Rajkumari Sharma Tankha
Part travelogue, part memoir, part family history and imbued with rigorous scholarship, The Other Mohan (HarperCollins Fourth Estate) by author Amrita Shah is not just a labour of love, but also a quest to understand her great-grandfather, Mohanlal, who set sail for South Africa from pre-independent India at the turn of twentieth century.
“Setting out to retrace my ancestor’s journey across the Indian Ocean was like embarking on a voyage of discovery, venturing into the unknown, with scant resources, looking for answers about origins and history,” says Shah. Excerpts from an interview:
What made you want to write about your great grandfather. What exactly is the idea behind writing this book?
As a child I was told that I had a great grandfather called Mohanlal, who was an interpreter and who went to South Africa for a few years as a young man. This would have been around the turn of the twentieth century. I did not know anything else about the event but it fascinated me. It was the idea of overseas travel that I found exciting but also perhaps my idea of Africa which was shaped by colonial stories of exploration and adventure.
Over the years I became preoccupied with the idea of retracing my ancestor’s journey and finding out why he went there and what he did. Since there was no information, in the form of dates, travel documents, letters or anecdotes, this was quite a daunting task. My book, The Other Mohan in Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire is formatted like a thriller unravelling the story of my pursuit bit by bit.
Why name it The Other Mohan?
An important discovery I made right at the start was that Mohanlal had met Mohandas Gandhi in South Africa and had participated in his Satyagraha campaign in 1908. In 1908, Gandhi was fighting against a racist law which required Indians to identify themselves with papers carrying their fingerprints as if they were criminals. In August 1908 Indians en masse burnt their identity papers in protest. This event has become an iconic moment in the history of the struggle against oppression and was dramatized in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi.
My great grandfather was present at this event. He had joined a group of educated Indians who refused to register themselves with their fingerprints. They were arrested and spent many weeks in jail.
But there was more to the story than was apparent which you will find in the book. Following an ordinary traveller like Mohanlal, not an extraordinary leader like Gandhi brought me face to face with some startling findings about a historical event that I thought was well-known. It is a history that has not yet been told. Hence the title, The Other Mohan.
When did you begin writing it and how much did you take to complete it, cover to cover?
I started researching it in fits and starts between 2013 and 2016 and started writing probably sometime then. It took about ten years.
You travelled to South Africa to gain info about your great grandfather. How challenging was the journey and the digging out of the information?
Well, I suppose it was a challenge to go to an unfamiliar place and expect to discover a story about a person who was not famous and who lived over a hundred years ago. For some reason I believed I would find it. I don’t know why, perhaps it was my long experience as a journalist which gave me that confidence. It was definitely not easy and there were times when I felt I was getting nowhere. But I was lucky to come across helpful people who pointed me in the right direction. I was lucky also to find a wealth of material in the archives. It was hard work but very rewarding.
There is plenty of history writing in the book – you have talked about Surat and South Africa of that time. Did you get this info through the old letters/ documents and people or you referred to history books?
The historical background came from books and academic papers. Also the research done on Indians in Africa by a few dedicated scholars. That said, I did spend time in these places and had to work hard at picking out what was relevant to my findings and to build a context for my story. I also added to this pile from my own discoveries and my examination of primary documents in the archives.
Writing such a kind of book (biography of a family member) is no mean task. Every felt writer’s block… giving up on writing. If yes, how did you motivate yourself to come back to it?
No I don’t take breaks or feel like giving up when I am writing a book. But there are times when the structure or the writing is not working. I know that you have to keep trying and the solution emerges on its own.
What are the unique aspects of your great grandfather that you discovered in the process of writing this book?
I think he was probably a very confident man. He was not afraid of going to foreign places and making his way around. He always seemed to be sure of what he was doing even though he must have been quite young, early twenties when he went.
Is there a message that you want to send across through this book?
Not really but if this book would encourage people to chase stories of interesting, lesser-known individuals, that would make for a fuller understanding of history.
Any anecdotes you would like to share about the journey of writing this book?
Many of the anecdotes are in the book. An interesting encounter that I did not put in happened when I was driving to a village outside Surat. A colleague had asked a retired principal of a local college to accompany me. The latter did not know the subject of my research. When I told him he said his grandfather had also gone to South Africa as a young man. As it turned out, both our ancestors had participated in the same event in the Satyagraha campaign and I got some valuable material from him. I also travelled to fascinating places which no tourist would ever go to such as a functioning South African jail and a border town to see a riveting theatre festival.
Who is your favourite author, and why?
I have many, but since I have dealt in popular history I will mention Jan Morris, who writes beautifully and has a multi-faceted approach to history.
Which is your favourite book, and why?
There are many books I like but again, since we are talking history I will name M S Commissariat’s 3-volume History of Gujarat which I find replete with riches.
What book are you currently working on?
I am writing a book explaining the upheaval India is going through
What are you doing when not writing?
I read, listen to music, go to the theatre, socialize.
