The shifting of the ideas of India territorially and historically examined in the text shakes the complacency about our idea of the nation, the false notion of Indian culture as a monolithic entity. The idea of India as determined by economics, language, culture at various junctures in the history of what we now call India is discussed, in this brief conversation, counterintuitively as Gayatri Spivak prefers all discussions to be.

The idea of India has evolved at different junctures in history and is mostly territorial and shifting. Even the name Aryavarta is not one well defined space, it keeps shifting. It is as diverse as diverse can be. It is not until the 1920s when according to Romila Thapar the idea of India that had been amorphous, saw the beginnings of an ‘ idea’ emerging as what we now call India.

Both of them are skeptical of ‘ideas’. Spivak teaches literature and speaks in metaphors. She feels the idea is like a lid which too often solidifies the entire diversity of thought systems into an unidentifiable mass and one cannot separate the each unique India after it has become the Idea of India. Edward Said had called it an Orientalist discovery of India which the progressive elites identified with.

Thapar thinks most people identify with the culture at the top when they say “I am an Indian”: “I see this as a heritage of the colonial view of India and Indian culture: the two nation theory underlined the perspectives on culture and theory as devolving from the Hindu and Muslim communities in a strictly religious sense. Looking beyond the elite was thought to be unnecessary. “: the Muslim India and the Hindu India. Thapar stresses that during the time of the national movement we did not endorse the Hindu Rashtra idea or claim that Hindu has primacy as a citizen.

The India after independence was conceived as a society that would be reasonably equal: every citizen enjoying the same privileges. Our economic plan that focused on state industrialization, employment, rural development to create an equal society, pay no attention to caste and religion, the plurality of which were determinants of Indian culture, observes Thapar. Spivak gives a nuanced description of how she as a young expatriate in the US found India. India to the diasporics was an unreal version of what it really was. “At that point in time (1987) it had already become important for us not to acknowledge the diasporic image of India as India as a minority in the US, sometimes even a white- identified, good affirmative action minority.” She goes on to point out how in the democratic India the largest sector of the electorate, the landless illiterates have no idea of India at all. The idea of India as non- idea.

Thapar, when she pins the idea of India as a coherent India in the 1920s, is not imagining a single idea but “the opening out of possible ways of looking at these ideas, why they happen, what the consequences were “. The idea of India conceived by the anti-colonial national movement, the idea of India ( un)conceived by the diasporics, and the idea of India that is determined by cultural differences, religion and language. Attending to the interlinkages between economics, culture and religion is what they both seem concerned about. Spivak quotes Marx,” the content of the 19th century revolutions will come from the poetry of the future”.

They discuss the matter of Indian culture as conceived and practiced by the Indian middle class abroad and Thapar says” much of what one might call cultural or religious attitudes of the diaspora tend to have a very direct influence on the middle class here”. Spivak thinks there is a certain kind of unexamined unity coming in among the radical diaspora and she believes this solidarity is extremely frightening. Spivak thinks that India is a multi everything place which is ignored by Indians abroad. Spivak’s take on religion is both poetic and philosophic: one must make it a practice not to think of one’s own identity as the national identity.

Spivak’s take on religion is both poetic and philosophic: one must make it a practice not to think of one’s own identity as the national identity. “I don’t even know whether one should think ‘India’ but if one does, one should think about Indians who do not resemble one at all” and mix it up as a Hindu girl seeking blessings of a Muslim saint as an unconscious gesture or accepting ‘Assalamualaikum’ as an Indian way of greeting just as Namaste is, so that somehow we begin to think not only of our own identity as the Indian identity.

The two nation theory actually evolved from an elite perspective so Spivak points to the cultural differentiation that is more significant than class and caste. That the obsession with economic development did not pay much attention to language and religion, which is the cultural articulation of the nation, has apparently done much damage.

Question of economic growth is not merely Garibi Hatao but also social inclusion. The discussion elaborates on social inclusion, linking it to education, how it helps in questioning rather than it just being learning and knowledge. The focus now is not just on what the idea of India is but who has an idea of India. The discussion dwells on regional language and English: whether reading books in English might help in critical thinking. As in a conversation one often re-forms one’s thinking- Thapar reflects “it’s not true of every local language perhaps, there are people that are more analytical who are writing but I think that input from a different kind of intellectual tradition is always a very worthwhile input.”

Complex questions regarding language and its status are asked in the text. The content of Education depends on who is controlling the content and who is financing education especially in a so-called secular state, two things, the content of education and civil laws are very important factors in the creation of India, the identity of the Indian and the kind of society one looks forward to. Regarding the uniform civil code which Thapar suggests in the question “Isn’t it time that we removed all individual laws of caste and religion?” Spivak asks who are the’ we’ which emphasizes the relevance of political interests in the defining of uniform civil code.

Suggesting detranscendentalizing so that one conceives of religiosity as working even at the grassroots level, she points out, this can happen when religion is not mobilized politically. She relates an incident where she was eating Kurban meat with Bangladeshi Muslim women; they were poor and did not often get to eat meat. They were kind enough to worry about her as an upper caste Hindu eating meat. She says, “They are protecting my religion.” She explains that sometimes the self righteous missionary zeal in not teaching Christian scriptures to the natives, because they won’t understand the value of being taught the right way, is not actually access to secular education. She says that a certain kind of class mobility actually puts the lid on religious cultures. The emphasis is on who the decision makers, the ‘we’, are. As long as you had a reasonably secular state it was possible to have the content of Education not controlled by the strength and importance of local religious organizations.

A very pertinent observation regarding development that Spivak makes is “Development is insertion into the circuit of capital, without any kind of training as to how to manage it. Forget the training to use capital for social ends: opening of Swayam Nirbhar bank accounts without the knowledge of how to open and manage them.” This is where ideas of development and language within development become significant.

Thapar’s anxiety about cultures turning too inward looking and turning into one language communities without access to other cultures is answered by Spivak’s observation that the aboriginals that she has been associated with since 1986 were multilinguals, oblivious of the fact that they were. The Mundas and Oraons were also using each other’s language. She says this dialectical continuity; this multi-linguality on the surface is like the ecology of forests. Linguists are now acknowledging that those unwritten languages which we want to preserve are completely dialectically continuous, very multi lingual. Thapar worries about the absence of a comprehensive perception, thinking in totalities of economic growth, religion, education, language, law. She feels these interlinkages, fundamental to a society are nonexistent in the present. Whereas Spivak feels that success will come in other ways without the progressive bourgeois ideas of building societies.

Though this book was published in a bold move by the Seagull publishers in 2024, this conversation happened in 2017, emphasizing the visionary muscle of the text.

(Professor Zahira Rahman taught literature for 25 years, occasionally writes poetry, does translations and paints in watercolours and oil. She holds a PhD in Theatre Education.)

Courtesy: https://theaidem.com

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Noted historian Romila Thapar, along with four other intellectuals, Prabhat Patnaik, Devaki Jain, Maja Daruwala and Satish Deshpande, who had requested the Supreme Court of India to order a probe into the arrest of the human rights activists arrested in the Bhima Koregaon, has now written to the Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray expressing concern about their ongoing incarceration especially and demanding that they be placed under house arrest during the Covid-19 crisis.

In September 2018, Thapar and others had requested for a court-monitored probe into the arrests of these human rights activists saying that the arrests had been done arbitrarily, without evidence and were an attempt to stifle dissent. However, their petition was rejected through a majority 2-1 verdict.

Rights activists and lawyers – Varavara Rao, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bhardwaj, Sudhir Dhawale, Gautam Navlakha and Anand Teltumbde who had been arrested under stringent charges and were accused of having Maoist links, have been imprisoned since 2018 have consistently been denied relief from arrest even with some suffering serious ailments and now being under extreme risk in wake of the pandemic.

In their letter to CM Uddhav Thackeray, the signatories said, “At present, all eleven of the accused in the Bhima-Koregaon case are lodged in prisons in Maharashtra. All of them are either senior citizens or have serious co-morbidities, or both, that would place them at severe risk if they were infected by Covid-19. One ofthe detained persons, the poet Varavara Rao who is 81 years of age, suffered a collapse recently and was placed in the ICU. He continues to be in precarious health.”

Recently, a special court rejected the interim bail pleas of Varavara Rao and Shoma sen which they had filed on medical grounds, National Herald reported. Varavara Rao suffers from pre-existing medical conditions like Coronary Artery Disease, hypertension and he was even admitted to a hospital on May 27 after he complained of dizziness and fainted. Shoma Sen also suffers from various ailments like glaucoma and high blood pressure. The court denied bail saying that both the activists were being provided medical treatment inside jail and didn’t need to be released.

In a similar fashion, the special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court had rejected activist Sudha Bharadwaj’s bail plea which she had filed on medical grounds. The activist who suffers from co-morbidities like diabetes and high blood pressure has now moved the Bombay High Court for interim relief.

Seeing the latest developments, Thapar and others, in their letter added, “We are deeply concerned about the undue level of risk they (activists) are being exposed to which may easily prove fatal. The conditions under which they are lodged are extremely poor and provide no guarantee of their continued well-being. As the highest official of the state government you have absolute authority about where these prisoners can be lodged while awaiting trial.”

In light of the present scenario, requesting the CM to take a humanitarian step to prevent the unnecessary exposure of elderly and well-respected public persons to such an avoidable hazard, the signatories asked for the 11 human rights advocates to be removed from the current overcrowded facilities and be placed under house arrest, where they would continue to remain available to the justice system while their families ensure their well-being as best as possible.

The complete letter by Romila Thapar and others may be read below.

Related:

Green Nobel winner Prafulla Samantara protests against ‘undeclared emergency’ of Union government

SC stays Gautam Navlakha’s bail proceedings at Delhi HC; NIA says HC acted without jurisdiction

Family, ex-CIC commissioners appeal for Varavara Rao’s release after his medical condition worsens

Bhima Koregaon case: SC rejects ABA of Anand Teltumbde, Gautam Navlakha

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The current Executive Council of the JNU seems to be unaware of even the meaning of an emeritus professorship. It seems to think that it is an appointment against a post for which there are multiple applications.

An emeritus position is completely different. There are no posts and nobody ever applies for it. It is an honour conferred for life by the university on a retiring or retired professor in appreciation of their outstanding past work. This is true of every university in the world.

This current action of the JNU contradicts the very basis on which the status of professor emeritus was conferred on retired faculty in the JNU.
It needs to be reiterated that in the letter conferring the title of professor emeritus/emerita, it is described as honorary and is for life. It is clearly stated that it is in recognition of the outstanding contribution in teaching and research of the professor so honoured, and as an esteemed faculty member for outstanding academic achievements.

The current Executive Council and administration of JNU have either not understood, or have chosen to overlook, the import of this. Hence it needs to be explained for their benefit.

That the emeritus professorship is honorary means just that. The university does not have to make any special arrangements, financial or otherwise, to accommodate such professors. It is only a status that is conferred by the university on the retirement of a selected faculty member.
So the question of making positions available for other potential candidates does not arise. It costs the university nothing. The choice of professor emeritus is a comment on the academic values of the university. There can be any number of such professors. It is quite clearly an honour that is given for life; therefore any periodic reassessment is out of the question.

The honour is not conferred for work in the future, work that is yet to be done, but for the work that the faculty member has done before retirement. This means that it is based on the work that the professor has done before the award was conferred. It is a lifetime achievement award as well; therefore any assessment of work subsequent to the award is not required. The continuity of the award is not dependent on future work.

When a university confers this honour, there is no question of any prior submission of an application for it nor of a CV. Detailed information about the academic achievements and activities of its faculty should in any case be known to the university from its own website and records, provided these are properly maintained by the administration. There should be no need to ask for CVs. Nor is there any need for testimonials and peer group views since it is conferred.

In her response to the registrar, Thapar has reminded the university administration that they should be aware of what it means to confer an emeritus professorship, as has been explained above.

Furthermore, she has quite rightly asked, what exactly is the committee going to assess and how? Is it going to give a grade to the books that she has published since becoming a professor emerita, the major one, The Past before Us, being a pioneering study of historiography in early India? Is it going to evaluate the fact that she was awarded the Kluge Prize in History in 2008, which is regarded as equivalent to the Nobel and is given specifically in disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prize? How is the committee going to grade the other publications and the other awards?

Ironically, just prior to receiving this letter from the registrar of JNU, Thapar received a letter from the American Philosophical Society (APS), informing her that she has been selected for the society. The APS is the oldest scholarly society in the United States with a restricted membership selected on the basis of intellectual achievement.

The contrast in the treatment of a reputed Indian scholar by a foreign learned society, and the university that the scholar has served for decades and of which she was among the founding professors, is too stark to be missed. The Centre for Historical Studies of the JNU has also objected to this attempt to reconsider the status of emeritus for Thapar.

There is much talk these days about improving the quality of our higher education. This would remain a chimera if our outstanding scholars are treated in this manner by their own universities.

First published in Indian Cultural Forum
 

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The 79^th Indian History Congress (IHC) scheduled from 28-30 December at Savitiribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), Maharashtra, has been “postponed” until further notice. The Executive Council members were informed about the postponement through an anonymous email on 11 December 2018. The SPPU authorities have announced the postponement of the upcoming event 15 days prior to the schedule on the university website. In a recent press release, the Indian History Congress stated that the decision to postpone the session was taken unilaterally by university authorities.

Speaking with the Indian Cultural Forum, Dr. Mahalakshmi Ramakrishnan, secretary of the 79^th Indian History Congress said, “Over 1200 delegates were supposed to attend and around 700 papers were to be presented in this year’s Indian History Congress.”

One of the reasons given by the SPPU authorities to the conference authorities was “financial difficulties and lack of accommodation for the delegates.” The EC of IHC has also expressed their anguish in a letter written to the Vice Chancellor.

Commenting on the issue, eminent historian Romila Thapar said, “The last minute postponement sounds rather suspicious because they should have known about the financial situation much earlier. Also, the state of Maharashtra does not agree with the history as taught by the Indian History Congress.”

The annual IHC receives grants from UGC, ICHR, NEUPA and other public institutions. It has also received an amount of Rs. 15 lakhs as delegate and membership fees. According to close sources, one of the reasons given by the SPPU authorities earlier was uncertainty in the “law and order” situation of Maharashtra. Later, however, a letter issued by the university stated that it’s not just the law and order situation, but also financial issues since they are unable to raise funds for the conference.

Responding to the multiple changes in reasons given by the university authorities, Prof. Thapar added, “The reason for not allowing the Congress will keep changing. It all sounds a bit suspicious.”

Indian History Congress is one of the biggest events held in the academic circles. The body constitutes noted academics and historians from across the country. It is recognised by the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) and has a formal representation in the Central Advisory Board of Archeology. IHC, by its constitution, is only committed to the objective of History and not to any particular political ideology or outlook. It has also been defending the academic freedom of speech since 1975, after the arrests of several academics and others during the Emergency. The Indian History Congress decides its upcoming session’s venue a year prior to the event. The current venue, Savitiribai Phule Pune University was chosen by the association of Indian History Congress after the university authorities’ proposal.

Disappointed with the recent changes in the upcoming History Congress, Professor S Irfan Habib, Delhi based historian of science and modern politics said, “The last minute postponement of such a big conference, which the university committed to the IHC more than a year ago, can’t be decided by the university alone. The university must have gotten an idea about the financial situation while preparing for the conference, i.e. 3 to 6 months before. This last minute change can’t just be seen as a “financial” issue, there could be more to it.”

Last year, the Indian History Congress had also critiqued the right-wing government, citing its example on plastic surgery and genetic science relating it to the mythical idols. “The IHC has been facing serious issues over the past few years. The government and especially this right-wing government always have a problem with the IHC. It doesn’t agree with the idea of India that the Indian History Congress proposes or talks about. The whole thing is politically motivated and one can see through it,” added Prof. Habib.

Responding to the postponement, Lakshmi Chandran, a participant and winner of last year’s Dr. Nasreen Ahmed Memorial Prize said, “I was also invited to the IHC for the award. I had already booked tickets. As a participant, I am utterly disappointed with the postponement of the event. For students of history, IHC is one of the most prestigious conferences and it is these students who will be the most affected by the postponement because they can’t afford to lose such a huge sum of money.” Talking to the Indian Cultural Forum, another participant Upasana Hazarika said, “It takes several months of hard work to write a research paper for the conference. Postponing the conference will really demotivate students.”

The IHC has also called for an emergency Executive Council on 14 December 2018 regarding its future course of action. In another Press release issued by the Indian History Congress, Pune, it has called for public support from the citizens and academic community of Pune.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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We approached the Supreme Court when five well-known lawyers, journalists and civil rights activists were arrested across the country on 28th August and charged with abetting acts of terror under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

Our intention was to draw the attention of the judiciary to what we believe is a case of gross misuse of the state’s powers under draconian laws like the UAPA.  Our history as a republic shows that, if left unchecked, such misuse causes grave injustices and endangers the civil liberties of all Indians.  

Those arrested on 28th August have been accused of being implicated in acts of terrorism. 

However, we believe that there are two kinds of terrorism both of which create fear and undermine the foundations of our democracy: 
The violent acts of those described as terrorists, who plant bombs, instigate people to be violent, engineer riots and deliberately spread fear through their acts;
and
The illegal or unjustified acts of state functionaries who, instead of pursuing the actual perpetrators of violence, misuse their powers to harass those who do not conform to the politics of their current masters.

When the state uses anti-terror laws without adequate proof against persons known to be working for the rights of the weaker sections of society, it is also spreading a kind of terror.  Arbitrary arrests on implausible charges, like those of 28th August, are a source of anxiety for us all.  They mean that the police can walk into our homes and arrest us – either without a warrant, or a warrant written in a language we don’t understand – and then accuse us of activities about which we know nothing.

It has always been assumed that a genuine democracy will respect the constitutional and legal rights of every citizen, including the right to hold opinions different from – or even in opposition to – those of the government of the day.  Since these arrests follow similar arrests made in June, the arrests of 28th August point to a continuing attempt to erode these rights.

Our petition was essentially an appeal to the Supreme Court to check this erosion of rights and protect the liberty and dignity of human rights activists.

Today’s judgment has provided protection to the activists for a further period of 4 weeks and has given them the liberty to seek remedy from the appropriate courts. Our stand in this case finds vindication in the dissenting opinion of J. Dr. DY Chandrchud who has categorically held that liberty cannot be sacrificed at the altar of conjecture, and that the police had been taking liberties with the truth and besmirching the reputation of the activists by doing a media trial. Under such circumstances, the police’s ability to conduct a free, fair and impartial investigation is in serious doubt, as has been held by J. Dr. DY Chandrachud.

We, the Petitioners, are pleased to note that at least the liberty and dignity of the human rights activists has for the time being not been jeopardized and the Supreme Court has protected the same.
 
Signed, Delhi, 28th September 2018:

1. Romila Thapar: _________
2. Devaki Jain: _________
3. Prabhat Patnaik _________
4. Satish Deshpande _________
5. Maja Daruwala ________

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Image courtesy The Economic Times
 
The first step towards the crystallisation of what we today call Hinduism was born in the consciousness of being the amorphous, subordinate, other. In a sense this was a reversal of roles. Earlier the term mleccha had been used by the upper caste Hindus to refer to the impure, amorphous rest. For the upper castes, Muslims and especially those not indigenous to India, were treated as mleccha since they did not observe the dharma and were debarred from entering the sanctum of the temple and the home. Indigenous converts to Islam also came under this category but their caste origins would have set them apart initially from the amorphous Muslim. Now the upper and lower castes were clubbed together under the label of ‘Hindu’, a new experience for the upper castes.

This in part accounts for the belief among many upper caste Hindus today that Hinduism in the last one thousand years has been through the most severe persecution that any religion in the world has ever undergone. The need to exaggerate the persecution at the hands of the Muslim is required to justify the inculcation of anti-Muslim sentiments among the Hindus of today. Such statements brush aside the fact that there were various expressions of religious persecution in India prior to the coming of the Muslims and particularly between the Śaiva and the Buddhist and Jaina sects and that at one level, the persistence of untouchability was also a form of religious intolerance. The authors of such statements conveniently forget that the last thousand years in the history of Hinduism have witnessed the establishment of the powerful Śankarācārya maṭhas, āśramas, and similar institutions attempting to provide an ecclesiastical structure to strengthen Brahmanism and conservatism; the powerful Daśanāmi and Bairāgi religious orders of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava origin, vying for patronage and frequently in confrontation; the popular cults of the Nāthapanthis; the significant sects of the Bhakti traditions which are to be found in every corner of the subcontinent; and more recently a number of socio-religious reform movements which have been aimed at reforming and strengthening Hinduism. It was also the period which saw the expansion of the cults of Kṛṣṇa and Rāma with their own mythologies, literatures, rituals and circuits of pilgrimage. What defines many Hindus today has roots in the period of Muslim rule. Facets of belief and ritual regarded as essential to Hinduism belong to more recent times. The establishment of the sects which accompanied these developments often derived from wealthy patronage including that of both Hindu and Muslim rulers, which accounted for the prosperity of temples and institutions associated with these sects. The more innovative sects were in part the result of extensive dialogues between gurus, sādhus, pīrs and Sufis, a dialogue which was sometimes confrontational and sometimes conciliatory.  The last thousand years have seen the most assertive thrust of many Hindu sects. If by persecution is meant the conversion of Hindus to Islam and Christianity, then it should be kept in mind that the majority of conversions were from the lower castes and this is more a reflection on Hindu society than on persecution. Upper caste conversions were more frequently activated by factors such as political alliances and marriage circuits and here the conversion was hardly due to persecution. Tragically for those that converted on the assumption that there would be social equality in the new religion, this was never the case and the lower castes remained low in social ranking and carried their caste identities into the new religions.

When the destroying of temples and the breaking of images by Muslim iconoclasts is mentioned—and quite correctly so—it should however at the same time be stated that there were also many Muslim rulers, not excluding Aurangzeb, who gave substantial donations to Hindu sects and to individual brāhmaṇas. There was obviously more than just religious bigotry or religious tolerance involved in these actions. The relationship for example between the Mughal rulers and the Bundela rājās, which involved temple destruction among other things, and veered from close alliances to fierce hostility, was the product not merely of religious loyalties or differences, but the play of power and political negotiation. Nor should it be forgotten that the temple as a source of wealth was exploited even by Hindu rulers such as Harṣadeva of Kashmir who looted temples when he faced a fiscal crisis, or the Paramāra ruler who destroyed temples in the Caulukya kingdom, or the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king who tore up the temple courtyard of the Pratihāra ruler after a victorious campaign. Given the opulence of large temples, the wealth stored in them required protection, but the temple was also a statement of political authority when built by a ruler.

The European adoption of the term ‘Hindu’ gave it further currency as also the attempts of Catholic and Protestant Christian missionaries to convert the Gentoo/Hindu to Christianity. The pressure to convert, initially disassociated with European commercial activity, changed with the coming of British colonial power when, by the early nineteenth century, missionary activities were either surreptitiously or overtly, according to context, encouraged by the colonial authority. The impact both of missionary activity and Christian colonial power resulted in considerable soul searching on the part of those Indians who were close to this new historical experience. One result was the emergence of a number of groups such as the Brahmo Samaj, the Prathana Samaj, the Arya Samaj, the Ramakrishna Mission, the Theosophical Society, the Divine Life Society, the Swaminarayan movement, et al., which gave greater currency to the term Hinduism. There was much more dialogue of upper caste Hindus with Christians than there had been with Muslims, partly because for the coloniser power also lay in controlling knowledge about the colonised and partly because there were far fewer Hindus converting to Christianity than had converted to Islam. Some of the neo-Hindu sects as they have come to be called, were influenced by Christianity and some reacted against it; but even the latter were not immune from its imprint. This was inevitable given that it was the religion of the coloniser.

The challenge from Christian missionaries was not merely at the level of conversions and religious debates. The more subtle form was through educational institutions necessary to the emerging Indian middle class. Many who were attracted to these neo-Hindu groups had at some point of their lives experienced Christian education and were thereafter familiar with Christian ideas. The Christian missionary model played an important part, as for example in the institutions of the Arya Samaj. The Shaiva Siddhanta Samaj was inspired by Arumuga Navalar, who was roused to reinterpret Śaivism after translating the Bible into Tamil. The movement attracted middle-class Tamils seeking a cultural self-assertion. Added to this was the contribution of some Orientalist scholars who interpreted the religious texts to further their notions of how Hinduism should be constructed. The impact of Orientalism in creating the image of Indian, and particularly Hindu culture, as projected in the nineteenth century, was considerable.

Those among these groups influenced by Christianity, attempted to defend, redefine and create Hinduism on the model of Christianity. They sought for the equivalent of a monotheistic God, a Book, a Prophet or a Founder and congregational worship with an institutional organization supporting it. The implicit intention was again of defining ‘the Hindu’ as a reaction to being ‘the other’; the subconscious model was the Semitic religion. The monotheistic God was sought in the abstract notion of Brahman, the Absolute of the Upaniṣads with which the individual Ātman seeks unity in the process of mokṣa; or else with the interpretation of the term deva which was translated as God, suggesting a monotheistic God. The worship of a single deity among many others is not strictly speaking monotheism, although attempts have been made by modern commentators to argue this. Unlike many of the earlier sects which were associated with a particular deity, some of these groups claimed to transcend deity and reach out to the Absolute, Infinite, the Brahman. This was an attempt to transcend segmentary interests in an effort to attain a universalistic identity, but in social customs and ritual, caste identities and distinctions between high and low continued to be maintained.

Romila Thapar (born 30 November 1931) is an Indian historian whose principal area of study is ancient India. She is the author of several books including the popular volume, A History of India, and is currently Professor Emerita at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi.

This article was first published on Indian Cultural Forum

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Notes from the open-house organised by “History for Peace” on 24 December, 2017 in Kolkata

 
It wasn’t a surprise to see history lovers in Calcutta queue up on a Sunday morning to engage in a closed door rendezvous with Professor Romila Thapar. Professor Thapar, after years of inimitable research and fearless writing, needs no introduction. She certainly is a festering (and pestering!) eyesore of the Hindu Right, the fascist dispensation in control of the state apparatus in the democratic republic of India. Interestingly, Professor Thapar was the first historian to argue that Early India had a historical tradition of its own, and that a “consciousness of the historical moment” and the “perception of historical change” existed prior to the advent of colonial historiography. This open-house was organised by “History for Peace”, an intra-subcontinental network of history educators, academics and members of civil society that serves as a platform for the exchange of ideas pertaining to teaching and learning of history. “History for Peace”, through a series of conferences and workshops, facilitated a discourse on divided histories, narratives of violence, art as a pedagogical tool, nationalism, and other currents relevant to the dissemination of the historian’s craft.

Professor Thapar was in conversation with educationist Devi Kar. Responding to Kar’s question on subjectivity and history, Thapar elucidated the oft-quoted and apparently simple phrase “understanding the past”. She explained how a historian’s comprehension of the past, which is ideographic in approach, is different from the search for truth. Professor Thapar emphasised on the logic and rationality of historical reconstruction. The fundamental question that historians ask is “how societies functioned in the past?” The 70s marked the shift from a Rankean, extractive history writing to a more contextual, historicist academic practice, and Marxism was used as a method of enquiry. Professor Thapar belongs to that generation of historians. Her work on state formation in the Ganga Valley titled “From Lineage to State”, wherein she writes about the changing political formations and the emergence of kingship societies from clan-based social systems, makes evident her engagement with social anthropology indicating a new wave of inter-disciplinarity in the social sciences. The historian’s forage for social theories in order to better understand the events of the past added a force to the questioning voice. Professor Thapar took the Arthashastra as an illustrative text to explain how questions are asked and answers sought by the historian to “understand a text in its wider context.” “Who is the author of the text?”, “Which social group did s/he belong to?”, “What was the intellectual background of the author?” “What is the text about?”, “Is it descriptive or normative?”, “What was the purpose of the text?” These are all very important questions, but all single text-centric histories would end at this point. She counted comparison with other contemporaneous texts, and corroboration with other sources — archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic, architectural, archival, etcetera, as integral to the historical method.

Perhaps the best take away from this conversation was her personal recollection of anecdotes. Her early attempt at reading excavation reports was challenged by the archaeologist’s terminology — a new set of technical terms and concepts like stratigraphy, ceramic typologies, etcetera, that she was not familiar with. This encouraged her to venture into the field and work as a member of the excavating team during the Kalibangan excavations. The first skeleton that Professor Thapar unearthed was that of a woman, clutching a bronze mirror. The thrill of touching a bronze mirror that was last held by a human being about 4500 years ago shone on her face. The sense of connect that one experiences when superimposing one’s palm on an impression of the anonymous brickmaker’s palm, pressed on the brick and baked in the kiln of time, helps the individual get a “feeling of the past.” The academic historian in her says that it’s not possible to go back in the past. The lover of history in her agrees, but at the same time makes little advances that take her closer to the remote past. Both the academic and the lover exist in harmony. They acknowledge and appreciate the aesthetic and literary brilliance of texts, and yet, question and critique them incisively, instead of taking them at face value. She recalled how a professor in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) had remarked in her undergraduate days that she was “not suspicious enough.” As students of history, Thapar believes that one should be suspicious of everything that has been said, and question. Investigating the ancient past, or the early period, is like donning the detective’s hat. As a professor (and a founder-member) of the famed Centre for Historical Studies in JNU, she would encourage her postgraduate students to take up Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. That Poirot and Miss Marple could share space with Charlemagnes and Chandraguptas, was hitherto unknown to the practice of history teaching in India.

When asked about her biases, she spoke about the post-modernist wave in the academia, and how she was sceptical of the idea that all readings are of equal value. As a “positivist-empiricist” historian, she believes that it is of utmost importance to cite sources and qualify each statement with the help of supporting evidence. Professor Thapar argued that it’s unnecessary to assign ideological labels to social scientists, because their work can draw from various, and often disparate, traditions of thought, depending on the needs of the theme. For instance, the classical mode of production paradigm would be more relevant to a research on economic history than environmental history. It was acknowledged that labels are not only hurled at social scientists, but at societies, communities and cultures, reducing diverse, heterogeneous social formations to polarised blocks and binaries. When asked about her phenomenal work on Somnath, based on a study of texts from three literary traditions — Sanskrit, Jaina and Persian, and colonial archives, Professor Thapar stressed on the fact that the multicultural society in the pre-modern era was based on perpetual negotiations between different ethnic and geographical communities, guided by a variety of motives, ranging from trade to territorial expansion.

The prevalent understanding of religion in India could be traced back to colonial historiography, evident in the deliberate polarised periodisation (James Mill), characterisation of the period of “Muslim rule” as dark and degenerate (Elliot and Dowson), the myth of Hindu trauma (Lord Ellenborough and the British parliamentary debates on the gates of Somnath), and the increasing use of the term “Hinduism” to connote an uncontaminated religion. Thapar opines that early India provides ample evidence of decentralisation of religion and the absence of monolithic categories. The term “musalmana” was known in the early medieval, but inscriptional records refer to ethnic labels like Turuska, Tajika, Parasika, and Yavana. Responding to an attendee who had come all the way from Dhaka to hear Professor Thapar, she traced the changing terminology used to refer to the subcontinent, in a processual temporal-spatial context. From the Persian Hindush, to the Greek Indos, Aryavarta, Bharata-varsha, Jambudwipa (from Ashoka’s inscriptions), and the Turkish Al-Hind in the medieval, this land has been repeatedly named, unnamed and renamed, as its contours shifted and new inhabitants settled.

Speaking of the state sponsored communal divide, she argued that an “undemocratic nationalism has to find an enemy within”. For proponents of the Hindu rashtr, the “muslim” is the enemy within. Speaking on the modern nation state, she concluded by saying that “borders only become borders when cartographies come into existence”. But Professor Thapar is hopeful, and so are we, that the multicultural ideals of our society, which doesn’t boast of a glorious golden age of peace and harmony but of a historical consciousness, and the ability to learn from the past, will prevail even in difficult times.

Somok Roy studies history at Ramjas College, University of Delhi.

Courtesy:  Indian Cultural Forum

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When we heard of the lynching of Junaid, many of us were deeply saddened, and for many reasons. It is utterly tragic that a young boy should be lynched for no reason. Can such brutality be permitted in a society that calls itself civilised? Such occurrences take what is becoming a predictable pattern. A gang of Indians slaughter another Indian because he is not a Hindu, and a gathering of other Indians watch without making any attempt to prevent the murder. This is not the India that many of us have lived in for a lifetime. The lynching of Muslims and Dalits, and the increase in these incidents over the last three years, as statistics tell us, leaves one wondering what kind of a country India has become.

Lynching kills, but also creates terror; and this terror is now taking over Indian society. Terror brutalises people and leaves them with no moral commitment or sensitivity to other humans. They watch the brutality but do nothing to stop it. Is this the new ethical code of Indian society: that one should not intervene when a person is being lynched, slaughtered or raped?

Is it also terror that has seeped into the administration and the police, both wings of government that are supposed to protect the citizen, but are now unable to do so? Or is it just apathy? What has happened to governance with these continuing incidents of lawlessness? Have governments – state and centre – ceased to govern? Is the control of governance now shifting to the lynch mobs and their patrons? Is this to be the future of India?

We are continually told that Hindus have always been a non-violent and tolerant people. Is this a demonstration of non-violence and tolerance? Is lynching and murdering to be the method of defending the Hindu religion? Are devout and ethical Hindus not appalled by this? And are we, as Indians, aware of the consequences of this terror stalking our society?

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Part I

Part II

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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'Why can't we think of civilisation as a process of tracking cultures?': Historian Romila Thapar

Full text of the speech delivered at the 8th BR Ambedkar Memorial Lecture that pitched for rethinking civilisation as history.

Let me clarify at the outset that I am looking at the concept of civilisation as it has been used in reconstructing world histories. The term has had philosophical and other connotations that introduce dimensions other than the historical. I am, however, confining myself to the historical perspective.

The history of the world from pre-modern times has, in recent centuries, been projected in the form of stages, some culminating in civilisations. However, in the light of recent studies of history, civilisation as it was earlier defined is becoming rather paradoxical. The concept is a construction that emerged at a particular point in European history in the 18th century. It was a way of comprehending the past. Other theories of explaining the past that are now emerging in historical analyses may lead us to rethink the concept. Historians today try and peel events, viewing them as part of larger, and often diverse contexts, as I hope to show.

A civilisation implies a kind of package with specific characteristics. Thus the territory of a civilisation has to be demarcated; civilisation is identified with a period of high intellectual and aesthetic achievement – what some call “high culture”, including an emphasis on humanism and ethics; associated with this is a premium on refined manners exemplified by the elite; civilisation is articulated in a particular parent language; it is symbolised in a single religion; it assumes a stratified society, evidence of a state and governance; its elite is distinctive and dominates its surroundings; there is a marked presence of what are described as aspects of culture – art, monuments, literature, music, all of a sophisticated form; and above all, a civilisation records its knowledge of the world and attempts to advance it.

I have two concerns here. One is that a civilisation draws on the identities of its creators and its participants, but the identities of both change in the course of history. The other is that concepts help us understand social reality; but they, in turn, have to be investigated, and more so when they claim to be foundational to understanding history.

The somewhat spare definition I have just given needs enlargement. The territory is expansive, resulting from the ultimate success of one from among a number of competing others. The dominant culture monopolises the constituents of civilisation to the near exclusion of the lesser cultures that then tend to be sidelined. What are taken as the constituents of a civilisation reflect the dominant culture, whereas there is much more that goes into the making of a civilisation that has historically as yet remained in the wings.

Change is endemic to most societies, either from within, or from contact with other societies. This can disturb the social equilibrium, either increasing or decreasing the integration of its various units. A civilisation, therefore, cannot be static as its constituents inevitably change.

Constructing a concept
Let me begin with how and when the concept of civilisation first came to be constructed. Used in France in the 18th century, the concept assumed a departure from a prior condition. The Enlightenment understanding of history, together with social Darwinism in the subsequent period, placed human society in an advanced evolutionary stage. It underlined humanistic values as embedded in the literature, and the belief that rational beings could control the world around them.

German writers differentiated between civilisation and kultur/culture. Culture referred to what was thought of as intellectual and artistic in terms of value and ideals, and to morality. Cultures, again, were not compact, enclosed and static. Civilisation, however, had a broader spread and included more, as the definition suggests.

Why was it given a specific definition? Perhaps we need to keep in mind the ambience resulting from historical change at the time. Europe was moving from the imprint of an aristocratic feudal society to being gradually remoulded by the start of industrialisation and the emergence of new social categories. Entrepreneurs of various kinds were reformulating society, but at a slow pace, since the mores of the previous society were still viewed as exemplary. The emerging vision required pointing up the glories of the European past in a more insistent way than had been done earlier with the Renaissance.

This change coincided, and not accidentally, with the acquisition of colonies. When control over these colonies by European powers became more direct and fruitful, it had to be conceded that the colonies had their own cultures, but with the caveat that the European achievement in the past had been by far the highest. The colonies may well have even had civilisations, although these had been partially marred by the presence of the primitive in their midst. This took away somewhat from the achievement. Recognising this perspective on their past, the colonised also began to register among the evolving new groups of people their new ambitions, anxious to identify with a praiseworthy past to compensate for their subordination in the present.

In a sense, the seed of the idea of civilisation may have existed in the differentiation that past societies made between the dominant society, and those that used a different language and had a different way of life. One’s own society was always superior. But the growth of the idea into a concept of civilisation was associated with historical change, and the need for emergent social groups to claim new identities and a clearly defined heritage.

Civilisation assumed that the historically preceding societies did not qualify. These were labelled as barbarian. This dichotomy was present in the self-perception of ancient societies as well, but with a different connotation. Those regarded as “the Others” were assumed to be uncivilised. For the Greeks it was the non-Greeks, for the Chinese the non-Han, and for the aryas it was the mlecchas. If the Greeks called those that were their “Others” barbaros/barbarians, Sanskrit speakers referred to some as barbara-karoti, or those speaking in a confused way. The barbarians, irrespective of whether they lived as nomadic hordes threatening the civilised, or in the midst of the civilised, were recognisable by their markers – difference of language and custom. The concept of civilisation assumed the existence of the barbarian as a kind of all-purpose counterpoint to the civilised.

Colonial thinking
In the 19th century, the dichotomy was further elaborated. Human society was said to go through three stages of change. Starting with savagery, it improved somewhat when it reached barbarism, and this was prior to civilisation. Only some societies evolved to the third stage. It was thought of, essentially, as a process of evolution, and used to point to the distinction between the stages.

The other more effective route was seen in the imposition of the civilised on the barbarian through conquest, an obvious attempt to justify contemporary colonialism. A classic example was that of the Aztecs of Mexico. They were thought of as being less civilised, therefore performing human sacrifice, and the civilised Spanish conquest brought this activity to an end.

The concept was now used in two ways. One was its role in colonial thinking. The other was the appropriation of social evolution by theories of explanation in anthropology, archaeology and history.
Colonial thinking was clear about the distinction between the civilised and its alternative – the primitive. The coloniser, as the representative of a superior civilisation, introduced it to the colonised, the uncivilised primitive. In India, two divergent views – the Utilitarian and the Orientalist – emerged from colonial writers. James Mill and the Utilitarian thinkers writing on the Indian past saw the territory of India as hosting two nations, the Hindu and the Muslim, each intensely hostile to the other. Its governance conformed to what was called Oriental Despotism, pointing to the absence of a civilised society. The colonised therefore required correcting to be civilised.

The Orientalist view differed. It began with William Jones in the late 18th century, enquiring of the learned brahmanas as to the texts he should study to understand India. He was directed to the Vedas and to classical Sanskrit literature. Significantly, the Buddhist and Jaina texts were largely ignored. Jones’ comparative studies of language and religion were a search for parallels to the Greco-Roman.

The Orientalists and Sanskritists in Europe disagreed with the Utilitarians. They argued that India did have a civilisation that needed to be recognised. Influential among them was Max Mueller, who focused on the Vedas, especially the Rigveda. Such studies led to the theory that the Vedas were the foundation of Indian civilisation, and that it reached its crowning point in the golden age of the Guptas, extending into a few later centuries. Seeing India as a single unitary civilisation, specifically defined, made it easier for the colonisers to understand the colony, irrespective of how problematic these definitions were. We have inherited these colonial views about religion, language and history, views with which we still grapple.

A different turn
Dividing the world into civilisations provided portals to the study of global history. Association with a single language and, preferably, a single religion, meant that each civilisation could be more easily monitored as compared to non-structured history.

Asia, it was said, could boast of three civilisations: the Islamic, with Arabic as its language; the Sanskritic Hindu; and the Chinese, associated with Confucianism. I have often asked myself why Buddhism was lost sight of in this typology. It was once the inter-connecting thread through most of Asia. It was made to disappear in India; it faded in Central Asia; and was, on occasion, actively persecuted in China; yet it emerged as a crucial Asian link in civilisation markers and ethical values. A deeper investigation of the critique posed by Buddhist thought to many existing Asian cultures may help us redefine some aspects of Asian civilisations.

The concept of civilisation, however, took a different turn when associated with anthropology and archaeology. Patterns in the development of human societies drew from the theory of evolution, moving as a trajectory from simple to complex societies.

It was held that human society began with the stage of savagery in the bands of hunter-gatherers. Subsequently, there were societies of agro-pastoralists. Many took shape as highly efficient herders of animals – especially cattle and horses – and in systems of cultivating crops. The institution of the family, and notions of property that radically changed societies, emerged slowly. This took them to the stage of barbarism that was extensive and diverse. They were identified by the typology of the material goods they produced, such as pottery and metal-ware.

Some remained at that stage; others moved to the third and highest stage, that of urbanism. As in the case of animal life, evolution did not move in a vertical line for all societies. For some, a horizontal movement became permanent. Those not recognised as civilisations were described as cultures. A culture was defined as a pattern of living. There could be many cultures encompassed in a civilisation, but its definition was based on the features selected and said to be its markers. The primary features of the civilisation stage were urban centres, literacy, and the existence of a state; high culture alone, therefore, did not suffice.

Controversy abounds
This archaeological-anthropological trajectory, formulated in the early 20th century, has lately been extensively debated. The critique has suggested alternative ideas, but not annulled the theory. It has, however, been problematic in a few instances where earlier definitions of civilisation were already in use, as, for example, in India. According to the archaeological definition of the 20th century, the Harappan cities are the foundation of India’s civilisation. These predate the generally accepted date of Vedic culture by quite a few centuries. For some of the Orientalists of the 19th century, it was Vedic culture that was foundational to Indian civilisation, since the Harappan cities were not known at that point. But this culture lacked some of the fundamental components of the civilisation stage, urbanisation and literacy for instance.

Harappan cities were not only elaborate urban systems, but were carefully planned by people who understood the working of urban centres. The location of public functioning was concentrated in one area, in some cases on an artificially constructed mound, and was distinct from an expansive residential area. Other features are familiar to us from our school textbooks – a sensible layout with planned roads, a remarkable drainage system, warehouses and granaries, and complicated defences at the city gates. Among the other aspects of an advanced culture was the central role of a system of writing.

We now have a somewhat contrary situation: archaeology informs us that the foundations of Indian civilisation lie in the pre-Vedic cities of the Indus Civilisation; but the Orientalists, half a century earlier, had projected the Vedas as the foundation, and this continues to be preferred in some circles today. There is a significant difference between the two. Whereas texts are absent in the Harappa Culture even though a writing system is in use, the Vedic corpus boasts of oral compositions of a high order, composed over a millennium; but it has left no evidence of a writing system. It is difficult to identify the urbanism of the Harappan cities in the descriptions of settlements in the Rigveda, the earliest of the Vedas. Inevitably, there are controversies today about the origins of Indian civilisation.

Drawing boundaries
The concept of civilisation popular among 19th century historians was, of course, not the archaeological one, since that was worked out in the early 20th century. Yet, it is the 19th century definition that is, more often, in many people’s minds when they refer to Indian civilisation. Hence, I would like to discuss the definition of Indian civilisation that has prevailed in many works on the subject since the 19th century.

The territory chosen was that of British India. The confidence of colonialism made it seem that it would be permanent and stable. Earlier names for parts of the subcontinent, such as Jambudvipa, Aryavarta, Bharatavarsha, or even al-Hind, had shifting boundaries. But even British India broke up into three nations in the 20th century. This was not unusual, as every century has seen changing alignments in the borders of the many states and kingdoms comprising the subcontinent. There were no permanent boundaries in history.

In pre-cartographic times, defining boundaries with any precision was problematic in the absence of maps. The more common usage was that of frontier zones marked by geomorphological features, such as mountains, rivers and forests. For instance, Manu describes Aryavarta as the land between the Himalaya and the Vindhya, and the eastern and western seas. A study of frontier zones suggests that sometimes the more interesting historical interactions took place in such zones. Frontier zones have the advantage of looking both inward and outward, and they even had the choice of deciding which was which.

For a variety of reasons, the geographical focus of high cultures shifted. The Harappans occupied the Indus plain and its extension, but their artefacts are found as far west as the Gulf and Mesopotamia. The authors of the Vedic texts settled in the Punjab and the north-western borderlands, and moved eastwards to the Ganga plain. The second urbanisation had its epicentre in the middle Ganga plain. In general histories of India, the peninsula and the south are sometimes off the radar in this period, probably because the archaeology of their impressive Megalithic cultures differed from the cultures of northern India, as did the Dravidian language associated with that area.

Speaking of frontiers from the sub-continental perspective, the Kushanas were half in and half out. Their fulcrum was the Oxus valley. We may well treat them as integrated into north Indian history, but it would be worth asking whether they, in effect, may have looked upon north-western India as a frontier zone of their own Central Asian kingdom? And if so, how did they see it? Did Kushana polity focus more on Central Asia and China? Indian texts have less to say about the Kushanas but they are a presence in the Chinese annals of the time, the Hou Han Shu. The Indian writing of early times lacks curiosity about frontiers and beyond, compared, for instance, with Chinese inquisitiveness on the subject.

Significant frontiers
In controlling territory within India, the Guptas and the Cholas were virtually mirror images, one having a northern perspective and the other a southern one, separated by a few centuries. The Turks, Afghans and Mughals, irrespective of their origins, were firmly ensconced in northern India. Interestingly, the Mauryan and Mughal states incorporated the north-west borderlands, but not the entire peninsula. Territorially, neither made it to being a fully sub-continental empire. Identifying people with territory has now become complicated, with the frequent inputs of those working on DNA analyses to determine migrations and the mixing of populations.

So in terms of the territorial base of the civilisation, we are not speaking of a compact sub-continental area, but of parts of it that hosted a variety of cultures. The variations are pertinent to the notion of constructing a civilisation. But these are frequently ignored when selections are made of what goes into civilisation as a package. This applies not only to India, but to other civilisations as well. In Asia it would be as true of West Asia and China. What this suggests is that we should be sensitive to changes in the frontier areas, both overland and maritime. We should be open to how they may have contributed to the creation of what we call civilisation, since this would be pertinent to evolving cultures in various parts of the sub-continent. The view from the other side cannot be overlooked.

It is interesting that there was such a substantial interest in Buddhism among Chinese scholars but comparatively much less in Brahmanism, if, as we like to believe, the latter was central to Indian civilisation. At the same time, cultures also evolve over time within themselves. This makes it necessary to see civilisation, not as a permanent entity, but as a continuous process that also registers historical change.

Language and culture
Language is often a good barometer of historical change. We know that all languages mutate. Given the array of Indian languages, the change was impressive, both through mutation and through contact with other languages. This poses a couple of questions for the historian.

One is that we don’t yet know what language the Harappans spoke. Attempts to read the Harappan symbols as Indo-Aryan or Dravidian have not succeeded so far. The Vedic corpus refers to the mlecchas and the dasas as different from the aryas. They either spoke the Aryan language incorrectly, or not at all. They worshipped other gods and observed unfamiliar customs. There is also the puzzling group referred to as the dasi-putrabrahmanas, something of an oxymoron. Can the sons of dasis be brahmanas? But there they are, and respected by the brahmanas. It seems that more than one language was being spoken, and more than one cultural group involved.

But let’s leave aside the yet inexplicable, and turn to certainties. For almost a millennium, the most widely used language was not Sanskrit, but Prakrit, though they co-existed. The Jaina texts were initially composed in Prakrit, the Buddhist in Pali. Prakrit is, of course, related to Sanskrit, but its use was sharply differentiated. Discussions on causality in thought, dharma and ahimsa, rationality, the existence of deity and such ideas, were discussed, not by all, but by a number of people, in Prakrit. The evidence of inscriptions points to Prakrit as the initial common language used even by royalty, and Tamil in the south. The earliest inscription in correct Sanskrit dates to AD 150 with a lengthy statement by a ruler of Central Asian origin. Prakrit travelled to Central Asia, Southeast Asia and, together with Tamil, to the trading centres of the Red Sea. It was the language associated with those who came from India.

Learned brahmanas continued to use Sanskrit. But its use on a larger scale, or the emergence of what has recently been called “the Sanskrit cosmopolis”, dates to a later period, from the Guptas onward. This was when it came to have a monopoly as the language of learning, creative literature and administration; it was also the language of those aspiring to status. It expanded further with courtly culture in newly established kingdoms. This required its use by local court poets, but also in official documents, in which, occasionally, the scribe could even make mistakes. However, in Sanskrit drama, women and lower castes continued to speak Prakrit, presumably as befitting their inferior social status. Newly established kingdoms from the late first millennium AD onward, would use the emerging regional languages when hard pressed, especially when new castes of local origin became upwardly mobile. But Sanskrit was pre-eminent for a millennium in virtually every branch of learning, and more so in courtly literature and in religious scholarship, composed more frequently by upper caste authors.

Composition as dialogue
The history of this prior patronage explains, in part, its high status at the Mughal court where brahmana and Jaina authors interacted with scholars of Persian, also patronised by the Mughals. There was more than one translation of the Mahabharata and the Bhagvad Gita from Sanskrit to Persian, done jointly by brahmana pandits and Persian scholars. Such activity was not limited to an interest in religion, but was, more effectively, a form of translating cultures. Medieval patronage to Sanskrit as one of the languages of learning and formal religion is borne out by the numbers of literary texts, commentaries and digests that were composed in the last thousand years under multiple patrons.

This continued into modern times with patronage from the colonial state, conscious of the upper caste connections of Sanskrit. The literature in other languages received less attention as carriers of civilisation. It might be worth doing a survey of what was composed in these languages throughout history, to gauge the lineages of thought and articulation. This in itself would be insightful in evaluating the role of the single language as a civilisation idiom.

Any text of any kind, and in whatever language, assumes an audience. All composition is, in essence, a dialogue. If a text is written by the elite and uses the language of the elite, it reflects the elite culture and can, at best, reflect the participation of other cultures only indirectly. To that extent, it curtails our understanding of the civilisation.

Dual divisions
Much the same can be said about choosing a particular religion as the single one to represent a civilisation. The colonial readings of religions in India described them as monolithic. But were they? Many colonial scholars tended to see Indian religions through their knowledge of the medieval European past, with its single monolithic religion of Catholicism and later Protestantism. It is debatable whether religions in India were monolithic and unitary. Virtually every religion was articulated and propagated through a range of sects, each with the choice of being autonomous, or associated with another.

These religious sects have a long history. Their survival is also partly conditioned by their closeness to particular castes or caste clusters, and not unconnected to the patronage of the royal or wealthy. This highlights the interface between religion and society, an aspect seldom given enough space in the concept of civilisation. By bringing together virtually every religious articulation other than the Muslim and Christian under the label of Hinduism, the extensive divergence characteristic of religion in India, with its unique qualities, was denied.

That Indian civilisation was characterised by a singular and monolithic religion is unlikely. Dharma, which we today take to mean religion, was viewed as consisting of two streams. One was Vedic Brahmanism. This required a belief in Vedic and other deities. It insisted on the sanctity of the Vedas authored by the gods, and held that each mortal had an immortal soul. Strongly opposed to these beliefs were various groups jointly referred to as Shramanas, who doubted or rejected deity and the immortal soul, and treated the Vedas as authored by humans. Across the centuries, dharma was defined as the two streams of the Brahmana and the Shramana, or the astika/ believers, and the nastika /non-believers, which we today regard as the orthodox and the heterodox. The nastika consisted of Buddhists, Jainas, Ajivikas and those of such persuasion, including the Charvaka, with their philosophy of materialism. Interestingly, the initial social context of the Shramanic rejection of Vedic Brahmanism was urban.

This dual division was referred to in the edicts of Ashoka Maurya (bahmanam-samanam), in the account of Megasthenes (Brachmanes and Sarmanes), as well as in that of Xuanzang, and continued up to the time of Al-Biruni – a period of 1,500 years. Patanjali, at the turn of the millennium AD, mentions it in his famous grammar, and adds that the relationship between the two is comparable to that of the snake and the mongoose. The Shramanas in some Puranas are called the great deceivers – mahamoha – who deliberately mislead people with the wrong doctrines. They are therefore pashandas – frauds. The Buddhists sometimes refer to the brahmanas with the same epithet.

We are told that on some occasions, the relationship between the two became violent. A deeper investigation of our history of religion may show us as being less tolerant and more violent than we claim to be. We can certainly take pride in the absence, so far at least, of something like the Catholic Inquisition that forced people to make statements or to recant. Nevertheless, the degrees of intolerance and non-violence that prevailed in the past need to be re-assessed.

Striking changes
Intermeshed with religion and society was social oppression and the exclusion of those declared to be without caste, or of the lowest status and polluting. Caste discrimination linked to pollution was the Indian equivalent of the observance of other forms of discrimination in other civilisations. In practice, this was observed by every religion in India and by most communities. Surprisingly, it is rarely mentioned in discussions on ethical values and humanism in Indian civilisation, neither in the texts of the high culture nor in later descriptions of Indian civilisation. We owe our current highlighting of this aspect to the writings of Ambedkar and some of his predecessors.

The practice of treating demarcated members of the society as polluting negates the idea of a tolerant society, signifying as it does extreme intolerance and a lack of social ethics.
Yet, at a different level, there was a dialogue and much discussion between brahmanas and shramanas on philosophical questions, on, for instance, the definition and use of logic. By the mid-first millennium AD, the Shramanas were also using Sanskrit in philosophical discourse. But soon Buddhism was to be swept away in most parts of India.

The last thousand years have been quite striking in terms of the changes introduced at various levels in what we would regard as aspects of civilisation. The landscape changed. Temples and mosques replaced Buddhist monasteries and stupas. Some of the most magnificent Hindu temples dedicated to divergent sectarian deities, and also Jaina temples, were constructed in this period. These were endowed with land, and their committees of control were engaged in substantial commerce, as had been the case with some of the Buddhist monasteries in earlier times. Economic enterprise was open to all religious institutions and places of worship, and they did not hold back, since many had substantial wealth to invest.

The religion that we today refer to as Hinduism also had roots in the teachings of the medieval Bhakti sects. These encouraged new forms of worship, some reflecting ideas from the presence of other religions, and they taught in the regional languages. In the transition from the Vedic to the Puranic religions, a distancing of the later from the earlier took place, and this was acknowledged only among some. For the majority of people, Vedic belief and ritual as such, although patronised by royalty, became peripheral. Much of the teaching, attracting substantial numbers, was oral, since the larger numbers were not literate. The result was a multiplicity of sects of every kind, either drawing from, or opposing, the more formal religions. This receives less space in the classic descriptions of religion in Indian civilisation.

Compact aspect
What I am suggesting is that the conventional description of what constitutes Indian civilisation is partial. It does not sufficiently include the reality of the substantial contribution beyond that of the elites and the upper castes.

The concept of civilisation needs to draw from a far wider spectrum if it is to represent more than just the dominant cultures. This critique applies equally to descriptions of other civilisations. One could argue that the concept itself is therefore limited. Let me try and explain this.

The compactness of civilisation is partly due to its land-based and demarcated territory and the social origins of the cultures it encapsulates. But many of the achievements resulted from the co-mingling of groups, elites and non-elites, both within this territory and those on its frontiers and, sometimes, beyond. The commissioning of a monument or a cultural object may lie in the hands of a wealthy patron, but its creator is often a lower caste professional. Styles can therefore be a reflection of localities and popular trends, either of the elite or of others.

Icons of the Buddha illustrate this. The Gandhara image from the north-west is Indo-Greco-Bactrian in features and style, whereas the one from Mathura has no element of the Gan-dhara style. It is strikingly different, as is the one from Amaravati in the south. It changes again in Borobudur and Angkor in Indonesia and Cambodia, as also in Dunhuang and Lung Men in Central Asia and China. The images do not conform to a single aesthetic, but do suggest the richness of the dialogues that must have taken place among those sculpting them. These are, unfortunately, unrecorded. But surely some shilpins and sthapatis, as artisans and craftsmen, also travelled with the traders, brahmanas and Buddhist monks to Southeast Asia in the early periods, to assist with constructional problems, or the precision, if not also the aesthetics, of iconography?

How are forms transmitted to distant cultures? Surely the idiom in a new context should be read in its own context as well? The diversity points to the inspiration’s not being limited to a single elite source, yet the creators of the icons find little place in discussions of civilisation. How were the complexities of the Sanskrit manuals converted into visual forms by artisans not educated in Sanskrit? This is the interface that civilisation is all about, not the separation of the two.

Texts requiring scholarship travelled with brahmanas, Buddhist monks and traders. Many ventured beyond the frontiers, creating innovative mixed cultures that would have challenged the existing civilisational models. This would be more marked in the formation of new states, especially in distant lands. Some Indian texts were rendered into local languages and adjusted to local perspectives, in an effort to imprint their own culture and influence patronage. The variations speak volumes. In the controversial additions to the Hikayat Seri Rama of Malaysia, the patriarch Adam carries messages from Ravana to Allah. Other variations are similar to those known in India, but what these say remains outside the delineation of civilisation.

Carriers of culture
Adaptations provide another perspective. It is argued that the original Javanese version of the Ramayana story did not draw on the Valmiki text, but drew on the narration of the story in the much later grammatical work, the Bhattikavya. The question is why. The choice of one from a diversity of sources needs explanation, especially now, when some insist on cultural singularity. Even if it is a transaction between high cultures, the cultural presence of the Other is crucial to explanation.

Central Asia provides parallels. The carriers of the cultures were the same as those that went to Southeast Asia, but the Buddhists drew greater attention. Buddhist monasteries marked the staging points of the trade routes that went from China through Central Asia and northern India to the Mediterranean. This was the Old Silk Route. A healthy patronage encouraged each monastery to host murals of the highest quality, illustrating narratives from the Buddhist texts, in the context of local history. Their versions become, in a sense, a commentary on the Indian texts, an attempt to see a part of India from the other side of the border. Do their perceptions confirm our current view of Indian civilisation?

The involvement of Indians in this trade continued until the last century, although latterly in segments because of historical changes. For over a millennium, it had cut across what were identified as the separate civilisations of Asia, civilisations whose distinctiveness we have thought of as being crucial to their identity. But in each case, the achievements, be they in philosophy, religion or the arts, drew on the interaction of these cultures rather than originating in isolation. The initiative was taken by the traders, and the rest followed.

In the past, Indians and Chinese came to Southeast Asia through maritime exploration. This linked up ports and hinterlands, and required traversing the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the South China Seas – an Indian Ocean route, linking the segments of the chain from North Africa to South China. This is not a compact land mass but the contacts it nurtured impacted civilisations. Like the Silk Route, it virtually created its own cultures. Can we call it a maritime civilisation? It boasted of multiple cultures – high and low, literature in various languages, architecture and art that competed in quality with those in what we call established civilisations. Above all, it demonstrated that ultimately, knowledge advances when there is an exchange between those in the know, irrespective of where they come from.

Evolving process
This is superbly demonstrated in the study of astronomy and mathematics across Asia, dependent on this exchange for many centuries. This was not just a casual mixing of ideas. It involved the careful sifting of what goes into any knowledge system so as to understand it better. This, surely, is the more essential requirement of civilisations. The ascription of origin to a single author was not the point. Authorship was the contribution of more than one. Nor was a there a desperate competition to claim that one’s own civilisation got there first.

When we begin to think of the concept of civilisation as something that is not either territorially compact or pertaining to a limited period of history, we will, perhaps, recognise the limitations of singularity and isolation in the current concept. We can either dispense with it; or we can redefine it. Redefining it will require that some existing ideas be unpacked and rejected, some repacked, and some replaced.
Civilisations as we know them now tend to segregate rather than integrate. Colonial conquests the world over, with their new and precise boundaries, ended existing inter-connections between cultures. A case in point is that of contacts between India and Southeast Asia. Various regions of India had connections with various parts of Southeast Asia. Colonialism split Southeast Asia into colonies held by the British, French, Dutch and Spanish.

This carving up terminated the earlier links.

Colonialism reformulated cultural identities with new hierarchies of status both within a society and across its frontiers. This, in part, accounts for what are erroneously described as civilisational clashes. What is striking about the swathes of cultures that we study from the past is their porosity. Territories, languages and religions, however stable we would like them to be, are in fact constantly taking fresh shapes. The change comes from many sources: internal pressures that alter social hierarchies; alien cultures that accrete to them and take on new identities; diversities that transform even the cultures of the frontiers; and the ensuing perceptions that those beyond the frontiers have of us.

Civilisation is a process that evolves over a long period, mutating as it goes along. We have to recognise the mutations and discover their source. In focusing on the culture of the elite, the construction of civilisation overlooked its dependence on the cultures of others as participants in the same society. The essential concerns with the “why” and the “how” of history did not find space in the concept.

Overlooked in earlier histories, these perspectives can provide revelatory insights by forcing us to peel the layers, and refrain from insisting that civilisation is a uniform entity. Cultural articulations have to incorporate the dialogue among varying social groups in the societies that constitute the players. How did the participants in a civilisation perceive themselves and their own activities, and in relation to the social hierarchy? Did they all see themselves as part of one civilisation? This is a tough question, but we may find answers if we are willing to enquire.

If we choose to redefine the concept, can we think of civilisation, not as a self-contained homogenous entity valid for all time, but as a process of tracking cultures, even those perpetually in transition? The perceptions that this may provide can, perhaps, translate the past in ways that will enable a new understanding of both the past and the present.

(The Full Text of this Lecture first appeared on Indian Cultural Forum)
(Romila Thapar is Professor Emeritus in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and the eminent author of numerous books. This speech was delivered at Ambedkar University in Delhi on April 21.)

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