The First Firangis: Remarkable Stories of Heros, Healers, Charlatans, Courtesans and other Foriegners who became Indian by Jonathan Gil Harris

The First Firangis:Remarkable Stories of Heroes, Healers, Charlatans, Courtesans & other Foreigners who Became Indian by Jonathan Gil Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jonathan lives in Delhi and practices for marathons and runs for marathons. In the process he learns to adjust his steps to the various obstacles that one encounters on a typical Indian road like potholes, bull shit, garbage etc. He is also adjusting the "extremely" spicy, oily food that the Indian thrive on. His body is adjusting to digest this new kind of fully cooked food rather than the rare meats that his body has been used to all this year. Add to this the adjustment to extreme heat of the summer and the polluted winters interspersed with a heavy monsoon and one can imagine the forces that Jonathan's body has to adjust and get used to.

Jonathan delves into the past and tries to elicit from the sparse documentation as to how it would have been for the initial immigrants who to came to India to adjust the completely alien culture,
costume, conversation, climate and cuisine.

The history he delves into starts with the 14th 15th century with the first of the Portuguese settlers and traces down to the times of the Mughal emperors. He covers the immigration to almost the whole of India starting with the south from where Portuguese started, the West covering Gujarat, in detail the Delhi and its environs and also Eastwards towards Bengal and what is today Bangladesh.

In the process he also somewhere plays a victim by claiming that many of the immigrants were "slaves" of the various rulers under whom they lived and worked for. The word slave has a specific feel to it and it is hard to consider these "firangis" to be slaves to the rulers in India. While there are exceptions most of them enjoyed the patronage of the royalty and were given a much better treatment than the hoi-polloi of the kingdom. Yes they may not have been treated on par with another royalty, but their position was definitely an enviable one for the local populace, irrespective of whether they were the white skinned people from Europe or the jet black ones from Abyssinia. They were either given high military position, or administrative position. A few were recognized for their artistic skills (this more during the times of the Mughals).

The fact that some of these, especially those from Abyssinia, were actually bought as "slaves" from owners who actually bought and transported the "slaves" along with them would definitely be a surprise to many Indians who, in my knowledge, have never heard or read about these facts. Although it is likely that the lives of many of these slaves would have improved after being bought by Indian rulers.

An interesting read.

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