BOOK REVIEW:
“IN THE SHADOW OF THE TAJ” BY ROYINA GREWAL
PUBLISHED BY PENGUIN
PRICE RS 295

After having read several books on the cities of the world, I was rather disappointed when I read Royina Grewal’s account of Agra. While her excessive love for the town is evidently showcased over several pages, what is lacking, however, is a sincere attempt at a coherent presentation of the data she has compiled. One goes back and forth in time repeatedly; why did Ms Grewal think it necessary to flashback, an style more suited to fiction than to non-fiction? Attempting to be in two different time zones, and that too, without panache, the book muddles on in contrived distraction. One is even more surprised to find the Penguin book poorly proof-read (even the initial “Acknowledgements” begins with spelling consistently as “consistantly”).

Grewal starts off with the announcement that all the Mughal emperors loved the outdoors, implying that this was unusual. Then the book lumbers under the writer’s clear pro-Muslim bias: Babur is regarded as a “great adventurer, a master strategist, an inspired leader of men, a general renowned for his bravery… he loved nature deeply… he had a distinguished ancestry..” If Mahmud Ghazni invaded India 17 times, Ms Grewal wishes to question the inconvenient fact and puts that historical fact into unattributed quotes, afraid, no doubt, of hurting Muslim sentiments. Why walk on eggshells on this fact? Grewal sees Agra through a romantic haze but she has makes no attempts to hide her disdain of other faiths of Indian origin. Her slyly critical account of her meeting with the head of the Radha Soami Satsangh reeks of unkindness and prejudice. While in one breath she writes, “ Sultan Ibrahim Lodi is credited with founding the city in 1504 and the year 2004 was sought to be celebrated as the 500th anniversary of Agra’s birth. This plan was scuttled in consideration to those who believe that Agra was an ancient Hindu settlement” a few pages ahead she goes ahead to state, “ The region is mentioned in the epic, “Mahabharata” as Agravan, the forest of Agra, or as some prefer, the forest ahead.” The struggle between the historian and the secularist in Grewal rages on through the book, making the book difficult to read as a book about a town. By questioning the Hindu claim and treating non-Hindu positions with kid gloves she turns the attention away from Agra and towards herself, which is a pity.

However, the book brings important facts to one’s attention, appalling as they often are. There are no flights to Agra despite the Tajmahal! Train timings are fixed in such a way that people don’t even need to stay over a night, resulting in losses to hotels. All this because “Agra has never had a godfather, we’ve never had a political patron” as Mr Dang observes in the book. The book ends with a poem that highlights how the local population of Agra see the Tajmahal:
“The Taj is Agra’s strength and its weakness
it is our pride, it is India’s pride
But because we consider the Taj to be everything
Anything else is scorned
Even the plight of the common man
Whenever there is any thought of advancement in Agra
It is the Taj, always the Taj, only the Taj,
The Taj is like a coffin in which the people of Agra are buried alive.”

One hopes that the shortage of potable water and other pressing problems that beset Agra will cease once a political bigwig reads the book. Ms Grewal’s observations about a town in disrepair could have been so much more effective had she been wearing the historian’s hat throughout the book.