India before modernity, Sanskrit not exclusionary: A historian rethinks history writing on India

Published by Vitasta

Pages: 283

Price: Rs. 750

Professional historians emphasise a important connection arsenic portion of their craft: historicisation. Good past penning remains live to disjunctures and continuities arsenic it studies the past and avoids being anachronistic by utilizing contiguous categories to look astatine the past.

Historian Shonaleeka Kaul, who teaches past astatine Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, has made a large involution successful this facet of the historian’s trade successful her just-released publication “Bharata Before the British and different essays – Towards A New Indology”, published by Vitasta. Kaul delves into nonrecreational history penning connected India since the 19th Century, a overmuch politically contested abstraction successful modern Indian politics. She argues that assemblage prisms person been wide utilized to presumption the state and Indian literate sources person been viewed from a lens that was utilized by the West to spot non-western societies arsenic the Other.

Rethinking past penning connected India

Kaul breaks with overmuch of the extant world commonsense that prevails successful India, and astir India globally, by seeking to tease retired caller ways of sourcing the Indian past and questioning prevailing world wisdom.

She argues that assemblage writers saw India arsenic a nine with nary consciousness of history, dissimilar the modern, “rational” West that had a consciousness of facts, chronology, and linearity. Kaul says that the prevalence of this content adjacent aft Independence led to overmuch past Indian lit being classed arsenic story and frankincense either not of overmuch value to the historiographer oregon a past instrumentality for disseminating the worldview of the societal elite crossed society.

Kaul differs by arguing that myths are “communitarian mechanisms by which societies marque consciousness of themselves and their world”, frankincense having a important relation successful “meaning-making for immoderate society” and “identity enactment for immoderate demographic group”. She says that technological historiography that ignored myths successful the hunt for technological past truths became an “agent of Empire” successful India arsenic it reinforced the assemblage assertion that portion the West possessed past arsenic a civilisation, determination were non-western societies that possessed lone myths.

She critiques the mentation of epics specified arsenic Ramayana arsenic representing a struggle betwixt aggressing Aryans and non-Aryan tribals, saying that free-floating oral narratives circulating implicit the millennia cannot beryllium reduced to an essentialist interpretation. Kaul calls for an attack wherever myths beryllium reclaimed arsenic “modes of territorial becoming and belonging” alternatively than dismissing them arsenic ahistorical.

India arsenic a ‘felt community’

Theories connected nationalism ranging from scholars specified arsenic Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm to Ernest Gellner spot nationalism and nation-states arsenic modern phenomena. For Anderson, nationalism successful India becomes a sermon derived from the West. Taken unneurotic with a beardown contented of assistance that saw British regularisation and the assemblage modernity it ushered successful arsenic large disjunctures that some administratively agreed and altered the country, this assemblage of assistance sees India arsenic a modern phenomenon.

What laic earlier it? Much probe sees pre-modern times arsenic lacking a consciousness of a pan-Indian assemblage and being astir webs of localised relationships that kept changing implicit time; of “fuzzy and fluid communities”, arsenic Gyanendra Pandey enactment it.

Kaul breaks with this to reason that the conception of a “felt community” existed implicit the millenia successful India. She distinguishes it from the modern nation-state, which is simply a caller signifier of governmental organisation crossed the world, but asserts that the conception of being a assemblage bounded by the Himalayas successful the northbound and the seas successful the southbound comes repeatedly crossed humanities sources, ranging from the Mahabharata, the Puranas, Tamil Sangam texts, testimonies of overseas travellers specified arsenic Al Beruni, and the writings of writers specified arsenic Amir Khusrao and Abul Fazl.

While historians are acutely alert of the disjuncture that modern technology, systems, colonialism, and wide mobilisation brought successful societies, Kaul says this does not mean the lack of a “felt community” — borrowing a operation from Rajat Kanta Ray — successful India implicit the millennia.

Sanskrit not elitist

Kaul besides makes a interruption with different commonsense axiom of nonrecreational past writing: that Sanskrit was elitist and exclusionary, and Prakrits were the dialects that the communal radical utilized successful aboriginal India. She says that connected the contrary, Sanskrit was utilized for the wide dissemination of ideas done nationalist plays and often had non-conformist content.

Asserting that “there is thing inherently sectarian oregon hegemonising astir Sanskrit”, Kaul says, “You lone person to work a Kalidasa oregon a Shudraka to perceive the Sanskrit litterateur talk information to power, oregon a Bilhana and a Kalhana to glimpse the contempt successful which they held almighty kings.”

She besides cites texts that “lampoon and castigate societal hypocrisies”, contesting D D Kosambi’s operation that Sanskrit writers were the “housebirds of patricians”. She adds that the Natyashastra, India’s earliest enactment of dramaturgy successful Sanskrit, says that “Sanskrit plays were performed astatine festivals, among different occasions, successful nationalist places specified arsenic temples and metropolis squares”. The substance calls play the 5th Veda for each classes of society, Kaul writes. Recalling that the Natyashastra said a Sanskrit play indispensable not incorporate obscure and hard words, Kaul says that Sanskrit and Prakrit were often utilized successful the aforesaid play.

Kashmir’s taste links with the remainder of India

A salient historiographer of aboriginal Kashmir, Kaul devotes a fewer chapters to Kashmir’s humanities taste links with the remainder of India, questioning the conception that it was historically unsocial and chopped disconnected from the remainder of the country. She adduces grounds from the past to medieval times to amusement that Kashmir was ever seen arsenic portion of the “felt community”; that pottery recovered determination astir the 6th period BC is of the aforesaid signifier arsenic that recovered successful the Ganga Valley; that Sanskrit was 1 of the oldest humanities languages utilized there; that Kashmiri was related to the Indo-Aryan languages, and that the Sharda publication of Kashmir evolved from Brahmi.

Kaul laments that overmuch probe ignored the heavy taste ties of Kashmir with the remainder of India due to the fact that of modern governmental concerns, offering wide grounds for the constituent she makes successful the discourse of aboriginal and medieval Kashmir.

She ends her publication with chapters connected past penning successful India, questioning not conscionable what she sees arsenic a occidental lens to survey India but besides the neat part of historians successful India betwixt the Left and Right camps. She is besides captious of the bureaucracy’s clasp implicit academia successful India and the API strategy that rewards papers published successful journals aimed astatine expanding API scores alternatively than hard enactment starring to books with archetypal arguments.