Decoding ‘The Discovery of India’

 

Decoding ‘The Discovery of India’

Jawaharlal Nehru wrote The Discovery of India, from a solitary confinement, during the incarceration at the Ahmednagar Fort, paying homage to his beloved country.  It provides a broad view of the Indian philosophy, culture and history, the numerous foreign invasions and their impact on socio-economic and political life of India, couched in pleasant prose often rising to poetic heights. He captured India’s past relating it to the present and then predicting the shape of future. It is a gripping narration of India's history, right from the Indus Valley civilization to the Quit India movement. Some selected topics from the book are discussed here for their relevance and significance:

 

The Continuity of Indian Culture

 

According to Professor Anthony Macdonell- a noted Sanskrit scholar-when the Greeks invaded the North-West in the 4^th century BC, the Indians had already developed a national culture of their own, unaffected by foreign influences. And in spite of successive waves of invasion and conquest by Persians, Greeks, Scythians and Mohammedans, the national development of the life and literature of the Indo-Aryan race remained practically unchecked and unaltered till the advent of the British. And “no other country except China can trace back its language and literature, its religious beliefs and rites, its dramatic and social customs through an uninterrupted development of more than 3,000 years.” This cultural growth and continuity is remarkable.

 

Max Muller- the famous scholar and Orientalist- observed: “There is an unbroken continuity between the most modern and the most ancient phases of Hindu thought, extending over more than three thousand years."  In his series of lectures delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1882, he eulogized India: “If we were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow in some part a very paradise on earth, I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we here in Europe, who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thought of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, more truly human a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured, and eternal life---again I should point to India.”

 

Nearly half a century later Romain Rolland wrote in the same strain:” If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days, when man began the dream of existence, it is India.”

 

Growth and Decay

 

Nehru wrote that during the first thousand years of Christian era, though there were many ups and downs, many conflicts with invading elements and internal troubles, India had a vigorous national life bubbling over with energy and spreading out in all directions. During the Gupta   period, called the Golden Age of India, the Gupta Empire flourished and became the patron and symbol of the widespread intellectual an artistic activity. The writings of that period, which were classics in Sanskrit literature “reveal a serenity, a quiet confidence of the people in themselves, and a glow of pride at being privileged to be alive in that high noon of civilization.”

 

The South India became more important both politically and culturally. This was because the South escaped the continuous strain of fighting waves of invaders; many of the writers and artists and master-builders migrated to the South to escape from the unsettled conditions of the North. The powerful kingdoms of the South, with their brilliant courts, attracted these people and gave them opportunities for creative work which they lacked elsewhere.

 

Banaras was then the heart of religious and philosophical thought.  Kashmir was for long a great Sanskrit Centre of Buddhist and Brahminical learning. The great universities flourished of these, Nalanda the most famous of all, was respected for its scholarship all over India. The intellectual life of the university had been one of animated debates and discussions. The spread of Indian culture abroad was largely the work of scholars from Nalanda.  

 

As the first millennium approached its end, Nehru said, "all this appears to be the afternoon of a civilization; the glow of the morning had long faded away, high noon was past." In the South there was still vitality and vigour and this lasted for some centuries more; in the Indian colonies aboard there was aggressive and full-blooded life right up to the middle of the next millennium. The Cholas in the South continued to be a great sea power till the eleventh century when they defeated and conquered Srivijaya Empire in Southeast Asia.

 

India was drying ad losing her creative genius and vitality. The loss of political freedom led to cultural decay.  A small country might easily be overwhelmed by superior power, but a huge, well developed and highly civilised country like India succumbing to external attacks explains the internal decay. The capacity for adaptation, the flexibility of mind which had saved India so often in the past had left her.  The fixed beliefs and the growing rigidity of her social structure made her mind rigid.

 

We had many examples of the collapse of a civilization. The most notable of these was that of the European civilization which ended with the fall of Rome. Long before Rome fell to the invaders from the North, it had been on the verge of collapse from its own internal weaknesses. In India, “the spirit of exclusiveness snapped the creative faculty and developed a narrow, small-group, and parochial outlook.”  Education and opportunities of growth were withheld from the lower castes, who were taught to be submissive to those higher ups in the social ladder. No marked progress was possible without releasing fresh sources of talent and energy. And “the caste system was a barrier to such a change. For all its virtues and stability, it had given to Indian society, it carried within it the seeds of destruction”, resulting in decline all along the line-intellectual, philosophical, political, in the technique and methods of warfare, in knowledge of and contacts with the outside world. There was a growth of local sentiments and feudal, small-group feeling at the expense of the larger conception of India as a whole.  

 

Mahmud of Ghazni and Ghuri

 

In 712, the Arabs had invaded Sind and occupied it, and it remained a small independent Moslem State. For nearly 300 years there was no further invasion of or incursion into India.  Around 1000 years AC, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni in Afghanistan- a Turk who had risen to power in Central Asia-began his raids into India. There were many such raids and they were bloody and ruthless, and on every occasion Ghazni carried away with him a vast quantity of treasure. The whole of Central, Eastern, and South India escaped from him completely. He annexed Punjab and Sind to his dominions and returned to Ghazni after each raid.

 

Ghazni’s raids are a big event in Indian history, though politically India as a whole was not greatly affected by them and the heart of India remained untouched. These raids demonstrated the weakness and decay of North India. It is important to remember that the Islam had come peacefully as a religion and taken its place among the many religions of India without any trouble or conflict.

 

Another Afghan, Shahab-ud-Diu Ghuri (Muhmud Ghuri) captured Ghazni in 12^th century, and put an end to the Ghaznavite Empire. Muhmud Ghuri had invaded North India several times. He marched to Lahore and then to Delhi. But the king of Delhi, Prithvi Raj Chauhan had defeated him every time. Ghuri had ultimately defeated Prithivi Raj Chavan in 1192 and captured the throne of Delhi and beheaded him later. 

Prithivi Raj carried away the daughter of Jaichandra, King of Kanauj in Central India, defying an assembled host of princelings who had come to offer court to her. This infuriated King Jaichandra, and he joined hands with Ghuri and helped him  to defeat Prithivi Raj. This is how Nehru viewed the episode: “The chivalry of Delhi and Central India engaged in internecine conflict and there was much mutual slaughter. And so, all for the love of a woman, Prithivi Raj lost his life and throne, and Delhi, that seat of empire, passed into the hands of an invader from outside. But his love story is sung still and he is a hero, while Jaichandra is looked upon almost a traitor.” 

                                       Purdah: The Seclusion of Women

Among the unfortunate developments that took place in India, was the growth of purdah- the seclusion of women. This started in the Byzantine court circles (Eastern Roman Empire). Byzantine influence travelled to Russia where there was a strict seclusion of women right up to Peter the Great’s time. The mixed Arab-Persian civilization was affected in many ways by Byzantine customs and the segregation of upper-class women grew. However, there was no strict seclusion of women in Arabia or in other parts of Western or Central Asia. The Afghans who crowded into northern India, after the capture of Delhi, had no strict purdah.  It was an old Islamic custom that women must keep their faces unveiled during the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca. Purdah grew in India during Mughal times, when it became a mark of status and prestige among both Hindus and Moslems.  And yet, purdah had not been strict in the Punjab and in the Frontier Province, which were predominantly Moslem.

 

To Nehru, purdah was among the causes of India’s decay in recent centuries. He was convinced that “the complete ending of this barbarous custom is essential before Indians have a progressive social life." That "it injures women is obvious enough, but the injury to man, to the growing child who has to spend much of its time among women in purdah, and to social life generally is equally great.” Gandhiji too had been a fierce opponent of purdah, called it a vicious and brutal custom, that kept women backward and undeveloped: “the wrong being done by men to the women of India by clinging to a barbarous custom, which was doing incalculable harm to the country.” He urged that woman should have the same liberty and opportunity of self-development as man. He believed in women’s equality and freedom, and bitterly condemned their domestic slavery.