The Other Mohan

On a quest to understand why her great-grandfather, Mohanlal, set sail for South Africa from pre-Independent India, Amrita Shah’s wonderfully engaging book sets on record for the first time a sweeping social and business history of the Indian diaspora in the Indian ocean, drawing out an incredible story spanning centuries of migrations and peopled by slaves, political prisoners, sex workers, lascars, smugglers, indentured workers, traders and interpreters.

Drawing on an extensive range of sources interwoven with her own first-hand research in India, South Africa, Mauritius and Britain, in The Other Mohan in Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire, Shah covers a wide gamut, including in its sweep, the Indian Ocean, the medieval port of Surat where Europeans set up their earliest trading companies in India, the evolution of colonial Bombay and Indian migrant communities in the Indian Ocean littoral.

By foregrounding the story of her great-grandfather and of the opportunistic drive that led thousands of Indians to seek their fortunes across an ocean, Shah also offers a supplementary history to explain many aspects of India’s present.