The Slow, Silent Emergence of the Indian National
Identity
Jawhar Sircar
MAULANA AZAD
MEMORIAL LECTURE
11 November 2016
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute Of Asian Studies, Kolkata
As
this is a presentation meant for a general but informed audience and not the
community of historians, I will make every effort to desist from academic
terminology. The prime purpose of this
brief piece is to disprove the very common contention that the Indian nation
was a gift of British colonial rule that galvanised divergent ethnic groups
across the Indian subcontinent into one (or two) nations. In other words, the
usual belief is that if the British had not embarked upon their policy of
aggrandisement and empire building here, the Indian people would have remained
divided among several nations and would never have united. The counter argument
that we shall see here is that Indians had, in fact, experienced what it was be
together for long periods of history much before the British arrived. For
instance, we may recall immediately three empires under which almost all
Indians came together: the Mauryas (322-187 BC), the Guptas (320-550) and the Mughals
(1526-1707). The more powerful argument that we shall examine is how Indians
were conscious of their remarkable similarities even when they were brought
together by these pan Indian empires.
In the
third century BC, for instance, a Brahman intellectual, Chanakya, moved from
somewhere in present day Tamil Nadu to Taxila or Takshashila in north west
Pakistan to study and teach at the university and later migrated far east to
Pataliputra or Patna of modern times to guide Chandragupta Maurya in setting up
his empire. He is just one example of free movement across the Indian
subcontinent which required an understanding of the whole and the parts as well
as the confidence to be able to traverse and communicate among people who were
quite akin to each other. To understand the purport of this example one may
need to transport oneself to the pre Roman era and imagine whether a Scotsman
would be able to move across Europe to Poland or Ukraine for studies and then
settle in Spain. And this was when the first of the great empires had not yet
been established and communications must have been rather difficult. We see how
a thousand years later, Shankaracharya the great sage set out from Kalady in
Kerala in the deep south to set up four monasteries in four extreme corners of
India that are in present day states of Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Odisha and
Karnataka.
But
before proceeding further, it is essential to state a caveat. The term ‘national’ that we use here refers more to the ‘consciousness’ of
belonging to an identifiable area, which in this context, is the Indian
subcontinent. It is evident in the shared basic values and beliefs of the
different peoples or ethnic or linguistic groups who inhabit this geographical
area of ‘undivided India’. Strictly speaking, the nation state appeared as a
preferred political unit only in the nineteenth century and remains till today
a rather slippery concept. The notion of ‘nationalism’ that runs through this piece is therefore more in
the nature of ‘proto-nationalism rather than the ripe classic version. To
explain further, the nation state that consisted of a reasonably homogeneous
people who inhabited a demarcated area on the globe and usually shared the same
language and/or religion emerged in real earnest only after the First World
War. In Europe, it arose from the ruins of battered transnational empires while
in Asia and Africa, colonised countries fought and obtained their independence.
This narrative covers some three millennia and thus the ‘national identity’ referred to here obviously precedes the arrival of
the modern nation state by several centuries and denotes a cognition among the
inhabitants or dominant groups that they belong to a common stock, whether we
call it country or race or people.
It is
needless to say that this ‘unity’ does not preclude a sense of distinctiveness
as well that could be quite different from the feeling of commonness. But then,
just because the Bavarian Catholic is so considerably different from the
Prussian Protestant does not make either a lesser German. Or, St Petersburg and
Vladivostok may be quite different and separated by thousands of kilometres,
but both are essentially Russian. Many national regimes seek or strive towards
greater homogeneity and frown upon differences but that does not obviate the
ground reality that people and cultures even across the same nation are not
clones produced in laboratories. In other words, the feeling of ‘national
consciousness’, ie, of belonging to an identifiable mega-culture usually leaves
sufficient space to its constituent local cultural formations to enjoy their
diversity as they are strong enough to be identified as ‘one people’ and, more
important, worth dying for, in the name of their common ‘country’. We shall not
stray further into the excitable discourse on what constitutes ‘nationalism’ as different definitions are churned out by
ultra-nationalists in this new century, more for political advantages and
oneupmanship than for honest reasons. Besides, there are whole libraries of
volumes written on the subject by academics who have dealt with its internal
contradictions and many imperfections as well as its debatable present and
future.
Our point is that even in the ancient
period, a section of the learned knew the country and its topography of India
well enough to traverse without maps or regular guides. We need evidence to
ascertain the period in which a consciousness may have arisen that India or
Bharatvarsha was one interconnected land mass that had several common
characteristics. As of now, we have no evidence that the earliest civilisation,
the Harappan or the Indus Valley, knew about the India that lay beyond the
Indus and its tributaries and perhaps the Ghaggar river basin. The problem is
that when history focuses on bright
spots like the Harappan (3300 BC to 1700 BC) it gives an impression,
inadvertently or otherwise, that the rest of India was ‘uncivilised’. The fact is that we have no concrete evidence of
other urban settlements in the Indian subcontinent at that time between the
middle of the fourth millenium and the mid second millennium BC. It is almost
certain that we may never come across a vast town-based civilisation spread
over such a large area anywhere else but we may stumble upon smaller townships.
But the fact that the cultures and settlements were not urban does not in any
way lessen their importance where history and the social sciences are concerned
as they do mark the progress of ‘man in India’.
There is no doubt that the megalithic cultures of India that are now estimated
to go back to the third millennium BC represented considerable advancement
where culture and technology are concerned. The burial goods discovered at the
sites reveal several considerably advanced human settlements. To revert to our
theme, however, i.e, whether there is any indication of a pan-Indian
consciousness emerging, one can safely say that the answer is negative.
When,
therefore, do we see the first whiff of an all-India consciousness? Without
this basic ‘consciousness’, the next stage of moving towards a ‘national idea’ cannot be thought of. We come across this knowledge of ‘other civilisations’ for the first time in the Vedic period, albeit in a
very oblique manner. The authors of the Rig Veda and three other Vedas were
obsessed with the virtues of their own lifestyle, beliefs, language, gods and
ritual to such an extent that they deemed all others to be barbarians. It is through
these stanzas that we deduce that they were, at least, conscious of a large
part of the Indian subcontinent that lay within the north-western quarter of
India and all of present-day Pakistan. They reveal a penchant for geography and
we have a rough but reasonably acceptable sketch of some parts of India and the
surrounding countries, which is really creditable considering the stage of
human development. If we choose not to be fixated on the Rig Veda text and
examine the context, i.e, the material culture of the period we shall find a
lot of similarities across the region. Pottery styles form distinct markers of
different cultural patterns and we come across three major categories, namely
BRW (Black and Red Ware) which is approximately from 1200 BC to 900 BC; PGW
(Painted Grey Ware) which started around the same time, 1200 BC but flourished
for three centuries more, upto 600 BC and the NBP (Northern Black Polished)
Ware that ruled from 700 BC to 200 BC.
While
BRW represented the Late Harappan phase and was confined to the Indus Valley,
it appears to have influenced the other two forms. Though we have discounted
the Harappan period from our ambit, we need to bring into consideration what we
call the Late Harappan period, which overlaps with the Vedic period. In any
case, scholars are convinced that quite a few typically-Indian technologies and
products like the bullock cart and the plough appeared first in Harappan
culture. Weights and measures, beads, combs, the dice and several items may have
spread to the rest of India from the Indus Valley. Our point is that material
cultural patterns united large parts of India, which suggests cross
fertilisation of ideas, knowledge and some amount of communication. We find
vast swathes of northern India containing remains of Northern Black Polished
(NBP) Ware pottery, all the way from Pakistan (almost whole), right rough the
Gangetic valley to Bangladesh and nearby Assam. Southwards, this covered Madhya
Pradesh and northern parts of the Deccan. Clear settlement patterns emerged in
small towns and villages, where iron was used and this represents an
exponential jump in technology. This, in turn, led to vast improvement in
agriculture, food consumption, lifestyle and values. The point we need to
observe is how technology and usage of cultural items linked large parts of
India with characteristics that emerged over the next millennium as distinctly
Indian: irrespective of regions. Incidentally, the late Vedic texts and
Upanishads reveal a lot of ideas taken from the non-Vedic people of India and
indicate that the initial differences between the populace was narrowing and
mixed blood was becoming more common.
The
next period from 600 BC to 100 BC saw the emergence of the small but powerful
in the Gangetic plains kingdoms, the Mahajanapadas, that were linked together
in language, culture, technology, urban lifestyles, mercantilism, beliefs and
customs. They form the core of India that accounted for almost half the known
population of the subcontinent and laid the keel of the Indian nation, two and
a half millennia ago. Except for Greece and Rome, that accounted for mere
fragments of the European population at that time, the continent was far behind
in all aspects vis a vis the Indian subcontinent. Iron and hegemonic regimes
ensured not only order all over north India
but facilitated smooth trade across the land and beyond. The first signs
of ‘integration’ were clear and this is the theme that we refer to as
the slow, silent emergence of the ‘national identity’ in India.
Magadha subjugated the other kingdoms under Chandragupta Maurya (321-298 BC)
whose empire, the first in India, untied all of Afghanistan, Pakistan with the
whole of northern India, upto Bengal. This massive congregation of people
facilitated cross movement of culture and trade within the empire. It is
remarkable that though Mauryans conquered so many kingdoms, it did not impose
the cultural superiority of Magadha did over others like Rome did. Slaves were
not paraded in Magadha as was the rule in Rome and India showed that it was
different. We have every reason to believe that once Magadha’s paramountcy was established, an amity existed all
over north India from the Khyber to Tripura, extending to central India as
well. The new empire facilitated the emergence of a cultural consensus across
north India or else cross communication without force could never be sustained.
Trade across India and beyond played an important role in the Mauryan empire of
Magadha, but it is critical for students of history not to miss the cultural
component as they study the story of empires mainly from the political or
economic viewpoints.
This
period also saw the rise of two important religions, Buddhism and Jainism that
improved the emerging consensus by first challenging the dominant theme of
Vedic religion, i.e, ritual sacrifice,
and then offering mass level alternative religious beliefs. Vedic religion was
not only non-inclusive and elitist in its character as the common man or even
the non-ruling strata of society could hardly afford the costly sacrificial
fires and the elaborate priestly apparatus that went with them. Buddhism was
for the masses and encouraged bonding and it was genuinely inclusive. Buddhism
reached the commoner not in the language of the ‘Arya’ and the ruling classes,
i.e., Sanskrit, but in in his own language, Ardhamagadhi Prakrit, that was
actually the prevailing popular dialect. This was long before Hindi and other
Indo-European languages came out of Sanskrit and also its friendly outreach
called Prakrit. Prakrit or the Prakrits,
as there were many of them, proved to be an effective communicator as well as
an excellent binder for Indians spread over such a vast area who could speak in
one or more of the Prakrits. The language used for Buddhist texts was just a
refined and grammatically-designed version of Prakrit known as Pali, while Jain
texts were in Shauraseni Prakrit. Another interesting fact is that Sanskrit did
not have its own Devanagari alphabet till much later, well more a millenium,
and the language of the Brahmans was written in the script of the Buddhists,
ie, Brahmi, in which Pali texts were composed by the Sangha.
Equally important was another mission of Buddhism, which was to absorb
many of the tales and legends that were prevalent among the masses and elevate
them through re-branding as the Jataka
Tales. This was the first organised attempt to forge a common stock of morals
and beliefs through the length and breadth of the Mauryan empire and beyond. It
needs to be noted specially and we must understand the critical importance of
this enterprise because it were legends and fables that were, and still remain,
the stock in trade among the masses. Pithy idioms and sayings that lace the
language rose from these fables and it is rare to find historians look at the
utility of the Jataka Tales from this angle of social cohesion. These tales
were actually effective proxies for religious philosophies and they were
understood by all. Another spin-off of Buddhism was that its monk-hood, the
Sangha, did more to fuse India together and its large network of monasteries
and missions than is appreciated by text-book historians. Their door to door
visits across the vast area brought cultures together and they passed on
several messages and elements that were subsequently absorbed into Hinduism
until they became inseparable part of the Hindu religion and its core beliefs.
The beef-eating Arya-putra was coaxed into non violence as his dharma and
turned towards vegetarianism. Peace was emphasised upon as State policy and
saffron robes entered Hinduism once monastic life was learnt from Buddhism that
had hitherto known of individual ascetics, the Rishis and Munis.
Consequentially, seeking of alms or begging for a living, i.e, bhikhsha was
considered as an honourable vocation by those who had given up worldly
pursuits. We need to remember that while the hereditary Brahmanical class among
the Hindus could live off donations (dakshina) made for performing life-cycle
and other rituals of the jajmans and from offerings made at sacred sites, the
Buddhist monk had no such ritual role or assurance of sustenance from Indian
society. He had to beg for a living as the Buddha had done. The point to note
again is how a disparate people came together in the subcontinent in spite of
distances and geographical barriers.
The
political unity that the extended empire of Ashoka (268-232 BC) brought about
has been mentioned time and again by historians and his messages of peace,
coexistence and non violence do not require repetition. The ‘root programme’ of India, i.e, unity amidst diversity appears
magnificently through his edicts that were engraved all over the vast empire.
It covered large parts of the Deccan as well, which brought in the southern
part of the subcontinent at par with the northern two-third of the land mass.
But what we need to examine is how India’s core philosophy of heterogenous
unity differed so sharply with the other largest country in the world, China.
The first emperor of China appeared on the stage around the same time in the
same century. He was Qin (pronounced ‘Chin’) Shi-Huang-di (247-210 BC) who sent
up the Qin/Chin dynasty. Forty years after Ashoka crushed Kalinga, Qin united
much of China for the first time, with equal if not more brutality. He invented
the term emperor (huang-di) for himself and unlike Ashoka, Qin went about the
task of enforcing homogeneity in China quite mercilessly. To enforce the
Chinese language among the numerous non-Chinese population, he banned all books
in other tongues, burnt them and executed scholars of other languages without
compunction. He introduced several reforms, quite like Ashoka, but force was
his forte, whether it be in enforcing a common measurement system or coinage
and even in compelling the axles of all carts to be of the same length. An
intelligent observer can trace the origin of the wide divergence between China’s
historic policy of ‘one nation, one language, one people’ and India’s
philosophy of ‘many languages, many peoples and yet one nation’ to their first
emperors. This is important for our purpose to understand the dynamics of India’s
nationalism that thrives amidst diversity.
Post Mauryan India saw the rule of foreign dynasties like the Scythian
or Shaka and the Indo-Greeks but it is fascinating to note how all of them
accepted the religious beliefs of India like the worship of Vishnu. Coinage also
played its role and the fact that India was being viewed as one nation becomes
clear from the utterances of Roman senators like Pliny the Elder who complained
in 77 BC that India would eat up all the world’s gold through its prized
exports to Rome and elsewhere. Persians, Greeks, Romans and other nations of
consequence used different terms for India but meant one entity as it was clear
to them that there were strong common features that were visible. We need to
ponder on this point and consider how this vast country was referred to as one
by the wide world. This was also the time when the two ‘magna cartas’ of India were finalised, the Mahabharata and the
Ramayana. Historians date their production period to span some four centuries
(2nd century BC to 2nd century AD) or even a bit more, i.e, from the 2nd
century BC to the 3rd century AD when their final recessions appeared.
Ascribing the composition of the Ramayana to one Valmiki and to credit
Veda-Vyas with the writing of the Mahabharata are typical of the Indian
intellectual regime that put forward one identifiable figure for the masses to
believe. In reality, however, numerous scholars toiled for centuries to graft
local legends seamlessly into the central themes, that flowered in two great
epics. Every known king or kingdom was interjected into the stories, somewhere
or the other, to give an inclusive character to the tales and some grains of
historical facts were punched in as well, to lend authenticity. The sites outside the main
centres like Ayodhya-Janakpur and Hastinapur-Indraprastha were usually kept
vague which meant that a dozen places could claim to be Manipur or Chitrakoot
and hook themselves to the narratives. The idea of India was really firmed up
through these two absorptive epics, that served thereafter as the reference
point for everything.
The
next major empire that ruled India or most of it for 230 long years, from 320
AD to 550 AD was that of the Guptas. For our purpose, we can gloss over what we
have all been taught, i.e, the might of the empire; its conquests; its
sculpture and the arts. What is noteworthy was its active patronage of the
Brahmanical class and its religion, that was still not the formed Hinduism we
know but half way between Vedic religion and the people’s-level Hinduism of the
present. Just as Buddhism (and partially Jainism) had managed to penetrate
every corner of India and preach to every class, Brahmanism made its real
comeback during the Gupta period. This is the period when the eighteen
Maha-Puranas were composed and those that had started work earlier were
finalised. Along with the two epics, the Puranas provided for the legitimation
of numerous regimes and their ethnic groups by resorting to long genealogies,
largely manufactured, which sealed the treaty between the Brahman composers and
panegyrists and the martial classes. Of course, some Puranas like the Bhagavat
Purana were composed much later and some were finalised for several centuries
more, but the bulk of the Purana-construction took place under the
Brahman-favouring regime of the Guptas. More important is the fact that this
exercise smoothened the process for newer settlements or kingdoms to emerge out
of the forested areas that till then lay outside the pale of ‘civilisation’, and join the mainstream. The classical binary
between the Vana or forest and the Kshetra or kingdom that arose out its
destruction was increasingly tilting in favour of the settlements where
agriculture and trading activities provided for a higher standard of living, nutrition
and longevity. The complicated operation of fixing the newer social groups into
the stratified caste hierarchy was handled quite adroitly by the Brahmanical
and Kshatriya classes, through well established occupation-based working models that were sanctified by appropriately
produced justificatory legends and explained in terms of Karma and rebirth.
For our theme, it is also important to note how gods and goddesses were
more or less decided upon, finally, though the legacy of a lot of Vedism
continued, like Brahma, Varuna and Indra. These would be pensioned off in the
post Gupta phase and Shiva, Vishnu and the Devi would be the new power centres
on the Hindu pantheon. As there was very little opposition to this new
religious wave, except where Buddhism was still strong (which was diminishing
rapidly), it swept throughout all Indians and found its way to Southeast Asia
as well. Iconography was clear and common and even incarnations and alternative
entities were reasonably common. The institution of multiple names for the same
deity, often called Ashtottara Shatanaama (108 names) or Sahasranama (thousand
names) came in extremely helpful as conflicting deities like Kali (the dark
one) and Gauri (the fair one) could be said to be two versions of the same
goddess. Pilgrimages came up or were sanctified and went on increasing rapidly
as more and more local cults were absorbed into either of the two
super-entities, Vishnu or Shiva, depending on what the appropriated deity stood
for originally. Where it came to the female deities of the indigenous people
and different ethnic religions, they were all subsumed into the Devi. This
gigantic process of ‘mergers and acquisitions’ is unparalleled in world history
where millions of gods, demi-gods, godlings,
spirits, demons, celestial creatures and the whole lot were pegged to any one
of the three ‘major’ corporate entities of Indian
religion, namely, Vishnu, Shiva and the Mother-goddess.
Every
oddity of the local deity, however bizarre, was explained in terms of
imaginative legends that were usually sourced from the Mahabharata or the
Ramayana or the Puranas or manufactured to suit local exigencies. This is the
story of India that was linked by common gods, festivals, beliefs, world views,
superstitions and pilgrimages that was inherited by the British more than
millennium later. To claim that they united a hopelessly divided country for
the first time is a bit shallow, as the prevailing political fragmentation of
the 18th and 19th century that they utilised to full advantage hid the fact
that beneath the turmoil lay an eternal India. Pilgrimages, incidentally, took
care to keep powerful local cults of the indigenous people happy as they were
assured of all-India pilgrims if they subsumed their deity to the pan-Indian
network. The original non-Brahman priests like the Daityas of Puri were given a
suitable position and importance even after the Brahmanical takeover.
Incidentally, pilgrimages and the vast network of holy sites meant that even if
one never had the opportunity to visit distant ones, one knew which part of
India it was situated. Even the unlettered knew different sports scattered all
across this vast land and felt at home wth far-off places because they were
sown into his emotional fabric. Hinglaj in Balochistan and Kamskshya in Assam
were linked together by Sakti with Jwalamukhi in Punjab. Shaivaties remembered
the twelve great sites of their
pilgrimage called the Jyotirlingas as the Vaishnavs cherished theirs.
The arrival of Islam did disrupt this centripetal process and for the
first time, Indian religion was made conscious that its assimilative process
was indeed peculiar and reprehensible as it followed no single holy book like
the Quran or the Bible and neither had any central supreme centre like Mecca or
Jerusalem to pine for. Its festivities were raucous, its deities rather ungodly
and its prayers rather noisy and boisterous. The fact that widely contradictory
belief systems had been harmonised with patience and tact for centuries on end
was hardly understood as conversion of Indians was considered the preferred
option by quite a few Islamic groups and rulers, though certainly not all.
Islam brought in western architecture based on the arch and the dome that boosted
temple making activities in India but the fact that the stifling nature of
casteism often led to conversions of lower strata to Islam was a wake up call
to Brahmanical religion. The egalitarian nature of Islam profoundly impacted
India and led to the liberation of suppressed forces of similar nature. This
led to the devotional movement and the Bhakti cults, that gripped India from
the fourteenth century onwards and encouraged a typically Indian form of
assimilation and social equality. This is also the period when north India
languages broke free from Sanskrit/Prakrit, like the South Indian languages had
done vis a vis Tamil a few centuries ago. This brought in more compactness
within the regions that spoke the same language or dialects thereof but it did
compartmentalise India again. The empire of the Mughals and the tolerant policy
of Akbar brought in unprecedented unity in India, centuries before the British
East India Company fished in the troubled waters and rot of post-Mughal India:
to win by hook or crook, preferably crook. What is hardly understood is that
apart from restoring unity and bringing in new technologies, lifestyles,
apparel and foods, it also encouraged the growth of fusing forces like the Urdu
language and the Hindustani classical music.
Besides, the Sufi brand of Islam that is most popular in India also
believes in matters typical Indian (this includes Pakistan and Bangladesh as
well) like Quwwali and music that are anathema to the religion in Arab lands.
Festivities and marriage celebrations follow very similar styles and are often
indistinguishable except in terms of dress or headgear. The belief in Pirs or
holy men and considering their graves or sites as sacred is also an Indian
habit that has dominated Islam on the subcontinent which is, of course, sought
to be removed and ‘purified’ by hardliners, Whabis and Salfis. Many of these
elements, incidentally, preach violence and terrorism and are as condemnable as
Hindu extremists. But our sharp point here is that while the arrival of Islam
in India did jar matters in India there is hardly anything in this land except
perhaps orthodox temple rituals that have not been influenced by Islam, often
for the better. And Islam in this subcontinent is again typically local.
The
process of coming together of Indians from distant corners over centuries and
millennia has been a slow but definite force and its most evident proof lies in
the comfort with which people hailing from widely varying languages and
cultures in this subcontinent feel so at home with each other when facing the
rest of the world. This process was so inexorable that when the British left
after dividing the country, there was not any second thought as to whether
Kerala and Assam and Punjab needed to be separate countries, ever. The
political unification could not last after 1947 unless there were eternal
binders that held India together through common history and culture and the
rapid development of a strong nation in just decades after Independence
testifies to an inner residence and an urge to be one nation. True, British
rule in India did improve communications and lead to the emergence of unifying
forces like the English language but then it delayed the industrialisation and
economic development as long as it could. Who knows how better Indians would
have fared if they were not crushed by imperialism for two centuries but then,
history deals with facts not speculation. And the fact is that the Indian
national identity took its own slow and silent centuries to emerge but
considering the fascinatingly complex nature of the subcontinent, it is only
India that could unite so many different ethnic groups into one colourful
entity. Nowhere else in the world has such a multi-ethnic equilibrium worked and
while China, Russia and the USA seek to homogenise more and more, India has
enjoyed its diversity and plurality because it was supremely confident that its
underlying unity is more powerful. It has, after all, taken millennia to build.
