Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By Michel Danino*
(Keynote address delivered at a seminar on History of Globalization and its impact on Indian Culture organized by the Dept. of History, P.S.G.R. Krishnammal College for Women, Coimbatore, on 20 December 2006.)
In the last few years, Indian history has been much in the news. Not, however, in an effort to make better sense of Indias past, of her behaviour as a civilization, of the specificities of Indian culture, nor also to integrate new findings into an ever-growing perspective, but mostly for polemical, political or sensational reasons that only end up creating more confusion and driving us farther away from the central issue: How to deal with Indian history? Ideology barges in and a finer perception of India tiptoes out. In the end, we Indians are the victims, more particularly the students: as long as the teaching of history is manipulated and remote-controlled, it will stifle creativity and students will continue to look at the discipline as a chore pushed down their throats a sleeping pill, as some of them once told me. Mathematics might be another, but then, you need it to get a good job what do you need history for? That, in fact, is the whole question. Unless the syllabus, the textbook and the teacher can together convince the student that history opens a window onto Indian culture and heritage and an understanding of ourselves in short, a meaningful perspective of India the answer to the question will merely be, to get a few marks at the exam. If there is nothing more to is, we might as well scrap the whole discipline, as a few State governments have indeed suggested recently. Indias history is not about dates and kings and bloodsheds. It is about bringing out the life and culture of the Indian people, also the bend of the nation, the way India reacted (and continues to react) to crises and obstacles, adapted to new conditions, the way it has absorbed and given, changed but also remained the same. In a word, what makes India India.
* Michel Danino (micheldanino@gmail.com) is a long-time student of Indian civilization, the convener of the International Forum for Indias Heritage, and an author in French and English. His recent titles include The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati (Penguin Books India, 2010) and Indian Culture and Indias Future (DK Printworld, 2011).
Rabindranath Tagore, whose view of India and Indian history is rarely highlighted, wrote a seminal essay entitled The History of Bharatavarsha. In it he struck a cord parallel to Majumdars:
The history of India that we read and memorize for our examinations is really a nightmarish account of India. Some people arrive from somewhere and the pandemonium is let loose. And then it is a free-for-all: assault and counter-assault, blows and bloodletting. ... If Bharatavarsha is viewed with these passing frames of dreamlike scenes, smeared in red, overlaid on it, the real Bharatavarsha cannot be glimpsed. These histories do not answer the question, where were the people of India? Our real ties are with the Bharatavarsha that lies outside our textbooks. If the history of this tie for a substantially long period gets lost, our soul loses its anchorage. After all, we are no weeds or parasitical plants in India. Over many hundreds of years, it is our roots, hundreds and thousands of them, that have occupied the very heart of Bharatavarsha. But, unfortunately, we are obliged to learn a brand of history that makes our children forget this very fact. It appears as if we are nobody in India2
Such a conception was also that of Swami Vivekananda,3 of Sri Aurobindo, who presented us with a comprehensive formulation of Indian civilization in his Foundations of Indian Culture,4 of Sister Nivedita,5 John Woodroffe,6 Ananda Coomaraswamy,7 K. M. Munshi,8 and a host of other profound thinkers and scholars.
On the other hand, we have what I venture to call the colonial-Marxist perspective. The hyphenation is justified, as we find that in Indias case, Marxist historiography accepts in practice the broad framework of the erstwhile colonial historians, even as it throws new insights, some of which (in the economic and social fields in particular) are often valuable. Among the main features of this perspective, we should certainly mention: A purely materialistic, social and economic definition of man. Since no spiritual dimension is acknowledged, Indias religious and spiritual currents, movements and evolution are interpreted purely from a materialistic standpoint. Indian spirituality and religion (labelled animism, idolatry) are therefore of no value, as are Indias great spiritual figures. To a Marxist historian, Swami Vivekanandas or Sri Aurobindos or Tagores understanding of Indian history and civilization is of no relevance. Indias cultural continuity and identity are basically denied. Artificial breaks are introduced in time (for instance the imaginary Aryan invasion of India) or in society (the Brahmins vs. the rest of India). We do hear of Indias diversity but not of what constitutes its unity. Indias cultural cement, for instance the reach of Epic and Puranic lore to the remotest corner of India, is not thought to be a worthwhile object of study. A gross overemphasis is laid on the caste system: most social phenomenons are interpreted in terms of caste. Yet the relative stability and economic prosperity provided by the caste system to Indian society is overlooked. Also, the substantial role of Islam and British rule in hardening the caste system is glossed over, while Hinduism is portrayed as the spread or sometimes the imposition of Brahminism, ignoring its organic interchange with local cultures. Indias civilizational achievements and contributions to the world in terms of science, technology, philosophy, spirituality, religion, art, literature, scripts etc., are consistently underemphasized. Semitic religions and societies are gently dealt with, while the defects of Indian society are magnified and invariably put down to Hinduism. Indias history is squeezed into a Eurocentric framework through an artificial and alien terminology: barbarism, feudalism, class war.... Failing to work out an Indian historiography of India, this perspective in effect promotes a de-Indianized view of Indian history, which can logically lead only to the atomization of India, since one is left to wonder what can hold together this bewildering medley.
fire, mother-goddess, lingam, etc.13 It is therefore hardly surprising to read such statements under the pens of archaeologists:
John Marshall: The [Harappan] religion is so characteristically Indian as hardly to be distinguished from still living Hinduism.... One thing that stands out both at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa is that the civilization hitherto revealed at these two places is not an incipient civilization, but one already age-old and stereotyped on Indian soil, with many millennia of human endeavour behind it14 Jonathan M. Kenoyer: Since the discovery of the Indus cities, scholars have made comparisons and contrasts between the Indus cities and later urban cultures of the subcontinent. Current studies of the transition between the two early urban civilizations claim that there was no significant break or hiatus.15 Jim Shaffer: The previous concept of a Dark Age in South Asian archaeology is no longer valid.16
Such assertions of Indias civilizational continuity, which run counter to the theory of an Aryan invasion of or migration into India, are echoed in the works of B. B. Lal, S. P. Gupta, S. R. Rao and others. They also get independent corroboration from three recent significant finds in the Gangetic plains: Mother-goddess cult: In the 1980s, evidence of worship of a mothergoddess going back to 8000 or 9000 BC came to light during the excavation of Baghor in the Son valley (Sidhi district, Madhya Pradesh). On a circular platform of about 85 cm in diameter made of sandstone rubble, fragments were found of a 15 cm-high triangular-shaped natural stone of alternating light and dark colours. Very similar shrines were found in nearby tribal settlements, in particular with the Kol and Baiga tribes, which makes this cult over 10,000 years old.17 Rice in Neolithic culture: Recent excavations in North Central India have yielded ancient dates for Neolithic sites where rice was domesticated (often along with millet): 7477 BC for Jhusi (near the Ganga-Yamuna confluence), 6570 BC for Koldihwa (in the Belan valley of Allahabad district), 6591 BC for Tokwa (Adwa valley of Mirzapur district). This pushes back the conventional date for rice cultivation in India by several millennia. Indeed, the region was a crucial one for the birth of rice and millet agriculture, while the North-West developed barley and wheat agriculture. The two regions gradually came into contact, with rice travelling westward and barley and wheat eastward.18