Interpretations of Indian history took a regressive turn when Company rule ended and Indian administration came directly under the Crown. Pursuing Mill’s dilettantism, Queen Victoria’s idle husband Prince Albert recruited a German scholar Max Mueller to overturn Indology. He propagated the Aryan Invasion Theory which was eagerly adopted by 19th century scholars.
Enemies make poor
historians.
Will Durant, eminent historian
What is history? The Sanskrit word Itihasa means a story that narrates events of the past in the land of India. The Greek word historia means enquiry into events and knowledge. The word “chronicle” (from the Greek word “chronos” or time) means recording of time.
The writing of history began in the cradle-lands of world civilizations—Iraq, Egypt and India. The Sumerian civilization (Iraq) was highly developed during 3500 BCE when events were recorded in cuneiform script on stone tablets. One of these is a stone document considered the oldest legal code, known as the Reforms of King Urukagina, dating around 2500 BCE. This provides information on laws and customs of the Sumerian civilization. In the Kesh Temple at Nippur, Iraq, the hieroglyphics there record the oldest literary works of the world.
Greece began historiography with the great Thucydides who was born and lived in Greece around 450 BCE. His immortal work “History of the Peloponnesian War” is a definitive chronicle of the wars between Athens and Sparta, which remains the model for narrating and documenting events of the past with accuracy and objectivity. No military historian before him or after him has described warfare with dispassionate clarity. Later, exiled by Athens, he wrote “…by reason of my exile, I had leisure to observe affairs more closely.” He was a neutral spectator of events and thereby attained an objective vision of the causes, self interest, and thirst for glory that shaped the destinies of nations.
There is a contemporary touch in his writing when he warned messengers and chroniclers to avoid fake news and propaganda.
Much later came Herodotus, who was born in Halicarnassus in Asia Minor in the 2nd century BCE. His magnum opus, “The Histories” describes his times and thoughts. He travelled widely and recorded his views and opinions, sometimes with levity. Though a Greek, he questioned his older compatriot—Homer—on the veracity of the Hellenic epic, The Iliad. Herodotus disagreed that the Greek city states waged war on Troy because of a runaway bride. He believed—what is generally accepted now—that Sparta and other Greek city states which were yet to be “civilized”, invaded Troy, which had a highly developed and prosperous civilization. The Bronze Age had begun and Troy possessed metals—copper and bronze—which the Greeks wanted. This was the cause of the Greco-Trojan war.
Numerous excavations at Hissarlik in Anatolia (Turkey) by Schliemann, Kauffman and others have dated the Trojan Empire around 1500 BCE. Bronze, gold and metal arrowheads were found during excavations, denoting the metallurgic skill of the inhabitants. The stone foundations of edifices extending over hundreds of miles indicated an advanced urban culture.
Western litterateurs have glorified the Greeks and trivialized the Trojans. While Achilles is a great hero, there is scant homage paid to the nobility and courage of the Trojans embodied in Prince Hector. It is archaeology, the handmaiden of historiography that has provided a different narrative and perspective on Troy and Greece.
Two of the greatest epics of the world, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, are believed to have been composed around the second millennium BCE. Transmitted orally they were later composed in Sanskrit. Patient archaeology and research as well as corroborative evidence indicates that the events narrated and the persons described by the great poets Valmiki and Vyasa occurred in the Indo-Gangetic plain. The diverse Mahabharata character suggests that the epic was a chronicle narrating events in Indica Magna comprising the Iranian plateau, Afghanistan, Indian subcontinent, to Central Asia. Later the historical chronicles became legends, mythology and finally religious literature.
After establishment of the Asiatic Society, British Indologists from Sir William Jones onwards and erudite scholars of East India Company did extensive research into ancient Sanskrit texts that proved India’s ancient civilization.
Montstuart Elphinstone, the first governor of Bombay Presidency endorsed this in 1818 by stating in his “History of India” “…To say that Hinduism spread from a central point is an unwarranted assumption, and even to analogy; for, emigration and civilization have not spread in a circle, but from east to west. There is no reason whatever for thinking that the Hindus ever inhabited any country but their present one, and as little for denying that they may have done so before the earliest trace of their records or tradition.”
The colonial age ushered in scholastic distortions. When enlightened British Indologists began unravelling the grandeur of ancient India as deciphered through the epics, puranas, and poetic dramas, there was uneasiness. It was one thing to rule an India peopled by savages, it was quite another to rule a land of advanced ancient civilizations, whose mother language Sanskrit was declared by Sir William Jones “to be superior to and more ancient than Greek or Latin.” Implicit in this was the rejection of the notorious Aryan invasion theory shortly to be sponsored by Britain.
As counterpoint to Elphinstone and the Company scholars, John Mill, sitting in London, with no knowledge of Sanskrit, Persian or Hindi, published his infamous “The History of British India” in 1817 in which he stated that India did not have the literary and cultural traditions of the Western world. He had no idea of the two great Indian epics, or of Kalidasa, Banabhatta, or the historian poet Kalhana’s “Rajataringini” or of medieval devotional literature.
Interpretations of Indian history took a regressive turn when Company rule ended and Indian administration came directly under the Crown. Pursuing Mill’s dilettantism, Queen Victoria’s idle husband Prince Albert recruited a German scholar Max Mueller to overturn Indology. He propagated the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) which was eagerly adopted by 19th century scholars. According to this Theory, northern India was invaded and conquered (around 1500 BCE) by a nomadic, light-skinned race called “Aryans.”
This theory declared: Aryan invaders destroyed an earlier Dravidian civilization which flourished in the Indus Valley. The white Aryans composed the Vedas, the Puranans and the epics in Sanskrit (which originated from their nameless homeland) and evolved the religious rituals that existed and were practised.
There is no mention of, or reference to, an Aryan invasion or migration in Vedic scriptures, the epics or puranas. There are no references to an Aryan race. “Arya” meant a cultured or high placed person. Nor have these texts, allegedly composed by the Aryans, referred wistfully to their original homeland—as all émigrés do!
The AIT pronounced that the Dravidian people were defeated and their culture was destroyed by the superior Aryans. They were said to have lived around the Indus Valley. They were described as a pastoral people who lived in rude huts since they knew nothing about buildings. They did not ride horses, did not have chariots or armour.
The AIT gathered momentum as Indian resistance to imperialism grew. It was imperative to have phantoms of presumably Aryan-European invaders who had civilized the Indian subcontinent around 1500 BCE, and whose sacred mission was being continued by the British Raj!
This specious theory was challenged by archaeology and linguistic research in modern India.
The Aryan Invasion Theory was dramatically demolished by the discovery of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa in 1922 by Rakhaldas Banerjee and his team of dedicated archaeologists of the Archaeological Survey of India. The advanced urban culture found in the two cities, with fortifications, buildings, houses, streets, canals and drainage system put an end to the theory of Aryan invaders destroying Dravidian kingdoms. Moreover skeletons of horses and remains of chariots and armour were found during excavations. This proved that the inhabitants of the Indus Valley had knowledge of irrigation, metallurgy and weaponry. Sir John Marshall, then Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, exulted, “These discoveries have pushed back the frontiers of Indian civilization by three thousand years!”
The British Establishment was not at all pleased. Disturbed by these discoveries which proved the antiquity of Indian civilization which was entirely indigenous, further excavations were halted by eminent archaeologist Leonard Woolley on the ground that there was a paucity of funds. Sir John Marshall’s pleas were ignored. After independence excavations have proved that the Indus Valley civilization extended to Central India. Eminent historian Mortimer Wheeler called it “a vast unitary civilization of India.”
The AIT had also advocated that the Mahabharata epic was a fictional work. The momentous discovery of the submerged city Dwarka demolished the Aryan Invasion Theory that the Mahabharata was a work of fiction.
Dr S.R. Rao and his team of the Marine Archaeology Unit unearthed the ruins of the submerged city of Dwarka off the Gujarat coast during 1984-1988. Dwarka was the kingdom of Sri Krishna, one of the principal characters of the Mahabharata. Dr S.R. Rao’s team found artefacts and remains that were dated around 3,500 BCE which was contemporaneous with the civilization of Sumeria in Iraq. ASI officers have excavated five villages of the Pandava brothers—Indraprasth, Sonapath, Panipath, Bhagpath, Tilpath—around present day Delhi and Punjab.
European historians have also played havoc with their own great/small men.
Henry VIII—who beheaded two wives, divorced two unoffending wives, who wished to behead his daughter Mary, and executed great scholars like Sir Thomas More—has been glorified as a “splendid Renaissance prince” by English historians.
Per contra, Ivan IV of Russia—who unified Russia and defined its present borders, who ended Mongol rule, brought order to Russia, established trading companies, who sent emissaries to the West and Central Asia and who ruled his empire with a severe autocratic hand—earned the sobriquet “The Terrible”. It is a distortion of the Russian word “grozny” which means “awesome”—the word that is used to describe Lord Shiva in a song by Rabindranath Tagore: “Oh Nataraj, dance to your own music, oh Shiva Shankar, oh Bhayankar”.
Protestant historians have defamed the Catholic Philip II of Spain, whose realm encompassed “half the known world.” He opposed the African slave trade in Spanish South America as “slavery opposed Christ’s teachings.” He advocated reform of corrupt monasteries and convents. But his Armada against England made him an enemy of “that Virago” (Elizabeth I), who beheaded her beautiful rival cousin (Mary Stuart), lover Earl of Essex and other dissenters. There is no dearth of apocryphal tales about this sombre king. One was “Philip II smiled only once—when he heard of the massacre of Protestants.” Actually, he smiled many times when he conversed with Teresa, the rebel nun of Avila.
However, we cannot blame only Western colonial historians for distorting events and achievements of India. Some Indian historians have adopted similar methods to narrate events of the past.
A distinguished Indian historian, Dr Ramesh Chandra Majumdar wrote volumes on ancient India which remain the source material for research. But when he refused to toe the line of the Indian government regarding the Uprising of 1857, he was unceremoniously removed from the committee that was commissioned to publish a massive centenary volume on 1857. Dr Majumdar would not accept the official line—that it was a full scale national movement. He declared—with facts and figures—that the Sepoy Mutiny was primarily a mutiny by the mercenary soldiers of the East India Company and that they were joined by discontented rajas and nawabs who wanted preservation of their privileges. The Tagore family agreed with him.
Dr K.M. Panikkar caused a sensation when his magnum opus “Asia and Western Dominance” was published. This brilliant and unique work traces the origins of colonialism from the arrival of Vasco da Gama in India. With his views on historical materialism, Dr Panikkar narrates the commercial avarice accompanied by military might with which European states conquered and then dominated most of Asia. With energy and passion, as well as vast erudition, Dr Panikkar reveals the tragic and inexorable imperial progress that ruined Asia—with no apologies to anyone. There are few books on the ravages of colonialism to rival Dr Panikkar’s work.
This has been said of Dr Panikkar’s book. “The changes in historiography are not necessarily a mere process of evolution, but are shaped by continuous intellectual struggles, rooted in ideological influences, political interests and material concerns.”
Dr Majumdar returned to compose his volumes on ancient India without Indian government’s sponsorship. Leftist historians regarded him as “slanted”. Undeterred, he continued to write on ancient India on events founded on facts.
He wrote: “We should not write corrupted history, however bitter the proceedings may be. Many countries have the tradition of changing history as their leaders change. We should not let India become one of those. History should be written based on sound proof and reasoning and not focused around famous personalities.”
Dr Majumdar laid down three principles of interpreting history. “Firstly, that history is no respecter of persons or communities; secondly, that its sole aim is to find out the truth by following the canons commonly accepted as sound by all historians; and thirdly, to express the truth, without fear, envy, malice, passion or prejudice, and irrespective of all extraneous considerations, both political and humane”.
Achala Moulik is a retired civil servant who has published numerous books on world history, international relations, as well as four novels.