1540 the destruction of temples began. Francis Xavier arrived in 1542 and started mass conversions. He died off the coast of China in 1552, was first buried in Malacca and later shipped to Goa in 1554 to be finally interred at the Basilica of Bom Jesus. The author notes that “…parts of a shoulder blade are in Cochin, Malacca and Macao, the upper arm is in Japan, the internal organs have been distributed as relics…”

At Bassein in 1564, the Portuguese smashed the idols in a temple, killed a cow and sprinkled its blood in the sacred lake. The first Inquisition happened in 1560 in Goa. It was Francis Xavier who had recommended this horrendous practice to the Pope. 16,172 cases were investigated, thousands imprisoned, tortured and burnt at the stake before the practice was banned in 1774. The Inquisition was revived in 1778 and finally banned in 1812.

The book gives us many interesting anecdotes about the Kunjali Marakkars, commanders of the Zamorin’s fleet, who put up the fiercest resistance against Portuguese intrusion into Malabar. If the Zamorin hadn’t fallen out with them in the last decade of the 16th century and sided with the Portuguese, the history of Malabar may perhaps have taken a different turn. Marakkar’s surrender on 16th March 1600 was followed by treachery and tragedy. The Portuguese carted him off to Goa where he was publicly beheaded and his body dismembered and exhibited on the beaches. Then “his head was salted and conveyed to Cannanore, there to be stuck on a standard for a terror to the Moors.” The Zamorin had effectively dug his own grave. A century of resistance to colonization was over.

“Goa relied on a huge population of slaves……Women slaves were sold semi-naked at auctions and fetched more if they were virgins.” All the European powers exported slaves, mostly to the East Indies. “Slaves were commonplace in Madras. …The accounts show that in the month of September 1687 no fewer than 665 slaves were exported.” Edward Barlow, an English sailor noted in his journal in 1670 when his ship docked at the Company’s newly formed base at Valapattinam that the local people would not sell them cows but that for a small sum “you may buy their children”.

Bombay was ceded to Portugal in 1534 by the ruler of Gujarat. The Portuguese did nothing except destroy a few temples and build a few churches. In 1662 when Catherine of Braganza married Charles II of England, Bombay became part of her dowry. Six years later Charles II leased it to the East India Company. And the rest is history.

The author opines that the Mughal rulers, excepting Akbar, did little to improve the economy or the lives of the people. Thomas Roe stayed at Agra for three years and supplied alcohol to Emperor Jahangir. Shah Jahan ordered the destruction of Hindu temples. Aurangzeb converted Surat’s Jain temple into a mosque. His 50 year rule left a legacy of religious conflict that persists to this day.

Overall Assessment: Recommended for whites, blacks and browns alike.

The Theft of India
Author: Roy Moxham
Publisher: Harper Collins India
Year of Publication: 2016

---

Contributor: Pushpa Kurup lives in Trivandrum, India and works in the IT sector.

This memoir was first published in London in 1824, two years after the death of the author. Born in Devonshire, James Scurry had gone to sea at a very young age, probably accompanying his father. His Indian ordeal began at the age of 15 when he was captured by the French off the Coromandel Coast and handed over to Hyder Ali. After a decade in captivity he made a daring escape and managed to return to England where he built a chequered career, and died at the age of age of 57, leaving behind a widow and son.

Scurry begins his amateurish narrative by telling us he set sail from Plymouth Sound in the ship Hannibal and ended up near Ceylon where they ran into trouble with the French. He dived into the shark-infested waters and tried to swim to safety. “I had nothing about me but a silk handkerchief with two rupees, all my treasure, tied up in the corner.” He mentions Trincomalee, Batticaloa (which he called Bloody Bay), Tranquebar and finally Cuddalore where he was taken along with others after his capture. The year was 1781.

After two months of imprisonment in Hyder Ali’s fort of ‘Chillembroom’ where a famine was raging, the prisoners were marched off to Bangalore. “No butcher ever drove oxen with more cruelty than we were driven.”

Eventually, a group of 52 boys aged 12 to 17 were assembled and told they were now the ‘sons’ of Hyder Ali. They were marched off to Seringapatam, and their heads shaved. Months passed and Hyder Ali ‘Cawn’ died. “…towards the close of his life, when the ulcer was rapidly spreading, he, by advice, ordered several criminals at different times to be killed, in order to apply their livers to his sore.”

Scurry makes an intriguing observation that, “Hyat Saib was the rightful successor, but Tipoo proved the more powerful.” (Hyat (Ayaz Khan), was a Nambiar boy from Chirakkal who had been captured in 1766, converted and re-named before growing to be a prime favourite of Hyder Ali. Hyder is said to have publicly proclaimed that he wished Ayaz was his son and successor.) Did Hyder actually nominate Ayaz to succeed him? Or was Scurry referring to palace whispers?

Tipu’s accession aggravated the misery of the English captives, as they were incorporated into slave battalions. “Our ears were bored and a slave’s mark was put in each of them.”

Scurry describes the fate of Brahmin prisoners and English officers in Tipu’s custody. “…Colonel Bailey, who was in leg irons, with Captian Rumney, and Lieutenant Fraser and Sampson. The three latter had their throats cut at Mysore. Colonel Bailey appeared much emaciated; I rather think grief was the cause of destroying his constitution.”

Of the Malabar (Mangalore) Christians, Scurry records that 30,000 of them were driven to Seringapatam, “where all who were fit to carry arms were circumcised, and formed into four battalions.” Tipu wanted their daughters for his harem and when they refused, they were all imprisoned. “The chumbars, or sandal-makers were then sent for, and their noses, ears and upper lips were cut off; they were then mounted on asses, their faces towards the tail and led through Patam…”

“The principal street in Seringapatam, on each side, was ornamented with paintings, such as, elephants whirling Europeans in the air – tigers seizing whole battalions of English sepoys – five or six English officers supplicating for mercy…” Later when Tipu feared the English would get to Seringapatam, these paintings were removed.

Scurry asserts that Tipu was a coward and a tyrant, and probably mentally deranged. Tipu kept nine large tiger cages in front of his treasury. Three of his principal officers were thrown to the tigers and devoured in an instant. The tigers didn’t live long either. Tipu went hunting and brought in new ones. Scurry describes in detail the unique instruments of torture that Tipu used. “But his most common mode of punishment was that of drawing to death by the elephant’s feet.” This corroborates the accounts of other writers in Malayalam and English.

Scurry also describes Tipu’s ‘games’ that would have put the ancient Romans to shame. When Tipu concluded peace with the British in 1784, and the customary exchange of prisoners took place, Scurry and a 100 other boys were sorely disappointed. Had their government forsaken them? Scurry records that he went into depression for three months.

To cut a long story short, Scurry was circumcised, re-named Shamsher Khan (he spells it Shum Shu Cawn), and forced to marry a dark-skinned girl from Arcot, also a prisoner. “She was an affectionate creature by whom I had two children, one died and the other I left in the arms of its distracted mother.” Scurry eventually escaped into Mahratta territory and returned to England in 1793. His efforts to trace his wife and child proved futile. Recounting his final moments with them he wrote, “I was eager to give them a final embrace; but fearful of the consequences. Oh my God! What were my sensations then! And even now, after a lapse of more than thirty years!”

Scurry’s language and spellings are quaint. We hear of him speaking the “Moorish’ language, the Canary language and the Tellingey language. He also recounts ‘seeing the Bramin women ascend the funeral pyre with the dead bodies of their husbands, apparently with as much composure as we would sit down to our breakfast.” His words are straight from the heart of an unlettered man.

Overall Assessment: Certainly worth reading.

The captivity, sufferings, and escape of James Scurry, who was detained a prisoner during ten years, in the dominions of Hyder Ali and Tippoo Saib
Author: James Scurry
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Year of Publication: 2015 (Original 1824)

---

Contributor: Pushpa Kurup lives in Trivandrum, India and works in the IT sector.

This book is part of a series by different authors detailing the global commercial activities of Indian merchants down the ages. It presents an amazing account of the trading practices of Punjabi businessmen, whose initiative and enterprise will certainly surprise the reader. Moreover, there’s a detailed account of the slave trade and the horse trade, which were inextricably intertwined.

India had been cultivating cotton and producing textiles from antiquity. Textile fragments excavated at Mohenjo Daro indicate that dyes were used for colouring. The Greek historian Herodotus had referred to Indian cottons.

The Arthashastra the Mahabharata and the Manusmriti refer to institutionalized slavery in India. Mahmud Ghazni took away not only India’s treasures but also hundreds of thousands of slaves. The Slave dynasty (builders of the Qutub Minar) also kept up the slave trade. When Timur sacked Delhi in 1398 he returned to Samarkand with plenty of wealth and slaves. Alauddin Khalji (ruled 1296-1316) had 50,000 slave boys and another 70,000 slaves engaged in construction works. Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1351 to 1388) had 180,000 slaves. Th author notes that, “The Mughals regularly included skilled slaves as gifts along with ambassadorial exchanges.”

In 1646 Shah Jahan’s army occupied Balkh and marched to Samarkand under Aurangzeb. Defetaed by the long, cold winter the Indian forces had to retreat. A central asian chronicler recorded that the Central Asian ‘wolves’ captured the retreating Indian ‘slave-sheep’ and sold them in the markets of Samarkand, Tashkent and Turkestan. The voluminous supply of slaves caused prices to plummet from 225 tanga in 1589 to 84 tanga in 1646.

The Lodi dynasty of Afghan Pashtuns (later overthrown by Babur) came to India as horse traders. “The fact that the ancient Indian ashwamedha, or horse sacrifice, is described already in the Rig Veda indicates that Indians were involved in this exchange many centuries before Herodotus,” the author points out. Marco Polo noticed that the Malabar rulers imported 10,000 horses a year at a cost of 2.2 million dinars – and all but 100 would be dead by the end of the year. Niccolao Manucci wrote in the latter half of the 17th century that 100,000 horses were led from Bukhara to India every year and 12000 of them went directly to Aurangzeb’s stables.

Babur wrote in 1504, “From Hindustan, caravans of ten, fifteen, twenty thousand pack animals bring slaves, textiles, rock sugar, refined sugar, and spices.” 22 years later he would defeat Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat and found the Mughal dynasty.

Successive rulers in India and Central Asia carefully protected the caravan trade. When Akbar learnt that Afghan and Baloch tribes were preying upon the caravans, he sent his army to subdue them. Thousands of tribesmen were killed and thousands more enslaved and deported.

The arrival of the Europeans did not impact the caravan trade. The Portuguese brought much silver from the Americas in exchange for spices and textiles. The 17th century French traveller Francois Bernier observed, “Gold and silver, after circulating in every corner of the globe, comes at length to be swallowed up, lost in some measure in Hindostan.” The French monk Raphael du Mans described India as a place “where all the money in the Universe is unloaded as if into an abyss.” Earlier in the 1st century Pliny the Elder and the anonymous author of Periplus Maris Erithraei had bemoaned Rome’s massive trade deficit with India.

Mulasthana or Mulastanapura became Multan in the 8th century following the Muslim conquest. Alexander the Great took the city in 326 B.C.E. 13th century records identify Multanis as money-lenders and wholesale textile dealers for the first time. Indian merchants were considered indispensable to the local economy and the term ‘Multani’ referred to both Hindus and Muslims. As Multan began to suffer repeated invasions in the mid 17th century, Multani merchants relocated en masse to Shikarpur in Sind.

In the 17th century the French jeweller Tavernier commented that Indian money-changers or Shroffs surpassed the Jews in their shrewdness. The Punjabi Khatris prospered due to Mughal patronage but outlasted several dynasties in India and Central Asia. There were Marwari Jains in Astrakhan in the 17th century.

Nadir Shah’s reign was the most disruptive period in the history of the Indian merchant diaspora. In 1736 he slaughtered the Hindu communities across Iran. After his assassination in 1747 Indians began to return.

Indian presence in Russian territory diminished in the second half of the 19th century due to Russian expansionist policies and harsh restrictions imposed on Indian businesses. Ivan the Terrible had annexed the Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan in the 16th century. The 1917 Revolution virtually ended Indian enterprise in Russia. With Partition in 1947, the Indians in Afghanistan had to move elsewhere, as the trade lines were cut off.

In 1914 Paramanand Deepchand Hinduja moved from his native Shikarpur in Sind to Bombay where he established firm. Five years later he moved his business to Iran. When he passed way in 1971 his successors maintained a close relationship with the Shah as well as the Indian government. The business shifted to Europe after the 1979 Islamic Revolution but continued to thrive. Today they employ 70,000 people in 35 countries and have assets worth an estimated $35 billion.

Years ago I was travelling in Uzbekistan with a few women. We were frequently accosted on the streets by local women asking to be photographed with us. They would first ask “Hindustan? Hindustan?” and when we nodded they would signal that they wanted a picture. This happened in not only in Tashkent but also in Bukhara and Samarkand. I suspected it was Bollywood mania, but after reading this book I can see other reasons too.

Overall Assessment: Very Interesting

Caravans: Punjabi Khatri Merchants on the Silk Road
Author: Scott C. Levi
Publisher: Portfolio (Penguin Books)
Year of Publication: 2016

---

Contributor: Pushpa Kurup lives in Trivandrum, India and works in the IT sector.