WOOD: Making a series on the story of India
has got to be the best job in the world.
So, naturally, everyone wanted to get in on the act.
Okay.
Okay, don't look at camera. Thank you.
It's time in this... Sorry. Sorry. One minute.
WOOD: Though sometimes, the sheer tumult drove our soundman, Callum, to despair.
I did one. Didn't you see? Okay.
And our cameraman,Jeremy,
soon discovered that you're never alone in India.
This is a series about the story of India.
The land of wonders.
You'd really need 1 00 films to tell the story of India.
There are so many wonderful things to compress into a few hours of television.
Now you don't see South India on TV as often as the north.
And one night, we shot this scene on our small video camera,
with the priest's permission I should add,
in the heart of the great temple of Madurai.
For me, it's one of the most atmospheric buildings in India.
Or anywhere in the world, for that matter.
Here in the deep south,
the customs of ancient times still survive.
And to me, it's irresistible.
When the ancient Greeks came to India, they felt at home with Indian religion.
These gods were like Aphrodite and Apollo and Artemis.
British, though, were a bit more buttoned up.
One British administrator came here to Madurai
and went no further than the front gate.
''I didn't go in,'' he said, ''I was afraid.''
The daily rituals here to the goddess Meenakshi
plunge you into another way of seeing.
Although, to the priest of the temple, of course,
it's just the job that they've always done.
They're putting Shiva to bed, with his wife, the goddess.
In a sense, you could say that the whole of this vast temple is
about their marriage and therefore, about all marriage.
So, of course, the god must go to bed with his wife at the end of the day.
You are the custodians of Shiva.
You are the guardians of Shiva's shrine here.
In the 21 st century, do you think, Guru, it's possible...
How do you think it is possible to be modern and also to keep the tradition?
-That's not difficult. -Yeah. Yeah.
Because we easily get all these things very easily.
So, we are following the tradition, I'm well settled.
My wife is very nice.
My children are very good. They are studying.
So, I'm really very happy. This is enough for me.
So, I'm very happy and I am very proud of it.
In India, the living presence of the past is all around you.
And the wealth of detail of the history is just fascinating,
especially when you meet another history fan.
This is a Roman Republican coin.
WOOD: Republican coin? All right.
-So, this is 1 st century BC? -Yeah.
-So this is Venus holding scales? -Yeah. Yeah.
Wow. That's too much.
WOOD: Oh, that's beautiful, isn't it? Face of a goddess.
MAN: Head of Cybele. WOOD: Cybele, yeah.
-And on the other side... -A human figure with hands extended,
kneeling right beside a camel.
WOOD: A human figure kneeling beside a camel.
MAN: (LAUGHING) Yes, camel. WOOD: Single-humped camel?
MAN: Yes. WOOD: My goodness me.
And the text on it?
-Bacchus? -Bacchus, yes.
The god Dionysus, the god of wine.
-Bacchus is the god of wine. -I see.
So, they liked Greek wine.
In The Story of India, we set out to use all the historian's tools.
Archaeology and language, texts and traditions,
and even DNA and climate science,
in a time when new discoveries are being made almost every day.
But in India, everyone has their own take on history.
WOOD: Hi, how are you?
(SPEAKING HINDI)
WOOD: Yes, please.
Take this moment at Hastinapur, when the site guardian, Hari Ram,
took me completely by surprise.
What is this, Hari Ram?
(SPEAKING HINDI)
-Harappa? -Harappa.
-Definite? -Definite.
WOOD: Not form Gupta period or... No, Harappa?
A figurine, it's female? Female?
-RAM: Male. Female. -Male? Female?
You see the breasts marked there. And a strange little face.
That's 5,000 years old! No wonder history matters here.
And the arts, too, are part of the history.
Despite the ravages of time, no country in the world, perhaps, is so rich
in painting and sculpture.
But history in India is also contested.
Thank you very much.
The Sultan, Mahmud Of Ghazni, is supposed to have stolen these gates
from a Hindu temple in India, and taken them to Afghanistan.
In the 1 840s, the British stole them to curry favour with the Hindus.
So this is the gate that was taken to Ghazni?
And then brought back by the British.
MAN: There was a controversy about the history.
(LAUGHING) There is a controversy about the history?
You are...
Some writer says this, some writer says this.
WOOD: Modern historians say, this carving, typical of Cairo
-and Damascus, in the 1 1 th century. -Islamic. Yeah.
So, if the modern historians are right, this is Islamic wood.
People who carved it were craftsmen from
Syria, Egypt, who were coming to Ghazni?
And this was the real gate of the tomb?
MAN: That's why somebody said this was all Muslim architecture.
-Mostly all Muslim. -Yeah. Yeah.
-Nobody quite knows the truth. -Nobody quite knows the truth.
A warning to those who manipulate history, as they still do,
for political ends.
Of course, being British of a certain age,
I grew up reading school textbooks that had a rosy-tinted view
of the British Empire in India.
So, in the story of India, how to handle the Raj?
After all, imperialism is still imperialism.
Take this scene, where I used a British guidebook to India from the 1 920s
to see how they saw history then. And it's not so long ago.
For the British, 1 857 was the most important event in their rule in India.
And you can see how important when you look at the guidebooks of later times.
This is Murray's Handbook,
the top tourist guide to India. This one, published in 1 929,
is full of all the typical British stuff,
the adverts for Thomas Cooks and P&O Liners.
Adverts for the latest flash hotels,
under European management, of course, it stresses.
And, in the middle, more on Lucknow than on any other Indian city,
with fold out maps and all the details.
The reason, the events that took place here in 1 857,
the Siege of the Residency.
It says this, ''The Residency is the spot
''which all Englishmen will wish to visit first in Lucknow.''
''A place in the midst of which one can think, thankfully and proudly,
''of the events and deeds of that summer in 1 857.
''On the tower over the Residency Building,
''the banner of England floated during the siege.
''And still flies in tribute to the dead. ''
Even for the nation that patented the stiff upper lip,
it must have been the most profound shock,
to find yourself isolated in a vast alien land
that you completely fail to understand.
The British had thought themselves bearers of a superior culture
bringing civilisation to the benighted Indians,
only to discover that, far from being grateful,
the Indians just wanted to kill them.
Making films like this, you often go searching off the beaten track
on the off-chance that you'll find hidden histories.
And sometimes you turn up surprises.
Rudyard Kipling, the English writer. Here, somewhere. Do you know?
Old house of Rudyard Kipling, do you know?
You don't know where it is. Where is... No? Okay.
Here in Allahabad, I went looking for the house
of the great British writer Rudyard Kipling.
It's a little forgotten corner of Allahabad, here.
This is the house where Rudyard Kipling lived in the late 1 880s.
The garden where he wrote some of those famous animal stories
like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the mongoose.
Born in India. An outsider.
Hated what he called the large-bore officials
with their new respectability, their clumps, their polo clubs
and large verandaed houses
with 20 or 30 servants, even for a small family.
Here's the house. How about that?
Hello, good morning. It's very nice to meet you.
Hello, I'm Michael from London. Very nice to meet you. Hello.
So, is this the... This is the Kipling house, is it?
-Wow! -They say, when we came in '42, '4 3,
my father was posted here,
and this whole building was one bungalow...
-Right. -...with four big halls.
You can see, if you want to.
So I found the house. But more important, I met Durga,
who'd worked for All India Radio covering India's freedom struggle
as a journalist in the 1 940s.
And like so many Indian people on our journey,
she welcomed us into her home and shared her story.
WOOD: So, you've seen big changes since the 1 940s?
DURGA: Big changes.
People do not realise how difficult it was to get freedom.
Those who were not born, those who have not seen,
people even in politics are those who don't know what was freedom struggle.
British rule, it was a very disciplined rule.
But, you know, bondage, nobody likes.
Everybody likes to be free.
India is so vast and so diverse, that there are no black and whites,
no full stops. And, of course, that goes especially for religion.
This is the ancient capital of Patna,
one of the most interesting places in India.
(BELLS CHIMING)
WOOD: So this is a city for Hindus, Sikhs, Jains.
But it's also a great Muslim city.
And the last of these legendary places
is a Muslim shrine. See if we can find it.
I was searching for the site of a famous monastery
of the Buddhist emperor Ashoka, who ruled in the 3rd century BC.
But here in the Ganges Plain, Buddhism died out nearly 1,000 years ago.
What, I wondered, would be there today?
The local people led me to the old site of Ashoka's monastery.
And as so often in India, the place was still holy.
This must have been a graveyard.
In the Middle Ages, a Sufi Muslim holy man settled here,
gathering Muslim and Hindu followers.
And today, the local people told me,
all religious communities still come here and share its festivals.
(SPEAKING URDU)
MAN: All religion... WOOD: Together?
MAN: People of all religion meet together
and celebrate their festival together.
It's like a kind of legacy of Ashoka, isn't it?
You know, one of the key things that he said was
you should always show respect for each other's religions.
In the end, all religions are tending for the same goal,
for purity of mind, and they agree in the essentials,
even if they differ in the superficial things.
So never use violence of language
about another person's religion, he says.
Ashoka's words, of course, are still painfully relevant today
for in history, religion has been a constant source of conflict.
And India, the most complex religious society on earth, is no exception.
Even the act of carving beautiful sculptures for a temple
can be loaded with danger.
Relations between Hindu and Muslim have become
a central political issue in India.
Since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1 94 7,
the issue, above all, has become associated
with the name of the sacred city of Ayodhya.
This temple is planned to replace a Muslim mosque
destroyed in religious rioting in 1 992.
These are the pieces for the projected Rama temple in Ayodhya.
What they envisage is a temple about 2 70 feet long,
1 40 feet wide, with a tower 1 30 feet high.
And these are all the blocks, that will be its facing.
The Congress government has said they intend to promise
to rebuild the mosque that was destroyed.
This is a powerful expression of intent, isn't it?
Here in Ayodhya, then, the filmmaker has to be sensitive
to bigger and more important considerations.
WOOD: We've just come all the way from England
to shoot the sequence and it seems crazy.
It's just a few shots inside the temple.
I don't understand. I really don't understand.
The police say that we can't go up and film inside the temple,
even though we have ministry permission.
There's a big mela, a huge number of pilgrims,
security situation's very tense, a lot of soldiers here
and they don't want us to film.
WOOD: Sorry. Thank you. Thank you. MAN: Thanks.
I have to say, though, that I love Ayodhya.
Sacred to Muslims as well as Hindus, it seems to me
it's a living symbol of all India's pasts.
WOOD: Hello.
And despite the riots of 1 992,
something of the fabulous culture of old Ayodhya has hung on today.
(SPEAKING HINDI)
This is one of those little Sufi shrines in Ayodhya.
There were about 80 of them before 1 992,
going back 700 years, they called it the city of the Sufis
or the little Mecca. It's absolutely amazing, isn't it?
Oh, wow! Look at this.
Oh, that is so beautiful.
So, the name of the Sufi?
Ibrahim Shah.
-Ibrahim...? -Shah.
Ibrahim Shah.
So, where did Baba Ibrahim come from? Do you know which part of the world?
(SPEAKING HINDI)
MAN: He came for Tashkent. And he was the Prince of Tashkent.
From Tashkent? Yeah. From Central Asia. A lot of these Sufis came to India.
You know, in the aftermath of the first Turkish armies,
Turkic armies that came from Central Asia,
a lot of these holy men came to India and made their homes here
in the cities of the Ganges Plain. May we go in?
(SPEAKING HINDI)
MAN: Can you cover your head?
WOOD: To cover my head? Thank you. Okay.
The world's different customs.
It's interesting. It's very like Christianity, isn't it?
The Muslim commemoration of the saints.
You know, orthodoxy says you shouldn't do this in Islam.
But the ordinary peoples...
They commemorated their tomb and they still do.
(SPEAKING HINDI)
Many Muslim buildings were destroyed here in the rioting.
But not by locals.
The people here told me
that their Hindu neighbours helped protect this place.
He's saying that for centuries the two communities lived together.
They went to each other's marriages, they went to each other's festivals.
Their lives were intertwined. Isn't that amazing?
This is just so touching, isn't it? So touching.
This is what happens, you know, in the whole of history.
People get on together when they are left to their own devices.
They find their accommodations.
It's the politicians who... Who do things.
And in India, there's always a last twist.
And here it came when I said goodbye
to the guardian of this lovely Muslim neighbourhood shrine.
(SPEAKING HINDI)
Thank you very, very much. Very, very kind.
-What is your name? -Ram Kumar Srivastav.
(SPEAKING URDU)
-Ram Kumar? This is not a Muslim name. -No, no, no.
You are from the Hindu Community?
(SPEAKING HINDI)
He's living... Living proof of the story of Ayodhya.
Fantastic. Best of luck.
-We'll see you again. -Bye. Bye.
And that's India for you.
Incomparable, endearing, forever surprising.
The land of wonders.