Politics Of Indian History -2

[acharya]

AUTHORS: Great universality



By Dr Muhammad Reza Kazimi


Romila Thapar, the pre-eminent historian of India, recently visited Pakistan to participate in the Karachi International Book Fair. She is the Professor Emeritus of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and Fellow of the British Academy. Romila Thapar is a prolific writer who has viewed the human past from various angles. Some of her works include The History of India (1966), Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (1997) Cultural Pasts (2000) and History and Beyond (2000). The remarkable thing about her is her interpretation, analysis and a completely unclouded horizon in her works. Some of the themes should be familiar to the readers.

The great chronicler Tabari began his monumental History of the Prophets and Kings with a treatise on time. Modern theories of history have been categorized as linear, cyclic or chaotic, the last of which means that history does not allow generalizations. Cyclic theories are popularly known through the works of Ibn Khaldun, Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. It is not in the context of the rise and fall of civilization that Romila Thapar explains what is linear and what is cyclic. Her analyses are a result of greater abstractions and greater universality.

Her monograph, Time as a Metaphor of History, has both great conceptual and expository value and summarizing her views is an onerous responsibility. For example, she talks about two important things in her book: (1) change plus progress is equal to linear time; (2) cyclic time was seen as diametrically opposite to linear time and was associated with dialectical change.

The last sentence is meant to question European historians. Dr Thapar introduces the concept of cyclic time in relation to the Hindu and Buddhist concepts of time. This has been further associated with karma and the need to escape from the cycle of rebirth. She charts the course of the cycles in terms of metaphysical notions of time. “A series of such cycles would deem to take the shape of a spiral, and if the spiral is stretched, it approximates a more linear form.”

For every phase of early Indian history, Dr Thapar offers us insight based on the most thorough and meticulous research

Relating the cyclic to the linear is a cognitive process and she traces the steps of cognition. Astronomers calculated time and conceptualized it. Concepts of time integrated with ideas on creation go into the making of what may be called cosmological time. “Space is also projected where the universe is measured by a rope signifying speed.” From the cognitive, Romila Thapar takes us to the speculative level: “Time, it is sometimes projected as a deity”, “Time was a creator begetting heaven and earth, and that which was, and that which shall be”, “Time could be the ultimate cause”. This is a concept which parallels that of Stephen Hawkins. Nor should we be surprised that mythology, even though subject to higher criticism, should lead us to the threshold of logic. This abstraction attracts mainly because the theory is related to the practice of history and she concludes her treatise by saying: “This is not an exercise in intellectual curiosity. I have tried to argue that even concepts of time in early India, as read by scholars, need to be interpreted afresh.”

For every phase of early Indian history, Dr Thapar offers us insight based on the most thorough and meticulous research. But before we list these, we need to cover another theoretical aspect of history which concerns all historians, most particularly those on either side of the South Asian divide, that is, ideology. In Interpreting Early India, she says “The relating of ideology to historical study is a bifocal situation where the frame of reference provided by the analysis of ideology remains the distant view, while theoretical explanation of the data indicates the nearer reading.”

Romila Thapar has had to contend with both ideology and theory in the debate about the origin and impact of the Aryans. After first outlining Max Muller’s theory that the speakers of Indo-Aryans had their original home in Central Asia, and spoke a language which was not yet Sanskrit or Greek, she takes up the theory of Colonel Olcott who maintained that Aryans were indigenous to India and were also the progenitors of the European civilization. (Cultural Pasts)

Romila Thapar’s considered view is: “Although the earlier notion of a systematic destruction of Harappan sites by Aryan invades has been questioned by archaeological evidence, this does not allow us to maintain that the speakers of Indo-Aryans were indigenous to India.” Nor does the evidence support the identification of Vedic culture with Harappan culture (because Harappan culture was urban and Vedic culture was rural). (Cultural Pasts)

In tracing the evolution of Indian states, Dr Thapar posits a lineage system which preceded state formation. She finds evidence of lineage systems in the Vedic Age. According to her, lineage is a corporate group of unilineal kin with a formalized system of authority. (From Lineage to State) The state is defined as “a collection of specialized agencies and institutions which help in maintaining an order of stratification. (Ibid) She calls the lineage system a crucial stage because initially territorial sovereignty or the delineation of boundaries did not play a central role. Lineage became the legal sanction and regulated the activities of its members. (Ibid)

In the Indian situation, a lineage society gave shape to the caste system. (Ibid) Coming to the Age of Epics, Dr Thapar first traces their earlier versions and then observes that, “Idealized characters are seldom the gods but rather the heroes who occupy centre stage while the gods remain in the wings”. (Ibid)

In her interpretation of the role of Jainism, and Buddhism, she describes their relation to state power. “The movement towards hierarchical vertical authority was mitigated by the countervailing presence of the renouncer and the charisma attached to them. (Interpreting Early India) She further asserts that since Jainism and Buddhism rose as a counter culture, they had a clearer sense of their historical purpose. The influence of Jainism and Buddhism was most obvious when Chandragupta Maurya became a Jain, (Bindusara became associated with Ajivikas) and Asoka became a Buddhist.

In Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Romila Thapar dealt with the first imperial dynasty in detail. She came back to this dynasty especially when she based her study on Asoka’s inscriptions to determine his relation with Buddhism. She points out, most pertinently, that it is rare in Indian history to have access to personalized edicts. She asserts that Shramana (that is, non-Brahmin) ideologies were prevalent and popular in the Maurya milieu. Hence what Asoka was exposed to was not heterodoxy, but current ideologies. (Cultural Pasts) She cites the Major Rock Edict as evidence that Asoka went to the Bodhi tree, 10 years after he had been consecrated, and the Nigalisagar Pillar as recording Asoka’s enlargement of the Konakamana Stupa. The significance of both acts highlight the historical aspects of Buddhism.

The Mauryan dynasty represented the Shramana persuasions, though what persuasion is posited by Kautilya needs to be determined. The Gupta dynasty saw the flowering of Hindu culture. On the question of nationalism and its treatment of Gupta history, she is of the opinion that the early readings of Gupta history were influenced by the idea of cultural nationalism of the 20th century. However, her lecture on Sakuntala shows that she has not actually neglected this phase of Indian history.

Romila Thapar’s engagement with history is epic. She is as outspoken as she is erudite. Her following words record not only her struggle but the struggle of all historians who need to be heard: “When cultural traditions seek legitimacy from history, thereby imprinting themselves on the perception of the present, and are used as building blocks in the construction of contemporary identities, then the voice of the historian has perforce to be heard.”


Reza Kazimi Professor Thapar, you are a living legend as a historian. Following your eulogy of D.D. Kosambi, how would you describe your contribution?

Romila Thapar: D.D. Kosambi has been a major intellectual influence on my thinking about early Indian history as he has been on many in my generation of historians. I do not necessarily agree with his final generalizations but I have been impressed by the kinds of questions he posed to the data and his use of extensive evidence.

RK: You argue that Jains and Buddhists being dissidents had a clearer sense of their historical purpose. (History and Beyond) Didn’t the transition from Indra-centred worship to Shiva-centred worship also involve some dissent?

RT: A sense of historical purpose implies that there can be dissent from existing explanations. Buddhism and Jainism being ideologies based on a historical founder and functioning through a system of institutions — the Sangha and monasteries — had a clearer sense of historical purpose in human activities than many of their contemporary schools of philosophy.

RK: Does Asoka’s enlargement of the Stupa of Konakamana imply greater antiquity for Buddhism? (Cultural Pasts)

RT: The activities of Asoka in relation to Buddhism are important not only for shedding light on Asoka’s policies as well as the teachings of the Buddha, but also because they establish the historicity of Buddhism. His marking the birthplace of the Buddha at Lumbini and enlarging the Konakamana Stupa are indications of these.

RK: Do you see a relation between the mythology of Indian creeds and the sophistication of Indian philosophy?

RT: There is always a relation between mythology and philosophy, but not at the literal level at which it is often treated. Mythology encapsulates beliefs and thus attempts to provide an explanation for them at the popular level. Philosophy goes much further in questioning beliefs or confirming beliefs but through a sophisticated intellectual process of analysis. So the relationship is not absolute, it is tenuous. Also it extends to only some myths and their treatment in philosophies.

RK: You follow D.D. Kosambi in holding that “Far from the Guptas reviving nationalism, it was nationalism which revived the Guptas (History and Beyond). Two questions arise from this: firstly under what structure could nationalism make the Guptas its instrument? Secondly, if nationalism was a force stronger than the rulers, do you include religion as part of that nationalism?

RT: Nationalism has to be understood as an entirely modern phenomenon. It arises with the modernization of structures, as we are witnessing today in many parts of the world. Therefore nationalism constructs its ideology in part by using early history and giving it an interpretation that supports its own modern ideology.

The Guptas were seen as rulers who supported a Hindu revival by those nationalists who were influenced by religious nationalism. The need to emphasize the “Golden Age” of the Guptas was in part a legacy of the colonial views of Indian history; the periodization of James Mill of dividing Indian history into the Hindu, Muslim and British periods; and the emphasis of Orientalism on the revival of Hinduism in the Gupta period, after a long period of Buddhist dominance. Religion is not a necessary part of nationalism but it is often introduced for political reasons as, for instance, in the two-nation theory of pre-1947 which was supported by certain groups of Muslim and Hindu politicians.

The treatment of the Gupta period as a “Golden Age” of Hindu revival has been questioned by a number of historians. There is now a far more realistic assessment of this period.