Musings on Indian History

[Guest guest]

History is cyclical. It is not linear. It always repeats itself-

provided the time span being is sufficiently long.

 

In a country like India, where we can not really fathom how old is her

past, the history of the country is both glorious and painful.

Obviously, the various ideologists have failed to notice that this

country, like any other society, will have both good and bad elements.

Only an unbiased and non ideological look at the ancient history will

be able to trace the origins of these elements and present a cohesive

, correct and more importantly, a definite picture.

 

The earliest western historians have started with the premise that the

greatest contributions of India to the world are Hinduism and

Sanskrit. While the list does not stop here with regard to the

significant contributions of India, the fact is that these two

elements are singularly the greatest contributions to the world. But,

the Marxists did not agree to this. They do not recognize the religion

as a great contribution on one hand and depict the Brahmins as a set

of eternal oppressors, who are responsible for all Hindu maladies. For

Marxists, Sanskrit is more of a linguistic symbol of such oppression.

Thus, they have started looking for other choices and came up with

Buddhism as an alternative nominee for this honor.

 

However, in this quest for ideological fix it somehow formulas, the

world’s view of the Indian history suffered. Ultimately, Basham

describes the greatest Indian contribution to the cultural world is

the community of Gypsies. Nothing could be more ironical!!!

 

On the other hand, the Indian past is not all milk and honey, as

depicted by traditionalists. Any society undergoes pain and pleasure

cyclically. Similarly, every historical figure has his or her own set

of characteristic idiosyncrasies †" good and bad. They must have had

something really note worthy in them, otherwise they could not have

remained in the annals of history for so long. Nothing can be more

fallible than trying to fit and justify the ancient societies into

today’s value systems. If our ancestors have behaved so and so, so be

it, if that is the truth.

 

Why the readings by any historian of the Indian ancient past are

always only partially true? No single element of this hoary past had

ever been presented in a holistically correct way.

 

The possible explanation for this riddle is twofold †" one, the

chronology of the India always remained warbled, mostly thanks to the

biblical time limits. We can notice that the dating of some of the

ancient events, like say Mahabharat war, is constantly being revised

pushing it into earlier times. I think the first group of colonial

historians has placed MBh war sometime in 400 AD but now, the people

are conceding it as early date as 1400 bce!!! We are yet to reconcile

this with the traditional dating of around 3000 bce.

The puranas and other scriptural evidences are almost rejected with

regard to the chronology of the Indian past. This warbled history

makes one jump to wrong conclusions, by falsely shrinking the

historical time distances.

 

The second and most painful reason for the wrong interpretations of

the Indian History is the high level of polemics and intrusion of

ideology into the realm of history erudition.

Every school has insisted to interpret history not on the basis of the

events that have unfolded but on the basis of the ideology it follows.

This was true of colonial historians, true of Marxists, true of

Christian missionaries, true of present western historians (and their

Indian followers) and sadly true of even traditionalists. Each of

these schools talks as if they are the ultimate authority on the

subject of Ancient India and every one else suffers from the scholarly

myopia. The deliberate and malafide methods of misinterpretations of

Indian history have done the greatest disservice to the field and in

fact, to the present generations in shaping their attitude and

outlook. Without a doubt, this has become greatest bane.

 

One of the very interesting corollaries of this feature is that

today’s ultimate word on ancient Indian history is not that of

historians but of historical linguists, ideologists and religionists.

It is a different thing that some of them do don the garb of

historians. While we should not reject the tools and readings of

these groups in toto- lest we may be falling into the same trap that

these groups knowingly binding themselves in- nothing can be sillier

than say, a linguist or a theologist offering an ultimate dictum on

history issues.

 

Most of these schools do not want to consider the eternal pluraralism

of Ancient India. No doubt, many countries in the world today enjoy or

suffer cosmopolitan pluralism. But this pluralism is mostly modern in

its origin i.e. to say, the identity and the origins of both the sons

of the soil, the natives and of the immigrants is clearly known in

almost all these countries. The bipolar division of native and

newcomer is possible elsewhere in the world but not in India.

 

In fact, the model of ancient substratum assimilation of a single

homogenous group over another SINGLE native homogenous group is highly

improbable in this country, i.e. at any given point of time, there are

more than one group of people that were claiming themselves to be

natives of this country and in today’s India, it is really not

possible to say who is the most original native and who is an

immigrant, unless such immigration has occurred in the “recent “past

of say 2000 years. Thus, we have to reject the Single native theory

that seems to be being imposed on this country.

 

 

Kishore patnaik

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