The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History By Sanjeev Sanyal

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The author of this book, Sanjeev Sanyal makes a credible statement on an obvious shortcoming with a majority of historic narratives. In a planet where 71% are covered by the oceans, our history is almost completely rooted on the land. Sanyal in his book sets out to look at history from the Indian Ocean’s perspective. The Indian Ocean encompasses Africa, Asia and Australasia in its fold what happens against the backdrop of this sea is rich, varied and instrumental to world history. The narrative draws inspiration from the namesake of the ocean itself and is almost fully if not completely India centric.

The course of events that the author chooses is pretty much well-trodden territory starting right from the first large migrations of humanoids across landscapes, the breakup of the super continent, colonization of Australia and so forth down to the rise of sedentary civilizations. The Persians and Greeks are given passing references and the narrative shifts almost completely to India once Alexander departs from the subcontinent. The first pan Indian empire was established following the battle between Chandragupta Maurya (Sandracottus in Greek) and Seleucus Nicator which led to Mauryan domination across the sub-continent. This was followed by a succession of dynasties with the Sungas, Satavahanas, Rashtrakutas and Guptas to the north and the Cholas, Cheras and Pandiyas to the south. This wave was followed by the Islamic sultanates and the Mughals who then left the stage for the rise of the Marathas. The dynasties all wound down with the rise of the English East India Company and the British colonization of India and the rest is pretty famous history. All of these get ample attention from Sanyal and the narrative also features cameos by the Portuguese, the Dutch and the French.

In reality these events stretched out over centuries and yet Sanyal captures it all in a gap of just a few chapters. The hues of the individual stories range from the totally daring ( how the British sneaked away the seedlings for cloves and nutmegs from Dutch control) to the depressing ( the Portuguese arrival and subsequent carnage in Calicut) to the gallant ( Marthanda Varma defeating the Dutch at the battle of Kolachal) and all of which have made significant forks in the highways of history. Sanyal compresses the stories into a quick read and while this is the biggest highlight of the book, it is also the book’s undoing.

Brevity in terms of historical narratives might not always be the best way to treat a reader since a lot of details and explanations are sacrificed for the sake of easy readability and this malady strikes the narrative heavily. To borrow from Stephen King it is as if the flow of events are hurrying by in a rush to get out in a whoosh while stumbling and jostling with each other. There is also the fact that Sanyal’s narrative is prejudiced for a few reasons. At the onset itself, he discounts the fact that there has been an Aryan invasion at all across the sub-continent and without valid proof. All that you get are phrases like ‘we know that’ or ‘as we know’ to substantiate the claims. As to how ‘we know that’ is not explained. The tone is also rather careless at places, let me illustrate with a piece from the book :

The analysis of the DNA extracted from the remains of European hunter-gatherers suggests that lighter skin may have spread among Europeans as recently as 5000 BC (i.e. after the migration) although I suspect some pre-existing north European populations may have become light-skinned much earlier.

Now I understand that Sanyal is an amateur historian but telling us that he suspects something is not ground enough for our solid understanding of a concept. I did come across multiple usages of my guess is or I think here and as fellow readers I don’t have to tell you what that counts for when we talk about history. And much like the Aryan theory there are personalities and groups he discards summarily. For instance while the kingdoms of the coast are all lauded, a king like Ashoka is given a critical eye. Sanyal begins his sub-chapter on Ashoka calling it ‘Ashoka – the not so great ?’. A similar treatment is meted out for Gandhi and the Indian National Congress while Subhash Chandra Bose and the armed revolutionaries are treated with awe. The contributions of all these cannot be discounted and yet it tells a lot on the personal biases from the author’s side. Needless to say a lot of filtering needs to be done before the contents of the book can be consumed.

Recommended for the story but not the history. Hardcover How come the fossil remains of marine animals have been found in Himalayas?

How come we can see oriental faces in the engravings by Pallavas?

Why did Vasco Da Gama worshipped in a Hindu Temple when he set his foot in India for the first time?

How come the Parsi Community of India embraced the local Gujarati culture so effortlessly?

Yeah, you guessed it right- This books has not only answers, but also profound explanations of all the above mentioned (and many more) questions.

History has been prescribed in our curriculum right from the primary school. But if you will ponder a bit, its easy to realize that the entire curriculum is heavily skewed towards Mainland History. While we discuss Ashoka and Akbar in great lengths, a minuscule space is given to the Cholas, Chalukyas and Pallavas. We talk at lengths about Ashoka and Akbar but conveniently forget Kharavela.

In this groundbreaking, one-of-its-kind book, Sanjeev Sanyal retraces History from the Indian Ocean's and its coastline's perspective. The book start right from the origin of Indian Ocean due to the movement of tectonic plates and ends right at the transformation of Bombay to Mumbai with the reclamation of land over the ocean. The book is full of rich details of all kingdoms that throve around the Indian coastline and islands on Indian ocean and of also those that had cultural and trade ties with these kingdoms. Some of the anecdotes are a delight to read while many others get a bit dragging and prosaic- but it doesn't undermine the fact that the book is an extremely informative account and is a result of an honest and meticulous hard work of author. Some details in this book will challenge your notions and previous knowledge of history with new insights and a different perspective while others will make you go bewildered about the richness and obscurity of our ancient times.

A heartfelt thanks to Penguin Books India for providing The BookTrack team with a review copy of the book. Please buy a copy of this book from Amazon and start a literary ride which will increase your knowledge quotient for sure-http://amzn.to/2bpQwgb

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Hardcover A thoroughly enjoyable voyage across the Indian Ocean with Sanjeev Sanyal. Sanyal has clearly gone from strength to strength since his last work and his command over the narrative, and engagement of the reader is admirable now. A challenging task is taken up here, since the sweep of time and geography to be covered in a short book like this is ambitious to say the least. Sanyal pulls it off quite handsomely, it has to be said, even though oversimplification and a few biases color the narrative in many places - but I appreciated the fact that in a few instances where Sanyal gives us an overtly divergent view of events, he admits that he is showing us such a version of history only to make us question the established stories we have accepted to date. That is a interesting way to engage the reader in a history book and I liked how that allows the author to trot out pet theories and still allow himself the guise of a serious historian.

My biggest gripe with the book was the amount of space dedicated to the pre-historic migrations, and the constant references to the aryan invasion theory. However, this can be excused to an extent since Sanyal does use that background to keep pointing us towards how certain patterns in the history of the Indian Ocean rim seem to repeat themselves over millennia... It might be more imagined than real, these patterns, but it gives the book that sense of a grand sweep, and a mystique to the ocean rim itself.

Much of the actual history should be familiar territory for most readers (assuming people who pick up a niche book like this would tend to be history buffs), but the narrative created by Sanyal and the enjoyment of reading a well-narrated, well-researched, and articulate history by a young Indian author more than makes up for it. Hardcover Another good book by Sanyal. The best thing about Sanyal's writing style is he does not force feed you his beliefs, like some other history writers. He puts forth the hypothesis, set out facts, give assumptions, deductions, conclusions, and then leave it with readers to explore for more.

The use of fables, folklore and tongue-in-cheek lines have kept the book from becoming a dry commentary.

After reading Savarkar's Six Glourious Epochs of Indian History, this book again brings out the rich history of our sub-continent which has been suppressed for ages. Its only in the last few years that we have started questioning what we have been told for decades about our history. The stories we have been told by our grandparents were forgotten because in most cases it did not match with what we have been taught at school/colleges, but these books give them credence and make us question what we have believed to be true. The truth seems something different shrouded under a thick grey film which needs to be dusted and brought out to light.

The attempt by authors like Sanyal to bring out new perspective on our history is a commendable and it will make us question and explore rather than blindly believing everything we are told. Hardcover I did hope to be impressed which unfortunately I wasn't while reading this one.
I did hope to find some intensive if not extensive history of the diasporic movement around and across the Indian Ocean, what I did get was a quick tour of the region and those beyond it spreading across centuries and civilizations, right from the Prehistoric times to the recent past.
I did hope to read of those unknown sailors, pirates, local merchants, lascars, what I got...well I did not get what the author had hinted in his first chapter. This still appeared to be a narrative from the top not of the subalterns...

Having said that, if you want to know about the whats and whos without being bogged down by conjectures and analysis or theories, then go for this book.

Ohh and I am definitely going to check out the references from which the author has cited a lot of information in the book! Hardcover

Much of human history has played itself out along the rim of the Indian Ocean. In a first-of-its-kind attempt, bestselling author Sanjeev Sanyal tells the history of this significant region, which stretches across East Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent to South East Asia and Australia. He narrates a fascinating tale about the earliest human migrations out of Africa and the great cities of Angkor and Vijayanagar; medieval Arab empires and Chinese 'treasure fleets'; the rivalries of European colonial powers and a new dawn. Sanjeev explores remote archaeological sites, ancient inscriptions, maritime trading networks and half-forgotten oral histories, to make exciting revelations. In his inimitable style, he draws upon existing and new evidence to challenge well-established claims about famous historical characters and the flow of history. Adventurers, merchants, explorers, monks, swashbuckling pirates, revolutionaries and warrior princesses populate this colourful and multifaceted narrative. The Ocean of Churn takes the reader on an amazing journey through medieval geopolitics and eyewitness accounts of long-lost cities to the latest genetic discoveries about human origins, bringing alive a region that has defined civilization from the very beginning. The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

It is really an outstanding book. A friend of mine recommended Sanjeev Sanyal to me and I started reading his books in the chronological order in which he has written them. I guess that was a good decision from my end because I have liked each book more than the previous one and this is quite easily the best from him so far. Very often than not, when we speak of history, we restrict ourselves to the terrestrial form of history and restrict ourselves to a history of a particular country or land.

In this book, Sanjeev Sanyal writes about the maritime history and how the Indian Ocean was impacted by it and how it impacted the affairs of the world. The book tries to answer a lot of questions such as why is the South East Asian culture so similar to Indian culture. Why is Bali still predominantly a Hindu island despite the rest of Indonesia being home to the largest Muslim population in the world?

The book gives a good idea about the history of all the countries that share links with the Indian Ocean which includes India, Indonesia, Australia, Sri Lanka, and so on. Indian Ocean is the only ocean out of the four which is named after a country and after reading this book, you'll know the answer why is it so. The Indian subcontinent played a vital role in the global trade for a large part of history and a lot of this was possible because of the Indian Ocean. Hardcover The best thing about this book is the focus on South India. Indian History is far too Delhi-centric, and it is good that an emminental readable and well-studied account of the South is now presented. The author has a knack of combining the studies of Geography and History, and the book does not disappoint one bit. What I particularly enjoyed is the use of anecdotes to stitch together broader historical patterns. The book also does not pull back on punches and focused on key areas such as the cultural interlinkage of the Indian Ocean Region, and the cruelty of colonial rule. My.only complaint is that the book is more horizontal than vertical, in so much as that certain sections of the book lack in depth. That, however, is a function of the author's prerogative and the reader's discretion, and beyond this the book is excellent. Highly recommended. Hardcover Being a regular reader of the history I was fascinated by this book by the author Sanjeev Sanyal. Having read his previous book Land of the Seven Rivers I was all eager to read this new book. In his previous book, he talked about the seven important rivers of India including the mighty Saraswati River. The Land of seven rivers was summed up in one line as “Seven Rivers (Sapth Sindhu), One Country, Five Millennia, Startling History”.

Asian histories have been rendered in a biased manner since time immemorial. As a famous saying that goes, until an animal has its own history, the history of the hunting will always glorify the hunter. If we take any history curriculum in Indian education system, we can read leaps and bounds of Mughul Empire, the British regime, the Sultanates and such similar accounts.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to read the histories of Cholas, Pandyas, Pallavas in greater detail and their glories have been limited to few pages here and there. This book, one of a kind in its genre, breaks that stupor and gives us a riveting account of how the Indian Ocean has shaped the human history. Indian Ocean is itself a big mystery. It holds many unresolved or undiscovered history that is hidden deep into its core. Author Sanjeev Sanyal tried to uncover this in this vast researched and well articulated book and succeeded in satiating his readers.

The book opens up by a fascinating tale of how the Pallava dynasty has traced an heir to their Kingdom when the erstwhile King, Parameshwara Verman II died in 731 CE. A delegation of Brahmin scholars, which travelled across the Indian Ocean to the far ends of Cambodia, and got back an heir that traced his roots to the Pallava dynasty from five long generations ago!! Thus, the reign of Nandi Verman II has started.

Sanjeev Sanyal views this history as Complex Adaptive System. Given his background in Economics, where he considers multiple factors act upon a system to determine the direction it takes. From Harrappan times, Indians have been trading with the world in many ways. Maritime trading is the major aspect during those times when land routes were hardly discovered. The powerful Chola king, Rajendra Chola made a naval attack on the Sri Vijaya Kingdom of Sumatra by 1025 is one such example. Chola Empire was one of the powerful empires in the entire South Asia region during that time. There were a major geo-political-economic alliances or rivalries between Indians, Chinese and the Sri Vijaya Kingdom.

Kerala being the hub of the maritime trade have witnessed a vast amount of geo-political-economic tradeoffs. As a testimony to those, even today in Kerala, we have the world’s second Mosque and India’s first mosque (Cheraman Perumal Mosque) built by the king Cherman Perumal by the orders of Mohammed the prophet himself in 629 AD. We also get to see the memorial of St. Thomas (doubting Thomas fame), a disciple of Jesus, who visited Kerala via sea route.

Read the full review here Hardcover 2.5/5 For the most part it read like a school textbook, too much information of dates and names cramped into few pages with urgency. More of information than on insights/analysis. Also, felt a lack of continuity and depth. Hardcover Book Review: The Ocean of Churn
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I am going excited by thinking that if our history books of school have been such cool as this book. Without any propaganda, it tells about the glorious past and culture of India.
The book starts with the incident of Nandi Varman 2 being the king of Pallava kingdom. Our history books reacts like that there was no past of our India before the invaders invaded India, that results immense coloniality in the mind of students. But Sanyal explained the history of the Pallavas, Cholas, Pandyas, Cheras and many more Indic dynasties. The book is mainly based on how our Indiawas connected with the World through the Indian ocean for business and exchange of culture. For telling the real history, sometimes Sanyal used folk stories which are dismissed by left historians. Sanyal also tried to give historical relevance to this folk stories. Sanyal also explained how our ancestors used lunar days for sailing in the Indian ocean. Many of Indian festivals that are still being celebrated by the people of coastline areas are based on the dispatch of the sailors of ancient times.
The book explained the history of Indian ocean from when it formed. Then Sanyal explained how the ancient people came to India and inhabited in it. The book completely destroyed the propaganda of Aryan invasion theory and gave explanations of the Indus-Saraswati civilisation.
This book also distorted the “great image of Ashoka with proves and facts. It also descripted the rise of a great Hindu king Kharvela from Kalinga. Today’s Jai Bhim-Jai mim theory is completely based on the theories of Hindu-Buddhist rivalry. But Sanyal explained how Hindus and Buddhists respected each other and even many of Sinhalese monestaries are having many shrines till nowadays.
The book also describes how invaders came to India to conquer it and how Indic resistances were faced them. Many of our history books are based on the perspective of a person, but this book is based on the perspective from the Indian ocean towards the land. Hardcover