I enjoy it: the historian in me likes the attention to detail and I admire the enormity of the conception. Scott has created his own India complete with towns, hill stations and regions which are often hard to nail down, so that you find yourself asking whether Pankot is Simla or Poona and Ranpur Delhi or Bombay, and the truth is probably neither, or a bit of both.
But Scott is not a great writer; his problem, I think, is that he is often brought down by his stodgy prose, verbosity and a lack of characterisation in his dialogue. Dialogue is not really the word: the characters deliver monologues, often seemingly interminable monologues, but then again the stories are generally repeated from different sides and in different contexts, so there is a lot you know already.
I have now acquitted three out of four and the last one lies ready for the quiet days succeeding Christmas. Robinson is quite right in insisting that India is a lot more than just the history of the Raj, although it is this side of India that I obviously feel most tangible. I suspect, like many people, I find Hindu theology mind-bogglingly complicated even if I have relished every opportunity I have had to explore antique temples on my travels.
Things might have changed. In the nineties and the early years of the new century I went to the subcontinent ten times. I visited each of the old Presidencies: Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay and Madras all besides Delhi have changed their names since. I went up the Hooghly to examine the trading counters of the French, Danes and Portuguese. In Rajputana I admired the achievements of Hindu princes and some pornography in Deogarh while in Agra and Fatehpur Sikri I saw some of the greatest Islamic architecture in the world.
I flew or took toy trains to the hill stations of Simla and Darjeeling, inspected the cantonment of Bangalore and the court residences of Mysore, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Udaipur and more. I endured gossip wallahs in Simla, clinked whiskies and soda with barristers in Calcutta clubs and suffered the silences of Rajput princes. I ate street food in Bombay and nursed gastro-enteritis in Paris as a result.
