Strawberries and scholarship
India and Iran converge again in Cambridge
The temptation was strawberries, but I savoured learning's creamy layer. In 1998, I'd interviewed Richard Blurton — yes with an 'l' – when, as director of British Museum's South Asian section, he'd brought 'The Enduring Image' exhibition to Mumbai. We reconnected 26 years later, at Malavika Banerjee's 'Kalam' in Bhubaneswar, where he presented his latest tome, India: A History in Objects. On my recent trip to London, he said, 'Do come to the Ancient India and Iran Trust (AIIT) garden party in Cambridge. There'll be plenty of strawberries, cream and bubbly.' He added, 'You'll meet its new Chair, Almut Hintze.' Wow! Being appointed Zarthoshty Brothers Professor of Zoroastrianism at London's SOAS had till then been the latest recognition of her long scholarship; she belonged to the august lineage of non-Zoroastrians dedicated to the study of my 3,000 year-old faith. And there she was in person – and so personable.
In a very English way, a patron's generous bequest was exclusively meant for this garden at 23 Brooklands Avenue. It had come along with the house bought by Sir Harold Bailey, Cambridge Professor of Sanskrit and the other four founding Trustees who had dug as deep into the study of South and Southeast Asia — some physically too, having doubled as archaeologists. The Trust was established in 1978 to 'promote the study of prehistory, archaeology, art history and ancient languages of South & Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Iran –but it has gone beyond.
If journalism is history 'To go', scholarship is history 'on the slow'. My goosebumps rose as I padded through rooms bringing alive Zoroastrianism's lifelong researchers such as Mary Boyce and John Hinnells. Their personal libraries were among AIIT's precious trove of 30,000 volumes and 20,000 records. All being safely digitised.
The Bridget Allchin Archive included photographs of everything displayed in the Kabul Museum in the early 1950s; priceless because it was trashed in Afghan's civil war. India Room's mantelpiece displayed a celebrated quartet of Burmese bronze figurines from another founding-Trustee collection, that of the Dutch van Lohuizen couple, Joan and Jan. It captured men cracking open a coconut, playing a flute, and two, 17 cm high, engrossed in the rattan-ball game of chinlone, which I learnt was deeply embedded in Burmese cultural history.
A month later Richard was to address London bankers. Whhyy? He explained. 'In today's world anyone operating internationally is at a disadvantage without an understanding of the fundamentals on which South Asian society is built. This is increasingly important since more and more people of South Asian origin, especially Indian, are at the summit of commercial, financial, academic and political activity; this understanding we try to deliver at the British Museum.'
Good to hear authoritative, non-bigoted lips proclaim our past and present greatness.
***
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