Perceptions of the Past - THE BOOK NOTES

Perceptions of the Past

Chapter – 1

Harshit Sharma

Political Science (BHU)

Contact

Colonial Constructions: Orientalist Readings

Modern writing of Indian history initiated with colonial perceptions, shaped by European Enlightenment views.
Colonial rule from the 18th century influenced European scholars’ search for Indian histories conforming to familiar European perspectives.
The Rājatarangini, a twelfth-century history of Kashmir by Kalhana, was the only exception initially recognized.
European scholars, focusing on Hindu and Sanskritic elements, disregarded Persian chronicles of Turkish, Afghan, and Mughal rulers.
Limited familiarity with Sanskrit sources, local chronicles, and dynastic annals persisted.
Eurocentric biases viewed India primarily as a Hindu civilization, neglecting other religious and linguistic cultures.
Initial hostility towards Islam was rooted in historical European antagonism, and Islam was often portrayed negatively without sufficient investigation.
European scholars asserted that India lacked a sense of history, attributing it to a cyclic concept of time.
The concept of cyclic time clashed with the European linear perspective, essential for a historical outlook.
The absence of a connected narrative led to the ‘discovery’ or ‘rediscovery’ of the Indian past.
European Enlightenment ideas, including a linear concept of time, influenced the emerging discipline of history.
Two major strands in European interpretation of Indian civilization: Orientalist and Utilitarian.
Orientalist studies, fostered by British officials of the East India Company, focused on languages, texts, and legal codes.
European preconceptions influenced interpretations, leading to a disjuncture from traditional ways of perceiving Indian history.
Orientalism initially fueled European Romanticism’s fantasy and freedom, anticipating a new Renaissance through acquaintance with the Orient.
Enthusiasm for India shifted in the late 19th century, aligning with the belief in the innate superiority of European civilization.
Oriental civilizations were seen as having once been great but in decline.
Indian middle class, influenced by Orientalist ideas, formulated Indian culture as uniform, emphasizing non-historical aspects.
The ‘discovery’ of India was largely through selected Sanskrit literature, emphasizing continuity over 3,000 years.
German Romanticism endorsed the mystic image of India, portraying it as the spiritual East and a refuge for European intellectuals.
A dichotomy in values emerged, with Indian values described as ‘spiritual’ and European values as ‘materialistic.’
This theme persisted in Indian opinion, acting as a consolation during anti-colonial nationalism.

Colonial Constructions: A Utilitarian Critique

Utilitarian critique of Indian culture emerged from British officials based in Britain, represented by James Mill and Thomas Macaulay.
James Mill’s “History of British India” in the 19th century periodized Indian history into Hindu civilization, Muslim civilization, and the British period.
Mill’s periodization influenced religious nationalisms in South Asia, contributing to distorted historical narratives.
European perception asserted India lacked admired qualities like rational thought and individualism, deeming its culture stagnant.
Thomas Macaulay expressed contempt for traditional Indian education and political institutions, viewing them as despotic.
Mill’s views influenced colonial policy, emphasizing the conquest and economic restructuring of the subcontinent.
Utilitarian critique argued that legislation could remedy India’s perceived backwardness, aiming to change its stagnant society.
Debates on India’s condition were influenced by Utilitarian views and contemporary British political economy discussions.
Oriental Despotism theory depicted Asian societies with despotic rulers, bureaucratic control, and state-controlled irrigation.
The theory traced back to early Greek perceptions of the Persian Achaemenid Empire and was reinforced by Crusades literature.
Central to the theory was the assumption of no private ownership of land in Asia, with the king owning all the land.
The theory gained axiomatic status in the 19th-century interpretation of the Indian past, influencing debates on land ownership and revenue collection.
Debates on land ownership questioned whether the king/state, individual cultivator, or village community was the owner.
The village community was sometimes portrayed as an autonomous republic or a collective for tax purposes.
Administrators and historians like Henry Maine, Baden-Powell, Munroe, and Montstuart Elphinstone engaged in these debates.
Preconceptions about the Indian past influenced the exploration of questions related to land ownership and revenue collection.

India as ‘The Other’

Orientalist and Utilitarian ideas in the 19th century led to Asia being perceived as ‘the Other’ of Europe.
Karl Marx’s concept of the Asiatic Mode of Production depicted despotism, stagnancy, and the absence of capitalism in Asian societies.
Wittfogel added to this theory, arguing that bureaucratic control of irrigation allowed rulers to be despotic.
Asian Marxist historians criticized the theory, noting its lack of historical evidence and oversimplification of complex technological impacts.
Debates on caste origins in the 19th century considered factors like kinship, marriage, occupation, religious functions, and political hierarchies.
Max Weber focused on Hinduism, linking caste to religion and seeing the absence of a Puritan ethic as a barrier to economic change.
Weber explored various religious sects, highlighting the lack of a Puritan ethic in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina beliefs.
Weber excluded certain Islamic sects, emphasizing India as a Hindu civilization and overlooking colonialism’s role in European capitalism.
Interest in caste components and religious activity in late 19th and early 20th centuries involved philologists, sociologists, and religious studies specialists.
Emile Durkheim’s studies recognized survivals from earlier societies in Indian rituals, contributing to later studies of Vedic sacrifice.
Marcel Mauss and H. Hubert analyzed sacrifice rituals, and Mauss’s work on gift-giving examined links between social and religious relationships.
Celestin Bougle questioned whether caste was unique to Hindu society, defining it as hierarchical hereditary groups with unequal rights and resistance to unification.

‘Discovering’ the Indian Past

European scholars in the late 18th century relied largely on brahmans for information about India’s past.
Much early history of India was reconstructed from Sanskrit texts, often biased and reflecting brahmanical theories.
Caste, as described in texts like Dharma-shastras, was based on varna distinctions and portrayed from an upper-caste perspective.
Limited attempts were made to integrate texts studied by Indologists with ethnographic data, contributing to a biased view of Indian society.
A dichotomy between ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive’ societies influenced the separation of textual and ethnographic information.
Evidence from diverse sources, including contemporary inscriptions, genealogies, and local chronicles, challenged and corroborated aspects of textual evidence.
James Tod and L.P. Tessitori collected information from bards and local chronicles but often filtered data through their own preconceptions.
The 19th century saw advancements in Indology, including the decipherment of the brahmi script by James Prinsep, leading to new perspectives from epigraphic sources.
Numismatics contributed to deciphering brahmi through bilingual coin-legends, linking Greek and brahmi inscriptions.
Scholars like Alexander Cunningham explored archaeological remains using the itinerary of Hsuan Tsang as a guide.
Textual analyses expanded to include Pali texts associated with Buddhism and Prakrit texts of the Jaina tradition.
Many scholars had a colonial perspective, interpreting findings within that framework.
Impressions recorded by visitors from Greece, Rome, China, and the Arab world provided diverse perspectives on India’s past.
Descriptions by visitors sometimes correlated with tangible remains revealed through excavations.
The corpus of evidence on Buddhism expanded with chronicles from Sri Lanka and translations of Buddhist canonical texts into Chinese and Central Asian languages.
Arabic and Persian texts on the history of India were studied independently, moving beyond being regarded as supplements to Islamic culture.
Indians traveling outside the subcontinent rarely left itineraries or descriptions of their experiences in distant places.

Notions of Race and their Influence on Indology

Linguistic studies, especially of Sanskrit, contributed to the development of comparative philology in Europe.
Comparative philology led to the study of early languages in Asia and a re-reading of Eurasian history.
‘Race science,’ a European invention, drew from various studies and was used to claim European superiority.
Social concerns, including racial attitudes, influenced the British approach to their empire.
F. Max Muller, studying Sanskrit, contributed to the reconstruction of a perceived Aryan race, emphasizing similarities between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin.
Max Muller’s theories linked Aryans to central Asia, suggesting migration to Europe and settlement in India, introducing Vedic culture.
The fallacious equation of language with race, although corrected by Max Muller later, became common currency.
Aryan race theory had wide-ranging reactions in India, used in political confrontations and social movements.
Jyotiba Phule argued that Sanskrit-speaking brahmans were alien Aryans, justifying lower castes’ claim to land.
Hindu nationalists later shifted from supporting an Aryan invasion theory to claiming Aryans were indigenous to India.
The amended theory became part of the Hindutva ideology, defining indigenous people based on religion rather than caste.
Mainstream historians accepted the Aryan invasion theory initially but faced challenges with the discovery of the Indus civilization.
Today, historians argue for linguistic evidence of Indo-Aryan language migration to northern India without significant archaeological evidence of a large-scale invasion.
The close affinity between present-day Hindutva views and 19th-century colonial views, such as Theosophists’ theories, reflects a complex history of ideas.
By the mid-20th century, the notion of equating language with race was found invalid, and the concept of an Aryan race was debunked.
Recent genetic studies have further invalidated claims about race based on biology.
It is more accurate to refer to ‘Indo-Aryan speaking peoples’ than ‘Aryans,’ emphasizing language groups over race.

History and Nationalism

British administrators in the 19th century, deeply involved with India, wrote histories focused on the rise and fall of dynasties and empires.
Historical studies in Europe at that time, influenced by admiration for the Roman Empire, emphasized political and administrative history, with kings as central figures.
The autocratic image of Indian rulers, often indifferent to the welfare of subjects, was a common portrayal in British and European histories.
British administration was considered superior, and centralized bureaucracy was seen as the best form of administration.
Indian historians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, influenced by nationalist sentiment, produced dynastic histories following the colonial model but challenged colonial explanations.
Growing communication between the colonizer and colonized was facilitated by the emergence of an English-speaking Indian middle class.
Nationalist historians endorsed favorable colonial views of the past and criticized unfavorable ones, asserting the familiarity of institutions like democracy in ancient India.
Nationalists emphasized indigenous origins, depicting a ‘Golden Age’ in ancient India, particularly during the Hindu period.
The Golden Age was associated with Gupta kings and viewed as a prerequisite for claims to civilization in the early 20th century.
Cultural achievements were measured in terms of arts, literature, and philosophy, prioritizing Sanskrit sources over other languages.
European historians often measured newly discovered cultures against ancient Greece, and Indian historians reacted sharply to such comparisons.
The notion of the osmosis of cultures shaping histories had not yet been recognized, and Indian history was often treated as a series of isolated dynasties.
A. L. Basham was an Indologist with a more open approach, extending the parameters of history by incorporating new influences.
Emphasis on dynastic history contributed to the division of Indian history into Ancient, Medieval, and Modern periods, with a later shift in nomenclature but not time brackets.
The Ancient period begins with the Indus civilization, and the Medieval period starts with the Turkish raids and the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate.
The equation of Ancient with Hindu and Medieval with Muslim was based on the religious affiliation of ruling dynasties.
The periodization of Indian history was contested, with some questioning its validity and emphasizing that rulers’ religious affiliation was one among several factors influencing change.
Nationalist historians played a crucial role in contesting negative features attributed to the Indian past, constructing a narrative to legitimize the national identity and culture.

The Seeding of Communal History

Indian nationalist history challenged colonial historiography but sometimes adopted positive colonial theories, embedding them in nationalist narratives.
Nationalist histories focused on single categories like religion, with Muslim and Hindu nationalisms interpreting history through monolithic religious identities.
Identity in pre-colonial India depended on features like caste, occupation, language, sect, region, and location.
Colonial reconstruction gave religion primacy, leading to the perception of a confrontation between Hinduism and Islam, shaping interpretations of Indian history.
Communal history, based on religious nationalisms, narrows perspectives and projects the history of a specific community, excluding the study of others.
Communal history retains the colonial periodization, emphasizing the Hindu majority and Muslim minority, explaining historical causes mostly through religious confrontations.
The two-nation theory leading to the partition of India in 1947 was facilitated by the belief in the historical inevitability of distinct Hindu and Muslim nation-states.
Critical evaluations of events during the ‘Hindu’ period are often hesitant, with normative texts taken at face value, portraying pre-Islamic India as a tolerant society.
Regional history, emerging in the early 20th century, initially adopted the Hindu-Muslim-British periodization, but variations in chronology and local sources have been acknowledged.
Research on regional sources is increasing, providing deeper analysis of historical problems, including variations in caste configurations, environment, resources, and economies.
Some regional histories now align the history of the dominant community with the history of the region, potentially distorting the overall history.

Marxist Histories and the Debates they Generated

Marxist interpretations introduced a paradigm shift in historical understanding in India from the 1950s onwards.
D.D. Kosambi played a key role in this shift, moving away from dynastic history to focus on social and economic history.
Kosambi emphasized “living prehistory” and cultural survivals to reconstruct archaeological and historical cultures with empathy.
He proposed stages of social change in Indian society, sparking debates about the stages and causal features.
The Asiatic Mode of Production, Marx’s model for India, was questioned and largely set aside, but its worthwhile questions remained.
The Feudal Mode of Production became a subject of intensive debate among Marxists, with varied perspectives on state power, economies, and religious expressions.
Kosambi’s concept of feudalism from above and below faced criticism, but the broader argument endorsing feudalism stimulated discussion.
There were attempts to apply other modes of production like the Slave Mode or the Feudal Mode to explain aspects of pre-modern Indian history.
The concept of Indian feudalism generated controversies, attracting both Marxists and non-Marxists.
Controversies focused on decentralization of state power, resource use, labor, and religious expressions during the feudal period.
Some critiques of Marxist models led to alternative theories, including ones suggesting integrative polities and segmentary states.
The segmentary state model, initially formulated for African societies, was applied to southern kingdoms in India, assuming the separation of political sovereignty and ritual authority.
Debates and critiques led to a departure from seeing a uniform pattern applicable to every state, with a focus on refining methods and generalizations.
Statistical research by Japanese and south Indian scholars, using computer-based analyses of inscriptions, refined the understanding of agrarian and commercial structures.
Attention was directed to processes like the creation of new castes, religious beliefs, and practices during this period.

History as a Social and Human Science

Marxist histories emerged alongside other developments in Indian historiography during the 1950s and 1960s.
The post-independence period saw the establishment of social sciences as disciplines in India.
Interdisciplinary research across disciplines like economics, demography, anthropology, sociology, archaeology, and history became prominent.
Historians shifted from a focus on narrative and information to asking diverse questions and seeking answers.
Marxist intervention brought new perspectives and legitimized themes like society, economy, and culture in historical analysis.
The French Annales School’s influence on history, emphasizing society, economy, population, and environment, coincided with these changes.
The social sciences were recognized as legitimate methods to explore the human past, requiring a broader definition of historical data.
Historical imagination shifted to making the past intelligible, transcending single events to understand actions in a wider context of human and social activity.
Historical studies focused on society, economy, religious articulations, art, literature, and systems of knowledge.
The multiplicity of causes in such studies added to the dimension of historical explanation.
Fernand Braudel’s concept of historical time, distinguishing between the event, broader social context, and long duration, influenced historical studies.
Comparative perspectives on Indian history emerged, considering forms and functions across different cultures.
Early historians’ work laid foundations for the history of India, providing a chronological framework for fresh interpretations.
Contemporary historical approaches place less emphasis on chronological and dynastic reconstruction and more on understanding the layered nature of past societies.
Social history now explores diverse forms of kinship and gender relations in the multiple societies of the Indian past.
Anthropological studies and historians working on gender encouraged a more searching exploration of women’s status in different periods, regions, and castes.
The implications of patriarchy on gender relations and society are now better understood.
Historical narratives now include lower castes, marginalized groups, and untouchables as significant players, especially in social concern-driven religious movements.
Recognition of labor as essential to historical change has led historians to seek references in texts to complete the picture of society.
The concept of Oriental studies has evolved, and the history of early societies is approached from various perspectives beyond classical cultures.
Political histories and dynastic studies are viewed in the context of changes in economic structure and social relationships.
The acceptance of religious movements, emergence of new languages and literature, and societal needs are considered in understanding historical developments.

Reconsidering Periodization

Reconsideration of periodization needed due to discussions on historical change and introduction of new sources like archaeology.
European terms Ancient, Medieval, and Modern applied to Indian history raised issues as they lacked relevance.
Tripartite division modified to Early Historical (up to 8th century AD), Early Medieval (8th to 13th century), Medieval (Turkish rule to Mughal decline), and Modern (British rule from 18th century).
The current periodization remains vague and may not convey social mutations adequately.
A more descriptive alternative periodization suggested:
1. Hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and early farmers
2. First urbanization: the Indus Plain and northwest India
3. Megalithic settlements of the peninsula
4. Chiefships and kingships (1200-600 BC)
5. Second urbanization and state formation in the Ganges Plain (c. 600-400 BC)
6. The Mauryan state (c. 400-c. 200 BC)
7. The rise of the mercantile community and cross-cultural contacts (c. 200 BC-AD 300)
8. The creation of Sanskritic cultures (c. AD 300-700)
9. Distributive political economies and regional cultures (c. AD 700-1300)
10. The assertion of regional identities (c. AD 1300-1550)
11. The Mughal state and subsequent regional kingdoms (c. AD 1550-1750)
12. British colonial rule and the Indian nationalist response.
Periodization should indicate social mutations and project a sequence involving what came before and after.
Ambiguity of the term ‘Medieval’ debated, and a more definitive term may be considered.
The distinction between periods determined by characteristics of polity, economy, technology, society, religion, and reference to key events.
Information on elite groups more common, but archaeology provides insights into the material culture of ordinary people.

Cultural Histories of a Different Kind

Historical trends include the questioning of the discipline by theories focusing on language, known as the ‘literary turn.’
Some argue that language, as the medium of knowledge, constitutes a text, and interpretations vary with each reading, challenging historical representation and claims to objectivity.
Readings can be hegemonic, ignoring alternative interpretations, but an absence of reading structures can hinder knowledge acquisition.
The prevailing view advocates greater sensitivity to alternative texts and readings, emphasizing cultural, belief, and ideological aspects alongside political and economic dimensions.
Theories of explanation, like Marxism, have evolved and diversified, challenging earlier economic determinism.
Colonial and nationalist interpretations are being critically examined, and paradigms in history, particularly regarding facts and concepts, are reformulated.
Cultural history’s rise involves analytical studies of texts as historical artifacts, considering authorial intent, patronage, and audience.
The itihasa-purana tradition, capturing the past in various forms, includes genealogies, historical biographies, and regional chronicles, providing insights into historical perceptions.
Inscriptions, previously used for dynastic history, now reveal alternative statements and regional cultural meshing when analyzed.
Historical study requires recognizing fragments of political, environmental, technological, economic, social, and religious histories, related to a whole for causal explanations.
History involves change, not arbitrary or purposeless, and various theories of explanation exist, focusing on power relations, socio-economic structures, ideologies, or their interlocking.
Theories of interpretation are context-specific, not inevitably sequential, with some declining, persisting, surfacing aggressively, or generating new theories.
The book aims to present significant themes and contributors to Indian history without categorical judgments, acknowledging the historian’s role in the historical process.