Civilization - Niall ferguson

Civilization- Niall Ferguson(2011)

The question has surely vexed generations:

How is it that Europe, a barbarian land of negligible consequence in the early 15^th  century compared to the dazzling civilizations of the Orient, suddenly became the masters of the world 500 years later?

Niall Ferguson in his ‘Civilization’ brings forth compelling arguments and  lists out six ‘killer apps’ which caused the West to pull away from the rest, namely- Competition, Science, Modern Medicine, Property, Consumerism, and Work Ethic.

One might agree or disagree at the arguments set forth in the book, but it’s really a fascinating read.

The heights attained by the Chinese civilization and the Ottoman Empire in their glory days were truly awe inspiring and hence the precipitous decline is all the more unfathomable.

The Indian civilization is acknowledged, yes, but the reasons for the decline are not really dwelled at length in the book. One reason could be that Ferguson talks more of the world in the 10^th to 15^th century, and India, had long fallen of the pedestal by then.                                                                             

In fact by the 8^th century A D, the Indian civilization had reached its zenith and invaders were creeping up the Hindu-kush mountain ranges to begin the subjugation of the subcontinent for more than a thousand years. The Mughals revived some of the old splendor, of course, but as brought out in the book, the dogma of Islamic decrees made further blossoming of the subcontinent somewhat problematic. 

But consider the glory that was China, even in the 15^th century.

'Even though, the credit for Industrial revolution is ascribed to Europe of the 17^th/18^th century, the revolution actually prefigured in China.

The first blast furnace for smelting iron ore was not built in Coalbrookdale in 1709, but in China before 200 B.C.

The oldest iron suspension bridge in the world is not British but Chinese; dating from as early as 65 AD, and remains of it can still be seen near Ching-tung in Yunnan province.

Even as late as 1788, British iron-production levels were still lower than those achieved in China in 1078.

The printing press with movable type is traditionally credited to fifteenth-century Germany. In reality it was invented in eleventh-century China. Paper too originated in China long before it was introduced in the West. So did paper money, wallpaper and toilet paper.

It is often asserted that the English agricultural pioneer Jethro Tull discovered the seed drill in 1701. In fact it was invented in China 2,000 years before his time.

The Rotherham plough which, with its curved iron mouldboard, was a key tool in the eighteenth century English Agricultural Revolution, was another innovation by the Chinese.

It was the Chinese who first revolutionized textile production with innovations like the spinning wheel and the silk reeling frame, imported to Italy in the thirteenth century.

And it is far from true that the Chinese used their most famous invention, gun-powder, solely for fireworks. Jiao Yu and Liu Ji's book Huolongjing, published in the late fourteenth century, describes land and sea mines, rockets and hollow cannonballs filled with explosives.

Other Chinese innovations include chemical insecticide, the fishing reel, matches, the magnetic compass, playing cards, the toothbrush and the wheelbarrow.'

But just how close the Chinese were to conquering the world in the 15^th century is evident when you consider the fascinating tale of the mighty Chinese navy in the 15^th century.

‘In Nanjing today you can see a full-size replica  of the treasure ship of Admiral Zheng He, the most famous sailor in Chinese history.

The treasure ship was 400 feet long - nearly five times the size of the ‘Santa Maria’ in which Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1492.

And this was a part of a fleet of more than 300 huge ocean going junks. These ships were far larger than anything being built in fifteenth-century Europe. With a combined crew of 28,000, Zheng He's navy was anything seen in the West until the First World War.

In a series of six epic voyages between 1405 and 1424, Zheng He's fleet ranged astoundingly far and wide. The Admiral sailed to Thailand, Sumatra, Java and the once-great port of Calicut; to Temasek (later Singapore), Malacca and Ceylon; to Cuttack in Orissa; to Hormuz, Aden and up the Red Sea to Jeddah.

When the whole world lay wide open thus for the Chinese to conquer or pillage at will, the sea explorations were suddenly ceased by the Chinese.

In 1424,Emperor Yongle died –and China's overseas ambitions were buried with him. Zheng He's voyages were immediately suspended, and only briefly revived with a final Indian Ocean expedition in 1432-33. The Emperor's decree definitively banned oceanic voyages. From 1500, anyone in China found building a ship with more than two masts was liable to the death penalty; in 1551 it became a crime even to go to sea in such a ship. The records of Zheng He's journeys were destroyed. Zheng He himself died and was almost certainly buried at sea.'

So what lay behind this momentous decision? No one is really sure.

The same however, could not be said for the voyages that were about to be undertaken by a very different sailor from a diminutive European kingdom at the other end of the Eurasian landmass.

In Lisbon, the newly crowned Portuguese King Manuel put Vasco da Gama in command of four small ships with a big mission.

All four vessels could quite easily have fitted inside Zheng He's treasure ship. Their combined crews were just 170 men.’

So why was it that the 15^th century marked the beginning of domination of European powers and not the Chinese, when they clearly had all the advantages?

Ferguson maintains that one of the key reason was the ‘fierce competition’ that existed between the European countries in the middle ages.

When Zheng He embarked on his numerous voyages, trade was not the key requirement of the Emperor. In the words of a contemporary inscription, the fleet was 'to go to countries and confer presents on them so as to transform them by displaying our power ...'. What Emperor Yongle wanted in return for the foreign rulers to pay tribute to him the way China’s immediate neighbours did, and thereby to acknowledge his supremacy.

For Europeans, however, sailing round Africa was not about exacting symbolic tribute for some high and mighty potentate back home. It was about getting ahead of their rivals, both economically and politically. If Vasco da Gama succeeded, then Lisbon trumped other European rivals.

‘Maritime exploration, was in short , was fifteenth century Europe’s space race or rather spice race.’

So why did the Europeans seem to have so much more commercial fervour than the Chinese?

Ferguson maintains that it was because of the ‘disunity’ in Europe.

The  map of medieval Europe, show literally hundreds of competing states. There were roughly a thousand polities in fourteenth-century Europe; and still around 500 more or less independent units 200 years later.

The constant fighting between these states encouraged innovation in military technology. On land, fortifications had to grow stronger as cannon grew more powerful and maneuverable.At sea, meanwhile, ships stayed small for good reasons- to strike an ideal balance between speed and firepower. It was much easier to turn and much harder to hit than one of Zheng He's giant junks.

So in China when the central authorities decided that there will be no more deep sea voyages, the decree was implicitly accepted by the gentry.

However, generations of internecine conflict ensured that no European monarch ever grew strong enough to be able to prohibit overseas exploration.

On the contrary, the European monarchs all encouraged commerce, conquest and colonization as part of their competition with one another.

Another reason was that the religious fervour provided another incentive to expand over seas, whereas a proselytizing religion did not exist in China.

In short, the political fragmentation that characterized Europe precluded the creation of anything remotely resembling the Chinese Empire. It also propelled Europeans to seek opportunities - economic, geopolitical and religious - in distant lands.

The Ming empire had collapsed in the 15^th/16^th century as the turning inwards proved to be  fatal, especially for a complex and densely populated society like China's.

There were no external resources to draw upon. And that proved to be the death knell of the Chinese culminating in the ‘Century of humiliation’ beginning 1850 to 1950.

Similarly Japan too missed the bus of Industrialization due to the Tokugawa Shogunate's policy of strict seclusion (sakoku) after 1640. All forms of contact with the outside world were proscribed. As a result, Japan missed out entirely on the benefits associated with a rapidly rising level of global trade and migration.

So the European powers were pulling ahead of the great civilizations of the Orient because of the material advantages of commerce and colonization.

The Chinese and Japanese route - turning away from foreign trade and intensifying rice cultivation - meant that with population growth, incomes fell, and so did nutrition and productivity. When crops failed or their cultivation was disrupted, the results were catastrophic.

This theory of intense competition does not explain why the Indian civilization also did not forge ahead in the 15^th century. India was perhaps more or less as fragmented as Europe of the 15^th /16^th century. There were petty rivalries amongst numerous principalities.

Possibly the ossification of the caste based society and the Islamic domination prevented any positive fallout in the medieval period in the subcontinent.

Similar to the dazzling heights achieved by the Chinese civilization in the 15^th / 16^th century, the Ottoman empire had also flourished in the 9^th /10^th century.

'The caliphate established by the middle of  eighth century, extended from Spain, right across North Africa, through its Arabian heartland, north through Syria and into the Caucasus then eastwards across Persia and into Afghanistan.

The Abbasid caliphate was at the cutting edge of science. In the Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) founded in ninth-century Baghdad by Caliph Harun al-Rashid, Greek texts by Aristotle and other authors were translated into Arabic.

The caliphate also produced what some regard as the first true hospitals, such as the Bimaristan established at Damascus by Caliph al-Waleed bin Abdel Malek in 707, which was designed to cure rather than merely house the sick.

It was home to what some regard as the first true institution of higher education, the University of Al-Karaouine founded in Fez in 859.

Building on Greek and especially Indian foundations, Muslim mathematicians established algebra as a discipline distinct from arithmetic and geometry. The first algebraic textbook was The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing (Hisab al-Jabr Wal-Musqabalah) written in Arabic by the Persian scholar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi in around 820.

The first truly experimental scientist was a Muslim: Abu 'All al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (965-c. 1039), whose seven-volume Book of Optics overthrew a host of ancient misconceptions, notably the idea that we are able to see objects because our eyes emit light.

The West owes a debt to the medieval Muslim world, for both its custodianship of classical wisdom and its generation of new knowledge in cartography, medicine and philosophy as well as in mathematics and optics.

The English thinker Roger Bacon acknowledged it: ‘Philosophy is drawn from the muslims’

So what caused the decline of the Caliphate from being leaders in innovation and scientific progress?

‘The best explanation for this divergence was the unlimited sovereignty of religion in the Muslim world.'

Towards the end of the eleventh century, influential Islamic clerics began to argue that the study of Greek philosophy was incompatible with the teachings of the Koran.Indeed, it was blasphemous to suggest that man might be able to discern the divine mode of operation, which God might in any case vary at will.

Under clerical influence, the study of ancient philosophy was curtailed books burned and so-called freethinkers persecuted; increasingly, 'the madrasas became focused exclusively on theology at a time when Europe universities were broadening the scope of their scholarship.

Printing too, was resisted in the Muslim world. For the Ottomans, script was sacred: there was a religious reverence for the pen, a preference for the art of calligraphy over the business of printing. 'Scholar's ink', it was said, 'is holier than martyr's blood.'In 1515 a decree of Sultan Selim 1, had threatened with death anyone found using the printing press.

This failure to reconcile Islam with scientific progress was to prove disastrous. Having once provided European scholars with ideas and inspiration, Muslim scientists were now cut off from the latest research.

If the Scientific Revolution was generated by a network, then the Ottoman Empire was effectively offline.

The only Western book translated into a Middle Eastern language until the late eighteenth century was a medical book on the treatment of syphilis.

Nothing better illustrates this divergence than the fate of the observatory built in Istanbul in the 1570s for the renowned polymath Takiyiiddln al-Rasid (Taqi al-Din). In the mid-1570s, as chief astronomer to the Sultan, he successfully lobbied for the construction of an observatory.

Prying into secrets of the heavens was however considered  blasphemous and in 1580, barely five years after its completion  Sultan ordered the demolition of Takiyiiddin's observatory. there would not be another observatory in Istanbul until 1868.

By such methods, the Muslim clergy effectively snuffed the chance of Ottoman scientific advance - at the very moment  the Christian Churches of Europe were relaxing their grip on free enquiry.

European advances were dismissed in Istanbul as mere 'vanity’. The legacy of Islam's once celebrated House of Wisdom vanished in a 

cloud of piety.

By the second half of the seventeenth century, while the heirs of Osman slumbered, rulers all across Europe were actively promoting science, largely regardless of clerical qualms.

The Ottomans knew by this time that they had to learn from the West. In 1732 Ibrahim Muteferrika, an Ottoman official posed the question that has haunted Muslims ever since:

'Why do Christian nations which were so weak in the past compared with Muslim nations begin to dominate so many lands in modern times and even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies?'

So it was the turning back on science and innovation that finally caused the downfall of the Islamic civilization.

It explains the backwardness even today of the Islamic world, and the sliver of a state ,Israel, holding out against its hostile Arab neighbors is not really a mystery, considering that Israel is at the cutting edge of scientific and technological innovation.

Between 1980 and 2000 the number of patents registered in Israel was 7652 compared with 367 for all Arab countries combined. In 2008 alone Israeli inventors applied to register 9,591 new patents. The equivalent figure for Iran was fifty and for all majority Muslim countries in the world 5,657.

Another fascinating conundrum is as to why it was the Anglo Saxons that has effectively dominated the world in the 19^th and 20^th century and not the Spanish and the Portuguese.

When the conquest and colonization of the Americas began in the medieval period, it was one of history's biggest natural experiments:

Take two Western cultures, export them and impose them on a wide range of different peoples and lands - the British in the North, the Spanish and Portuguese in the South. Then see which does better.

It was no contest. Looking at the world today, four centuries on, no one could possibly doubt that the dominant force in Western civilization is the United States of America. Until very recently, Latin America has lagged far behind Anglo-America.

How and why did that happen?

 The Spanish Empire - or the Portuguese – were not afflicted with the defects of the great Oriental empires. Unlike the Chinese, the Spaniards were early participants in the global trade boom after I500. Unlike the Ottomans, they were early participants in the Scientific Revolution.

Instead, it was an idea that made the crucial difference between British and Iberian America - an idea about the way people govern themselves.

The idea was this:

Establishment of rule of law with the sanctity of individual freedom and the security of private property rights, ensured by representative, constitutional government.

In 1532 when 200 Spaniards landed in Ecuador, their ambition was to conquer the Inca Empire for the King of Spain and to secure a large share of its reputed wealth of precious metal for themselves. Whereas when another ship reached the New World 138 years later, in 1670, at  an island off the coast of what today is South Carolina among their modest ambition was to find a better life than the grinding poverty they had left behind in England.

The two ships symbolized this tale of two Americas. On one, conquistadors; on the other indentured servants. One group dreamt of  instant plunder - of mountains of Mayan gold, there for the taking. The others knew that they had years of toil ahead of them, but also that they would be rewarded with one of the world's most attractive  assets - prime North American land - plus a share in the process of law-making. Real estate plus representation: that was the North American dream.

So in Latin America you have the problem of unequal distribution of property itself.  For instance in post-independence Venezuela, nearly all the land was owned by a creole elite of just 10,000 people - 1.1 per cent of the population. Whereas in America, the percentage of rural property ownership, is close to 75 %.

So while it was democracy that flourished in America, it was dictatorship that took root in Latin America.

A fascinating read, it is almost a follow up to another great book 'Guns,germs and steel' by Jared Diamond which also examines the rise and fall of civilizations.

The Krishna Key- Ashwin Sanghi(2012)

The Krishna Key- Ashwin Sanghi(2012)

His third book- ‘The Krishna Key’ by Abhishek Sanghi disappoints at so many levels. 

His narrative skills are pretty ordinary, and if he is being called ‘Dan Brown of India’, then it's a big insult to the American author. With Dan Brown himself generally panned by critics for his unimaginative style of writing, one may surmise where that leaves Abhishek Sanghi.

However in this blog, I intend to only consider various theories floated by the author on the supposed time period of Vedic civilization in India. 

The author pushes back the date of Vedic civilization by a couple of millennium to 3500 BCE, and the Indus Valley civilization is recast as the greatest Vedic community on Earth. 

Considering that the consensus date for the Vedic civilization amongst historians is 1800 BCE and the Indus Valley civilization is considered pre-Vedic, this theory is interesting. 

The various ‘evidences’  cited is certainly food for thought, all right, but to consider them as conclusive proof is stretching it a bit too far.

The Unique Alignment of Planets Theory

In the Mahabharatha, Sage Vyasa met Dhritharashtra on the eve of the battle and warned him of the terrible planetary omens that he had seen:-

- Conjunction of Saturn with Aldebaran.

- Retrograde Mars before reaching Antares.

- Lunar eclipse near Pleiadus(or the seven sisters).

Apparently all three astronomical events can occur simultaneously only in two possible years- 3067 BCE or 2183 BCE. However taking into consideration the month of death of Bhishma, (Magha, which occurs after winter solstice), the only possible year is 3067 BCE.

Account of Megasthenes

Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador in the court of Chandragupta Maurya, made the first  ever written reference to Krishna, the mythical God.      

Krishna is called Heracles in his account, the Greek usage influenced by the term Hari.

Krishna is recorded as having lived a hundred and thirty eight generations before the times of Alexander and Chandragupta Maurya.

Considering the Chandra Gupta Maurya’s reign as being around 307 BCE, the approximate period of Krishna’s existence would be 3067 BCE.

The theory is certainly interesting. However Vishnu or Krishna is very sparingly mentioned in the Vedas, the main Gods being Agni, Indra, Rudra etc. Vishnu or Krishna attains prominence only in the Puranic period (generally post 200 BCE). Vishnu is a minor deity in the Vedas.

The popular practices of Hinduism today is based on the Puranas, with the Vedic religious practices almost extinct in a way in modern day India.
 
So why does a Greek historian give so much importance to Krishna( or Heracles) whenever our own Vedas does not?

Theory 3- Surya Siddhanta Dates

Surya Siddhanta, the ancient work on astronomy that provides the foundation for all Hindu and Buddhist Calendars, provides a few timelines which are interesting. 

Kaliyuga is slated to have started on 18 Feb 3102 BCE.

The belief is that human civilization degenerates spiritually during Kaliyuga – almost a dark age – because people moved away from God.

The first event to distance mankind from God was the death of Krishna, thus pushing back the Vedic period by a couple of millennium.

To nitpick, however, one can bring out a few flaws in the dates set forth.

Firstly, the dates for Mahabharatha is given as 3067 BCE as per the planetary alignments. But if Krishna died in 3102  BCE , then Krishna could not have existed during the period of Mahabharatha as the battle occurs after his death, which is clearly not acceptable.

Secondly again, why no mention of the epics of Mahabharatha or Ramayana in the Vedas? Why is Vishnu treated as a minor deity in the Vedas?

Even in Manusmriti, which is treated as a classic treatise on Hindu social laws, written somewhere in 300 BCE, and giving valuable insights into life in India of that era,does not mention of any of the Gods of the epics. Vishnu or Krishna is not even talked about. The emphasis is on the Vedic rituals and Vedic Gods.

Also why did Kaliyug start after the death of Krishna? Of the ten Avatars of Vishnu, Krishna is the eighth, Buddha the ninth and then Kalki.

In the first place Buddha as one of the Avatars of Vishnu is not acceptable to most Buddhists. So treating the period in which Buddha was alive as a Kaliyug, which has negative connotations, would be seriously objectionable to Buddhists.

Theory 4- Archeological Evidence

The archeological evidences, according to the book, proves without any doubt  that the Indus valley Civilization was the greatest Vedic Community on Earth and it was the inhabitants who wrote the Vedas and Upanishads.

What are these archeological evidences?

In Kalibangan, fire altars were discovered here proving that this was a Vedic settlement.

In Mohanjodaro, discovery of ‘The great bath’ which was used for ritual bathing is another hallmark of Vedic settlement.

Also hundreds of seals have been recovered with images of swastika – a symbol of Vedic origin in addition to seals depicting yogic meditation.

The facts enumerated above are interesting. However there is a flip side.

The Vedas are replete with mentions of horses(there are 792 mentions of Asva or horse in Rig-Veda as per one study), but the Indus valley civilization did not have horses. 

Light horse chariots with spoke wheels are mentioned in the Vedas, but the Indus civilization had only cattle drawn solid wheel carts, as seen in numerous depictions.

The Indus Civilization script recovered from the ruins is yet to be deciphered, but the consensus is that these symbols are some form of hieroglyphics and not a script of any sophisticated language.So where did Sanskrit come from?

On the other hand however, it is a well known that the Rig Vedic Sanskrit and  the language spoken in Asia minor (modern day Turkey) in the 1^st millennium BCE( about 1500 BCE) were more or less similar, indicating common ancestors supporting the Aryan migration theory in respect to the Vedic people.

In the book, however there is a further theory suggesting that India was the cradle of civilization and not Mesopotamia as widely believed.

When Sarasvati started drying up around 3200 BCE, it split up the Indian civilization.  Some people moved eastwards towards the Ganges and some westwards in the direction of Tigris- Euphrates

The people who moved eastwards were called Devas and those who moved westwards were called Asuras. The Zoroastrians( of Persia) viewed the Ahuras( or asuras ) as good people and the Devas as the villains, the exact opposite of Vedic civilization.

Further the founder of Judaism is Abraham, and his name is similar to Brahma and is only separated by a single letter – ‘A’. Also Abraham’s consort and Brahma’s consort have almost the same names – Sara and Saraswati.

Unfortunately apart from these phonetic word play, there is no other empirical proof in the book. 

On the other hand, archaeological evidences abound with regards to the move of Indo- Europeans to India from the West.

The various attempts at reconstructing the ‘glorious past’ of India by co-opting even the Indus Valley civilization as Vedic had received a fillip with the growing Hindutva movement. 

It was difficult for the Hindutva brigade to accept foreign roots of the Vedic civilization and Sanskrit language and hence re-branding the Indus civilization as Vedic fit into their scheme of things.

For this purpose ‘archeological evidence’ was cooked up with a picture of a terracotta seal with a horse in it, cited as the final ‘proof’ that the Indus civilization was indeed Vedic. The same was published in all  BJP led states in NCERT school text books in 2000.

However the grand scheme came a cropper when it was revealed that the horse seal was a simple fraud based on computerized distortion of a seal of a unicorn bull.

It is difficult to fathom as to why the Hindutva zealots are bent upon twisting historical facts and being complicit in obvious frauds and lies, to advance the ‘indigenous theory’ of the Vedic civilization.

Why this insecurity? How does it matter where the Vedic people came from -  the fact that they flourished in India is what is important. 

And there are many important mathematical and science treatises between 800 BCE to 500 CE of which Indians can be justifiably proud of. 

For instance The Baudhayana Sulbasutra had worked out the Pythagoran theorem in 800 BCE, 400 years before Pythagorus. 

But in the book, the author is not happy with such mundane achievements. He alludes to the depth of  ‘scientific knowledge ‘ by claiming that the ancient Vedic people knew among other things, the making of a nuclear bomb, Stem cell research, cloning, nuclear transmutation and that the lost city of Atlantis is Dwaraka, Mount Kailash is actually a man made pyramid......


It would have been really funny if it wasn’t so sad.

The USA is less than 300 years old, but it doesn’t stop them from believing that they are the best.

We need to stop sinking to lame attempts at reinventing history. We were a great civilization. Period.

Of course the present state is somewhat less than glorious. And we should probably we focusing on getting that right.

 

Indian Ideology - Perry anderson

INDIAN IDEOLOGY - PERRY ANDERSON (OCT 2012)

Perry Anderson has a few things to say about India which might not be palatable for most Indians.

I remember the buzz around the book when it was about to be released- the constant chatter by the twitterati and the interviews by the author to various print and social media.

But come October 2012 - post the book release - there was hardly a murmur. There were a few strong reviews all right, but they picked the book on technicalities and, to my mind, did not attempt to address the issues raised by the author.

The contentious issues raised are essentially as follows:-

-  The idea that a sub continental unity existed in India extending back to 5000 years is a myth.

-  Partition was essentially the handiwork of the Congress and not the Raj or Jinnah, with Nehru and Gandhi being the main culprits.

As Indians, we have all lapped up this great story of the grand Indian civilization – images of Kumbh Mela being performed  2500 years ago and still continuing flashes before us .We devoured Nehru’s ‘Discovery of India’, Amartya Sen’s ‘Argumentative Indian’ and other such ‘feel good’ books on the same vein.

But Perry Anderson says that the story of the ‘Grand Indian civilization‘  is all wrong- it’s a myth.

Sample a few passages from the book:-

“The subcontinent as we know it today never formed a single political or cultural unit in pre-modern times. For much the longest stretches of its history, its lands were divided between a varying assortment of middle-sized kingdoms, of different stripes. Of the three larger empires it witnessed, none covered the territory of Nehru’s Discovery of India. Maurya and Mughal control extended to contemporary Afghanistan, ceased below the Deccan, and never came near Manipur. The area of Gupta control was considerably less. Separated by intervals of five hundred and a thousand years, there was no remembered political or cultural connection between these orders, or even common religious affiliation: at its height, the first of these Buddhist, the second Hindu, the third Muslim.

…The ‘idea of India’ was essentially a European, not a local invention, as the name itself makes clear. No such term, or equivalent, as India existed in any indigenous language. A Greek coinage, taken from the Indus river, it was so exogenous to the subcontinent that as late as the 16^th century, Europeans would define Indians simply as ‘all natives of an unknown country’...”

The British created India:

‘The British had taken over the subcontinent with such relative ease because it was politically and socially so tangled and fractured, but in imposing a common infrastructural, juridical and cultural grid on it, they unified it as an administrative and ideological reality for the first time in its history. The idea of India was theirs.’

And he takes Nehru and his ‘Discovery of India’ to the cleaners:

‘Nehru, on the other hand, had enjoyed a higher education Gandhi lacked, and an intellectual development not arrested by intense religious belief. But these advantages yielded less than might be thought. He seems to have learnt very little at Cambridge, scrapping a mediocre degree in natural sciences that left no trace thereafter, did poorly in his bar exams, and was not much of a success when he returned to practice law in the footsteps of his father. The contrast with Bose, a brilliant student of philosophy at Cambridge, who was the first native to pass the exams into the elite ranks of the Indian Civil Service and decline entry to it on patriotic grounds, is striking.

But an indifferent beginning is no obstacle to subsequent flowering, and in due course Nehru became a competent orator and prolific writer. What he never acquired, however, was a modicum of literary taste or mental discipline. His most ambitious work, ‘The Discovery of India’, which appeared in 1946, is a steam-bath of Schwarmerei with few equals in the period.

But ‘The Discovery of India’ – not to speak of its predecessor ‘The Unity of India’ – illustrates not just Nehru’s lack of formal scholarship and addiction to romantic myth, but something deeper, not so much an intellectual but a psychological limitation – a capacity for self-deception with far-reaching political consequences.

            ‘India was in my blood and there was much in her that instinctively thrilled me’, he told his readers. ‘She is very lovable and none of her children can forget her wherever they go or whatever strange fate befalls them. For she is part of them in her greatness as well as her failings, and they are mirrored in those deep eyes of hers that have seen so much of life’s passion and joy and folly and looked down into wisdom’s well.’

Not all of  ‘The Discovery of India’ is of similar quality. But the Barbara Cartland streak was never far from the surface: ‘Perhaps we may still sense the mystery of nature, listen to her song of life and beauty, and draw vitality from her. That song is not sung in the chosen spots only, and we can hear it, if we have ears for it, almost everywhere. But there are some places where it charms even those who are unprepared for it and comes like the deep notes of a distant and powerful organ. Among those favoured spots is Kashmir, where loveliness dwells and an enchantment steals over the senses.’ A mind capable of prose like this was unlikely to show much realism about the difficulties facing the national movement.

The author highlights the fissiparous tendencies that almost fractured India during the time of partition, as India was ‘never a political union’:

Bengal …had a stronger common identity, a richer cultural-intellectual tradition and more advanced politics under the Raj. …In the Hindu community a movement led by Bose’s brother Sarat, and in the Muslim community by the the local head of the League, Suhrawardy, joined forces to call for United Bengal as an independent state, adhering neither to India nor to Pakistan. Mountbatten wanted only two Dominions in the sub-continent, though if it was difficult to avoid, did not rule out a third. Jinnah, to his credit, said he would not oppose a unitary Bengal.

             ….When the question was put to the Bengal Assembly, the vote was 126 to 90 in favour of unity.

….densely forested mountainous uplands inhabited by tribal peoples of Tibeto-Mongoloid origin untouched by Hinduism, with no historical connection to any subcontinental polity. In the valleys, three Hindu kingdoms had long existed, the oldest in Manipur, the largest in Assam. The region had lain outside the Maurya and Gupta empires, and had resisted Mughal annexation….

…. So remote were these from anything to do with India, even as constituted by the Victorian Empire, that when Burma was detached from the Raj in 1935, officials came close to allocating them to Rangoon rather than Delhi.

The basic point the author is making is that India was never a political union throughout its history. Period.

But, isn’t that a given? Isn’t it obvious that India was never really a political union? Why waste reams of paper on such an obvious fact?

The basic ‘idea of India’ for the present modern state, I would like to believe, does not hint at a ‘political unity’ though the ages. But rather, a ‘civilizational unity’.

If the basis of a modern nation should only be a ‘historical political unity’, then of course, India, immediately after partition, should have split up into 600 plus principalities. There were too many Maharajas, Nawabs and Princely states floating around.

To my understanding, there was never any suggestion of a ‘political unity’; but it was always the idea of a ‘civilizational unity’, that Nehru and his ilk were sold upon, and that is the foundation on which they wanted to build this brand new country called India.

Is the idea of ‘civilisational unity’ good enough to build a nation? Who decides if it is so?

Is the ‘American way’ the ‘right’ way to build a nation?
Is it ok that you systematically obliterate the indigenous ‘Red Indians’ and usurp their lands?

What about the Latin American countries? Where are the Mayans and the Incas? Is that the way to build a nation?

I would like to believe that a ‘continual civilizational and cultural unity’ is not a bad start point to build a brand new nation.

But is this enough to sustain a fledgling nation?

Well that is an existential query facing India today, that only time will answer conclusively. But one may daresay that there are fewer naysayer’s in 2013, as compared to 1947, on whether India can survive or not.

But there are a few aspects that Indians have got right in building a brand new nation.

One of them is a canon called ‘unity in diversity’. One may scoff at this, but evidence suggests that this actually works in India. 
Consider this:-

It is a fact that in India there is no subversion of any Indigenous culture. There are insurgencies, yes - folks wanting to break away from the Republic. But the point remains- there is no subversion of any indigenous culture.

So,  the Monpa’s of Tawang, the Meitei’s  in Manipur, the Ladakhi’s, the Thambi’s of Tamil Nadu all have a distinct, strong, vibrant identity of their own, within the union of India. 

The proof of the same is that you will never hear of any ‘refugees’ from India due to persecution by the state.

Which country did Dalai Lama pack his bags and come to?

When Quaid-e- Azam, Jinnah, proclaimed Urdu to be the common language of Pakistan, thereby sparking the seed of Bengali insurgency, which country did the Bangladeshi’s take refuge in?

Look at Tibet or Xinjiang in China. The indigenous population in these areas, are a shrinking minority every day, due to the Han sinicization process of China. Does this happen in India?

Things are definitely bad here in India. Lots of poverty and corruption. But one thing  no one can blame us for, is of  subversion of any indigenous culture in India, unlike say  in China.

The fact of the matter is that today, in all states including Kashmir, there have been free and fair elections and there is stability and progress.

I had attended a cultural festival in Tawang in October 2012. The crowd- all local- about 5000 strong, were dancing to their local rock stars numbers, as well as to Bollywood numbers. They even loved the crass jokes by the special guests from Bollywood  - Ehsan Qureshi and Shakti Kapoor. It was a simple depiction of how different cultural strains can co-exist together – ‘Unity in diversity’.

More damning however is the author’s take on the Congress being the main culprit behind partition and not Jinnah or the Raj.

He squarely blames Gandhi’s evocation of Hindu spirituality and invocation of Lord Ram into the political discourse that drove away Muslims -including Jinnah- from the Congress.

‘The official view in Delhi, shared across the political spectrum, has always been that it was Jinnah’s personal ambition that fired Muslim separatism, destroying the unit of the national liberation struggle ……

…Like most politicians, Jinnah was certainly ambitious. But he was also an early architect of Hindu-Muslim unity; had little mass following down to the end of the thirties; and even when he acquired one, probably aimed at a confederation rather than complete separation.

………but it was not Jinnah who injected religion into the vocabulary and imagery of the national movement, it was Gandhi. That he did not do so in any sectarian spirit, calling on Muslims to defend the Caliph in the same breath as Hindus to restore the golden age of Rama, was of little consequence once he jettisoned mobilization against the British without regard for his allies in the common struggle.

…..What remained was Gandhi’s transformation of Congress from an elite into a mass organization by saturating its appeal with a Hindu imagery. Here, unambiguously, was the origin of the political process that would eventually lead to Partition.’

Gandhi’s statements: ‘I yield to none in my reverence for the cow’..

… warning his son against marrying a Muslim on grounds that it was ‘contrary to dharma’ and – a telling simile – ‘like putting two swords in one sheath’… (did not make things better either.)

The author also blames Nehru, for being unwilling to accept the ‘cabinet mission plan’ for devolution of powers between Congress and Muslim league, which might have prevented partition.

‘..But for Nehru,.... (cabinet mission plan) was worse than partition, since it would deprive his party of the powerful centralized state to which it had always aspired, and he believed essential to preserve Indian unity. Congress had always insisted on its monopoly of national legitimacy. That claim could no longer be sustained.

But if the worst came to the worst, it was better to enjoy an unimpeded monopoly of power in the larger part of India than to shackled by having to share it in an undivided one.

So while the League talked of partition, Jinnah contemplated confederation; while Congress spoke of union, Nehru prepared for scission. The Cabinet Mission Plan was duly scuppered. Everything then turned on how the spoils were to be distributed.

There are further telling passages in the book. 

The author paints both Gandhi and Nehru as ‘black’- devious and unscrupulous characters, whereas the popular Indian discourse deifies them.

The opinions expressed by the author , are however  a matter of conjecture and ascribes intentions to Gandhi and Nehru which might not be wholly true.

The truth, of course, would probably be somewhere in between.