Author:
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: March 21, 2004
Romila Thapar's book reveals that
Western rethinking on old patriotisms and new nationalisms has yet to win
the allegiance of Indian Marxists, says Meenkashi Jain
Indian Marxists, notwithstanding
their claims to originality, have always been faithful followers of Western
intellectual trends, often long after these were dated in the West. Thus,
well after Western academics expounded upon European feudalism, Indian
Marxists continue to search for point-by-point parallels between post-Gupta
India and the West. Similarly the once-in-vogue notion of 'imagined' communities
continues to bewitch our Marxist brethren who remain committed to fitting
the history of the subcontinent to this maxim. Only the Western rethinking
on old patriotisms underpinning the new nationalisms has yet to win the
allegiance of Indian Marxists.
As of now, they continue to argue
that the genesis of the Hindu community dates back to only the 19th century
and is inextricably linked to the competition for middle class employment.
For a Hindu community, Marxists allege, became a requisite for political
mobilisation under colonial rule, when representation by religious community
became the key to power and economic resources. Hence, Marxists want us
to believe that though the peculiarly Hindu institution of caste existed
from early historic times, the Hindu community itself did not then come
into being. So, while Brahmins, Rajputs, Vaniks, Chandals and Doms evolved
from amorphous entities to identifiable groups, the Hindu community as
a whole did not emerge from its parts. The same was true of the Hindu tradition.
Shaivites, Vaishnavites, Shaktas, Buddhists and Jains, all stretched back
into antiquity. Yet Hinduism itself was claimed to be a 19th century Western-inspired
abstraction.
Romila Thapar's Somanatha, The Many
Voices of History represents one such attempt to reinvent the past. Inverting
remembered history, Thapar dismisses notions of Hindu trauma over Islamic
iconoclasm as a later-day fabrication. Rather, she alleges, in medieval
times Hindu kings often vandalised temples and images, even if they did
not surpass the Muslim record in this respect. Contemporary Hindu sources
are silent about Mahmud's attack on Somanatha, she assert, because "the
looting of a temple (was) not such an extraordinary event, given that some
Hindu rulers also attacked the temple of those they had conquered, or in
order to confiscate the wealth of the temple."
Thapar however ignores the pertinent
fact that the alleged attacks by Hindu kings on images and temples did
not rest upon any shastric commandment. In the few known incidents when
images were taken away from enemy kings, the Hindu ruler honoured the idols
thus acquired and built stately temples for them. As for the so- called
Hindu destruction of Buddhist and Jain places of worship, even the evidence
for such acts is vague and unconvincing.
Strangely for a historian, Thapar
takes no cognisance of the Prophet smashing 360 idols at Kaba and the Quranic
injunction: "Fight them until idolatry is no more and God's religion is
supreme". Artificially insisting that political and economic motivations
superseded iconoclastic compulsions, she never explains why all Muslim
(and not just Turk) attacks on temples always resulted in the desecration
of idols. Indeed, Arab literature on Sind and Hind is obsessed with idolatry.
The Arab rulers of Sind even sent cartloads of idols to Baghdad in lieu
of revenue. The Turkish assault on Hindu idols was more thorough, as their
Indian encounter was lengthier than that of the Arabs. Iconoclasm, as Thapar
well knows, was a feature of Islamic polity till its very end; few rulers
were an exception to this rule.
Mahmud's assault on Somanatha electrified
the Muslim world because it was viewed as a sequel to the Prophet's action
at Kaba. Muslims identified the Somanatha idol as that of Manat, believed
to have been ferreted out of Mecca just prior to the Prophet's attack on
its temple. By destroying Somanatha, therefore, Mahmud was virtually completing
the Prophet's work; hence the act was hailed as "the crowing glory of Islam
over idolatry".
To establish economic motives for
iconoclasm, Thapar contends that exaggerated reports of wealth motivated
ghazis to join Mahmud's Indian campaigns. But this ignores the evidence
of early migration of Ghazis from Central Asia to eastern Bengal in service
of the Crescent. Muinuddin, founder of the Chishti order in India, set
up his headquarters in Ajmer, the heartland of the Hindu military aristocracy.
Sufis participated in warfare in the Deccan during the 13th and 14th centuries,
to extend the frontiers of Islam. The lure of lucre is difficult to discern
in these cases.
Equally awkward is Thapar's claim
that substantial numbers of mercenaries in the Ghaznavid armies "were Indians,
and, presumably Hindu." Surely she does not suggest that the Turkish conquest
of India was a Hindu-Turk joint venture?
Thapar views the construction and
destruction of Somanatha as a "counterposed legitimation," whereby re-consecration
gave legitimacy to Hindu kings and destruction validated the Turkish Sultans.
Surely this proves the conflicting value systems of the two communities.
Marxists must explain why Turkish vandalism was almost always directed
at non-Islamic objects, but not against mosques or other sacred architecture
associated with rival Muslim kings. For instance, when Mahmud attacked
the Ismailis of Multan, he did not destroy their mosque.
Thapar makes much of the contemporary
Hindu silence on Somanatha as if, barring it, the Hindus catalogued every
other instance of Islamic iconoclasm. The fact is that the Turkish intolerance
of imagery deeply preoccupied Hindus. Medieval Hindu historiographical
works, temple hagiographies (mahatmayas), site histories (sthala puranas),
dharma nibandhas and even inscriptions, all bear witness to the experience
of cultural disruption and desecration of the sacred by the Turks. Islamic
iconoclasm lay at the heart of the psychological rejection of the Turks
(turushkas) and is central to the remembered medieval past of the Hindus.
Medieval Hindu literature grapples
with the searing issues raised by Islamic iconoclasm. In the Ekalinga mahatmaya,
the sage Narada enquires of the God Vayu how an image of God could be destroyed
by Muslims if it was indeed God himself. Vayu responds that just as the
demons had tried to harm Gods, so the Yavanas had a natural tendency to
destroy divine images. Though they had the capacity to retaliate, the Gods
understood that their conflict with the demons was eternal and that each
was fated to suffer setbacks, for periodic dissolution of the world was
part of the natural order. The Vimanarcanakalpa, a medieval priestly handbook
of the Vaisnava Vaikhanasa school, lays down ritual procedures for burying
images in times of danger.
The rich body of medieval Jain literature
is notable for its strident assertion of the power of the faith and images
to withstand the Islamic onslaught. Images that had retreated or gone into
exile reappear more powerful than ever, and even those mutilated reveal
increased ability to perform miracles. Jain literature discusses the entire
gamut of problems related to image worship in the medieval era, including
the appropriate medium in which to fashion icons in times of Muslim threat,
the sufferings of the true faith in an age of declining virtue, the necessity
of hiding images for safety, the divine order to unearth images and resume
their worship, the smashing of images by "those wicked Muslims" and their
final restitution through the agency of a devotee. Thapar overlooks all
these concerns and equates Turkish iconoclasm with an imagined Hindu vandalism.
Notwithstanding her attempts to
invoke the class factor, medieval Hindu literature associates all sections
of society, viz., kings, saints, and ordinary devotees, with the heartbreaking
task of protection and restitution of images in temples. The recovery of
buried images invariably follows a divine communication to a humble cowherd.
In the case of the Sri Ranganatha image, a female devotee follows the Sultanate
army all the way to Delhi and is instrumental in the eventually retrieval
of the idol.
Thapar makes much of a land grant
by the Hindus of Somanatha to a trader from Hormuz for constructing a mosque
some two centuries after Mahmud's raid. Yet this Hindu gesture only reinforces
the opposing perspectives of the two sides. While the Arab trader wished
Somanatha might come to Islam, his Hindu hosts showed no desire to convert
him, and facilitated the construction of a mosque so he could properly
adhere to his faith. Thapar's shoddy insistence that the gesture was dictated
by the greed of Hindu traders for a share of the Arab trade is typical
Marxist drivel. Events in the erstwhile Soviet Union (the former Mecca
of those supposedly in the vanguard of the proletariat) prove that man
does not live by bread alone. The overt manifestation of Christianity in
Mother Russia (briefly the Soviet fatherland) should convince Marxists
of the need for deference to the spiritual underpinnings of Indian civilisation.
Going through Thapar's bibliography,
one is struck by a major omission. Though Thapar cites a volume recently
edited by Sheldon Pollock, she studiously ignores two of his most seminal
articles on the Islamic encounter with India. In the first, Pollock demonstrates
that the period between the 11th and 14th centuries represented a special
historical juncture in which a Ramayana imagery became predominant in the
public political sphere. And the Hindu rulers of the time deliberately
styled themselves as Rama incarnates, dedicated to complete his mission
against demon forces.
In the second article, Pollock shows
that massive volumes of intellectual works emanated from the courts of
Hindu kings around this time. At one level, these dharma nibandhas were
digests on social-religious codes of conduct for Hindu society. In essence,
however, they were a major reaffirmation of dharma which, for the first
time since the writing of the dharmasastras, faced in the persona of the
Central Asian Turks, a radically different and resolutely unassimilating
social and religious formation. It would have been interesting to know
Thapar's response to such crucial observations.
(The reviewer is a Fellow, Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, Delhi)
