How the Past Explains the Present

Robert Caldwell: A Missionary’s Contribution to the Dravidian Movement

The Untaught HistorianLeave a comment

I first encountered Robert Caldwell after Udayanidhi Stalin’s statements against Sanathana Dharma caused social media to explode. Caldwell was buried in the comments section of a YouTube video on his statements and their context.

If, like me, you don’t know much about the man – this is Robert Caldwell.

Look at his wise eyes, his luxurious, well-tended beard – a sober Santa on a healthy diet of South Indian food.

Robert Caldwell was old when this picture was taken, and so looks a little more dignified, but in his youth, it feels like Caldwell was an intense sort of fellow who was interested and curious about everything. He landed in Madras in 1837 with a blazing missionary zeal to bring Christ to the heathen masses of South India. He wanted to do it in the local language – Tamil, perhaps influenced by a German Christian movement called Volkskirche (people’s church). According to the Volkskirche philosophy, the church was for the people who were its members, and so needed to be based on the culture, language, and tradition of the local population. In 1841, Caldwell walked (walked!) from Madras to Tirunelveli, where he would later serve as Bishop of Tirunelveli. In 1844, he married Eliza Mault, the daughter of another missionary. Eliza, who was born in Nagercoil, bore Caldwell seven children and joined in proselytizing local Tamil women. This brief biographical outline was enough to impress upon me that the western missionaries of the 19th century were made of different stuff. They were wandering about the hottest parts of India, determined to bring Christ and salvation to people, in a time before penicillin, or even antiseptic. A lot of them trudged around, lugging what Rudyard Kipling would call the white man’s burden
( ‘to take up the White Man’s Burden/… to serve [his] captives’ need/… to wait in heavy harness/ on fluttered folk and wild/ – … half devil and half child.’ )

Now, Caldwell was a sort of racist (you’ll see why later) Renaissance man. He was not just a Christian missionary – he was a gifted linguist, anthropologist, and archaeologist. As an archaeologist, he collected palm manuscripts of ancient Tamil literature and dug up the foundations of ancient buildings, funereal urns, and Pandyan coins.

Caldwell, the Shanars and the Dravidian Argument

As an anthropologist, he studied the local Nadars (he called them Shanars). The Shanars made up most of his flock at his congregation in his little village of Idaiyangudi (south of Tirunelveli). Caldwell was particularly interested in the Shanars, whose traditional occupation was to climbing Palmyra palms and collect toddy, because they suffered tremendous caste oppression and discrimination, and were the target audience for most missionary activity.

Untouchables and lowest caste Hindus lived in miserable social and material conditions through almost all of Indian history. Living on the outskirts or of towns and cities, or in separate settlements, they had to endure all kinds of humiliations. The missionaries noticed that the untouchables would hide in ditches or climb trees to prevent polluting the atmosphere as caste Hindus passed them by. In some places, they would maintain specific distances from caste Hindus based on how low they were on the caste hierarchies. If one of them was found violating caste rules could be slashed down with a sword without second thought. Women could have their breasts cut off for not covering them appropriately, and in one reported incident, a man was impaled alive for selling a bullock to a European man in 1772. And of course, they lived in miserable poverty, with no scope of escaping its trappings.

Missionaries provided medical care and education to people cast out by Hindu society for thousands of years. In addition to the services provided, the missionaries introduced them to Christianity, promising them a chance to live in a society of equals (or so they thought and hoped).

Yet, with all the promise of a better life – both now and after death – that Christianity offered, Caldwell’s Shanars did not seem to be converting in the large numbers that Caldwell must have expected.

Part of this was Caldwell’s fault of course. In his book on the Shanars with the impossibly long title – The Tinnevelly Shanars: A Sketch of Their Religion and Their Moral Condition and Characteristics as a caste with special reference to the Facilities and Hindrances to the Progress of Christianity among them, he seemed to go out of his way to insult the Shanars.
He wrote: “I am confident that none can be compared with the Shanars for the dullness of apprehension and confusion of ideas”.
Then, as an example of comparative racist analysis (an intellectually rigorous practice in which you compare your racist judgments about one group with your racist judgments about another group and see who wins) he thought he should let his readers know that “the Negroes [of West Indies were] superior to the Shanars in intellect, energy and vivacity”. The Shanars, he wanted you to know, were worse than the untouchable castes lower than the Shanars, like the Pariars had sharper intellects and better manner of talking (their expressions and pronunciations more accurate) because they had “in their daily business more intimacy with the higher castes than the Shanars have”.

Caldwell must have assumed that the Shanars would never actually read his book, but he was wrong of course. The Shanars, obviously, took offense to someone writing of them with such outrageous prejudice. But, also, Caldwell was saying something else more upsetting. Caldwell was saying that the Shanars did not naturally belong to Brahminical Hinduism. According to him, they were an indigenous people, separate from the Aryan Hindus who had come from the North, and imposed Vedic Hinduism, Sanskrit, and the caste system on the locals. Caldwell introduced the idea that Dravidian languages (like Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Tulu, etc) were indigenous languages that developed separately from Sanskrit. He was able to support this claim very credibly in his seminal work: A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages

Caldwell felt that Shanars and other lower-caste Hindus were unwilling to part ways with Brahminical Hinduism. One can imagine that they might have feared further social isolation or possibly incurring such bad karma that their next life would be more cursed than this one.

In his book, Caldwell wrote that Vedic Hinduism had been imposed on the indigenous culture of the Dravidians. He claimed that the Brahmins were of Indo-European stock who had colonized the south and installed a harsh social hierarchy upon the society, making sure they were on the top.

Now some of Caldwell’s claims are self-serving. He was trying to draw the Shanars away from the influence of the Brahmins. By stating that the Dravidians had an independent literary and religious history that pre-dated Brahminical influence, Caldwell hoped that the Shanars would feel more free to leave the Brahminical fold and join the Church.

The thing is that Caldwell wasn’t entirely wrong. His linguistic analysis was sound and contemporary and later linguists agreed – Tamil and the Dravidian languages are an independent and indigenous language group. The worship of mother goddesses, animistic forms, and, later, Shaivism, all predate Vedic Hinduism’s arrival in South India. Jainism and Buddhism were in South India before Vedic Hinduism and Brahminism (we know this through Sangam literature’s limited mention of typically Hindu and caste-based topics – many of the earliest Tamil literature were either secular or later credited to Jain and Buddhist poets, or through archaeological evidence).

Regardless of his intention, he wasn’t wrong in highlighting the rich Dravidian cultural history that all Indians should be proud of. The Shanars can’t be faulted for choosing any route out of the utter misery that an oppressive caste system subjected them to.

Without meaning to, Caldwell’s writings laid the bedrock for an anti-Brahminical political movement that demanded social justice and freedom from caste oppression that extended well into the 20th century… and, clearly, the 21st century (the DMK and BJP in Tamil Nadu were on the subject in 2023)

Caldwell served his congregation for fifty years but his legacy has outlived him. Not only did he (along with many other missionaries and linguists, some of whom mentioned Dravidianism before him) introduce Dravidianism to popular discourse, but he also managed to convert most of the local Shanar population by the end of his life. Today, Tirunelveli has one of the largest Christian populations.

Isn’t history funny? A prejudiced colonial missionary became one of the early influencers of the anti-Brahmin movement and social justice movements. What does it matter if the movement tried to help people shrug off oppression thrust on them for millennia? 

How The Harappans Aren’t So Different From Us

The Untaught HistorianLeave a comment

On September 20 1924, The Illustrated London News published a 3 full-page article announcing the discoveries of Harappa and Mohenjodaro.

The front page of the article. Source: http://www.harappa.com

The announcement might not have seemed particularly exciting to the layperson in London in 1924. England was enjoying the roaring twenties. The post-war economic boom was peaking (before the decline that ultimately became the Great Depression). Hemlines shrank, the bob came into fashion and jazz and flappers were the rage. But a bunch of nerdy men who weren’t going to be invited to parties anyway pored over the black-and-white pictures of archaeological digs. For the lay Indian and the British academician, the announcement was significant because Sir John Marshall, director general of the ASI, was telling the world that his team had found an ancient civilization – a civilization that he could not specifically date, but which he thought might be as old as 1000 BC. That was all he could dare to imagine.

The following week, the newspaper printed a response to this article from a Reverend Sayce – areputed linguist and Professor of Assyriology (an actual subject, by the way) at Oxford and one of the aforementioned non-flapping nerds. He wrote in to say that he had seen the seal with a unicorn (you are welcome, JK Rowling and My Little Pony) and peculiar script before. An identical seal in fact. It was found in the city of Susa in Iran. And guess what! He said that the seal was confidently dated – they knew for a fact that the seal was from around 3000 BC. Three. Thousand. BC. As a kid this number made no difference to me. But as an adult now, I understand the significance. 

  1. Marshall and team had been 2000 years off target – that’s like thinking Jesus Christ was born in 2023.
  2. In 3000 BC, if Indus seals were showing up in places like Susa, it meant that this civilization was trading far beyond its borders even before the Iron Age. It was clearly more successful than previously imagined. 
  3. And perhaps, most importantly, this means that the Indus Valley Civilization/Harappan Civilization was as old as what the Western World considered the cradle of civilization – Mesopotamia.

To cut a long story short – the world (for archaeologists and Indian nationalists) shook. Marshall sent his announcements to Indian newspapers like Amrita Bazar Patrika, Statesman, The Times of India, The Hindu, and other local newspapers a few months after his article was published in London. In a private letter to an ex-ASI official, Marshall wrote, “I cannot conceive of a discovery more likely to appeal to Indian national sentiment”. He was right. This colonial official was handing Indian nationalists justifications for being proud of their history and culture and increased their confidence in their demands for self government. He also shared the discovery of Ashoka’s stupa that later became our national emblem. Independent India’s history was being put together under the supervision of a British colonialist who had sympathy for Indian nationalism.

70 years later, Indian nationalists would have been disappointed with this Indian (me) as I struggled to stay awake through the chapter on Indus Valley Civilization. I could feel no pride because these Harappans were far removed from the 1990s. Ancient history always bored me since it has always felt completely irrelevant to my current experience of the world. My less-than-enthusiastic attitude towards the ancients continued to adulthood, and even when I got to go to grand museums, both in India and abroad, I would zip past the antiquities to come to the Renaissance or Mughal period – as close as I could get to the 20th century.

This June, however, a pair of ambivalent teenagers and I headed to the National Museum of India specifically for the Harappan collection (for a separate project). Before we went inside, I promised that we would not linger on for too long beyond the Harappan section. It would be a quick visit. My son and niece had acknowledged the unnecessary reassurance with an indifferent nod. As it turns out, their indifference and my worry were short-lived. Almost as soon as we entered, eyes popped out of sockets, hands exited pockets and jaws needed to be scraped off the floor. 

Forgive the poor quality of my pictures. They were taken hurriedly in my rush to get back to examining the collection.

What makes the Harappan collection incredible is that it isn’t fancy. Instead, it is surprisingly relatable. A collection of kitchen utensils that dated back to the 3rd millennia BC (millennia, not century) looked almost identical to things we would find in a kitchen today. Check out the tavas and pots. What about that grinding stone for masalas? I was looking for something similar on Amazon just weeks before.

The jewellery collection, with bead necklaces, thick ceramic bangles, coiled finger rings, looks like things the head of an artsy NGO or anthropology professor would wear to a book festival. Talk about fashion repeating itself!

But that wasn’t all. Junior Harappans were entertaining themselves in much the same way our children did with Harappan Hot Wheels and Harappan chess.

And Harappan mothers preserved little clay pinch pots and figurines that they got for Mother’s Day, just like modern mums.

I think I danced a little jig in front of a display on various standardized weights used across the civilization. My son had to shoot me a killer glare that he reserves for when I am being unforgivably embarrassing in public.

You might say, calm down girl – it’s just a beam balance. But, here’s the deal – standardized weights means that each of those cubes of rock/ivory weighed the same across all the major cities and towns in the Indus civilization – a shopkeeper in Mohenjadaro (Sind), a shopkeeper in Dholavira (Gujarat) and a shopkeeper in Harappa (Pakistan-Punjab) all agreed that one little cube of green rock was the same weight. It raises all kinds of delicious questions, like: How did that become the norm? Did they have some governing body that published standardized weights and conversions? (If you are wondering how we got the metric system, here is an interesting article). What kind of government empowered such a body to issue such standardized weights? Clearly, they didn’t have an emperor since we haven’t found an enormous palace or any other grand structure. Kings usually find their way onto seals and other official materials, but no sign of a monarch anywhere. So if not a king, then what? Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum! The juiciest bits of the story are in all the gaping holes of our knowledge.

Before this visit to the National Museum, the Harappans felt so unimaginably old that I could not help thinking of them as “another”. But isn’t the study of history a practice in humility? Is there ever such a thing as an original idea?

The Harappan world is so familiar, especially the kitchen. Harappans primarily ate wheat and barley as the civilization was being established, but during the peak of the civilization, the climate changed, and the Harappans faced a crisis like we do now. 

In history books, we think of the Harappans failing in the face of climate change, but it wasn’t such a dramatic end. The Harappans adapted. They built infrastructures to collect water because the rains were now unreliable. And now, along with wheat and barley, they grew drought-resistant millets. The adaptable Harappans lived on and prospered for a few hundred years. Eventually, when the course of the rivers changed and the drought settled in more deeply, most people migrated in the opposite direction – leaving urban centres for rural areas. Those who stayed behind left evidence of their difficulties on their bones. Archaeologists who are studying city cemeteries found that towards the end of the Harappan Civilization, people were dying from leprosy, TB and other infectious diseases as well as violence. These circumstances must have hastened the abandonment of these cities in favour of better climate and safety. 

In 2023, as the world goes through another round of significant climate change, and millets are enjoying a revival of sorts. For 5000 years, aside from rice, our major carbohydrates have remained the same. We also have seen the rise in disease and intra-personal violence in the wake of the stresses laid on by climactic events. There is a lesson for us in the story of Harappa, I suspect, although at the moment we do not know the full story of what happened then. 

In any case, in a time where climate change and AI makes everything seem so fragile, I feel strangely reassured by the constancy of certain designs – the tawa, the pots, the pickle jars (martabaans), the bead necklaces and ivory bangles, the toys and wheat, barley and millets. 

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For more information on the Harappan Civilization:

Check out Harappa.com because it has great pictures and the latest discoveries being made in the field right now.

You can also read:

Nikhil Gulati’s The People of the Indus – a well researched graphic novel which makes it so much easier to relate to.

Nayanjot Lahiri’s Finding Forgotten Cities about how the Indus/Harappan civilization was discovered in the early 20th century.

Am currently reading Rita P. Wright’s The Ancient Indus: Urbanism, Economy and Society – and it is a fascinating slog (if you know what I mean).

What is Constitution Day (Samvidhan Divas) And Why it Should be Celebrated

The Untaught HistorianLeave a comment

Constitution Day is a rather recent addition to our calendar. 26 November used to be called National Law Day and it was mostly forgotten. But in 2015, the National Law Day was declared Constitution Day (or Samvidhan Divas). It gives me an excuse to delve into one of my favourite topics. Our Constitution.

The Constitution itself has a marvelous history. The drama around the creation of the Constituent Assembly, their debates, and the variety of issues it sought to address (something I hope to write about in a future post). Civics is by far the dullest of the Social Sciences in middle school and yet the most important and relevant. No matter what career a student chooses to take up, they are invariably going to be citizens of a democratic nation. We take this citizenship for granted, never really thinking about how precious this is. My grandparents, just two generations away from me, were part of a generation that knew what it was to live in a non-democratic state. Their ancestors before that were either subjects to the British Raj or in princely states – subjects of a detached and disinterested monarch. Also, for generations, people in the Indian subcontinent were always aware of their duties – duties to their family, duties to their community, religion, king or queen. With independence and the adoption of democracy, Indians were introduced to a new vocabulary. We grew aware of rights, and our Constitution told us what those rights were and also, that we could fight to protect our rights.

The Constitution as an Agent of Transformation

The Civics textbook definition of the Constitution is that the Constitution serves as a rule book for how a democratic state should function. It also provides a sort of mission statement to guide future leaders and citizens about the ideal society that the Constitution seeks to nurture and protect.

The Indian Constitution is often criticized for being derivative. More than 70% of it came from the Government of India Act, 1935. The framework of how our government will run comes from the Act. Curiously, we even incorporated some of the harsher, more autocratic aspects of the Act like preventive detention, or the power to suspend the legal system during an Emergency, etc. Things that Indian freedom fighters had objected to in the 1930s were now powers that the independent Indian state had.

So what was so great about the Indian Constitution? While it is true that most of it is derivative, does something have to be entirely original to be of value? I do not know. I do know that while it may have flaws, the Constitution sought to create an new nation that was built on the precepts of Equality, Liberty and Fraternity as interpreted for the uniquely Indian context.

Here are the top 3 things I think makes our Constitution unique and special:

  1. Universal Adult Franchise: When we read ‘universal adult franchise’ we automatically think of women receiving the right to vote, and this is natural because that was a hard-won right in the rest of the world. Women in India could vote and hold office since the 1920s (Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay becoming the first woman to run for public office, even before her counterparts in Britain, when she ran in the 1926 elections for a seat in the Madras Provincial Legislative Assembly). Interestingly, women got this right much before western women (French women could vote and hold office only in 1944). But, there was a time when voting was the right of just the educated landowners. It was an effective way to disenfranchise the weakest and most vulnerable portions of society. In India this would have excluded not just women but also Dalits and indigenous (tribal) people. So, for a new nation to immediately grant Universal Adult Franchise is a big deal. From its very beginning, it sought to include the very people who had been excluded by society through political and social institutions. (To give us some perspective, South Africa adopted universal adult franchise only in 1996 and Bahrain and some other Muslim states gave women the right in 2005).
  2. It’s Defense of Equality: At the time of independence, India was shaking off the British but was still in the suffocating grips of social and religious authoritarianism. Breaking caste rules or gender rules could lead to severe social, emotional and often physical consequences. Unlike Western nations where the power lay in the hands of the government, India had multiple levels of power, starting at the religious or caste based community level down to the head of the family. Ambedkar, B.N. Rau and members of the Constituent Assembly were writing a constitution for a country that didn’t fully recognize the notion of an individual’s rights. And so, the framers sought to rewire our social structure. Article 15(2) which banned the discrimination in access to restaurants and roads (years before the American Civil Rights movement managed to end segregation in the United States), Article 17 abolishing untouchability and Article 23 forbidding forced labour. In theory, at least, the Constitution was laying the groundwork for a society where every citizen was equal both politically and socially.
  3. The Right to Constitutional Remedies: In India, a citizen can move directly to the Supreme Court to protect their fundamental rights against violation not just by the State but also by institutions. This makes sure that the State and institutions cannot create laws that violate any individuals fundamental rights. The head of your company, religious math, or head of your joint family even cannot force you to do anything that violates your fundamental rights, as the state is duty bound to protect it. As mentioned earlier, our Constitution recognized the various levels of power or sovereignty in India and provided a recourse for the average citizen to protect themselves from social as well as political authoritarianism.

Ambedkar was used to hearing criticisms of the Constitutions by the end of the drafting process. In his final speech to the Constituent Assembly on the 25th of November, he addressed some of them but added “… I feel, however good a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it, happen to be a bad lot. However bad a Constitution may be, it may turn out to be good if those who are called to work it, happen to be a good lot. The working of a Constitution does not depend wholly upon the nature of the Constitution. The Constitution can provide only the organs of State such as the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. The factors on which the working of those organs of the State depend are the people and the political parties they will set up as their instruments to carry out their wishes and their politics.”

He continued to say that the Constitution written by the Constituent Assembly reflected the views and pressing concerns of his generation and he was aware that every generation would face its own concerns and have its own views. He quoted Thomas Jefferson, an American founding father –  “We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of the majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.”

The Constitution we have today is not perfect. It has also been interpreted in ways we might not agree with. But if we choose to remain ignorant of its contents we do ourselves and our generation a great disservice.

We live in a frighteningly divided time now, where neighbors attack each other personally for differing political views and declare themselves upholders of morality in their community WhatsApp and email groups. The late 1940s were an even more divisive period in Indian history. People disagreed violently with each other on a lot of things. The violence spilt out of their mouths, onto the page and then into the street.

At the time, the subcontinent was divided and two countries were formed. One ended up with a Constitution that was slowly but carefully constructed. The other that seemed accidentally put together with individual egos and prejudices taking precedence over values and ideals. One has survived70 years and is regularly challenged but almost always respected. The other was thrown out and new ones were written to suit the convenience of the man in charge. If we look further at the other countries who gained independence and shook of colonialism in 1940s, 50s and 60s, the story of Indian’s constitution feels even more unique and special.

And so I feel our Constitution should be celebrated every year. The best way to do it is to pay attention to it – understand it, discuss it and defend the rights within it whenever we can.

Resources:

Ambedkar’s final speech to the Constituent Assembly (bits of which I have quoted above) can be found here.

An excerpt of the final speech in a Scroll article titled Why BR Ambedkar’s three warnings in his last speech to the Constituent Assembly resonate even today

An article I wrote earlier about Ambedkar and the narrative of his life.

A book that I am currently reading: The Transformative Constitution by Gautam Bhatia

East India Company’s Plundering of Indian History (and why that matters today)

The Untaught Historian4 Comments

This is Benjamin West’s famous painting of the Mughal emperor Shah Alam handing over the rights to collect taxes in Bengal to Robert Clive and the East India Company (1765). A little over 100 years ago, Aurangzeb had nearly evicted the British, but in the 1760s the scrappy East India Company (EIC) was on the verge of drowning Aurangzeb’s precious empire and emerging as the new power in the subcontinent. If you look at the painting closely, you will see how the British and their allies are cast in the light, while most Indians are in the shadow.

West was a romantic and a patriot. He liked painting famous scenes from history like The Death of Nelson or Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky. The painting above was recording the birth of British India and the British Empire at large. India was to be the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Casting a Shadow over Bengal

Ironically, in his painting, West wasn’t wrong to paint Indians in the shadow because with the handing over of the Diwani to the EIC, a dreadful shadow did indeed fall over Bengal. Within five years, the Company’s exploitative business practices ruined the local economy and compounded a natural disaster that led to the terrible famine of 1770. 10 million people died during this time – 1/3rd of the total population in the province.

To give you some perspective, Covid has caused approximately 6.5 million deaths globally over nearly 3 years. The famine cost 10 million lives in just one province that covers modern day West Bengal, Bangladesh, parts of Odisha and Bihar. Entire generations were effectively wiped out.

To their credit, the world took notice. While descriptions of the famine shocked the English back home, the English were even more outraged when they started seeing Company officials coming home millionaires (the outrage stemmed more from envy, I suspect, than moral uprightness). Robert Clive, the central figure in West’s painting (receiving the scroll from Shah Alam), and considered the founder of the British Empire in India reportedly came back to India with “£1,200,000 in cash, bills, and jewels.” In today’s value, that is £286,400,000 (£286 million). This was one individual’s earnings. There were many other Company millionaires who made their millions by looting India.

In the end, Robert Clive’s career took a nose-dive. In England, he faced charges of corruption, brutality and profiteering. During his life time, he was much hated and he ended up killing himself at the age of 49 in the same brutal manner in which he had lived his life. Later, his story was scrubbed and rewritten by other British viceroys to justify their rule in India. But we won’t go there.

Our textbooks talk in great detail about the significance of the Battles of Plassey and Buxar, the rise of Clive and the Company and their hand in the famine that followed. It makes mention of the wealth that India had at the time and how, in a very short time, the British managed to strip it away.

But textbooks and classrooms do not have the time to fully illustrate what that wealth looked like, or even how it was plundered away, and what that really means in the present.

The Lucrative Career of a Plundering EIC Officer

Robert Clive’s eldest son, Edward Clive, followed in his father’s footsteps and was Governor of Madras as well as part of the wars with Tipu Sultan. He was present when Tipu Sultan was finally defeated and killed in battle. His wife Henrietta, wrote to her brother about the plundering of Srirangapatnam: “The plunder of Seringapatam is immense. General Harris will get between £1,50,000 and £2,00,000. Two of the privates have got £10,000 in jewels and money. The riches are quite extraordinary. Lord Clive has got a very beautiful blunderbuss (a short, large-bored gun) that was Tipu’s and much at Seringapatam. I should like to have the pickings of some of the boxes.”

“I should like to have the pickings of some of the boxes” she says!

Edward and Robert Clive’s collections are housed at Powis Castle in Wales. You can pay an entrance fee, explore the beautiful gardens, the enormous castle and the attached museum that was all funded by the Clive’s adventures in India. The Clive Collection – a collection of Indian items that is one of the biggest in the world – is bigger than the Delhi Museum even. It includes a grand palanquin that belonged to Siraj ud Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal who Clive defeated at the Battle of Plassey, and Tipu Sultan’s gold embroidered slippers, his guns, jewels, and even his battle tent.

The Clives also carried away two of eight finials that adorned Tipu’s throne. Finials are the decorative knobbly bits on the ends of thrones. The finial, like the one in the image above, is made of gold and set with rubies, diamonds and emeralds. One was sold in 2009 for over £3 million.

In 2003, Christies auctioned this 17th century Mughal emerald brooch. According to the listing details it is an “emerald of exceptional colour and clarity weighing 55.8 carats with superb Mughal carving of tulips on both sides”.

According to the note on its provenance, the brooch last belonged to the 10th Duke of Northumberland. It was passed down through the generations from his ancestor, the 3rd Duke of Northumberland, Hugh Percy. His wife was Charlotte Florentia, the daughter of Edward Clive, who stole the finial that we talked about earlier. Charlotte’s mother had wanted to “have the pickings” of Tipu’s treasure. Coming back to 2003, this brooch was sold for £1.2 million.

Whose History is it?

Today, the United Kingdom is working hard to make sure these treasures do not leave their borders.

I found a press release issued in 2021 on gov.uk titled “18th-Century Tipu Sultan Throne Finial worth £1.5 million at risk of leaving UK“. According to the release, an export bar had been placed on the finial (just like the one in the Clive collection) to allow time for a UK institution to purchase the piece, which might otherwise leave the country (UK). Why does the UK still want it?

The UK sees the finial as part of their history now. The release states that “Following his defeat, many objects from Tipu’s treasury arrived in Britain, where they influenced poetry (John Keats), fiction (Charles Dickens; Wilkie Collins), artists (J.M.W.Turner) and were received with huge public interest.” – “arrived” in Britain? Did they just arrive as if of their own volition? Were they looking for cooler climes?

The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) recommended that the export license application for the finial be deferred to 11 February 2022, or extended to 11 June 2022 to try and keep the finial in the UK because the Committee believed that “it is an important symbolic object in Anglo-Indian history in the last years of the 18th Century, with Tipu’s defeat having great historical importance to Britain’s imperial past and leading to a contemporary fascination with Tipu’s story and objects.”

Guess who else might think that Tipu’s defeat might be of greater historical importance? Where else might there be a greater contemporary fascination with Tipu’s story and objects? (India, of course!)

When I was younger I had heard arguments made by the Egyptians and the Indians about how the British had stolen our nation’s wealth. I had not really cared at the time. I didn’t have a concept of time or value of history and cultural identity.

However, if you were to zoom into the image of the finial or the emerald with it delicate tulips etched into it, it tells us a story of advanced Indian artistry and craftwork. There was nothing comparable to it in the world at the time. And it wasn’t even that long ago.

How many Indians, do you think, are aware of this rich history of art in India? Generations of Indian students are coming out of secondary school without fully understanding what the textbooks are telling them – about the wealth that the Mughals and other Indian monarchs commanded, about the quality of artistry, understanding of metallurgy and gems that our ancestors possessed – an understanding that might be more easily grasped with a visit to a well curated museum where the story comes to life.

Today, if I want to show my son, or my class, any of this, I will need to organize a trip to the United Kingdom because that is where the best samples are. We will need to buy tickets to see our own cultural heritage – a heritage that was literally stolen from us. And worse still, some of these items are not even in museums – they are being sold off to be part of private collections, where some rich woman will wear that 17th century brooch as a pendant of a string of pearls at a party. So not only did the treasure make a British person rich in the 18th century, it continues to make British people rich today.

If you want to read more about

Robert Clive, then this article by William Dalrymple on Robert Clive as a vicious asset-stripper

Also, check out this blog about the art in Tipu’s palace in Srirangapatnam.

What does Nehru have to do with Children’s Day?

The Untaught Historian4 Comments

Happy Children’s Day!

When my son was very little, he came home from school and went straight into the kitchen, clearly looking for something. Disappointed, he stood in front of me and demanded to see the cake. What cake, I asked. “It’s Children’s Day, Mamma! You are supposed to celebrate having children!”

Today, it isn’t very different. My son just came home from school where his teachers worked really hard to make him and his classmates feel special and cared for. I appreciate the sentiment even though the day had a very different point of origin.

Significance of Children’s Day

Growing up, I knew that we celebrated Children’s Day on Nehru’s birthday. The reason I had heard was that Nehru loved children, but I later found that Children’s Day was really an awareness and fund-raising drive.

In 1951, a United Nations Social Worker Fellow V.M. Kulkarni who had been studying the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents in England liked how the Queen of England’s birthday had been used to focus attention on children’s issues and raise funds for Save the Child Fund. He proposed that Pandit Nehru’s birthday, November 14, be used to bring awareness to children’s issues and child rights. It is said that the proposal embarrassed Nehru but he agreed to have his birthday attached to the cause.

Perhaps Nehru’s reluctance at Kulkarni’s suggestion was warranted. Soon political bootlickers and sycophants would gather children and have them sing songs in Nehru’s honour and he would pose obligingly with little children. The original intent was forgotten and a new legend grew about Nehru’s great love for children. He certainly had a great love for his own daughter, to whom he wrote wonderful letters from prison that not only outlined Indian and world history but also explained his humanist ideals and values. I often wonder how young Indira felt on receiving these letters. Did she groan at the heavy topics he chose to write about, and wish he would talk more about prison food or other ordinary things – not a draft of a chapter?

At any rate, Nehru’s birthday became Children’s Day from 1956. I looked around for pictures of the first official Children’s Day but the first official interesting material I found was the President’s address on the occasion in 1957.

In a speech titled A Plea for a Better Deal for Children, Prasad said that “it is a welcome idea to have one day every year to be celebrated as Children’s Day when all questions pertaining to children and child welfare would receive special attention.” The theme in 1957 was child hunger. The International Union of Child Welfare declared that “a child that is hungry must be fed”. Prasad extended the theme, by saying “If we put a wider interpretation on this theme, it should encompass wider needs such as hunger for play, hunger for love and hunger for security. After all a child needs these as much as nutritious food.”

Today, India’s President welcomed students from various schools and her speech was simply about the beauty of childhood. The original intent is long forgotten. It is now just a day when we celebrate children and Nehru.

Growing into Nehru

The slide show above covers Nehru’s childhood from infancy to his college years at Cambridge (the last picture is of him with his parents and two younger sisters, who later became famous in their own right – Vijaylakshmi Pandit and Krishna Hutheesing)

Born on November 14, 1889, as a child, Nehru did not hunger for food, love or security. He was born to extraordinary privilege. His family home, Anand Bhavan, in Allahabad had a swimming pool. Of course, do not imagine Nehru living alone with his parents in this palatial estate. The Nehru clan lived together. He was the youngest and his sisters followed much later, so while Nehru might not have hungered for the basics, he did hunger for companionship. Home schooled for nearly most of his education with governesses and private tutors, he did not have a peer group of classmates or playground friends. His much older cousins had neither time nor interest in him, and so although he was part of a bustling household he grew up rather alone.

In his autobiography, Nehru begins his story with refreshing candor and self awareness “An only child of prosperous parents is apt to be spoilt, especially so in India. And when that son happens to be on only child for first 11 years of his existence there is little hope for him to escape this spoiling.” His parents certainly spared no expense on his education. Annie Besant, the great educator and founding member of the Theosophical Society, recommended a tutor – Ferdinand T. Brooks – who, Nehru believes, had a great influence on his thinking. Brooks developed in Nehru a taste for reading and introduced him to a vast variety of literature and philosophy (including Theosophy). He also set up a lab in their home where they performed experiments to explore basic chemistry and physics. At 15, his parents and his infant sister accompanied him to England, where he was dropped off at the famous English public school – Harrows.

Clearly Nehru did not have an average childhood. He was keenly aware of the great difference between his experience of India versus that of the common Indian. This difference is often used against him. While many like to pull Nehru down for his elitism or his post-Independence leadership choices (both valid points), Nehru’s writings from prison in the 1930s reminds us that he was human, with the same human frailties that affect us regardless of income, education, gender, caste or creed.

In fact, I am glad for his intellectual upbringing. India was blessed to have an independence movement led by thinkers rather than wild and spontaneous actors (think of the rather haphazard birth of Pakistan). The men and women who organized our freedom struggle developed democratic ideals and a vision for equality that came from a conversion of intellectual vigor to actual action. The outcome, among other things, is our Constitution. Imperfect though it might be, it has provided us with a stable democracy for 75 years, while our neighbours have floundered. Most of the people who helped put the Constitution together were intellectual giants.

Recently, on social media, I read comments wishing that the India had a military dictatorship. They felt that this would help improve infrastructure and law and order. I wonder if Indian classrooms should spend more time exploring Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Burmese or Sri-Lankan history. All our neighbors have had experiences with military coups (successful and failed) and the outcomes were never positive for the country. In India, Nehru and his colleagues can take some credit for military-proofing Indian democracy. To read more check out this article. His understanding of the potential threats to democracy has often helped us tremendously, and while we might disagree with his politics, we should be grateful that we have a democracy that allows (at least in theory) for dissent.

So this Children’s Day let us not conflate the two events. Nehru probably did like children (it is very difficult not to like children, and even if he did not like them, it would have been political suicide to admit it) but Children’s Day is not to celebrate his love for children. It is to draw awareness to important children’s issues in our society today, as Rajendra Prasad did in his very first Children’s Day address – serious issues concerning children’s health, children’s rights, access to quality nutrition and education.

It is also Nehru’s birthday. We are still a young nation and his legacy is still up for debate and political wrangling but perhaps in a hundred years the man will be remembered for both his contributions and his failings in a more balanced, objective and less divisive manner. That he was extraordinary is hard to deny if you delve into the man’s writing and look carefully at his influence in a myriad issues that concern modern India today. It is also hard to deny that he was not perfect. We should never be satisfied with the legacy of our ancestors – growth and forward movement are our constant civic duties.

Sources:

Joshi, S. (2005) How did Children’s Day begin, The Tribune India. Available at: https://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20051112/saturday/main4.htm (Accessed: November 14, 2022).

Prasad, R. (1958) “A Plea for a Better Deal for Children,” in Speeches of Dr. Rajendra Prasad, President of India, 1957-1958. India, pp. 98–99.

Nehru, J. (1982) “Descent from Kashmir,” in Jawaharlal Nehru, an autobiography. Tehran: Bahman Pr., pp. 1–26.

All images from Wikimedia Commons

Stamp # 8: Why Kanakadasa Matters

The Untaught HistorianLeave a comment

My first serious encounter with the Bhakti movement saint Kanakadasa was when I had to make a bunch of tweens care about him in a class covering Medieval Indian history. Have you tried introducing Carnatic music to children who are more familiar with KPop than Indian music? It didn’t go well.

But Kanakadasa and others like him (Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Kabir, Eknath, Jnanadev, Purandaradasa, etc) were the viral influencers of their time. Kanakadasa and other Bhakti saints are still is relevant, even if you don’t listen to classical music or are religious:

Kanakadasa stamp issued in 1990 by India Post

Before we begin, here is a quick 2 point reminder on who Kanakadasa is:

  1. Kanakadasa is one of the pillars of Carnatic music – credited with 240 odd musical compositions that are now canon.
  2. He got a Krishna idol to literally turn away from the entrance, towards a little window in the back of the Udupi temple sanctum sanctorum when Kanakadasa was not allowed to enter the temple on account of his low caste. By turning towards the window, Kanakadasa was able to have the Lord’s Darshan through a crack in the wall.

Three Things That Make You Forget Kanakadasa Lived in the 16th Century

  1. Swag

    Kanakadasa was born a minor chieftain under the Vijayanagar empire. While he belonged to the shepherd caste, he was not some poor unknown. He was a well respected and successful member of society. Yet, when his guru, the famous Brahmin saint Vyasatirtha accepted Kanakadasa as his disciple purely on the merits of his devotion and talent, the guru’s other followers (all Brahmins) sneered at him for his lack of qualifications (birth being the only qualification that mattered at that time).

    Kanakasa’s response? Like a modern song writer, his music was influenced by his experience. He wrote some of the classiest revenge songs ever. One of his longer pieces called Ramadhanya Charita is a biting criticism of caste through witty metaphor. The story isn’t about the glorious life of Rama. Instead, grains of rice and ragi play the main roles.

    In the story, Rama and Sita, on their way back to Ayodhya, stop for a meal at sage Muchikunda’s ashram. Here, the sage offered a vast spread of food and Rama asks Hanuman what the best dish is. Hanuman, ever the over-achiever, asked for all the raw ingredients that went into making the dishes to be brought out. Once on the table the various grains assembled begin to argue that they are the grain of real essence. Finally, Rama asks that all grains be stored for six months. Six months later, Rama asks to check on all the grains. Rice, the most refined of grains, was stalest while ragi, of humble origins, was still fresh. Thus, humble ragi won the title of Ramadhanya – the grain of Rama. Rice was a metaphor for the refined upper castes while ragi represented the humble lower castes who worked sincerely without fanfare. This poetic work assured the common man that Rama was aware of their true worth.

    In another song titled Teerthavanu Pididavarella (Are All Those Who Hold Teertha Hallowed?) Kanakadasa says:
    …
    Are all those, who holding their nose and take a dip
    Into water who reading holy scriptures
    Hoping to enjoy other’s wives secretly
    Swerving from the code of ethics, Brahmins, gody?

    Are those bot-bellied persons Vaishnavas of true essence
    Who earn their lievelihood with shouts of vehemence,
    Simply painting their foreheads and keeping their vessels
    Without knowing the art of penance and its skills?
    …

    Imagine being one of those snooty fellow disciples listening as Kanakadasa sings the keerthana before his guru, or worse, listening to people in your community humming it as they watch you walk past them, demanding undeserved respect.
  2. Represent!

    Recently, I was listening to a wonderful podcast on The Daily about Serena Williams legacy to the sport. She is a great example of the importance of representation and just how powerful that is. How do you quantify the impact of seeing someone who looks like you succeed in a world that is not welcoming to you. Serena Williams looked nothing like the delicate gazelles we expect to win Women’s Wimbledon. She was muscular and powerful and was a woman of colour. She didn’t hide who she was. She was loud and proud. But we think of representation as being something modern.

    Yet, back in the 16th century, Kanakadasa was representing an entire group of people who were consciously disempowered. He was writing songs in local dialect for the common man in which he was explaining complex Hindu philosophy in simple language – philosophy that the Brahmins felt was exclusively their domain.
    While Kanakadasa was an outsider to the orthodoxy, to the common man, he was a lower caste man who was accepted and even praised by the great Brahmin guru Vyasatirtha, advisor and guru of the king of the entire Vijayanagar Empire. His life was his message And what was that message? He was saying that everyone is deserving of divine grace and acceptance. He was saying that these Brahmins who demanded respect and servility weren’t necessarily deserving of it.

    Instead of sitting in one place, expecting disciples to come to him, Kanakadasa was going village to village spreading the word. So, you could meet him, talk to him, listen to him, sing with him and clap to the beat. There is power in that.
  3. Democratization of Education

    In modern times literature, social science, science and technology are important elements of that education. Why? Because education’s main goal is to improve quality of life. A good education gives us perspective; it makes us less gullible to superstition or herd mentality; it prepares us to be good citizens; and it prepares us with the skills and knowledge we might need to earn a living. Today, with technology and e-learning – high quality education is available to more and more people. It used to be the domain of the rich, but now it is something accessible to anyone with a smart phone.

    In the medieval times, you learnt how to make a living by helping your parents or people of your caste. But that wasn’t an education. An education that explained the world to you or that transformed your way of viewing the world was an education exclusively for the Brahmin or the Kshatriya. Anyone not of those castes were excluded in two ways – first, they did not have access to a Brahmin guru who passed such important knowledge orally to his disciples. Second, they could not learn on their own because all scriptures were in Sanskrit. But Kanakadasa brought learning to everyone. Instead of sitting in one place, expecting disciples to come to him, Kanakadasa came to your doorstep. So, a potter or a weaver, an open minded Brahmin or Kshatriya, all had access to him.

    And when he came to your village, he wasn’t just talking about social justice or deep Vedantic truths, but he was also encouraging rationalism – telling people that they needed to think logically and not fall prey to superstition. In a sense, his music was the medium of education in that time, much like video is today.

As I read and listened to his music, Kanakadasa upturned several false narratives that I had collected in my head. Prime among them was this peculiar belief I once indulged that Indians began to think rationally once we were exposed to rational Western thinkers of the18th and 19th century. Yet, 200 years before that, Kanakadasa was already questioning the orthodox Hindu’s belief that he needed a son to be able to attain the Divine. His argument was based in logic and rational thinking. Think for yourself, he was constantly exhorting. It is the same as Kabir and other poets of this period. Yet, somehow I read Indian history and unconsciously came to believe, rather preposterously, that before Western philosophy all Indians were running wily-nily through life without any sense of reason.

The other false narrative I had built up was the power of an individual against ingrained social norms. I had a Hollywood influenced dramatic belief that all it takes is one persuasive individual to transform society. However, Kanakadasa was fighting the same prejudice that, 400 years later, Ambedkar and other Dalit leaders were fighting against – an inflexible and cruel caste system. This leads me to conclude that social change cannot come from one individual’s extraordinary effort. It can only work when we all unite and push against it, like that moment at the end of Finding Nemo, when Nemo advises all the fish to swim down to overwhelm the fishing net. It is an apt visual metaphor for what is needed to make fundamental changes in society.

Just Keep Swimming

In the end, personalities have always come who have tried to play the role that Nemo’s dad plays here which is to encourage us all to swim down, but the swimming is up to us, and while all of us cannot be Kanakadasa or Ambedkar or other voices of a united conscience, we can all swim. Social change is always a product of united effort.

Resources:

You can buy this book here

a. Select Songs of Kanakadasa by Shashidhar G. Vaidya

b. Wikipedia for more information on Haridasa and Vyasatirtha

c. Rajkumar’s 1960 film Bhakta Kanakadasa. (great piece of Indian film history and great music too)

Ambedkar’s Rags to Riches Tale and What We Can Learn About Story telling from It

The Untaught Historian1 Comment

When Helen Keller, the famous blind, deaf and dumb author and disabilities activist, was 11, she wrote a short story called ‘The Frost King‘ that was published in a couple of newsletters. It quickly got a lot of attention because many found it very similar to a story written by Margaret T. Canby called “Birdie and his Fairy Friends”. The scandal quickly became a national issue with Helen Keller being accused of plagiarism. At the time, many famous people including Mark Twain came out in Keller’s defense. It was in this context that Twain wrote these famous words: “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations.”

When you read enough books and watch enough film you come to realise that this is very true. Indeed, all stories are based on one of these seven plot lines.

  1. Overcoming the Monster – where the hero has an arch nemesis (usually an evil being or force)that he/she must defeat to protect one’s family, home or country, like in Star Wars or Sholay.
  2. The Quest – where the hero and his/her companions go in search of an object, and overcome various obstacles and challenges, like in Lord of the Rings or the story of Hanuman’s journey to find Sita.
  3. Voyage and Return – where the hero travels to a strange land and, after some adventure, they learn important lessons that they could not have learnt anywhere else. They eventually return as better or wiser people, like in the Odyssey or Jab We Met.
  4. Comedy – where there are a bunch of absurd twists and turns where expectations are subverted but the outcome is always happy. Most rom-coms.
  5. Rebirth – where an event forces the hero to reconsider his/her beliefs and attitudes and forces them to change for the better. Secret Garden (one of my all time favourite book), the story of Valmiki or Gautama Buddha.
  6. Tragedy – The hero, a somewhat symathetic character, has a major character flaw or great mistake which is ultimately leads to their undoing, like the story of Karna in the Mahabharata.
  7. Rags to Riches – where the hero starts at the bottom, gains success, then suffers set backs to emerge triumphant eventually, like the Will Smith movie Pursuit of Happyness.

These plotlines and the ideas that Twain was talking about might be true about fiction, but this blog is about history. What does this have to do with telling of history?

Good history writers and teachers have long employed these plotlines to tell us about what happened in the past. Some lives of important figures in history often feels like they were just made for film or novel.

Take Ambedkar for example. His life reads like a classic rags to riches tale. I do not mean that Ambedkar became a rich man or that he spent his life in the pursuit of wealth. He is no Tata or Birla. But look at where Ambedkar began and look at where we find him now – on stamps, in statues all over the city, on the sides of cobbler shops and banners in your neighbourhood. He went beyond temporal and mortal riches. The chronology of Ambedkar’s life fits almost perfectly into a typical template of a rags-to riches story.

Ambedkar: From village to Columbia to Baroda to New Delhi

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar went from a little boy who was made to sit on a gunny sack in the corner of the classroom to an esteemed scholar, Chairman of the Drafting Committee and first Law Minister. Image Source: Columbia University

A typical Rags to Riches story has 5 typical elements – a raggedy beginning, a promising series of initial victories, a giant set back, a valiant struggle, and eventual victory. Now, this is easily managed when you are writing fiction, but often, if we take a few steps back, the fully-lived life of a historical figure can also be squeezed to fit the template, as you can see in Ambedkar’s case:

A Raggedy Beginning: Ambedkar was born in a small town in Madhya Pradesh in 1891, into the Mahar caste. Mahars are untouchables and Ambedkar was never allowed to forget his low status. In school, he was forced to sit separately on gunny sacks and not given equal access to drinking water. When he would come up to the board to answer a question, children would rush to move their lunch bags out of his way so that he didn’t accidentally pollute their food. Yet, Ambedkar shone so brightly that nothing, not even caste, could hold him back.

A Promising Series of Initial Victories: After school, Ambedkar entered Bombay University and got a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Political Science. He was the first of his community to rise so high, but he was to meant to rise higher still. He was awarded a scholarship by the Diwan of Baroda that sent him to Columbia University, where he received a Masters and PhD in Economics. Then, he went to London where he became a lawyer and received a D.Sc in Economics. If you haven’t caught the drift yet, Ambedkar was a rising star.

The Giant Setback: After London, Ambedkar somewhat reluctantly returned to India because part of the deal with his scholarship was that after receiving a world class education, he needed to come back and serve the Princely State of Baroda. Up until this point, Ambedkar had enjoyed several years just being Bhimrao Ambedkar – lawyer, economist, a complete human. But when he came back, no one could see beyond his caste. In Baroda, no one was willing to rent him a decent home and his colleagues refused to let him drink water from the same pot, share food with them or sit with him. It was deeply humiliating. He was being treated exactly as he had been as a child. Except now, he had a taste of a life with dignity, respect and visibility and he knew that no human deserved this sort of treatment.

A Valiant Struggle: At Baroda, Ambedkar realised that academic achievement and wealth were of no value in the face of prejudice. So, he left Baroda without fulfilling his commitment with a clear mission now. He returned to Mumbai and became a lawyer who specialised in issues relating to the rights of lower caste people. One of his early cases was a libel suit. A group of three non-Brahmins had written an article blaming all the problems facing contemporary India on the upper castes. An outraged group of Brahmins filed a libel suit on these men. Ambedkar came to their defense and won. With this victory, Ambedkar made a name for himself. But he was going to become more known when he locked horns with Gandhi himself, demanding that the Depressed Classes receive their own separate electorate, just like how the Muslims and the Hindus had their own. Gandhi was anxious not to create more division. Division based on religion was grievous enough, but dividing the Hindu electorate based on caste was unacceptable. Gandhi was going to fast unto death to oppose Ambedkar’s proposition for separate electorates. Fortunately, the two men found a way to compromise. The Poona Pact was signed in 1932, where the untouchables did receive a reservation of electoral seats in the British Legislature. Ambedkar never forgave Gandhi. But during this time many noticed Ambedkar as more than just a Dalit leader. He was a political thinker.

Eventual Victory – When India was on track to get Poorna Swaraj, Ambedkar (who never joined the Indian National Congress) was asked to become Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee. As Chairman, he led the Committee with his clear vision of what India should be – a fair, free democracy that valued liberty, equality and fraternity. Nehru also invited Ambedkar to become India’s first Law Minister.

Ambedkar who was once treated as sub-human was sought after for his sharp mind and wisdom. No one cared for his caste (or if they did, they dared not let their prejudice be known). They only cared about his ideas, and whether they liked them or not, they were all listening keenly till the end.

If this was a movie, then it would end with the hero winning – a standing ovation, or a shower of petals or a walk into the sunset.

Ambedkar’s narrative arc is that of a man who rose from nothing to something, and carried us all together with him, taking the role of India’s moral voice in its early years.

The Problem with Using Archetypical Plots in History

History writers and teachers have always employed one of the 7 standard plotlines from the very beginning of time. Think of any famous historical figure and you will find that they conveniently fit into one of these standard plots.

Gandhi’s tale is told to us as a Voyage and Return plot, where Gandhi grows up as an average boy in India, sails to South Africa where his adventures in this strange and deeply racist land leads him to the discovery of non-violence as a potent political weapon against injustice; a weapon he returns to India with in order to push the British out and free India forever.

Nelson Mandela’s story can be told as one of Rebirth, where prior to his imprisonment Mandela was leader of a violent guerilla group, but over his 27 year long imprisonment, he emerged as a voice for non-violence, forgiveness and peace.

Telling their stories in this manner can leave students or readers inspired, if that is the intention of the story. In addition to inspiring, one of the chief concerns of any good educator is to get students to think for themselves. Often stories like these glorify historical figures and encourage blind hero-worship. Is that the purpose of history teaching? To simply make us feel proud or feel in awe of these men and occasional women who changed the world?

There is a risk of over-simplification and glossifying history for the sake of good story-telling, but I argue that employing archetypical narrative arcs or plot lines have their place in the classroom, especially where critical thinking and reflection are valued

Employing Archetypical Narrative Arcs to Support Critical Reflection

Story-telling has been a powerful teaching method from the very beginning of time. From time to time, it has been used to rewrite history to conveniently persuade the listener to share the values of the story-teller.

But as teachers of any subject, one of our goals is to create independent critical thinkers. If we keep this goal always in sight, we will be less likely to stray.

Powerful narratives are a great way to hold a class’s interest and keep them hooked till the very end of the lesson. But, more importantly, it is a great way of showing, not telling, history. Ambedkar’s story isn’t just the story of a determined man who wanted to rise out of his miserable conditions. It is very much about the perniciousness of the caste system, about the ideas of social equality and justice that he tried to ensure had a place in the Constitution, as well as the revival of Buddhism in India.

For stories to work, it is important for a teacher or writer of history to be always aware that the story is a tool. They should not fall into the trap of actually believing that a fully-lived life can cosily fit into these constructed arcs. Life does not just abruptly cut off at the high point because it would be convenient for the audience. Life ends whenever it chooses to; in Ambedkar’s case the story did not just end when he occupied a seat in Nehru’s Cabinet.

The interesting parts of the story are those that do not fit in the narrative arc. It’s when you draw your students’ attention to the unruly bits that stick out of the template. Like in Ambedkar’s case, it is about how he was always restless and dissatisfied with his own work. He resigned from his position in Nehru’s cabinet after Parliament failed to pass the Hindu Code Bill that sought to protect gender equality in marriage and inheritance in one go. After resigning, Ambedkar stood for elections as an independent candidate on two separate occasions. He lost both times and then, he died in 1956.

I asked my class what they thought was on his mind the most in those last months, when he apparently worked just as had as he always had even though he was very sick. Did they think he was reflecting on his role in writing the Constitution, the moral conscience of India, or the fact that he lost the recent elections and wasn’t directly in government any more?

Life is more complicated than fiction. This inconvenient little ending to the otherwise perfect story had my class a little unsettled. One child found it hard to believe that even after all he had done, he was still unable to win an election. Was it because of caste? Was it because he wasn’t a good politician? He asked questions that got other people thinking. The class fell silent for a while. Then, he said that sometimes even when we do our best, people don’t notice. It happens to all of us – we try very hard and the others don’t really care that we did. There were murmurs of agreement, as am sure many thought back to times when their efforts were unappreciated.

The conscious inclusion of narrative arcs in our lessons makes a difference, but only as long as we use it carefully, remaining truthful to the actual story and focussing on the showing, rather than the telling of the lesson.

Stamp #4: Stalin, Mao, Lenin and E.M.S. Namboodiripad on the Streets of Kochi

The Untaught Historian2 Comments

As we drove into Kochi, red flags with the hammer and sickle greeted us almost as soon as we entered the city. My son, whose energy and patience were flagging, suddenly perked up. “Wait!” he said. “Where are we?”

It was like we had entered another alternate universe. My son who had been studying about Indian democracy and who has been exposed to ample anti-communist, anti-China rhetoric through the media was surprised to see Mao smile benignly at him from behind parked vehicles.

Nearly every other lamp post and pillar had him exclaiming in delighted horror. “Isn’t that Hugo Chavez!” he cried, before he spotted Stalin standing guard outside the entrance of a Pay and Park lot. Karl Marx was expected, but Maradona’s smiling face confused all of us and demanded some quick googling to find the connection between Maradona and Communism. Turns out Maradona was an anti-American Leftist.

By the time we reached our hotel room, Kerala’s Communist party propoganda had been so successful that I myself was wondering if I had remembered history correctly. I mean, maybe Stalin wasn’t so bad… and I never knew Mao could look so gentle and kind. I may have misjudged the man.

Over our weekend in Kochi, we could not escape the hammer and sickle at all. And I began to wonder how Communism took hold in Kerala? And why has it survived? Afterall, history has not been kind to Communism. There are 5 nations that call themselves communist today: Cuba, North Korea, China, Laos and Vietnam and I wonder if any of them had Stalin staring sternly at cars entering a pay and park lot.

Communist leaders abroad have always concerned themselves with class struggle and the inequities of industrial economies. Yet despite typical Indian hero worship (parents even name their children after Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev – listen to this interesting podcast about why they do), political thinkers in Kerala were original thinkers. The founding fathers of Kerala’s Communist party, like EMS Namboodiripad, P. Krishna Pillai and A.K. Gopalan, saw socialism and communism as a possible solution to the social inequalities caused by caste, gender and religious discrimination.

EMS Namboodiripad (EMS) came from the highest landowning caste in Kerala. The Namboodiris are the Brahmins and at the time, they were a feudal elite who intermarried with the Nairs (the caste of the monarchs) to dominate society, art, culture, politics and even the economy. While EMS could have led a comfortable life, he was influenced by a rising political awakening across the nation in the 1920s. Like AK Gopalan, his comrade who came from the Nair class, and P. Krishna Pillai, he was inspired by Gandhi’s satyagrahas and joined the Indian National Congress.

But over time, like many other regional political thinkers and actors, EMS and others were increasingly disillusioned by Gandhi’s particular blend of politics and spirituality. While Gandhi might be what was needed to get national independence, Gandhi’s method did not feel practical to the issue of caste discrimination, gender inequality nor did it address the issues of landless peasants. EMS came to see Gandhi as a “Hindu fundamentalist” and yet he also recognised Gandhi as a complex person and had embraced his ideas of simple living.

In 1939, after leaning more and more to the left, first within the Congress party, and then out of it, EMS, Krishna Pillai and AK Gopalan formed the Communist Party in Kerala. In 1956, when Kerala became a state, EMS became its first Chief Minister – the first and only non-Congress chief minister in India at the time.

How had the Communist party become so successful? I think this is because of the grassroots efforts of the Communist party in Kerala. Krishna Pillai, still fondly remembered as a founding father of Communism, died at the age of 42 while hiding from authorities in a little hut. He was bitten by a snake. Although a leader of great repute, his premature death isn’t very surprising because he lived an action packed life. Coming from a poor family and having left home early to make his way in the world, Pillai was uniquely qualified to understand the suffering and the needs of the masses. Everywhere he went his emotional attachment to the cause and his personal interest in the people was evident, and so Pillai became an effective missionary of sorts. He brought Communism to all corners of his state and made an intellectual philosophy a meaningful cause. Of course, the British and the Indian government had concerns about Communists and all their talk of armed revolution, but it is important to note that apart from the Punappra Vayalar uprising against the Diwan of Travancore in 1946, Kerala’s Communists functioned within the India’s democratic multi-party framework and grew increasingly popular because were addressing specific social problems.

So when Kerala became a state in 1956, EMS became the chief minister, because the people in Kerala were familiar with the Communist Party. Those in power in Kerala society trembled because with his arrival came also terrible signs that things were about to change. EMS quickly set about making aggressive agrarian land reforms by capping the amount of land anyone could own and passing ownership of land to tenants who had been working that soil for generations. Although he could not immediately bring these land reform laws into action, eventually it went a long way in redistributing land and opportunity across Kerala.

Unfortunately, he perhaps tried to do too much too soon. His controversial attempts to reform private education to make it more accessible to all, led to vast, mostly peaceful protests led by the Syrian Catholic Church, Nairs and the Congress. In 1959, EMS was forced to resign and Kerala was under President’s rule for a while. He came back to power in the 1960s where he was able to pass more reform laws and today is credited for the state’s high literacy rates.

A curious thing I learnt as I read about EMS and other Communist thinkers in India was how international the Communist movement was. Indian Communist thinkers like M.N. Roy travelled outside India, even meeting Lenin, and helped other countries with their own movements. During the Sino-Indian war in 1962, Communists like EMS remained neutral – choosing to side with neither Mao-led China nor their own nation, India. Isn’t that curious? In the minds of the early Communists what came first – the political ideology or their nation? And what about Indian Communists today?

At any rate, today, nearly 75 years later, from the looks of things Communism is still going strong in Kerala. It bypasses religious differences by being vocally atheistic. Their gods were the faces we saw on the sides of Kochi’s street – Lenin, Maradona, Hugo Chavez, Engels, Marx, EMS, Krishna Pillai and others. Like the hundreds of Hindu gods who smile down at us from prints on the wall, in calendars, wedding invitations and car stickers, they are more or less forgotten in our daily busy-ness, and only remembered in times of crisis or when in need of inspiration.

Orchha – The Hidden Kingdom

The Untaught Historian7 Comments
Orchha lies tucked away in the Vindyas, often overlooked by the average tourist. The shikhara of the Chaturbhuja Temple dominates the skyline in this tiny town that is packed with places to see and admire. (PC – District Administration of Niwari’s official website)

Driving through Orchha is like driving through the set of an Indiana Jones movie. Overgrown forests, ancient buildings, and then suddenly you are in a typical Indian small town, where a man on a motorcycle and a comically large bundle of mats behind him tries to squeeze past you at top speed while also confidently driving head-on into a large delivery van. The van and our SUV both came to a respectful halt, to let this brave Orchha warrior through.

This small inconspicuous sign on a largely deserted single-lane highway assured us that we were not lost.

We had not heard of Orchha till a few hours before we actually got there. It had come on our way from Nagpur to Jhansi and we stopped after quickly googling for places worth seeing en route. While overlooked now, Orchha used to be an important Bundela kingdom. While Orchha itself had been established in the mid 16th century by Raja Rudra Pratap, the most famous Orchha king was Raja Bir Singh Deo.

Since we hadn’t really planned the visit, we didn’t have the time the town truly deserves. In the hour or two that we spent there, we took a guided tour around Jahangir Mahal and the Raja Mahal, within the fort. Jahangir Mahal is a beautiful haveli style palace; a fusion of Rajput and Islamic architecture. The guide told us that Bir Singh Deo had built it as a gesture of friendship and loyalty towards the emperor. When it was complete, he invited him for a sleepover. Jahangir spent one night and never returned. And since then, the palace had remained vacant in honor of Jahangir (and perhaps subsequent Mughal rulers).

Lest you think that Raja Bir Singh was simply a vacant sycophant trying to curry favour with his Mughal overlord, our guide pointed out the subtle symbols of Rajput pride and resistance that lay hidden in the design of the palace. “Look”, he said, as we entered the palace through a narrow door. “Our backs are to the West. Jahangir and his men had to turn their backs on Mecca in order to come in. That was a great insult” At another point, he showed us a Ganesha carved into the tall doorway. “Jahangir and his men had to walk under Ganeshji to come into the palace.” According to the guide, Jahangir noted these insults and refused to stay more than a night. “This was the most expensive and elaborately planned insult in the world,” my son said wryly on our way out. According to the guide, the whole palace with its lapiz lazuli stone work, beautiful murals, trellises, hanging balconies and fountains cost a whopping 700 crore rupees in those days.

While we didn’t have a chance to visit her palace, Parveen Rai’s palace has murals of the famed courtesan and her dasis entertaining their patron and shows how much respect and power a courtesan wielded in court, given the proximity of her palace to the king’s own abode as well as the size and splendour of the place. (PC – Heritage India Magazine)

Outside Jahangir palace, our guide pointed out a large mahal in the valley below. It was the home of the famous courtesan Praveen Rai. She lived during Akbar’s time and was famous for her beauty and wit. When Akbar heard about her, he ordered the then chief of Orchha Raja Indrajit Singh to send his favourite courtesan over to him. Our guide said that Indrajit loved Praveen Rai and did not intend to obey the order, but Praveen insisted on going. When Akbar asked her to perform, Praveen Rai said very prettily, “Vinit Rai Praveen ki, suniye sah sujan. Juthi patar bhakat hain, bari, bayas, swan” or ‘Oh you great and wise! Hear this plea of Rai Praveen. Only someone from a low caste, barber or scavengers would eat from another person’s used plate.’ Ouch! Poor Akbar sent her back to dear Indrajit.

While we were there, the guide and my family were the only people in Jahangir Palace, till a short while later a small group of college boys tumbled in and spent much of their time posing for selfies. The guide told me that prior to Covid, Orchha was very popular and was mostly visited by foreign tourists. Covid had changed all that. Most domestic travellers don’t know very much about Orchha, which is overshadowed by her neighbours Gwalior and Jhansi.

Today, the settlements just outside of Orchha are empty and look worn out. The fields looked uncared for and the sides of the roads still seemed to be used as open toilets for young children. Time has not been kind to the region. We realised that kings and queens of little kingdoms such as this had played a major role to sustain local economies. While my son might view the extravagance of such kings as wasteful, such kings had created thousands and thousands of jobs. Orchha is scattered with temples, chhattris, mansions and palaces. Each had employed thousands of artisans during their construction. Think of the entire supply chain involved in the building and maintenance of such places! Aristocrats and royalty must have provided business and employment to thousands of farmers, florists, weavers, tailors, blacksmiths, jewellers, cooks, maids and manservants, caretakers of horses and camels, etc. I remember reading that in yesteryears kings would start massive public works projects during famines to provide employment and serve meals to labourers who might have starved otherwise, a practice that the British did not take up and which led to disastrous famines in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

This visit also helped me understand Mughal’s governance system better. Akbar had centralised Mughal government and had created a coherent and solid framework for governance that allowed Mughals to stay in power for 150 years. Apart from Afghan, Persian and Indo-Islamic members of his court, Akbar had wanted to include Hindu Rajput kings into Mughal nobility. He allowed Rajput chiefs and their families to receive a high rank, pay and the promise that they could continue their customs, rituals and beliefs. They continued to have control over their ancestral lands and were rewarded with more land if they pleased the emperor with their services. In exchange, Rajput chiefs had to publicly pledge their allegiance to the emperor. They had to offer active military service when called upon and willingly give their daughters in marriage to the emperor or his princes when asked to. The Mughal emperor was paramount, and he rewarded loyalty. It completely explains Bir Singh Deo’s desire to curry favour with Jahangir.

Here is a portrait of Raja Bir Singh, armed with shield and dagger, painted in the early 17th century. (P.C. Christie’s)

Bir Singh Deo occupied a prestigious position in Jahangir’s court because of the services he had provided the emperor. Before Jahangir became emperor, he once decided to flex his muscles and got into a conflict with his father. According the Jahangir’s memoirs, he hired a man to kill Abu Fazl. The man he hired was Orchha’s Bir Singh Deo. Bir Singh cut off Abu Fazl’s head and brought it to the young prince. When he came to the throne, Jahangir gave Bir Singh the title Maharaja and must have bestowed many other gifts of land and wealth. In the political world at that time, Bir Singh Deo and other ambitious Rajputs could only safeguard their positions by betting on the right guy in a conflict and then expressing loyalty through grand gestures like enormous palaces or gifts of women or personally chopping off someone’s head for their boss. What a tough, complicated world that was!

Orchha is beautiful. The murals are fading and many bits of lapis lazuli are missing from the walls. Lovers and friends have etched their names into door frames and walls and some floors are covered with a mosaic of bat droppings, and yet it remains beautiful despite the neglect. I have not given it justice and would highly recommend checking out some of these blogs if you plan on visiting.

Resources:

How India Saved the Lions of Gir

The Untaught HistorianLeave a comment

With all the attention that tiger conservation has received in recent years, we tend to forget her shaggier and more sociable cousin, the lion. When I told my class about India’s Asiatic lions, a few younger children were surprised. “Aunty, we have lions?” one asked. We certainly do. India is the only country in the world that is home to both lions and tigers.

A lion cub in Gir. (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Once I started thinking about lions, I started seeing them everywhere. They were on currency, on Indian government seals on official documents, on ancient temple walls and pillars, on murals in urban centres and historical monuments, at the family altar (where Durga rides on a lion) and even as people with fierce last names like Singh, Sinha, and Simhan.

Lions show up everywhere in Indian iconography and language because it looks like they actually were almost everywhere. Their range extended from Greece in Europe to the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent.

Today, the poor Asiatic lion is found in the little blue dot in Gujarat – the Gir National Park. What happened to the lion?

We did. First, we took away their homes by converting their grasslands and forests into farmland, towns and villages. Later, our upper classes decided that hunting lions would be a great sport. In the Middle East and India, hunting lions was seen as a rite of passage for young men seeking power. It was a way to show off your prowess and courage. And for good reason; from the numerous Mughal paintings, like the one below, it is clear that hunting lion was not for the faint hearted.

Mughal Miniature of a Prince on a Lion Hunt (Photo Credit: Christie’s)

The ruling classes all around the world have always been obsessed with hunting. The Mughals and Rajputs were no different. But I was unprepared for the sheer volume of kill. According to one record that I read, between March and May 1610, Jehangir and his companions killed seven lions and 203 other birds and animals. By the time he was fifty, Jehangir claimed to have hunted more than 17,000 animals.

During Jehangir’s time, lions were found in forests across modern day Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and even parts of Bengal. I could not find any information on when they disappeared from the Deccan plateau, but by late 19th century, lions were hunted to extinction in most parts of India.

Tiger hunt by Lord Reading, Viceroy of India (before 1935) (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Enter the Nawab of Junagadh. (Well, actually three generations of Nawabs). In 1879, around the same time when the last lion near Allahabad and the last lion In Rajasthan were hunted down, Mahabat Khan, the sixth Nawab of Junagadh, banned all hunting without special permission in his territory. The Nawab was alarmed by the dwindling numbers of lions and wanted to protect those that remained in his kingdom.

Sir Muhammad Rasul Khanji Babi, Nawab of Junagarh (1858-1911) with heir and council 1903 (Photo credit: Royal Collection Trust)

His son, Nawab Rasulkhanji, ascended the throne in 1892, and immediately instituted firmer laws – protecting more animals. The Gir Forest was within Junagadh borders, but Rasulkhanji was frustrated to find that the British and neighbouring Rajas kept pestering him with requests to go hunting for lions in his territory. If he did not allow it, hunters would tie baits just outside Junagadh’s borders to tempt the lions out of Junagadh where they could be hunted without consequence.

Rasulkhanji’s son, Nawab Mahabatkhanji, carried his grandfather and father’s legacy and fought to protect his lions until October 1947, when he acceded his kingdom to the Government of India and moved to Pakistan (with his 200 dogs but without any of his wives!). When he left, he left his lions unprotected.

After Independence, we seemed to have forgotten about the lions in Gir. We had Partition and a whole impoverished country to establish. It is somewhat understandable that we lost track of the lions for a while. In 1964, the Gir forests were home to 285 lions. Five years later, there were only 166 left.

Fortunately, the Indian Forest Service (the unsung hero that has stepped in to rescue so many animals from the brink of extinction in India) took notice. They set up a wildlife conservation programme for Asiatic Lions in 1965 and made the Nawab’s beloved Gir a Wildlife Sanctuary.

The Indian Forest Department has an all female team of guards protecting the lions around the clock. (Photo credit: Times of India)

At the start of the programme, India had around 177 lions. In 2005, we had 359. In 2020, we are up to 674. We talk so much about the saving the Tiger that we often forget to acknowledge our efforts with lions. If earlier, we were worried that we had too few lions, now we worry that we have too many lions squeezed into a rather small park. The Forest Department is looking some place to relocate a part of the lion population. I do not know very much about conservation and animals, but it sounds like this is a far better problem to have than having too few lions.

There is a story buried here somewhere – the story of our Forest Department and its extraordinary efforts to protect our wildlife heritage. I didn’t realise we had so many national parks dedicated to protect animals close to extinction.

At the end of the 20th century, there were around a hundred Nilgiri Tahrs in the wild. The Nilgiri Tahrs can only be found in India. They are like a cross between a goat and a sheep, and used to live in the mountains of the Western Ghats, from Maharashtra, down to Kerala. Today, there are close to 3,000 Nilgiri Tahrs in the wild. Isn’t that remarkable?

On a recent Safari through B.R. Hills, the forest department official explained that the morning safari had been cancelled because their staff will be busy carrying out a census. When I told him that we saw a pack of dhol (wild dogs) on our drive to the camp, his eyes grew wide in child like excitement. “Where?” he asked. He must have seen wild dogs many, many times in his years in the forest, and yet here he was nearly as excited as we were about our sighting.

When you read the story of the lions of India, you can read it as the tragic tale of a big cat that fell prey to human greed and cruelty. But, if you read on, you can also read it as a story of hope, vision and determination. It is a reminder that while we are capable of immense cruelty and destruction, we are also capable of immense compassion and regeneration. Starting from the late 19th century, when the Nawabs identified the threat to the lion till today, when the Forest Department and local communities have united to protect the big cats, the Asiatic lion has gone from being just a symbol to an actual creature we can visit on vacation.

Lion Safari (Photo Credit: Gir National Park Website)

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Resources:

1. Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India’s Geography by Sanjeev Sanyal
2. Mughal Emperors and The Imperial Hunt (Samyukta Ninan) https://www.livehistoryindia.com/story/history-daily/mughal-hunt/
3. The Naturalist with a Hint of Cruelty https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/VP1pnZYhc8q2s6A3U42QzI/The-naturalist-with-a-hint-of-cruelty.html
4. Untold Story of How an Erstwhile Princely State Saved Gir’s Lions from Extinction
https://www.thebetterindia.com/235146/world-lion-day-gujarat-gir-national-park-nawab-junagadh-british-rule-india-nor41/