Book Review: River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh (Penguin Books, Rs। 655)A much discussed book, River of Smoke, written by an eminent English writer Amitav Ghosh is one of the few English novels which I have read completely and with interest from beginning to end। About 550 pages long, full of historical details, anti-colonial in theme – is second of the trilogy to be written by this author. It is preceded by Sea of Poppies, a book shortlisted for Booker in 2008 but one can independently read the second book, because it is written in such a way. What interested me most in the beginning was not its style, or slangs used in it, but the theme on which it was written. It is all about situations leading to two Opium Wars (1839-42 and 1856-60) fought almost at a time when we in India were fighting our First War of Independence of 1957. Anyhow there is no mention anywhere of this in the novel. We know that the two opium wars were forced immorally upon China by the allied forces of Britain, America and other European powers in which China was defeated diabolically despite its superior human resources, and was forced to sign an unequal treaty of Nanking wholly unjustified, humiliating and one sided.
The Story of the Book: The genesis of the story starts with the tea plant produced only in China at that time, which became very popular in European countries। The humongous demand of tea in Europe caused a massive economic deficit as European nations bought it with large quantities of silver। So Europeans countries had nothing to offer to China and trade was becoming unequal every day। These Europeans empires came upon a very dangerous idea to equalize their trade balance। They came to the conclusion that opium should be popularized in China which was produced for a pittance in British India and almost monopolized by East India Company. But the problem was China had banned this commodity in 1730 and secondly entering China was a difficult affair too. The Canton System put in place by the Emperor of China in 1756 forbade Europeans from entering the country and restricted business to one port, Canton, situated on the mouth of Pearl River. European merchants, including the English East India Company, were permitted to trade only on the island of Macau. The diabolic strategy adopted by Europeans was most nefarious and ingenious. They devised ways and means to infiltrate the system of China and thus created an enormous demand for this drug and set up a sophisticated smuggling operation that frayed relations between the two powers and escalated into a war.
How Europeans Smuggled Opium into China: The East India Company devised a way of beating Chinese regulations – the traders would take the opium to a little island at the mouth of River Pearl, still now known as Lintin island। The Chinese at that time did not exercise authority on offshore islands like this and was under the control of sea-pirates as we see today in Somalia. The Britishers and American took big ships to Lintin Island, anchored them there, took off their masts and left the hulls. The hulls became ‘receiving ships’ – they were like floating platforms. So Europeans would pick up opium from Bombay and Calcutta, take it to Lintin Island and offload all of it into these ships. Then once their holds were clean, they would approach the Chinese customs office, and say, ‘We have no opium.’ Here from the Chinese smugglers would carry the opium in fast-crabs, which were very fast boats with about 60 oarsmen. The opium would be taken to the mainland but the merchants, as far as they were concerned, had their hands clean. Slowly and steadily the whole of China became a hub of smuggled opium with the connivance of corrupt officials and local merchants. Even most of the high-class mandarins got involved in this dubious trade. Anyhow whatever damage it caused to China, the Europeans were successful in their strategy as most the silver which went to China by import of tea, started returning to the coffers of Europeans in this way.
If we ask ourselves if there is any historical evidence of these designs, the answer is definite: YES. Historical evidence clearly show that by 1730 only 15 tones of opium was consumed in China and by 1773 it escalated to 75 tones, six time growth। Again by 1820 it reached the 900 tons mark and by 1838, the period which is depicted in this novel, the consumption in China was 1400 tons. In 1938 when King of China appointed a very honest and efficient young official Lin Zexu as a commissioner of Canton, he seized and destroyed all the opium confiscated from foreign vessels. 1700 opium dealers were arrested and 2.6 million pounds of opium confiscated ad destroyed. To be more specific 20,000 chests of opium were seized and each chest contained 55 kg of opium in it, so about 11,00,000 kilograms of opium was destroyed drained in the sea in the presence of all – local and foreigners. Definitely a River of Smoke it was! The records show, if we go further, by 1881 the population of China was also reduced from 400 million to 370 million and every third person in China was an opium addict.
How Amitav depicts all this in his novel: But it is not a book of boring data and Gosh is too intelligent a writer to get on his moral high horse। His novel is not a rant, but a panoramic history, rich in period detail and peopled with plausible characters. The most complex is Bahram, a genial Parsee merchant from Bombay, who is keen to flog his last consignment of opium before the prohibition takes force. He has a half-Chinese son, from whom he has become estranged, and an occasional weakness of opium-enhanced sex with Chei Mei, but in his fundamental decency is a far more sympathetic character, loved and adored by his staff, than his fellow traders. There are typical European merchants, very crude and shrewd , the like of Dent and Burhaman. One another story goes side by side of an orphaned Paulette, who is accompanying a Cornish botanist to China on an expedition to track down the mythical golden camellia plant. In the end it proves to a hoax designed by a previous botanist just to garner more funds from his financers en Europe. It is in the description of paintings and letters of a young artist Chinnery which were addressed to Paulette or Pugglie that we find a detailed description of those times – events and customs. There are comic touches mainly involving characters talking pidgn English, and moments of real lyricism. His taste for obscure words aside, Ghosh can be a rather ponderous story teller. Even in the beginning the enchanting story of Deeti catches of imagination of the readers with obscure Indian words like pus-pus, paltan, bowjis, salas, sakubays, bandobast etc. without any glossary for foreign readers. The Indian reader is definitely at an advantageous position in this regard. Similarly there are other historical anecdotes mixed in his story-telling e.g. a brief interview of hero Behram of exiled hero of those times - Napoleon Bonaparte on their way to China.
What Gosh says extra in his interviews about those times: When someone asked Gosh that if there was an echo of the opium trade in the New World? He answers with a laugh that not just an echo, they were enthusiastic opium traders, virtually, he adds, the whole of the East Cost of America – all their major institutions and major families – were deeply involved I the opium trade। For instance, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, perhaps their greatest President of the twentieth century – his grandfather, Andrew Delano, was one of the major traders in Canton. He quotes letters of Coolidge’s – who also had a president (Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of US) who came from Canton to Bombay to pick up opium. One of the Coolidges even lost his money in Bombay – the records show. And most of the American opium traders when they went back to America and endowed universities and schools and colleges and in brief a lot of American education system was funded by opium. It may be the fault of my Swadeshi nose, I still smell the odour of nefarious opium in the research work of American research institutes even now, designed only to enhance their trades and profits –by hook or crook.Gosh further adds though all were “pretty bad” – Europeans, Americans and even Chinese, but peculiar repellent about the British Empire is the hypocrisy that goes with it. They go on chanting rhetorically ‘ we are doing this for your good, to make you free, and to promote harmony and goodwill’ when it is the worst kind of greed and venality and racism’. “The greed, venality and racism should exist is not surprising – it exists everywhere. But the most people don’t cloak it by constantly about how that’s a good thing. So it is the hypocrisy that appalls me so much” adds Gosh.
20-years of Globalization and echo of this Book: I think the present designs of 8-G countries find their replica in River of Smoke. The present day machinations of Cargill and Monsanto in the field of agriculture - BT seeds and pesticides, the evil designs of retails sharks like Wal-mart and Metro, the dubious deals of nuclear power plants even after the tragedy of Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan and after seeing the plight of Bhopal Gas become vivid after reading the book. After 20 years of Globalisation we are listening to the venomous polices coated with honey capsule of the West on the one side. On the other side we find that China is embarking on the same policy of opium-traders in dealing with countries like India. On the hand, the way Chinese consumer goods are dumped in our country, the use of melamine in milk-products, use of dangerous colours in toys resulting in cancer, corrupting the Indian mandarins in its deals and governmental contact present a very horrible scenario too. The nightmare comes to horrible culmination with the idea that if we are forced to wage a war with China the results may not be reminiscent of China’s historical debacle: Europeans ravaged the Chinese ports mercilessly, dictated the terms of settlement in their favours, ceded the Chinese territories including Hongkong, unilaterally fixed Chinese tariffs at a low rate, granted extraterritorial rights of foreigners in China, which were not offered to Chinese abroad, a most favoured nation clause, as well as diplomatic representation and in brief leading to “Century of humiliation”. We have tasted this humiliation in 1962, and थेre is time now to be alert with experiences of China and with China।कश्मीरी लाल स्वदेशी जागरण मंच
