“India Before Europe”13

Section I
“India Before Europe”
13
Introduction
Geographic Features of India
India, home to 1.2 billion people, is the world’s largest
democracy.14 Today, India shares borders with four other
sovereign nation-states. Pakistan, with a population of
196 million, lies to India’s northwest. On India’s northern border lies Nepal (population 31 million) and to its
east Bangladesh (166 million) and the mountainous
kingdom of Bhutan (734,000). Just south of India, separated only by a narrow channel, is the island nation of Sri
Lanka (22 million). Finally, off of India’s southwestern
coast is the island chain of the Maldives (394,000).15
The Indian subcontinent can be divided into three
geographic zones: the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the Himalayan Mountains, and the Deccan Plateau.
The Deccan Plateau was formed in prehistoric times
when the Indian tectonic plate ran into Asia, forming the
Himalayan Mountains.16 The Deccan Plateau is mainly
made of granite and is not as well disposed to agriculture as the coastal regions to its east and west. India’s
western Malabar and eastern Coromandel Coasts are divided from the Deccan Plateau by the rocky ghats, long
granite mountain ranges running up and down western
and eastern India. At the start of the Western Ghats, on
the Arabian Sea, lies Bombay. On the other side of the
subcontinent, across the Eastern Ghats, lies Chennai,
formerly Madras, which has served as one gateway for
the transfer of Indian culture to Southeast Asia.17
Mountains form a natural boundary of the South
Asian subcontinent, both to the west and east. The
Kirthar and Sulaiman ranges form a boundary in the
northwest. Though these mountains are formidable, they
have historically been passable, linking India into great
trans-Asian trade and intellectual developments through
passes like the famous Khyber Pass.18 The Tibetan Plateau that lies just beyond the Himalayan Mountains provides many river systems to the north Indian heartland.
This rich agrarian plain is called the Indo-Gangetic
Plain after the two river systems between which it lies,
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the Indus to the west and the Ganges to the east.19
The land between the Yamuna River and the Ganges
is called the doab (“two rivers”), and the land where five
rivers run off the Indus is called the Punjab (“five rivers”).20 Located in the heart of the doab (the term “doab”
refers to a tract of land lying between two rivers) is India’s
current capital, New Delhi, alongside the Yamuna River.
As the Yamuna traces east, it merges with the Ganges
River at Allahabad, or Prayag as it is known in Hinduism. From there the two rivers flow together across
eastern India toward the equally significant port city of
Calcutta (today called Kolkata). Eventually the Ganges
gives way to the Brahmaputra, which also has its origin
in the Tibetan Plateau, and they finally combine as the
Padma to form the largest delta in the world, south of
Bangladesh’s capital at Dhaka.21
An additional important feature of India’s geography
is its rainfall pattern, mostly concentrated in the two
yearly monsoons that bring much-needed rain in vast
quantities. The monsoons, wind patterns carrying rain
from the Indian Ocean, have shaped the conditions of
agriculture and the rhythms of long-distance shipping
and trade. Beginning in June and July, Indian Ocean air
currents direct moisture in vast sheets to the southeastern Indian coast, where the weather system then travels
north and west across India. Next, the monsoon “retreats,” providing another dose of rainfall for an additional growing season. The first monsoon, blowing from
west to east, historically allowed long-distance shipping
across the Indian Ocean. The second monsoon, blowing
from east to west, would also allow eastward seafaring
from India’s Malabar Coast. These favorable climactic conditions contributed to the growth of large-scale,
settled, agrarian empires as well as important shipping
entrepôts such as Calicut. In arid, desert regions, such as
Rajasthan, political organization tended toward smallscale tribal forms of organization, many of which were
not entirely settled.22
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Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daula.
even the fabulously wealthy banking house of the Jagat
Seths upon whom he relied for ready credit.119 Siraj’s reforms to his grandfather’s administration tossed out old
office holders. His thinking: the British defeat of the
French made clear British military superiority, which
the British would surely use to extract more favorable
trade terms. Siraj was not interested in advancing more
favorable terms to the EIC but in protecting his kingdom’s interests. His drastic measures prompted dissent
and fractiousness at his court just when a unified front
would have been most convenient; disgruntled and displaced former elites of the kingdom consolidated local
power bases, readying to put Siraj in his place. Though
Siraj was happy to extract large quantities in customs
and fees from the French and the Dutch, in June 1756,
he attacked English Calcutta especially because it was so
well fortified, to make a point about any challenges to
his sovereignty, which he would and could not accept.120
Siraj’s June 1756 attack on Calcutta resulted in the imprisoning of the English residents of Fort St. William.
Forty such prisoners, in Siraj’s soldiers’ care, suffocated
in what later infamously became known as the “Black
Hole of Calcutta.” This incident, not surprisingly given
the charged atmosphere, provided additional “evidence
for the British of Indian cruelty and barbarism.”121 In the
wake of this disaster, Robert Clive (1725–74), a man who
“had no doubts and no fears,” arrived in Bengal with ten
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ships’ worth of soldiers from Madras. Siraj duly decided
to return Calcutta to the English in January 1757, and
further hostilities were briefly forestalled.
In the peace that followed, Siraj restored Company
privileges, but Clive’s ambitions had been set alight; the
opportunity to dethrone Siraj with the help of his powerful, experienced, and discontented opponents proved
too tempting. The great financier Jagat Seth struck a deal
with the British. Jagat Seth, backed by Mir Jafar, and the
EIC would work together to dethrone Siraj-ud-Daula.
In exchange for EIC support, Mir Jafar and Jagat Seth
would cover all EIC expenses, grant the EIC increased
trading privileges, and provide the EIC other financial
rewards to the tune of around £1,250,000.122
The deal was finalized in June 1757. Clive put his ships
and troops to work. Just over two weeks later, the British
troops met Siraj-ud-Daula at the inland town of Plassey
in the famous Battle of Plassey. The Nawab’s troops,
already bought off by Jagat Seth, mostly turned coat
and fled the battlefield. With Siraj caught and executed,
Mir Jafar, grandee of financier Jagat Seth and the EIC,
claimed the Nawab’s throne at Murshidabad.123
This farcical battle turned out to be one of the most
important in India’s history. It was motivated by the relatively conservative ambitions of the EIC: to guarantee
and increase trade profits. The EIC did not seek political
dominion but rather a return to or slight improvement on
its privileged commercial status.124 Perhaps neither the
British nor the “Indian actors…[saw] the extent of what
they had done.”125 Along with the privileges the EIC
had long held, the agreement allowed the EIC to mint
coins, whereas previously Jagat Seth had held this as a
monopoly right. Beyond its Calcutta fort, the Company
also gained a neighboring area called Twenty-four Paraganas, now part of metropolitan Kolkotta. The Nawab
and the EIC would remain independent allies with diplomatic relations with each other, and the EIC would use
its troops to protect the Nawab if he needed it.126
The Nawab’s affairs time and again drew Clive into
Bengali politics because Clive desired to protect the
EIC’s interest in the vast trade. Recall that Mir Jafar
and the Jagat Seths had promised great rewards to the
EIC as a corporate body and as individuals for the intrigue. Facing difficulty in meeting the full amount of
this demand, the Jagat Seths arranged to pay half of it
upfront and the rest over three years. But Clive was impatient and untrusting, and he demanded the revenue
rights to three important Bengal districts (Chittagong,
Mindnapur, and Burdwan) in 1758. Herein lay another
important way station on the journey from trade to dominion: the EIC became a territorial ruler at first temporarily and only to service a debt owed to it.127
By 1760 Clive demanded that these revenue assignments be made permanent, largely because the revenue
they were producing could not meet the British demand.
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Bharatiya Janata Party President L. K. Advani
toured across India dressed like Lord Ram in a
modern-day Toyota chariot to support the Hindu
right’s demand to rebuild the purported
original Ram temple on the site of
the Babri Masjid mosque.
Though the government arrested Advani and his many
volunteers before they could reach the mosque at Ayodhya in 1990, this tour set the tone for things to come.331
The power of Advani’s rhetoric and visuals were further
reinforced by his deliberate invocation of the contemporaneous nationwide obsession with the television serializations of the great Hindu epics The Ramayana and The
Mahabharata.332 The episode combined the potent forces
of mass media, spectacle, and religious devotion with
violent ends.
Veer Sarvarkar (1883–1966) is considered an ideological founder of the Hindutva philosophy, laid out in
his 1923 tract Hindutva.333 There were three pillars to
Sarvarkar’s idea of Hinduness: the geographical unity
of India, the Aryan roots of this Hindu community in
Sanskrit language scriptures; and the common culture of
India. For Sarvarkar, this was not specifically a religious
identity. Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists were also crucial
members of the Hindu family. Hindutva ideology used
this “big tent” approach to Indian religion to draw many
into a familial ideology.334 It defined itself against an external other: Hindutva ideology finds that because Islam
had its origins in a foreign land, it is not a truly Indian
religion. In this view, Muslims have an extra burden to
“assimilate” into Indian society and do not deserve the
special protections granted to them, whether it was separate electorates in 1909 or the right to practice a different
religious civil law in 1985.335
The origins of many Hindu nationalist organizations
lay in the early twentieth century. In 1915 several of
these organizations formed the Hindu Mahasabha, the
premier organization of Hindu nationalism. The Mahasabha promoted cow protection, though many Hindus
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also eat beef. The Mahasabha also sought to promote a
Sanskritized Hindi language over Urdu, English, or any
other official language.336
Another organization in the Hindutva family is the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Association of National Volunteers, established in 1925. The
RSS was a paramilitary organization that did not seek
to enter electoral politics. It is organized into local units
(shakhas) where members train in paramilitary drills as
well as complete community service, creating local bases
of support for this and other Hindu right organizations.
They often provide or facilitate basic goods and services where the state has failed. The primary goal of the
RSS was to reform the Hindu community by grooming strong, masculine, militaristic, and totally dedicated
warrior-leaders. It was supported by the Hindu Mahasabha in its expansion within the north Indian heartland,
especially in areas where there were many high-caste
Hindus who felt threatened by both peasant unrest and
large Muslim populations. During Partition, the RSS
attacked Muslims and worked to protect Hindus from
attacks. After Independence, it found a sympathetic base
among the traumatized Hindus and Sikhs who came to
north India during Partition. But when RSS member
Nathuram Godse assassinated Gandhi in 1948 and the
organization was banned, it lost its prominence on the
national stage. There are many other Hindutva organizations under the aegis of the Sangh Pariwar, the family
of Hindu right organizations. The Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) was formed in 1980 when the Jan Sangh withdrew
from the Janata Party coalition.337
Rajiv’s Fall and the Rise of the Janata
Dal/National Front Government
Other problems plagued Rajiv Gandhi’s Prime Ministership. One was the corruption scandal involving the
Swedish arms company Bofors and kickbacks to ministers in Rajiv’s government.338 V.P. Singh, who was Rajiv’s Defense Minister, pressed the scandal forward until
Rajiv expelled him from the Congress Party. V.P. Singh
then put together a coalition that could unseat Congress dominance in the 1989 elections. This new coalition of seven parties was led by V.P. Singh’s Janata Dal.
Through prudent electoral strategy V.P. Singh was able
to ensure a successfully united opposition.339 This gave
the Janata Dal government a crucial victory; it was also
an important leg-up on the national stage for the BJP,
which won eighty-six seats in the Lok Sabha.340 The next
year the Congress suffered embarrassing defeats in state
elections, retaining control of only nine states whereas in
1985 it had controlled seventeen.341 The Janata Dal won
five states in the Hindi heartland, and the BJP won control of Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.342 Thus
began the era of “political fragmentation.”343
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1940
Lahore Resolution of Muslim League
1942
Quit India movement led by Gandhi; Fall of Singapore in February 1942
1943
The Great Bengal famine
1943
Subash Chandra Bose (“Netaji”) founds Indian National Army in Singapore
1945
World War II ends in September
1946
Cabinet Mission proposes a three-tiered, grouped Independence settlement to
solve the problem of Hindu and Muslim representation in independent India
1947
Independence and Partition
1947–64
Prime Ministership of Jawaharlal Nehru
1947–9
First India-Pakistan War over Kashmir
1948
Assassination of Gandhi in New Delhi
January 26, 1950
Republic Day: India’s new Constitution takes effect
1955
Pakistan Constitution takes effect
1962
India-China War
1964–66
Prime Ministership of Lal Bahadur Shastri with an Indian National Congress
government
1965
India-Pakistan War
1966
Death of Lal Bahadur Shastri
1966–77
Prime Ministership of Indira Gandhi
1971
Independence of Bangladesh
1975–77
Emergency
1977–88
Dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan
1977–1979
Janata Party coalition government
1979
Mrs. Gandhi re-elected to the Prime Ministership
1984
Crisis in Punjab and Mrs. Gandhi’s attack on separatists holed up at the Golden Temple at Amritsar; Assassination of Mrs. Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards
1984–89
Prime Ministership of Rajiv Gandhi
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