Durga Prasad Dash's Blog, page 10
April 18, 2020
How we learnt our puranas
Hari anant hari katha ananta, kahahi sunahi bahu bidhi sadhu santa – thus goes a stanza in Ramacharita Manasa of Tulsidas. Hari is endless, so are his stories. The saint listens and speaks of it in so many ways.
Mahabharata, the biggest epic of the world runs into hundred thousand slokas. Then there is Ramayana and the eighteen puranas. Each of these have their local versions and variations. On one hand we have endless mythological literature. On the other hand, for centuries, majority of our population could hardly read or write.
The remote villages and small towns, where I spent most of my childhood days, provided healthy doses of entertainment in the form of dramas, puppetry and other folk performances conducted in open theatres. Most of the performances would be based on stories from various epics like Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagavat Purana etc. At such places, by the time a boy/girl was into his/ her teens, whether he was educated or illiterate, he/she knew all the major stories from the epics, along with their moral and ethical implications.
There are two such theatrical performances unique to my native district Ganjam. One is a popular musical dance drama with resemblance to Kerala’s Kathakali dance format. It is known as Prahlad Nataka or Raja Nacha. Another is Duari Nacha or Bharata Leela. There are two easily affordable folk performances popular all over Odisha known as Pala and Dashakathia. In this article I will discuss briefly about each of these.
Prahllada Nataka
Taken from Vishnu Purana and Nrusingha Purana, Prahlad Nataka is about the ordeal of Prahallada who was time and again attempted to be punished or killed by his own father for being a devotee of Lord Vishnu. His father Hiranyakashyapu had become the sworn enemy of Lord Vishnu because the Lord had killed his brother Hiranyakhya in his Varaha Avatar. The ordeal of Prahallada ends when Lord Vishu takes Nrusingha avatar and kills Hiranyakashyapu.
The musical dance drama would start in the morning and continue till late night or the morning next day. Before the battle finale, the actors playing Nrusingha and Hiranyakashyapu would be bound in iron chains with two groups of strong men in control of each actor. The elders would explain that if it is not done, the actors may kill each other. Towards the end, the actors identify themselves with the characters so much they forget that they are acting out the roles. As I remember, after the killing episode of Hiranyakashyapu, the actor playing Nrusingha would reach a trance like state. The actors, playing the roles of Hiranyakashyapu and Nrusingha, have to be not only highly skilled in acting, but also disciplined enough to follow prescribed rituals strictly a few days before the enactment of the play till its end.
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Duari Nacha or Subhadra Parinaya or Bharata Leela
Duari Nacha is also a musical dance drama. The main characters are Arjuna, Sri Krishna’s wife Satyabhama and sister Subhadra. The central character is Arjuna’s gatekeeper (duari) who is also the narrator or the sutradhara. It is the story of Subhadra’s pursuit of Arjuna leading to her ultimate marriage with him. In this pursuit Satyabhama is an accomplice. It is a kind of reverse seduction in the sense that it is usually the man who is not subtle in his seduction. Then anything is possible in Mahabharata where a woman can have five husbands. But you would find neither such story as that of duari nacha nor the character of duari in Mahabharata. Spin offs of Indian epics are nothing new.
It is not a monotonous story development in such performances. There are frequent interruptions to regale the audience with comedy gigs and dance numbers. Now a days even they have added item songs. However it is not easy to play the duari character. Only acting skill is not enough for this. As sutradhara, he has to be solid in the knowledge of medieval odia literature. As the story progresses he brings in different perspectives of different poets by singing them and explaining them. It is a demanding job too for all the artists as the performance can go on sometimes up to twelve hours and it is not a large group of actors and musicians to enable them to take frequent breaks.
Pālā Nācha
Ours being a small village and not having many rich families I don’t remember big theater parties frequently coming to our village. Duari nacha was affordable to some extent. But one performance that was frequently hosted was Pala Nacha. A pala group consists of five or six members all of whom triple up as singers, performers and percussionists. In each group there is a chief singer and the other members are known as palias.
The performance consists of narrating an episode from the epics in songs. They don’t play different fixed characters like the duari nacha. Mridangam and cymbals are the main musical instruments used here. Sometimes they perform continuously for sixteen days and each day they would have a different central story. Generally the lead singer sings the first line and the palias complete it or they sing the repeat line at the end of each stanza. The chief singer of a pala has to be a better expert of Sanskrit and odia medieval literature than the sutradhara of a duari nacha.
Quite often a self styled village intellectual would come up with a tricky question and the chief singer has to give a satisfactory answer to preserve his honour. I still wonder how these people are able to become walking talking encyclopedias of Sanskrit and Odia literature and remember thousand of stanzas of famous poets.
Pala tradition started as a part of the attempts during Mughal period to bring in communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims. Even though for musical performance the chief singer takes up a central topic from Hindu scriptures and makes cross references to other mythological stories from Hindu scriptures, at the beginning they worship Satyapir and narrate a story whereby a Hindu is rescued from distress by a Muslim Pir. Satyapir is a combination of Satyanrayaya from Hindu tradition and Pir from Muslim tradition.
Dāsakāthia
This word has nothing to do with my name. It is a more affordable performance than even the pala nacha because for Dasakathia two is a company. One is the chief singer and the other one is palia. The name Dasakathia comes from the name of the peculiar musical instrument consisting of a pair of small wooden pieces. You can find similar instruments being used by Rajastahni folk singers and also by by the mythological character Narada Muni. The format of story telling through songs is similar to that of pala and the central stories are chosen from one of the epics.
When they arrived unannounced
As I have mentioned earlier, out of many types of folk performances available, our village was a frequent host to Pala Nacha. After the harvest season in September /October, the pala groups used to visit from village to village as per their bookings. Sometimes even without booking a pala group would arrive in our village. They were never turned away on such occasions. Voluntary donations in cash or kind were arranged immediately and they were given food and accommodation. Messengers were sent to the nearby villages to invite them for the show.
Your native locality must be having traditional types of group performers like Pala and Dasakathia. Have you ever watched their performance? What are they know as? Please share about them in the comments.
PS : This is P alphabet post of my April A to Z challenge 2020. My theme this year is ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’ where in I explore various facets of India and also some places and events of India I have been closely associated with.
All posts of the AtoZChallenge can be accessed here.
April 17, 2020
The Odyssey of Odissi Dance
The first time I saw Odissi live on stage was in 1999. It was Kargil time. I was in active defense service and was posted in a forward position. We used to receive the love of citizens in many forms, one of them being an Odissi dance performance. Sonal Mansingh with her troupe had flown in to give an exclusive performance for the soldiers in front line. I had seen Odissi earlier on Television. But watching a maestro and her troupe live was mesmerizing, sublime and ethereal.
The second time I saw Sonal Mansingh was a couple of years back. She had come to Bengaluru Literature festival to promote a book written about her. This time it was her talk that enthralled me. It was the enthusiasm of a person whose life has become a dance. It is no ordinary dance. She is an exponent of Odissi and Bharatanatyam both of which have deep roots in spiritual India.
Sonal Mansingh was candid about many things that happened in her life. Born into a family of high social standing (her grandfather was one the first five governors of India) it was not easy for her to pursue her passion in dance because of the stigma attached to the dancers in 1950s.
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Ironically it was not so a century earlier. Many of India’s ancient dance traditions were kept alive by the temple dancers known as devadasis. They were seen with high esteem and were generously patronized by the kings. They did not do anything else other than being a part of the temple worship rituals. Under the British rule, their patronage declined and some of them, to sustain their livelihood, engaged in dubious activities. Eventually there came a time when the British banned the custom of devadasis.
Maharis were the temple dancers of Puri Jagannath Temple. The word mahari is a derivative of two words – mahan and nari. From the high pedestal of reverence and greatness, maharis too met with the same fate under the British rule.
Thankfully in the villages surrounding Puri a devotional dance tradition was kept alive by groups who trained and encouraged small boys. These boys dressed as girls to do the role of Gopi or Radha. While they performed regularly in their vilages, they came to Puri on special occasions to perform for Lord Jagannath.
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Sonal Mansingh’s Odissi guru Kelucharan Mahapatra was one such gotipua when he was a child. He was a person of multiple talents. Like many people of his native village Raghurajapura, he was an adept pattachitra artist. He was a master percussionist. Perhaps his way of self discovery was to want more out of life. He did extensive research on the dance forms of Odisha whose earliest mention can be found in Bharat’s Natya Shashtra of 500 BC, whose earliest trace can be found in the Udayagiri caves of 200 BC, whose elaborations are frozen in millions of sculptors in thousands of ancient temples found in Odisha, and whose imprints have been passed on through generations of maharis and gotipuas.
After the British left, Indian classical dance forms saw a revival in many parts of India. Odisha was not behind. Padma Vibhushan Kelucharan Mahapatra was one of the leading pioneers of not only reviving Odisha’s traditional dance form, but also giving Odissi its distinct features.
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Sonal Mansingh also recounted how dance has been her way of self discovery through spiritual awakening. Indian classical dance postures and mudras are closely linked to the yogic postures and mudras. Since these are dance forms, all the emotions including the erotic too are present. The expert dancer does not suppress any kind of emotion, but transcends and merges them in the ocean of divine love. When the expert dancer meets the discerning audience, the emotional upheavals and transcendence of the dancer becomes contagious.
Of course these days some dancers experiment with non spiritual themes. But at the core, dance forms like Odissi or Bharatanatyam remain a journey of self discovery for the dedicated dancer.
Even though they sound similar I don’t know whether Odyssey and Odissi have common roots. But the word Odyssey has two meanings. It means a long journey. It also means a journey of self discovery.
PS : This is alphabet O post of my April A to Z challenge 2020. My theme this year is ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’ where in I explore various facets of India and also some places and events of India I have been closely associated with.
All posts of the AtoZChallenge can be accessed here.
April 15, 2020
Nua Mahulia
Nua Mahulia – this word which has strange rhyming resemblance with the word Oumuamua* is not any interstellar object. Nor is it any Greek or Latin word for a legal term. It is the name of my native village. The theme of this present series of blogs being mera gaon mera desh, a post about mera gaon in literal sense was long in the offing. Of course I have given glimpses of my village life in some of my earlier posts and my books.
In our primary class text book we had a romanticised poem about villages. It started like this:
Small is my village.
You may not find it mentioned
in geography or any other book
but .....
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Surprisingly even after more than four decades the situation has not improved much. In this age of Google maps too it does not find a proper mention. When you google for it a different place is shown. As a saving grace the nearby temple of the village deity is marked correctly. I have sent a request for correction, and hope they correct it after the Covid crisis is over.
My village does fit the romanticized description of an ideal Odisha village as described in the poem. It is small. Just forty odd houses aligned on both sides of the village road that runs from east to west. You will find this pattern in almost all villages of our area.
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To the east end of our village are four ponds – one of which is used exclusively for taking bath and swimming. The big banyan tree with its hanging roots enticed the hidden Tarzan in each of us. There used to be extensive sessions of swimming, somersault and other water sports in the mornings and afternoons during spring and early summer before the pond almost dried up in peak summer. Beyond this three pond there is our neighboring village Shradhapura.
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During the peak summer when the pond dried up our evening adda shifted to the small river at about a furlong’s distance from the west end. The river was also dry but you could get crystal clear water just by digging two or three feet on its river bed. Sitting with our friends on the river sand we used to gossip for hours till we felt it was time to go home to avoid being scolded.
When the river had water, occasionally we tried our hands in river fishing. It was trying our hands in literal sense. In shallow waters around small islands inside the river you have to put your hands inside the holes to catch these mid sized fish. You had the options of angling. But it was too boring.
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To the south there is hillock with a Shiva temple on its top, and beyond this hillock on the other side is another neighboring village Kantadora. Between this hillock and our village is the village school with classes up to eighth standard. I studied up to class three and again sixth and seventh here. Our neighbouring villages Shradhapur and Kantadora too are dependent on this school.
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Rice fields start from the backyards of the northern flank of houses and extend for about one and half kms till they meet a huge mango grove in north – north west and a big set of hillocks in North – north east. There are two Shiva temples at foothills of these hillocks. One of them was buried deep in mud and was excavated about thirty five back. It is assumed that the temple was originally constructed in the twelfth century.
[image error][image error][image error]Sapaneshwar and entry gate to the left. Dakhineshwara (the 13th century Shiva temple which was excavated 35yrs back) to the right. The linga here faces south.
In fact there are two mango groves. The one near our village is the small mango grove (chhota amba tota) and the one little farther is the big mango grove. The small grove houses our grama thakurani – the village protective deity. There is no single owner of these mango groves. Each tree has its owner and each tree is unique. One is suitable for only to be eaten raw, another when it is fully ripe, another only suitable for pickles and so on.
Even though the mango groves are not fenced off, the unwritten rule is that without the permission of the owner you cannot pick mangoes from the trees. But if a mango has fallen on the ground anyone can lay claim to it. So, after a storm it was fun to run to the groves and compete with others in collecting fallen mangoes.
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The mango chowkidar and the climbers who collected mangoes were paid in kind (a portion of mangoes of the same tree). Some of my friends were already experts in climbing trees. The truth was that I was a backbencher when it came to climbing trees, making somersaults, catching fish etc. I was jealous of those who could climb up to the top of the mango tree or made multiple somersaults from a pole in the middle of our pond without any hesitation. In turn perhaps they were jealous of me in school. But I enjoyed being with such friends and was happy to play second fiddle to them. It is worth noting that our gang did not strictly consist of boys of my age.
In spite of the lure of the mangoes, we spent more time in these groves during the non-mango season when there would be no chowkidar to shoo us away the moment he spotted us. Moreover, during mango season the grove is a kumbhmela for all types of irritating insects. In winter, when the fields were full of fresh vegatables a get together in one of these groves was a regular weekend affair.
Everything was not romantic about the village. It was only about a decade back that a bridge was constructed over this river and now there is a pucca road connecting our village with the nearby town of Bhanjanagar (7-8kms). Those days one had to cross two rivers to reach this nearest town. There was no pucca road and during rainy days when the rivers flooded and the kuchcha roads became muddy, the village almost became cut off from the outside world.
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Most of the houses including ours was made of mud walls and thatched roof. It provided the much needed relief from summer heat when prior to the seventies there was no electricity first then when it came it was highly erratic. But there was always the danger of fire and as there was no gap between houses sometimes in our area during summer entire villages used to be gutted down.
Of course now to have a thatched house with mud walls would be a costly luxury. Many of the things which were part of our daily life too would be costly luxuries if you are in a city.
Now the nearby village of Golapada (2-3 kms) has a High School. But those days village boys had to walk or pedal the distance upto Bhanjanagar for High School and college education. The truth was that many were not able to afford even a bicycle.
Thanks to my elder brother I was spared from such ordeals as he was already a teacher in Bellaguntha High School. I stayed with him and studied in Bellaguntha High School for some time. Subsequently when I got a scholarship which stipulated that to be eligible for the full benefit one has stay in the hostel of a designated High School. Thus I became a boarder at Upendra Bhanja High School, Bhanjanagar.
But during vacations it was back to village again. Of course my friend circle had dwindled. Many of our erstwhile gang members had left the village either for education or for employment. I developed companionship with Devendra Mishra who is actually four to five years elder to me. Now he is principal of a school in our district. Those days his family owned a radio and I spent a lot of time with him listening to BBC or Vividh Bharati (Binaka Geetmala, Jayamala). Other pastimes of this period included climbing or strolling around the hillocks in the north side and doing yoga on the river sand.
My father Rama Chandra Dash had a younger brother Narasingha Nath and two cousin brothers Lokanatha and Dandapani. All the four houses were decadent to one other and we were eleven brothers and almost equal number of sisters. We were a gang on to ourselves. The families were partitioned but the children had the liberty to eat anywhere and sleep anywhere. Now out of the eleven, only the family of one of us stays in the village. Similar is the case with many old families. Some of them don’t stay in the village even though they still have their houses. Some have sold their houses. After father, none of us took care of our ancestor home. Apart from the memories, the vacant plot is the only thing that connects me with the village.
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Perhaps, change in the composition of people is the only major change that has happened to the village. Of course it is now well connected with the nearby towns and villages. While cities like Bengaluru must have expanded 5000 times in last fifty years, our village size has hardly increased even by five inches.
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These three Gouda brothers, who used to be our neighbors, have chosen not to forsake their village. Even though they are brothers, they seem to represent three generations. The photos of this post has been taken by Abhisek, the son of the youngest one. I had a plan to write an exclusive blog post about my native village long before this AtoZ challenge series. But I wanted to do it after doing an exclusive photographic tour of my area. However, having chosen this theme mera gaon mera desh, I found no point in postponing it.
Apart from the Thakurani utsav about which I have mentioned in an earlier post, the month of Kartik used to be full of community celebrations. Both in the months of Kartik and Chaitra the Kirtan group goes around the village singing and chanting ‘Hare Krishna … ‘ in accompaniment to mridangam and cymbals. From time to time the village played host to many local folk and traditional performances like danda nacha, pala, dashakathia, duari nacha, raja nataka etc.
Here are some more photos of my obscure and childhood utopian village and its villagers:
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In spite of all those difficulties, those days spent in Nua Mahulia continue to be some of the fondest memories. Not just in rhyming, there may be more resemblance of our village with Oumuamua. A thorough city bred may feel he is in another planetary body after spending a month in our village.
(*By the way for an interesting literary journey with Oumuamua, visit this blog post at uspandey.com)
Image courtesy: Abhisek
PS : This is alphabet N post of my April A to Z challenge 2020. My theme this year is ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’ where in I explore various facets of India and also some places and events of India I have been closely associated with.
All posts of the AtoZChallenge can be accessed here.
April 14, 2020
A Virtual Tour of Mughal India
I don’t write book reviews. But sometimes, I write about a book or share my excitement about a book that enthralled me. You may call it a book review if you chose so. In fact this article was first published as a Book Review in the September 1999 issue of ‘Bengaluru Review’. I am sharing it here with some modifications. I made a brief mention of this book in my earlier blog post the missing history of Hindustan.
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Going to a physical library sometimes throws surprises that you do not get from search engines or auto suggestions of algorithms however smart these may be. It was a pleasant surprise to find this book – Beyond the Three Seas – Travellers’ Tales of Mughal India. It aroused curiosity about not only the life of the common man during the Mughal period but also what it was like to travel in those times when mechanical vehicles and Google maps were not invented even in dreams.
The book is a compilation of extracts from the firsthand accounts of ten travellers who visited India during different periods from 1470 to 1670. It is Edited by Michael H. Fisher and William Dalrymple’s preface is as interesting as the account of the travellers who belonged to different nations of Europe and were from different professions. Someone was a doctor, someone was a merchant, and another was a Christian evangelist and so on. Thus, they viewed India through the prism of both their own local cultures and their professions. The travel accounts are also chosen in such a way as to cover as much area of the undivided India as possible. The travels also cover all the seasons.
Our historical text books base their contents about the Mughal period on the official records kept by emperors like Shah Jahan or court historians like Abul Fazal. As we know, official records are usually one sided. In this context books like ‘Travel Beyond the Three Seas’ augment, validate, and provide the missing links for our fair appreciation of History.
William Dalrymple who has written the foreword puts it like this:
“… the dissonant witness provided by European travellers to the Great Moghul court provide a perfect counter point to the Moghul court’s own writings. Travel accounts like the ones collected in this book, for all their flaws and errors and occasional fictions and tall stories, and despite the prejudices and sometimes outright bigotry of their authors, do nevertheless tend to provide sharper and certainly livelier pictures of the reality of Mughal India than the fawning pages Abu’l Fazl’s paean of praise to his paymaster, the Emperor Akbar, or the even more unctuous pages of the Shah Jahan Nama.”
Alfansy Nikitin, a horse trader from Russia, is the first of the ten travellers whose account is included in the book. He travelled in west and central India during 1471 and 1473. He was awed by the wealth of the Muslim Sultan of Bidar. He recounts how his horse was confiscated by a local Muslim chieftain and was promised to be restored with the horse if he agreed to convert to Islam. He became a part of Hindu pilgrimage to a mountain to witness rituals like shaving of head by both men and women. He observes that while travelling, the Hindus ate with their right hand and did not know the use of a spoon. They cooked meal in separate pots and took care that any Mohammedan did not look into it. He mentions that Hindu Sultan of Vijayanagar known as Kadam was a powerful King. During his travels Nikitin was always afraid of losing his Christian faith.
About the social situation he observes: “The land is overstocked with people; but those in the country are very miserable, whilst the nobles are extremely opulent and delight in luxury.” After more than four centuries, I think, there is hardly any change in the situation.
Portuguese traveller Cesare Federici visited India a century later spending three years mostly in central and south India. He has narrated firsthand the cruel practice of sati practised in the Vijaynagar Empire. He writes, “I have seen many burnt in this manner, because my house was nearer to the gate where they go out to the place of burning; and when dyeth any great man, his wife with all his slaves with him he has had carnal copulation, burned themselves together with him.“
Usually sati is associated with the royalty of Rajasthan and is glorified by some even to this day saying that it was practised to protect the honour of women in view of Mughal atrocities. But Casear Federici’s account shows that it was practised in many other parts of India and was not restricted to the warrior class. Further, it was practised irrespective of the cause of the death of the men.
A decade later, invited by Akbar, Antonio Monserate, a Portugese Catholic Priest travels from Goa to Fatehpur along with Mughal officials. On the way to Fatehpur, ‘the entourage, came to a fort built out of the debris of some Hindu Temples which the Musalmans had destroyed.’ His efforts to convert Akbar to Catholicism goes in vain in spite of following Akbar even during his harsh war campaigns. It seems destruction of Hindu temples was a very common practice those days. While Monserate is full of praise for cities like Delhi and Lahore, he does not hide his disdain for the Hindus, Muslims and the Protestant Christians.
The fourth traveller to be featured in the book is William Hawkins. Unlike other authors of this collection, his accounts are extracted from the reports he sent to his employer – the East India Company that had entrusted him to negotiate with Jahangir for trade concessions and permissions to establish a permanent base for its merchants. While travelling from Surat to Agra he survives a plot to be killed by his coachman. Emperor Jahangir bestows him with an enviable official position and he meets his future wife – Mariam in the palace. An interesting thing mentioned by Hawkins is that everything done by Jahangir was recorded by official writers. “… and whatever he doth, either without or within, drunken or sober he hath writers who by turns set downe everything in writing whatever he doth, so that there is nothing passeth in his lifetime which is not noted, no, not so much as his going to the necessary, and how often he lieth with his women, and with whom …”
Traveller Peter Mundy was also an employee of the East India Company. He narrates his experience of transporting Indigo from Agra to Surat by bullock carts. It was a perilous journey with the carts needing frequent repairs, the bullocks facing imminent death due to exhaustion and starvation, and the whole kafila in the danger of being looted on isolated terrains.
Portuguese catholic priest Friar Sebstein Manrique narrates his journeys in Odisha and undivided Bengal and Bihar. Everyday life of the common man of those times can be inferred from his recordings. While Peter Mundy narrates the way of travel of the nobility and the large contingents, Manrique narrates the way of travel of the common man and describes life in caramossaras which were the motels of those days. Manrique found that even though uncivilised, the caretakers of caramossaras were far better than the innkeepers of Europe who, though civilized in behaviour, were greedy and exploitative.
Unlike other visitors, Niccolao Manucci (1639-1717) stayed back in India for the rest of his life. He came to India as a servant of an English noble, but due to his efforts prospered after his initial years of struggle. He describes his life and struggle in his first months in India and also the transitions of people and places during his subsequent encounters. He served Mughal officials including Aurangzeb’s ill-fated liberal brother Dara Shikoh and Raja Jai Singh of Rajasthan.
French doctor Francois Bernier arrived in India in 1658. For some time he served as the personal physician of Dara Sikoh and subsequently was part of the entourage of Aurangzeb’s courtier Danishmand khan. Through his accounts one can have an idea about what it was like travelling long distance with the royal entourage of Aurangzeb. He describes how it was difficult and dangerous to try to have a glimpse of the royal female contingent that accompanied Aurangzeb.
Traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavarnier was French military officer turned merchant- banker. His writing selection includes details of modes of travel in India. Even he describes the daily life of the people who specialised in ferrying goods through bullock carts, palanquins, and boats. He refers to the Hindus as the idolaters. He also brings out all the dangers in travelling in India. To avoid extreme heat one had to mostly travel during night which increased the risk of being robbed and killed. Hence he advises to travel with the help of paid armed men. He describes his journey from Agra to Dhaka via Allahabad, Benaras, Patna, and some other cities of Bengal. With a little bit of amusement and disdain he describes the religious rituals of the idolaters of Benaras. He undertakes parts of his journey by boat on the river Ganges and gives an interesting account of his boat Journey.
The last author to be featured in this selection is Spanish Friar Domingo Fernandez de Navarrete who travelled in the areas between Madras and Hyderabad in 1670-71. Even though he was Spanish, he was saddened by the declining influence of Portuguese in India. It seems South India’s fascination for imlis goes back beyond the Mughal period. He writes “.. the tamarine trees are planted very regularly; the natives make use of their shade to weave their webs in it sheltered in the sun … … They make much use of the fruit in dressing their diet.“
Overall, it was an interesting virtual journey cum time travel for me to go through this book. I found myself sharing a meal and worshiping the stone idols of the tribes who professionally undertook to transport goods through bullock cart on long arduous kuchcha roads. I was part of the boat journey up in the Ganges going through the trials and tribulations of the travellers and the oarsmen. I was also part of Aurangzeb’s royal entourage that traveled from Delhi to Kashmir with a retinue of servants and soldiers.
As the editor has rightly mentioned in the introduction, one can sense the seeds of colonisation through these writings even though actual colonisation happened after the decline of the Mughal Empire.
PS : This is the alphabet M post of my April A to Z challenge 2020. My theme this year is ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’ where in I explore various facets of India and also some places and events of India I have been closely associated with.
All posts of the AtoZChallenge can be accessed here.
The Liberals of Hindustan
Liberalism comes from the latin word libre which means ‘free’. Libre is the origin for other words like liberal, liberty, libertarian, and libertine. It is also the inspiration for two of the most frequently used words in Indian social media these days : librandu and fiberal.
Even though its popular use started in 17th century Europe, its meaning, use and associations have gone so much change across time and geographical zones that today experts find it difficult to give an exact non-controversial definition. However, the spirit of liberalism and the core values it represents can be understood from the fact that concepts like democracy, secularism, gender equality, individual rights, laissez fair, freedom of speech, free market economy, pluralism, universalism, autonomy etc. owe their origin to liberalism. Liberalism also includes humanitarian values like care for the less privileged.
The early philosophers of liberalism proposed that in an ideal form of governance individuals come together and enter into a contract with the state to willfully concede some of their rights so that the state is able to govern and protect them. Thus we can see nationalism (not chauvinism) too is part of liberal principles.
Our constitution is based on liberal principles, which is clear from the preamble itself.
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Liberalism was not always respectable, especially before the seventeenth century. When Europe was at the peak of religious morality and conformity there were people whose behavior defied social standards. They even did not respect the sanctity of marriage. People who took this extreme form of liberty were called as libertines. They were not seen in good light by the respectable people of society. But defying the existing social rigidity and religious authority was at the core of liberal movement.
Seen by those standards Krishna can be considered as the first liberal of Hindustan. The libertines of sixteenth century Europe were compulsive seducers. In this aspect, the less said about Krishna the better. In today’s world when the world is fighting its existential crisis, what are these liberal intellectuals upto? They are not fighting shoulder to shoulder with others in the corona battle. But they dole out advice after advice as to what to do and what not to do. Well Krishna did a similar thing. He refused to fight on behalf of either the Kauravas or the Pandavas. But he doled out some advisories on the war field that has thrived till date.
Jokes apart, in the back drop of the social life of those days, Bhagavad Gita is revolutionary. Krishna emphasizes the inferiority of Karma Kanda (Vedic rituals to appease various Gods) to Jnana yoga and Karma yoga. Rama thought in traditional ways and strictly followed the social norms. But not Krishna. Even Arjuna wanted to follow the traditional ways till Krishna, with the help of those seven hundred verses of Bhagavad Gita brainwashed him.
According to some historians, Krishna was born about five thousand back. So after about 2500 years India saw the rise of another liberal who changed the courses of world History. It was Gautam Buddha. He was not so multidimensional like Krishna. But except for not being a feminist he had all the qualities of a liberal. He was dead against the caste system and other social inequalities. What is more, like many liberals he did not bring God into the picture.
In modern context too, there have been liberals in India since pre-independence times. They never bothered to call themselves as liberals. Nor did we take care to notice that they were liberals.
However, in the last decade or so we have seen a sudden surge in the use of L word in our political and social media discourses. It all started when some people thought it cool and fashionable to call themselves as liberals, even though in real life they did not subscribe to its core values. Now they have become the self-appointed evangelists of liberalism.
Liberals are usually against religious dogma. But there is an unwritten code among the liberals of the west. When it comes to religion, they usually criticize the religion they were born to or are identified with. But in India this is not the case. Take the case of two self styled liberals like Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi. You would rarely find them criticizing any wrong practice of Islam. But they are quick to condemn anything they find odd with Hinduism.
Or consider these two self-proclaimed evangelists of liberalism- Rajdeep Sardesai and Sagarika Ghosh. It is perfectly in line with the unwritten code of liberalism if they point out any wrong practice of Hinduism. But they don’t restrict themselves to doing that. In addition they also go to defend the radical activities of other religious groups. This is a disturbing trend in India. Liberalism, at its core, is against any form of radicalism whatever may be its source.
Unlike these spineless fake liberals there was a true liberal in twentieth century whom we associate with many other values but rarely with liberalism. But he was the man who gave us a constitution that has liberal values as its foundation.
He was also unequivocal in his attacks on religious dogma. On the one hand if he attacked the caste system of the Hindus, on the other hand he chastised the Muslims for their discrimination against women and treatment of children. He was not afraid to criticize the dogma of anybody, be it even Mahatma Gandhi.
Coincidentally like many liberals of the west like Adam Smith, Keyness and John Stuart Mills he too had an economics background. Of course later on he topped up his economics credentials with a doctorate in law.
His personal life and struggle, though outside the purview of this post, is worth serious study for any one who wants to know what it means to fight all odds and achieve seemingly impossible goals.
Today on his birth anniversary I offer my humble homages to such a glorious son of India – Babasaheb Dr. Bhimarao Ambedakr.
PS : This is the alphabet-L post of my April A to Z challenge 2020. My theme this year is ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’ where in I explore various facets of India and also some places and events of India I have been closely associated with.
All posts of the AtoZChallenge can be accessed here.
April 12, 2020
Kaveri connections
Since childhood I have a fascination for rivers. Both mine and my maternal uncle’s villages where I spent most part of my childhood were surrounded by rivers. I can write volumes about my adventures and playful activities associated with rivers.
The story of the river is also the story of its people. All ancient civilisations were founded beside rivers. In India rivers are considered sacred and have been revered since time immemorial.
Coming to the river Kaveri, during my stay in Tamilndu and Karnataka, I have visited almost all the prominent places of interest dotting the river in its 765 km journey from Talakaveri to Puhar. So I could write a series of blog posts about my visits around Kaveri. Or even a book. But in this blog post I will restrict myself to a few selected places and events.
My proposed travel series will not be complete without visiting those few missed places. So, to connect all the missing dots and to fulfill my spirit of adventure I have an unchecked item in my bucket list – to take a leisurely bike journey along the river from its beginning to the end. It seems this year too I may have to give it a miss.
Kaveri is no less a sacred river than Ganga or Godavari. In its journey through the varied landscapes of Karnataka and Tamilnadu, it also becomes river of discord as it crosses the border. The river has been exerting considerable influence in the lives of the people of these two states by virtue of its numerous places of faith and amusement on its river banks, by being a prominent source of water and sometimes due to the number of bandhs and political activities it stirs.
One such bandh caught us by surprise way back in 1991. Then I was stationed in Bangalore. We had gone on a follow up honeymoon tour to Puducherry. Buses and trains between the two states were stopped. Thankfully, there was no such restriction on travelling to Andhra and from Andhra to Karnataka. So we headed to Tirupati. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We spent a couple of days there. We suspect that our first child was conceived in Tirupati. That is how the river has played an important, albeit indirect, role in watering our family tree.
Even though my first encounter with the river happened about three decades back, it was a couple of years back that I was able to see the origin of the river at Talakaveri. Like all important rivers of India, the origin of Kaveri too is a place of pilgrimage.
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When we reached Talakaveri, we were beguiled by the quirkiness of nature. When we reached the place it was all sunshine providing a clear view of the distant mountain peaks. By the time we got down after reversing and parking our vehicle, we were engulfed by thick clouds. You couldn’t see even a meter ahead.
As one travels down from Talakaveri, the next place of interest is Bhagamandalam, the first place of Sangam on river Kaveri. People come here to conduct Shradha – the Hindu ritual for expressing gratitude to the departed ancestors. The next Sangam on Kaveri is near Srirangapatnam. The myths associated with these places are similar to that of Prayag on river Ganga. The advantage is that in case you are not able to go to Prayagraj, you can derive similar spiritual benefit by going to one of its local versions.
In India, all prominent places or circuits of pilgrimage have their regional and sometimes sub-regional and sub-sub-regional versions. Diana L Eck, in her book, ‘India-a Sacred Geography’, dwells at length about this aspect.
The first segment of Kaveri is through Coorg or Kodava region. Apart from Tourism, Coorg is famous for coffee, its own unique cuisine and tales of heroism.
Majority of the tourist attractions in Coorg are near the course of the river. The speed of the river in this region is good for river rafting and there are plenty of spots beside the river where this adventure is offered by private parties.
If you are travelling from Bangalore to Medikaeri via the Mysore route, Kushalnagar is a good place to make the first night stop. The Tibetan settlement of Bylakuppe is nearby. The Namdroling Monastery situated here is the largest teaching center of the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Other places of interest are Harangi Dam, Chiklihole Reservoir, Nisargadham and the Dubare Elephant Camp which is also a popular starting point for river rafting.
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After Kushal Nagar, the next interesting place on Kaveri is the Chunchanakatte Falls. It is around 50 kilometers from Mysore. It is also a popular weekend getaway for the bengalurean. The waterfall here that makes a lot of noise is linked to the nearby Ram temple whose sanctum sanctorum is an abode of silence and where Sita is on the right side of Rama contrary to the usual practice.
During his vanabasha days, Rama accepted the hospitality of a tribal couple. Not able to find a proper bathing place and water for Sita-mate, Lakshman stuck his arrow on a rock and commanded that water gush forth. So it happened and as a mark of gratitude to the hosts Chuncha and Chunchi, the waterfall was named as Chunchankatte falls.
When the idols were consecrated, another thing (apart from being put on the left side of his wife) that did not go down well with the Lord was that he was disturbed by the constant nagging of his wife. So using divine will, he muted the atmospheric sound inside the sanctum sanctorum. That is the reason one does not hear the loud noise of the nearby waterfall.
Quite often in our country, folklore and social stereotypes merge with mythologies to give a local twist even to the legends of divine descent.
Karnataka is full of popular tourist destinations. I think the Bengaluru – Mysore tourist circuit must be the most popular among them. At the end of this post I have given the links to some of my earlier posts about travel in Karnataka.
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Two places in Karnataka near river Kaveri have strange similarities with my native district in Odisha. During the billboard days of Bengaluru (now there is a High court ban on putting hoardings in the city), when once I saw an advertising of a store named Ganjam Jewellery, I was happy thinking that someone from my district had opened his chain of stores here. But on further enquiry I learned that there is a place called Ganjam in Mandya district of Karnataka. Mandya is basically an agricultural district, ragi being one of its main crops.
My native district in south Odisha is called Ganjam and it is perhaps the only district where ragi is popular. Guess what, we used to call ragi as Mandia. Actually we used to be so notorious ragi eaters that sometimes people of northern districts used to tease us by referring to us not as Ganjami but as Mandia.
It is quite possible that in the distant past some trader from Karnataka introduced ragi to our area. After the traders left people forgot the name of the item but remembered that these traders were from Mandya.
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Journey through Karnataka’s Heritage Sites
Ba ngalore Weekend Getaways – Shivasamudram and Talakad
Sree Bhoga and Yoga Nandeeshwaraswamy Temple
Sur prises on the way – a photo essay
PS : This is the eleventh post of my April A to Z challenge 2020. My theme this year is ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’ where in I explore various facets of India and also some places and events of India I have been closely associated with.
All posts of the AtoZChallenge can be accessed here.
April 11, 2020
From Jagannath to Juggernaut
Google’s dictionary gives the meaning of the word Juggernaut as follows:
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Then when you google to find out the origin of the word Juggernaut, the first page is full of results from sites run by erstwhile publishers of famous dictionaries. Of course you will also find a link to wikipedia, which I find to be somewhat better than the dictionary sites.
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But wikipedia is not the first suggestion to your google query. Usually the first suggestion is this blog which is run by the publishers of Macmillan dictionary.
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So this etymologist from Macmillan defines juggernaut as ‘something that is very powerful, especially that has a bad effect.’ However these day the word is used to mean just a magnificent force irrespective of its outcome. In many places I find it being used in a positive way. Or else an Indian company would not name its venture as ‘Juggernaut Publication’. But this Macmillan guy is like our typical journalist who is hell bent on giving everything (especially of Indian origin) a negative connotation.
As you can see, the Macillan explanation makes no mention of the car festival of Puri Jagannath. He says – juggernaut comes from the Hindi word Jagannath, meaning ‘lord of the world’. He does not know that it is not only the word Jagannath but also the event of the Lord being drawn in a huge chariot that gave rise to the word juggernaut and its association with massive unstoppable force (and large trucks). Without the grand car festival, the word ‘Jagannath’ would still be there in Sanskrit and other Indian languages, but there would be no ‘juggernaut’.
But, there are many things factually correct in the statement – “Juggernaut comes from the Hindi word Jagannath, meaning lord of the world”. Without fail, you will find ‘Jagannath’ in a Hindi dictionary and it will tell you that the word means ‘lord of the world’. See, it is not easy to dispute the claim of the Macmillan guy, even though you feel that somewhere the statement is misleading.
That is how our journalists frame their statements. Being of Sanskrit origin, ‘Jagannath’ is found in all the Indian languages which were influenced by Sanskrit. Suppose a journalist favours the Gujrati lobby. Then he will say that juggernaut comes from the Gujrati word Jagannath, meaning ‘lord of the world’. (Lo, kya ukhad loge)
The Macmillan guy goes on to add that -the word is further derived from the Sanskrit ‘jagati’ meaning ‘he goes’ and ‘nath’ meaning ‘master’.
This etymologist of Macmillan seems to be not only incompetent, but also confused. First of all, he avoids making any in depth inquiry. Secondly, whatever material he gathers from the internet, he presents them in a messy manner. Like an Indian journalist.
Now let us come to the mischief of the monk. Odoric of Pordenon, a thirteenth century Italian evangelist was probably the first person from west who narrated the event of Puri Rath Jatra to his countrymen. He reported that people were throwing themselves in front of the moving chariot to be killed.
I think, he too was behaving like a typical western corespondent of Asian affairs. In fact he had more reasons to be biased than a journalist. Odoric of Pordenon was a Christian monk and missionary during Europe’s dark age when people were getting prosecuted by the Church just for holding the opinion that the earth went round the sun.
Of course later on in spite of his accounts being a major source of Asia’s thirteenth century history, it was realized that the monk had exaggerated many of his travel accounts including his account of Rath Jatra. After the discovery of the sea route to India, more and more people from Europe came to India and some of them must have seen the Jatra. But by that time perhaps the damage had already been done. Authors and journalists had started using ‘juggernaut’ to mean a massive force that caused death and destruction.
Later on the word was used to just mean any massive unstoppable force. But our man at Macmillan has no knowledge of its latest use. This is what sometimes our journalists do. They circulate a two year old photo captioning it as the photo of the day.
You may be wondering why I have made frequent reference to journalists in this blog post. Well today’s alphabet is ‘J’. It could also be a post about the ‘Journalists of Hindustan’.
PS : This is the tenth post of my April A to Z challenge 2020. My theme this year is ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’ where in I explore various facets of India and also some places and events of India I have been closely associated with.
All posts of the AtoZChallenge can be accessed here.
I have written a number of posts about Lord Jagannath and Rath Jatra:
The big lord descends among us
April 9, 2020
The Idea of India
If I were asked to have only one post on the current AtoZ theme, mera gaon mera desh, I would have this one. It is a book review of ‘India: a sacred Geography’. The book was written by Diana L. Eck – an award winning professor of comparative religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University. This book review was first published in the Aug 2019 issue of Bengaluru Review.
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There have been numerous western scholars who have written books about India and Hinduism. Most of them have tried to see India through the lenses of either orthodox Christian values or liberal western values. Having done away with their pagan Gods with the advent of Christianity, it baffled the Europeans when they came to India to see a thriving civilization living together with polytheistic beliefs and multicultural identities. However, instead of probing India’s cultural roots and taking a holistic view, some authors focused selectively on only the negative aspect of Indian society like the caste system and tried to establish that their own culture was far more superior to that of India.
But Dian Eck’s book does not try to take any such comparison to show the superiority of the western culture or the monotheistic religions. Rather it tries to explore delightfully as to how such a culture survived over thousands of years in spite being under rulers some of whom tried to destroy this fabric. The author has attempted to establish that the idea of India is ancient in origin and has withstood all the upheavals of history.
This is contrary to the accepted idea of India in the west following the concept propounded by Sir John Strachey (1823-1907), a British Civil Servant posted in India. In one of his reports to Her Majesty, he concluded,
“ ….. India is a name which we give to a great region including a multitude of different countries. There is no general Indian term that corresponds to it….. There are no countries in civilized Europe in which people differ so much as the Bengali differs from the Sikh …. That there is not, and never was an India, or even any country of India, possessing according to European ideas any sort of unity, physical, political, social and religious: no Indian nation, no ‘people of India’ of which we hear so much. We have never destroyed in India a national government, no national sentiment has been wounded, no national pride has been humiliated and this is not through any design or merit of our own, but because no Indian nationalities have existed.”
Of course the British civil servant was trying to justify and rationalize his own guilt of being a part of a colonial system that systematically exploited the people of India. But chances are that his sentiments might have been genuine since he came from a continent where each nation was of one language and one religion that recognised only one god. Whatever it may be, he was wrong – as wrong as he could be. Not only did he miss the sacred geography that united India, but also its inexplicable ‘oneness’ that was deeply felt even by a western educated intellectual like Nehru who was one of the greatest votaries of secularism. Nehru wrote in his Discovery of India,
“It was not her wide space that eluded me, or even her diversity, but some depth of soul which I could not fathom, though I had occasional and tantalizing glimpses of it. Though outwardly there was diversity and infinite variety among our people, everywhere there was that tremendous impress of oneness, which had held all of us together for ages past, whatever political fate or misfortune that had befallen us. The unity of India was no longer merely an intellectual concept for me: it was an emotional experience that overpowered me.”
Eck brings out the fact that the word India is a Greek word that referred to the land beyond the river Sindhu. The Greek historians wrote works they called Indika to consolidate knowledge received from this land. Of course the people of Bharat did not call their own land India. The indigenous term Bharata was derived from the famous son of King Dushyanta. It was also called Bharatavarsha, the land of Bharata. The Indian sub-continent was known as Jambudwipa (Rose Apple Island) or Kumaridwipa (the island of the Virgin Goddess).
I have observed that before offering puja, every Hindu Sankalpa, to make explicit one’s position in the cosmos, starts with, “In Jambudwipa, in Bharatkhanda, in so and so city …….”. This tradition has been followed since time immemorial. Thus the names Bharatavarsha and Jambudwipa are not only ancient, but also very much in vogue.
Eck’s book primarily focuses on the sacred geography of the land from the point of view of Hinduism and there are detailed explorations of the places of pilgrimages and how they are linked to each other across India. Such connections are not only pan Indian; they have their local replicas too. We have four principal places of pilgrimages spread across India known as char-dham located at Badrinath, Puri, Rameswaram, and Dwaraka. The state of Uttarakhan has its own version of char-dham that consists of Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath.
What is unique about India is that there are millions of sacred places and each of these sacred place is linked with multiple others. The author observes that in India even the Christians and Muslims have tried to create similar interlinking of sacred places.
Another specialty about India’s landscape is that in addition to being diverse and dramatic, all its landmarks like rivers, mountains and seashores etc., are alive with myths and stories, ranging from being local to pan Indian, being little known to being part of famous legends known throughout the length and the breath of the country. These are further linked to the great epics like Ramayana or Mahabharata.
The book also explores the impact of Muslim invaders and colonialism on this sacred landscape. No doubt the Muslim invaders destroyed many temples. But, how could they destroy the geographical landmarks like mountains, rivers, and seas which are linked to the great epics?
Contrary to the belief that all the desecrations of temples that took place during Muslim rule were due to religious bigotry of the rulers, the author is of the view that it was more to do with stripping the conquered from their association with the source of power. For many rulers the patronizing of a particular place of worship was closely linked to his extent of power. Of course, many of the places of pilgrimage that they destroyed or tried to destroy – like the Somnath Temple, the Jagannath Temple at Puri, – have bounced back to their former glory.
Prodding through volumes of ancient Indian texts, the author has brought out many interesting facts, narrations and insights of the ancient seers. Here is one that I found interesting. The author has observed that India’s imaginative world map, as envisaged by the ancient seers, did not make India the centre of the world as did Anaximander who made Greece the centre of his world map. In fact, the Indian seers were not only aware of the existence of the other parts of the world beyond Indian sub-continent, but also idealized other parts of the world some of which they named as Ketumala, Uttarakuru, Bhadrashva etc. According to them in many other countries people led far better lives and had more material resources to enjoy life. Then of course the ancient seers emphasized that it was only in India that the ultimate freedom or moksha was possible as it was the karmabhumi (lands of spiritual action) while other countries were bhogabhumi (lands of worldly enjoyment).
“Therefore this Bharata is the most excellent land in the Rose-Apple island, O Sage. For the others may be lands of enjoyment, but this is the land of spiritual action”
Mahabharata
Isn’t the above statement true even today? In fact it is so true that sometimes I doubt it was written thousands of years ago. Isn’t it India where the serious spiritual seeker lands up, ultimately? (In spite of all its shortcomings)
Eck shows us that from these networks of pilgrimage places, India’s very sense of region and nation has emerged. This is the astonishing and fascinating picture of a land linked for centuries not by the power of kings and governments, but by the footsteps of pilgrims.
My own view is that you may try to destroy the idea of India by destroying its sacred landscape, but how do you destroy the myths which are harbored in the minds of its people? At a deeper level, perhaps, the idea of India lives in the collective consciousness of its people through the myths that have been handed down since time immemorial, construction of temples and associating the geography with the myths being a part of that process.
PS : This is the ninth post of my April A to Z challenge 2020. My theme this year is ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’ where in I explore various facets of India and also some places and events of India I have been closely associated with.
All posts of the AtoZChallenge can be accessed here.
The Missing History of Hindustan
In my first article of this series I have mentioned about the tradition of Boita Bandana and Bali Jatra that commemorate the glorious maritime adventures of Odias in South East Asia. The businessmen who engaged in such maritime trade were known as sadhabas. There is a popular folk tale in Odisha about one of sadhaba families. This family had seven brothers and one sister whose name was Ta-a-poi. While the seven brothers are away on a trade voyage to Bali, this innocent daughter is tortured by the wives of of the seven brothers. Sounds familiar? You are not alone.
Apart from the above unbroken customs and the folk tale, the coins of Srilanka and other regions that have been excavated in some places in Odisha indicate to a rich marine history of Odisha. However, there are more questions than answers with regard to this chapter in Odia History. How did they build their boats? What did they trade in? Were these the people who carried Hinduism and Buddhism to these countries of South East Asia? There is no way to make a detailed reconstruction of events of those days.
The Hindu history of south east Asia was almost forgotten until the chance discovery of the forgotten temple of Angkor Wat. Not only at Angkor Wat, but in man places in Cambodia, original Hindu temples seem to have slowly given way to Buddhist Shrines. Apart from the island of Bali where there is a Hindu majority, it is Buddhism, Islam or to some extent Christianity which is followed by the majority of the population of different areas.
Based on the imprints of Hinduism found in these regions scholars have come up with many theories, all of which are still speculative. Detailed historical records are either not available or are not being made available to know in detail about the spread of Indian culture in these regions.
Even in case of ancient Indian history, different estimates are given by different scholars as to the period of composition of the vedas and Indian epics. Now a group of scholars in the west would like us to believe that Sanskrit originated in Europe. Yuval Noah Harari in his book ‘Homo Sapiens’ writes that there is a group of scholars who claim that yoga was invented by the Jews. The Indian yogis too are not of much help. Many so called self styled super yoga gurus attribute its origin to some mythical characters in our epics in stead of making any serious scientific study to know its history.
So at a time when we are able to find out the exact age of the sun and the earth, in stead of getting more facts on various periods and aspects of Indian History, things are becoming more speculative and controversial. What could be the reasons for such missing links in Indian History that evoke either wild speculation from vested interests or deafening silence from the seekers of truth. Maybe, once we know the reasons we may find some remedy or make efforts in the right direction to find the unbroken authentic history of India.
The Hindu concept of history
It is the western scholars who termed Ramayana and Mahabharata as mythologies. For the Hindus, the epics are purana and itihiasa. Hindu spiritual leaders still insist that these epics contain are our real history. In fact their thoughts are in line with the ancient Rishis who were more interested in setting examples and creating philosophies for the well being of the future generations than in describing in great details the actual historical events as Herodotus did. According to some scholars it is not important to know Rama’s exact date of birth or the exact date wise events of Krishna’s life. In any case there are more than a hundred versions of Ramayana. What is important is the lessons they teach and the mystic messages they carry.
In Hindu India of 500/600 BC, Jainism and Buddhism were the rebel religions. But they were not different from Hindus in myth making and in their attitude to history. To a Buddhist all the events in Jataka tales are as real as the events in Ramayana to a Hindu.
This is one of the reasons why none of the sadhavas ever bothered to pen down and publish their maritime adventures for the sake of posterity. Let us not forget that an important source of Indian History is the travel accounts of foreign travellers who visited India on various periods of History.
Hindu kings did not appoint court historians
Hindu kings did have court poets. There were also non court poets whose works are the only sources of some periods of Indian History. But they were nothing like the record keepers in a Moghul court.
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I hate shopping, including its vicarious cousin – the window shopping, except when I am in a library or a book store. That is how the other day in a library I came across a rare book titled: Beyond the Three Seas- Travellers’ tales of Mughal India. The book is a compilation of articles extracted from various accounts of visits to India during the Mughal period.
The fourth traveller to be featured in this book is William Hawkins. Unlike other authors of this collection, his accounts are extracted from the reports he sent to his employer – the East India Company that had entrusted him to negotiate with Jahangir for trade concessions and permissions to establish a permanent base for its merchants. Emperor Jahangir bestows him with an enviable official position. This enables him to observe the court life very closely. An interesting thing mentioned by Hawkins is that everything done by Jahangir was recorded by official writers. The following is a verbatim extract from his report:
“… and whatever he doth, either without or within, drunken or sober he hath writers who by turns set downe everything in writing whatever he doth, so that there is nothing passeth in his lifetime which is not noted, no, not so much as his going to the necessary, and how often he lieth with his women, and with whom …”
Of course being official writers some of heir accounts could be highly exaggerated. Still, such records are very important primary sources of History. Such official records are the reason we have a plethora of literature concerning the Moghul period of Indian History. Another reason is that the frequency of travel to India increased after Vasco Da Gama discovered the sea route in 1498. Thus we have more travel accounts of India post this period than the period prior to the sixteenth century.
Subsequently India came under British rule. The British are notorious for their meticulous record keeping.
Bias of the kings and the historians
British educationist Sir Ken Robinson jokingly often says, “In England we don’t teach American history. We suppress it.” Distortion or partial suppression of history is something that all nations indulge in. The history text books of Pakistan tell a different story than those of India. In spite of being meticulous record keepers, in their text books the British portray their rule of India as a god given gift clearly omitting the period of famine and other atrocities.
But the matter does not end there. Quite often the contents of History text books undergo change with the change in governments. So, know that what ever you read as history in your text books is only a partial and partisan version of History. Thankfully, unless you are in China or North Korea, these days all sorts of information is available at finger tips. It would always be good to know the contrarian view. But how many have got the time and the inclinations to cross check.
These days we come across frequent allegations against those who dominate the history scene in India, namely Romila Thapar, Ramachandra Guha, Irfan Habib and their ilk. It is alleged that these historians being from the left back ground (thus being of anti-Hindu leanings) represented history in such a manner as to glorify the Mughal emperors and other cruel rulers like Tipu Sultan. At the same time they undermined the conquests of Hindu rulers like Shivaji or the Chola kings. There are also allegations that we are not taught much about what happened in India before the Mughal era. Almost ninety percent of what we read as Indian History pertains to the Mughal era and the British empire.
Without dragging myself into the above debate one factor I would like to highlight is that when it comes to the period prior to the Mughal empire there is utter lack of written records or any other reliable sources as I have already mentioned. Maybe some records are available for the overall history of India. But when it comes to regional histories there are many missing links.
Much of the Odisha history is based on Madala Panji – a system of record keeping followed in Jagannath Temple since 12th century AD. The history of Odisha before this period is vague and there are huge gaps in the chronology of events. Similar chronological gaps are found in other regional histories.
The so called prominent Indian Historians whose books dominate our libraries and bookstalls have done nothing in terms of original research. Western authors are the source material of their books.
It is only when more Indians with scientific spirit take to historical research that we will be able to establish, without any bias or controversy, the missing links of the history of greater Hindustan. By the way, greater Hindustan is a cultural concept covering the areas shown in orange and yellow on the map at the top.
“Those who fail to learn from History are condemned to repeat it”, said Winston Churchil. I wonder what he would say to those who fail to know their history?
PS : This is the eighth post of my April A to Z challenge 2020. My theme this year is ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’ where in I explore various facets of India and also some places and events of India I have been closely associated with.
All posts of the AtoZChallenge can be accessed here.
April 7, 2020
mera gaon mera desh
Having missed the theme reveal post as I was late in waking up to the AtoZ challenge, I hope this post would compensate for that.
In almost all Indian languages, a village is called a Gramam or any of its minor variations. Same way the word palli and its minor variations (like in Kannada it is halli) is used to mean a rural area in many parts of India. In spite of India being a multicultural country, there may be marked similarities among different regions of rural India, majority of rural population being associated with agriculture. Of course not the way Bollywood would like us to believe.
Mera Gaon Mera Desh may remind many readers of the eponymous movie. Some of you must have seen this it. Mera Gaon mera desh, literally means: my village, my country. Of course the movie is not an overall representative of our country. Maybe, the title justifies the old saying – ‘India lives in its villages’. But again the movie is also not an overall representative of pan Indian rural life. It is just that the story unfolds at the back drop of a rural India of a particular region.
Inspired by the success of this movie and other movies like Sholay, the 1970s and the 1980s saw a plethora of movies revolving around dacoit leaders and gangs. Dacoits were romanticised and were given local flavours as many regional language movies adopted such themes.
A bunch of artists from my locality too woke up to the clarion call. Their film was widely publicized to be based on the life of people of our locality and it was shot extensively in my native area. I remember this movie because it was the first movie whose shooting I saw. In the final product the movie turned out to be a poor remix of Mera Gaon Mera Desh and Sholay. I was not the only one who wondered, “Hey when did we have such gun totting dacoit gangs in our area”. The movie lasted a day or two in the box office. Ironically the movie was named Alibha Daag, meaning the unerasable mark.
From all those movies in different Indian languages one would have got the impression that Indian rural life was infested with gun totting horse riding dacoits. On the other extreme, Indian villages are not so utopian as portrayed in many of the Indian movies. Then Bollywood and its regional siblings have a way of generalising the occasional and romanticising the mundane.
In this series of articles, I write about various issues related to India. I also write about some places in India I have been closely associated with. The places I have chosen are either villages or very small towns that have retained a kind of rustic charm, like the one about Bellaguntha.
There is a reason why it is said that India lives in its villages. When we say the culture of any region of India, it is basically the culture found in its villages. Cities, after some years, become a hotch-potch of different cultures. More so, if it has a large migrant population. If India has retained its ancient cultural roots in spite of being under alien rule for over a thousand years, a large credit goes to its villages. The invaders, be it the Mughals or the British, confined themselves to the cities they created either at new places or by destroying the old cities along with its cultural symbols.
India is a multicultural country. A bigger and more populous country like China speaks one language and its differences in cultural elements are so muted, as if those differences do not exist. But this is not so in the case of India. Its regional differences are so much distinguishable, one may often wonder if one is visiting the same country.
It is not that it became a multicultural country due to the Mughals or the British. It has been so since ancient times. However, India’s multiculturalism has an eastern flavour. Surprisingly, unlike the Mughals, the British did not try to impose their culture in India with evangelical zeal. They were content with financially looting the country. Of course they left their imprints.
Since then we have seen many elements of western lifestyle making inroads into our lives, even in rural areas. I have no objections to our adopting good western values like honesty, scientific temper and adventurous spirit. But unfortunately, we have restricted our imitation of western elements to superficial things like clothing, food, or the use of the F word in every alternate sentence.
PS : This is the seventh post of my April A to Z challenge 2020. My theme this year is ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’ where in I explore various facets of India and also some places and events of India I have been closely associated with.
All posts of the AtoZChallenge can be accessed here.
