An idea of India

Historiography, especially of pre-literate societies, has to be written with great caution because written texts are not the only source of information for the ancient past of any society, especially of great civilisations like China, India, Arabia and so on.

In this context, Indians are in a difficult situation because academic historians offer cautious and tentative interpretations of the past and the Sangh Parivar has reduced the rich and varied history of India into a diabolical game of political propaganda to divide society.

Chattopadhyaya's extremely well-researched and scholarly contribution has come at a time when history has been appropriated by politicians and their hired pseudo-historians.

This book consists of three parts dealing with Archaeology and Historical Issues, Texts and Historical Issues, and Historiography and History as Communication.

In these 13 chapters, the author has painstakingly reviewed all the important 'debates' and 'disputes' (like whether the indigenous people of India were Aryans) to the limitations of making texts the only basis of discovering the past.

Instead, he says historians need to bring archaeology and archival evidence to the study of India's development in an 'evolutionary' manner. He writes: "To a historical perspective, which accepts the premise of stage of evolution, the 'Aryan' as the sole and universal agent of social change becomes irrelevant; that is, unless one believes in a primordial Aryan Indian civilisation without beginnings."

The key to the understanding of history is 'social evolution' and 'comparative history' and if this key is applied to unlocking the processes of human evolution, the three-fold periodisation of Indian history by British colonisers and the neo-colonial Hindu communalists into Hindu India, Muslim India and British India collapses like a house of cards.

This neat periodisation pitches one against the other while the evolution of Indian society breaks these Chinese Wall-like boundaries of three periods and replaces them by focusing on evolving human reality and experiences.

James Mill and the British colonisers defined Indian history on the basis of homogeneous and monolithic Hindu Period, Muslim Period and British Rule. The author, by contrast, takes us on a fascinating journey from tribal society to territoriality with settled agriculture and agrarian and urban lives around the evolution of people and their organisations, the state and other systems of authority.

In other words, the monolithic religion-based historiography of India's past and medieval times is rejected and replaced by a story of diversity and heterogeneity.

The author also rejects all bi-polarities like Hindu and Muslim periods of history or the Orient-Occidental bipolarity because "such broad bipolarities alone... (cannot) accommodate a tremendous range of possible culture spaces" which are found in rich diverse and culturally plural India.

Chattopadhyaya has competently demolished a school of historiography created by the British colonial rulers that: "In the fateful year AD 997 Abu-I-Qasim Mahmud, son of Sabukitigin, captured Gazni, developed a marvellous striking power and turned his attention to India. Ancient India ended. Medieval India began."

On the basis of rich and diverse sources of information, the author refutes the political hegemonisation of a phase of history from 1000 AD by a monolith Muslim religious identity. And that's not all. This kind of interpretation of history by first identifying it as Muslim rule and then demonising it deserves to be refuted because historically, Muslim society in India was internally differentiated and heterogeneous and the existence of a Muslim monolith is falsehood masquerading as history.

Chattopadhyaya warns that, "One of the major anomalies in modern historical narratives on India is that whereas all such narratives are prefaced with pronouncements on India's essential unity in diversity, the narratives are almost uniformly unilinear and flat, with hardly any reference to how diversities can be integrated into the narrative...."

The 13 chapters of this book clearly sends the message that India lives in 'regions' not territorially defined but as cultural universes, and the rich civilisation of India has emerged through a long process of evolution of cultures and sub-cultures, political and economic systems "" all pluralities of human life sharing many common and competing lifestyles. While he does not ignore the project of national history, Chattopadhyaya has warned against different kinds of hegemonisation in the name of national history.

As he says, "...[P]ast experience also demonstrated that the agenda of what is seen as national history can be formulated differently by participants who constitute themselves voluntarily into different groups even within what is defined as a national boundary." The plea is to look for pluralities, diversities and multiplicities of group activity in the history of a complex and diverse sub-continent.

Since Mahabharata and Ramayana have been projected as the most important 'texts' for historical sources, Chattopadhyaya brings in the need for relating texts with archaeological excavations to construct the past.

The author pursues this argument by observing that: "(i) the archaeological culture of a region ought not to be considered as monolithic; the culture assemblage at rural, commercial or urban sites is likely to have varied considerably...." Implicit in this warning about the appropriation of epics is an attempt to show that history cannot be and should not be used to propound such unfounded concepts as the Golden Age of the Hindus and the demonic disaster brought about by the Muslims rulers.

Chapters on the history of Deccan, Early Punjab, Early Bengal et al show that the Mauryan and Gupta states could not be candidates for an all-India single authority. That apart, even these two states provided plenty of 'autonomous spaces' where "the power of social norms in regulating conduct" existed under the overall loose umbrella of these states.

The clear message is that ancient Indians, like human beings in every other society, were evolving from "tribe to settled agricultural society" through diverse processes but the goal was one "to create multiple conditions for living together".

STUDYING EARLY INDIA:
Archaeology, Texts and Historical Issues

Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya
Permanent Black: 2003
Pages: 283
Price: Rs 575