The Past as Present by Romila Thapar

Author:Romila Thapar [Thapar, Romila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789383064502
Published: 2014-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

III

DEBATES

DEBATES: AN INTRODUCTION

Invented Theories

One of the principal statements of the colonial understanding of Indian society was that of describing it as a static society that underwent no change whatsoever, throughout its history. A static society meant that the description of society would remain the same for long periods. Therefore the Hindu period could well last for two if not three thousand years without change. It also meant that early Indian society had no consciousness of history since an awareness of history requires recognition of historical change. Historians influenced by anti-colonial nationalism, contested some colonial interpretations, but these views were not among them.

Two theories from among those propounded by colonial scholarship were continued unchallenged by the successor historians of the early twentieth century. Both have been run threadbare and have been rejected by later historians, but remain resilient in the identity politics of today. One was the equating of the identity politics of religious communities with nationalisms as has been discussed above. The other was the projection of the Aryan race and its culture as the author of Indian civilization and therefore foundational to its creation. As we’ve seen, this theory was influential through the writings of Friedrich Max Mueller, the Sanskrit scholar, and at the popular level through its propagation by Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, the Theosophist. Max Mueller maintained that the Aryans came from Central Asia but Olcott insisted that they were indigenous, and were the cradle of Indian civilization which they took to other parts of the world. This view does not reflect indigenous scholarship, as is claimed by those that support it today. Based on this theory it is argued that the superior cultures of the past have an Aryan authorship; hence the need to insist that the Harappans were Aryans, irrespective of whether or not the evidence supports the argument. If Aryanism was the foundation of Indian civilization it had to be indigenous, that is, it had to originate within the boundaries of British India or else it would count as alien—as indeed it was so declared by Jyotiba Phule, an early social reformer of nineteenth century Maharashtra. Needless to say Phule is not a hot favourite in Hindutva circles. And furthermore, there is now a need for the latter to insist on Aryan being indigenous in order to associate Hinduism with the earliest beginnings, despite the definition of ‘Aryan’ having mutated from Vedic times to the later centuries, as indeed also in historical thinking over the last two centuries. ‘Aryan’ and ‘Dravidian’ used as terms for peoples confuses language and race since these are language labels, and should correctly be used as, ‘Aryan-speaking people’ and ‘Dravidian-speaking people’.

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