Day .21-JAWAHARLAL NEHRU - The Discovery of India (Continued)

CHAPTER FIVE

T H R O U G H THE AGES Nationalism and Imperialism under the Guptas

THE MAURYA EMPIRE FADED AWAY AND GAVE PLACE TO THE SUNGA dynasty, which ruled over a much smaller area. In the south great states were rising, and in the north the Bactrians, or Indo- Greeks, were spreading out from Kabul to the Punjab. Under Menander they threatened Pataliputra itself but were defeated and repelled. Menander himself succumbed to the spirit and atmos-phere of India and became a Buddhist, a famous one, known as King Milinda, popular in Buddhist legend and regarded almost as a saint. From the fusion of Indian and Greek cultures rose the Graeco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, the region covering Afghanistan and the frontier.

There is a granite pillar called the Heliodorus column, dating from the first century B.C., at Besnagar, near Sanchi in Central India, bearing an inscription in Sanskrit. This gives us a glimpse of the process of Indianization of the Greeks who had come to the frontier, and their absorption of Indian culture. The in-scription has been translated thus: 'This Garuda column of Vasudeva (Vishnu), the God of gods, was erected by Heliodorus, a worshipper of Vishnu, the son of Dion, and an inhabitant of Taxila, who came as Greek ambassador from the great King Antialcidas to King Kashiputra Bhagabhadra, the saviour, then reigning in the fourteenth year of his kingship.'

 'Three immortal precepts, when practised well, lead to heaven —self-restraint, self-sacrifice (charity), conscientiousness.'

In Central Asia the Shakas or Scythians (Seistan=Shakasthan) had established themselves in the Oxus Valley. The Yueh Chih, coming from further east, drove them out and pushed them into North India. These Shakas became converts to Buddhism and Hinduism. Among the Yueh Chih, one of the clans, the Kushans, established their supremacy and then extended their sway over Northern India. They defeated the Shakas and pushed them still further south, the Shakas going to Kathiawad and the Deccan. The Kushans thereupon established an extensive and durable empire over the whole of North India and a great part of Central Asia. Some of them became converts to the Hindu faith, but most of them became Buddhists, and their most famous king, Kanishka, is also one of the heroes of Buddhist legend, which records his great deeds and public works. Buddhist though he was, it appears that the state religion was a mixed affair to which even Zoroastrianism had contributed. This borderland state, called the Kushan Empire, with its seat near modern Peshawar, and the old university of Taxila near by, became the meeting place of men from many nations. There the Indians met the Scythians, the Yueh Chih, the Iranians, the Bactrian Greeks, the Turks, and the Chinese, and the various cultures reacted on each other. A vigorous school of sculpture and paint-ing arose as a result of their interactions. It was during this period that, historically, the first contacts took place between China and India, and a Chinese embassy came to India in 64 A.C. Minor but very welcome gifts of China to India at that time were the peach and the pear trees. Right on the borders of the Gobi Desert, at Turfan and Kucha, rose fascinating amalgams of Indian, Chinese, and Iranian cultures.

During the Kushan period a great schism divided Buddhism into two sections—the Mahayana and the Hinayana—and con-troversy raged between them and, as has been India's way, the issue was put to debate in great assemblies, to which representa-tives came from all over the country. Kashmir was situated near the centre of the empire and was full of this debate and of cultural activities. One name stands out in this controversy, that of Nagarjuna, who lived in the first century A.C. He was a tower-ing personality, great in Buddhist scholarship and Indian philo-sophy, and it was largely because of him that Mahayana trium-phed in India. It was the Mahayana doctrine that spread to China, while Ceylon and Burma adhered to Hinayana.

The Kushans had Indianized themselves and had become patrons of Indian culture; yet an undercurrent of nationalist reistance to their rule continued, and when, later, fresh tribes poured into India, this nationalist and anti-foreign movement took shape at the beginning of the fourth century A.C. Another great ruler, also named Chandragupta, drove out the new intruders and established a powerful and widespread empire.

Thus began the age of the imperial Guptas in 320 A.C. which produced a remarkable succession of great rulers, successful in war and in the arts of peace. Repeated invasions had produced a strong anti-foreign feeling and the old Brahmin-Kshatriya element in the country was forced to think in terms of defence both of their homeland and their culture. The foreign elements which had been absorbed were accepted, but all new-comers met with a vigorous resitance, and an attempt was made to build up a homogenous state based on old Brahminic ideals. But the old self-assurance was going and these ideals began to develop a rigidity which was foreign to their nature. India seemed to draw into her shell, both physically and mentally.

Yet that shell was deep enough and wide enough. Previously, in the ages since the Aryans had come down to what they called Aryavarta or Bharatvarsha, the problem that faced India was to produce a synthesis between this new race and culture and the old race and civilization of the land. To that the mind of India devoted itself and it produced an enduring solution built on the strong foundations of a joint Indo-Aryan culture. Other foreign elements came and were absorbed. They made little difference. Though India had many contacts with other countries through trade and otherwise, essentially she was absorbed in herself and paid little attention to what happened elsewhere. But now periodic invasion by strange peoples with strange customs had shaken her up and she could no longer ignore these eruptions, which not only broke up her political structure but endangered her cultural ideals and social structure also. The reaction was essentially a nationalist one, with the strength as well as the narrowness of nationalism. That mixture of religion and philo-sophy, history and tradition, custom and social structure, which in its wide fold included almost every aspect of the life of India, and which might be called Brahminism or (to use a later word) Hinduism, became the symbol of nationalism. It was indeed a national religion, with its appeal to all those deep instincts, racial and cultural, which form the basis everywhere of nation-alism to-day. Buddhism, child of Indian thought, had its nation-alist background also. India was to it the holy land where Buddha had lived and preached and died, where famous scholars and saints had spread the faith. But Buddhism was essentially international, a world religion, and as it developed and spread it became increasingly so. Thus it was natural for the old Brah-minic faith to become the symbol again and again of nationalist revivals. That faith and philosophy were tolerant and chivalrous to the various religions and racial elements in India, and they still continued to absorb them into their wide-flung structure, but they became increasingly aggressive to the outsider and sought to protect themselves against his impact. In doing so, the spirit of nationalism they had roused often took on the semblance of imperialism as it frequently dees when it grows in strength. The age of the Guptas, enlightened, vigorous, highly cultured, and full of vitality as it was, rapidly developed these imperia-listic tendencies. One of its great rulers, Samudragupta, has been called the Indian Napoleon. From a literary and artistic point of view it was a brilliant.period.

From early in the fourth century onwards for about a hundred and fifty years the Guptas ruled over a powerful and prosperous state in the north. For almost another century and a half their successors continued but they were on the defensive now and the empire shrank and became smaller and smaller. New inva-ders from Central Asia were pouring into India and attacking them. These were the White Huns, as they are called, who ravaged the land, as under Attila they were ravaging Europe. Their barbarous behaviour and fiendish cruelty at last roused the people, and a united attack by a confederacy under Yasho-varman was made on them. The Hun power was broken and their chief, Mihiragula, was made a prisoner. But the descen-dant of the Guptas, Baladitya, in accordance with his country's customs, treated him with generosity and allowed him to leave India. Mihiragula responded to this treatment by returning later and making a treacherous attack on his benefactor.

But the Hun rule in Northern India was of brief duration— about half a century. Many of them remained, however, in the country as petty chiefs giving trouble occasionally and being absorbed into the sea of Indian humanity. Some of these chiefs became aggressive early in the seventh century A.C. They were crushed by the King of Kanauj, Harshavardhana, who thereafter built up a powerful state right across Northern and Central India. He was an ardent Buddhist but his Buddhism was of the Mahayana variety which was akin in many ways to Hinduism. He encouraged both Buddhism and Hinduism. It was in his time that the famous Chinese pilgrim Hsuan Tsang (or Yuan Chwang) came to India (in 629 A.C.). Harshavardhana was a poet and dramatist and he gathered round his court many artists and poets, making his capital Ujjayini, a famous centre of cul-tural activities. Harsha died in 648 A.C., just about the time when Islam was emerging from the deserts of Arabia, to spread out rapidly across Africa and Asia.

South India

In South India for more than 1,000 years after the Maurya Empire had shrunk and finally ceased to be, great states flouri-shed. The Andhras had defeated the Shakas and were later the contemporaries of the Kushans; then came the Chalukyan Em-pire in the west to be followed by the Rashtrakutas. Further south were the Pallavas who were mainly responsible for the colonizing expeditions from India. Later came the Chola Empire which spread right across the peninsula and conquered Ceylon and Southern Burma. The last great Chola ruler, Rajendra, died in 1044 A.C.

Southern India was especially noted for its fine products and its trade by sea. They were sea-powers and their ships carried merchandise to distant countries. Colonies of Greeks lived there and Roman coins have also been found. The Chalukyan king-dom exchanged ambassadors with the Sassanid rulers of Persia.

The repeated invasions of North India did not affect the South directly. Indirectly they led to many people from the north migrating to the south and these included builders and craftsmen and artisans. The south thus became a centre of the old artistic traditions while the north was more affected by new currents which the invaders brought with them. This process was acce-lerated in later centuries and the south became the stronghold of Hindu orthodoxy.

Peaceful Development and Methods of Warfare

A brief account of repeated "invasions and of empire succeeding empire is likely to convey a very wrong idea of what was taking place in India. It must be remembered that the period dealt with covers 1,000 years or more and the country enjoyed long stretches of peaceful and orderly government.

The Mauryas, the Kushans, the Guptas, and, in the south, the Andhras, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas and others, each lasted for two or three hundred years—longer, as a rule, than the British Empire has so far lasted in India. Nearly all these were indigenous dynasties and even those, like the Kushans, who came from across the northern border, soon adapted themselves to this country and its cultural traditions and functioned as Indian rulers with their roots in India. There were frontier forays and occasional conflicts between adjoining states, but the general conditions of the country was one of peaceful govern-ment, and the rulers took especial pride in encouraging artistic and cultural activities. These activities crossed state boundaries, for the cultural and literary background was the same through-out India. Every religious or philosophic controversy imme-diately spread and was debated all over the north and south.

 Even when there was war between two states, or there was an internal political revolution, there was relatively little inter-ference with the activities of the mass of the people. Records have been found of agreements between the warring rulers and the heads of village self-governing communities, promising not to injure the harvests in any way and to give compensation for any injury unintentionally caused to the land. This could not apply, of course, to invading armies from abroad, nor probably could it apply to any real struggle for power. The old Indo-Aryan theory of warfare strictly laid down that no illegitimate methods were to be employed and a war for a righteous cause must be righteously conducted. How far the practice fitted in with the theory is another matter. The use of poisoned arrows was forbidden, so also concealed weapons, or the killing of those who were asleep or who came as fugitives or suppliants. It was declared that there should be no destruction of fine buildings. But this view was already undergoing a change in Chanakya's time and he approves of more destructive and deceptive methods, if these are considered essential for the defeat of the enemy.

It is interesting to note that Chanakya in his Arthashastra, in discussing weapons of warfare, mentions machines which can destroy a hundred persons at one time and also some kind of explosives. He also refers to trench warfare. What all this meant it is not possible to say now. Probably the reference is to some traditional stories of magical exploits. There is no ground for thinking that gunpowder is meant. India has had many distressful periods in the course of her long history, when she was ravaged by fire and sword or by famine, and internal order collapsed. Yet a broad survey of this history appears to indicate that she had a far more peaceful and orderly existence for long periods of time at a stretch than Europe has had. And this applies also to the centuries following the Turkish and Afghan invasions, right up to the time when the Moghul Empire was breaking up. The notion that the Pax Britan-nica brought peace and order for the first time to India is one of the most extraordinary of delusions. It is true that when British rule was established in India the country was at her lowest ebb and there was a break-up of the political and economic structure. That indeed was one of the reasons why that rule was established.

                          India's Urge to Freedom 

The East bowed low before the blast In patient, deep disdain;

She let the legions thunder past, And plunged in thought again.

So says the poet and his lines are often quoted. It is true that the east, or at any rate that part of it which is called India, has been enamoured of thinking, often of thinking about matters which to those who consider themselves practical men seem absurd and pointless. She has always honoured thought and the men of thought, the highbrows, and has refused to consider the men of the sword or the possessors of money as superior to them. Even in her days of degradation, she has clung to thought and found some comfort in it.

But it is not true that India has ever bowed patiently before the blast or been indifferent to the passage of foreign legions. Always she has resisted them, often successfully, sometimes un-successfully, and even when she failed for the time being, she has remembered and prepared herself for the next attempt. Her method has been two-fold: to fight them and drive them out, and to absorb those who could not be driven away. She resisted, with considerable success, Alexander's legions, and immediately after his death drove out the Greek garrisons in the north. Later she absorbed the Indo-Greeks and the Indo-Scythians and ultimately again established a national hegemony. She fought the Huns for generations and drove them out; such as remained being absorbed. When the Arabs came they stopped near the Indus. The Turks and Afghans spread further only gradually. It took them several centuries to establish themselves firmly on the throne of Delhi. It was a continuous, long drawn-out conflict and, while this struggle was going on, the other process of absorp-tion and Indianization was also at work, ending in the invaders becoming as much Indian as anyone else.

 Akbar became the great representative of the old Indian ideal of a synthesis of differing elements and their fusion into a common nationality. He indentified himself with India, and India took to him although he was a newcomer; because of this he built well and laid the foundations of a splendid empire. So long as his successors kept in line with this policy and with the genius of the nation, their empire endured. When they broke away and opposed the whole drift of national development, they weakened and their empire went to pieces. New movements arose, narrow in outlook but representing a resur-gent nationalism, and though they were not strong enough to build permanently, they were capable of destroying the empire of the Moghuls. They were successful for a time, but they looked too much to the past and thought in terms of reviving it. They did not realize that much had happened which they could not ignore or pass by, that the past can never take the place of the present, that even that present in the India of their day was one of stagnation and decay. It had lost touch with the changing world and left India far behind. They did not appreciate that a new and vital world was arising in the west, based on a new outlook and on new techniques, and a new power, the British, represented that new world of which they were so ignorant. The British triumphed, but hardly had they established themselves in the north when the great mutiny broke out and developed with a war of independence, and nearly put an end to British rule. The urge to freedom, to independence, has always been there, and the refusal to submit to alien domination.

Progress Versus Security

We have been an exclusive people, proud of our past and of our heritage and trying to build walls and barriers to preserve it. Yet in spite of our race-consciousness and the growing rigidity of caste, we have, like others who take such pride in the purity of their racial stock, developed into a strange mixture of races — Aryan, Dravidian, Turanian, Semitic, and Mongolian. The Aryans came here in repeated waves and mixed with the Dra-vidians; they were followed in the course of thousands of years by successive waves of other migratory peoples and tribes: the Medians, Iranians, Greeks, Bactrians, Parthians, Shakas or Scythians, Kushans or the Yueh Chih, Turks, Turco-Mongols, and others who came in large or small groups and found a home in India. 'Fierce and warlike tribes,' says Dodwell in his 'India,' 'again and again, invaded its (India's) northern plains, over-threw its princes, captured and laid waste its cities, set up new states and built new capitals of their own and then vanished into the great tide of humanity, leaving to their descendants nothing but a swiftly diluted strain of alien blood and a few shreds of alien custom that were soon transformed into something cognate with their overmastering surroundings.'

To what were these overmastering surroundings due? Partly to the influence of geography and climate, to the very air of India. But much more so, surely, to some powerful impulse, some tremendous urge, or idea of the significance of life, that was impressed upon the subconscious mind of India when she was fresh and young at the very dawn of her history. That impress was strong enough to persist and to affect all those who came into contact with her, and thus to absorb them into her fold, howsoever they differed. Was this impulse, this idea, the vital spark that lighted up the civilization that grew up in this country and, in varying degrees, continued to influence its people through historical ages?

It seems absurd and presumptuous to talk of an impulse, or an idea of life, underlying the growth of Indian civilization. Even the life of an individual draws sustenance from a hundred sources; much more complicated is the life of a nation or of a civilization. There are myriad ideas that float about like flotsam and jetsam on the surface of India, and many of them are mutually antagonistic. It is easy to pick out any group of them to justify a particular thesis; equally easy to choose another group to demolish it. This is, to some extent, possible everywhere; in an old and big country like India, with so much of the dead cling-ing on to the living, it is peculiarly easy. There is also obvious danger in simple classifications of very complex phenomena. There are very seldom sharp contrasts in the evolution of practice and thought; each thought runs into another, and even ideas keeping their outer form change their inner contents; or they frequently lag behind a changing world and become a drag upon it.

We have been changing continually throughout the ages and at no period were we the same as in the one preceding it. To-day, racially and culturally, we are very different from what we were; and all around me, in India as elsewhere, I see change march-ing ahead with a giant's stride. Yet I cannot get over the fact that Indian and Chinese civilizations have shown an extraordi-nary staying power and adaptability and, in spite of many chan-ges and crises, have succeeded, for an enormous span of years, in preserving their basic identity. They could not have done so unless they were in harmony with life and nature. Whatever it was that kept them to a large extent to their ancient moorings, whether it was good or bad or a mixture of the two, it was a thing of power or it could not have survived for so long. Possibly it ex-hausted its utility long ago and has been a drag and a hindrance ever since, or it may be that the accretions of later ages have smothered the good in it and only the empty shell of the fossil remains.

There is perhaps a certain conflict always between the idea of progress and that of security and stability. The two do not fit in, the former wants change, the latter a safe unchanging haven and a continuation of things as they are. The idea of progress is modern and relatively new even in the west; the ancient and mediaeval civilizations thought far more in terms of a golden past and of subsequent decay. In India also the past has always been glorified. The civilization that was built up here was essentially based on stability and security, and from this point of view it was far more successful than any that arose in the west. The social structure, based on the caste system and joint families, served this purpose and was successful in providing social security for the group and a kind of insurance for the individual who by reason of age, infirmity, or any other incapacity, was unable to provide for himself. Such an arrangement, while favouring the weak, hinders; to some extent, the strong. It encourages the average type at the cost of the abnormal, the bad or the gifted. It levels up or down and individualism has less play in it. It is interesting to note that while Indian philosophy is highly individualistic and deals almost entirely with the individual's growth to some kind of inner perfection, the Indian social structure was communal and paid attention to groups only. The individual was allowed perfect freedom to think and believe what he liked, but he had to conform strictly to social and communal usage.

With all this conformity there was a great deal of flexibility also in the group as a whole and there was no law or social rule that could not change by custom. Also new groups could have their own customs, beliefs, and practices and yet be considered members of the larger social group. It was this flexibility and adaptability that helped in the absorption of foreign elements. Behind it all were some basic ethical doctrines and a philosophic approach to life and a tolerance of other people's ways. So long as stability and security were the chief ends in view, this structure functioned more or less successfully, and even when economic changes undermined it, there was a process of adaptation and it continued. The real challenge to it came from the new dynamic conception of social progress which could not be fitted into the old static ideas. It is this conception that is uprooting old-established systems in the east as it has done in the west. In the west while progress is still the dominant note, there is a growing demand for security. In India the very lack of security has forced people out of their old ruts and made them think in terms of a progress that will give more security.

In ancient and mediaeval India, however, there was no such challenge of progress. But the necessity for change and con-tinuous adaptation was recognized and hence grew a passion for synthesis. It was a synthesis not only of the various elements that came into India but also an attempt at a synthesis between the outer and inner life of the individual, between man and nature. There were no such wide gaps and cleavages as seem to exist to-day. This common cultural background created India and gave it an impress of unity in spite of its diversity. At the root of the political structure was the self-governing village system, which endured at the base while kings came and went. Fresh migrations from outside and invaders merely ruffled the surface of this structure without touching those roots. The power of the state, however despotic in appearance, was curbed in a hundred ways by customary and constitutional restraints, and no ruler could easily interfere with the rights and privileges of the village community. These customary rights and privileges ensured a measure of freedom both for the community and the individual.

Among the people of India to-day none are more typically Indian or prouder of Indian culture and tradition than the Rajputs. Their heroic deeds in the past have become a living part of that very tradition. Yet many of the Rajputs are said to be descended from the Indo-Scythians, and some even from the Huns who came to India. There is no sturdier or finer peasant in India than the Jat, wedded to the soil and brooking no

interference with his land. He also has a Scythian origin. And so too the Kathi, the tall, handsome peasant of Kathiawad. The racial origins of some of our people can be traced back with a certain definiteness, of others it is not possible to do so. But whatever the origin might have been, all of them have become distinctively Indian, participating jointly with others in India's culture and looking back on her past traditions as their own.

It would seem that every outside element that has come to India and been absorbed by India, has given something to India and taken much from her; it has contributed to its own and to India's strength. But where it has kept apart, or been unable to become a sharer and participant in India's life, and her rich and diverse culture, it has had no lasting influence, and has ultimately faded away, sometimes injuring itself and India in the process.