Book 30 - "Snakes and Ladders" by Gita Mehta

[tala-tale.livejournal.com]

I read this review of Gita Mehta's Snakes and Ladders by fiction_theory and decided to read the book -- I'm sooo glad I did.

I most heartily concur with the review fiction_theory wrote, so I'll let interested folks read that instead of repeating it all here, but in terms of my personal experience with the book... well, most fundamentally, I didn't realize how colossally ignorant I was about India's history until I started reading. Not only are Mehta's essays delightfully engaging, blending the humorous, the serious, the political, the historical, the personal, and the lyrical into a deeply seductive mix, but they left me hungering to know more, which is, to me, one of the hallmarks of good non-fiction.

I'm going to be keeping an eye out for good books on the history of India (both about the periods up to the publication of Mehta's book in 1997 and about what's happened since then) -- if anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

(Tags: a: mehta gita, nonfiction, short essays, history, indian)

Comments

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

Not a book, but if you're interested in the history of India and you can listen to podcasts, I recommend this series of undergraduate lectures (a pretty substantial course) (http://www.oid.ucla.edu/webcasts/courses/2009-2010/2009fall/hist9a-1) by Professor Vinay Lal of UCLA. The lectures cover India's history from prehistory up to Independence, and there is also a course available on British India (http://www.oid.ucla.edu/webcasts/courses/2009-2010/2010winter/hist174c-1), which is Prof Lal's main area of specialisation.

Lal is strongly influenced by Orientalism and very much concerned with issues of how history becomes History, which makes the lectures that bit more valuable for me; he's not just saying "well, this happened and then this happened and then because of that this other thing happened", but discusses issues like who was keeping the records and why they kept them in the way that they did, and how they've been interpreted differently by various groups for various different reasons. I'm listening to the British India lectures at the moment, and he approaches the colonization of India as a "conquest of knowledge" -- it's fascinating.

[tala-tale.livejournal.com]

Wow, the podcasts sound great!

I haven't the foggiest notion of what "Orientalism" would mean in this context, but I imagine I'll find out! :) I hugely appreciate any historian who is aware of, and addresses, how and by whom history is shaped and recorded -- it's pretty much impossible, in my experience, to understand anything useful about history without the ability to intelligently see the fingerprints of those who shaped the story-as-it-is-being-told-to-you.

I'm not always great at assimilating information I hear (and my hearing's rather wonky, so speech patterns other than those I'm very used to can be hard for me to parse), but these sound like they're absolutely worth taking a shot at; thank you!

If nothing else, my sweetheart, who was *most* unhappy that I had to return Snakes and Ladders to the library before she had a chance to read it, and who adores podcasts of all kinds, will certainly be interested!

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

In this context, it's referring to the theory of Edward Said that Western (and especially British) scholars approach the Middle East and Asia with a set of colonial preconceptions that shape what data they look for and what conclusions they draw. It's an intellectual form of racism, essentially, and one that's very easy to slip into because so many of the English-language sources on Asia and the Middle East are biased in this way. As with all historical bias issues, being aware of it goes a long way to combatting it.

I hope you get value out of the podcasts!

[tala-tale.livejournal.com]

Ahh, thank you!

:)

[seabookmonger.livejournal.com]

I too enjoyed reading this book. Thank you to Purity for recommending Professor Lal's lectures. I'm enjoying the podcasts. Lots to learn about this region and it's nice to have the overview.