UNFAMILIAR RELATIONS: Family and History in South Asia Edited by Indrani Chatterjee, Permanent Black, Rs 695

Historians are increasingly venturing into uncharted territory in order to unravel the past, with the result that new light is being shed on the lives of our ancestors. History today is not just about power and politics; many areas considered trivial until recently seem to be yielding information aplenty that add greatly to our understanding of the past.

The book under review belongs to this category. It turns the spotlight on the family to see what more can be known of the past. It charts the history of some families and shows the enormous influence their families exercised on rulers in south Asia from the seventeeth- to the nineteenth-century. After all if a country or a state is important, so is the family.

Different facets of the family lives of rulers are brought to light to see what effect they had on their administration. These rulers could belong to vastly different times, dynasties, tribes, clans or religions. Some essays even venture into the emotional and sexual lives, as also the moods and habits, of important monarchs who held sway for a long period. The insights that these details reveal would delight scholars as much as they would baffle laymen. Though such petty details may seem insignificant, it is the small activities of day-to-day lives that make up a period.

These essays also give information about community lives, the position of women, the role of servants, slaves and even mistresses of the rulers. Some of the essays have interesting sidelights on the diplomacy of marriage.

The essays cover important eras in the history of the country, focussing on those moments when upheavals were taking place in its social and political life. But though it boasts of being about families in south Asia, Unfamiliar Relations concentrates only on India — it has not a single essay on even the country’s closest neighbours. Also there is little on the Mughals or the nawabs of Oudh or Bengal. Especially since the family-lives of the Muslim rulers exercised enormous influence on their administration.

To be fair though, the essays cover the whole of India and are not confined to any one particular geographical area. Some, of course, are devoted to particular kingdoms and dynasties, while others, to a particular age. There are also a few that deal with particular locations. Then there are two which take up individuals — William Dalrymple’s “White Mughals: The case of James Achilles Kirkpatrick” and Indrani Chatterjee’s “Gossip, taboo and writing family history”, both of which read almost like works of fiction.

In sum, this book dares to go down unconventional paths, something that will make it a boon for historians as well as general readers.