‘ASI is criminally underfunded’

In an exclusive conversation with DHoS, Writer-Historian William Dalrymple shares, “There is a whole story which remains untold about the influence of India. We need to work towards recovering that Indian story based on archaeological fact and historical evidence.”

When you think of ancient trade, what comes to your mind? The Silk Road that puts China at the centre of the map? But did you know India was one of the Roman Empire’s most affluent trading partners? Ancient Indian traders supplied the Romans with goods dripping in luxury, including precious stones, ivory and silk. The quality of these goods fetched Indians premium prices. The proof of this exists in the archaeological discoveries in India.

Scottish writer and historian William Dalrymple discusses all this and more in his latest book, ‘The Golden Road’ which has received much critical acclaim in the recent weeks. In an exclusive conversation with DHoS, he shares, “There is a whole story which remains untold about the influence of India. We need to work towards recovering that Indian story based on archaeological fact and historical evidence.” Excerpts

After having primarily covered colonial India, what prompted your shift towards Ancient India?

My original interest while growing up was ancient history and archaeology. First thing when I left school, I wanted to go and dig in Iraq. And then sadly, Saddam closed the British School of Archaeology, and I never got the chance. So I jumped on a plane to India. I visited the Ajanta and the Ellora, and it was much later that I got excited by colonial history, the East India Company and its interaction with 18th-century India, and the late Mughals.

I spent 20 years writing about the 18th century. I dug deep into the Mughals and the East India Company. Partly because it was a period which felt very unstudied, the late Mughals, especially. And the whole project was a collaboration with my great friend, the scholar Bruce Wannell, who is a wonderful Persian translator. And I think what distinguished those books historically was, partly the extraordinary Persian sources we were using, which had never been touched before. But that door slightly closed when Bruce died in 2019 of pancreatic cancer. So I thought I’d do something completely different and go back in a sense to my original love, my first passion, which is the ancient world.

How different was the process of writing about ancient India?

With the colonial period, there is a plethora of resources. The East India Company was a terrible institution in a rich variety of ways, but it was spectacularly good at keeping its records. When it comes to ancient Indian history, there are whole periods with barely any documentation. For example, the Gupta period — a period you’d imagine would be illuminated brightly because of its great impact — but all you’ve got is a handful of inscriptions and some coins, and virtually nothing else for 300 years. So it was much more difficult to pull together but there was just about enough to write.

You’ve called the Silk Road a myth…

Not entirely. The Silk Road is something that definitely existed in some form in the 13th century. But there was no trade route where merchants set off from Point A and ended up in Point B. My issue lies with the projection of China at the centre of it all. Rome and China had no idea of each other’s existence. We know that for a fact. They both had a vague awareness that there was some great power far away.

However, we do have that with India. We have eyewitness accounts of fleets of 250 vessels setting off from Egypt. Accounts of Cline talking about the drain of Roman gold. We have an entire merchant’s guide called the Periplus which lays out the different ports of the Western off the West Indian coast and some off the east. So how have we ended up in a situation where everyone thinks that China was the centre of world trade in the ancient period, while India doesn’t have a finger on the map at this moment in the British Museum? There’s an exhibition where China is everything and India is absent, and it’s just not true. Hence, the concept of the ‘Golden Road’ came about… it is a more accurate account of ancient trade based on India as the centre rather than China.

The Indian Right seems to be in favour of authors writing about ancient India…

This gets me irritated because I used to be criticised and called a ‘leftist’ or ‘Marxist’ because I wrote about the Mughals. If you write about the Mughals, everyone assumes that you are ‘glorifying’ them. Which is not what historians do. And equally wrong is the idea that if you write about ancient India, you’re suddenly a card-carrying member of the RSS and have to don khaki shorts!

It’s an interesting prejudice, though, because it doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. I’m a centrist, and I write and I approach both periods in the same way, with a sense of wonder. Both periods are extraordinary. No political persuasion should be allowed to appropriate an entire period of history.

You recently made a post about the need for better conservation of Indian architecture...

There’s no proper system of listing in India for vernacular architecture. In any other advanced economy, private buildings get graded according to historic value. So if you own a 16th-century palace, you can’t just knock it down and build a car park just because it’s gonna make you rich. But in Delhi, you can. This is an unusual and unfortunate situation.

There’s another problem with the monuments that are under the protection of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). ASI is criminally underfunded. If historical monuments are not protected, they will be looted and vandalised. And for a country with a government that claims to be a champion of Indian culture, this government has given almost nothing to the ASI to look after the monuments. Instead, they’ve started taking monuments out of the list and abandoning them. My strong recommendation to anyone in power is to invest money there so India can reap the rewards of tourism. At the moment, fewer tourists are arriving in India every year than in Singapore.