The Other Mohan In Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire: A Personal Journey into History

by Amrita Shah

English 320 pages 1 edition

On a quest to understand why her great-grandfather, Mohanlal, set sail for South Africa from pre-independent India, Amrita Shah takes the reader into an era of unprecedented global mobility. At the turn of the twentieth century, as millions of Europeans travelled to overseas colonies, new forms of migration from Asia also took place. Mohanlal’s co-travellers included traders, indentured workers, interpreters, soldiers, slaves, prostitutes, lascars and smugglers. A clash between the needs of white settlers and the aspirations of Indian migrants in South Africa saw the emergence of Gandhi’s Satyagraha campaign, which attracted many, including Mohanlal. The confrontation, though, was only a strand in the as yet untold story of enterprise and opportunity practiced by ordinary migrants like Mohanlal. Extensively researched in India, South Africa, Mauritius and Britain, this riveting account travels from the medieval port of Surat, where the British East India Company established its footholds in the Indian subcontinent, to nascent colonial cities such as Bombay, Port Louis and Durban, delving into the history of the Indian diaspora in the western Indian Ocean to discover modern India’s many ancestors. Part travelogue, part memoir, part family history and imbued with rigorous scholarship, The Other Mohan is an original pathbreaking work.