Land of The Seven Rivers- A brief history of India’s geography by Sanjeev Sanyal

 A Geographic Idea of India

Historians of a certain persuasion have denied the very existence of an Idea of India prior to India’s gaining independence in 1947. Their arguments have been based on the fact that the land mass of Greater India comprising modern day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka was never really under a unitary political rule. Even during the golden days of the Mauryas (321-185 BCE), and the Guptas (320-550 CE) who fashioned themselves after the former, the empire did not extend up to the southern tip; the southern peninsula remained unconquered. And when the last of the ‘so called Great Moghuls’, Aurangzeb did conquer the South, we know how it all ended- with the disintegration of the empire itself. 

In the book under review, the author based on evolutionary, geographical, archeological, and historical evidences, argues that a cultural Idea of India has always existed with a persistent continuity over different time scales based on the geography of the land mass, overriding disparate political identities. And this is best invoked by India’s traditional identity as ‘Bharata Varsh’.

India’s Great Epics

The two great epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, which define Indian consciousness, unite the geography of Greater India by connecting Kurukshetra and Ayodhya in the North with Sri Lanka in the south, and Gandhara (modern Afghanistan) in the west with Manipur in the East. Ramayana defines the North-South axis, and Mahabharata the East-West axis of the geography of the subcontinent. For those interested, Kishkinda-Bali’s kingdom, is Hampi in Karnataka, and the place of Jatayu’s fall is Lepakshi in Andhra Pradesh. Whether Ramayana and Mahabharata are based on real events or not, the authors of these ancient time-less epics were clear about their geography. The literary evolution of India’s classical languages reflects this connectedness.

Prehistory and early history

As early humans migrated out of Africa, crossing the red sea in cool climes when the sea level was perhaps 100 metres below its current level, the Arabian coast was wetter and more hospitable than it is today. Crossing the Persian gulf- then a shallow watered plain, the increasingly numerous group sauntered along the Makran coast and entered the subcontinent, with groups pushing further in. Stone age sites with their characteristic rock paintings are scattered all over the subcontinent. Warming of the planet and the advance of the shoreline inwards- the storyline of the Great Flood, a recurring theme in diverse ancient cultures, was a geographical event. This drove the human settlements further inland into the subcontinent. Further migrations and intermixing imply that even if the human pools in different geographies of the subcontinent were separate to begin with, they got mixed a long time ago, bringing about a continuity in the variation in the genetic content of the populations of the north and the south. The extremely isolated pockets of Nicobarese being the probable exceptions.

As with the genetic content, so with the language and culture. Those trying to discern an exclusive and pristine Dravidian culture, may be disappointed to know that cultural influences travelled in both directions along the North-South axis, as did the populations. “---by the late Iron Age, the people in southern India were not just aware of the rest of Indian civilization but were comfortably a part of it. Many of the words that are generally considered as Sanskrit words used in modern Tamil are actually ancient Tamil words that found their way into Sanskrit” (page 109-110, emphasis added). Thus Sanskrit was never a “pure language” as some people believe it to be. The enduring success of Sanskrit can be attributed to its ability to absorb words and ideas from diverse sources.

Some New Insights into widely held beliefs

1.       Turkic Invasions.  Turkic invasions into the Hindu-Buddhist Afghanistan in the late tenth century which destroyed the Hindu Shahi dynasty, and the raids into Somnath are well known. The systematic destruction of the holy Hindu cities and ancient schools of learning like the Nalanda give the impression that the Turkic raids were inspired by religious zeal. What the author brings to light is the equally despicable motive to capture slaves. “Over the next few centuries, hundreds of thousands of Indian slaves- particularly from West Punjab and Sind- would be marched into Afghanistan and then sold in the slave bazaars of Central Asia and the Middle East” (page 145). This slave trade continued well into the mid-nineteenth century, Indians being replaced by Persian and Russian slaves. This was the major reason for the Russian attacks on the Central Asian Khanates in the nineteenth century (Hopkirk, The Great Game). In fact the Persian slaves were not rescued until these Khanates were completely integrated into the Russian empire. Old habits die hard, indeed.

 

2.       The Age of the Great Mughals. Much is made of the age of the ‘Great Mughals’ from Babur to Aurangzeb in the teaching of History. However the truth is slowly being unraveled. The eminent historian William Dalrymple, in a recent podcast (Express Adda with William Dalrymple, YouTube Uploaded 21 Dec. 2019), admitted that “Hindutva myth apart” (Dalrymple’s words) the golden age of India lasted from about the 200 BC to 1200 AD, when the Sanskrit language, Hindu religion, Ramayana, and Hindu names spread from Kandahar (Gandhara) to Singapore (Singapura), and Sumatra. At the same time Buddhism went northwards through modern day Afghanistan (Bamiyan province) to China all along the Silk Road. The estimated GDP of the subcontinent was nearly a third of the global GDP, and prosperity was wide spread. How trade, and Indian culture and religion spread from the subcontinent throughout the Indian Ocean rim both eastwards and westwards is succinctly described in this book.

The implication is clear though no one wants to assert it aloud. The advent of Islam was the beginning of the end of this glory. According to Dalrymple, Babur, understandably, was and behaved like an invader. His descendants were not much better as they taxed the farmers like never before, essentially running an extractive system of governance (Civilization of Moghal India- William Dalrymple introduced by Enrique Gavilan, YouTube 5^th Sept. 2024). The Mughals adopted the Persian court etiquette, and Persian as the court language, while actually the population spoke Hindi and Urdu, and the language of scholarship was Sanskrit. Persian nobles were preferred to those of Indian origin (for more on this see Dadvar, Iranians in Mughal Politics and Society). Productivity and prosperity began to decline and India’s share in the global GDP had already declined to 24% during the rule of Akbar. “In short, the glittering Moghul court of the sixteenth and seventeenth century hid the fact that India was already in decline” (page 188). In fact Shah Jahan’s Delhi was already a city of slums- chaotic and dirty, often a victim of fire. In Aurangzeb’s reign, even the upkeep of the Red Fort suffered (Truschke, Aurangzeb- The Man and the Myth). After Nadir Shah sacked Delhi, the decline of the Mughals was complete. The Mughal empire had simple fallen behind in the technology of weaponry, construction, and in general human enterprise.

The reason for the economic decline under Islamic rule is not hard to find. The extractive economy did not make any public investment. This is unlike the Vijayanagar Empire where the kings ploughed the revenue back into irrigation and mining on a large scale (see Gribble, The Deccan Sultanate).

High Culture in the Mughal court under Bahadur Shah Zafar. There is a general belief that the court of the last Mughal emperor in the mid.-nineteenth century saw the flowering of high culture and literary achievements- Ghalib being the poster boy of this cultural renewal. The author contests this. Delhi of this period was “distinctly provincial and archaic compared to Calcutta” (page 229). In actual fact, Zafar’s court was pauperized by his rising expense in maintaining a gargantuan family of several thousand salatins on the Company’s meagre pension. Although he received a pension from Zafar, Ghalib rarely attended the Court unless explicitly summoned by Zafar. In fact, Ghalib unsuccessfully petitions the Company for a pension, and seeks a Professorship at the Delhi College (Dalrymple, The Last Moghul). The author goes on to say “A ‘renaissance’ is about new ideas, innovation and vigour” (page 229). Ghalib did not contribute to any of this. His poetry was archaic and stylized, restricted to well defined themes of romance, and unrequited love. At best he added themes of longing for the glorious past, and regretted the approaching times. There was a very practical aspect to all this- his pension, and hence his livelihood was at risk!

Socialists and Fascists

What is the difference between Chalk and Cheese? You cannot eat chalk, and you cannot write with cheese.

What is the difference between Socialists and Fascists? The author says, not much so far as architecture is concerned. Both love “the industrial starkness of reinforced concrete”, and “the urge to impose rigid master plans on cities” (page 288). Nehru invited Corbusier to design Chandigarh unfettered by India’s ancient civilization, and poured enormous resources in land, material and money into this project- all to map out a square grid of roads! Somewhat like Nazi era Berlin. Chandigarh’s antiseptic cleanliness is achieved by the economic profiling of potential residents by the unfettered rise in real estate prices. The result: most residents are bureaucrats of the two states for which Chandigarh is the capital, who anyway live in rent-free accommodation. The city even today, does not generate adequate tax revenue for its own upkeep!

To conclude, this is an interesting book covering India’s evolution from ‘Gondwana to Gurgaon’. There is an abridged form of this book that the author has adapted for young adults in collaboration with Sowmya Rajendran.