EXCELLENT REVIEW IN TRIBUNE CHANDIGARH

Sunday November 29, 2015

Kuldip Singh Dhir

The best thing about history is that it can serve as an early warning system. History revisited in Ocean of Cobras has definitely some lessons to share, for it draws our attention to the gory details of an epic battle for secular India. It views the conflict between Dara and Aurangzeb as not one for the throne but between two ideologies. Dara’s love for all religions and secular thinking are poised against Aurangzeb’s staunch Islamic beliefs. Hindus and Muslims have lived together for centuries with little conflict, until alienated by Aurangzeb’s unyielding orthodox beliefs, resulting in widening antagonism in succeeding years. 

Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists will find Dara’s exploration of their core philosophies hard to deny. Though Aurangzeb managed to eliminate all his rivals to rule the mighty Mughal Empire, yet he failed miserably in stopping its relentless slide into ruin. Although it staggered on for another 150 years, it had shattered in body and spirit by the time he died.

Aurangzeb was otherwise a remarkable ruler, intelligent planner, shrewd guide, and wasn’t attracted towards vice, luxury or sloth. A liberal secular empire assiduously built by Akbar was destroyed by his own grandson who mutilated this character with his inflexible bigotry. Murad Ali Baig has portrayed all this in an unputdownable novel. To add drama to dry historical account and transform it into fiction, the novelist has deftly used some literary devices. Mubarak Ali, a fictional eunuch in the imperial Zenana, known to all the princes and princesses, is the narrator of the story. The tools of astrological predictions, soothsayers and omens which was so common in medieval India, have been used to provide psychological justification for behavioural prejudices. Intimate description of moments of romance and desperate yearning make the reader flip pages.

Except for certain brief flashbacks, the narrative moves almost as a whole in a linear manner from 1630 AD and ends with the execution of Dara in 1659 AD. The epilogue takes it further to make the curious readers aware of the fate of all main historical characters in next 50 years, which reads more like history than a novel. The storyline starts with young prince Aurangzeb slipping a small frog down the back of his sister Roshanara’s dress, earning his father’s wrath. Juxtaposed with it is Dara’s similar prank of smearing honey inside Aurangzeb’s cap, which attracts an army of tiny ants making him leap about in frenzy. Unlike Aurangzeb, Dara is not reprimanded. Ordinary events like these have been presented that sow the seeds of distrust, bitterness, prejudice in the psyche of various members of the royal family. 

Kind and merciful Dara’s lofty ideas about unity of all religions and sly and ambitious Aurangzeb’s inflexible orthodoxy are pitted against each other. These leitmotifs take us deeper and deeper into the mysterious ocean of cobras, which is a metaphor for Aurangzeb and his accomplices. Incidentally, the metaphor and the amazing event related to it have been recorded in Storia do Mogor written by Victorian gunner Nicclao Manucci, who served with Dara and the imperial forces in 17th century.

Training and growth of princes, their military expeditions, Deccan diversion, death of Mumtaz, illness of Shah Jahan and the battles for the throne are the foci around which the narrative revolves. This bloody struggle for empire cost more than two lakh deaths in battles at Dharmat, Bahadurpur, Samugarh, Khajua and Deorai. Young men of an entire generation perished in these futile battles. The ruthless killing of Dara is heart wrenching. The novel takes the reader through royal palace into the harem, to royal hunts and to the kingdoms of rivals and rulers. 

Mubarak Ali, the narrator, fights in the armies of rival princes and describes the bloody battles. His adventures take the reader from the limpid lakes of Kashmir to the deserts of Sindh and the lush forests of Central India. 

This is a highly readable and informative tale of adventures, reckless courage, cunning and tender romance, and heart wrenching tragedy, in which fundamentalism vanquished the secular voice. The victory, however, ultimately spelt ruin not only for the victorious ruler, also for his co-religionists and there lies a lesson for us all.

PSYCHOLOGY OF REVENGE IN ISLAM

My mistake. This was the first article in Outlook Online.

 It is claimed that the horrific recent bombings in Paris had been in revenge for the role of France in bombing ISIS fighters in Syria. The cycle of revenge goes on and on but few people know the significance of revenge to Islamic fanatics. Few know that revenge is an old Arab custom that has unfortunately become a part of the Muslim tradition worldwide. It had been a necessary survival custom in the precarious times when small tribes of Arab Bedouins had to protect themselves from bigger or more powerful tribes who, without the fear of revenge, could loot or molest them. Life in the desert was always very tenuous and there was fierce competition over the scarce sources of food or water. Individuals could not survive except with the protection of the bonds of blood within their tribes. This was expressed in the Arab ideology of Muruwah that not only meant manliness, pride and courage but endurance in suffering, avenging each and every injustice  and unflinchingly defying stronger enemies regardless of the consequences. This philosophy also glorified the most generous hospitality to friends and equally intense hatred to enemies.

Oppressors had to therefore be very careful for this well established tribal code made it certain that any injustice would be avenged at some future date. Regardless of power and position no one could ever be absolutely safe from attack and had to tolerate lesser tribes and be very careful not to incite serious animosity. The American cowboy glorification of revenge also arose out of similar compulsions among numerous isolated ranchers who, far from legal remedies, had to protect themselves from their bigger oppressors. This revenge philosophy has plagued Islam from its earliest days. The early Khalifs Umar and Uthman as well as the prophet’s own son in law Ali were all assassinated by vengeful factions. The predominantly Bedouin Kharajite faction, who were unhappy that Ali had not avenged the assassination of Uthman, mainly caused the split into Sunni and Shia sects that was to cause so much bloodshed over the centuries. These Kharajites, or Salafis, had a very narrow and extremist view of the words of the prophet. Their successors especially the Wahhabis after the late 18^th century were to gain great importance when the Al Saud family captured Medina and Mecca in 1924 and then gained the huge power of oil riches in 1938 to export their extreme brand of Islam that was later an intrinsic part of Taliban thinking.

Actually, many Wahhabi ideas were a heresy to the words and actions of the prophet. Few know that his conquest of Mecca had been achieved without shedding a drop of blood through a year long, almost Gandhian, campaign of patience and moral principles. Muhammad preached peace, except in times of actual combat. The word Jihad is rarely found in the Quran but is referred to 199 times in the Hadith that was written two centuries after the death of The Prophet. The Wahhabis interpreted Jihad to mean a holy war even though there were two Jihads according to Muhammad. The greater Jihad meant a struggle against one’s own weakness while a lesser Jihad was to fight against injustice. Both enjoined adherents to struggle on regardless of the odds with the certain faith that Allah would come to the aid of the sincere devotee. But there were strict rules and Jihad could not be declared by anybody but only by an authority of widely accepted repute.

The Quran very clearly says that killing in the name of Islam was the opposite of Jihad and had expressly forbidden harm or the killing of women and children. It was also forbidden to take hostages or to torture or kill prisoners. Even suicide was forbidden. Muhammad had also said that anyone who sets another… even an ant… on fire commits the greatest sin and is destined to the fires of hell.

There was no need for such a philosophy of revenge in more affluent pastoral or urban communities and was thus unknown in the philosophies of China, India, Europe or in many other societies. In fact mature cultures understood that accommodation was much preferable to violence. This was so well enunciated by Buddha who had preached that hatred can never be appeased by hatred but only by love and that the only lasting victories were the conquest of the heart because victories in the battlefield only caused the defeated to lie down in sorrow and wait for revenge making future peace impossible.   

The seemingly endless cycle of violence will only end when people learn that violence is the childish recourse of the weak and immature and that lasting peace can only be achieved by finding `win-win’ solutions where the fears and concerns of all the opposing factions can be accommodated. Muslim clerics should understand that the philosophy of revenge has made Muslim communities viewed with great suspicion worldwide. They should lead their followers to go back to the words of their prophet instead of following the words of the many revisionists who have hijacked the faith.

Bedouins and cowboys had little claim to wisdom and their philosophy of revenge is unsuited to mature societies. The Muruwah spirit will ensure that Islamic terrorism will not surrender to brute military force. But it can be eroded when the terrorists believe that, far from serving their religion, they a disobeying the sacred words of their prophet and will go to hell instead of the promised paradise. Evil things are never committed with such enthusiasm, pride and joy as when they are done out of revenge and especially if they are done in the name of religion.

HOW ISLAM BECAME HIJACKED BY REVISIONISTS

This article was published in the e-edition of Outlook magazine

The brutal killing of over 130 innocent people in Paris is another example of the mindlessness of Islamic terrorism. Few people however realize that terrorism had never been endorsed by the prophet Muhammad nor sanctioned in the Quran. Like all religions the traditions of Islam were however frequently changed over time and many passionate clerics moved Islamic Sharia from the mostly gentle words of Muhammad to the angry rhetoric of the Taliban or ISIS. The Quran clearly says that killing in the name of Islam is the opposite of Jihad and expressly forbids an attack on anyone who had offered no offence. It is forbidden to harm or to kill women and children, take hostages or to torture or kill prisoners and commit suicide. 

Two hundred years after the death of the prophet several pious Muslim scholars put together another sacred book called the Hadis (or Hadith) that told Muslims that they should not only follow the words of the prophet but also examples from his life. Several scholars like al Bukhari tried to reconstruct the stories of his life from the testimonies of people who claimed to be descendants of the prophet or his companions. After eight or ten generations such testimonies were very dubious. Restrictions on women like the veil only now become an Islamic requirement. Many Muslims now began to copy the prophet’s behavior as acts of piety. Even acts like putting on the left slipper first or entering a room with the right foot and every detail including his clothes, habits or behavior became acts of piety. 

The next major change came with the Abbasid Caliphate (750 – 1258). The huge Islamic empire with many diverse races needed new legal authorities like the Qazi (magistrate) to manage complex legal matters, police, taxes and the status of non-Muslim subjects. So Islamic law underwent many changes but adopted many Jewish and Persian laws and split into six schools of law. The Jewish Torah (Toraat) introducing the Jewish sins including blasphemy and heresy that now became Islamic sins. Clerics began prescribing draconian death sentences by burning, stoning, beheading and strangulation as prescribed in the Torah even though the Quran had never demanded such punishments.

Four categories of punishment in Islamic law seem to have been devised much after the Quran. These were Qisas, (retaliation) as `an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth’ that is prescribed in the Jewish Torah; Diyya, or compensation paid to the heirs of a victim in blood money or ransom; Hadud or harsh pre determined punishments for severe crimes like murder, adultery, blasphemy, intoxication, idolatry or apostasy and Tazir that were punishments given at the discretion of a Qazi. The Quran is silent about alcohol and quite mild about intoxication that became a sin according to the authors of the Hadis.

In 1256, after the bloody sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols, Ahmad ibn Tamiyya, a Muslim scholar, was driven out of Iraq and he defined a new policy to divide the Islamic world into two. `Dar ul Islam’ (abode of Islam) and `Dar ul Harb’ (abode of disbelievers). He also redefined the word Jihad to mean a `Holy War’ In 1683 the defeat of the Turkish armies outside Vienna marked the end of Islamic expansion and the rise of European powers that were to soon dominate the world and make Muslim nations react with increasingly narrow orthodoxy. The rise of Europe resulted in the impoverishment of many great Muslim empires and Muslim cultures sank from liberal scholarship to narrow minded illiteracy allowing clerics to exploit the frustration.  

Then, in the eighteenth century, Islam was completely hijacked by Mohammad Abd Al Wahhab (1703 – 1792) who started the Sunni Wahhabiya movement that accepted the authority of the Quran and Hadis but opposed all innovations, superstitions and deviances from their narrow interpretation of these in a very puritanical and legalistic manner. They considered the veneration of pirs, the intercession of Imams, religious holidays, and other devotional acts as heresies and even they desecrated the tomb of Muhammad. With the support of the ibn Saud family of Arabia they promoted an extreme form of Islam that led to formation of the Taliban and Al Qaida.

After the Balfour declaration of 1922 at the end of the First World War, Britain casually divided up the former Turkish territories they had occupied and Israel became an independent country in 1948. This immediately triggered a bitter war between Israel and its Muslim neighbors of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria leading to an unending cycle of conflict ever since.

Then American support to Pakistan for the creation of the Taliban in their covert war to oust USSR from Afghanistan was to make the Taliban a potent force. Radical Muslim clerics would target impoverished young boys who were taught the Quran in Arabic that they could not understand and fool them to believe false translations or interpretations to make them into fanatical terrorists. The American `War on Terror’ against Iraq (1991 and 2003) and Afghanistan (2001) then made most Muslims infuriated by these morally unjustified invasions.

Muslim clerics continued to give the greatest reverence to the Quran and the Hadis as their most sacred books but most of their religious pronouncements were actually dictated by the words of numerous passionate revisionists who preached long after the time of the Prophet. The Quran, for example, was unprecedented in its time for its support of women and their rights but because all the subsequent clerics were men the gentle words of the prophet were steadily eroded to make Islam the most restrictive religion concerning women. Most Muslims accept the sanctity of the words of the prophet but they need to ask themselves whether they should believe there is any sanctity in the words of all the many revisionists. They need to also ask themselves why they should be fooled to go bloody deaths by listening to the words of bigoted Mullahs and other clerics.

Islamic terrorism will not easily succumb to military action but the terrorists might submit to social pressure if the large moderate Muslim majority convinces them that their actions are absolutely against the injunctions of their prophet and will get them to the eternal fire instead of the paradise they fervently hope for.   

Book review: Ocean of Cobras

 

14 November, 2015

Ocean of Cobras: The Chronicle of a Slave to the Mughal Prince Dara Shikoh, a book by Murad Ali Baig.

Writing history from stories is a major intellectual exercise.   But creating a story out of history requires more – an imagination that reflects what happened, at the same time walking through the spirit of the time.  Murad Ali Baig in his Ocean of Cobras has done precisely that – to give flesh and blood to the skeletal memory of the penultimate moment of Mughal rule on the sub-continent – the final years of Emperor Shah Jahan and the fratricidal struggle for the throne.

The book is a portrait of Dara Shikoh - a neglected ecumenical figure in histories of the period - favorite son of Shah Jahan and one of three brothers of Mughal Badshah Aurangzeb.  The period acquires life through the eyes, ears,  and soul of Mubarak Ali, a court eunuch and slave who enjoyed unique access to the extended royal Mughal family.  This voice renders many tales and tales within tales, bringing alive late seventeenth and early eighteenth century "India" with embroidered detail - the first family, court politics, battles between the brothers, their lust, loves and lives, and their hopes, fears, jealousies and hatreds.

The scenes and acts change: forays into tribal life; the ritual of the royal hunt; the finery of the zenana; seamless seductions; the gossip of the bazaar; culinary journeys into sumptuous banquets; and encounters with visitors from afar.  Beneath the glitter, the hustle and bustle of bazaars and the moving cities of royalty, lurks the rivalry between the siblings.  The tensions surface, pull and fall like the tow of currents in shallow waters - sensuous versus the austere; the laid back versus the disciplined; liberal versus orthodox Islam; the other-worldly versus the here and now; Dara versus Aurangzeb.

Immersed in the struggle and shaped by it are the visions, characters and passions of the two brothers who wrestle for purpose and pre-eminence.  Few may know that Dara commissioned the first translations of the Upanishads and Bhagvad Gita into Persian.  One encounters the first travellers from the West and their impressions of the country when early modern Europe was striking root.  Others would learn more of the intricate and fickle Hindu-Muslim alliances that influenced outcomes of the time.  The two faiths and the family of the ageing and marginalised Shah Jahan were bound and broken by exigencies of temporal power.  A persistent question that lingers in the narrative is what might India have been, had Dara reigned instead of his brother.

Beyond this larger question is the salience of the social and the play of chance which rarely find place in conventional accounts:  the chance encounter of Shah Jahan with a mendicant whose prophecy colors the psyche of a father toward his sons – particularly his suspicion of Aurangzeb and pampering of Dara, and its larger effect on family relations and court politics.  The restrained yet haunting role of the sisters - Jahanara, tenderly passionate but enigmatic; the malevolent but clairvoyant Roshanhara,  and the melancholic Gauharara;  and the shenanigans of the elder king with the wives of his generals who later come to haunt Dara.  These and other anecdotes string the high politics of empire into the human soil of everyday life.

Woven into these tales are excursions into military organization, strategy and technology of Mughal warfare, how armies moved and fought more than three hundred years ago.  Baig's rendition of tactics, maneuvers and sieges, logistics, weaponry and marches is masterful.  One moment you are in the midst of a campaign – the twists and turns in the fog of battle.  At another, on the Malwa plateau, or the climax of the final encounter between the brothers near Ajmer.  It is a ring side view from the howdah of an elephant, of changing fortunes of nobles and soldiers, personal tugs that underlay combat, and the ideas and expectations that compel men and women to act and choose as individuals, while silently a collective destiny forms.

Importantly, the book quietly touches some of the central themes that persist in the governance of modern India:  the intrigues and complications of dynastic politics; the relationship between state and religion; the long misunderstood engagement of the Islamic and Hindu way of life; and the continued distance between the ruler and ruled.  The Ocean of Cobras is an enchanting primer into our late medieval past which has much relevance for understanding the medieval present.

Kishore Mandhyan

Former Political Advisor - Cabinet of the United Nation's Secretary General

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MOTORCYCLE REVOLUTIONS

My 3rd column in Business Standard Weekend.

“Those were the days my friend… we thought they would never end… “ crooned Mary Hopkins  way back in 1968. In those days smart young men had just graduated from big 4-stroke bikes that used to be imported like those of BSA, Triumph, Norton, BMW and even the American monsters like Harley Davidson and Indian Chief to little Lambaretta and Vespa scooters. The Lamby faded out and the Vespa evolved into the Bajaj that quickly became the mainstay for almost every Government babu. With the lumbering Ambassador and Fiat cars It ruled the Indian roads throughout the 70’s while the Rajdoot and Jawa motorcycles as well as the old Royal Enfield motorcycles trailed far behind. I began my motoring on a curious American 300 CC Allstate scooter and later graduated to a 500cc 4-stroke Jawa that I rescued from a junk heap.

In 1970 I joined Escorts Limited that used to make the 175 cc Rajdoot. By this time small Japanese bikes had revolutionized the global roads but none of the Japanese manufacturers were willing to part with their technologies. In 1977 Escorts persuaded Yamaha to sell their technology for the 2-stroke 350 cc Yamaha RD 350 motorcycle because they were phasing it out. The twin cylinder bike was one of the world’s fastest road bikes but way ahead of its time and was not a success even though it taught Escorts a great deal about Japanese engineering and systems. Escorts also discovered that to make this bike they had to also enter further technical collaborations with eight other Japanese companies for the manufacture of carburetors, clutch assemblies and even the spokes for the wheels.

2-stroke and 4-stroke

Conventional wisdom at the time had it that the 4-stroke technology was best for engines above 200 cc and that smaller bikes should use 2-stroke engines. In 1980 the Government decided to allow 100 cc motorcycles and issued licenses to four bike makers. Suzuki was first off the mark in collaboration with Kinetic Engineering in 1983. It did very well until Honda collaborated with a cycle maker Hero to introduce the 4-stroke 100 cc CD100 the following year. Critics claimed that it was too complicated for India’s after sales service but its extraordinary fuel efficiency, captured in their memorable slogan… “Fill it, Shut it, Forget it”, made it an instant hit.

The Yamaha RX100 next entered the market in 1985. Though 2-stroke it belted out a huge 11 bhp as compared to the 7.5 bhp of the Honda CD100. It got off to a slow start with its higher fuel consumption but gradually became the preferred bike for youngsters who wanted its phenomenal speed and performance. A year later Bajaj introduced Kawasaki’s KB100 that was not a great success because Honda had captured the space of buyers who wanted economy and Yamaha had the market among those who wanted performance.  

Hero Honda’s CD100 and successor bike models not only offered outstanding fuel efficiency with very adequate performance but soon proved to be very reliable as well. After that all 2-stroke engines came under a cloud with concerns about pollution and had to be phased out. Hero Honda therefore flourished despite growing competition from home grown 4-stroke bikes made by TVS and Bajaj and from Yamaha who were now an independent foreign company in India.

Bajaj parted company with their collaborator Piaggio who owned the Vespa brand and Piaggio formed a new collaboration with LML to continue with the making of their famous product. They both did well for a few years until they began to lose ground before the onslaught of so many good 100 cc motorcycles and both companies suddenly stopped scooter production. After Kinetic Suzuki tied up with TVS while Kinetic tied up with Mahindra & Mahindra after trying to battle it alone for several years. It was very difficult for small companies to survive in intensely competitive markets.

With a loosening of Government controls foreign companies were allowed to build or import their models. Suzuki motorcycles as a 100% foreign company then began to fill the gap making a range of scooters and were followed by scooters from Honda who had separated from Hero in 2011. The excellent scooters from this new company made them great hits and scooters began to revive and make inroads into the huge motorcycle market. Today scooters are growing fast and account for nearly 30% of India’s 2-wheeler sales. India is the world’s largest 2-wheeler market today after China with an annual sale of over 19 million units.  

Bigger bikes

All the bike and scooter companies broke out of the 100 cc restrictions of the past and bigger bikes and scooters began to be offered to Indian buyers. In the world of 2-wheelers the huge volume of small machines are mostly commuting vehicles in warm countries like India, China, South-East Asia and southern Europe. Big bikes, that often cost as much as a car, are mostly `boys toys’ for the rich and sporty of cooler climes. India had long been a market for commuting bikes and few Indian customers were interested in big machines. When the BMW 650 CC Funduro was launched in the late 90’s it had great difficulty selling 80 machines but there several sporty buyers today who are going for big bikes imported by Harley Davidson, Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Suzuki and Triumph despite the heavy customs duties they have to pay. There is nothing like a road of a big bike to stir the adrenalin and to catch the attention of all the pretty girls.

Almost forgotten in this hectic scramble was India’s first and most iconic motorcycle the Royal Enfield that began life as a World War II messenger machine. Madras Motors went into a collaboration with Enfield Cysles to make it in 1955 and production began a few years later. It was a rather sluggish 18 bhp 350 cc 4-stroke machine with a classic personality and distinctive `dhug… dhug… dhug” exhaust note. Its quality used to be questionable and many riders getting oil on their boots used to call it the `royal oilfield’. Sales used to be sluggish till 1990 when Eicher Motors took control of the company. Eicher retained the classic styling of the RE but completely revolutionized the production technology to quickly make it a very popular and sought after product that is offered with 500 bhp engines as well. It is available in eight models that include a low slung cruiser and has a long waiting list despite impressive sales growth.

BOX

Brijmohan Lall Munjal who died recently at the age of 92 was without doubt the doyen of India’s motorcycle industry. His company Hero Cycles made cycle parts and then cycles from 1954. He was impressively tall and his warm and genial personality must have charmed the heads of Honda Motor company who entered a joint venture to make the Hero Majestic moped that was followed by the Honda motorcycle in 1984. Honda and Hero were a very good partnership in which the products, manufacturing systems and marketing were guided according to Honda systems. Though the two companies parted ways in August 2011, the new company Hero MotoCorp continued the production and marketing disciplines to continue with impressive innovations and growth. 

IS INDIA A HOMOGENEOUS NATION...

...or is it still a land of many thousand tribes and cultures?

The huge network of railways and highways built over the past two centuries now connect almost all parts of India and persuade many to believe that India is one big homogeneous nation with only a few variations in languages, religions, races and customs. The ardent champions of Indian nationalism want everyone to believe that India is a country with one single cultural, linguistic, social and even religious identity. Though India has some dozen religions, and hundreds of religious sub cults within Hinduism itself, many Indian philosophers tried to promote the idea of a common golden thread of religious philosophy connecting all Indian cultures when they proposed the theory of “Unity in Diversity.”

Diana Eck’s book `India- a sacred geography’ details the impact of the nearly a hundred million pilgrims who travel every year to hundreds of holy places from the Himalayas to remote areas throughout India. There are Yatras (pilgrimages) to hundreds of Dhams (holy seats), Tirthas (river fords) and Melas (congregations) including many Sufi shrines. Many million Indians therefore have a physical experience of India’s varied geography and this huge mingling of numerous ethnic people speaking different languages share many religious ideas even if they often worship different gods. All these contribute to a uniquely colorful and generally very tolerant Indian identity.

Geography shapes history and India has for many centuries been a gigantic patchwork of numerous small fertile areas separated from each other by mountains, rivers and thick tiger infested forests that were distinct from each other like a thousand islands. In ancient Sanskrit texts they were sixteen Mahājanapadas or "great realms" that were the big oligarchic republics that had existed from the sixth to fourth centuries BC. Ancient Buddhist literature makes frequent references to these sixteen great republics. For every Mahajanapada there were numerous smaller Janapadas.These sixteen Mahajanapadas were:

Vriji (Assam),

Chedi (Nepal),

Anga (roughly the present day Bengal),

Koshala (East UP),

Magadha (Bihar),

Kashi (Varanasi),

Malla (Allahabad),

Vatsa (west UP),

Panchala (east Punjab),

Kuru (west Punjab),

Matsya West Rajasthan),

Surasena (south east Rajasthan),

Avanti (Madhya Pradesh near Ujjain),

Gandhara (north west Punjab near Taxila),

Kambhoja (Kabul)

Assaka, a Deccan area south east of Hyderabad.

Assaka was the only kingdom south of the Vindhya Mountains that suggests that most of south India was still unknown to the composers of the ancient texts. Many other kingdoms must have also flourished in ancient India unknown to the Vedic or Buddhist scribes of this early period.

The texts of the Mahabharat, Ramayana and many other Hindu and Buddhist texts describe how each little tribal kingdom was separated from others by thick forests, rivers and hills. Each of these gradually developed their own cultures with distinctive dialects, objects of worship and customs. As in tribal societies in other lands they had strong family bonds that kept them united and their tribal councils would attend to disputes and injustices. The punishment for any individual who defied tribal customs was to banish them from the tribe cutting off their identities making it very difficult to survive among other tribes that would usually not accept them, feed them or allow them to marry their girls. At later times when Brahminism dominated their religious and social life most of these tribes were grouped into a number of castes that too used excommunication as one of the main methods of making their members conform to their rules.

Anthropologists have considerable evidence to show that all human beings evolved from ape like hominids like Australopithecus who once inhabited the Olduvai Gorge in the Rift Valley of southern Africa about three million years ago. They probably moved on to south east Asia and many centuries later crossed over the ice bridges to populate Australia and America during the last Ice Age. Science can also trace human evolution from the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in studies of populations from all over the world. According to SIL International’s “Ethnologue report for Language Isolate 2007” India has more than two thousand ethnic groups. The Anthropological Survey of India estimates that India has 4,635 communities. The DNA of aboriginal tribes of the Andaman Islands is similar to the Australian aborigines.

The DNA of different Indian races show that all the main ancient ethnic groups like the descendents of Proto-Austroloids continue to inhabit most areas of south and central India, Negroids the south west, Mongoloid tribes the north east and Dravidians the south east areas. Dravidians probably originally came from west Asia and were later pushed south by a series of Caucasoid people like the Aryas, Greeks, Kushans, Parthians, Sakas, Jats and others who migrated from the steppes of central Asia. Later the Arabs, Mongols, Turks, Afghans, Chinese and European races all added to India’s brimming melting pot.

Many people wrongly consider Negroid, Australoid, or Mongoloid ethnic characteristics as being inferior to the Caucasoid types but few people know that any such inferiority is only through cultural evolution and not from any intellectual limitations. The Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian people are mostly mongoloid but have evolved distinctly different racial identities. The Innuits or Eskimos are of the same basic mongoloid racial stock but have suffered cultural degradation for hundreds of generations making them so focused on survival in an extremely difficult environment that their cultural horizons were naturally constrained. Other tribal people like the aboriginals of Australia, Andamans and the Bushmen of the Kalahari have been similarly affected.

People of any ethnic background can be as successful as any other. Children even from the most impoverished low caste families have often been very successful when given the opportunities of good education and social support. The success of Europeans and Americans during the past four hundred years and the impact of Hollywood movies made Caucasian features admired. Barak Obama, as president of USA, has single-handedly done more to demolish the idea of `White Supremacy’ than any other person or scientific discovery.

The Nazi myth of an Aryan super race was as much a fiction as the Aryan myth of Brahmin belief. The spurious idea of keeping pure Aryan blood from becoming contaminated by the blood of inferior races was to cause millions of deaths and unbelievable suffering. The refrence to Varna or skin colour in the Rig-veda was to cause great social injury for millions of people in India over the centuries. The division into four social classes only appears in two sklokas of the late Rigvedic Purusha Sukta  (RV 10.90. 11-12), which has the Brahman, Rajanya (not Kshatriya), Vaishya and Shudra classes emerging from the mouth, arms, thighs and feet of the primordial giant, Purusha. In the post-Vedic period, this division is elaborated in the Dharmashastra literature and later in the Puranas and other texts.

As the early tribes gradually settled into a number of different game rich forests a huge number of local customs dialects, religions and traditions evolved independently isolated from others till some of them began to merge through conquests or trade. According to anthropological studies each tribal area would usually jealously guard its resources of food and game from greedy neighbors. As each tribe had their own deities and many of their deities continued to be worshipped even after their followers shifted part of their allegiance to the gods of the bigger tribes that ruled over them turn by turn. Conquered tribes accepted the gods of bigger tribes but the idea of an all powerful supreme god was to come much later. 

Ancient India must have therefore once been a patchwork of thousands of local customs and languages. The existence of 22 official languages and 1,635 dialects (according to the 2011 census) confirm India’s gigantic linguistic diversity that is a reflection of India’s huge diversity in ethnic, religious or other traditions as well. Ethnologue, a comprehensive reference work cataloging all of the world’s known living languages, states that India has 454 living languages of which 447 are indigenous. The continuing vestiges of these early tribal roots are also evident from the many thousands of `gotras’, or lineages, that are part of India’s complicated caste system. Gotras were the lineages descended from a single ancient ancestor.

The Brahmins alone have the following main gotras: Agasthya, Ahabhunasa, Abnavana, Aliman, Angad, Angirasa, Akshinthala, Atreya, Atri, Badarayana,Barai, Bayan, Bachhasa, Bhalki, Bhargava, Bhaskar, Charora, Chaurasia, Chivukula, Chayavana, Dammiwal, Dadhichi, Dalabhya, Dhananjay, Dhanvantari, Galav, Gautam, Ghanara, Harita,  Haritash/ Haritsa, Jaabaali, Jaimini, Jamdagni, Kankar, Kankariya, Kanva, Kapila, Kapinjala, Kapisa, Karkata, Kashyapa, Kashav, Katyayana, Kaundilya, Kaudinya, Kaundrus, Kaushal, Kaushik, Kaushish, Krishnatrey, Kutsa, Kush, Lohitsya, Mandavya, Marichi, Markandeya, Maudgalya, Mudgal, Monash, Nagaich, Nanda, Paalavalli, Parashara, Pathak, Purugutsa, Ramanuja, Rikhi, Sakti, Salankayana, Sanatana, Sandilya, Sadanwalia, Sangar, Sankriti, Savarna, Shandilya, Shaunaka, Shiva, Shopauran Nagarwal, Soral, Srivatsa, Suryadhwaja, Tiwari, Upadyyay, Upamanyu, Upreti, Vadula, Vartantu, Vashishta, Vaishwanar, Vatashva, Vatsayan, Vishvamitra, Kamsi, Yaska, Vats and Vijaychan.

Brahmins account for only 5.6% of India’s population and there are many more lineages connected to Kshatriyas, Vaishyas as well as other castes that the Brahmins do not even wish to acknowledge.

After the forests were cleared for cultivation many tribes were assimilated into larger kingdoms people began to add the customs of the dominant rulers to their old ones. The tribes in every land had no standing armies though able bodied men would respond to attack by taking up clubs, spears and bows to indulge in the age old tribal pastime of mounting raids to steal cattle, women and treasures from their neighbors. They were however powerless against trained armies. The armies of the kingdoms that succeeded small tribes thrived on wars because soldiers had an insaitiable hunger for conquest and military glory.

Holding new territories was however difficult so most conquering rulers, in every country, would usually find it convenient reinstate the defeated rulers on their own thrones to be their vassals though they would be required to send tributes to their new sovereigns. Kautalya’s Arthashastra, written in the third century BC, details a complex political science for the management of these `Samantas’ or vassal kingdoms. Their priests provided a convenient ideology affirming divine sanction for this and other elaborate ceremonies like the royal coronation ceremony of Rajsuya Yagna as are recorded in numerous documents and land grants.

Tribal people readily accepted the new deities though they continued to worship their own ones. There was little conflict between their old ones and any new deity that claimed to offer them the boons of food or prosperity. After the 1st century AD a number of evangelical Aryan heroes came out of north India and passionately promoted their Vedic religion as they moved from north India to other areas. Local rulers were easily seduced by the many beautiful Brahmin rituals of royal consecration but they were not successful in eradicating the deep rooted earlier tribal beliefs so many local gods and goddesses continued to be revered along with the new Vedic deities. Over time the Brahmin priests had to accept many local customs. Today the unifying impact of mass media, television and cinema is creating a new homogenized monoculture and many local religious customs and practices are fading out along with many of their dialects and customs. 

Most of the debates and controversies concerning Hinduism today are fueled by a large number of predominantly Brahminised Hindus who want to promote Hinduism as a mono-culture and religion and dismiss the huge mass of local traditions as being irrelevant deviations to the themes that they so ardently believe in. Many believe that there is little to Hinduism outside the Vedas and no history except the fragments of history found in the voluminous Sanskrit texts. They believe that ancient India had a pristine pure ethnic and religious culture that was corrupted and polluted by foreign invaders. Actually these Brahmins had been quite tolerant to ethnic differences but not to the religions of Islam and Christianity that were evangelistic and intolerant.

Some Indians also claim that the boundaries of India should be extended far beyond the confines of the modern map of India to include Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mynamar and several other countries. They are correct in believing that `Indian’ rulers had, at some time of the other, ruled over wider areas. They however forget that at other times these `Hindu’ empires also disappeared to become part of foreign kingdoms.

They also forget that Chandra Gupta Maurya was probably a Jain and that his grandson, the great king Ashok, had been Buddhist and that Buddhism been the most prevalent religion in most parts of India for almost a thousand years. They seldom know that the very word `Hindu’ is a foreign word given by the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great in the 6<sup>th</sup> century BC to the people of the Indus who were inhabitants of his 19<sup>th</sup> province. As the Persians could not pronounce `S’, the word Sindu became Hindu that was later made the name for a great religion.