‘9th Professor Sarat Mahanta Memorial Lecture on ‘Bharat Varsha – The Origins of Our Civilizational Identity’
GUWAHATI: “The idea of India as a civilizational nation is clearly very ancient, but it is not static, rigid, or pure. It has evolved over thousands of years to include many new ideas, including foreign influences that came through trade, migration, invasion, and exchange of ideas,” said Sanjeev Sanyal while delivering the 9th Professor Sarat Mahanta Memorial Lecture on ‘Bharat Varsha—The Origins of Our Civilizational Identity’ at the Royal Global University in Guwahati on Wednesday.
Sanyal is a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council. He presented a compelling case that Bharatvarsha, which is India, is an ancient civilizational nation and not, as is claimed by some, a mere union of states.
Sanjeev Sanyal cited a plethora of ancient texts and historical accounts to effectively demolish what he termed the ‘colonial denial of Indian civilizational identity’.
He quoted Sir John Strachey, the acting Viceroy of India in 1872, who said, “The first and most essential thing to learn about India is that there is not, and never was, an India.” Winston Churchill has also said that “India is a geographical term, no more a united nation than the equator.”.
Marxist historians and a section of the western-leaning elite in India have also been propagating this falsehood for their own vested interests. The Bharatas, he contended, were people that lived and flourished in the ancient Harappan civilisation on the ‘land of the seven rivers’, or the ‘Sapta Sindhu’ in the Saraswati and Ghaggar basins. Contrary to popular belief, the original seven rivers were the Saraswati and its tributaries and did not include the rivers of Punjab.
The Saraswati river, on whose banks lived a Vedic tribe by the name of Bharata-Trutsu, is also referred to as Bharati and finds mention in the Rig Veda seventy-two times. The river dried up around 200 BCE (before the Common Era), he said.
Assimilation and not imposition, contended Sanyal, was the bedrock of the Indian civilisation. This is amply demonstrated by the Bharatas’ act of compiling all the existing wisdom of the tribes they defeated into the Vedas. The Vedas are, he added, explicitly a ‘samhita’ or compilation and do not claim to be the origin. The Rig Veda, thus, begins with a chant paying respect to both ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ sages.
The symbol of the Charavartin (universal monarch) was the spoked wheel, which was the same as the Mauryan ‘chakra’ that finds its place in India’s national flag. This strongly suggests a civilizational continuum, contended Sanyal. An interesting pivot of the Indian civilisation, pointed out by Sanyal, was that it was based on a ‘civilisational contract’. The last hymn of the Rig Veda explicitly lays out that all ancient gods have a place around a common sacred fire.
Sanyal contended that the idea of ‘Sapta Sindhu’ spread in the post-Vedic texts to cover the entire subcontinent. The Puranas and the epics suggest a clear knowledge of the subcontinent’s civilizational unity. He cited chapters from the Brahma Purana that mention the geographical boundaries of ‘Bharata’, whose people are called ‘Bharatis’.
Sanyal refers to the accounts of Chinese, Greek, Arab, and other foreign visitors who clearly described India and a geographical and civilisational unity.
For example, the ancient Greco-Romans referred to the subcontinent as Indoi, while Megasthanes wrote of it as Indika. The ancient Chinese had several variations on Sindhu: Yuandu, Tianzhu, etc.
The ancient Egyptians referred to Bharat as H-n-d-w-y (in their hieroglyphs), while mediaeval Arabs mentioned it as al-Hind in their accounts. Al-Beruni’s book on India describes the civilisational unity of Bharat despite political divisions and provides clear estimates of distances as measured from Kannauj and a sacred tree in Prayag.
Shankara, or Adi Shankaracharya, toured the subcontinent in the 8th century CE and established ‘mathas’ at Puri, Sringeri, Dwarka and Badrinath which approximate the four corners of India.
In Jain, Buddhist, and Puranic texts, said Sanyal, Bharat is often referred to as ‘Jambudwipa’. The simplest explanation for this is that the subcontinent resembles the shape of a ‘jambu’ or rose apple fruit—broad at the top (the Himalayas) and narrow towards the bottom (peninsular India).
Even in the mediaeval period, there are references to Jambudwipa. For instance, during the revolt of the Poligars (Palaiyakkarars of the former Tirunelveli kingdom in Tamil Nadu) against the East India Company, their chief Marudu Pandyan made a declaration of independence in 1801 that referred to “the castes and people that are in the Jambu subcontinent of Jambu Dwipa.”.
The first line of the Constitution says, “India, that is, Bharat, shall be a union of states.”. Sanyal’s address was supplemented by another very interesting presentation by Nabaarun Barooah, who is pursuing his Master’s degree at Oxford University.
Barooah traced the untold history of what he termed Assam’s earliest defender—Prithu, the Rai of Kamrup. After destroying the world-renowned Nalanda University in Bihar, Bakhtiyar Khilji marched into Kamrup in 1206 after converting a local chieftain, Ali Mech, with the hope of conquering Tibet. Khilji conquered Lakhnauti (modern-day Bengal), destroyed temples, erected mosques over them, and built a capital in his own name around 1203 CE in the area in central Bengal called Gaur.
He continued his conquest and sacking of Bengal and laid siege to what is today Nadia around 1204 CE.
But Khilji met his nemesis in Assam. Minhaj-al-Din Siraj-al-Din Muhammad Juzjani, in an account commissioned by Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah in 1260 CE, mentions the defeat of Khilji at the hands of the Rae of Kamrup.
A rock inscription in North Guwahati (Kanhai Boroxi Board Xil) dating back to 1206 CE says that in the year 1127 of the Saka era, on the 13th day of the’month of honey’ (Chaitra), upon arriving at Kamarupa, the Turks perished.
The name of Prithu (of Kamrup), who defeated Khilji, first appeared in colonial-era gazetteers who conducted research in Rangpur and Panchagarh in present-day Bangladesh.
In the decisive Battle of Kamarupa between Khilji and Prithu, the former marched with 10,000 horsemen along the Bagmati river and entered the hills. Prithu’s army follows a scorched earth policy to starve Khilji’s army. A stone bridge erected by the invaders was destroyed by Prithu’s army, after which, in a fierce showdown between the two forces, Khilji’s starving men fell.
Khilji escaped and hid in a temple, and after he returned to his capital, he was killed by Ali Mardan. Barooah also cited other historical sources to prove the heroic defence of Kamrup by Prithu. He concluded by stating that while Lachit Borphukan’s heroics are being finally honoured by the nation, Prithu still awaits his due.
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