History Avengers:
India at a crossroads
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History is someone’s narration of the events of the past, relative to a group of people at a geographically identifiable expanse of land on earth. Recent history, however, may be a reflection, supported by evidence, rather than a narration. In either case, the subjective element in “observation” is never absent. In other words, history as a subject of education is neither fact nor fiction and certainly not a foundation on which to build the edifice of a nation’s aspirations.
My centerpiece in this discussion is the history of India, the expanse of which is as it is told in epics such as Ramayana, extracted from archeology such as Mohenjo-Daro, discerned from the socio-religious classics such as the Vedas, witnessed by travelers such as Megasthenes, Fa-Hien, Al-Biruni, and Vasco de Gama, penned by modern historians such as Elphinstone, Will Durant, Bhandarkar, Majumdar or by those contemporary Indian history writers, who are revisiting history with a view to weaponize it to support their political agenda.
The common man sees history only that is highlighted and what is taught in schools from written textbooks. What other source of information could there possibly be? So, when the consciousness of history lights up in mind, one sees the beginning as the first battle of Panipat between Alexander, the invader and Porus, the defender and from then on, a series of invading armies: Arabs along the Makran coast, the Central Asians pouring through the Khyber Pass and later, the sea faring Europeans landing on the Malabar and Coromandel coast, spring up on the screen. The fire of nationalistic and religious sensitivities is kindled and the emotions of victimhood and anger against the vicious invader flares. The specifics remain out of sight and are rendered irrelevant. For instance, the invasion of Sindh by Mohammad Bin Qasim in the year 708 AD was caused by an attack on and looting of eight Arab ships by the pirates: the Sea Hawks of Debal and the imprisonment of many Sri Lankan Muslim men and women and the refusal of the raja of Sindh: Dahir to intervene. The fact that the battles were fought between Raja Dahir on one side and Arabs, Jats and Medes of India on the other side is shrouded by willful concealment. Likewise, the specifics of engagements for other conflicts, if mentioned objectively, alter their portrayals. One may look at history from a worm’s-eye-view or from a bird’s-eye-view. The two pictures will tell two different stories.
It must be kept in mind that the dynamics of human civilizations have two vectors: one arrow points inward and the other outward. The population moves according to the pressure differential (social and economic) between two sites. Take the Indian subcontinent for instance. It is a triangular piece of land surrounded by oceans on three sides and mighty Himalayas in the north, which are almost unsurpassable; there are a couple of passes on the northwestern side. The subcontinent is nurtured by several rivers, which are divine. The Rigveda speaks of Septa Sindhva (seven rivers), not including the rivers in South India. This makes the Indian subcontinent, an island of unprecedented riches, the envy of all the contemporary civilizations. Civilizations like this are sedentary civilizations. In the east there was and still is the equally well-developed Chinese civilization, which is also sedentary. Beyond the Hindukush mountains in the northwest, are vast open acres of barren lands and steppes, inhabited by nomadic people, with hardened lifestyle, always ready to move on the horse back. Since they are not bound to the land, nor to the riches, houses, farms and civic responsibility, they can muster enormous manpower and ride off at short notice. The sedentary people cannot be mobilized that easy and therefore suffer defeat when attacked by hordes of invaders. Thus, history has, time and again, repeated itself in India, when Indians were assailed from Central Asia under high pressure. Religion or belief system plays but a small part in such dynamics. Aryans (the present majority population in India), Scythians, Hephthalites, Kidarites (collectively called as Huns), the Iranians, the Turks, the Mongols and the Mughals; they all moved into India with ease, with the wind of history at their back. On the other hand, look at the map and see why movement in the other direction could not have happened. Much as the physical barriers were prohibitive, movement from sedentary community, settled on the banks of great rivers, into nomadic wilderness did not make sense because the reason for conquest is always either settlement or loot.
Killings, slaughter, pillage, slavery; they are all historical byproducts of conquests, which are historically perpetrated by the victors on the vanquished. (The latest examples are the two world wars of the Twentieth century). Genghis Khan was no more wicked than Asoka in Kalinga. Hitler was no more evil than the White Man in Americas. No side was more murderous than the other in the Panjab of 1947. Indonesia (1967), Sabra and Shatila (1982) and Srebrenica (1995) are other examples. Kindness, compassion, viciousness, wickedness is all in the human DNA. Each trait can come to the fore when incited, superposed on the rest. There is a duality of good and bad in human nature, each manifesting itself independently, suppressing the opposite when measured.
An increasingly popular narrative in the Indian media today is that Muslims in general and Muslim rulers in particular committed atrocities on Hindus, destroyed their institutions and demolished their temples, when they ruled India in the pre-modern period. This allegation can neither be confirmed nor refuted categorically since no data exists. It will not be logical to say that none of this happened. However, the scale and the magnitude of the “catastrophe” that is imagined is false. Why? Take an aerial view of the country today. What do you see? You see millions of temples, masjids, churches and gurudwaras, some side by side. Where you see the Taj Mahal and Qutubminar, there you also see the magnificent Kashi, Badrinath, Kameswaram, Meenakshi, Golden and thousands of other big and small temples, all built before independence. Where you see minarets and domes, you also see shikharas, with perfect symmetry and mathematical perfection, rising above the mandapas (the inner sanctums of temples). Also, scattered among them, you see pagodas and churches. Who has painted this unique and incomparable beauty of diversity on the canvas of geography? Where was the iconoclasm that was supposedly innate to the Islamic rule? After all, seven centuries was a long enough period to repaint the canvas!
Somnath may have been looted and the gold and silver taken out of India by Mahmood of Ghazni, but thousands of others stand tall magnificently, without a brick missing. The same for masjids. The Babri Masjid was notoriously sacked and demolished by hate mongers, but hundreds and thousands stand deep in the thicket of Hindu-Muslim populations, with adhan sounding from each one five times a day, all without a murmur from non-Muslims, at least as it was in the pre-Hindutva period.
I grew up in India until the age of Twenty-eight, some of which spent under Muslim rule and the rest in independent India. I never witnessed any masjid or temple demolished, although there were disputations and distances between Hindus and Muslims. There was segmented habitation and prejudicial behavior. Was it abnormal between two subcultures in the perspective of universal behavior? I think not, because the default position in such matter ranges from indifference to reservation until the ice is broken by friendly initiatives. Hands do not meet until someone extends one.
India today is fifth largest economy in the world and if the present growth rate is maintained, it is destined to become the most populous country in the world and the second or third largest economy. This did not happen overnight. The foundation was laid by Jawahar Lal Nehru and his team during the early years of independence. The infrastructure, inherited from the British, was expanded with generous aid from both the Eastern and the Western bloc, made possible by thoughtful foreign and domestic policies. The emphasis was on heavy industries rather than on consumer goods. People’s lifestyle was at first, austere as required by “the Socialist pattern of society”. It endured. The planning commission was created, headed by Professor Mahalanobis. Higher education was expanded by creating the University Grants Commission, that was headed by Dr. Deshmukh. Several highly prestigious technical colleges were established IITs (Indian Institute of Technology), in different cities in different regions of the country. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research with specific research centers all over the country, was expanded and strengthened. (I myself worked in one of such institutions). Its first Indian director general was Dr. S. S. Bhatnagar. So, when Narsimha Rao, the ninth prime minister of India took over in 1991 and appointed Manmohan Singh as finance minister to liberalize the economy, he had a robust foundation to build upon. The rest is history.
I left India in 1961 and have lived in Europe and America since. When I read and hear about the present political, moral and intellectual ethos in the country of my origin, I fail to recognize it. How can all that I saw and felt then, change so dramatically? That intellectualism, that scientific inquisitiveness, that artistic creativeness, that philosophical Peripatetics, those scholars, those poets, those mystics --- where have they all gone? Have they been exiled like in Germany of 1930s? Are the universities and the institutes of technology producing computer dummies, no better than programmed robots? The head of government, his ministers talk as though they were coming straight from the local akharas and have never seen the face of a teacher. I mentioned Germany of the Thirties. When I go back to edit my remark, I find to my horror that I cannot. This is exactly what had happened to Germany, with her great intellectual minds, made barren during the Nazi rule.
Today, the prime agenda of the ruling BJP party, together with its mother organization RSS, is to exact revenge from the Muslim citizens, whom they consider to be the vestiges of their “shameful past”. First, in that “shameful” past, India was the richest country in the world, with the GDP, one quarter of the rest of the world. This had motivated all the seafaring nations of Europe to take to the high seas trying to reach the Indian shores. This had incentivized Columbus to sail west and discover the New World, whose GDP is now at the top. This had prompted the Portuguese to build ships large enough to circumnavigate the continent of Africa. This had set the Dutch on the path to sail to the East Indies and profit profusely from the spice trade. This was how shameful it was to be living in Hindustan and being called a Hindu. The purely Hindu Hindustan would have been an interesting country, but I submit, the multi religious and multicultural triangle beneath the Himalayas was a gem that glittered to the envy of the world.
Second, the Modi clique is standing on the shoulders of giants, who gave India this stature, including Gandhi and Nehru and are determined to demolish their pedestals. This will not endear. Gandhi, Nehru and a plethora of intellectuals and visionaries were the heralders of enlightenment in the Indian society, whereas what we see today are the demons of darkness who are casting their shadows on the brightness that was set to illumine the landscape. Modi and his partners represent ignorance, not education, which must be the hallmark of the Indian society. So, India today is standing at a crossroads. One way leads to a glorious future, which is only a few steps away and the other to ignominy. Which one will the nation choose?
Waheeduddin Ahmed
January 2023
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