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Alivardi Khan on Governance
In Operation Red Lotus, Parag Tope wrote about the forgotten Azamgarh proclamation in which the Indian leaders of 1857 promised a triad of invaluable freedoms : political, personal, and economic. The review was getting too long and I had to leave this piece, about life in 1700s, which I found in Madhusree Mukherjee’s Churchill’s Secret War.
In the early 1700s, a far sighted diwan named Murshid Quli Khan reformed administration. Sixteen powerful zamindars, or overseers, and about a thousand minor ones, ran the province under his watchful eye. The zamindars, who called themselves rajas if they were Hindus and nawabs if they were Muslim, maintained armies, collected taxes and ran the courts, police, postal services, and often the schools. Villagers owned the lands they tended, and not even bankruptcy could evict them. Tax-exempt fields attached to the temples and mosques aided the poor, whereas those who excavated ponds or made other improvements earned tax remissions. Agricultural taxes — a fifth of the harvest — could be paid in kind, without resort to money lenders. The state, recognizing farmers, spinners, weavers, and merchants as the source of its wealth, tried to protect them. “The money in the hands of the people of the country is my wealth which I have consigned to their purses,” explained Alivardi, a ruler in the mid-eighteenth century, cautioning his grandson Siraj-ud-daula to abstain from extortion. “Let them grow rich and the state will grow rich also.”
In Pragati: Book Review – Operation Red Lotus by Parag Tope
In late 1856, some strange practices began to surface in parts of north India. Red lotus flowers were circulated in garrisons which housed the Native Infantry. The subedar would line up the troops and then hand a flower to the first soldier, who would hold it and pass it down the line. The last one would leave the station with the flower. Elsewhere, a runner took a bundle of chapatis to a village and handed it to the chief or sentry, with instructions to send the chapatis on to the next village under English rule. In the midst of these lotus and chapati incidents, the soldiers’ slogan would change from “everything will become red” to “everything has become red.” Other unusual events included the announcement of an important yagya in Mathura (which never took place), and the habit begun by many women of offering their rolling pins to the river Ganga.
These signs were noticed by the British—Benjamin Disraeli even raised the question of the travelling chapatis in Parliament—but were dismissed as Indian superstitions.
These abnormal occurrences, ignored by almost every historical narrative on the 1857 uprising, assume significance when seen in the light of an important question: How did the Indian troops travel over a million miles, in the early months of the war, without a supply line? In a regular war, there were three camp followers for each soldier, but once the soldiers mutinied in 1857, who fed them? Case in point: How did the 17th Native Infantry march 140km from Azamgarh to Faizabad in just five days?
The answer may seem straightforward: The villagers fed the soldiers. However, there was an intricate strategy underlying the initiative. To feed thousands of soldiers, each village (comprising of a few hundred people) needed an approximate count. The count was provided by the lotus flowers, while the chapatis and the rolling pins were the means used to confirm the commitment of the villagers. The Mathura yagya was a ruse to facilitate the travel of priests who doubled as spies.
Thus, the Anglo-Indian War of 1857 was initiated by leaders who planned the war, conducted internal and external reconnaissance, and recruited soldiers—with the help of civilians.
Parag Tope’s Operation Red Lotus—through the analysis of instances such as the use of red lotuses and chapatis—fills the gaps and corrects the myths about the events of 1857. Relying on eyewitness accounts written in Marathi and letters in Urdu and Bundeli, Mr Tope, a fourth-generation descendent of Tatya Tope, sheds new light on the momentous event. Add to it his analysis of troop movements, supply lines, and logistics—and the tale of the 1857 Anglo-Indian War comes to life in hitherto untold, dramatic fashion.
The triad of freedoms
The leaders who spearheaded the 1857 operation included Nana Saheb, his Diwan, Tatya Tope, Begum Hazrat Mahal, and the Nawab of Banda. In 1858, Sitaram Baba, a priest in Nana Saheb’s court was arrested by the British. Baba confessed that the conspiracy had been initiated by Baija Bai Shinde two decades earlier, and that the real planning had started three years before. He also revealed information about the runners who had gone to each regiment, and the connection between the lotuses and chapatis. Letters, translated for the first time in this book, reveal that Tatya Tope was aware of military movements, logistics and provisions.
“It is important to note that the rising was neither planned nor stimulated by any patriotic move”, wrote Gregory Fremont-Barnes in Indian Mutiny 1857-58 (2007). What Fremont-Barnes and many other Indian historians often fail to mention is that the leaders of the 1857 revolt had a clear vision for the future. After the uprising’s initial success, Bahadur Shah Zafar made a proclamation, read by his grandson in Azamgarh. The proclamation promised a triad of invaluable freedoms: Political, personal and economic.
The crony-capitalist state run by the British East India Company had destroyed the free market system in India. Heavy taxation was the norm, while prices were enforced with the threat of punishment. Manufacturing capabilities were crippled, and the agricultural sector lost the ability to shield the country from the threat of famines. Due to India’s asymmetrical role in the global network, even as the country’s share in the world’s GDP fell from 25 percent to 12, Britain’s share doubled.
On the social front, William Bentinck’s educational policy, based on Macaulay’s Minute, destroyed the private education system that had previously created a society more literate than that of Britain. In a letter to his father, Macaulay claimed that if the new education policy was implemented, there would not be a single idolater left in Bengal.
Even the legal framework was skewed—Indians wanted freedom from missionaries who were working with the Government, and laws which favoured Christians.
By promising the triad of freedoms, the leaders were not advocating a novel or revolutionary idea. They were reverting to the foundations of the Indian polity, which not only guaranteed political, social and economic freedom, but kept them separate as well. In other words, the ruler did not act as a trader, but created an environment suitable for trade.
Fractional Freedom
Mr Tope argues that although the initial uprising was brilliantly planned and co-ordinated, the war was lost due to two reasons. Firstly, the British used their women and children as human shields, which resulted in gory incidents such as the Siege of Cawnpore. Secondly, they resorted to the use of extreme brutality—leaving aside their usual pretences to civilised behaviour—citing the case of Cawnpore (Kanpur).
Recognising the supply lines for the soldiers, British officials attacked those villages through which the chapatis were passed. A law was passed to allow the hanging of even those whose guilt was doubtful. British troops under Havelock and Neill did a death march, killing women, children, infants and the elderly. Sepoys were ritually stripped of their caste by having pork and beef stuffed down their throats before execution.
In books such as The Great Indian Mutiny (1964) by Richard Collier, or The Last Mughal (2008) by William Dalrymple, the British officials’ use of violence is regarded as a reaction to the carnage that took place in Kanpur. However, Mr Tope points out that the government’s brutality was unleashed even before that. British historians recorded that “guilty” villages were “cleared” so that India could be saved from anarchy.
In 1857, the strategy of violent repression was used by the British to secure time to redeploy troops from other countries to India. It was during this time that Tatya’s tenacity became evident. After establishing a command centre in Kalpi, he set up factories for producing ammunition, guns and cannons.
Despite the prospect of imminent defeat, Tatya worked to raise an army, and inspire civilians. When the British took over Delhi, the battle ground was moved to central India. When Rani Laxmibai, who grew up with Tatya, was held under siege, he created a diversion to help the Rani escape. Following the Jhansi massacre, the Indian chieftains who supported Tatya backed down, but he came up with a new strategy—to raise rebellions in regions where the spirit of freedom was strong.
The battles are explained with numerous maps, painstakingly plotted with English and Indian troop movements—a useful tool to interpret the events, and grasp the thinking behind the strategy. The maps, coupled with the detailed narrative and critical analysis, provide a valuable resource to better appreciate the holistic nature of the 1857 uprising.
Upon realising that the 1857 war had ignited the desire for total freedom, Queen Victoria dissolved the East India Company and transferred all powers to the Crown. In her proclamation, she did not give India political or economic freedom, but made an important concession: The English would no longer interfere with the native religions. Even Fremont-Barnes’ apologia acknowledges that successive viceroys took greater heed of India’s religious sensitivities. It was an important victory, writes Mr Tope, for it prevented large scale British settlement in India, and stemmed the destruction of Indian traditions.
The fight continues
Nevertheless, the signature elements of the 1857 uprising—secret messages, planning, and mass murders—were repeated again. In 1932, freedom fighters were warned of danger by Hindu women, who blew on conch shells when they spotted a policeman—the sound was relayed for miles by a network of women.
Madhusree Mukerjee records instances of a different nature in her Churchill’s Secret War (2010). During World War II, when the Japanese army reached Indian borders, Leopold Amery, secretary of state for India, wondered if it was necessary to revive ruthless punishments of 1857 to prevent a possible uprising. Winston Churchill’s policies, argues Ms Mukerjee, resulted in a famine in which three million Indians perished. Mr Tope describes the events of February 19, 1946, when 78 ships, going from Karachi to Chittagong, changed their name from HMIS (His Majesty’s Indian Ships) to INNS (Indian National Naval Ships) in a co-ordinated move.
Coming back to 1857: Why is it that Baija Bai Shinde’s 20-year conspiracy, Nana Saheb’s planning or Tatya’s Tope’s contribution do not feature prominently in our history books? This probably has to do with the historiography of the event. In the official version written a century later by Surendra Nath Sen, the 1857 War was seen as a spontaneous uprising by “conspirators”. Historian R C Majumdar questioned if it could even be called a “war” since India was not a nation, while Marxist historians connected the revolt to peasant uprisings in Bengal.
This reluctance to deviate from the colonial narrative 150 years after the war and 60 years after obtaining political freedom is a telling sign about the state of historical study in India.
India’s proclamation of independence six decades ago has to be contrasted with the triad of freedoms promised in the Azamgarh proclamation. To the leaders of the newly independent polity, Indian traditions of the past did not guide the future. Their socialist mindset led to state control over education and restricted economic freedom, with the state itself becoming a trader—all of which had disastrous consequences.
Looking back, we know what our leaders tried to build and failed, but as well, what they knocked down.
(This version appeared in the February 2011 edition of Pragati)
Western ethics
Sila is usually translated as “virtue” or “ethics”, but we need to be careful not to confuse it with Western ideas of virtue and ethics. A traditional foundation of Western ethics is commandments and values often handed down from a god. These values include ideas about right and wrong, good and evil, and absolute rules that we have to live by. This approach to ethics leads easily to guilt, an emotion that is pervasive in the West, but which is considered unnecessary and counterproductive in Buddhism.
Buddhism understands virtue and ethics pragramatically, based not on ideas of good and bad, but rather on the observation that some actions lead to suffering and some actions lead to happiness and freedom. A Buddhist asks, “Doe this action lead to increased suffering or increased happiness, for myself and others?” This pragmatic approach is more conducive to investigation than guilt.
The Issue at Hand, Essays on Buddhist Mindfulness Practice, by Gil Fronsdal
Amartya Sen's Speech on Nalanda
Recently Amartya Sen gave the keynote at the Indian Science Congress at Chennai and the topic was Nalanda.
But how does it compare with other old universities in the world? Well, what is the oldest university in the world? In answering this question, one’s mind turns to Bologna, initiated in 1088, to Paris in 1091, and to other old citadels of learning, including of course Oxford University which was established in 1167, and Cambridge in 1209. Where does Nalanda fit into this picture? “Nowhere” is the short answer if we are looking for a university in continuous existence.
Nalanda was violently destroyed in an Afghan attack, led by the ruthless conqueror, Bakhtiyar Khilji, in 1193, shortly after the beginning of Oxford University and shortly before the initiation of Cambridge. Nalanda university, an internationally renowned centre of higher education in India, which was established in the early fifth century, was ending its continuous existence of more than seven hundred years as Oxford and Cambridge were being founded, and even compared with the oldest European university, Bologna, Nalanda was more than six hundred years old, when Bologna was born. Had it not been destroyed and had it managed to survive to our time, Nalanda would be, by a long margin, the oldest university in the world.[Nalanda and the pursuit of science]
But isn’t Takshashila the oldest university? This is what I found out
There was no single Takshashila University in the modern sense. Each teacher formed his own institution, teaching as many students as he liked and teaching subjects he liked without conforming to any centralized syllabus. If a teacher had a large number of students, he assigned one of his advanced students to teach them. Teachers did not deny education if the student was poor; those students had to do manual work in the household. Paying students like princes were lodged in the teacher’s house and were taught during the day; non-paying ones, at night.[In Pragati – Takshashila: The lighthouse of a civilization]
Coming back to Dr. Sen’s speech, credit is due to him for mentioning that it was Bakhtiyar Khilji who wiped out the place. But note that he did not mention why Bakhtiyar Khilji destroyed a six century old place of learning.
The Buddha and Dr Führer
Even though the popular version of history says that Siddhartha was born in Lumbini in present day Nepal, there are a bunch of folks from Orissa who want to prove that the Buddha was born in Kapileshwar village in Orissa. This version is not just a emotional outburst of some fanatics, but of some archaeological experts. This is based on an Asokan inscription which is believed to be a fake.
This search for Buddha’s birth place has quite a history; Rohan L. Jayetilleke’s lengthy article gives a good summary of current research. One interesting tale seems to be the discovery a stone coffer found in 1898 by the British planter named William Peppé. The documentation on the rim said that it belonged to Buddha and was burried by the Sakya clan. Charles Allen has a new book,The Buddha and Dr Fuhrer: An Archaeological Scandal, which tells the story of this discovery.
A comprehensive final chapter assesses the validity of the Peppé dig using carbon dating. In dealing with recent discoveries in the region, and with modern interpretations of the evidence, Allen covers the grim, yet hilarious battle, between India and Nepal over the true location of the Buddha’s birthplace. Unlike the respective tourist boards, he concludes that we don’t yet know where exactly the Buddha was born and raised, though Allen favours the Nepalese claim that the ruins of Tilaurakot by the river Banganga are the site of Kapilavastu. And he vouches for the authenticity of Peppé’s discoveries.[The Buddha and Dr Führer]
Book Review: Genghis: Birth of an Empire
An important moment arrives in Temujin’s life when he spots three riders coming towards his ger. While he is sure that they are enemies, he is unsure if they belong to an advance raid party or if they are just three independent raiders who have come to burn, rape and kill. The 17 year old turns to his mother, Hoelun, for advice. “You have prepared for this Temujin”, she says. “The choice is all yours.”
Temujin decides to fight. But first he sends off his mother and younger siblings to hide while he and his older siblings wait for the men. This is a battle between three kids against experienced fighters. Few years back Temujin’s father, the khan of the Wolves tribe, was killed by a Tartar raiding party. Following this murder, the khan’s bondsman took over the tribe and expelled Hoelun and the children, leaving them to die in the unforgiving harsh winter of the steppes.
Surviving without a tribe or the protection of a khan is hard. If the winter did not kill them, a herder would. But they survive by catching birds, animals and fish for food. They also practice with the bow and sword for such a day. But that didn’t help eventually. Temujin was captured and taken to the Wolves camp, humiliated and marked for death. But the man would not die. He escapes, makes it back to his family and starts building a tribe by collecting the wanderers and offering them a family. According to Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, to be proficient in a skill, you need to put at least 10,000 hours of work. By that measure Temujin had put more than that.
Con Iggulden’s novel — the first part of a trilogy — is about the rise of Genghis Khan and how he unites the tribes of the steppes. One question that is of interest for anyone who has read about Genghis Khan is this: what motivated him to unite the tribes which had been at war with each other for millennia? There is no direct answer, but a partial one. He sees the Chin envoy using the tribes to cater to their needs. In this specific case, the envoy requests Temujin to join forces with another tribe to take care of the Tartars. A foreigner meddling in the affairs of the tribes, rattles him. Genghis Khan unites the tribes, initially to fight the Tartars and later the Chin. As Iggulden writes in the epilogue, “If Temujin had not come to see the Chin as the puppet-masters of his people for a thousand years, he may well have remained a local phenomena.”
Besides the vision, another important issue was survival. First, he survived the winter, which eliminated the weak. Second important point was luck: his father’s bondsman could have killed him, but he did not. Even towards the end of the book, there is a scene where the bondsman of another tribe walks into Temujin’s ger to kill him. The khan is drunk and asleep and he could have been easily killed. But the man who came to assassinate was once pardoned by the Temujin and he felt that the debt should be repaid. So he wakes the khan and confesses.
Iggluden’s novel draws a great verbal picture of the life of the steppes where everything belonged to whoever had the strength to take and retain it. Even though they fought each other, relations were cemented through marriage.There were customs — like guest rights — which were followed by all. The horse was man’s best friend: during a battle, the Mongol would nick the vein, drink the blood and patch it with dust and water. Thus during war, no supply lines were required.
From a structural perspective, it would have been boring if the novel only had Temujin’s point of view. Instead, whenever possible, multiple threads are introduced. When Temujin is expelled from the tribe, there is a thread that follows the life of the bondsman who expelled him. There is another thread which follows Wen Chao, the Chin ambassador who is out to manipulate the tribes. When Temujin is taken as captive, we also get to see how his siblings survived. This keeps the excitement flowing, as well adds depth.
Iggluden masterly narrates huge battles. First Temujin starts with simple raids and then expands to capturing various tribes in his ruthless quest for power and revenge.There is a final battle which involves at least four major tribes against the Tartars involving thousands. The archery and maneuverability of his troops as well as their fast riding ability is what won his his battles; a picture well painted in the book.
Segei Borodov’s 2008 movie, Mongol, too dealt with the same span of Temujin’s life. Both these works claim to be based on the The Secret History of the Mongols, an anonymous Mongolian account of Genghis Khan’s life, but they differ vastly. In Bodorov’s movie, the love between Borte and Temujin was the main thread. Iggulden’s novel is about Temujin’s survival and execution of the vision of uniting the tribes. They differ even on minor points. In the movie, Temujin’s father is poisoned; in the novel he is attacked by Tartars. In the movie, Borte is kidnapped by a rival gang and she spends some time with them before she is rescued; in the novel, she is rescued within a few days. In the movie there is a whole story of Jamukha, his blood-brother which is absent from the novel. Basically both of them have taken creative liberties. We probably need to use Richard Feynman’s concept of multiple histories to figure out what really happened. Or we could read the primary source.
Genghis: Birth of an Empire: A Novel by Con Iggulden, Paperback: 416 pages, Publisher: Bantam (July 13, 2010)
A Brief History of Roma People
Vincent van Gogh: The Caravans – Gypsy Camp near Arles (1888, Oil on canvas) |
We know that the Roma originally migrated out of India. But what migration path did they follow? Also, where exactly did they originate from India?. A new study looks at maternal DNA to trace the Roma history and has some answers. This is particularly important because the Roma don’t have a reliable history and we all know how the Enlightened Europeans treated them.
The new study is mostly about what contributed to the heterogeneity of the Roma groups. What is of interest to us is that they left India about a 1000 to 1500 years back and went through Persia and Greece to reach the Balkans. By the 14th century, various Roma groups established themselves in the Balkan Peninsula and within a century they reached the periphery of Europe. When Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama set out on their famous voyages, the Roma were present in Spain and Portugal.
Investigating their Indian origins, the study found that the Roma originated mostly in North-Western India and a bit from East India. Among the North-Western states, Punjab is the most probable homeland for the Roma, thus creating a new market for Yash Raj films.
References:
- Isabel Mendizabal et al., Reconstructing the Indian Origin and Dispersal of the European Roma: A Maternal Genetic Perspective,PLoS ONE 6, no. 1 (January 10, 2011): e15988.
Review: The Pacific
In his New Yorker piece titled, Hellhole, Atul Gawande describes what happens to prisoners in solitary confinement.
After a few months without regular social contact, however, his experience proved no different from that of the P.O.W.s or hostages, or the majority of isolated prisoners whom researchers have studied: he started to lose his mind. He talked to himself. He paced back and forth compulsively, shuffling along the same six-foot path for hours on end. Soon, he was having panic attacks, screaming for help. He hallucinated that the colors on the walls were changing. He became enraged by routine noises—the sound of doors opening as the guards made their hourly checks, the sounds of inmates in nearby cells. After a year or so, he was hearing voices on the television talking directly to him. He put the television under his bed, and rarely took it out again. [HELLHOLE]
War can be equally fatal on the mind. There is a scene in The Pacific where an American soldier is seen casually throwing stones into the blown up head of another soldiers as if it were a dustbin.In another when they are waiting in the dark for the Japanese, a soldier panics and shouts and the others kill him with the comment, “Better him than all of us”. Another soldier just blows his brains out unable to take it anymore.
The HBO miniseries, The Pacific, is about the American war against Japan, fought in various islands in the Pacific Ocean following Pearl Harbor. It follows the lives of three soldiers — Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge and John Basilone — as they fight battles in tiny previously unheard islands, facing not just the Japs, but their own minds as well. The series is based on With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge and Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie as well as the memoir of a marine who fought along with Basilone.
Basilone, a gunnery sergeant, was sent to Guadalcanal where he successfully repelled a Japanese attack on the American lines; Basilone single-handedly kept firing at them, thus denying them a victory. This made him an instantly recognizable hero in America where he is sent to sell war bonds. Being a soldier selling war bonds is not to his liking. He enlists again and is sent to Iwo Jima along with 30,000 marines; he is killed on the first day.
Robert Leckie too was present in Guadalcanal witnessing the carnage and he writes about it to his neighbor Vera. Also during an R&R in Australia, he courts a Greek immigrant Stella, but eventually Stella breaks up with him as she knows his fate. Eugene Sledge could not initially join the war since he had a heart murmur, but he eventually joins. On the island of Pavuvu, he catches enuresis and almost loses his mind. He has a debate with Leckie on faith and God. Sledge is then involved in the capture of the airfield on the Peleliu. Once the beach is secured, they attempt to cross the airfield and face heavy gun fire. He gets shot and is evacuated to their ship.
He comes back again and faces battles where they face Japanese gun fire from the caves. The Japanese had built tunnels in the coral mountains and the intelligence had no clue. In a month of fighting, there were 6500 casualties, but the island was not used again. The final battle is fought in Okinawa and they hear about a new bomb which was dropped in Japan ending the war.
Following the first attack on American soil by a foreign power since 1812, there was heavy enthusiasm among Americans to enlist to fight the Japanese, but these young men did not know what they were getting into. The enemy was not just the ‘Japs’, but the tropical jungle where they had to face non-stop rains, leeches, crabs, rats, and poisoned water supplies.This has to be contrasted with the battle locations shown in the other HBO series, Band of Brothers, which was fought mostly in the towns of Europe.
The war has been presented unlike anything I have seen before on screen. It delivers a simple message visually: war is hell. It is an expensive HBO production and with executive producers like Tom Hanks and Steven Speilberg, no compromise was made in recreating the battles; the level of detail present in the Normandy scene in Saving Private Ryan is there in each episode. It is not a sanitized version of history; the crimes on both sides are depicted.
But what gives depth to the series, is how the war affects the mind. In Okinawa, where the Japanese used human shields, there is a scene when Sledge and “Snafu” hear a baby cry from a hut. They are not sure if it is a trap. They had been in one instance before where a woman who was booby trapped was sent with a crying baby into the midst of American soldiers and they had to shoot her. This time they walk into the hut and find a baby crying and the mother dead. They stand unsure what to do. The tension is palpable. Right then another soldier walks in and carries the baby away. In the same hut another wounded Japanese woman asks Sledge to shoot her and lifts his gun to her forehead.
The series ends with Leckie, Sledge and his companions coming back home. They have to decide what to do. Leckie finds a job as a reporter and marries the girl to whom he was writing all those letters. Sledge is unable to decide what to do. He says he will never wear the uniform again and breaks down on a hunting trip; he says will never be able to shoot again.
Indian History Carnival – 37: Vasco da Gama, Venice, Patanjali
- Giacomo Benedetti looks at what ancient DNA can tell us about the Indo-European problem.
- Recently Dr. Koenraad Elst wrote that there is no reason to believe that Patanjali the grammarian was also the author of Yoga Sutras. Sarvesh Tiwari decided to investigate.
- In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached Calicut and met the Zamorin. Maddy goes through an account of the meeting and offers his commentary. He also displays how various artists rendered this meeting.
- When the Portuguese discovered the path to Calicut, it had repurcussions not just in India, but in Europe as well. CHF writes
- Anuraag Sanghi has a review of Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians
We can suppose that the Oxus valley was an ancient seat for the R1a1a people coming from South Asia, and that they spoke an Indo-European language. From Central Asia they should have moved to the Kurgan area in Ukraine, and from there to Central Europe. Another R1a1a people went eastward up to the Tarim Basin (see here) and another to the Andronovo area near Krasnoyarsk in Siberia (see here). But we know that they all had their ultimate origin in western South Asia, and their expansion in Eurasia seems to be dated particularly in the metal age, since all these cultures knew metals.
Indologists objections revolve around the usual suspects: that there are interpolations, the non-homogeneity of texts, some philosophical concepts are allegedly imported from or influenced by the nAstika doctrines and therefore the resulting dating issues, some concepts that allegedly contradict and therefore could not have come from one person, dissecting the texts to such absurd level that the whole loses the meaning and then at that level showing the minor differences, and so on. But having seen those arguments we are convinced that none of them really stand water and we shall take a raincheck without getting into discussing those. We shall only say that the real issue here is the hankering to somehow give these texts absurdly late dates, besides of course trivializing their authorship, devaluing their worth and integrity, as well as obfuscating their origins and genesis.
Shows the Zamorin with a golden conical crown which is a depiction of a possible Thalapaavu or turban. Did the Zamorin wear a turban for ceremonial occasions? It is doubtful, but may have been keeping up appearances. The people around are obviously half clad (in reality just wearing a dhoti) and look terribly muscular (virtually impossible). As we read in Correa’s and other writings, the possibility of rings around his shin and calves like Romans is pretty doubtful, though he wore a Shringala. The large spittoon is depicted wrongly and the overall ambience thoroughly inappropriate. The room itself looks too high (impossible for a thatched roof dwelling) with ornate curtains and hangings. Note that the Zamorin has no beard.
Within the next couple of years, economic depression engulfed many of the trade centres of Europe, with firms collapsing and banks failing. The crisis was felt most in Venice which was the largest buyer of Asian spices. The Venetian Senate passed a resolution on 15th January 1506 on the alarming fall in trade as a consequence of the Portuguese arrival in Calicut: Since, as everybody knows, this commerce has now been reduced to the worst possible condition, it is essential to take some action and to provide our citizens with every facility for sailing the seas.
Till 1857, the British followed the Spanish model, and used religious logic, to justify their plunder and massacre in India. The British used religious differences to foist artificial Muslim ‘leaders’ on India – to finally partition India. While Shourie is critical of these Muslim ‘leaders’ (rightly), of Nehru (partly to blame), he is gentle in his criticism of the British role (Chapter 14).
If you find interesting blog posts on India history, please send it to varnam.blog @gmail or to @varnam_blog. The next carnival will be up on Feb 15th.