[First published in YouthKiAwaaz]
“My maternal grandmother, Damayanti, had briefly attended a reputed Convent school in the city much like mine, a fact that deeply influenced my own mother’s choice of school for me. How did it happen, though, that my grandmother went to an elite girls’ school at a time when women of her social class barely received any school at all? It did not occur to me then, but it must have had something to do with her father Mohanlal and his travels.”
Amrita Shah was always curious to know more about her maternal great grandfather, Mohanlal Killavala, a well educated man from a reasonably prosperous family who at the turn of the 20th century left the comfort of Bombay to travel to South Africa. By all accounts, he returned to his family and his young bride after a few years, made a career for himself in real estate speculation, built a “house entirely of wood” for himself and was in every way the typical Gujarati patriarch.
What struck her, however, was how little people spoke about his time away- what compelled a man with a predictable future to spend money and risk societal displeasure to travel to a virtually unknown country, what made him return, why were there no physical artifacts from his travel, and why was his journey not a part of family lore. Instead of using a research grant to travel overseas to deliver lectures that nobody would hear, the author decided to retrace the journey of her fascinating ancestor to try and piece together his story.
“The Other Mohan in Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire” is a book that cannot be fitted into a convenient genre- it part travelogue, part memoir, part family history, part historical recreation. It traces the history of families settled in small towns along the coast of Gujarat from the Medieval age- of how the families contributed to the rise of Surat as the most prominent maritime trading city in India, of the exodus to Bombay when the land of seven archipelagos started developing into a metropolis, of how they contributed to making Bombay a city that almost rivalled London on which it was modelled. Mohanlal was born in this city, and from the few clues available to her, the author attempts to retrace his journey to South Africa.
The author’s exploration of various cities of South Africa and Mauritius is fascinating for an Indian who has not only a faint idea of the history of South Africa. She describes the various types of migrations of Indian to Mauritius and South Africa- indentured labourers who signed up to escape poverty in their country, freed indentured labourers from other countries who chose to make a home and Indians like Mohanlal who purchased (fairly expensive) tickets to seek to make a career. She describes the growing prejudices against people of colour in South Africa, and while MK Gandhi (he hadn’t yet become the Mahatma) makes an appearance, she also speaks of many other prominent Indians who contributed immensely to the Indian community.
The book is full of vivid descriptions of people and events- it is clear that she has done considerable research, but she presents it in a way which is not only accessible to the lay reader, but also extremely enjoyable. While describing her own adventures, she easily slips between the present and the past, with the past perhaps being more important to her. With nothing but the faintest clues, she tries to find out more about her ancestor, and we rejoice with her every time she makes a fresh discovery.
In the Prelude, which sets the context under which the author set off on the quest to unearth more details about her great grandfather, she mentions stumbling upon the fact that Mohanlal was involved in one of the earliest non co-operation movements started by Gandhi in South Africa. “It is not everyday that one hears of an ancestor having played a role in the making of history”, she writes. One expects her to unearth more details, and maybe even find that there was a fleeting friendship between the ‘two Mohans’, but we soon realise that while Mohanlal knew other important personalities, the acquaintance between these two was fleeting, if at all. However, despite this being a work of non-fiction, there is a climatic revelation she uncovers which throws a different light on everything Mohanlal did upto then.
For most of the book the author doesn’t really tell us much about what might have driven Mohanlal, the picture she recreates is of an ambitious and proficient young man, who consciously chooses not to follow a conventional path. A man who not only prefers to work with white men, but also appears to have intermingled with them socially. Many of his actions seem random (he always throws up something stable to chase a new chimera), but it is clear to the writer that they are backed up with research and carefully planned. One would have thought that his interactions with Gandhi would form the backbone of the book, but they are merely one more aspect to an extremely engrossing tale.
I, personally, loved the parts where she recreates what life might have been like for her great grandmother- how she might have dressed, where she might have worshipped, the places she might have gone to, and the conversations she might have overheard/ participated in. While all of it is speculation on the part of the author, you know she has done considerable primary and secondary research using diverse data sources before coming up with her descriptions. As she says, “These are hypotheses, of course, but ancestry is a complicated business.”
This is a fascinating book, and the notes and references will certainly send the reader down other rabbit holes. The author also has a very engaging style and almost effortlessly brings the people and places to life. While the title may suggest it is the story of one man, it is actually the story of the people who were part of an immigration wave that is not spoken of much. Anybody who is curious about our history would love this book.
[I was sent a review copy by Harper Collins. The views are my own.]
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