The Harappans and Aryans

Title: The Harappans and Aryans
Author: M K Dhavalikar
Publisher: Aryan Books International, 2018 (First)
ISBN: 9788173056123
Pages: 227

 

When John Marshall unearthed the remains of Harappan civilization in the 1920s, he found – or rather thought he had found – clear elements of non-Aryan characteristics such as the absence of horse and iron and also an urban setting for the culture. Clever intervention by missionary-turned-anthropologists had successfully established an Aryan-Dravidian dichotomy by the end of nineteenth century. This led Marshall to propose that the Harappan civilization was engendered by the Dravidians on the laughable logic that whatever is not Aryan must be Dravidian. This assertion had no basis in fact. Archeologically, no trace of artefactual continuity is established between Harappa and the supposedly Dravidian-populated South India. The Harappan language, though not yet deciphered, stands no comparison at all with the Dravidian languages. The Harappans ate wheat and barley while the south Indians continue to eat rice. Even in the face of these logical arguments, a few scholars support Marshall’s cause and claim that the Dravidians established the Harappan civilization. The controversy still rages and we need many more scholars to put in their contribution to the debate. Madhukar Keshav Dhavalikar is a retired professor of archeology at the Deccan College, Pune. He is a field expert, having carried out excavations at many ancient sites which include Inamgaon, Prabhas Patan and Kuntasi among others. He has published over one hundred research papers and thirty books on archeology. In this book, Dhavalikar argues that the Harappan civilization was an Aryan construct and after the breakup of the civilization due to environmental factors, the Harappan-Aryans spread to other parts of north, central and eastern India and launched the second urbanization during the beginning of the historic period in the lifetime of Buddha and Mahavira.

Dhavalikar’s aim is to establish the connecting link between the proto-historic Harappan and the early historic Aryan urbanizations separated by a thousand years. His arguments are logical and may be plausible. He has explained away even the toughest challenges like the absence of horse and iron in a convincing manner. The horse reached India by the Late Harappan stage from west Asia and that’s why it is not depicted in seals made in the Mature Harappan phase, but found in large measure in Vedic texts composed in the Late Harappan period. The downfall of the urban phase is attributed to desiccation caused by global cooling that set in by about 2000 BCE and lasted for a millennium. At the same time, some hypotheses seem to be out of order. He postulates that Harappa was probably a monarchical state with a large, well-defined territory spanning 1.5 million square km. It exhibited occupational specialization in society with a variety of crops. The uniformity of customs at different ends of the land attests to a uniform state. The author also thinks that a rudimentary caste system was in existence at Harappan sites, judging from the demarcation of urban real estate into citadel and different shades of lower towns. This is a little farfetched. Some form of separation based on profession is seen in all societies and the dwelling places mirror this division. But arguing that the division into classes was sealed by birth in a specific class – as in caste societies – is not proven by available evidence.

This book introduces a plausible yet highly speculative sequence of events that led to the downfall of the Harappan civilization. Around 2200 BCE, a cataclysmic tectonic movement took place in the Himalayan foothills. This changed the course of rivers. The Sutlej river diverted its flow from Saraswati (present day Ghaggar-Hakra) and emptied its discharge to the Chenab river. Meanwhile, Yamuna also changed its course to withdraw from Saraswati and link up with Ganga further east, as it still does. This made the Saraswati go dry and the towns on its banks lost their vitality. However, this does not explain why other centres like Harappa or Mohenjodaro declined. To compound the misfortune, from around 2000 BCE, environmental degradation set in on a global scale and many parts became arid due to global cooling. Harappans were then scattered to distant corners of India and west Asia. Societies in other regions of India were still in the Mesolithic or even Neolithic stages at that time. Harappans taught them plough agriculture, cultivation of wheat and barley, copper-bronze technology, wheel-turned pottery, cremation of the dead and also Prakrit, an Indo-Aryan language.

In his bid to prove the identity of Harappans as Aryans, Dhavalikar examines a few aspects that are seemingly pointed against his theory. There are no confirmed traces of the horse in the Mature Harappan phase. It was a rarity in the Late phase too, since there was no agricultural use for the animal. Its use became more widespread in the era of migration to the Ganga basin. Scholars associate the horse inseparably to Aryans and the Rig Veda mentions it 215 times while the bull finds mention only 176 times. However, the author points out that the Aryans did not bring the horse to India, but was traded with west Asia by the end of the third millennium BCE. Fire worship was fairly common in India even in pre-Harappan sites like Mehrgarh in Baluchistan. Its universal adoption in Mature Harappan period is attested by the elaborate fire altars with remains of animal bones found in Kalibangan. In the Rig Veda, the largest number of hymns is addressed to Agni (fire). Anyhow, this book does not pursue the lead of fire worship to Zoroastrianism in Persia which looks like a serious slip.

The author’s credentials as an accomplished archeologist are beyond doubt, but his attempt to combine fact with fiction casts a shadow of inconsistency to the whole effort. Dhavalikar tries unconvincingly to reconcile ancient Indian concepts of chronological phases like Kali Yuga to historical notions. He calculates the beginning of Kali Yuga to 3110 BCE by counting 95 generations of kings from Puranic genealogy. In this irrational attempt, he arbitrarily assigns a regnal term of eighteen years to each king so as to coincide the beginning of Kali Yuga to the date of scholarly consensus of the onset of Harappan civilization. Interestingly, this date is extended to supposed references in the Bible too. This book wonders at the coincidence of the year 3104 BCE mentioned in the Bible as the year of God’s creation of the world. This assertion is quite strange as there no such references in the Bible. Bishop Ussher of England in the early modern age had estimated the Creation as happening in 4004 BCE from the genealogical lines listed in the Bible. This is far too distant from the author’s estimation.

The spread of Harappans/Aryans from the land of five rivers to the east and west is covered in some detail. They established their prominence as far as west Asia and Iran. The treaty between Hittites of Anatolia and Mitanni in Syria of fourteenth century BCE, found and known as the Boghazkoi Inscription of central Turkey mentions Rig Vedic gods such as Indra, Mitra, Nasatya and Varuna. This migration phase in India is characterized by the Rig Vedic picture of a rural society featured by subsistence farming, stock-raising and hunting-fishing. The fall from the great urban period cannot be more striking. Dhavalikar takes a dig at the Aryan invasion theory with an analysis of ancient languages. Prakrit was the language of the Harappans and it is an Indo-Aryan tongue. Rig Veda has borrowed many words from it. He also claims that Dravidians too had migrated to India from Elam in Persia in the fourth millennium BCE. He accepts that the Aryans had come from central Asia, but affirms that they made the Harappan civilization in all its glory.

The book includes some references to the author’s political opinion which is to be highly deplored in an academic treatise such as his hostility to communal reservation in government jobs in India. He terms it an irony of fate that people of the upper castes now want to turn into backward castes. At the same time, he makes a prescient observation that innovation had never been an Indian quality. The artifacts stood unchanged for thousands of years with no change for the better. There is no difference in bullock carts as depicted in Harappan terracotta seals and the modern ones still used in Indian villages.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Babur – Timurid Prince and Mughal Emperor

Title: Babur – Timurid Prince and Mughal Emperor 1483-1530

Author: Stephen Frederic Dale
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2018 (First)
ISBN: 9781107107267
Pages: 242

Zahir al-din Muhammad Babur (1483 – 1530) was a prominent invader of India in its millennia-old history, He established the Mughal dynasty that lasted for only three centuries, but offered lasting contributions to India’s society as a whole. As a conqueror, Babur’s legacy is surprisingly scant and he had not left behind many monuments that evoke his memory. Rather, he is still remembered for the destruction he had caused in India. Babur suddenly acquired relevance in the last decade of the twentieth century for two contradictory reasons. In India, a sixteenth-century mosque attributed to him was razed to the ground by militant Hindu nationalists in 1992 which they claimed was built on top of a destroyed temple dedicated to Lord Ram, one of Hinduism’s most revered divinities. Even though the temple destruction was masterminded by Mir Baqi, Babur’s local commander, the mosque was named in honour of his master. At the same time, the Soviet Union disintegrated into several national republics that quickly faced an urgent need to stitch together a national narrative to bind their people together. The newly formed Uzbekistan found its rallying cry behind its medieval heroes like Timur, Ulugh Beg and Babur. This book is a toned down version of one of the author’s thoroughly researched book that was difficult for ordinary readers to enjoy. Stephen Frederic Dale is Professor Emeritus of South Asian and Islamic History at Ohio State University.

Babur inherited the most exalted ancestry imaginable to a medieval central Asian warlord. He descended from Timur on the father’s side and from Chingiz Khan on the mother’s. This gave him legitimacy in the fiercely tribal society of those times. At the same time, Dale narrates characteristics of a barbarian polity showing no respect for kinship relations. When Babur’s father Umar Shaikh Mirza died in 1494, Babur became the ruler of Ferghana with his capital at Andijan. He was soon attacked by close relatives on all sides. Ahmad Mirza of Samarqand, who was his own father-in-law, attacked from the west; his maternal uncle, the Chaghatai Mongol Mahmud Khan of Tashkent, attacked from the northwest and a Mongol kinsman and ruler of Kashgar Abu Bakr Dughlat, from the east. Babur repulsed all of them, but this lust for power cast a long shadow on the dynasty he founded in India. Their affections often followed personal whims than paternal obligations. Muhammad Baranduq Barlas, Babur’s ancestor, much loved the hawk such that if a hawk died or was lost, it would have mattered more than if one or another son had died or broken his neck (p.74).

The author describes the sorry plight of Babur in his native Ferghana and Samarqand against powerful enemies. Babur occupied Samarqand three times – which he considered to be his legacy attributable to his Timurid ancestry – but lost out to Uzbeks on all three occasions. Babur fled each time he had had to cross swords with Shaibani Khan Uzbek. Finally, he occupied Kabul as to make the best out of a hopeless situation. He conquered Kabul not by conquest, but by legitimacy. His Timurid uncle Ulugh Beg Kabuli who had ruled there had died in 1502. But he found the Afghan tribes too independent as to refuse taxes or tributes. Compared to the economically poorer province of Kabul, the wealthy plains and compliant farmers of India was a very alluring prospect. However, Babur matured in Kabul and enjoyed a considerable degree of stability for the first time in his life. The two decades he spent there was full of great personal and intellectual accomplishment. In that congenial life, eighteen children were born to him of his four wives! The poor resources of the province comprised only of custom duty. Dale presents a comparison of Kabul with Agra. While the latter collected 2.9 million shahrukhis in taxes, Kabul could produce only 0.8 million. Still, Babur loved life in Kabul so much that he regretted ever leaving Kabul’s cool forested countryside and its cascading streams for the hot, humid and arid planes of India.

However hard you may analyse the impact of Babur on India, the modern Indian society think of him as another marauding, nomadic barbarian from the central Asian steppes. The feeling of ill will is mutual. Babur found Indians black and ugly. He viewed India with contempt and he does not even allude to Indo-Muslim clerics in his religious musings. As compared to the slave lineage of Delhi’s first sultanate dynasties, Babur trumpeted his heritage and resultant legitimacy derived foremost from his prestigious Timurid lineage. As a true Hanafi Sunni Muslim and a representative of Perso-Islamic society, he criticized the lack of social life in India and the isolating Hindu ways of caste which in his view lacked the civilized traits of congenial social intercourse. In a sustained effort of cultural imperialism, Babur worked constantly to Persianize India.

In his later years, Babur stuck to a puritanical way of life, giving up intoxicating drinks and opium as a thanks-giving offer for victory against Rana Sanga at the Battle of Khanwa. Anyhow, he was a rank opportunist when he could enjoy power by compromising on his religious beliefs or morals. Shaibani Khan was an Uzbek warlord who scattered Babur’s troops whenever they met in battle. This Khan was killed by Shah Ismail Safawi of Persia who offered a gift to Babur which he could not refuse – the rulership of Samarqand. Babur readily reciprocated with fealty and submission to the Shah and his Shii faith. When he took Samarqand, the Shah’s name was read in Friday prayers and the Shii profession of faith ‘Ali wali Allah’ was stamped on coins. But the people of Samarqand rebelled against this apostasy, which was one of the reasons for his getting ousted from the city. Babur also continued to use the name of the Turko-Mongol pagan god Tengri (blue sky) as a synonym of Allah. In fact he uses the term Tengri more often than the Islamic god (p.130).

Dale gives pride of place to Babur’s literary achievements like poems and ghazals. Most of them are of the expected variety of unrequited love or frustrated infatuation. However, he does not enjoy an exalted poetic reputation but his poems are important as evidence of his literary ambitions and cultured personality. Many character sketches of the Timurids in Afghanistan as Babur consolidated his position in Kabul are given. A long list of poets and philosophers are also included. The discussion loses focus here and falls to the level of a summary of Babur’s autobiography called Baburnama.

The author marvels at the candidness with which Babur had approached his own self and at the objectivity of his observations of others. He also hints at the trait of homosexuality seen in the Mughal founder. Babur talks about his infatuation with a youth he calls Baburi. His emotionally affected prose depicts a distant and unresolved infatuation as if from the side of a girl. He writes that he was ‘tongue-tied when he met Baburi in the bazaar out of modesty and bashfulness’. In this case, Babur is unable even to open a conversation with the young man who aroused in him emotions of ‘desire’ and ‘love’. Dale opines that all these references generate unanswerable, psychological questions in readers. Another instance that pointed to this trait of Babur’s personality occurred in 1519 when we see him write a two-couplet verse a few days after he sent his long-term companion Khwajah Kalan as the governor of Bijaur. It contains the same imagery of separated lovers found in ghazals.

This book takes Babur at face value as far as his autobiography is concerned. It provides such an uncritical evaluation of the historical text that had Dale been alive in Babur’s time, he would have honoured the American professor with a khilat (honorary robe) and perhaps several villages as tax-free grant! This book always refers to India as Hindustan even in contexts not related to the descriptions in Babur’s text. This feels awkward with an impression that the modern Indian state does not faithfully reflect the legacy of the medieval country. Dale is a Turkish language scholar too, but his frequent use of Chaghatai Turkish words from the original text is troublesome for easy readability. This makes the book appear scholarly, but without much use for ordinary readers. The author takes extraordinary care not to disclose Babur’s religious bigotry and sanitizes such references as temple destruction and forced conversions. He uses the word ‘pagan’ instead of ‘kafir’ even though he liberally quotes from the original text.

To sum up this review, let me reproduce a quatrain from Babur.

‘O Breeze, if thou enter the sanctuary of that Cypress
Remind her heart of the wound of separation
May god have mercy; she does not recall Babur
God grant mercy to her heart of steel’

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

 

Armed Struggle for Freedom

Title: Armed Struggle for Freedom – 1857 to Subhash

Author: Balshastri Hardas

Publisher: Jagriti Prakashan, 2016 (First published 1958)

ISBN: 8186719091

Pages: 439

 

Indian students who study their country’s history of the freedom struggle from their school textbooks are led to believe that India became independent through the struggles of Congress entirely through non-violent means suggested by Gandhi. The Congress party which ruled the country for sixty years after independence has comprehensively scrubbed down all traces of effort put in by other organisations in achieving freedom. This has cast an air of inevitability on the British government’s actions after 1900 as it is observed that the constitutional process kick started by the 1909 reforms gradually blossomed into full independence by 1947 in the face of Congress struggles which were mostly exaggerated and generally insignificant. A clear line of thought existed in India that sought to wrench freedom from the colonial masters through violent means. The British government handled them mercilessly. Innumerable martyrs were hanged on the gallows and many were transported for life to the Andamans or Aden. All these known and unknown sons and daughters (yes, there were a few brave women too) of India who suffered, sacrificed and died for the freedom of their motherland cannot be denied their credit. This book corrects the psychological bias of Indians towards non-violent means and explains the brave deeds through which the revolutionaries sometimes shook the British power to its roots. Balshastri Hardas was a renowned scholar of Sanskrit and ancient Indian studies. He was a prolific author who had 27 books to his credit. He died in 1968 at the age of 50. This book which tells the story of the armed rebellion from 1857 to 1947 was published to coincide with the centenary celebrations of the first war of independence in 1957.

 

Hardas explains the sanctity of violence in a nation’s fight for freedom from bondage by an external power. Acts of terror is required to warn the administration and to arrest the course of oppressive policy. It creates self-confidence among the silent masses along with the moral courage of resistance to the tyranny. Here, the subtle difference between the word ‘terror’ used in the book to its modern meaning is to be clarified. Terrorism, especially Islamic terrorism, is the use of excessive force in which the target is destroyed along with an equally huge collateral damage, like the thousands of innocent victims of 9/11. It also aims for the killing of ordinary people without any specific target in mind as seen in 26/11. Indian freedom fighters never resorted to such inhuman ways. They targeted much-hated officials of the administration who themselves had blood of innocents on their hands. Bombs were sometimes used, but on highly specific targets such as the Viceroy’s railway cabin or the Governor’s car. The fact that the violent strikes did play a part in granting independence is amply clear by the debate in the House of Commons on the Indian Independence Act. When Churchill asked why freedom is conceded to India, Prime Minister Attlee attributed two reasons for that decision. One was that the Indian mercenary army was no longer loyal to Britain and the other was that Britain couldn’t afford to have a large British army to hold down India (p.403). It is remarkable that he made no reference to the kid gloved programs of the Congress party!

 

The book starts the narrative from the 1857 Rebellion which is disparaged by most British historians and some of the Indian ones who take inspiration from the former. Contrary to British claims, the author argues that if the rifle cartridges greased with cow and pig fat was the sole problem, it would have remained confined to the circle of sepoys who were asked to use them. Moreover, the Governor General had assured the soldiers that these cartridges won’t be used in the army and the sepoys will be permitted to make their own cartridges. 1857 was also the time when Hindus and Muslims came closest in relations in the entire history of their interactions spanning 1200 years. We find letters written by Hindu war leaders describing the British as kafirs (infidels in the Islamic sense) and highlighting the need to oust them for the protection of both religions. The two major religions came together under the tutelary figure of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah and cried ‘maro firangi ko’ (down with the foreigner) in unison.

 

The 1857 war was a crude wake up call for the British. The Crown took over the administration of India from the trading company which had conquered it and opened up new programs to prevent recurrence of such feared resurrections in the future. It disarmed the natives by taking away their right to carry arms through the notorious arms act. Another Britisher founded the Indian National Congress to open a safety valve to give vent to pent up discontent. The government encouraged Congress by letting many of its mild demands to be accepted. The Maratha country saw the birth of some noble souls who engaged the British in armed conflicts around 1900.

 

A curious orientation seen in the book is its antagonism against social reformers who did their work in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Hardas accuses them of being dazzled and charmed by the glitter of western culture and civilization that they forsook the ideas of freedom and preferred the act of blind imitation. They were accused of believing that if we could reform our social and cultural order of life on the lines of the ruling English people, then freedom will flow automatically as a gift from the democratic English. This leadership honestly but foolishly believed that our fall was due to our social backwardness. They believed in flirting with and flattering the English as demigods and beseeching them for rights and privileges (p.106). The author thus arraigns Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Gopal Hari Deshmukh, Jotiba Phule and M G Ranade as having fallen in this British trap. The preaching of these people almost destroyed the pride of Indians in its own ancient culture, civil and social structures.

 

The history of the revolutionary Gadar movement is actually hidden from public view by academic historians. Hardas makes a valiant effort to remedy this deficiency. Gadar was a party formed overseas for an armed uprising in India. It smuggled men and material to India for a rebellion during the First World War when the British troops were occupied elsewhere in the empire for the war effort. Due to lack of strict discipline, spies leaked the assault plans to the authorities. Hundreds were hanged in the legal process which followed. This book’s greatest contribution to public knowledge is the detailed report it provides regarding the revolutionary war effort in Punjab in 1915-16. A decade later, the Hindusthan Socialist Republican Army struck in Punjab and North India under Chandrasekhar Azad and Sardar Bhagat Singh. Numerous other incidents are also narrated. Many young students, who had just completed their graduation, wielded a gun during the convocation ceremony to make an attempt on the life of the dignitary who was attending the function which usually was the provincial governor who was also the chancellor of the university.

 

The book is written with a strong, nationalist bias. The author becomes quite emotional at times while describing the great sacrifices of the revolutionaries on the altar of the nationalist spirit personified as a mother. The book’s foreword is written by M S Golwalkar, the supreme leader of the RSS at the time of publication. A drawback of the author’s narrative style is the assumption of cowardice on the enemy. Many examples can be cited in which the English are lampooned for running away from the scene of an attack to protect their lives and property. This attitude is incorrect and provides a fictional sheen to the narrative. The English are well known for their bravery during the world wars. However, this was for protecting their own homeland rather than an overseas colony. The author is also somewhat careless about dates, omitting them at many places.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 3 Star