A Study of History, Vol 7B

Title: A Study of History, Vol 7B – Universal Churches

Author: Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1985 (First published 1954)

ISBN: 978-0-19-215237-4

Pages: 403

In this second part of the seventh volume of Toynbee’s series on universal states and universal churches, the onus is on the latter. Whenever a society enters its path to disintegration, the possibility of conjuring up a universal state or church emerges. While state formation may be by the hands of internal elements or outer barbarians, universal churches are generally produced by the internal proletariat. Toynbee examines the arguments that treat religion as cancer on the societal body, or as chrysalis of a new civilization and ends up with the laughable postulate that divine love is that which moves the world and seeking union with god is the ultimate purpose of human life on earth! Even allowing for the zeitgeist of that time, it is really sad to observe such a ridiculous pose from a great scholar like Toynbee.

Religion, especially those ‘higher’ religions that roots on prophetic revelations, is a weak point of the author’s rationale. The readers wonder at the proclivity of the author to trumpet the praise of religion and god as the defining parameters of humanity, instead of merely as the stepping stones of man’s social progress, which is the place a rational mind ascribes to religion. To a modern intellectual, religion lies at the bottom of the social milieu, based on which the society still function, though deep chinks are seen in the solid foundation that counted time in millenia. But Toynbee places it at the top level of all human endeavours that might be accounted for, by his point of view which may be at odds with modern thinking. He begins this volume by attacking the argument that religion is a cancer that eats upon the vitality of a society. Before religion separated man from fellow man, his allegiance was to the society as a whole, in the form of family, tribe, clan, state or empire. His actions were governed by considerations of how his actions would be beneficial to his fellows. Primitive religions also followed this road, where rituals that ensured the participation of the whole tribe counted for all of god’s grace that flowed to a man. But when the ‘higher’ religions came into being, it placed man on a personal footing against god. His grace could theoretically flow direct from the godhead to the person according to a specific set of guidelines that didn’t accord much significance to such corporate entities as a state or kingdom. Hence man withdrew into a shell that housed god anyhow, and the society was the loser. It was only when the crab-like grip of religion was eased in the 17^th century did civilization once again started moving towards greater freedom and progress. Toynbee counters this unassailable piece of wisdom with weak homilies like god’s love of man inspiring the notion of brotherhood and universal love. The author’s arguments are not convincing.

Another breathtaking feat of acrobatics is the author’s equating the ‘higher’ religions of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism on a par as the paths of salvation open to mankind. Toynbee’s voice rings conciliatory, but unaccompanied by supporting evidence of the tie, that binds these varied religions through a common thread of ‘revealed’ information. Readers may doubt whether there is anything fundamental that differentiates between Hinduism and the ancient Greek religion that also adored numerous divinities of varied statures and equally variable moral standards. Both of them can rightly be called paganism, but Toynbee goes to great length to mitigate the taint of idolatry and paganism as far as Hinduism is concerned whereas the Greek religion earned his scorn at every turn. However, the author’s act seems to be in contrast to his earlier point of view as is evident from the previous volumes in which Hinduism was painted as the hotchpotch of practices of a society kept firmly under the British colonial empire. What apparently caused his volte face? The hint to this question lies in the year of publishing of this volume. This book came out in 1953 whereas the previous volumes saw light of the day in the 1930s. See the difference a country’s independence in the meantime forces on the evaluation of a learned scholar! India’s attainment of independence in 1947 must be seen as the reason behind the author’s graciousness of bracketing India’s ancient religion also in the elite club of ‘higher’ religions. But Toynbee’s classification and praise of such religions are so flimsy and illogical that I am constrained forever to put the word ‘higher’ only inside apostrophes! When the readers get really fed up at the end of the book, they would get some comic relief by learning the opinion of Martin Wight, whose comments are prominently incorporated and paraphrased by the author throughout the text. According to Wight’s ‘learned’ opinion, all other religions’ sole purpose in life is to pave the way for Christianity to conquer, because that alone is the true religion! He objects to Toynbee’s practice of equating the four prominent religions in the world on a footing of spiritual equality.

The book then presents another dull and predictable exposition of the roles of science and religion in the modern world and how they could live in harmony with each other by sticking on to the domains of intellect and revelation. Whenever they stepped on the domain of the other, havoc resulted in totalitarian dominance of one on the other. Religion reigned supreme for most of the time, but science regained its hegemony during the last two centuries. But if the author’s opinion is to be accepted at face value, the two devastating world wars has exposed the precariousness of letting science have its own way. Most readers, except the deeply devout, would disagree with this conclusion.

Annexes to the entire seventh volume including ‘Universal States’ and ‘Universal Churches’ are included with this book. One of them is a scholarly treatise on the administrative and fiscal geography of the Achaemenian Empire. Here, the author examines the errors and inconsistencies observed in the remains of official records unearthed by archeologists and found mentioned by Herodotus in his history. Not only the exposition is extraordinarily detailed, but the sieve with which he tries the assertions of the ancient authors is a very fine one. Do the readers need be subjected to such an elaborate display of erudition, but which does not contribute in any way to the readability of the book or relevance to the content? Toynbee applies generalization principles to historical events so as to present before us an overarching scheme of how things work out in the rest of the book, but in this annex, he unleashes his scholarship to magnify a finer point which does not donate any additional insight to the overall picture. As a result of this tiring exercise that carries more than hundred pages of the volume, tt may come as a surprise to many students of ancient Indian history to note that the Indus basin and Punjab plains had been under the domination of Persian kings in the pre-Alexandrine era. The rock edicts of Darius at Behistan evoke an urge to compare its style with Ashoka's edicts which differ in time by two centuries.

This volume was a great disappointment. We get frustrated for denying us the chance to learn about how religion occupied the world as it does today. Instead, they are forced to partake from the author’s laborious essays on spirituality, religious philosophy, and metaphysics. Some of them are outright childish, like “A crucified man would be the only kind of man that an Incarnate God could be” (p.567)! Toynbee loans concepts from science to apply them afresh to historical facts, like he did with the ocean current of Gulf Stream in trying to prove a historical point. This is unconvincing and is erroneous application of the idea. But on some aspects, he identifies the exact nature of things that happened, like “Sankara relieved Hinduism of the incubus of Indic scriptures (Vedanta, Upanishads) by professing to place these on a pedestal high enough to remove them conveniently out of the way” (p.454). Then again, his proposition that Jawaharlal Nehru becoming the administrator of modern India was because he was a Kashmiri Brahmin as a consequence of the rule that Brahmins decided the fate of the country is ridiculous and born out of ignorance of the conditions existing in India during the end of the 1940s.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

October Coup

Title: October Coup – A Memoir of the Struggle for Hyderabad

Author: Mohammed Hyder

Publisher: Roli Books, 2012 (First)

ISBN: 978-81-7436-850-8

Pages: 227

When the British left India in 1947 after dividing her into two, each half was itself vulnerable to further split on account of hundreds of princely states who found the paramount power no longer browbeating them to submission. Most of the princes were ineffective, indulgent and had no idea of how to steer their states to modernity after clearing the cobwebs of centuries of ignorance and superstition. The local rulers hoped to declare independence from both countries and to continue their misrule for many more decades to come. Pakistan was lucky not to have faced such a standoff as it had only a few princely states which readily joined the new nation. India was different, but the steely will of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, India’s first home minister, prevailed over the petty kings who found their knees bending like a piece of rubber before the Iron Man of India. Three states – Hyderabad, Kashmir and Junagadh – posed problems for the new government as they wanted either to remain independent or accede to Pakistan. Hyderabad was the most numerous and powerful among the three, whose Muslim ruler – the Nizam – wanted to remain free. Riding roughshod on the backs of the Hindu majority in that state, the Nizam and the state’s Muslim aristocracy who monopolized all the administrative posts didn’t want to give up their undemocratic privileges. Patel waited and waited for the Nizam to see reason, but who was bent on prolonging the negotiations on the one side and amassing weapons on the other, at the same time trying diplomatic overtures to make the UN Security Council involved in the case, in a bid to escalate the standoff to the level of an international issue. Meanwhile, the aristocracy formed a private militia calling themselves Razakars, who intimidated the Hindus and subjected them to untold atrocities and acts of aggression. India lost patience in the end and annexed the state after a ‘Police Action’ which thoroughly wiped off the erstwhile Nizam’s administration. Mohammed Hyder was the Collector of a border district in Hyderabad state and describes the story of the final days. The author was removed from his post and charged with multiple counts of murder, loot and arson. He was incarcerated for a few years and later released when the new government didn’t pursue the cases against him in Supreme Court. The book presents the story of those tumultuous days and the author’s legal battle to get himself freed from prison against a crime he has not committed, as he says.

Hyder was posted as the Collector of Osmanabad in January 1948. Being a border district, the civil administration found it difficult to stem in the miscreants from across the border, where Hyderabadi Hindus found asylum from the ransacking Pathan and Arab mobs. His assertion that the border camps were the shelter of hooligans who committed murder, loot and arson may be taken only with a pinch of salt. Hyderabad had a naturally porous border with India, with many villages overlapping with that of India, and the very existence of the princely state was untenable, according to the author’s own words. The Standstill Agreement signed by the Nizam with Indian Union stipulated discussions to be held regarding the state’s status and that needed time. But the Nizam and the ruling Muslim aristocracy had no plans to acquiesce in to representative government as they were apprehensive about the Hindu majority gaining upper hand in such a situation. It planned to invoke the UN Security Council and had plans afoot to large scale import of weapons from Pakistan (p. 52). The Hindus were intimidated to unprecedented scales and Hyder states even little Muslim children harassed them (p. 26). Obviously, India had to resort to firm action, which materialized in September 1948 and the state was annexed, which Hyder claims was really a military invasion.

Even though the book is titled ‘October Coup – A Memoir of the Struggle for Hyderabad’, the memoir of the struggle constitute only a brief part of the narrative, the remainder dedicated to highlight the author’s legal battle against the state. Immediately after the ‘Police Action’, Hyder was suspended from service and four months later, he was arrested. Being a member of the aristocracy, considerable leniency was shown to him and he could shirk police custody by fortuitously coming up with a case of dysentery! After spending nearly a month in hospital, he was transferred at last to Osmanabad prison. 19 cases of murder and dozens of instances of dacoity were charged against him and in a double murder case, he was even sentenced to death! The accused used all legal options open to him and even succeeded in quashing the constitutionality of special tribunals set up to try them. But on appeal, the Supreme Court upheld the constitution of the special courts. Hyder was convicted on all counts by the special judge, but the High Court acquitted him on account of the technical issue. The state went in for appeal and the apex court overturned the High Court verdict. Strangely, the government didn’t pursue the case against the author and it was dropped.

Hyder protests his innocence voluminously, but his arguments appear as untenable to impartial observers. He cites the late filing of FIR on a murder case on which he was charged. The Police filed an FIR only after India took over Hyderabad, which is cited as an irregularity. But, what justice could the victims hope to obtain, when the police and judiciary in Nizam’s state was controlled by the uncivilized Razakars and Majlis e-Ittihadul Muslimeen? It is no wonder that not even an FIR was filed in that era. Even though not convicted at the end of the term, the legal wrangles lasted for nearly ten years and he was removed from service. He fought the decision, but to no avail. The courts upheld the government’s contention that they don’t want this man and no reasons were disclosed for sending him out. Hyder gives a verbatim account of the affidavits couched in legal language, which greatly diminishes the readability of the book. From this point onwards, the course deviates from a memoir to the author’s personal legal file which is not at all appealing and relevant for the general reader.

However self-promoting and one-sided the argument is, the book presents occasional flashes of fine metaphor and excellent historical allusions which carry the day. Hyderabad’s worsening law and order situation while Sardar Patel, also known as India’s Iron Man, was eagerly watching for an opportunity to intervene, is stated as, “Hyderabad had attained the required white heat and there could not be a more opportune moment for the Iron Man to strike” (p. 70). On his servant helping him with an open heart while he himself was languishing in prison, he says, “It was one of those relationships where the servant gives more than the master has either the right to expect or the ability to reward, putting the latter forever in his doubt” (p. 104). Also, the allusion to the struggle between Athens and Melos in classical Greece where the democratic Athens forcibly annexed the militarily weak island of Melos, was a fine, rhetorical comparison to the situation between India and Hyderabad.

The book inadvertently brings to light the deplorable conditions prevailed in pre-annexation Hyderabad in particular and all princely states in general. An aristocracy that cleverly managed the strings and cliques connected to the soverign, de facto ruled the state as its fief. The civil service was dominated by them, all plum positions reserved for their kin. Reading between the lines, it is highly probable that the author’s own entry into the Hyderabad Civil Service immediately after completing his B.A, might have been due to the highly influential connections enjoyed by his family. His father-in-law was the Director General of Police having intimate relationship with the ruler and the prime minister. In deed, when he asked for a posting as the collector of a difficult border district, the minister sanctions the request only after getting clearance from the father-in-law! The same family network helped him make acquaintance with Qasim Razwi, the terrorizing founder of the notorious Razakar movement, that was a private militia of the aristocracy, but also employable to achieve the religious whims of the Muslim clergy. Law and order was in the hands of the undisciplined Razakars who went on committing atrocities on the helpless Hindu citizens with impunity. Hyder has taken great pains to extricate himself from any allegation of complicity with the Razakars, but the quantum of outrage the liberated Hyderabadi administration felt towards him betrays his underhanded deals with the dreaded lawless movement. To add to the travails of the common man, Pathans and Arabs who were mercenaries in Nizam’s forces, also extorted the Hindus. The author himself expresses his revulsion towards this cruel, unintelligent and semi-barbarous goons going about their ways with no let or hindrance. It is only with deep shock can we discern the terrible fact that the erstwhile Hyderabad government employed these scoundrels in the special police branch (p. 59). No wonder, these public servants ran protection rackets among the border villages (p. 61). The height of mismanagement is seen when the author declares that he dismissed a tehsildar (a senior civil servant in the district administration) of his own department for taking part in daylight looting! (p. 45).

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

A Study of History, Vol 7A

Title: A Study of History, Vol 7A – Universal States

Author: Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1985 (First published 1953)

ISBN: 978-0-19-215236-7

Pages: 379

A society in disintegration is marked by a ‘Time of Troubles’ in which it is rent by fratricidal warfare between contending states in its bosom. After this show of strength that saps all progress in other spheres of culture, either one state among the many or an alien community defeats the other contenders and establishes a universal state for the society in consideration. This volume describes this phenomenon in detail. Universal states and universal churches occur side by side, and both of them constitute the subject matter of volume 7 of Toynbee’s classic, but due to inordinate size of the content, it is separated into two sub-volumes 7A and 7B. The author’s survey covers the whole world, but four states in particular attracts our attention more than any other because of their continuing moral and cultural impact on today’s world – them being the Roman, the Han, the Ottoman and the Caliphate. The coverage is comprehensive as usual, with all aspects of a working state like its civil and military services, enfranchisement of citizenry, road network, postal and espionage services, law, coinage, weights and measures and also the unintended services these states render to higher religions. Being the shortest volume in the series, readers may find this one easier to complete, but the road is as tough as those of the previous volumes due to the author’s mastery over joining up sentences to make a very long piece of information that envelops a large ensemble of concepts.

Universal states originate in the disintegrating phase of the life of a society. The dominant minority among the society or external barbarians may do it a creditable service by establishing a universal state. In China, the Tsin and in the Hellenic, the Roman empire were universal states created by the society itself, but for the Eastern Orthodox Christian and Hindu civilizations, the Ottoman and Mughal empires provided the unity obtainable only through a universal state. A notable aspect of these political creatures is the delusion of immortality these states imprint among its citizens. Even long after the state had crumbled and had lost its coercive power beyond the immediate neighbourhood, the citizens cling to their old impression of its invincibility. The nominal ruler of such states wields honour and legitimacy to the extent that even contending rulers seek investiture from the titular monarch. The Islamic Caliphate is a good case in point. The last Abbasid caliph was deposed and brutally killed in 1258 by the invading Mongol Hulagu Khan, but his legacy lived on and all Muslim rulers sought to obtain legitimacy for their own regimes by receiving titles from the caliph or swearing allegiance to him. This lasted until the caliphate itself was dissolved by Turkish nationalists in 1924, after deposing the last Ottoman sultan.

Universal states help to permeate uniformity among the subject populations. State’s institutions like roads, garrisons, language and law reach far and wide. One of the first acts of an ecumenical power will normally be building thoroughfares that link remote corners of the country to the capital city. The Roman Empire provides an excellent example. But the roads prove to be a boon not only for the empire builders, but the enemies from outside the pale too. Goths and Vandals, who finally sacked Rome, found it easy to speed their way across the length and breadth of the empire through the well maintained road network. Roads are normally directed at capital cities, but the capitals too might wander across the land according to the whims of conquerors and the necessity of the military situation. To make an example from India, the ancient Mauryas ruled from Pataliputra, which continued as the seat of government by the Gupta dynasty too. In the meantime, the country was subjected to alien intrusions from the North-west in the form of Saka and Kushan invasions. Harsha then moved the capital nearer to the troublesome border, at Sthaneswara, near Delhi. Muslim sultans adopted this city as their own. When a new threat arose from the sea in the form of British incursions, the victorious British set up their capital at Calcutta first, which was nearer to their own arena of operations. But when they established suzerainty over all other states in the sub-continent, even they couldn’t resist the lure of the old imperial city. The capital was moved from Calcutta to Delhi in 1912.

Language is another medium through which a universal state makes its presence felt. In any case, there is no general rule to predict in which way the victor would choose to go. Sometimes, the conqueror’s mother tongue will be enforced as the medium of administration. The British replaced Persian of the Mughal Raj with English and vernacular languages. In some cases, the language of the vanquished that command such a high degree of reverence might continue to be used. The Romans acquiesced in to the continuance of Greek in those provinces where that language was used, and forced Latin on others. The Achaemenid empire helped Aramaic to obtain wide currency in the Near East at the crucial juncture when Sumerian and Akkadian languages were on the decline. In some very special cases, the barbarian conquerors allow the continued usage of the civilized language of the defeated. The Mongol and Manchu backwoodsmen who established universal states for China allowed and even enthusiastically followed the adoption of Chinese for official purposes. Similarly, the Mughals, whose native tongue was Turkish, accepted Persian as the official language that was a continuation of the system of Sultanates whom they dethroned.

The book includes a commendable survey on the origin of law and jurisprudence in ancient societies. It is only a small step from here to deduce the indebtedness of modern legal systems to the age old codification of laws. The first such attempt to compile statutes was performed in Babylon by Hammurabi in the 19^th century BCE, followed roughly 2500 years later by Justinian in the East Roman empire. Surprisingly, it took another 1300 years for Napoleon to follow suit with his own code after establishing the French empire. These anthologies produce lasting effects on the populace and even religious schools are also not immune to its percolating effects. Hammurabi’s code is the basic source for many of the Jewish strictures and Justinian’s code similarly provided the source material for many articulations of legal proceedings in Islamic Sharia. A debilitating oversight at this point of the Study is the casual way in which the author glosses over these facts without the least care to bring about the points of correspondence in greater detail. This is in stark contrast to the other parts of the Study (see Christus Patiens in Volume 6), where even a minor argument is supported with the forceful enlistment of extensive references. Such cavalier treatment of so important a fact was a little disappointing. He further extends the study to the standardization of weights and measures, time keeping, calendars, and military and civil administrations.

This volume came out after a delay of 14 years, as the author was called upon civil duty during the Second World War for seven years. This unsettled the book’s original plans, but had produced a welcome change in the author to review the earlier scheme and incorporate apposite changes in its structure. The War was such a profound event in human history that it has doubtless forced changes in some of the author’s previous arguments. The readability has improved a lot. This incident also shows the unsettling impact the war inflicted on the people. It was all pervading and all enveloping. Eminent scholars like the author could not escape the call of duty and conscription. Younger scholars fought on the fields. The cruel demand war extracts from the populace is clearly evident from the Introduction to this volume.

Even with the apparently superhuman effort that has gone into research for this work of erudition, it seems possible that the author has missed a point that might harbor immense relevance to ancient Indian history. While discussing about the uniform practice of garrisoning the frontiers of universal states, with special reference to the Achaemenian empire (Persian), the author observes that on the Northeast frontier with Ferghana in Central Asia, the Persians used the services of nomads to guard the borders and says, “on its Sogdian sector, this frontier was screened by a military alliance with a nomad horde in Farghana described in the official lists as ‘the Hauma (?)-drinking Saka (Saka Haumavarga, Greek Amyrgioi)” (p.120). Accounting for the peculiarity of Persian phonetic expression in transforming the sound ‘s’ to ‘h’, the Hauma changes to ‘Soma’, which is meaningful in the Vedic context where the mild alcoholic stimulating drink of Soma is highly praised. Toynbee fails to make this connection and puts a question mark after Hauma (see above). If this allusion to Soma holds good, it is a clear and even convincing argument in favour of the Central Asian ancestry of Aryans. Historians may like to carry this point further.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star