India Unvarnished
Murad A Baig August 15, 2000
#114 Posted by smellycat on February 28, 2001 6:56:23 pm
http://members.nbci.com/_XMCM/KoenraadElst/articles/aurangzeb.html
During the Ayodhya controversy, there were occasional statements in the Hindutva camp confirming (VHP) or denying (BJP) that apart from Ram Janmabhoomi, two other sacred sites should also be ``liberated`` from Islamic ``occupation``: Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura and Kashi Vishvanath in Varanasi. Though the Hindu business community in central Varanasi has made it clear that it refuses to suffer the inevitable losses which would accompany an agitation in their densely populated neighbourhood, the liberation of Kashi Vishvanath is still on the VHP`s agenda. Therefore, some authors have tried to ``do an Ayodhya`` on Kashi, viz. try to make people believe that there never was a Hindu temple at the disputed site.
Syed Shahabuddin asserts that Muslims cannot possibly have destroyed any Hindu temple, because ``pulling down a place of worship to construct a mosque is against the Shariat``; claims to the contrary are all ``chauvinist propaganda``. Arun Shourie has confronted this claim with the information given in the official court chronicle, MaasiriAlamgiri, which records numerous orders for and reports of destructions of temples. Its entry for 2 September 1669 tells us: ``News came to court that in accordance with the Emperor`s command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishvanath at Banaras``. Moreover, till today, the old Kashi Vishvanath temple wall is visible as a part of the walls of the Gyanvapi mosque which Aurangzeb had built at the site.
In the face of such direct testimony, it is wiser not to challenge facts headon. It is better to minimize or to justify them. Thus, Percival Spear, co-author (with Romila Thapar) of the prestigious Penguin History of India, writes: ``Aurangzeb`s supposed intolerance is little more than a hostile legend based on isolated acts such as the erection of a mosque on a temple site in Benares.`` But a perusal of the same Moghul chronicle thoroughly refutes this reassuring assertion: Aurangzeb had thousands of temples destroyed. And other chronicles, diaries and other documents concerning Muslim rulers in India prove that the practice was not a personal idiosyncrasy of Aurangzeb`s either.
Therefore, a more promising way of defusing the conflict potential which the mosque at the Kashi Vishvanath site carries, is to justify the replacement of the temple with a mosque. Maybe the owners and users of the temple had brought it on themselves? Maybe Islam can be disentangled from this act of destruction in favour of a purely secular motive?
JNU historian Prof. K.N. Panikkar offers one way out: ``the destruction of the temple at Banaras also had political motives. It appears that a nexus between the sufi rebels and the pandits of the temple existed and it was primarily to smash this nexus that Aurangzeb ordered action against the temple.`` The eminent historian quotes no source for this strange allegation. In those days, Pandits avoided to even talk with Mlecchas, let alone to concoct intrigues with them.
Other secularists have spread a more sophisticated variation, now regularly reproduced in the media: ``Did Muslim rulers destroy temples? Some of them certainly did. Following the molestation of a local princess by some priests in a temple at Benaras, Aurangzeb ordered the total destruction of the temple and rebuilt it at a nearby site. And this is the only temple he is believed to have destroyed.`` This story is now repeated ad nauseam, not only in the extremist Muslim press and in the secularist press but also in academic platforms by ``eminent historians``. It is repeated with approval by historian Gargi Chakravartty, who also reveals the source of this story.
She introduces the quotation as follows: ``Much has been said about Aurangzeb`s demolition order of Vishwanath temple at Banaras. But documentary evidence gives a new dimension to the whole episode:`` What follows is the theory launched by B.N. Pande, working chairman of the Gandhi Darshan Samiti and former Governor of Orissa:
``The story regarding demolition of Vishvanath temple is that while Aurangzeb was passing near Varanasi on his way to Bengal, the Hindu Rajas in his retinue requested that if the halt was made for a day, their Ranis may go to Varanasi, have a dip in the Ganges and pay their homage to Lord Vishwanath. Aurangzeb readily agreed. Army pickets were posted on the five mile route to Varanasi. The Ranis made a journey on the Palkis. They took their dip in the Ganges and went to the Vishwanath temple to pay their homage. After offering Puja all the Ranis returned except one, the Maharani of Kutch.
``A thorough search was made of the temple precincts but the Rani was to be found nowhere. When Aurangzeb came to know of it, he was very much enraged. He sent his senior officers to search for the Rani. Ultimately, they found that the statue of Ganesh which was fixed in the wall was a moveable one. When the statue was moved, they saw a flight of stairs that led to the basement. To their horror, they found the missing Rani dishonoured and crying, deprived of all her ornaments. The basement was just beneath Lord Jagannath`s seat. The Rajas expressed their vociferous protests. As the crime was heinous, the Rajas demanded exemplary action. Aurangzeb ordered that as the sacred precincts have been despoiled, Lord Vishvanath may be moved to some other place, the temple be razed to the ground and the Mahant be arrested and punished.``
The story is very bizarre, to say the least. First of all, it has Aurangzeb go to Bengal. Yet, in the extant histories of his life and works, no such journey to Bengal, or even any journey as far east as Varanasi, is recorded. Some of his generals were sent on expeditions to Bengal, but not Aurangzeb himself. There are fairly complete chronicles of his doings, day by day; could B.N. Pande or any of his quoters give the date or even the year of this remarkable episode?
Neither was Aurangzeb known to surround himself with Hindu courtiers. And did these Rajas take their wives along on military expeditions? Or was it some holiday picnic? How could the Mahant kidnap a Rani who was there in the company of other Ranis, as well as the appropriate courtiers and bodyguards? Why did he take such risk? Why did the ``Rajas`` wait for Aurangzeb to take ``exemplary action``: did they fear his anger if they punished the priests or destroyed the temple themselves? And since when is demolition the approved method of purifying a defiled temple, an eventuality for which the Shâstras have laid down due ritual procedures?
One question which we can readily answer is, where did B.N. Pande get this story from? He himself writes: ``Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, in his famous book The Feathers and the Stones has narrated this fact based on documentary evidence.`` So, we have to go one more step back in time to find this intriguing ``documentary evidence``. Let us turn to this book, now hard to find, to see what the documentary evidence is on which this whole wave of pro Aurangzeb rumours is based, but which no one has cared to reproduce or even just specify. This is what Gandhian Congress leader Pattabhi Sitaramayya wrote in his prison diary:
``There is a popular belief that Aurangazeb was a bigot in religion. This, however, is combated by a certain school. His bigotry is illustrated by one or two instances. The building of a mosque over the site of the original Kasi Visveswara Temple is one such. A like mosque in Mathura is another. The revival of Jazia is a third but of a different order. A story is told in extenuation of the first event.
``In the height of his glory, Aurangazeb like any foreign king in a country, had in his entourage a number of Hindu nobles. They all set out one day to see the sacred temple of Benares. Amongst them was a Ranee of Cutch. When the party returned after visiting the Temple, the Ranee of Cutch was missing. They searched for her in and out, East, North, West and South but no trace of her was noticeable. At last, a more diligent search revealed a Tah Khana or an underground storey of the temple which to all appearances had only two storeys. When the passage to it was found barred, they broke open the doors and found inside the pale shadow of the Ranee bereft of her jewellery.
``It turned out that the Mahants were in the habit of pick ing out wealthy and bejewelled pilgrims and in guiding them to see the temple, decoying them to the underground cellar and robbing them of their jewellery. What exactly would have happened to their life one did not know. Anyhow in this case, there was no time for mischief as the search was diligent and prompt. On discovering the wickedness of the priests, Aurangazeb declared that such a scene of robbery could not be the House of God and ordered it to be forthwith demolished. And the ruins were left there.
``But the Ranee who was thus saved insisted on a Musjid being built on the ruined and to please her, one was subsequently built. That is how a Musjid has come to exist by the side of the Kasi Visweswar temple which is no temple in the real sense of the term but a humble cottage in which the marble Siva Linga is housed. Nothing is known about the Mathura Temple.
``This story of the Benares Musjid was given in a rare manuscript in Lucknow which was in the possession of a respected Mulla who had read it in the Ms. and who though he promised to look it up and give the Ms. to a friend, to whom he had narrated the story, died without fulfilling his promise. The story is little known and the prejudice, we are told, against Aurangazeb persists.``
So now, we finally know where the story comes from: an unnamed mullah friend of an unnamed acquaintance of Sitaram ayya`s knew of a manuscript, the details of which he took with him in his grave. This is the ``document`` on which secularist journalists and historians base their ``evidence`` of Aurangzeb`s fair and secularist disposition, overruling the evidence of archaeology and the cold print of the MaasiriAlamgiri, to ``explode the myth`` of Islamic iconoclasm spread by the ``chauvinist`` Hindutva propagandists. Now you just try to imagine what the secularists and their mouthpieces in Western academe would say if Hindus offered evidence of this quality.
During the Ayodhya controversy, there were occasional statements in the Hindutva camp confirming (VHP) or denying (BJP) that apart from Ram Janmabhoomi, two other sacred sites should also be ``liberated`` from Islamic ``occupation``: Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura and Kashi Vishvanath in Varanasi. Though the Hindu business community in central Varanasi has made it clear that it refuses to suffer the inevitable losses which would accompany an agitation in their densely populated neighbourhood, the liberation of Kashi Vishvanath is still on the VHP`s agenda. Therefore, some authors have tried to ``do an Ayodhya`` on Kashi, viz. try to make people believe that there never was a Hindu temple at the disputed site.
Syed Shahabuddin asserts that Muslims cannot possibly have destroyed any Hindu temple, because ``pulling down a place of worship to construct a mosque is against the Shariat``; claims to the contrary are all ``chauvinist propaganda``. Arun Shourie has confronted this claim with the information given in the official court chronicle, MaasiriAlamgiri, which records numerous orders for and reports of destructions of temples. Its entry for 2 September 1669 tells us: ``News came to court that in accordance with the Emperor`s command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishvanath at Banaras``. Moreover, till today, the old Kashi Vishvanath temple wall is visible as a part of the walls of the Gyanvapi mosque which Aurangzeb had built at the site.
In the face of such direct testimony, it is wiser not to challenge facts headon. It is better to minimize or to justify them. Thus, Percival Spear, co-author (with Romila Thapar) of the prestigious Penguin History of India, writes: ``Aurangzeb`s supposed intolerance is little more than a hostile legend based on isolated acts such as the erection of a mosque on a temple site in Benares.`` But a perusal of the same Moghul chronicle thoroughly refutes this reassuring assertion: Aurangzeb had thousands of temples destroyed. And other chronicles, diaries and other documents concerning Muslim rulers in India prove that the practice was not a personal idiosyncrasy of Aurangzeb`s either.
Therefore, a more promising way of defusing the conflict potential which the mosque at the Kashi Vishvanath site carries, is to justify the replacement of the temple with a mosque. Maybe the owners and users of the temple had brought it on themselves? Maybe Islam can be disentangled from this act of destruction in favour of a purely secular motive?
JNU historian Prof. K.N. Panikkar offers one way out: ``the destruction of the temple at Banaras also had political motives. It appears that a nexus between the sufi rebels and the pandits of the temple existed and it was primarily to smash this nexus that Aurangzeb ordered action against the temple.`` The eminent historian quotes no source for this strange allegation. In those days, Pandits avoided to even talk with Mlecchas, let alone to concoct intrigues with them.
Other secularists have spread a more sophisticated variation, now regularly reproduced in the media: ``Did Muslim rulers destroy temples? Some of them certainly did. Following the molestation of a local princess by some priests in a temple at Benaras, Aurangzeb ordered the total destruction of the temple and rebuilt it at a nearby site. And this is the only temple he is believed to have destroyed.`` This story is now repeated ad nauseam, not only in the extremist Muslim press and in the secularist press but also in academic platforms by ``eminent historians``. It is repeated with approval by historian Gargi Chakravartty, who also reveals the source of this story.
She introduces the quotation as follows: ``Much has been said about Aurangzeb`s demolition order of Vishwanath temple at Banaras. But documentary evidence gives a new dimension to the whole episode:`` What follows is the theory launched by B.N. Pande, working chairman of the Gandhi Darshan Samiti and former Governor of Orissa:
``The story regarding demolition of Vishvanath temple is that while Aurangzeb was passing near Varanasi on his way to Bengal, the Hindu Rajas in his retinue requested that if the halt was made for a day, their Ranis may go to Varanasi, have a dip in the Ganges and pay their homage to Lord Vishwanath. Aurangzeb readily agreed. Army pickets were posted on the five mile route to Varanasi. The Ranis made a journey on the Palkis. They took their dip in the Ganges and went to the Vishwanath temple to pay their homage. After offering Puja all the Ranis returned except one, the Maharani of Kutch.
``A thorough search was made of the temple precincts but the Rani was to be found nowhere. When Aurangzeb came to know of it, he was very much enraged. He sent his senior officers to search for the Rani. Ultimately, they found that the statue of Ganesh which was fixed in the wall was a moveable one. When the statue was moved, they saw a flight of stairs that led to the basement. To their horror, they found the missing Rani dishonoured and crying, deprived of all her ornaments. The basement was just beneath Lord Jagannath`s seat. The Rajas expressed their vociferous protests. As the crime was heinous, the Rajas demanded exemplary action. Aurangzeb ordered that as the sacred precincts have been despoiled, Lord Vishvanath may be moved to some other place, the temple be razed to the ground and the Mahant be arrested and punished.``
The story is very bizarre, to say the least. First of all, it has Aurangzeb go to Bengal. Yet, in the extant histories of his life and works, no such journey to Bengal, or even any journey as far east as Varanasi, is recorded. Some of his generals were sent on expeditions to Bengal, but not Aurangzeb himself. There are fairly complete chronicles of his doings, day by day; could B.N. Pande or any of his quoters give the date or even the year of this remarkable episode?
Neither was Aurangzeb known to surround himself with Hindu courtiers. And did these Rajas take their wives along on military expeditions? Or was it some holiday picnic? How could the Mahant kidnap a Rani who was there in the company of other Ranis, as well as the appropriate courtiers and bodyguards? Why did he take such risk? Why did the ``Rajas`` wait for Aurangzeb to take ``exemplary action``: did they fear his anger if they punished the priests or destroyed the temple themselves? And since when is demolition the approved method of purifying a defiled temple, an eventuality for which the Shâstras have laid down due ritual procedures?
One question which we can readily answer is, where did B.N. Pande get this story from? He himself writes: ``Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, in his famous book The Feathers and the Stones has narrated this fact based on documentary evidence.`` So, we have to go one more step back in time to find this intriguing ``documentary evidence``. Let us turn to this book, now hard to find, to see what the documentary evidence is on which this whole wave of pro Aurangzeb rumours is based, but which no one has cared to reproduce or even just specify. This is what Gandhian Congress leader Pattabhi Sitaramayya wrote in his prison diary:
``There is a popular belief that Aurangazeb was a bigot in religion. This, however, is combated by a certain school. His bigotry is illustrated by one or two instances. The building of a mosque over the site of the original Kasi Visveswara Temple is one such. A like mosque in Mathura is another. The revival of Jazia is a third but of a different order. A story is told in extenuation of the first event.
``In the height of his glory, Aurangazeb like any foreign king in a country, had in his entourage a number of Hindu nobles. They all set out one day to see the sacred temple of Benares. Amongst them was a Ranee of Cutch. When the party returned after visiting the Temple, the Ranee of Cutch was missing. They searched for her in and out, East, North, West and South but no trace of her was noticeable. At last, a more diligent search revealed a Tah Khana or an underground storey of the temple which to all appearances had only two storeys. When the passage to it was found barred, they broke open the doors and found inside the pale shadow of the Ranee bereft of her jewellery.
``It turned out that the Mahants were in the habit of pick ing out wealthy and bejewelled pilgrims and in guiding them to see the temple, decoying them to the underground cellar and robbing them of their jewellery. What exactly would have happened to their life one did not know. Anyhow in this case, there was no time for mischief as the search was diligent and prompt. On discovering the wickedness of the priests, Aurangazeb declared that such a scene of robbery could not be the House of God and ordered it to be forthwith demolished. And the ruins were left there.
``But the Ranee who was thus saved insisted on a Musjid being built on the ruined and to please her, one was subsequently built. That is how a Musjid has come to exist by the side of the Kasi Visweswar temple which is no temple in the real sense of the term but a humble cottage in which the marble Siva Linga is housed. Nothing is known about the Mathura Temple.
``This story of the Benares Musjid was given in a rare manuscript in Lucknow which was in the possession of a respected Mulla who had read it in the Ms. and who though he promised to look it up and give the Ms. to a friend, to whom he had narrated the story, died without fulfilling his promise. The story is little known and the prejudice, we are told, against Aurangazeb persists.``
So now, we finally know where the story comes from: an unnamed mullah friend of an unnamed acquaintance of Sitaram ayya`s knew of a manuscript, the details of which he took with him in his grave. This is the ``document`` on which secularist journalists and historians base their ``evidence`` of Aurangzeb`s fair and secularist disposition, overruling the evidence of archaeology and the cold print of the MaasiriAlamgiri, to ``explode the myth`` of Islamic iconoclasm spread by the ``chauvinist`` Hindutva propagandists. Now you just try to imagine what the secularists and their mouthpieces in Western academe would say if Hindus offered evidence of this quality.
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#115 Posted by smellycat on February 28, 2001 6:56:23 pm
Murad,
56. Did Muslim perpetrate forcible conversions?
You don`t give any accounts here, just some baashan. Why not try to list the events from the history ? You do not want to list them, Why? Do you want me to list them for you ?
46. Did Hindu rulers encourage violent religious persecutions?
Now, Here you go hunting for some kind of half-truths, to be pushed as ``history``. Really, in more than 2 millenia of history you couldn`t find more half-truths to be subverted as ``truth``, Right?
56. Did Muslim perpetrate forcible conversions?
You don`t give any accounts here, just some baashan. Why not try to list the events from the history ? You do not want to list them, Why? Do you want me to list them for you ?
46. Did Hindu rulers encourage violent religious persecutions?
Now, Here you go hunting for some kind of half-truths, to be pushed as ``history``. Really, in more than 2 millenia of history you couldn`t find more half-truths to be subverted as ``truth``, Right?
#116 Posted by alizadeh2000 on March 3, 2001 5:10:32 pm
in Question 59 you write:
``Two hundred years later, the celebrated Al-Bukhari, a devout Muslim scholar, travelled the Muslim world to write most of the Hadith or the sayings and examples from the prophet`s life, that now forms a part of the Koran.``
This is completely false!
Hadith do not form a part of the Koran!
The Holy Koran is ONLY as much as was revealed to the Prophet PBUH over a period of 23 years!
``Two hundred years later, the celebrated Al-Bukhari, a devout Muslim scholar, travelled the Muslim world to write most of the Hadith or the sayings and examples from the prophet`s life, that now forms a part of the Koran.``
This is completely false!
Hadith do not form a part of the Koran!
The Holy Koran is ONLY as much as was revealed to the Prophet PBUH over a period of 23 years!
#117 Posted by aksuman on March 6, 2001 4:00:52 pm
Hello Murad
You are one of the worst writer I have ever seen .
(1) There is a place called kurushetra where Mahabharata was fought and the soil is still red.
(2) There is a place called Janakpur in nepal wheer ram married sita .
And there are many information that are wrong .Idol worship became famous because it gives you a way to pray .
Islam not spread by love but it spread by sword .
Understand
You are one of the worst writer I have ever seen .
(1) There is a place called kurushetra where Mahabharata was fought and the soil is still red.
(2) There is a place called Janakpur in nepal wheer ram married sita .
And there are many information that are wrong .Idol worship became famous because it gives you a way to pray .
Islam not spread by love but it spread by sword .
Understand
#118 Posted by aksuman on March 6, 2001 4:00:52 pm
Hello Murad
You are one of the worst writer I have ever seen .
(1) There is a place called kurushetra where Mahabharata was fought and the soil is still red.
(2) There is a place called Janakpur in nepal wheer ram married sita .
And there are many information that are wrong .Idol worship became famous because it gives you a way to pray .
Islam not spread by love but it spread by sword .
Understand
You are one of the worst writer I have ever seen .
(1) There is a place called kurushetra where Mahabharata was fought and the soil is still red.
(2) There is a place called Janakpur in nepal wheer ram married sita .
And there are many information that are wrong .Idol worship became famous because it gives you a way to pray .
Islam not spread by love but it spread by sword .
Understand
#119 Posted by pkesh on March 9, 2001 5:48:49 pm
Mr. Baig
I am not a Hindutva-vadi, or a ``praise-seeking`` Indian. I tried hard to read your essay without any pre-judgements or passions, but boy, do you make it heard.
Unfortunately, you see, I am a brahmin. It is very hard to remain silent when you bash me, my ancestors and effectively try to rewrite our history. My people have persevered over thousands of years, living ascetic lives and on the alms of other castes, to carry forward the knowledge of the vedas from generation to generation. There have been those among us (like in ALL castes) seeking fame, power, and money and have done unnameable harm to others. But hey, ``let he who is without sin cast the first stone`` and all that, right? Brahmins account for 3% of the country`s population and are being systematically eradicated from Kashmir downwards. Please do not indulge in the fantasy that you can heap the country`s ills and bad moments in history upon us and get away with it.
Anyway, your article is anything but objective, and anything but unvarnished. You are doing exactly the same thing to history that the VHP and Bajrang Dal are - trying to tilt it to suit your tastes. I`d like to see how Muslims react if you called Mohammed a ``seducer of women`` - like you have called Hanuman. It is a testament to Hindus` tolerance by and large that slanderous writing like yours is let go without challenge.
I am not a Hindutva-vadi, or a ``praise-seeking`` Indian. I tried hard to read your essay without any pre-judgements or passions, but boy, do you make it heard.
Unfortunately, you see, I am a brahmin. It is very hard to remain silent when you bash me, my ancestors and effectively try to rewrite our history. My people have persevered over thousands of years, living ascetic lives and on the alms of other castes, to carry forward the knowledge of the vedas from generation to generation. There have been those among us (like in ALL castes) seeking fame, power, and money and have done unnameable harm to others. But hey, ``let he who is without sin cast the first stone`` and all that, right? Brahmins account for 3% of the country`s population and are being systematically eradicated from Kashmir downwards. Please do not indulge in the fantasy that you can heap the country`s ills and bad moments in history upon us and get away with it.
Anyway, your article is anything but objective, and anything but unvarnished. You are doing exactly the same thing to history that the VHP and Bajrang Dal are - trying to tilt it to suit your tastes. I`d like to see how Muslims react if you called Mohammed a ``seducer of women`` - like you have called Hanuman. It is a testament to Hindus` tolerance by and large that slanderous writing like yours is let go without challenge.
#120 Posted by Ghulam on March 22, 2001 7:42:43 pm
I think that Murad Ali Baig should go back to some History School if he has to even think about writing history again. I think age is getting over him. He probably should retire. Or else go to a mental asylum!
There are many faults in what he has said in this article. Its a pity that such a seasoned man like him (Really???) should make comments on things he doesnt even know. Some of the useless and wrong interpretations in his article are:
Q1. Nobody ever said India was the oldest civilization!!
Q2.Everybody knows that Homo Sapiens originated from Africa. Who said they originated in India???
Q3.What has skin colour to do with this debate?? Did anyone say that India ever had fair skinned people and that led to social problems?
Q6.GREAT THINKING,IF THEY WERE DRAVIDIANS, THEN WHY IS THERE NO SIMILARITY IN THE LIFESTYLE OF DRAVIDIANS TODAY AND THAT OF THE INDUS VALLEY PEOPLE.
Q9. What has the origin of the word ``Magic`` to do with religions??? If MAB thinks that religions had their foundations in magic, then I cant stop laughing at his great finding!!!
Qs10 and 12. Here our great writer is trying to mislead leaders with like sounding names. True, Rig Veda may have borrowed from Zend Avesta. MAB says Devas were Daevas of Zend Avesta, who were Devils. Cant they be ``Daityas`` who are the demons of Rig Veda. MAB is just trying to foment trouble by unnecessary and ridiculous interpretations
Q13. THERE ARE 4 VEDAS !!!! BOTTOM LINE .TRUE THE THE OTHER THREE WERE COMPILED LATER, BUT THEY WERE VEDAS!! BECAUSE THEY ARE REGARDED AS VEDAS. THERE IS NO REASON WHY A PERSON WHO DOESN`T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HINDU MYTHOLOGY SHOULD DECIDE THAT THEY ARE NOT VEDAS!!
Q14. NOBODY EVER SAID THAT SANSKRIT WAS THE MOTHER OF ALL LANGUAGES !!! IF MAB EVER BELIEVED THAT, THEN HE IS A FOOL.
Q15. EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT ARYANS DID NOT ORIGINATE IN INDIA. WHY THE DEBATE THEN??
Q19.Their priests were the Arthvan (from Arth, meaning a person of essence).This was probably the origin of the Vedic word Brahmin. Their warriors were Ratheshwar (from Rath, meaning charioteer) and this was the origin of Kshatriya.HOW CAN ``ARTHVAN`` PROBABLY BE THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD ``BRAHMIN``?? AND ``RATHESHWAR`` BE THE ORIGIN OF ``KSHATRIYA``??? DO THEY SOUND ALIKE TO MAB????? OR IS THERE ANY OTHER EXPLANATION??
SO MANY MISLEADING COMMENTS IN THE FIRST 20 SELF MADE QUESTIONS THAT MAB HAS TRIED TO ANSWER!!! FRANKLY, I DIDNT THINK THIS ARTICLE WAS WORTH EVEN A SINGLE MORE MINUTE OF MY PRECIOUS TIME. I THINK CHOWK SHOULD REMOVE THIS ARTICLE FROM THEIR SITE TO SAVE PEOPLE THEIR TIME AND BAR MAB FROM WRITING ANY MORE ARTICLES ON THE SITE.
There are many faults in what he has said in this article. Its a pity that such a seasoned man like him (Really???) should make comments on things he doesnt even know. Some of the useless and wrong interpretations in his article are:
Q1. Nobody ever said India was the oldest civilization!!
Q2.Everybody knows that Homo Sapiens originated from Africa. Who said they originated in India???
Q3.What has skin colour to do with this debate?? Did anyone say that India ever had fair skinned people and that led to social problems?
Q6.GREAT THINKING,IF THEY WERE DRAVIDIANS, THEN WHY IS THERE NO SIMILARITY IN THE LIFESTYLE OF DRAVIDIANS TODAY AND THAT OF THE INDUS VALLEY PEOPLE.
Q9. What has the origin of the word ``Magic`` to do with religions??? If MAB thinks that religions had their foundations in magic, then I cant stop laughing at his great finding!!!
Qs10 and 12. Here our great writer is trying to mislead leaders with like sounding names. True, Rig Veda may have borrowed from Zend Avesta. MAB says Devas were Daevas of Zend Avesta, who were Devils. Cant they be ``Daityas`` who are the demons of Rig Veda. MAB is just trying to foment trouble by unnecessary and ridiculous interpretations
Q13. THERE ARE 4 VEDAS !!!! BOTTOM LINE .TRUE THE THE OTHER THREE WERE COMPILED LATER, BUT THEY WERE VEDAS!! BECAUSE THEY ARE REGARDED AS VEDAS. THERE IS NO REASON WHY A PERSON WHO DOESN`T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HINDU MYTHOLOGY SHOULD DECIDE THAT THEY ARE NOT VEDAS!!
Q14. NOBODY EVER SAID THAT SANSKRIT WAS THE MOTHER OF ALL LANGUAGES !!! IF MAB EVER BELIEVED THAT, THEN HE IS A FOOL.
Q15. EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT ARYANS DID NOT ORIGINATE IN INDIA. WHY THE DEBATE THEN??
Q19.Their priests were the Arthvan (from Arth, meaning a person of essence).This was probably the origin of the Vedic word Brahmin. Their warriors were Ratheshwar (from Rath, meaning charioteer) and this was the origin of Kshatriya.HOW CAN ``ARTHVAN`` PROBABLY BE THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD ``BRAHMIN``?? AND ``RATHESHWAR`` BE THE ORIGIN OF ``KSHATRIYA``??? DO THEY SOUND ALIKE TO MAB????? OR IS THERE ANY OTHER EXPLANATION??
SO MANY MISLEADING COMMENTS IN THE FIRST 20 SELF MADE QUESTIONS THAT MAB HAS TRIED TO ANSWER!!! FRANKLY, I DIDNT THINK THIS ARTICLE WAS WORTH EVEN A SINGLE MORE MINUTE OF MY PRECIOUS TIME. I THINK CHOWK SHOULD REMOVE THIS ARTICLE FROM THEIR SITE TO SAVE PEOPLE THEIR TIME AND BAR MAB FROM WRITING ANY MORE ARTICLES ON THE SITE.
#121 Posted by mohajir on March 28, 2001 3:01:59 pm
On the Misportrayal of India:
Toward a New Look at Indian History
by David B. Gray, PhD
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITmisportrayalframeset.htm
Copyright 2001, The Educational Council on Indic Traditions
Presented at the Asian Studies Development Program National Conference on March 21, 2001
at the College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL
Introduction
The study of India in the West has long been overshadowed by the concerns of Eurocentric historians, who, to the extent that they studied India at all, did so in a manner that privileged Europe as the motivating force of world history. India has, ever since the classical Greeks make contact with the Persians to the East, been an object of curiosity for Europeans, although until recently their knowledge of India was largely second-hand and imprecise. As Europeans gained greater access to India, it was under the context of the British conquest and colonialization, and this significantly affected the resulting portrayal. India has been represented as lacking historical agency, and serving a role in history that is subservient to the agenda of Europeans. Despite the many recent critiques of colonial orientalist historiography, elements of this tradition linger on in contemporary studies of India, and, in particular, in textbooks geared for secondary school and undergraduate students.
The purpose of this essay is twofold; it will attempt to undertake the following aims:
1. Elucidate the paradigms of Indian historiography that have prevailed in academic writings, especially the notion that India lacks a historical tradition per se, and that India was a passive field activated primarily by the incursion of invading groups.
2. Counteract this notion and restore the historical agency of Indians by stressing the numerous ways in which India served as a powerful civilizing and economic force in the world, not because of invasions but in spite of them. Evidence concerning centrality of India in the pre-modern and early modern world economies should be presented in secondary and undergraduate level texts.
In this paper the former task will largely be addressed. Given the time constraint, it will only be possible here to suggest an alternative approach to the study of Indian history.
Much ink has been spilled concerning the issue of orientalism; in the context of India, Ronald Inden and many others have shown the degree to which the orientalist enterprise was deeply intertwined with colonial institutions. Histories of India produced by this school tended to represent Indian history in a fashion that legitimated colonial rule. This paper will explore one aspect of this historiography, an aspect which is unfortunately alive and well in many current accounts.
One might hope that by now a new model of Indian historiography would have developed, one that stresses the agency of Indians and rejects contrived culturally chauvinist constructions. Fortunately, new models are emerging, but unfortunately they have not yet fully supplanted the older models, which still linger on albeit in weakened forms. One model is what might be called the ``invasion theory`` of Indian history. In its strong form, it is simply a version of the Hegelian portrayal, the assumption being that India as a passive, unchanging entity has only undergone historical change when motivated by outside forces, namely active aggressors. While the explicit version of this model has fallen out of fashion, it remains in an attenuated forms in narrative accounts of Indian history that are structured around invasions, making them implicitly appear to be the central events in Indian history.
Now, India was of course invaded over the course of its long history, usually from the interior of Asia. This is not peculiar to India, but is a pattern seen throughout Eurasia, in which sedentary agricultural societies situated along the coasts or in river valleys were periodically invaded by nomadic, pastoral peoples from the interior. This pattern is also seen in East and West Asia as well as in Europe; it is unlikely that India suffered invasions with any greater frequency than these regions. In fact, it seems likely that East and West Asia were invaded more frequently simply because they are far more geographically open to attack. China`s northern border, for example, is simply the open steppes of central Asia, whence invaders descended with alarming frequency. Lacking a natural barrier such as the Himalayan and Hindukush mountains that admirably shield India`s northern border, the Chinese expended incredible time and energy constructing a series of walls and guard posts. Naturally, no barrier is impermeable; walls can be breached and mountain ranges have passes. Since India is no exception in this regard, there is thus no good reason to particularly dwell on invasions as a motivating force in Indian history.
Hegel played an important role in this model of Indian historiography. In so doing, he ignored and indeed discredited the extensive influence India had on other Eurasian civilizations. He wrote in his Philosophy of History that
On the whole, the diffusion of Indian culture is only a dumb, deedless expansion; that is, it presents no political action. The people of India have achieved no foreign conquests, but have been on every occasion vanquished themselves. And as in this silent way, Northern India has been a center of emigration, productive of merely physical diffusion, India as a Land of Desire forms an essential element in General history … From the most ancient times downwards, all nations have directed their wishes and longings to gain access to the treasures of this land of marvels, the most costly which the earth presents; treasures of nature - pearls, diamonds, perfumes, rose-essences, elephants, lions, etc. - as also treasures of wisdom. The ways by which these treasures have passed to the West, has at all times been a matter of World-historical importance, bound up with the fate of nations. Those wishes have been realized; this Land of Desire has been attained; there is scarcely any great nation of the East, nor of the Modern European West, that has not gained for itself a smaller or larger portion of it. 1
India so characterized makes the Western colonial aggression and resultant theft of resources appear as an essential an inevitable stage of history; this indeed is the ulterior motive, conscious or unconscious, in constructing an essentalized version of Indian history. The conclusion of this passage, which portrays the colonization of India as something practically every ``great nation`` has done, is also clearly an attempt at the legitimization of the colonial enterprise.
It is now widely recognized that such theories of history are basically ethnocentric justifications of European colonialism. While they are rooted in the very real hegemony achieved by the Europeans of most of the world during the nineteenth century, they err in assuming this achievement was due to an intrinsic superiority of the Europeans. This myth of the superiority of the West is in fact based upon a systematic erasure of the interdependency of humanity, and the negation of the many and real contributions of other regions of the world that made the European rise to power possible.
The colonial perspective lingers on today in what might be termed the ``invasion theory`` of Indian history. This narrative assumes (usually implicitly) Hegel`s idea that India is an intrinsically static, passive civilization, incapable on its own of having a history. Indian history then is taken as the result of a long series of invasions, beginning with the mythical ``Aryans`` and culminating in the invasion by the British. While there was at times warfare between India and her neighbors, sometimes culminating in invasion, India here is no exception to the general trends of ancient and medieval history. To assume that invasions are THE motivating force in Indian history is to fall into the self-justifying theory of Indian history developed by the British to legitimate their exploitive colonization of India.
This pattern is often repeated in contemporary histories of India. These typically begin with a cursory description of the Indus-Saraswati civilization, before moving on to describe the destruction of this civilization by the ``Aryans``, a nomadic people, supposedly originating in the steppes of Central Asia, whose invasion destroyed its older precursor, but who introduced to India their own culture which was to give rise to glories of the Vedas and classical Indian Vedic civilization. This is the first of the invasions that mark the ``invasion theory`` narrative. It is based on one bona fide fact: that there is in fact a strong linguistic connection between European and Indian languages. This theory slips from the factual and into the mythical, however, in making several assumptions. The first is the equation of language and race. The second is that language transfer was necessarily effect through the medium of invasion, rather than by diffusion, peaceful migration or some other means.
There are several inconsistencies with this theory. One is that there is actually no evidence that invaders destroyed the Indus-Saraswati civilization; this theory is in fact based upon the interpretation of several ambiguous Rig Veda hymns. As Shaffer and Lichtenstein have pointed out, archeological evidence points to a gradual abandonment of Indus Valley sites due to climate change, and particularly due to massive tectonic activity around 1900 BCE which changed the course of the Saraswati river and rendered the numerous cities located on its former banks uninhabitable. These changes occurred several centuries before the Aryans supposedly even arrived in India, which is usually dated around 1500 BCE. These changes led to the gradual migration of peoples East, into the Gangetic Valley, a event which is attested both in the archeological record and in the Vedic texts themselves. As Shaffer and Lichtenstein put it,
The modern archeological record for South Asia indicates a cultural history of continuity rather than the earlier eighteenth through twentieth century scholarly interpretations of discontinuity and South Asian dependence upon Western influences. The cultural and political conditions of Europe`s nineteenth and twentieth centuries were strong influences in sustaining this interpretation. It is possible now to discern cultural continuities linking specific social entities in South Asia into one cultural tradition. This is not to propose social isolation nor deny outside influence. Outside influences did affect South Asian cultural development in later historic periods, but an identifiable cultural tradition has continued, an Indo-Gangetic Tradition linking diverse social entities which span a time period from the development of food production in the seventh millennium BC to the present. (Shaffer and Lichtenstein 1999:255-56)
It is not my point here to argue that there was or was not an Aryan invasion. Given the ambiguity of evidence, it is a topic on which I must remain agnostic, although I should add that the burden of proof lies with those who insist on its veracity. Here I would only like to point out the peculiar fact that on such a tenuous hypothesis rests an entire edifice of Indian historiography. The assumption of Aryan conquest of Northern India was elaborated into timelines of Indian history as well as theories of social geography and demography that are extended well into the historical era, as if this one event of the distant past is the key to understanding all of Indian history. As Inden points out,
Presupposing their Aryocentric geography and oriental demography, scholars have represented these states on their maps and read the political history they fabricated from them. That history consisted of the narrative of a society that was made to be inherently dependent on the intervention of a Western political economy for its unity and prosperity. (1990:187)
The next invasion in the invasion theory timeline is that conducted by Alexander the Great. Our sources for this invasion are Greeks, who may have had a natural tendency to exaggerate the significance of this event, which in fact made no impression whatsoever on the Indian historical record. Even in the Greek sources, Alexander`s sojourn in India is admittedly brief; having made it to the Indus River he quickly returned West again. The consequence of this event was the establishment of the Seleucid Greek kingdom in Persia and the Middle East, as well as the establishment of a smaller, independent Greek kingdom in Bactria, in what is now Afghanistan. Their expansion into India proper was prevented by the rise of the Mauryan dynasty in the late fourth-century BCE, which succeeded in uniting most of India under centralized rule.
There is no doubt that the Greeks had an influence in North India and were in turn influenced by the stay there. But this influence has been exaggerated, extending beyond the realm of the probable and into the realm of the wildly improbable. Greek influence was particularly attributed to the rise of Buddhist art and the development of Mahayana Buddhism, casting India`s most significant cultural export as a product of European influence. These theories have been largely discredited, however, and exposed as what they truly are. As Stanley Abe put it,
The late nineteenth-century interest in claiming an originary role for the Greek tradition in early Buddhist art must, at least in part, be understood in the context of this larger European project to construct a cultural lineage back to purely Aryan Greece. The erasure of the non-Aryan within the West was played out in the assertion of Greek (Aryan) influence onto Gandhara. In this sense, the discovery of Greek influence in Gandhara has as much to do with the need of the West to secure its own internal dislocations and self-representation as it does with Buddhist art. (1995:84)
Following the Greeks, the invasion theory timeline moves on to the Mauryan dynasty, and then to the invasions of the Kushans and Sythians. The Gupta dynasty is then covered, only to move on to the devastation caused by the invasion of the Huns. Following the Huns, India is usually portrayed as undergoing a political decline characterized by fragmentation and decentralization, as well as a cultural decline, resulting in the rise of ``unorthodox`` religious traditions such as the Tantric schools of Buddhism and Hinduism. India was then purified by the violence of the Islamic invasions, resulting in the re-establishment of centralized rule under the Moghuls.
This narrative framework is found in many histories of India, including some quite modern ones. The classic version of this history is Vincent Smith`s The Oxford History of India (1919), which has been duly deconstructed by Inden, who makes quite clear the ideology underpinning the ``invasion`` narrative. Inden wrote that
To have represented the kingdoms of India as relatively autonomous agents, as complex, inter-related polities that could unite through pacts as well as `force` within a single imperial formation and create new centres not determined by a fixed military topography, would have undermined this whole orientalist project. So Smith dispatched cruel Huns to prepare the way for the still worse advent of Islam, which would in turn, clear the way for the miraculous arrival by sea of the better Aryan, the Western or European. He could clip the Dravidian jungle and prevent the Russians setting fire to the whole green expanse. The history of medieval decline did not stop, however, by preparing for the modern. If Smith`s history of ancient India was, in effect, a history of its present, his narrative of medieval India was really a parable of the future, of what would happen in India if the British withdrew. (1990:188)
At issue here are not necessarily the ``facts`` of history, but rather the ideology that underlies certain configurations of ``facts``, and the relative degrees of emphasis placed upon them. Even if all were true that would not render the ``invasion theory`` histories unproblematic. Histories are, after all, narratives, and as such are selective in the narrative elements in which they choose to convey. Histories are ideological in precisely this way; ideology is present in the choices historians make. This is not necessarily a conscious process. As Edmund Leach noted,
``Bad`` history is seldom constructed out of fantasy; it is simply that we tend to accept as good history whatever is congenial to our contemporary way of thinking. The good history of one generation becomes the bad history of the next.
In presenting an essentalized view of India as a passive land of invasions, historians of the colonial era concocted histories congenial to their contemporary way of thinking. For us now, presumably, these are bad history, but one might wonder if the persistence of this narrative might indicate that we are not as far from the colonialist mentality as we would like to believe.
How might a new history be constructed? At this point I cannot answer this question definitively, but only offer a tentative solution. This would be to depict cultural influence not as a one-way street, but as a result of complex interdependencies between cultural regions. A more accurate portrayal of India would treat the influence of India on the rest of Eurasia at least as extensively as the influence of other cultures on India. So doing would require a conceptual framework that transcends the academic regional pigeon-holes such as West Asia, South Asia, East Asia and so forth and focus instead on the dynamics of inter-regional connectivity. Such would probably best be undertaken not by a single scholar, but by a group of scholars representing numerous methodological and regional specializations.
Here we should conclude with the hope that new histories do not fall into the same trap of essentalizing India. While we can and should seek a history that places greater emphasis on India`s historical agency, we should not do so with the assumption that there is any essential ``India`` out there which needs to be rediscovered. India is and probably always has been a complex of different cultural and ethnic groups who cannot be reduced to any particular essence. But in writing a history, such diversity must be respected, while at the same time paying more attention to the ways in which Indians throughout history have played an active role both in constructing their own history as well as in acting as influential players in the world.
Notes
1. Hegel 1956, pp. 141-42, op cit. Inden 1990 p. 70.
Works Cited
Abe, Stanley K. 1995. ``Inside the Wonder House: Buddhist Art and the West``. In Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism. Donald S. Lopez, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 63-106.
Hegel, G. W. F. 1956. Philosophy of History. J. Sibree, trans. New York: Dover.
Inden, Ronald B. 1990. Imagining India. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Leach, Edmund. 1990. ``Aryan Invasions over Four Millenia``. In Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, ed. Culture Through Time: Anthropological Approaches. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 227-245.
Shaffer, Jim G. and Diana A. Lichtenstein. ``Migration, Philology and South Asian Archeology``. In Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and Ideology. Johannes Bronkhorst and Madhav M. Deshpande, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 239-60.
Smith, Vincent A. 1919. The Oxford History of India. fourth edition, Percival Spear, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.
Toward a New Look at Indian History
by David B. Gray, PhD
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITmisportrayalframeset.htm
Copyright 2001, The Educational Council on Indic Traditions
Presented at the Asian Studies Development Program National Conference on March 21, 2001
at the College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL
Introduction
The study of India in the West has long been overshadowed by the concerns of Eurocentric historians, who, to the extent that they studied India at all, did so in a manner that privileged Europe as the motivating force of world history. India has, ever since the classical Greeks make contact with the Persians to the East, been an object of curiosity for Europeans, although until recently their knowledge of India was largely second-hand and imprecise. As Europeans gained greater access to India, it was under the context of the British conquest and colonialization, and this significantly affected the resulting portrayal. India has been represented as lacking historical agency, and serving a role in history that is subservient to the agenda of Europeans. Despite the many recent critiques of colonial orientalist historiography, elements of this tradition linger on in contemporary studies of India, and, in particular, in textbooks geared for secondary school and undergraduate students.
The purpose of this essay is twofold; it will attempt to undertake the following aims:
1. Elucidate the paradigms of Indian historiography that have prevailed in academic writings, especially the notion that India lacks a historical tradition per se, and that India was a passive field activated primarily by the incursion of invading groups.
2. Counteract this notion and restore the historical agency of Indians by stressing the numerous ways in which India served as a powerful civilizing and economic force in the world, not because of invasions but in spite of them. Evidence concerning centrality of India in the pre-modern and early modern world economies should be presented in secondary and undergraduate level texts.
In this paper the former task will largely be addressed. Given the time constraint, it will only be possible here to suggest an alternative approach to the study of Indian history.
Much ink has been spilled concerning the issue of orientalism; in the context of India, Ronald Inden and many others have shown the degree to which the orientalist enterprise was deeply intertwined with colonial institutions. Histories of India produced by this school tended to represent Indian history in a fashion that legitimated colonial rule. This paper will explore one aspect of this historiography, an aspect which is unfortunately alive and well in many current accounts.
One might hope that by now a new model of Indian historiography would have developed, one that stresses the agency of Indians and rejects contrived culturally chauvinist constructions. Fortunately, new models are emerging, but unfortunately they have not yet fully supplanted the older models, which still linger on albeit in weakened forms. One model is what might be called the ``invasion theory`` of Indian history. In its strong form, it is simply a version of the Hegelian portrayal, the assumption being that India as a passive, unchanging entity has only undergone historical change when motivated by outside forces, namely active aggressors. While the explicit version of this model has fallen out of fashion, it remains in an attenuated forms in narrative accounts of Indian history that are structured around invasions, making them implicitly appear to be the central events in Indian history.
Now, India was of course invaded over the course of its long history, usually from the interior of Asia. This is not peculiar to India, but is a pattern seen throughout Eurasia, in which sedentary agricultural societies situated along the coasts or in river valleys were periodically invaded by nomadic, pastoral peoples from the interior. This pattern is also seen in East and West Asia as well as in Europe; it is unlikely that India suffered invasions with any greater frequency than these regions. In fact, it seems likely that East and West Asia were invaded more frequently simply because they are far more geographically open to attack. China`s northern border, for example, is simply the open steppes of central Asia, whence invaders descended with alarming frequency. Lacking a natural barrier such as the Himalayan and Hindukush mountains that admirably shield India`s northern border, the Chinese expended incredible time and energy constructing a series of walls and guard posts. Naturally, no barrier is impermeable; walls can be breached and mountain ranges have passes. Since India is no exception in this regard, there is thus no good reason to particularly dwell on invasions as a motivating force in Indian history.
Hegel played an important role in this model of Indian historiography. In so doing, he ignored and indeed discredited the extensive influence India had on other Eurasian civilizations. He wrote in his Philosophy of History that
On the whole, the diffusion of Indian culture is only a dumb, deedless expansion; that is, it presents no political action. The people of India have achieved no foreign conquests, but have been on every occasion vanquished themselves. And as in this silent way, Northern India has been a center of emigration, productive of merely physical diffusion, India as a Land of Desire forms an essential element in General history … From the most ancient times downwards, all nations have directed their wishes and longings to gain access to the treasures of this land of marvels, the most costly which the earth presents; treasures of nature - pearls, diamonds, perfumes, rose-essences, elephants, lions, etc. - as also treasures of wisdom. The ways by which these treasures have passed to the West, has at all times been a matter of World-historical importance, bound up with the fate of nations. Those wishes have been realized; this Land of Desire has been attained; there is scarcely any great nation of the East, nor of the Modern European West, that has not gained for itself a smaller or larger portion of it. 1
India so characterized makes the Western colonial aggression and resultant theft of resources appear as an essential an inevitable stage of history; this indeed is the ulterior motive, conscious or unconscious, in constructing an essentalized version of Indian history. The conclusion of this passage, which portrays the colonization of India as something practically every ``great nation`` has done, is also clearly an attempt at the legitimization of the colonial enterprise.
It is now widely recognized that such theories of history are basically ethnocentric justifications of European colonialism. While they are rooted in the very real hegemony achieved by the Europeans of most of the world during the nineteenth century, they err in assuming this achievement was due to an intrinsic superiority of the Europeans. This myth of the superiority of the West is in fact based upon a systematic erasure of the interdependency of humanity, and the negation of the many and real contributions of other regions of the world that made the European rise to power possible.
The colonial perspective lingers on today in what might be termed the ``invasion theory`` of Indian history. This narrative assumes (usually implicitly) Hegel`s idea that India is an intrinsically static, passive civilization, incapable on its own of having a history. Indian history then is taken as the result of a long series of invasions, beginning with the mythical ``Aryans`` and culminating in the invasion by the British. While there was at times warfare between India and her neighbors, sometimes culminating in invasion, India here is no exception to the general trends of ancient and medieval history. To assume that invasions are THE motivating force in Indian history is to fall into the self-justifying theory of Indian history developed by the British to legitimate their exploitive colonization of India.
This pattern is often repeated in contemporary histories of India. These typically begin with a cursory description of the Indus-Saraswati civilization, before moving on to describe the destruction of this civilization by the ``Aryans``, a nomadic people, supposedly originating in the steppes of Central Asia, whose invasion destroyed its older precursor, but who introduced to India their own culture which was to give rise to glories of the Vedas and classical Indian Vedic civilization. This is the first of the invasions that mark the ``invasion theory`` narrative. It is based on one bona fide fact: that there is in fact a strong linguistic connection between European and Indian languages. This theory slips from the factual and into the mythical, however, in making several assumptions. The first is the equation of language and race. The second is that language transfer was necessarily effect through the medium of invasion, rather than by diffusion, peaceful migration or some other means.
There are several inconsistencies with this theory. One is that there is actually no evidence that invaders destroyed the Indus-Saraswati civilization; this theory is in fact based upon the interpretation of several ambiguous Rig Veda hymns. As Shaffer and Lichtenstein have pointed out, archeological evidence points to a gradual abandonment of Indus Valley sites due to climate change, and particularly due to massive tectonic activity around 1900 BCE which changed the course of the Saraswati river and rendered the numerous cities located on its former banks uninhabitable. These changes occurred several centuries before the Aryans supposedly even arrived in India, which is usually dated around 1500 BCE. These changes led to the gradual migration of peoples East, into the Gangetic Valley, a event which is attested both in the archeological record and in the Vedic texts themselves. As Shaffer and Lichtenstein put it,
The modern archeological record for South Asia indicates a cultural history of continuity rather than the earlier eighteenth through twentieth century scholarly interpretations of discontinuity and South Asian dependence upon Western influences. The cultural and political conditions of Europe`s nineteenth and twentieth centuries were strong influences in sustaining this interpretation. It is possible now to discern cultural continuities linking specific social entities in South Asia into one cultural tradition. This is not to propose social isolation nor deny outside influence. Outside influences did affect South Asian cultural development in later historic periods, but an identifiable cultural tradition has continued, an Indo-Gangetic Tradition linking diverse social entities which span a time period from the development of food production in the seventh millennium BC to the present. (Shaffer and Lichtenstein 1999:255-56)
It is not my point here to argue that there was or was not an Aryan invasion. Given the ambiguity of evidence, it is a topic on which I must remain agnostic, although I should add that the burden of proof lies with those who insist on its veracity. Here I would only like to point out the peculiar fact that on such a tenuous hypothesis rests an entire edifice of Indian historiography. The assumption of Aryan conquest of Northern India was elaborated into timelines of Indian history as well as theories of social geography and demography that are extended well into the historical era, as if this one event of the distant past is the key to understanding all of Indian history. As Inden points out,
Presupposing their Aryocentric geography and oriental demography, scholars have represented these states on their maps and read the political history they fabricated from them. That history consisted of the narrative of a society that was made to be inherently dependent on the intervention of a Western political economy for its unity and prosperity. (1990:187)
The next invasion in the invasion theory timeline is that conducted by Alexander the Great. Our sources for this invasion are Greeks, who may have had a natural tendency to exaggerate the significance of this event, which in fact made no impression whatsoever on the Indian historical record. Even in the Greek sources, Alexander`s sojourn in India is admittedly brief; having made it to the Indus River he quickly returned West again. The consequence of this event was the establishment of the Seleucid Greek kingdom in Persia and the Middle East, as well as the establishment of a smaller, independent Greek kingdom in Bactria, in what is now Afghanistan. Their expansion into India proper was prevented by the rise of the Mauryan dynasty in the late fourth-century BCE, which succeeded in uniting most of India under centralized rule.
There is no doubt that the Greeks had an influence in North India and were in turn influenced by the stay there. But this influence has been exaggerated, extending beyond the realm of the probable and into the realm of the wildly improbable. Greek influence was particularly attributed to the rise of Buddhist art and the development of Mahayana Buddhism, casting India`s most significant cultural export as a product of European influence. These theories have been largely discredited, however, and exposed as what they truly are. As Stanley Abe put it,
The late nineteenth-century interest in claiming an originary role for the Greek tradition in early Buddhist art must, at least in part, be understood in the context of this larger European project to construct a cultural lineage back to purely Aryan Greece. The erasure of the non-Aryan within the West was played out in the assertion of Greek (Aryan) influence onto Gandhara. In this sense, the discovery of Greek influence in Gandhara has as much to do with the need of the West to secure its own internal dislocations and self-representation as it does with Buddhist art. (1995:84)
Following the Greeks, the invasion theory timeline moves on to the Mauryan dynasty, and then to the invasions of the Kushans and Sythians. The Gupta dynasty is then covered, only to move on to the devastation caused by the invasion of the Huns. Following the Huns, India is usually portrayed as undergoing a political decline characterized by fragmentation and decentralization, as well as a cultural decline, resulting in the rise of ``unorthodox`` religious traditions such as the Tantric schools of Buddhism and Hinduism. India was then purified by the violence of the Islamic invasions, resulting in the re-establishment of centralized rule under the Moghuls.
This narrative framework is found in many histories of India, including some quite modern ones. The classic version of this history is Vincent Smith`s The Oxford History of India (1919), which has been duly deconstructed by Inden, who makes quite clear the ideology underpinning the ``invasion`` narrative. Inden wrote that
To have represented the kingdoms of India as relatively autonomous agents, as complex, inter-related polities that could unite through pacts as well as `force` within a single imperial formation and create new centres not determined by a fixed military topography, would have undermined this whole orientalist project. So Smith dispatched cruel Huns to prepare the way for the still worse advent of Islam, which would in turn, clear the way for the miraculous arrival by sea of the better Aryan, the Western or European. He could clip the Dravidian jungle and prevent the Russians setting fire to the whole green expanse. The history of medieval decline did not stop, however, by preparing for the modern. If Smith`s history of ancient India was, in effect, a history of its present, his narrative of medieval India was really a parable of the future, of what would happen in India if the British withdrew. (1990:188)
At issue here are not necessarily the ``facts`` of history, but rather the ideology that underlies certain configurations of ``facts``, and the relative degrees of emphasis placed upon them. Even if all were true that would not render the ``invasion theory`` histories unproblematic. Histories are, after all, narratives, and as such are selective in the narrative elements in which they choose to convey. Histories are ideological in precisely this way; ideology is present in the choices historians make. This is not necessarily a conscious process. As Edmund Leach noted,
``Bad`` history is seldom constructed out of fantasy; it is simply that we tend to accept as good history whatever is congenial to our contemporary way of thinking. The good history of one generation becomes the bad history of the next.
In presenting an essentalized view of India as a passive land of invasions, historians of the colonial era concocted histories congenial to their contemporary way of thinking. For us now, presumably, these are bad history, but one might wonder if the persistence of this narrative might indicate that we are not as far from the colonialist mentality as we would like to believe.
How might a new history be constructed? At this point I cannot answer this question definitively, but only offer a tentative solution. This would be to depict cultural influence not as a one-way street, but as a result of complex interdependencies between cultural regions. A more accurate portrayal of India would treat the influence of India on the rest of Eurasia at least as extensively as the influence of other cultures on India. So doing would require a conceptual framework that transcends the academic regional pigeon-holes such as West Asia, South Asia, East Asia and so forth and focus instead on the dynamics of inter-regional connectivity. Such would probably best be undertaken not by a single scholar, but by a group of scholars representing numerous methodological and regional specializations.
Here we should conclude with the hope that new histories do not fall into the same trap of essentalizing India. While we can and should seek a history that places greater emphasis on India`s historical agency, we should not do so with the assumption that there is any essential ``India`` out there which needs to be rediscovered. India is and probably always has been a complex of different cultural and ethnic groups who cannot be reduced to any particular essence. But in writing a history, such diversity must be respected, while at the same time paying more attention to the ways in which Indians throughout history have played an active role both in constructing their own history as well as in acting as influential players in the world.
Notes
1. Hegel 1956, pp. 141-42, op cit. Inden 1990 p. 70.
Works Cited
Abe, Stanley K. 1995. ``Inside the Wonder House: Buddhist Art and the West``. In Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism. Donald S. Lopez, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 63-106.
Hegel, G. W. F. 1956. Philosophy of History. J. Sibree, trans. New York: Dover.
Inden, Ronald B. 1990. Imagining India. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Leach, Edmund. 1990. ``Aryan Invasions over Four Millenia``. In Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, ed. Culture Through Time: Anthropological Approaches. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 227-245.
Shaffer, Jim G. and Diana A. Lichtenstein. ``Migration, Philology and South Asian Archeology``. In Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and Ideology. Johannes Bronkhorst and Madhav M. Deshpande, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 239-60.
Smith, Vincent A. 1919. The Oxford History of India. fourth edition, Percival Spear, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.
#122 Posted by pullu on March 28, 2001 8:19:36 pm
What a waste of time and effort it has been! As one interested in serious history, I had set out for a brief unemotional journey down the lanes. But what i got was a half-cooked, biased and a bunch of lies; propagated with an unsubstantiated belief in the self. Murad is actually trying to make political statement(s), separating brahmins from others, suggesting them to be the biggest curse on India. Everything that is positive and undeniably good had it`s roots in Persia.Everything demeaning and unhuman was strictly local in origin. If rig veda has any salient feature then it is derived from Zend Avesta. What kind of history is this Mr. Murad?
You seem to rejoice im many of the findings (many based on your own discovery) and you call it an unemotional look at history. Actually you have interpreted history here, just as you wanted it to be.
Like...
# Early Indians always ate beef..but these brahmins...
# ``Are (Shiv, Krishna, Ram, Lakshmi, Parvati, Saraswati, Ganga) or the concepts of reincarnation, Dharma, Karma, Ahimsa alien to the Vedas?``
How did you think this question bothered students of history all along?
Dharma,karma, himsa,ahimsa are all sanskrit wordds, hence Hindu in origin but Buddhism and Jainism advocated strong adherence to them.
# Ramayana, Mahabharata were great battles fought in Persia and documented and ``mythologised``
in India. Rama must have made a long voyage to Lanka{gawd!!!}. Do you need to discuss Rama`s character to tell us about Ancient Indian history?
# A baniya festival, a kshatriya festival or a shudra festival...what do you want to say..?
Do you need to discuss Babri Masjid when talking of Moghul history? Muslim invaders destroyed temples because they wanted to loot the wealth..? How simplistic. A few years from now you will say Taliban destroyed Buddha statues because they thought they would find huge amount of wealth in Buddha`s large belly. (sic...Murad your argument stinks..). Do not try to justify history Murad just as we (hindus) cannot justify babri masjid demolition. Indian Muslims are not responsible for the deeds of their ``ancestors`` and the conditions prevalent then.
If discussing Indian history meant discussing hinduism(buddhism, jainism..) and it`s evils then you should also have discussed Islam and thrown more light on it`s evils and life and character of Mohammed (now it might sound ridiculous to you).
You are not biased when you say that there is nothing wrong with Islam but only that the followers knew little islam....
# Just like Islam, Buddhism and Jainism are great simple religions unlike hinduism. Thanks for the concession Mr. Murad. To think that Buddhism,Jainism and Hinduism constitute the same people.
# ``Though some historians have given a strong communal colour to the torture and execution of Guru Arjan Dev, few know that his chief tormentor was no Muslim but a Hindu banker whose daughter Arjan had refused to marry to his son. Paradoxically his main defender was Mian Mir a Muslim divine``
{ another of your logic...that hindus were the cause for everything, basically sikhs and moghuls were bosom pals but for those brahmins... }
# Until the advent of the Turks and then more such tribes...India was in dark ages....and the sole reason for the cultural advancement of moghul india were the persians!!!!!!
You make me laugh Murad.
# Muslims are intolerant today because european powers rode to great heights and they(muslims) started living on past glory...{ Murad you are a genious SIR! }
There are many more issues you have touched which have no bearing on history, which you could have done well to avoid. Many valid and useful information that you have brought out here are lost in a non-sense lens that you used to decipher history. Don`t add feelings to history and neither be judgemental. History is a sensitive subject.
It`s only at the end that I found that you are mainly into advertising. And you did just that Mr. Murad. One solitary suggestion: ``please, stick to advertising, and leave history alone.
At the end of it all, one word kept coming to my mouth: ``NAMURAD``.
no regards, { let good thoughts come to you from all directions }
Pullu (hindu)
You seem to rejoice im many of the findings (many based on your own discovery) and you call it an unemotional look at history. Actually you have interpreted history here, just as you wanted it to be.
Like...
# Early Indians always ate beef..but these brahmins...
# ``Are (Shiv, Krishna, Ram, Lakshmi, Parvati, Saraswati, Ganga) or the concepts of reincarnation, Dharma, Karma, Ahimsa alien to the Vedas?``
How did you think this question bothered students of history all along?
Dharma,karma, himsa,ahimsa are all sanskrit wordds, hence Hindu in origin but Buddhism and Jainism advocated strong adherence to them.
# Ramayana, Mahabharata were great battles fought in Persia and documented and ``mythologised``
in India. Rama must have made a long voyage to Lanka{gawd!!!}. Do you need to discuss Rama`s character to tell us about Ancient Indian history?
# A baniya festival, a kshatriya festival or a shudra festival...what do you want to say..?
Do you need to discuss Babri Masjid when talking of Moghul history? Muslim invaders destroyed temples because they wanted to loot the wealth..? How simplistic. A few years from now you will say Taliban destroyed Buddha statues because they thought they would find huge amount of wealth in Buddha`s large belly. (sic...Murad your argument stinks..). Do not try to justify history Murad just as we (hindus) cannot justify babri masjid demolition. Indian Muslims are not responsible for the deeds of their ``ancestors`` and the conditions prevalent then.
If discussing Indian history meant discussing hinduism(buddhism, jainism..) and it`s evils then you should also have discussed Islam and thrown more light on it`s evils and life and character of Mohammed (now it might sound ridiculous to you).
You are not biased when you say that there is nothing wrong with Islam but only that the followers knew little islam....
# Just like Islam, Buddhism and Jainism are great simple religions unlike hinduism. Thanks for the concession Mr. Murad. To think that Buddhism,Jainism and Hinduism constitute the same people.
# ``Though some historians have given a strong communal colour to the torture and execution of Guru Arjan Dev, few know that his chief tormentor was no Muslim but a Hindu banker whose daughter Arjan had refused to marry to his son. Paradoxically his main defender was Mian Mir a Muslim divine``
{ another of your logic...that hindus were the cause for everything, basically sikhs and moghuls were bosom pals but for those brahmins... }
# Until the advent of the Turks and then more such tribes...India was in dark ages....and the sole reason for the cultural advancement of moghul india were the persians!!!!!!
You make me laugh Murad.
# Muslims are intolerant today because european powers rode to great heights and they(muslims) started living on past glory...{ Murad you are a genious SIR! }
There are many more issues you have touched which have no bearing on history, which you could have done well to avoid. Many valid and useful information that you have brought out here are lost in a non-sense lens that you used to decipher history. Don`t add feelings to history and neither be judgemental. History is a sensitive subject.
It`s only at the end that I found that you are mainly into advertising. And you did just that Mr. Murad. One solitary suggestion: ``please, stick to advertising, and leave history alone.
At the end of it all, one word kept coming to my mouth: ``NAMURAD``.
no regards, { let good thoughts come to you from all directions }
Pullu (hindu)
#123 Posted by veeresh on April 1, 2001 12:52:29 pm
In all this Murad bashing that is going on, I want to say one thing: I know that Murad actually gets on to the road by car, train, plane whatever and checks out the local traditions, the folklore, the geography . . . the unwritten but often ``sung`` histories passed down . . . and then comes to his hypo-thesis.
I think Murad`s conjectures or conclusions beat those by most of us thumping keyboards.
Then again, maybe I am wrong?
#124 Posted by ylh on April 1, 2001 1:46:26 pm
Amateur Historians do more harm to the cause of History than good... the guy looks like the most gullible of people in his photograph.
#125 Posted by friend on April 15, 2001 3:11:47 pm
After reading this ``scholarly article`` by Murad Ali Baig, one sad conclusion can easily be made.
If one has right political connections and rich dads, even a stupid person can become general manager of a company in India. On brighter side, it shows that claims of descrimination againsts Muslims are false. If even an idiot like Murad can become a GM, intelligent muslims can achieve much more.
If one has right political connections and rich dads, even a stupid person can become general manager of a company in India. On brighter side, it shows that claims of descrimination againsts Muslims are false. If even an idiot like Murad can become a GM, intelligent muslims can achieve much more.
#126 Posted by nhajra on April 19, 2001 9:06:36 pm
A Pakistani net-friend recently advised me to visit Chowk.com. This was my first visit. I`m already wondering if I should visit ever again. Reason: This article by Mr. Baig. I have nothing against this frustrated elederly gentleman. I`m surprised thought that the Chowk editor should ask a successful PR person to write serious articles on issues which even highly trained and venerated historians find difficult to handle.
My particular reference is to the articles last point: impact of independence. I`m shocked that Mr. Baig sees nothing - `no thing` - to say it in Jean Luc Goddard`s fashion - positive in independent India.
It is stupendous how he dismisses the neat result of world history`s most amazing struggles for freedom as `sudden empowerment of numerous interest groups`. He finds at least hundred years of freedom movement `sudden`.(and here I`m not even considering the numerous tribal and other grassroots uprisings before 1857, on which modern historians are putting increasing emphasis).
His sweeping comment that the British had no role in India`s impoverishment would put all modern British historians to shame. Clearly Mr.Baig has not the foggiest idea how colonialism operated in India in classical fashion. I suggest he does some reading on how the British purposefully interfered into the development of industrialization and the market in India. The second volume of the Cambridge Economic History of India (Habib & Roychaudhury) would be a good book to begin with.
That India has been able to preserve democracy as a political system despite all the poverty and hunger is no significance Mr.Baig? Remember how India`s illeterate millions thwarted Indira Gandhi`s effort to subvert democracy? Would he please stick his neck out a little, have a look around and tell us how many developing countries have a robust free media as India does? China? Pakistan? Sri Lanka? Afghanistan? The East European countries? The African nations? The Latin American states? Only last year I had an opportunity to interact face to face for three weeks with media specialists coming from 25 countries around the. All of us were between 30 & 40 years of age. We stayed together and became friends. This was in the US. I returned home a proud man, because our democracy matched the very best in the world.
Doesn`t Mr.Baig have any idea of the progress India has made in the fields of Science & Technology, Agriculture and medicine.
Yes, there have been failures. `Little victories and big defeats` -- to say in tune with Joan Baez. But let us not forget these very important victories, as we shouldn`t ignore the gravity of our failures either. Forty per cent of our people continue to hover around the poverty line. An ominous - but also artificial, I know for certain - storm of communal hatred is threatening to tear the country apart. Worst of all people are slowly losing faith in the judiciary: How can they not after the Narmada verdict. All this is true. Yet it will be worthwhile to remember for how many years developed countries like the US, Britain, Germany, France, Japan etc. have been independent of any long term foreign occupation. A comparison will surely show India`s independence in much better light than Mr. Baig tries to project.
As for the dear Editor(s) of Chowk.com, catering such articles will only widen the estrangement between the people of India and Pakistan. Simply because it`s based on a total misunderstanding of history. We have bled enough constantly hurt by the barbed wires of disinformation, hatred and mistrust. We can do without any more untruths.
NILANJAN HAJRA
CALCUTTA
WEST BENGAL
INDIA
My particular reference is to the articles last point: impact of independence. I`m shocked that Mr. Baig sees nothing - `no thing` - to say it in Jean Luc Goddard`s fashion - positive in independent India.
It is stupendous how he dismisses the neat result of world history`s most amazing struggles for freedom as `sudden empowerment of numerous interest groups`. He finds at least hundred years of freedom movement `sudden`.(and here I`m not even considering the numerous tribal and other grassroots uprisings before 1857, on which modern historians are putting increasing emphasis).
His sweeping comment that the British had no role in India`s impoverishment would put all modern British historians to shame. Clearly Mr.Baig has not the foggiest idea how colonialism operated in India in classical fashion. I suggest he does some reading on how the British purposefully interfered into the development of industrialization and the market in India. The second volume of the Cambridge Economic History of India (Habib & Roychaudhury) would be a good book to begin with.
That India has been able to preserve democracy as a political system despite all the poverty and hunger is no significance Mr.Baig? Remember how India`s illeterate millions thwarted Indira Gandhi`s effort to subvert democracy? Would he please stick his neck out a little, have a look around and tell us how many developing countries have a robust free media as India does? China? Pakistan? Sri Lanka? Afghanistan? The East European countries? The African nations? The Latin American states? Only last year I had an opportunity to interact face to face for three weeks with media specialists coming from 25 countries around the. All of us were between 30 & 40 years of age. We stayed together and became friends. This was in the US. I returned home a proud man, because our democracy matched the very best in the world.
Doesn`t Mr.Baig have any idea of the progress India has made in the fields of Science & Technology, Agriculture and medicine.
Yes, there have been failures. `Little victories and big defeats` -- to say in tune with Joan Baez. But let us not forget these very important victories, as we shouldn`t ignore the gravity of our failures either. Forty per cent of our people continue to hover around the poverty line. An ominous - but also artificial, I know for certain - storm of communal hatred is threatening to tear the country apart. Worst of all people are slowly losing faith in the judiciary: How can they not after the Narmada verdict. All this is true. Yet it will be worthwhile to remember for how many years developed countries like the US, Britain, Germany, France, Japan etc. have been independent of any long term foreign occupation. A comparison will surely show India`s independence in much better light than Mr. Baig tries to project.
As for the dear Editor(s) of Chowk.com, catering such articles will only widen the estrangement between the people of India and Pakistan. Simply because it`s based on a total misunderstanding of history. We have bled enough constantly hurt by the barbed wires of disinformation, hatred and mistrust. We can do without any more untruths.
NILANJAN HAJRA
CALCUTTA
WEST BENGAL
INDIA
#127 Posted by krashid on May 14, 2001 4:54:51 am
Mr. Baig
I spent my whole night reading your article 38 pages long.
It gave me some idea of Philosophies in India.
One point I need to clarify.
You have stated that Hadith is part of Koran.
How did you reach that conclusion.
I spent my whole night reading your article 38 pages long.
It gave me some idea of Philosophies in India.
One point I need to clarify.
You have stated that Hadith is part of Koran.
How did you reach that conclusion.
#128 Posted by wookie on May 16, 2001 10:13:33 am
i am surprised at teh ire in the soul that this article has caused. after all it is not as if murad ali baig has any standing as historian (a degree in history is not even near enough) or even commentator in india.
beyond cars, which he write on extensively, he has no credibility in the indian media.
right now i am sure mr baig must be fancing himself to be an intellectual under attack for these tirades against him! when he`s not even an intellectual to begin with. so dont credit him with this status.
I think he has exposed his ignorance enough in this article where purports to answers questions about indian and pakistani civilization (for they were the same till a 50 years ago)that serious historians are still working out. lets not give him more importance than he deserves.
beyond cars, which he write on extensively, he has no credibility in the indian media.
right now i am sure mr baig must be fancing himself to be an intellectual under attack for these tirades against him! when he`s not even an intellectual to begin with. so dont credit him with this status.
I think he has exposed his ignorance enough in this article where purports to answers questions about indian and pakistani civilization (for they were the same till a 50 years ago)that serious historians are still working out. lets not give him more importance than he deserves.
#130 Posted by Chowk Staff on May 22, 2001 4:11:39 am
The following response is from Murad Baig
Since my last reply on October 17th, there have been 22 responses. Most have been uncomplimentary and a few quite appreciative.
In `Unvarnished’, I had tried not to be dogmatic and had mainly attempted to make readers look out of the box of conventional history and folklore to consider many alternatives to the popular and sometimes dubious ideas about the Indian subcontinent’s varied past. I have sought to question these rather than assert that another point of view was correct.
I am VERY WILLING to stand corrected on any point where I may be in error. Actually the voluminous responses have often been very instructive and I will readily incorporate many corrections in my long overdue next draft.
Pullu may have a point in saying that the conclusions in this essay indicate a strong debt to Persia. Actually the full story of Persia’s huge contribution to the irrigation, buildings, arts, music, food, literature, language and culture of the Indian subcontinent has never been written. It hugely influenced not only India but also Arabia and West Asia.
Actually, but for the accident of Muhammad being born in Arabia, most of the wealth of its so-called Islamic culture were the contributions of the older civilisations of Babylon, Persia and Egypt. Even Sufiism predates Islam as the Persian `Sophists’ had been around even in Alexander’s time. Later they added many spiritual spins to orthodox Islam.
The Indian subcontinent has been subject to these and many other influences and has absorbed them to make them part of its own evolving ethos. Very little is absolutely original in any society and every country, including the aforementioned ones, develops its own elaborations that gradually becomes a part of its own culture. We can all be proud of our creations and need have no shame if some of the roots began elsewhere.
It is also true that there is some element of Brahmin bashing. But this is not anything personal against the Brahmins as a caste for they have also been praised as the keepers of knowledge and who have had a huge role in the shaping of our ethos. Positively they made major contributions to philosophy, literature and intellect. But it cannot be denied that they also erected and maintained an abhorrent caste system that was to be the downfall of the country.
I do not agree that the indigenous people of India were automatically Hindu. I believe that the earliest people in India, as in all lands, had no `religion’. They were then, as many I have met in the mountains and forests of India still are, simple worshippers of animistic spirits of mountains, rocks, streams, trees, etc. Deities with many local names. No priests no religion.
`Hinduism’ as a `religion’ needed Brahmin priests, the caste system, Vedic verses and rituals. And these too changed through the ages. Vedic deities like Indra and Nesatyas were superceded by the Puranic deities of Shiv and Vishnu that emerged in the declining years of Buddhism while the worship of Ram and Krishna only emerged during the declining years of Mughal rule.
Dharma, karma, himsa, ahimsa, etc., may be Sanskrit words but Sanskrit like all languages took loan words from and gave loan words to other earlier and later languages. Many self-proclaimed champions of India’s culture are surprisingly ignorant about India’s real Sanskriti. Many who complacently believe that Sanskrit is the mother of all languages would be horrified to know that before modern Sanskrit codified by Panini in the 4th century BC, there were still older Sanskrit languages that were the daughters of an even more ancient language similar to an extinct old Persian.
They would be shocked to learn that Devanagri, the script of modern Sanskrit, was India’s fifth script and that the earliest sacred writings were in Khoroshti that, like Persian was written from right to left. Then came Brahmi lipi. The oldest text in classical Sanskrit dates to Rudradaman, after the time of Christ, or four centuries after Ashoka’s inscriptions in Pali. Devanagri itself seems to have come from south India and had probably evolved from the older Akkadian and Sumerian cuneiform of ancient Babylon.
Language, culture, traditions and religion have never been constant. Even the word Hindu was not originally the name of a religion but just a geographical expression coined by the Persians to describe their 19th province of western India. All people living beyond the Indus or Sindhu were described as Hindu. By this definition every Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi is Hindu.
It was no different with Christianity or Islam that evolved over the generations and had many good and bad champions. These revealed religions and their champions have much to be proud of and ashamed of as well. These were evangalistic religions that strived to convert those who they considered unbelievers who needed to be saved from idolatory and ignorance. The pity is that some chauvinist Hindus today want to imitate their intolerance and aggressive evangalism.
I have never said that Hindus are weak/corrupt and that Muslims are smart/honest. No race or religion is good/bad per se and there are many examples of either. And I have no desire to go to Pakistani as I feel, despite many imperfections, that there is much greater freedom of thought in India.
Dost Mittar, I am not being an apologist for anyone. The arrogance and narrow intolerance of so many Muslim rulers, clerics and their followers is appalling. Tragically all religions are tolerant and magnanimous in their times of greatness and become narrow and intolerance with the bitterness that follows periods of their decline. Perhaps some of the well documented examples of such intolerance need to be highlighted.
I agree with most of Mojahirs observations and am grateful for his elaborations.
Ghulam is right that the early questions are simplistic but it is surprising how many people believe India was the oldest civilisation, that most Indians originated in India, and that the varnas were ordained by god, Sanskrit was the mother of all languages and that the Aryans originated in India, etc. I have merely tried to question such dogmatism and put such prejudices in a factual perspective.
The Golden Bough by James George Frazer is a classic defining the magical roots of all religions. All religions began with simple spirituality and died when they became overwhelmed by an excessive baggage of ritual and superstition.
Krashid is absolutely right. The Hadith is not part of the Koran but is usually read with it to interpret any point of theology.
Part of the problem was that Brahmins made common folklore into virtual scripture unlike the epic myths and legends of other great civilisations. So many Indians feel criticism of myth is a virtual assault on their culture. They even codified even sculpture, medicine and other basic crafts into sacred shastras. While these contain the collective wisdom of many centuries, they also killed individuality and creativity.
Thank you Smellycat for your elaboration on the Kashi Vishwanath temple. The example shows how there can be many reasons for destroying temples and that myth and history are sometimes hard to separate. In fact there are many contradictions in Aurangzeb’s fairly well documented history. He was much more pragmatic and tolerant in the early part of his reign and even endowed some 36 temples including one at Chitrakoot that I visited three months ago. In his last bitter years, in what began as a fight against the Shia rulers of Golkonda and Bijapur, he stayed in the Deccan and alienated almost all his old allies including the Rajputs and stirred up the rebellions of the Marathas and Sikhs. During this period, many temples were demolished not only on his orders but even by some of his Hindu Amirs who thought it bring them Imperial favour.
Ghazni’s temple (and palace) destruction seems to have been almost entirely motivated by loot. His annual excursions reached many different rich targets from 1000 AD. A city near Peshawar in 1001, Bhatia on the Jhelum, a Muslim city in Multan. A great citadel and temple in Kangra in 1008 in whose vaults, the Shahis had accumulated 180 kilos of gold, 2 tonnes of silver, other booty valued at 70 million dirhams and a complete house of silver. Thanesar followed in 1010 ``with plunder impossible to recount``. Mathura followed in 1018 and Kanauj the following year. Muhammad returned with 20 million dirhams, 53,000 slaves and 350 elephants. He only targeted Somnath in 1025 where a reported 50,000 devotees allowed themselves to be slaughtered. The booty was so huge that his armies staggered back with great difficulty facing raiding bandits on the way. He was no religious fanatic and even had a Hindu army fight his Muslim rivals in Central Asia. He died in 1030.
It is difficult to be absolutely objective in history. Many facts can be disputed and even with these several different theories can be sincerely held. There are also many myths that breed prejudice and discord.
I do not wish to either praise or condemn anyone and have tried to avoid taking hard positions but to pose interesting and plausible counterpoints to some conventional ideas. I have attempted to challenge the socially damaging preconceived prejudices held by so many and stimulate some freethinking about our origins, religion, culture and history. The strong reactions confirm that many readers may also need to open their own minds. I am happy to have generated considerable intelligent response and also sorry if I have upset anyone.
Since my last reply on October 17th, there have been 22 responses. Most have been uncomplimentary and a few quite appreciative.
In `Unvarnished’, I had tried not to be dogmatic and had mainly attempted to make readers look out of the box of conventional history and folklore to consider many alternatives to the popular and sometimes dubious ideas about the Indian subcontinent’s varied past. I have sought to question these rather than assert that another point of view was correct.
I am VERY WILLING to stand corrected on any point where I may be in error. Actually the voluminous responses have often been very instructive and I will readily incorporate many corrections in my long overdue next draft.
Pullu may have a point in saying that the conclusions in this essay indicate a strong debt to Persia. Actually the full story of Persia’s huge contribution to the irrigation, buildings, arts, music, food, literature, language and culture of the Indian subcontinent has never been written. It hugely influenced not only India but also Arabia and West Asia.
Actually, but for the accident of Muhammad being born in Arabia, most of the wealth of its so-called Islamic culture were the contributions of the older civilisations of Babylon, Persia and Egypt. Even Sufiism predates Islam as the Persian `Sophists’ had been around even in Alexander’s time. Later they added many spiritual spins to orthodox Islam.
The Indian subcontinent has been subject to these and many other influences and has absorbed them to make them part of its own evolving ethos. Very little is absolutely original in any society and every country, including the aforementioned ones, develops its own elaborations that gradually becomes a part of its own culture. We can all be proud of our creations and need have no shame if some of the roots began elsewhere.
It is also true that there is some element of Brahmin bashing. But this is not anything personal against the Brahmins as a caste for they have also been praised as the keepers of knowledge and who have had a huge role in the shaping of our ethos. Positively they made major contributions to philosophy, literature and intellect. But it cannot be denied that they also erected and maintained an abhorrent caste system that was to be the downfall of the country.
I do not agree that the indigenous people of India were automatically Hindu. I believe that the earliest people in India, as in all lands, had no `religion’. They were then, as many I have met in the mountains and forests of India still are, simple worshippers of animistic spirits of mountains, rocks, streams, trees, etc. Deities with many local names. No priests no religion.
`Hinduism’ as a `religion’ needed Brahmin priests, the caste system, Vedic verses and rituals. And these too changed through the ages. Vedic deities like Indra and Nesatyas were superceded by the Puranic deities of Shiv and Vishnu that emerged in the declining years of Buddhism while the worship of Ram and Krishna only emerged during the declining years of Mughal rule.
Dharma, karma, himsa, ahimsa, etc., may be Sanskrit words but Sanskrit like all languages took loan words from and gave loan words to other earlier and later languages. Many self-proclaimed champions of India’s culture are surprisingly ignorant about India’s real Sanskriti. Many who complacently believe that Sanskrit is the mother of all languages would be horrified to know that before modern Sanskrit codified by Panini in the 4th century BC, there were still older Sanskrit languages that were the daughters of an even more ancient language similar to an extinct old Persian.
They would be shocked to learn that Devanagri, the script of modern Sanskrit, was India’s fifth script and that the earliest sacred writings were in Khoroshti that, like Persian was written from right to left. Then came Brahmi lipi. The oldest text in classical Sanskrit dates to Rudradaman, after the time of Christ, or four centuries after Ashoka’s inscriptions in Pali. Devanagri itself seems to have come from south India and had probably evolved from the older Akkadian and Sumerian cuneiform of ancient Babylon.
Language, culture, traditions and religion have never been constant. Even the word Hindu was not originally the name of a religion but just a geographical expression coined by the Persians to describe their 19th province of western India. All people living beyond the Indus or Sindhu were described as Hindu. By this definition every Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi is Hindu.
It was no different with Christianity or Islam that evolved over the generations and had many good and bad champions. These revealed religions and their champions have much to be proud of and ashamed of as well. These were evangalistic religions that strived to convert those who they considered unbelievers who needed to be saved from idolatory and ignorance. The pity is that some chauvinist Hindus today want to imitate their intolerance and aggressive evangalism.
I have never said that Hindus are weak/corrupt and that Muslims are smart/honest. No race or religion is good/bad per se and there are many examples of either. And I have no desire to go to Pakistani as I feel, despite many imperfections, that there is much greater freedom of thought in India.
Dost Mittar, I am not being an apologist for anyone. The arrogance and narrow intolerance of so many Muslim rulers, clerics and their followers is appalling. Tragically all religions are tolerant and magnanimous in their times of greatness and become narrow and intolerance with the bitterness that follows periods of their decline. Perhaps some of the well documented examples of such intolerance need to be highlighted.
I agree with most of Mojahirs observations and am grateful for his elaborations.
Ghulam is right that the early questions are simplistic but it is surprising how many people believe India was the oldest civilisation, that most Indians originated in India, and that the varnas were ordained by god, Sanskrit was the mother of all languages and that the Aryans originated in India, etc. I have merely tried to question such dogmatism and put such prejudices in a factual perspective.
The Golden Bough by James George Frazer is a classic defining the magical roots of all religions. All religions began with simple spirituality and died when they became overwhelmed by an excessive baggage of ritual and superstition.
Krashid is absolutely right. The Hadith is not part of the Koran but is usually read with it to interpret any point of theology.
Part of the problem was that Brahmins made common folklore into virtual scripture unlike the epic myths and legends of other great civilisations. So many Indians feel criticism of myth is a virtual assault on their culture. They even codified even sculpture, medicine and other basic crafts into sacred shastras. While these contain the collective wisdom of many centuries, they also killed individuality and creativity.
Thank you Smellycat for your elaboration on the Kashi Vishwanath temple. The example shows how there can be many reasons for destroying temples and that myth and history are sometimes hard to separate. In fact there are many contradictions in Aurangzeb’s fairly well documented history. He was much more pragmatic and tolerant in the early part of his reign and even endowed some 36 temples including one at Chitrakoot that I visited three months ago. In his last bitter years, in what began as a fight against the Shia rulers of Golkonda and Bijapur, he stayed in the Deccan and alienated almost all his old allies including the Rajputs and stirred up the rebellions of the Marathas and Sikhs. During this period, many temples were demolished not only on his orders but even by some of his Hindu Amirs who thought it bring them Imperial favour.
Ghazni’s temple (and palace) destruction seems to have been almost entirely motivated by loot. His annual excursions reached many different rich targets from 1000 AD. A city near Peshawar in 1001, Bhatia on the Jhelum, a Muslim city in Multan. A great citadel and temple in Kangra in 1008 in whose vaults, the Shahis had accumulated 180 kilos of gold, 2 tonnes of silver, other booty valued at 70 million dirhams and a complete house of silver. Thanesar followed in 1010 ``with plunder impossible to recount``. Mathura followed in 1018 and Kanauj the following year. Muhammad returned with 20 million dirhams, 53,000 slaves and 350 elephants. He only targeted Somnath in 1025 where a reported 50,000 devotees allowed themselves to be slaughtered. The booty was so huge that his armies staggered back with great difficulty facing raiding bandits on the way. He was no religious fanatic and even had a Hindu army fight his Muslim rivals in Central Asia. He died in 1030.
It is difficult to be absolutely objective in history. Many facts can be disputed and even with these several different theories can be sincerely held. There are also many myths that breed prejudice and discord.
I do not wish to either praise or condemn anyone and have tried to avoid taking hard positions but to pose interesting and plausible counterpoints to some conventional ideas. I have attempted to challenge the socially damaging preconceived prejudices held by so many and stimulate some freethinking about our origins, religion, culture and history. The strong reactions confirm that many readers may also need to open their own minds. I am happy to have generated considerable intelligent response and also sorry if I have upset anyone.
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